Never Fade Away: Trouble Finds Trouble (ch. 55) (Patreon)

Charges spent over timeskip:

Black boxing -- 5 (5)

Predator: Cloaking -- 4 (2)

Fallout: Energy Weapons -- 4 (2)

Fallout: Autodoc -- 5 (2)

Starfield: Grav Drive -- 5 (3)

…

“You've changed,” Kaiden accused me as I looked over the schematics I was developing for one of my many projects. We had gone to ground in the past month since I shot down the Turian ship. In a rather ironic twist, we ended up staying in the Arasaka Tower basement because it was one of the few locations that were designed to tank a WMD impact. Making it one of the few natural choices to set up shop.

It was something of a cold comfort that every Arasaka logo had been removed and the building itself was defaced by a large L painted on its side. Like a dog marking its territory.

“What do you mean?” I asked, not looking up from the blueprints. It was a body. A new one. One that was almost completely designed from the ground up to take advantage of all the advantages that I had -- PYM particles, GN Drives, Microbots, and so much more. A complete implementation of everything that I had developed so far.

It would just require some rather… invasive surgery. Well, calling it surgery was a bit of an understatement. I would essentially be turning myself into a borg. David proved exactly how powerful some of the implants I created were. He was nothing less than a one man army and, so far, he hadn't seemed to show any signs of cyberpsychosis.

It was an extreme measure, but a prudent one. There were some implants that I required to prolong my life, and they alone were pretty invasive. Meaning that I would have a better quality of life, and fewer difficulties, if I went all the way with it. Taking off my organic arms. My torso. Replacing my organs… my bones.

Ninety-six percent.

If I performed the surgery, then ninety-six percent of my body would be chrome and steel. All that would be truly left of me would be my brain, but it would have all the tools I would need to maintain my health.

Kaiden was right. I had changed. I would have jumped into that coffin of steel and chrome without a second thought before.

“You stopped talking about leaving, for one,” Kaiden pointed out.

I lingered on the designs. I could pull the trigger on them now. I had all the materials that I needed. I could print them off, load them up into the Autodoc, and I would become unstoppable. My brain would be flooded with a constant haze of healing nanites, undoing any damage that Johnny or my ability did as soon as it happened. But…

Becca's hands on mine, her lips on mine- That. I would miss that. And I imagined that she would be… less than pleased with me if I went and got rid of a good ninety percent of my body.

“Would there be a point?” I asked, switching the blueprints to work on something else. The next project on the docket was the Grav Drive. Or, rather, the ship that I was designing around it. “The only way I would leave is if I take you all with me. And I'm still planning to send away everyone that's too young to fight.”

“You would have taken us anyway,” Kaiden said, entering my laboratory. Arasaka had completely gutted the place when they left, but I'm pretty sure I was inside what used to be their server room. It had steadily been filling up with various projects, all of them shrunken down for storage. At the very heart of it all was my Recycler and Fabricator -- the first pieces of tech that I made, and the ones that had paved the way to every subsequent success.

“Are you asking me to?” I asked him, not looking at him as I distracted myself by running calculations and tweaking the design.

“No. But you agreeing to give away your tech is a pretty big departure,” Kaiden continued, grabbing me by the back of the chair and pulling me away from the computer screen. I let him as I lazily spun, seeing him take a seat on my desk.

I snorted, “It's all black boxed. It'd take everyone a hundred years to crack the first layer,” I replied, certain in that fact. Before, I just put a self destruct protocol on the off chance that some of my tech left my possession and fell into the hands of someone like Arasaka. And that was all I needed as far as I was concerned. But, Kaiden was right. I had started spreading my tech around, which meant that my approach needed to change.

So, I invested some charges into blackboxing my code and technology. It was simple really, even if it did necessitate some design changes -- the black box was where the magic happened. The core code, function, and output of any code or tech that couldn't be peered into because it would break it. People could guess how it worked. Theorize. They might even be right some of the time, and while I couldn't stop people from finding a way to replicate my technology, what I could do was prevent them from getting their hands on a functioning design to work off of.

I even took a page from the corporate handbook, specifically the one about planned obsolescence. All of my tech had a limited lifespan, or a limited number of uses, which would further hamper any attempt to replicate what I created. It also made me the only reliable source of my technology.

“I know. I can hear every gun nut griping about it,” Kaisen said, folding his arms over his chest. “I'm just saying that it's a big change. I talked to Rogue and you're first answer had been to trauma dump and tell the NUSA to go fuck itself.”

“I meant it,” I replied flippantly.

“L…” Kaiden sighed and I swallowed one of my own.

“Desperation makes shitty people worse. If I refuse, then the NUSA will get desperate. I… what I can do is too huge of a tactical advantage,” I explained, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “They’d brute force it. They’d pay whatever the cost in blood and make mountains of corpses on the off chance that they could make another me. They’d fuckin’ do it and call it a necessary evil.” I sneered, pushing myself back and I rolled across the floor to my guitar. My finger was tapping.

Kaiden was silent, and he knew the truth. “They’ll do that anyway.”

Kiwi was more right than she had realized.

“Yeah, they will. But me handing out some of my scraps will sate their greed. It robs them of the catch all excuse of ‘for the greater good,’” I added, grabbing my guitar and starting to strum away. Calluses had started to build up on my fingers and I was getting better. Much better. Far too quickly.

Johnny.

“It makes them dependent on me. They’ll try to slip the leash eventually, but they understand that they can't afford to make an enemy of both me and the Turians,” I finished, kicking off the couch while I lazily spun across the room to another desk, playing a tune all the while. “It's a half measure. Limited control. But it's enough to keep them honest for now.”

The only point of weakness was the Aldecaldos. They had the worst version of my GN Drive, but it was unboxed. I didn't really see Panam or Saul selling off the tech, but that didn't mean someone wouldn’t ask. A secret like that could only stay a secret for so long, and eventually, someone else would try to take the tech. The only reason why I hadn't acted was the thought that most people would assume that it was another black boxed GN Drive.

“Kaiden,” I spoke up, reaching the other desk. “What's going on?” I asked him, knowing that this was more than just a wellness check.

“The Turians. They're planning something,” he answered after a moment. I paused my strumming, glancing over at him with a frown.

“Chatter?” I prompted, not really surprised but it was unwelcome news.

“More like their actions. They're turtling up on whatever ground that they have and the fleet overhead is shuffling around,” Kaiden answered. All signs that something was going to happen. There had been a brief race against my bubble shields that steadily went up over major cities, towns, and military bases -- but humanity had won that race. All strategic positions had to be attacked by ground forces on a secure position. Or by hammering the shield with enough overwhelming force that the power supply couldn't supply enough to maintain the shield integrity.

The latter happened only once. To see if it was possible, as far as anyone could tell. The only thing holding them back seemed to be reluctance to bring down the amount of force to destroy the shield because it could very well be the end of the city as well.

“Kaiden. What else?” I prompted him again, knowing it was something else. Things had settled. The Turians bombed everything that came and went from a bubbleshield, meaning that Nomads were the most exposed until they started outfitting their vehicles with stealth tech. They started knocking out every single satellite in orbit to disrupt communications. But, they hadn't committed to any kind of large scale ground assault because it would be horrific for them.

The Turians were willing to accept collateral damage on their own side, but that didn't mean that they were willing to feed meat into the grinder to take inches of progress.

Meaning that the war was effectively at a standstill as far as I could tell. Humanity was building up their defenses while the Turians were preparing to attack. A lull in the fighting, but by no means a peace.

“I'm going to fight,” he answered, and… I wish that came to me as a surprise. “With the others. The ones that can fight. The Resistance is going to make an attack, try to link up with some cities up North." The Resistance. Wasn't enough that Night City was liberated. They wanted to secure the entire coast.

My grip tightened on my guitar. “Are you asking for permission, or something?” I asked him, making him pause before he shook his head.

“No. Nothing like that. I just…” he trailed off, not quite sure how to put it into words. But I understood what he was trying to say. War was war. Anything could happen. I could load him up with everything that he could conceivably ever need, and sometimes all it took was pure dumb luck and every preparation in the world couldn't stop him from dying.

“As far as I'm concerned, I don't have a bone in this fight,” I told Kaiden before I gestured him to follow me after I set my guitar to the side. “The only reason why I care about it at all is because you lot care about it.”

“Things can change, L. After,” Kaiden said as I hit a button.

“Kaiden, you can't be that naive,” I refuted and it was an argument that had cropped up more than once. Becca had said as much. Lucy had said as much. Kiwi has said as much. “As far as I can see, this war is between two evils, and even a lesser evil is still an evil. Things won't change after we win. Things will go exactly to how they were before this mess kicked off -- the same shit for brain backroom deals, corpo politics, and normal folk being treated as a resource to be exploited. And I can't change that. I can't change human nature, Kaiden.”

We were scanned by my desk before we were hit with PYM particles. Shrinking down, we were brought to what had looked like a fairly large model. Now, it looked like the spaceship that it was.

Full size, it would be a hundred and fifty feet long. Not exactly huge, by any measure, but it was outfitted with entire complexes, foundries, and storage. However, a good twenty five feet of that length came from a barrel of the main weapon -- a GBM. The ship itself was shaped like a lowercase ‘t’, with something of a wingspan where the bubbleshield emitters were placed for dual coverage and additional weapon systems. A large GN Particle thruster emerged from the back of the ship.

Johnny had called it the Swordfish on account of the GBM. And I hadn't been able to come up with anything better.

“You could take control,” Kaiden stated as we came to a stop, looking up at the ship. It was left unpainted, but I was itching to paint it a cherry red. Unnecessary, but flashy.

“Then I'm stuck on this rock playing babysitter for the rest of my life,” I refuted. It was possible. Doable. It would be bloody work, but blood had never scared me before. I pointed at the ship, “The latest Grav Drive can travel fifteen light years per jump. With the GN Drive I put in it, it can be powered endlessly with no time between jumps necessary, beyond the calculations needed for the next jump.”

Kaiden looked at the ship for a long minute. “A wanted to explore space,” He echoed A's wish back to me.

“The Swordfish can go anywhere. It's not reliant on any Mass Relay. It's completely self-sufficient in terms of power, food production, and it has all the equipment needed for further additions if necessary,” I told him. “The only reason why I'm not gone is because of you and the kids that want to stay,” I admitted.

Kaiden was silent. It had always been the plan, but I suppose it was different seeing proof of it. “Are you planning to go with them?” He asked, and that was a loaded question. More so than he realized.

The healing nanites were undoing the bulk of the damage that was being done to my brain, but when Vik first gave me my diagnosis, I had about twenty tumors. I had more than sixty now. Which led to the Relic nanites acting more aggressively as they attacked the tumors and that piece of brain that Arasaka called ‘the Nexus.’ That seizure had been a warning sign that the clock was ticking down a lot faster than anticipated.

“I'm not going to leave you all here to deal with this mess,” I reassured him, patting him on the back. “The Turians… we’ll deal with them one way or the other. Get them off of Earth, at the very least. And take down that fleet in orbit. After that…” I paused, pursing my lips before I offered a small smile. “You don't need me looking over your shoulders. You can make your own choices without me holding your hands.”

I could tell that Kaiden was a little put off by my decision. I understood why -- Johnny called me a mother hen, a helicopter mom, and about a dozen other things that all meant the same thing. That I was too overprotective. Some of it was reasonable, I felt. The world sucked and I had a massive target painted on my back. Other parts…

“There comes a point where being protective turns into being smothering. I went past it,” I admitted. “I'll always be there if you need me… But I gotta let you make your own decisions. Even if I think they're fucking stupid.” I added a little unnecessarily, making Kaiden snort.

Then he fell silent as he looked at the Swordfish. The most advanced ship that humanity had. I knew that various governments had their own secret projects to make a bleeding edge ship, but they all centered around Element Zero. I knew that the hacking attempts against the fleet had borne fruit for some that managed to klep some schematics and system data, which would be a large step forward in terms of humanity’s take on the Eezo drive. But, production of a fleet large enough to take the fight to the Turians was stalled on account that the Turians bombarded everything coming and going from a dome.

While I hadn't given them my recycler tech, they did shamelessly steal the idea from me and began recycling the garbage that filled the junk yards or back alleys of every city. I had no idea if it would be enough, but if it was or wasn't really wasn't my concern.

“You really have changed,” Kaiden noted, and I just shrugged. He paused for a moment before he spoke. “I'm going to fight. Jack is too. So are David and Lucy. Will you help?”

To that, I jabbed a thumb at the Swordfish. “It needs a test flight. So, I don't see why not.”

…

“Did you talk to him?” Jack questioned as Kaiden checked his equipment as they stood in the ruined parking garage in Pacifica. Microbots supported the weak points, turning the wide open space filled with rusted metal and crumbling concrete into one of the safest places in the city. His shotgun had a plasma blaster integrated into it. His armor was mat black and gray, and with a thought he could become invisible.

Kaiden looked around at the assault team that was formed up. It consisted primarily of the Aldecaldos, who would be using their vehicles as a method of transportation. All outfitted with stealth tech and heavy weaponry including tanks that L had printed off for them.

“L is going to make sure that we don't get hammered from their eye in the sky,” Kaiden said, looking out at the assembled group. It wasn't much of an army, not like what the Turians invaded with. Three thousand people, more or less, all sorted into various strike teams. But, what they lacked in quality, they made up for in quality.

Kaiden's gaze flickered to David, who stood with his arms crossed at one side of the table they were arranged around. Paper and digital maps marking their plans. Kaiden wasn't exactly sure how it turned out this way, but people turned to him and David when they were looking for leadership.

There was visible relief when word spread that L was on overwatch. Kaiden glanced at Jack -- her nose was crooked, and her lip was still a little busted. However, if he had to describe her expression it would be… annoyed.

Kaiden was just glad that Becca wouldn't be joining them on this particular excursion.

The strike group was made up of familiar faces -- David, Lucy, Jackie, River, Panam, Jack, and himself. Each filling a role that needed to be filled.

He looked down at the map of a Turian military base located in a small city north of Night City. It had largely been abandoned before the war, which made it a decent enough place for them to set up shop after they failed to take over Night City. That staging ground would pave the way for invasions into Night City, throughout the Midwest, down the East Coast, and into the Canadian province.

And they were about to take it out.

“Is everyone ready?” Kaiden asked and he saw as many nervous jitters as he did confident nods.

It was something.

“Then let's roll out.”