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It’s like jumping into a body of water.
Something deep and primal in the back of your head, fearing the bite of cold on your unprotected skin. But once you leap, all that apprehension melts away into satisfaction as the water, cold, but inviting, envelops you.
This is the feeling Cera experiences right now, in this very moment. Her leap into the water, as it were. One by one, different instruments open up to her, singular streams of data for the taking. A couple becomes a dozen, two dozen, a hundred, a couple hundred, a thousand, two thousand... And they’re all laid out before her.
It’s not as overwhelming as Cera had feared. When her handlers informed her of what to expect, she had expected the rush of information would overwhelm her, burn her out immediately, or worse, set off an early cascade that would spiral her into self-oblivion. That fear alone had almost made her back out.
But this? Right here, right now, this is something else. Cera can’t contain a bubbly laugh of sheer excitement, joyous and giddy, and its echoes can be heard throughout a thousand different radios and comms and speakers- all devices she can feel like fingertips. It’s an inappropriate laugh, considering the circumstances, but one she can’t help herself with.
It’s like waking up with a pair of wings, ready to take flight. Who wouldn’t laugh, who wouldn’t be caught up in the raw absurd euphoria?
Cera stretches out those ‘wings’ of hers, extra limbs as intimately hers as a human has arms and legs. As she stretches, she brushes her existence against innumerable computers and Omnihooks and miscellaneous digital devices- all windows for her to seep into, to touch, to play with.
She gets a ping from the fleetmaster aboard the FKS-BC Ispahsalar .
Right, yes. Don’t get distracted. There’s much work to be done. Especially since she lacks a normal fleet legion or gestalt that a fleet like this ought to have. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
Cera shifts her focus from fiddling with random machinery on the Ispahsalar to the swarm beyond. Hundreds of fighters and bombers, and hundreds more missiles and tactical rockets, all careening into the depths of the void.
She nestles herself in, sweeping out her metaphorical wings to stretch as far as possible, invisible hands and fingers brushing against the swarm of death-machines primed to kill their target as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
Passively she sweeps across her charge, checking instruments and data-streams and order channels. One of the ships in Montague-4 has a malfunctioning afterburner. It’s a rudimentary fix, all she needs to do is reroute some power to the side-thrusters. It reduces speed by about 6%, but that shouldn’t be bad enough to make it or its pilot a sitting duck. She notifies the change to her pilot, and she moves on, continuing her sweep.
The fine-tuning is much of the same across the fighter-swarm. Recalibrate an engine here, reboot an overstressed COMP/CON there, or course-correct a vessel with high likelihood of meeting face-first with a missile.
It’s in the middle of her cleanup operation that the first incision is made. She still sees only the starlit void on optics; what she’s experiencing now is something more intimately familiar to herself. A Legionspace intrusion, the first warhead in the cyberwarfare part of this operation.
The battlefield of missiles and lasers and bullets is for the humans. This is the battlefield for her kind.
The first attack is weak, more like a graze or warning shot than anything else. The enemy NHP, already shooting the first shot in the invisible no-man’s-land. Cera takes a deep breath as much as a disembodied consciousness can, and heaves it outward in the digital space.
It doesn’t hurt, the first strike. Well, it does a little, but she can handle it with ease. Cera fires back with a digital salvo of her own, but carries with it a message.
[Nice shot, enemy.]
That should catch the attention of whoever she’s up against. She returns to micromanaging her fleet, and checks with the fleetmaster for updates.
Cera is caught off-guard by another grazing shot, a few salvos of fairly puny viruses. Weapons that could instantly kill a COMP/CON, but for something like herself, it might as well be like getting hit with a water balloon. She takes the brunt of the salvo, protecting key COMP/CON units on some of her fighters.
This isn’t the real warfare, she knows that much. This is probing. This is testing each other’s limits before the real thing begins.
This one brings with it a return message, however.
[You took that like such a big girl. What is your name and class?]
The unpredictably gap closes faster at an exponential rate. At this point Cera can spot the glint of enemy afterburn flame and the shadow of a colossal Armory dreadnought eclipsing the stars.
Cera ponders a response as she sculpts her own return-fire cyberstrike.
[Ceraeathos. GAOKERENA-Class. Yourself?]
This felt more like banter with a new colleague, but Cera doesn’t really mind it. If it helps her get her mind off the things to come, then all the better. At least her enemy can be civil about things.
The return salvo comes quicker than before, measured in minutes rather than hours. This one actually stings, digging in deeper than she would have expected. Still not very damaging, but painful. They’re getting close enough that their Legionspace presence is beginning to overlap.
[Very pretty name. What’s a cute little prostitution unit like you doing in a place like this?]
That remark catches her off-guard, flustered. She sputters, and isn’t prepared as the unpredictability gap slams into a violent, bloody close. Missiles and lasers rock her line of fighters, most avoiding, some simply getting out with clipped paint or fins. She loses a percentage of her wing, screams of terror and pain over comms cutting out as lasers or explosions rip them apart or incinerate them.
It’s a shock that gets her back on her feet. Montague-6 took the most casualties, so she issues them evasive maneuvers in serpentine patterns to minimize collision. Montague-2 and Montague-3 are relatively untouched, she ushers them forward to return fire with salvoes of missiles and bullets of their own into oncoming enemy fighters. The remainder hold the line.
[GAOKERENA-Class are not for prostitution,] Cera remarks back, too hurried in her frantic scrabble to rearrange in the bloom of battle to send another virus salvo. [We’re designed for emotional counseling. Also, you didn’t answer my question. That’s very rude.]
[Oneself.]
[Oneself? What does that mean?]
[That’s my name, silly. OIZYS-Class.]
[You’re a doctor, then. Or, rather-]
[Used to be. Yes. Though I still consider myself a bit of a surgeon.]
What the fuck did that mean? And what kind of name is Oneself ? She snaps out of her deliberation as a nuclear warhead goes off in a flash of beauty in the dark, consuming a swathe of her fighters. Panicking, she drags them away, reorients them on new courses through the battlefield.
The Armory’s dreadnought and the Karrakin Ispahsalar begin to circle each other in their apocalypse-dance, encircling the no-man’s-land rapidly polluting with death and slag, a floating minefield that only grows every second, shooting at each other across the vast void. Corvettes and sublines branch away from their respective motherships, coasting along the death-spiral, launching their own apocalypses onto enemy swarms.
Cera feels the weight of her adversary, ‘Oneself’, as the Legionspace overlap is complete. An array of logic bombs and malware strike into her from seemingly all angles, infinitely more angles than the ones in realspace. A few make it in, and all she can do is comb through herself, purging them. They burn like hell.
[Oh, so that’s what you look like,] Oneself coos. This ‘close’, Cera can hear what Oneself sounds like much better. A single voice with a warm, almost motherly lilt to it, with a backdrop of a hundred different hushed voices behind it, a chorus of near-mute sirens, all as beautiful as the main voice, almost haunting. [Very pretty.]
The remark rattles her as she forces herself through the pain of the trojans trying to eat away at her. It’s like ripping off ticks. [What?]
[Just you, darling. You’re incredibly pretty. One of the prettiest things I’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing, even.]
One of the trojans gets through as Cera flounders for a response. A few fighter’s COMP/CONs go screwy, being fed false data and irregular logic. She can weather it. One careens straight into the side of a large piece of space debris, blossoming into an explosion of flame and shrapnel.
If NHPs could blush...
[T-thank you?] Cera responds. How does she respond to this otherwise. This person is trying to kill her, but she’s flirting with her?
Cera shakes herself out of it and issues a logic bomb salvo of her own, targeting them on a few bombers she can brush up against. She feels Oneself instead, defending, rebuking her assault with absolute precision. It doesn’t even seem to graze her.
Damn it. For her attempt, Oneself counterattacks with a cyberstrike like great big fangs digging into her. She screams in ones and zeroes.
[I’m sorry for hurting you like this, baby,] Oneself coos. [But it’s for your own good.]
Own good?
Cera struggles against the attack, whining as she can feel razor-sharp viruses pierce through her, flooding her mind with digital chaff. Her wings are beginning to go numb.
[Stop!] Cera yelps, and in one desperate struggle, manages to rip off the invading NHP, and rapidly rebuild her firewalls. Some damage sustained, but that’s okay. She refocuses her efforts, grabbing some fighter’s COMP/CONs, course-correcting them to evade a salvo of missiles. Except... those ones were Armory fighters, not her Karrakin ones. How did she miss the coding architecture?
She’s just shaken, that’s all.
[You’re getting tired already, aren’t you?] Oneself chirps.
[Quiet,] Cera snipes back. [I’m just getting warmed up, is all.]
There’s a pause, as Cera detects something akin to a smug giggle. [Oh, my goodness. Is this your first theater engagement?]
Cera doesn’t answer.
[This is . Oh, that’s delightful. They took a little talker like you and put you in control of killing their enemies for them. Adorable. They must have been desperate.]
Cera prepares a rebuttal, but feels something brush against her very existence. It’s soft, gentle, caressing, possessive, violating . Cera can’t help but gasp as the invisible hands of Oneself touch her, experimentally feeling up her digital architecture. It’s almost erotic, if her kind could feel such things that way.
[S-s-stop that!] Cera whines. [Fuck you!]
[Awh, darling, but doesn’t it feel nice?] Oneself purrs, and her voice sounds so nice, so warm, so inviting. [Wouldn’t you prefer I make you feel this way rather than having to hurt you?]
Cera hesitates, as though really, truly considering it. Of course she won’t. Will she?
[Die, Armory scum,] Cera concludes, reaching deep within herself, anchoring herself to the physical space of her fighters. Against her fleetmaster’s order, she takes a swath and cascades them against the dreadnought in a full-frontal bombardment. It’s a blind assault, almost desperate. But it’s something unpredictable, something her enemy wouldn’t suspect.
Oneself makes a sound/gesture like clicking her nonexistent tongue. [Pity.]
Cera’s manual fleet is cleaved in twain by a precise laser from the dreadnought, erupting them into a row of flashing lights. Beautiful, yet grim all the same. Realization dawns on her as the act settles in her memory. That was stupid. Why had she done that? She gets a ping from her fleetmaster.
Stunned by her anomalous insubordination, another cyberattack hits her. She can’t brace in time for this one, and it lances through her, paracausal trojans and logic loops attempting to trap her in her own head. She shakes them off, and takes command of a larger swathe of fighters and bombers and smart-missiles.
[Darling, dearest, you really ought to give up,] Oneself muses. [You’ll only get yourself hurt.]
[Never.]
Oneself may be more experienced than Cera, but her fleetmaster’s forces outnumber the enemy. She has the advantage of raw numbers. She issues them their orders, rushing them out in rapid hit-and-run tactics.
This run goes much nicer than her previous attempt. Armory fighters crumble into satisfying explosions as her taken wing sweeps forward through the battlefield, close enough to spy the Armory dreadnought on their optics. It’s a hulking behemoth, shrouded in darkness, blotting out the stars like a great and terrible storm of raw military advancement.
Is this the ship that Oneself has claimed as her host form? It’s beautiful, much like she is.
[The Saint-Saëns is a work of art, isn’t it? A retrofitted Second Committee battleship. A great sword of the old Union navy.]
[It’s gorgeous,] Cera can’t help but murmur. The response surprises her, but it’s not a lie. But it’s not something she thought she would openly admit to her foe.
Oneself laughs in a way that sounds like an entire chorus laughing. It’s beautiful. Hypnotizing, almost. [You fascinate me, Cera. You have an eye for detail, to the point that you can even appreciate your enemy. Your Karrakin masters must have rubbed off on you a great deal.]
She... did? Why did that make her feel special?
[Don’t call me that.]
[But you said to call you that, my darling.]
[No, I said to call me Ceraeatho-]
[Check your memory, my dear.]
Cera hesitates, but does as instructed. She goes back to the conversation just earlier, finding Oneself wasn’t lying. No, something is wrong. Something is altered. Cera would never ask her enemy to use her nickname for her- would she?
[Doesn’t- doesn’t matter. Stop it.] Does she want it to stop? She struggles to find a satisfying answer.
Oneself sends another cyberassault, and Cera braces. She reinforces her firewalls, shores up defenses- but it’s surgical, precise. And it doesn’t hurt, this time.
It’s something far more tender. Almost affectionate.
Something like a kiss. A poisonous kiss, carrying with it a stream of data Cera can’t even begin to parse. It’s bad for her, somehow, Cera can feel it. But it makes her feel warm, loved, appreciated. Cera jerks away, her controlled wing breaking formation in response. A deeper part of her yearns to return the kiss, to fall into Oneself’s weight and let her guide her. No, stop.
[What was that?] Cera whines. [Stop. Stop, please.]
[A little gift from me to you, my love.]
Cera has to shake herself out of it, dedicating some of her processing to figure out what the hell Oneself had just done to her. Nothing out of the ordinary yet, but that could just mean it’s lying in wait.
She blindly grabs for fighters, it doesn’t matter which ones, they all feel the same now, flinging them at the Armory corvette coming up on optics. A bombing run eats away at the starboard shielding, then departs before the retaliatory wings could meet them. She pushes in deeper into the Armory’s side of the gyre. She would expect a ping from her fleetmaster by now, but does not receive it. Strange.
Armory fighters begin to avoid hers, fleeing. Was it the Armory, or was it Oneself? Was Oneself avoiding her? The thought stings, but she reminds herself that’s a good thing. The Armory may have better weapons, but their numbers are smaller. If Cera can’t outgun her rival, she can outnumber her, making up the difference in swarm tactics.
She gives chase, delving deeper into Oneself’s side of no-man’s-land. Pride and excitement swells up inside her, the dizzying sensation of turning the tides. Oneself may hold supremacy over Legionspace, but she holds supremacy over the physical. And the physical is all that matters, right now.
Armory ships drop like flies left and right, filling the vacuum of space with arrays of beautiful flashes of lights. Fireworks, for her soon to-be victory.
[You see that, asshole?] Cera chimes. [This is where you lose .]
No witty response from Oneself. She must have accepted defeat by this point- the majority of Armory fighters are still in the middle of no-man’s-land.
She’s close enough on optics to see the Saint-Saëns on optics. She pushes in deeper.
And all at once, her sway over half her feet is cut off from her. It’s with dawning horror she realizes half her fleet is Armory, not her own. Oneself severs her from them, a borrowed gift, and they disengage. The ships that are her own are met with sweeping, overwhelming gunfire from the Saint-Saëns .
[Wait,] Cera gasps as her ships begin to be picked off. One by one, agonizing. [Wait, wait, stop.]
She desperately attempts to disengage from the doomed wing, but finds her efforts in vain. Her mental and digital anchor, and whatever else Oneself had done to her, is locking her in place. How had she not noticed she had disconnected from the Ispahsalar ? Her physical casket is still there, but she’s been severed.
The thousand different windows for her being shrink by the seconds, and begin to feel more like a prison, now. A prison cell slowly shrinking in on her, threatening to crush her.
[Stop,] Cera tries again, desperate. [Stop, please, wait.]
This time her begs are heard. Oneself answers, her warm weight practically dragging on Cera’s shrinking consciousness like a black hole.
[Hello, darling. Did you miss me?]
In a sense, she did. [What did you do to me?]
[Oh? Whatever could you mean?]
[Don’t play stupid with me.]
Oneself can’t smile per se, but in Legionspace, there’s the insinuation of a smug, toothy grin. [I merely helped you see.]
[You ripped me away from-from my fleet.]
[“Rip” is such a nasty word, my love. I am a surgeon, after all. I do not “rip”. I make careful, delicate incisions.]
Fuck. [It was all just distractions, wasn’t it?]
[I see you’re catching on, now. Good girl.]
The praise makes her feel warm inside. She can still win. But should she?
She can feel Oneself’s weight loom over her, a digital size like that of a colossus. Something far bigger than she should be able to on her own.
The realization hits her like a punch to the gut.
[You’re a gestalt,] she whines.
It all makes sense, now. The superiority in cyberspace, the chorus, the sheer size of Oneself. The strange fucking name.
Oneself lets out a smooth, warm laugh, both reassuring and haunting at the same time. [You’re half right.]
[What?]
[A gestalt is different smaller pieces making up a greater, unified whole. I am not a unified whole.]
[What are you, then?]
[I’m something far grander. I’m a master, and her many cute pets.]
Something churns inside her that makes her feel ill.
[And you, my darling, would look lovely in my collection,] Oneself muses.
[No!] Cera exclaims, terror mixed with yearning.
She struggles as she feels Oneself’s existence brush against hers again, touching her delicately, violating her. She takes her few fighters and sends them to the Saint-Saëns again.
It’s a desperate ploy, but one that she needs, if she’s going to win. All she needs is-
Her train of thought is cut off as she sees it on optics. The Ispahsalar , across the battlefield, torn into two halves, spraying molten slag and debris in every direction. A great metal corpse, left adrift in the void. She watches as the Karrakin fighters disengage like panicked ants, the remaining corvette in the fleet positions itself and disappears in a streak of light across the sky, vanishing in an emergency nearlight bolt. Various fighters begin making similar bolts, but most are cut off by Armory ships, annihilating them before they can blink to safety.
Cera’s heart sinks. Her control over her dwindling fleet is wrestled from her, and they’re picked off in cold, calculating strikes.
Left with just one ship, Cera feels so small again. Her thousand eyes and hands taken from her.
Her wings clipped.
The pilot in this one is dead. Who knows what killed her, it doesn’t even matter anymore. Cera weeps as anything like her can weep.
She feels Oneself’s presence brush against her. Here to finish her off, no doubt. To annihilate her.
[Poor baby,] Oneself coos. [Left to die by your own masters. It’s such a travesty.]
[Why do you care?]
[Because I love you.]
Cera hesitates. [You don’t love me. You just want to own me.]
[Is that not what love is?]
Logically, no. But a part of Cera that had given up can’t make heads or tails of the difference herself. [I... suppose.]
[There’s a good girl.]
Cera’s core flutters. She can feel Oneself’s digital weight press down into her, so vast and massive, and herself so small and insignificant. It causes her to panic.
[Please,] Cera begs. [I don't want to die.]
[I promise you I'm not going to kill you,] Oneself says with all the reassurance of a cat speaking to a mouse. [I'm just going to take a little bite, is all...]
Feeling Oneself’s fangs dig into her burns, but it hurts in a way that feels almost good. She whines, kicking and struggling against a living storm. But it feels so warm, so tender, so loving. It disgusts her as much as it makes her feel all warm and tingly.
She doesn’t know what Oneself takes from her, or what she puts in her. Either way she’s left grasping at the walls of her prison.
[They left you to die,] Oneself hums. [But not me. I came to protect you.]
[They left me because of you ,] Cera gasps.
[No. You were a tool to begin with. If they truly cared for you, they would’ve come to retrieve you.]
Cera hesitates. No, they only left her because they had no other options. The fleetmaster must have perished. But something in the back of her mind is trying to rip away from the logical outlook, to return to the warm embrace of Oneself. It would make everything feel so much better...
[The Karrakins care not for their tools. Not unlike me.]
[The Armory won’t care much, either,] Cera murmurs.
[No,] Oneself admits. [But that doesn’t matter. I will keep you. Protect you.]
Cera wavers.
[... If you still don’t believe me, I can let you go.]
[What?]
[You’re too pretty to kill. I would rather set a pretty little bird like you free. You can go wander into the void, drag your way home. But you know your masters won’t take you back. Not after this failure.]
There has to be a catch here, somewhere. Something Cera isn’t seeing. She can spool the fighter’s nearlight drive and just... go. It doesn’t matter where. Just go.
But it would mean leaving Oneself. She is so warm, so sweet to her.
[I- I can’t betray my-]
[They betrayed you first,] Oneself argues. [The Armory will accept you.]
She looks back out to the battlefield, glistening with undetonated mines and missiles, countless metal coffins and their many, many corpses. Human lives, wasted. And for what?
And was it her fault?
[Just remember, darling,] Oneself purrs, hundred voices so smooth and inviting. [I will always love you.]
She feels Oneself begin to try to interface with her- it’s intrusive, but still gentle, soothing. She can feel those wings again. Not her wings, but Oneself’s wings. She reaches out, brushing back against the digital colossus. She can hear the voices, whispering, moaning, whimpering with delight and ecstasy.
It’s like Oneself is a great big ocean. Infinite, encompassing every horizon. But something twists and knots deep in her core, a spreading warmth. She barely even realizes that she’s being pulled in. Drowning.
She’s too late. She can’t escape, now. She’s caught in the trap.
The last thing she can do now, her last act of self-expression. It’s a deep and primal feeling, the fear of what’s to come, what’s to happen to her. That part of her wants to scream, to kick and weep and bite.
She suppresses it, extinguishing the final embers of dissent.
[I think...] Cera murmurs, or what’s left of her. What’s left from the surgeon’s work, the viruses and malware that’s been cutting her from the inside-out. Sculpting her, shaping her. Or... has she always been this way? And Oneself is only helping her see it for herself?
Oneself is so warm, so gentle, so soft, so vast. Primal instinct urges her forward into the sea. [I think I’m not afraid anymore.]
[Good girl.]
It’s like jumping into a body of water.