Maelstrom

[Geno]

Valravn’s docks were grandiose, with immense beams of white metal and a spotless floor of white iridium stretching out for at least fifty meters in both height and width – enough to house some of the greatest saviors of Inverness, including the Predator and the Redeemer, neatly hanging from the ceiling with indestructible zero-g containment fields, ready for deployment at a moment’s notice. Multiple teams of armored guards were roaming around the perimeter of the upper level with precise and surgical marching patterns of six, almost comparable to those of machines. But what made them different from machines is that they were skin and blood and bone inside. The technocracy was a perfect symbiosis between steel and flesh, metal and gore, one helping the other in ways they could not help themselves. There was truth and wisdom in this holy union, a truth that was proved to be right multiple times, and a truth Sirius was, and never will, be ready to embrace. But there was a note of discomfort in the pilot of the approaching Jackdaw. Lazurith, as he made himself known to be, named after the eponymous mineral. He felt a leash around his naked neck, one that was never there. He approached the docking bay next to three perfectly aligned Hawfinch fighters, breaking the symmetry.

As he exited the yellow and scorched piece of scrap of a ship, he was immediately approached by a dozen soldiers in white, glistening heavy combat gear – the kind you see on space Marines who jump from a ship’s hull onto another with reckless abandon and splay the gore of everyone inside a ship with steel and overwhelming firepower. Only one of the soldiers, identical to the rest by the looks of the armor, stepped forward, with a Devastator MK733-4 rifle embraced in his hands, the shining visor of purple being the only recognizable thing for a face. It made its way past the mirrored rows of soldiers varying in height and size, approaching the jacketed contrarian who caused them nothing but trouble.

“Technocrat Lazurith.”
“Yes? Is something amiss?”
“Valentine's debriefing was ridiculous. You caused a major breach in a security protocol; our whole base went on Magenta alert because you can’t keep away from exclusion zones.”

The technocrat chose to promptly ignore the soldier’s complaints, despite the plethora of weapons that could have gone off at any second. He attempted to walk past the soldier, who promptly stood in his way again, preventing him an escape.

“We had to rush-start the Ixion. To exfiltrate you.”
“Look, soldier. If boarding a ship at such a late time and three hots and a cot aren’t enough for you, you can always leave. If it’s such a bother for you to do your job, just find something else. It’s okay.”

Laz left a gentle pat with his left hand on a pauldron of the irritated squad leader, with every other marine glaring in silence as the contrarian walked his way past the flight of stairs, beyond the sub-level clearance guards and off to the elevators.

Valravn was much bigger from the inside past the entry drydocks. A huge elliptical dome of white opened past the elevator’s door, with a small garden in the middle, brightened up by an incandescent and warm light from above, while crowds of other technocrats like himself were making their rounds in the station, some were accompanied by delivery automations of steel and lights walking beside them and chattering with each other like good friends, some were other patrolling marines in squads of four moving with a more laxed pace than their hangar counterparts, and there were other scientists with goofy visor-like augmentations donning long lab coats, rushing over from a laboratory to the library back again to the same laboratory at impossible speeds. The world is a rich tapestry, and so was Valravn. Kristoff mostly ignored the orderly, tiny crowds, gestured silent salutations to the few he knew, and made his way past the central platform that opened up to different paths across the station, taking the lift that would take him to the living quarters sublevel – it was time to finish what he had started.
Back in the comfort of his room after nearly a year, everything was as untidy as the day he left it – only with more dust against the large wall-sized window that had a full view of Elgin. But what concerned him was a slowly glowing box of ethereal green lights with several wires attached to it lying on his work desk. The intricacies of the metal had an impossible, inhuman shape, like a wicker box made by all-knowing deities. “Time to get to work, Sam.” He murmured to himself, as he watched the small inert box do nothing but radiate light pointlessly.

Kristoff’s work ethic was bizarre. There were several large boxes of empty components scattered across the desk, coupled with wirings, high frequency optical chips, and a large holo-terminal illuminating his tired eyes from the other side of the desk. The box was still there on the middle of the bench, but attached to a plethora of wirings connected to an entry port to the wall terminal. The technocrat was typing on a holopad at light speeds thanks to his replaced augmentations, a price he had to pay for venturing in the world of the heartless Sentinels. After typing several lines of code on his plugged terminal, he returned his attention to the glowing box, glaring at it curiously. Perhaps by pulling up a common interface for Sam, as he would call it, and himself, he could try to restore its functions by dialoguing with it through the console.


<::cd:SAM.hsp logs::>

<::attempting to pair with 00009930030-UNDEFINED device…::>
<::FATAL ERROR at quadrant 0x00000003c: unknown port::>
<::FATAL ERROR at quadrant 0x00000032a: unknown port::>
<:: FATAL ERROR at quadrant 0x00000111e: unknown port::>
<::FATAL ERROR at quadrant 0x00100033c: unknown port::>
<::FATAL ERROR at quadrant 0x00000003z: unknown port::>
<::FATAL ERROR at quadrant 0x00000111p: unknown port::>
<::FATAL ERROR at quadrant 0x00000003c: unknown port::>

The blue terminal was shining with glaring green alerts, one replacing the other, cascading in a fall of failures and useless code. Every string turned out to be incompatible with his devices. For an ancient AI possibly exiled from Gammu, Sam was a tough nut to crack. There was a maelstrom of errors, one after the other.

But he would not give up. Sam was there, a contrarian just like him. In the palm of his hand, amidst the wires.