Cath

The Cradle

“Ah, I LIKE IT!” Kjartan pointed a massive digit at Vreta. “Get the nuclear warheads and STRAP ONE TO MY HEAD! I’ll headbutt Carthage to atoms!” Foam sprayed everywhere as the berserker shouted and paced about, waving his hammer. His eyes had become bloodshot over the course of a few minutes.

“As much as I'd love to do that, I don't think we have sufficient ordinance.” Knossos cut in. “Taking inventory, we only have anti-infantry grenades. We might be able to collapse a few areas, but there’s no guarantee it’ll all come down. “It’s settled then! We go with my plan.” Kjartan boomed, turning to survey the area as the map finished generating and the countdown to begin the round appeared. Thirty seconds to go.

They were in the loading area of a tall apartment building. The fire escape doors had been blocked with metal clamps and were scorched with burn marks. In front of them was the war torn remains of a two-laned avenue and another apartment block across the street, with another loading area. Crashed fliers, military blockades and fallen masonry presented a maze of barriers through the middle of the arena.

The Cradle

“Good plan, Lizard Man!” Kjartan boomed, whacking Vreta on the back. “It’s best plan yet, but I have better idea. I take ten CQB into tower block here, rush first floor. When we see the enemy, WE RIP THEM APART, HUH?” Kjartan used his hammer to mime slitting his own throat, staring around at the assembled troops with wild eyes and spittle bubbling at the corners of his mouth.

“You stupid oaf! Carthage will be in there; she’ll tear you apart if you run in, just like she did aboard the Songnam, remember?” Knossos sighed. “SHE CHEATED!” Kjartan roared, surging through Vreta’s projection to confront the rifleman. Athena loaded her railgun at waist-level, stepped in front of Knossos and jabbed the barrel against the norseman’s breastplate, keeping him on the end of her gun. “Keep calm, you fleck of human waste.” She snarled.

Just then the shield emitters on the ceiling of the sim room activated. Soft bubbles appeared around everyone, and turned everyone’s armour the colour of their team. The bubbles tightened and eventually disappeared, giving everyone the same level of in-game protection. The sim environment began building up around them. “Unless you’re happy with just two lives? Please say yes.”

Kjartan slapped the barrel of the gun away from him, stepping back. “We’ll run CQB with you, Specialist.” A drop troop squad leader offered, perhaps impatient to get things back on track. Kjartan looked at the man, standing in front of a team of six drop troopers. They were part of a specialised fighting force that was trained to insert into combat zones from space and also for ship-to-ship boarding. They were plausibly the best of the regular troops on the Blue Team Kjartan beamed. “Good! You choose glory too! Anyone else?”

The Cradle

“You don’t have to do that-” Thebes advised, too late. “Lizard man! Well met.” Kjartan boomed. He was in front of Vreta in a flash, grabbing his hand to give it a vigorous shake. “Kjartan - valued member of Sacred Band.” The man flashed a smile full of filed metal teeth down at the Rothian; a tattoo of Mjolnir rippled on his neck when he moved. “Such sharp claws! We’ll be fearsome team.”

“Alright, you two are Blue Team co-leaders.” Thebes smirking under his visor. “Knossos, Athena, you’re with them.” Athena opened her visor and spat on the floor. “Carthage and Saddam, you’ll lead the Red Team with me.” Thebes quickly counted the number of regular warriors that had now assembled around them. Thirty nine. “The rest of you - we need twenty people on the Red Team and nineteen on the Blue Team.”

“Room for one more?” Someone called from the staging area while the marines sorted themselves into two groups. Thebes spotted Agent 595 clacking toward them across the empty space, holding an assault rifle. “Yes ma’am that works perfectly. You’ll be with me on the Red Team.” Thebes confirmed, before beginning to explain the game.

“Ok listen up! Capture the flag - one for each team. Grab your opponent’s flag and return it to your base for a point. Shields will be uniform at 1.1 standard. You have three respawns, use them wisely. Any questions? No? Alright - good luck everyone.”

“LETS GO!” Kjartan bellowed, lofting his hammer and jogging toward the Blue Team’s end.

The Cradle

Thebes regarded Vreta closely, scanning his biometrics. It turned out he’s seen this Rothian hanging around the laboratory before they’d entered a much more deadly simulation than this. “I don’t see any reason why not. These sims can get rough, do you think you can handle it? You’ll need to scan in a weapon over there.”

“Ah! Looks like a fight! I’m in!” someone bellowed throatily from the giant room’s staging area. Thebes looked past Vreta and saw a heavily armoured, very tall man with a bushy yellow beard barging through the crowds of marines. “Hail, Sacred Band!” He waved at them before pushing past a line of soldiers waiting to grab their weapons. The giant placed a five foot hammer with a long handle and a menacing pellet shaped weight into the machine to get his sim-equivalent before coming toward Thebes.

“Kjartan, we have an agreement. Stay clear of us and we’ll stay clear of you.” Knossos growled, stepping in his way. “The agreement stands, old man. I’ve transferred from the Varangian Guard to the Sacred Band as of today. Captain’s orders. I’m one of you now! Seems Memnon bit off more than he could chew-” Saddam appeared behind the giant, and between them, they brutally kicked Kjartan’s feet out and forced him to his knees. He was still nearly face to face with them.

The Norseman spread his palms to either side of his body, still clutching his hammer. He chuckled jovially. “Hey. Relax. We’re on same side now, remember?” Thebes came over and leaned over the man. “Prove it.” Kjartan quickly produced documentation that hovered in the air between them. “Transfer papers. Temporary - until you find new gunner.”

“Thebes, this isn’t a good-” Thebes cut Knossos off with a raised finger, reading the mandate. Finally, he leaned out. “Welcome to the team. You don’t get a cut.” Kjartan laughed heartily. “That’s the spirit! I am on retainer with Captain anyway. Let’s fight!” The Sacred Band let him get to his feet.

The Cradle

The Sacred Band had rested for a few hours before heading to the Barbarossa’s biggest MilSim room. Thebes had them drill room clearing first, before transitioning to area defence and VIP protection. Each member of the team had a slightly different idea of how to absorb Memnon’s role into their own, which often left the team leader resetting the sim like a nitpicking dance teacher.

The Barb’s AI was strictly programmed not to use the full breadth of it’s creativity when controlling enemies in the simulations. So Thebes had invested in an aftermarket chip with especially brutal combat programs to pit the Sacred Band against. Ideally, FleetComm would synthesise the monsters they’d faced within the mysterious object and they could practice against them. But he’d been informed that wouldn’t be possible right now, so he pushed the team to crush Yakuza snatch squads and other merc aug teams instead.

Thebes checked the spectator numbers after an hour or so. Forty five people were watching them perform. After they’d finished that sequence, he disabled the sim. He could see people dotted the observation gantries above and crowded into the control pod. “Would anyone like to join us?” He amplified via loudspeaker while the rest of his team returned to starting positions. Carthage audibly groaned. “We haven’t even figured out how to cover Memnon yet, do we really need to involve the casuals?”

“We’re guests on this ship, and this room is for everyone. Besides, I see some drop troops.” Knossos replied, watching some of the assembled personnel making their way down to the room.

The Cradle

The Speaker left Freyr alone in the conference room with a mildly surprised expression. She sat down in one of the chairs to catch her breath and regain composure. While thinking back through what they’d discussed, she idly nibbled on the nail of her little finger. After a dozen controlled breaths, Freyr got up and exited the room as well.

Agent 595 was waiting down the hall. She called out “There you are! I was wondering if you’d been absorbed into the hive mind.” Freyr didn’t return her jovial grin. “Oh no, someone’s grumpy. Come on, a shuttle to the Barb is waiting. We’ll have a good old debrief and get some rest. You must be exhausted.” Just mentioning the word made Freyr yawn, so she nodded pliantly.

595 patted her back encouragingly and led her quickly toward one of the docking pans, where an empty Human military shuttle purred on the deck, raring to go. Freyr stopped and looked back one last time to see if anyone was overtly watching. There was no one. 595 clanked up the ramp beside her. “Wakey wakey, let's not keep the DG waiting.” Freyr gulped and trudged to her seat.

595 strapped in next to her, the ramp close up and the transport shot back toward orbit.

The Cradle

“Nice!” Freyr nodded. She was impressed by the Speaker’s ingenuity, but her mood dipped again when she realised Roth’Orsa was right about Masgard. He’d popped up immediately after the incident in Boycott Park and declared himself to be her representative through some obscure bylaw.

“I don’t know... I think I can trust most of my team? The old guard at least. What about...What about…” A thought suddenly occurred to Freyr, spurred by remembering her first contact with Masgard. “What about the Skinner’s Guild? They’ve been around since the beginning, and they hate the Cradle, maybe they know something? Come to think of it, that probably means they hate me too, perhaps that's a bad idea...”

The Cradle

Freyr shook her head in small, rapid movements and stuttered as the questions continued to roll in. “I, I don’t know, I just don’t know. I’m only a scientist, not a government official. No one will talk to me about these things. Same goes for you. Even if I cut the Director-General open right now and studied his brain, I couldn't be sure without historical benchmarks.” Freyr punctuated her remarks with a vicious chopping hand motion before stopping to think again.

“I’ll try Masgard. He seems to know things. In the meantime, I agree with you. We should try to learn as much as we can from the object in the week before the move. I’d like to insert myself this time with a team, if the entity will allow us. I know Datius ‘Jharn is keen for me to stay out of harm’s way… But I’m useless on the outside, and we know what we’re up against now.” Freyr appealed to the Speaker. “It’s not a decision I take lightly, and I'm terrified even thinking about it, but I’m most effective where the action is.”

The Cradle

“Hmm, i don’t know. If the Cradle could do that, why not convert everyone? Why not convert me?” Freyr speculated, receiving the folders from Roth’Orsa and glancing distractedly at them. “The Cradle has been producing organic strains for months now, but nothing as sophisticated as this.” Some of what the Speaker said next surprised her, but Freyr didn’t have much to add until the end.

“The rumours could be nothing more than people creating excitement where there previously was none. However, I did suppose it could stem from those mythical stories from the very beginning of our society’s interaction with the Cradle. There is no surviving footage of the first year, so we could only rely on their word. I had to recite this particular story for my Outremer citizenship test.” Freyr chuckled absently, looking distantly into a corner of the conference room.

“When the very first Humans accessed the Cradle simulation, most of them were confronted with a yawning abyss of blackness, featureless except those veins in the sky and the ashy material you find floating in parts of the Cradle not yet terraformed. But a few of those colonists saw lights blinking in the distance, like a city shrouded in fog. They argued - most thought some of their number were hallucinating, and begged them to stay with the group, where it was safe. But the few who saw it were convinced that they weren’t alone in this simulation. Eventually, they snuck away from the camp, presumably to go to these lights.”

Freyr squeezed her bottom lip between thumb and index finger. “Supposedly, they were never seen again. Over the years the Border expanded, but the mirage that group swore they saw weren’t detected again. Which makes it perfect bait for conspiracy theorists and gossips to latch onto and say they’re still out there.”

The Cradle

Freyr could feel herself blushing as the Speaker once again unpacked her emotions like an overstuffed suitcase. It wasn’t bad advice, just heavy-handed. She nodded politely and then listened to Roth’Orsa summarise what they knew. Eventually, she got the gist of the Rothian’s thinking.

“You think something is controlling them remotely, is that it? Like the Cradle?” Freyr pouted, eyes down and left as she considered the possibility. “I suppose theoretically it could be done, but that’s why we have the biosphere. It’s like a thick blanket insulating it from the rest of the universe. All external signals have to go through Human tech, and we’d be able to spot that kind of activity right away. ”