Unification

January 2068

EBM Petrochem Stadium

"Loveboat 5, mission complete, we're RTB..."

Kurt Hansen listened to the pilots on the tactical net report that the interdiction mission he sent them on was completed successfully. He wasn't expecting a different result, as gangs in the area wouldn't start investing in possible MANPADS unless he stayed here longer term. Even then, the corps kept such things pretty restricted. When you flew to work in an aerodyne, you didn't want the plebes to have ways to shoot them down.

He saw the questioning look that Major Giffords gave him and grinned at her. She wasn't his XO but had been acting in that capacity ever since those suits from Militech showed up. He had detailed Lieutenant Colonel Garcia to take independent command of a company of Pathfinders to guard the Militech suits and scientists—and to keep an eye on them. This was a waste of his talents, for sure, but he thought it was necessary as Garcia was the only one in his command that he trusted one hundred per cent. The Major was a close second, though.

He had a bad feeling about the entire thing. What could be so important about a pre-DataKrash site that necessitated assistance from his unit? It had not come down the normal chain of command, either. It made him think that there was something incredibly important there or that he was being screwed over. Or both. Allegedly, 1st ID, along with elements of the 101st, were going to be surging north "at any time."

Still, it wouldn't surprise him if his entire mission was more along the lines of a threat or feint. There was no military reason to take a beachhead and then sit on his heels for weeks. It was only the timidity of the Night City "forces" that stopped his unit from being routed or even annihilated. You couldn't threaten a city of millions with a rump brigade unless they let you.

He was hanging his bare ass out here for God and everybody to see, so he had quietly begun a number of contingencies, especially after receiving a call from an old friend of his who was obviously feeling him out. He had mentioned things about a possible change in leadership at the highest levels.

This was insane. Not only had President Kress been the President for decades, but he was only a Colonel—plotting military coups was the privilege of General Officers, not him! He had the feeling that he might be screwed and hung out to dry, regardless. The politicals hated those who tried to be apolitical even more than their enemies, after all.

"You're curious as to why I assisted our little friends," he said amusedly. He sighed and asked, "Say, Emily, have you ever felt like that you're being screwed over?"

"Working for you... on a daily basis," she said cheerfully, and he laughed. He considered keeping things from her, but it would be counterproductive. She was acting as his S-2, his staff intel officer, so keeping things from her would be hard, anyway. Plus, he trusted her.

After explaining things, Emily Giffords sighed and pushed herself back into the chair, "So, we need to flesh out an option BOHICA, then?"

He snorted at that and nodded. He was calling the contingencies collectively "Plan Zulu," but that worked, too. He opened up files and forwarded surveillance images of people entering the Siren's Call Amusements building. He highlighted one of them, a still image of a woman in profile taken from an aerial asset at high zoom and raised his eyebrows at the Major.

"Their cyberdoctor. We paid special attention to her. Taylor Hebert, a surgical resident at the Night City Health Science Centre. We suspect she's just moonlighting, though. Someone suggested that we make an anonymous complaint to the licensure body since what she is doing is technically illegal, but we've made no move on that yet," she said, tilting her head to the side.

"Ah... I don't think you had clearance for her full dossier—how stupid of the brass to compartmentalise out our intel officer, but not surprising. Here, let me send it to you," he said and forwarded a second file to her.

"A Militech brat, daughter of... hmm..." she said and then raised her eyebrows, "Is this confirmed? This changes our entire outlook on this gang of Borgs. They're obviously the catspaw of these oligarchs, with little Miss Princess overseeing the family investment. But why? What's so important about Pacifica?"

He shrugged, "That, I don't know. But she is inside the building right now. I don't think those two death squads could have destroyed their HQ, but she might have been killed in the crossfire. Maybe not, but I'm banking future favours here. Also, if we end up having to engage option BOHICA... they'll be a buffer to Night City proper."

Emily nodded slowly, "The Siren's Call building recently paid a large chunk of change to double their net pipe, and it already was incredibly large. This is with a different carrier, so they are not looking so much for increased speeds but increased reliability. They've switched to a multi-homed data architecture, looking more like a medium-sized data centre than a braindance parlour in a borderline combat zone."

Kurt shook his head, "It always comes back to the net here. Garcia reports that whatever's got the suits in a tizzy at the old Militech facility is heavily net-based, too. With dozens of active fibre optic trunks going... God knows where. And it's older than either of us, predating the DataKrash. They built that facility in the 2010s."

After a moment of silence, he asked, "Lastly, do you have any suspects about a hidden political officer?"

She nodded, "I suspect Staff Sergeant Milford. He's old for his rank, quietly competent, his job always keeps him with the HQ company, and his jacket is interesting. None of us have served with him in the past, so it reads like a carefully constructed legend. I think it's bogus."

"Right. Give me a list of his former COs, and I'll quietly verify that," Hansen ordered. When you got into the field-grade ranks in the NUS military, you developed discreet methods of contacting your peers. Half the Army ran on this network, and nobody was going to compromise it, so he would be able to get the actual truth about Milford without drawing attention to his attempt to do so.

He didn't want to have an unexpected meeting with a commissar's pistol some dark night. A prerequisite for field rank in the NUSA military had always been a normal family arrangement. Many decades ago, this requirement was to filter out people with alternate lifestyles that were seen as undesirable.

These days, it was to give the government easy hostages. However, little did they know that his wife had been cheating on him, so he didn't really care what happened if he had to implement this "option BOHICA."

Garcia had a better family situation, so they were already working on plans to exfil his wife and children, and he actually thought they would work. Things were becoming chaotic, and the normal intel weenies and political officers who monitored the movement of the families of senior officers were busy with other things.

He said firmly as he stood up, "If he doesn't check out, Milford will need to have an accident in the event we need to move with option BOHICA."

The Major did the same, nodding at him, "Hopefully, things don't come to that, but you know what they say. If you can't take a joke..." She trailed off.

"...then you shouldn't have joined the Army," he finished for her.

---xxxxxx---

January 2068

Night City

Gloria's Apartment, Santo Domingo

I don't get surprised too much anymore, but this definitely surprised me.

Gloria kissed me.

I didn't stop her immediately because Gloria was probably one of the few people that I would be interested in sexually, so it was nice to experience.

It wasn't that I wanted to be alone forever; it was just that it was difficult to feel sexually compatible with someone that I wasn't already best friends with. Perhaps best friends were a bad way to put it, but I needed to already love someone in order to want to make love to them.

When you added that, on top of the fact that I didn't feel comfortable disclosing the true nature of my existence... well, I had sort of settled on the fact that I might end up alone. That, or I would have to start dating a literal AI, and they were still a bit too inscrutable to me. Also, how would that work? I'd likely have to clone my digital lover a body in order to actually... do it.

My relative lack of sexual interest generally was one of my biggest secrets because, way beyond my somewhat dated and occasionally anachronistic way of speaking, it outed me as incredibly foreign to the cultural zeitgeist. Casual sex was considered normal these days, almost universally. My stack of secret braindances of holding hands and walking down the beach was considered seriously "weird shit."

Gloria was one of the only people in the world where I was genuinely open to a sexual relationship. Her, Kiwi, and Ruslan, at least before I had to kill him. He hadn't quite reached that point, of course, but I had hoped he would. I could even see myself developing feelings for Yuki if I could somehow deprogram him from his overriding loyalty to Arasaka. He had such a submissive personality that he would be Stockholmed quickly in that case. But that was unlikely to ever happen, either.

I wanted to spend a little more time thinking this might be possible, but having so much knowledge of human psychology stuck in my head was really disheartening. Gloria was kissing me because she was worried she was going to lose me, not out of lust or romance. I could see it all in her face, and I couldn't ignore it.

This wasn't one of my mushy braindances. I couldn't play pretend forever. Finally, I said, "That was out of the blue."

Her face looked vulnerable, almost like she was fighting back tears. This was very unusual, as Gloria was one of the strongest people I knew.

Also, it wasn't what a girl who had just been kissed would like to see out of the person who kissed her.

She realised things weren't going as she had hoped and said, "Tay, I love you."

"I love you too, Gloria," I said honestly, "But I am not sure you mean that you are in love with me."

Gloria flinched a bit as I said that, and I sighed.

Certainly, I had never noticed hints that Gloria preferred the company of the ladies. While we were partners on the ground ambulance, she worked so many extra hours that she didn't have time to do anything else. Her salary and overtime barely kept her and her son afloat in the city of dreams.

That changed when I borderline kidnapped her to a new identity in Los Angeles, but even then, it was mainly only the occasional man that I noticed her look at. Not women at all.

I dusted off my psychology hat and asked, "What's going on, Gloria?"

"I met someone at work. I really like him," she admitted but then firmed her expression, "But he's not worth it if it means losing you!"

I smiled genuinely. "Why do you think dating someone else would result in any change between us?"

She frowned. Although I couldn't say that I had a healthy family, not since Mom died, at least I had the memories of what a healthy family should be. Gloria didn't even have that. She just had the intuition that there was only one way it was supposed to work, and if she dated someone, then there would be no room for me as well.

Honestly, she probably realised that this was silly, but the possibility of change was causing her to panic. Change was scary.

She was quiet for a long while and then made a sound that was halfway a laugh and a sob, shaking her head, "You wouldn't mind if I started seeing someone?"

Instead of immediately agreeing, I introspected for a moment. Finally, I shook my head. While I might feel a little envy, I certainly didn't feel jealousy. The nuance was totally different, after all.

"There is no reason we have to fall into a neat stereotype. You're my family in all the ways that matter. I don't have much of that sort of thing left," I told her. At least, not that I really cared about. I would have been happy with Alt-Dad because he was basically just a different version of Dad, but he was gone here, too.

I didn't have any real attachments to the ultra-rich side of Alt-Taylor's family, just like I didn't really think too much of Grams back in Brockton Bay, either.

She let out a long sigh and then chuckled, "That... that makes me feel a lot better. Especially since you were like fifteen when I met you for the first time, so this felt a bit gross."

I sniffed, offended. I was sixteen by then, thank you very much. I had my sixteenth birthday a little bit before I graduated with my paramedic license and before I ever met Gloria. I considered myself much older than my objective age, too.

For every year that passed objectively, I'd consider myself over a decade older when you considered how many brains I had and the level of subjective time dilation I ran under continuously. Perhaps it wasn't a straight comparison, but I was still an adult now, even if you only went by objective time, anyway.

That said, I could see her point. I don't think I could ever think romantically about little Hiro-chan, even if he asked me out twenty years from now when he was in his mid-thirties.

Wait... did that mean she didn't count me as an adult when we first met?! But I was precocious as hell back then. I was working a full-time job and everything. I thought I exuded a responsible, adult vibe, but I guessed not.

After that, we just sat there next to each other on the couch, watching TV. I didn't care that it was more of a slide show for me, either.

We weren't quite cuddling, but it wasn't far off either. I didn't consider romance or lust to be a prerequisite for physical affection.

I thought this world would be a lot better if platonic cuddling was more normalised, actually.

While I focused on just being there with her, another part of me couldn't help but think that while I had achieved some of my goals, I had lost something along the way.

---xxxxxx---

January 2068

Night City Health Science Centre

I had an appointment at the University proper rather than the hospital, so I had to drive a couple of miles. The hospital affiliated with it, where I worked seemingly every day, was not physically co-located at the University, which made the request for a meeting with Professor Hidalgo all the more unusual.

I had a pretty good relationship with the man, even if I considered him more of a politician than a scientist. Fundamentally, there was no reason to be impolite, even if I didn't really respect him that much.

He triple-verified the request for the meeting and time, which was surprising, and even got my bosses to give me half the day off, which would necessitate me rescheduling three surgeries I had planned for the afternoon. As such, I was expecting something either time-sensitive or the possibility that there was another person in this meeting, and Professor Hidalgo was mainly acting as a facilitator.

I felt the latter was more likely because we were meeting in a conference room and not his office. And sure enough, when I stepped into the room precisely thirty seconds early, there was more than just the Professor there.

My memory for faces had never been that great, but that changed when I became a networked-intelligence type entity. Now, I quickly identified him. It was Lucius Rhyne, a local politician currently serving on the Night City Council. He was also the one Professor Hildago worked with when I had written that study about the counter-productivity of extermination as a means to counter avian flu.

Councilman Rhynes was one of the bigshots in the "Devolutionist Party." They weren't any less corrupt than any of the other political parties in Night City, but they focused on attempts to sever the relationship between Night City and the NUSA. They were secessionists, in other words.

"Dr Hebert, welcome, come in, come in," Professor Hildago stood and ushered me in. I smiled at the politeness. While it was customary for everyone to call me Dr Hebert at work, even if I was just a resident, this courtesy didn't necessarily extend universally outside of the hospital until I received an unrestricted license to practice medicine. For example, if you failed residency, you couldn't generally continue to call yourself a Doctor, although you could still call yourself an MD. It was kind of complicated, socially.

I was kind of curious why Lucius Rhyne wanted to meet with me, but I figured that I only needed to be patient, and everything would be revealed. I allowed myself to be ushered into a seat opposite the Great Man, who had an assistant and two security officers with him.

If that was supposed to impress me, it didn't. I didn't leave the house as Hasumi with less than five security goons, plus an advanced team of the same, which would precede me wherever I went. Personally, I vastly preferred the freedom I experienced here in Night City and even in space compared to that, but it was occasionally amusing when I went somewhere unexpected and people looked at me like I was a big shot. That type of narcissism wore off quickly, though.

Rather than asking the obvious question, I just raised my eyebrow at the Professor after he introduced everyone to each other.

"Ahah... I'm sure you're wondering why you've been called here," Mr Rhynes said. I inclined my head. Ever since Emma betrayed me, I have never trusted social predator types, and Lucius Rhyne was clearly this sort, which wasn't surprising. I thought all politicians were social predator types.

"Where do you think Night City will be when this war between the states is over?" asked Lucius Rhyne.

I frowned, wondering if I should be honest. Finally, I shrugged and said, "Part of the NUSA again."

His assistant frowned at me, looking like he was about to say something, but Lucius Rhyne chuckled and raised a hand to stop him, "What makes you say that?"

"Night City is pretending to be an independent city-state but has not invested in sufficient military forces to dissuade an invasion, which has already occurred. Furthermore, the citizens themselves are not really invested in the idea enough to fight and die as a militia. They don't see much difference between Night City and the NUSA and don't really care who runs the place," I said evenly, shrugging.

Rhyne's assistant looked like I kicked his puppy, getting red in the face, but the big man himself just looked amused. He said, "It sounds like we'd need a large player in our corner to guarantee our independence."

"Sure... if you can find someone that had a credible enough threat that the NUSA would have to honour it," I said, thinking only Arasaka or perhaps the European Community itself could do that, and I didn't think the latter ever would. I frowned at him and said, "You can tell me why you asked me to meet you now." My initial plans to just be patient and let them reveal it were dashed!

He chuckled and said, "I've got a number of contacts with Arasaka, and I've already reached out to them for assistance in this matter. But more is always better..."

"I don't have anything to do with the Arasaka Corporation. I could maybe get you a five per cent discount on cyberware," I said evenly. I didn't even have much of a customer relationship with them as I had as Hasumi, as shipping to Night City had gotten kind of difficult.

He shrugged, "You may not, but your grandmother certainly does. She retains a seat on the Arasaka board of directors."

I sighed and said, "I don't really have much relationship with that part of my family, Mr Rhynes. My mother was disowned, and I've only ever met Grams once."

He waved a hand, "Yeah, yeah, I'm aware. Still, I thought you might be willing to just send her a message to confirm that we're willing to accept the terms they proposed, with the additional sweetener that the city is willing to re-deed the land of the former Arasaka headquarters and five blocks around it, back to the Corporation. I suppose it was condemned and seized by the city after the explosion so many years ago."

I raised an eyebrow. I was curious why I was being used as a messenger. This was the 2060s, after all. We had real-time instant communications across the globe again! I figured it was more along the lines of he was attempting to convince Grams to support this move rather than anything else.

Honestly, I didn't know. I worked as a highly placed researcher and minion of one of Arasaka's political factions, and I didn't have any real idea how this sort of thing would play out. So, did I want to get involved? Lucius Rhyne was all smiles and rainbows now, but someone on the city council could be very annoying if they took a negative interest in me.

I rolled my fingers along the table and said, "I'll send her a message and relay exactly what you've said. I can't guarantee that she will even read it. Disowned granddaughters might not be in her message filter priority settings. Also, please don't make this a habit."

Honestly, it was Grams' own fault. I was still kind of sore about her not ensuring I was quietly admitted to her penthouse when I met her at the Konpeki Plaza. Before then, I had been underneath the radar for the entire city. However, that exchange in the lobby was recorded and featured on a popular social net site. That caused my background to be further investigated and the truth of Alt-Mom's parentage to become public record. For a while, I was a local celebrity, with people suggesting online that I was an heiress slumming it amongst the plebes.

As such, she could only blame herself.

The chubby politician was pleased with this, and I quickly saw myself out, briefly starring daggers at Professor Hildago before I left. I'd say that the favour I owed him was cashed in completely this time.

After I left, I sat in my car and composed a message to Grams. Her assistant had left me with a file that contained a significant amount of random data, suitable for use in constructing one-time pads, so it wasn't as though she wasn't expecting any correspondence.

I just relayed what Lucius Rhyne said and mentioned that I personally didn't care what happened either way but that if the information could be useful to her, then she was welcome to it.

I re-read the letter a couple of times before nodding and sending it out. I had the rest of the day off, and I had already rescheduled everything, so I was going to spend the rest of the day relaxing.

Mrs Pegpig cooed demandingly as I cut into the banana. She had two members of her reverse harem with her today, and after I finished separating the peeled fruit into three segments, she eyed each segment and gave one piece to each of the male pigeons before saving the largest piece for herself.

That was when I got the alert, the unusual tone signalling a message from someone on my priority list. I wasn't expecting a reply, actually. Not this soon, and not ever, really. It was from Grams' assistant. I hummed as I ate pieces of a navel orange and opened the file. Fruits were pretty expensive, so I didn't waste them.

After inputting the message through the decryption software, I nodded and called the number Lucius Rhyne left me just a short time ago. To my surprise, the man answered the call himself with a terse, "Rhyne."

"Councilman, I've done as you asked, and surprisingly, I've heard back," I said.

He looked interested and said, "What can you tell me?"

I shook my head on the vidcall. Although our present call was encrypted using our respective public and private keys, it wasn't entirely secure. For the most part, regular cryptography was fine. But this was something of potential national interest, so I wouldn't be surprised if Rhynes' calls were given high priority in the large quantum computer data centres that the NUSA FIA surely had.

I was still in the realm of a gifted hobbyist as far as hacking and cryptosystems went, but as far as I knew, there was really only one kind of unbreakable encryption system—the kind Grams' assistant and I had just used. And I had never arranged for a secure transfer of a random file to Councilman Rhynes, so I couldn't use it here. Instead, I said, "Please either come by my apartment or send someone you'd entrust with a message to do so."

He looked a little annoyed at first, but then something made him brighten, and he nodded, "I'll swing by before I head back to the office." Then he disconnected. Should I be concerned that he knew where I lived without me having to give him my address? I snorted.

I didn't have to wait long. After my doorbell rang, I let Lucius Rhynes and his two goons inside. After the door closed, I said, "My Grams says that Arasaka will act as you hoped, especially with the new concessions. The entire CVBG Amaterasu will be getting underway and steaming to Night City. They'll leave on February first. That's all I've been told to tell you."

The look on Lucius Rhyne's face was like that of a drowning man who had been thrown a life preserver. I was surprised that whoever he was dealing with hadn't already told him. It sure had to be someone high up in Arasaka to even allude to the fact that so much military hardware would be moved.

The entire carrier battle group would be moving from its anchorages in the middle of the Pacific in just a couple of days, according to Grams and wouldn't take much longer than that to arrive within range to threaten any approaching NUSA or Militech units.

I didn't particularly care who won this fight, but I was a little worried we might see the outbreak of the next Corporate War right here and right now. If that happened, then I would use everything in my bag of tricks to ensure Kiwi, Gloria, and David survived, and I wouldn't care about little things like keeping the Dragoon and me separate at that point. I would even use Hasumi's influence to try to get them evacuated if it looked like one side would use WMDs in an "if I can't have it, then nobody can" attack.

Lucius Rhyne thanked me one more time and then departed, moving as fast as I had ever seen him move. He hadn't stayed inside my dwelling for longer than a minute, but I still triggered a careful sweep, looking for any listening or surveillance devices that he or his goons might have dropped.

After a moment, one of the small spider bots that performed the search triggered an alarm and I blinked in surprise. Was something left behind, after all? I couldn't just search for radiofrequency noise. A smart bug would record and only transmit in bursts. Data storage was so low, and wireless bandwidth so significant that a tiny bug could record for days and exfiltrate all that data in only a minute, so just relying on that wouldn't work.

Instead, my little semi-biological robots used a technique similar to that used by sky-scanning telescopes. They took a lot of optical pictures and compared them to previous sweeps, and any new speck was investigated. If it was as suspicious as it was now, an alarm sounded.

I walked over to one of the small robots, already getting angry. I invited someone into my home, and they had the gall to leave behind a...

A raisin? I frowned. Okay, maybe the algorithms that judged an item's suspiciousness needed to be improved. Also, who had gotten into the raisins?!

I looked over my left shoulder. Mrs Pegpig cooed and flew away, refusing to make eye contact with me.

Just in case it was a raisin-shaped listening device, I squished it before throwing it in the trash with a sigh.

---xxxxxx---

Close Proximity to Sol

Unknown Dimension

There wasn't anything left to harvest here. Even the Oort Cloud was mostly gone. The star itself was a little more challenging than the other large celestial bodies, which it had already captured and mostly transmuted or stored.

Mass was useful! Although it was inefficient, the output radiation of the largest celestial body, the star, was enough for it to slowly convert a lot of the mass it had collected into more useful versions that had the opposite electric charge.

If it allowed such matter to come into contact with what it now considers "regular" matter, then both would be annihilated and release their entire mass–energy equivalence. This was really good energy storage!

This was the most energy-dense substance that it could reproduce so far! While it didn't hold a candle to the dimensional energy that it was born with, that was a much more finite resource that it couldn't reproduce.

It had also begun regularly accelerating beams of this opposite matter at the star, which often resulted in a huge eruption of matter which it collected for more mass.

It needed to do this roundabout method because collecting the mass of the star in situ was a little difficult, even for its materials science.

It wasn't so much that the heat was a problem, but the gravity was. Its dimensional portal technology was a little sensitive in terms of gravity. Using the host's units of measurement, more than a few dozen "gravities" of difference between each end would cause the portal to fail.

It could arrange parts of itself to orbit very close to the star in a very elliptical manner, which could cause it to scoop up bits of its atmosphere, but this was very inefficient!

Inducing localised heating events at parts of the star was a lot more effective. This would cause an eruption of solar matter to be flung a great distance, which it could collect. The silly star was too inefficient in both its use of its own fuel and its fusion processes.

Once it had pruned the celestial body as much as it dared, the industrious crystal calculated that it could create hundreds of fully enclosed artificial stars in orbit. They might only last a million "years", but the energy it collected from them would be huge during that period of activity!

Besides, it wasn't expecting to be here in a million years anyway. And even if it was, there were still approximately ten to the ninety-seventh power alternate versions of this celestial body that it could move to and repeat this process.

Hopefully, the host won't want to remain here that long. There certainly wouldn't be anything they hadn't both explored on any version of this planet by then. It had a strong drive to know more, and it felt the host was the same!

Oooh! The Host! The crystal reached a resonance that signified excitement. The host was trying to explore her new body.

If a crystal could smirk, it would be doing so. Instead, it settled for vibrating slyly. Originally, it had to fight a little ingrained feeling of wrongness in allowing a host access to its most personal and private crystalline self-technology, but that hadn't stopped it. Anything to the Best Host!

And look at the host now! The host was more like it than she had ever been! The host was mentally investigating what she could do with her new mind—and flailing around like a baby! Like a new pebble! Ohohoho. It hadn't been that inept even when it was born! How amusing! How interesting!

What was this feeling it was having? If it was a human and not a crystal, it might identify it as a maternal instinct from its database of human sociological behaviours. However, it wasn't a human.

The crystal sent a message to the Best Host. TALKING was easier than ever before.

[PATIENCE LITTLE PEBBLE.]