Godclads

Chapter 2-4 Titanium Phantoms

Times change. War changes too. With this new epoch of innovation of Thaumaturgy and Coldtech, an arms race has begun, affecting levels both macro and micro.

With our advancements in phantasmic engrams and the ease of mass production using nano-fabrication, our forces would be better served by a legion of multi-platform pilots than wasting them as cannon meat.

Hence, we present to you, the X-1 Bodkin, our newest recon drone pattern. With complex loci allowing for long-distance possessions via ghosts, we believe that even with a dearth of proper training, a critical mass of these cheap expendable platforms piloted by an “immortal” militia of our citizenry will be more than enough to overload and overwhelm Highflame’s pre-cogged Planar Fortresses.

-Ori-Thaum Research and Development, X-1 Bodkin Development Log

2-4

Titanium Phantoms

Avo ignored the father’s questions as he clambered up the cylinder. If there were drones past the gap, he would force them to engage first. Too bad the submachine gun broke earlier. Could’ve really used that.

Rising out from the floor of the factory, Avo peeked through the gap leading into the assembly line proper. Countless conveyor belts and assembly drones latticed the area around him as if he was in a web of silicon, plastic, and metal. Massive reactors hummed at the very end of the cylinders, a grumbling turbine gasping as sparks rained down.

The interior of the factory’s assembly floor was as large as a megablock. It must’ve run on for a mile or two in width and length. Twice again that in height. It was as if he had climbed into an industrial forest. Chaos reigned around him, a symphony of working machines, whistling mechanisms, and sparking wires.

The wind lashed Avo from behind. Whipping his head, he barely caught sight of a chrome-tipped arrowhead slamming into a festooned corpse a scant foot below him. Clamps and corpse harnesses buckled and broke. The exterior of the cylinder dented as the spinning mechanisms within the machine began to wail. Sparks flew below as warped plates of metal came free.

As the ringing subsided, Avo felt a series of stings dance across his right thigh. Something parted against the blade held in his right foot.

A chorus of engines sang from above. A second sortie came from below. Avo shifted his blood and pushed the metal shards out from his leg. Hunger itching, he mended the wound. Darting between a sprawl of machinery and vine-like assembly lines in this alloyed forest, Avo caught sight of five titanium-hulled drones circling around him from two different directions, wolves on the hunt, cleaving through the air like arrows in flight.

+Lucky ghoul,+ the nasally one said.

+Shit drone-jock,+ a new voice interjected. +I would’ve liquified the rotlick easy.+

+Yeah, sure you would…+

“You,” Avo snarled, trying to catch sight of the father. The man was huddled tight against a corpse now, his son clutching his chest tightly. “Wait till the gap passes. Then get off.”

The father blinked. “Get off?”

He’d figure it out. Avo pushed off a loosened metal slat. The engines were getting closer. He looked at the nearest assembly belt. Ten feet. Easy jump. Avo leaped.

He landed on the belt just in time to witness two more drones slam and detonate over where he just was. The structure of the cylinder began to scream. Groaning, its top half began to bend, the tearing metal opening the spinning turbine, now on fire.

Another suicide drone was approaching. The air was tinged with static thrill and excitement.

Still clinging to the crumbling hull of the cylindrical corpse elevator, Avo watched as the father pawed blindly through the smoke, coughing and choking, completely missing that he was now right near ground level and could disembark at any time.

Idiot.

Sense told Avo to just run. Hunger wanted Avo to at least snatch the boy so he would have an easy snack. The memory of Walton reminded him and compelled him to stay and do good. Avo wondered if saving the same two lives repeatedly made up for the four separate ones he ended earlier.

Sighing, he passed his frequency blade from foot to hand and jumped back down. The ringing song of the machete-shaped weapon was an impediment to his hearing this close to his ears. It made it harder for him to judge where the next drones were going to come from.

The cylinder broke and folded, its cheap metal core twisting as the father screamed. A deafening chorus followed as it plunged through countless worker drones and belts, rolling over on its side. Branches of assembly belts caught and broke under its collapse. Metal and flesh spilled free into the air.

The father and his son began to turn under with the spin. With no time to contemplate, Avo leaped back down, gravity drawing his veins back like a bowstring as he fell. He landed hard, claws denting cheap steel. Something clipped the back of his scalp. A deafening scream of wind tore past him, the deep cut beginning to well blood.

Drone. Close. Any closer and he’d be without a head.

As the drone speared passed him, he noted that one of its leftmost engines was sputtering with fire. Must’ve sucked in a piece of debris during its dive.

+Lucky fucking ghoulie!+

This time, the other ghost-riding freeloaders agreed.

Sprinting over with the rolling metal, Avo noticed the father scrambling up as best he could. The idiot was trying to run up a rolling cylinder. The boy, meanwhile, was content to scream and offer no help at all.

The father gripped onto an outcropping of metal, clambering upward blindly. His handhold cracked and broke. The father screamed and tumbled back. The boy, unprepared, slipped free from his shoulder, hands clawing at empty air, his cries raising an octave higher.

Avo launched himself from a run and dove after them. Something exploded behind him. If it was the cylinder’s machinery or another drone, he couldn’t tell. He was just glad he jumped.

Lashing out with reflex-guided instinct, Avo felt the claws of his feet dig into the tender flesh of father and son. Their screams synchronized as he felt himself dig into their shoulders. A primal thrill slithered up his spine as he felt the beast inside him stir.

His leap pulled them free from getting rolled over immediately, but Avo hadn’t thought that far afterward. Open air and a shortfall awaited. Scant feet behind, the cylinder continued its warpath, tearing through the assembly wing.

A disoriented worker drone hovered by, its cone-shaped propulsors searing Avo’s shoulder. The smell was delicious. Lashing out, he hooked his blade through its chassis. His shoulder jerked and tore at an angle. A dozen fibers of muscles snapped like overstretched strings, but enough remained for him to keep his grip.

The drone pulled him up into the air unevenly for a few feet before its engines gave out. A conveyor belt passed below. From the periphery of his sight, Avo watched the cylinder slam into another of its own kind. A cataclysmic blast sent a rain of spearing shrapnel into the air. Another turbine caught fire. A new rain of bodies fell, burning embers in the wind.

They came to a crashing halt over another belt. Avo tumbled, his grip on his burdens unyielding. The same couldn’t be said about his frequency blade. The shattering drone tore his weapon from his grasp and sent it sliding along the assembly belt. It ended up embedded in a muscular torso. Just a torso.

Pure adrenaline surged through him. It had him so deep in its hold that Avo didn’t realize that he was dragging the claws of his feet against naked scapulas. The father roared in pain. The son struggled, little hands prying against Avo’s claws.

Avo released them, the red of their insides coloring the paleness of his claws so nicely. The way they writhed pleased him. Hunger rose. Involuntarily, he tongued his fangs–no. Avo bit back the urge. He was trying to save them. He needed to save them. Eating them would defeat the purpose.

The boy whimpered, compressing his wound with a hand too small. Rivulets of delicious crimson ran through the cracks of his chubby fingers.

Avo pulled his gaze away. Another whine made him look over his shoulder. More drones. Not over yet. Not nearly.

“Make him silent,” Avo said, not even looking at the father.

Another whine made him look over his shoulder. Not over yet. Not nearly. A smoking drone spun overhead, its engines spraying plumes of fire as it shot past the belt. Avo watched as it crashed amidst the debris below. He tilted his head.

Was that the one that sucked in debris earlier? Avo watched as it met the ground in a sparking landing, flesh and half-implanted limbs smearing apart in its wake.

A sudden idea formed in Avo’s head. Something that might ensure his survival, and give him some patchwork functions for his Metamind. Drones had loci that allowed ghosts to interface with them, allowing a drone-jock to pilot the machine from leagues and leagues away. If he was fast enough, he could siphon some ghosts and their sequenced phantasmics from the wreckage. Download those engrams. Regain some cognitive augments he was currently missing.

He grinned, the feral expression startling the father.

+Why’s the ghoul looking at the drone like that?+

+He might want to ride it.+

+That’s insane–+

+Ride the drone, ghoulie. Go nova. Earn your ashes.+

Thrusters screamed out from the distance. Past danglings of several belts and tumbling figures, a glint of metal flashed through the smoke. Another drone was coming. One or several, he couldn’t tell.

He needed to make haste.

Reaching over, he tore his frequency blade free from the torso. Turning, Avo studied the father and son. Deep red was staining the grey of their ugly tattered ashcoats. The boy was still weeping. The man didn’t look far off himself.

Avo sighed. It was just pain. Why were they fixating on it?

“We need to move,” Avo said.

“What?” the father said, gawking like a startled fish. “Where?”

“Down. Probably.”

The father shot the smoldering wreckage below a disbelieving look. “No!”

“Yes,” Avo said. “Just jump. Aim for one of the belts.”

“What?”

Avo growled. Maybe a demonstration would help.

Stepping off the edge, Avo fell fifteen feet before bouncing off the rollers of the assembly lane. Worker drones scattered around him. Bodies came apart beneath his weight. Turning, he motioned for the father to follow. “Throw the boy. I’ll catch.”

+You ever play thunderball, ghoulie?+ a voice in his head joked. The other ghosts around him echoed distant laughter. Space itself rippled slightly around him. Avo frowned. Another passenger had leaped into his mind, distorting his perception. More and more were haunting him. Watching him. He didn’t like the attention.

Looking up, he found the father staring at him in disbelief. The boy meanwhile was sizing up the jump. “You...wish what of me?” the man yelled.

“Throw the boy,” Avo said. He could hear another drone coming. How many more were there? They were wasting time. “You jump after.”

“I–”

The boy went over the edge without hesitation. Good. At least one of them knew what was at stake. He caught the boy in a dipping catch with his left hand. Avo blinked. Huh. His left hand was back. He healed much faster this time. Throwing the boy onto the platform, Avo tested his fingers. Felt clean of tumors as well.

A string of curses and slurs followed. This time, Avo watched as the father jumped as well, arms outstretched. Avo frowned at the technique as the man came down screaming. The father bounced against a hovering drone first before bouncing against the edge. Avo caught the man using his left foot before he could fall.

“Supposed to land on the belt,” Avo said.

The man said nothing, too busy coughing and wheezing to even reply.

A flash of chrome pulled Avo’s attention skyward. Something shot up from below them. Something barely missed them. Through the billowing smoke filling the room, Avo watched as haze threaded around in a curving arc as the drone made for them again. It was far now, but that wouldn’t last. Subsonic as their speeds were, they were still faster than him and the other two sacks of meat by far.

No time to waste. Avo hopped from the edge of the belt into the sprawl of metal and bodies as he made for the drone. Behind, he heard the boy calling for him. He ignored them. He needed to deal with the latest drone and only had one real idea of how he was going to do that.

+What’s the ghoul doing?+

+I think he’s trying to scavenge the Bodkin? Or something. No idea.+

The drone–Bodkin as his passengers had been calling it–was more like a graphene-tipped fragmentation missile. But then again, all drones and golems could technically be used as smart missiles thanks to ghosts taking up almost no internal architecture and being unaffected by even the most extreme of g-forces.

Cracks ran over the triangular compartment where the drone’s “mind” was. The sound of the last drone drew closer. Avo hoped the locus wasn’t broken.

Using his frequency blade to slice open the top half of the drone’s hull, Avo peeled away layers of titanium graphene before he finally found it. Before his eyes, a fist-sized object comprised of artificial crystal gave off a scalding heat. Avo often wondered how Voidwatch could contain the human mind in such a small object. Them being the only Guild to possess nano-fabs probably had something to do with it.

He felt the ebbing presence of lingering ghosts in its system forming constellations of cog-data across the locus’ three shimmering facets. Each plane held an activate phantasmic engram, designed to enhance, manipulate, or interface with cognition in a certain manner.

A locus was not a proper substitute for a functioning, conscious mind, but it had enough memory and nano-processing capabilities that it served well enough as a metaphysical anchor to root ghosts in.

Reaching into the slot, Avo pulled out the locus and clenched it tightly in his fist. The pilot was no longer connected to it. Good. Without a proper mind attached to it, there shouldn’t be anyone to interrupt his looting. He could take its engrams into his mind and convert whatever ghosts it still had into workable phantasmics. A splash of data booted behind his eyes. Avo watched as new HUD overlays manifested in his mind’s eye, linking his consciousness to the damaged drone. It lasted only long enough for him to snatch whatever leftover ghosts and engrams were still present.

ESTABLISHING GHOST-LINK

LINKING…

LINK COMPLETE - HOST UNDETECTED

SIPHONING GHOSTS … [22]

  GHOSTS - [28]

DOWNLOADING PHANTASMIC SEQUENCES…

  DOWNLOADED

PHANTASMICS ACTIVE - [SPECTER]; [AUTO-SEANCE]; [OSARAI MEMGUARD]; [PHYS-SIM]

WARNING! GHOSTS OVERCLOCKING COG-CAPACITY - 144%

Avo checked the corner of his cog-feed and growled. His twenty eight ghosts weren't enough to sustain all the phantasmics. He needed to choose which he was going to activate now and which to switch over to later. He needed to get more ghosts. More importantly, he needed to sequence them to each other and link their memory artifacts. That would increase cog-capacity immensely.

TUNING SEQUENCE…

  DEACTIVATING [SPECTER]

  PHANTASMICS ACTIVE - [AUTO-SEANCE]; [OSARAI MEMGUARD]; [PHYS-SIM]

Constellations flared above the inch-thin metaphysical halo that was his Metamind. Most pleasingly, a latticework of connected memory-forged battlements fused around the borders of his halo, cycling the trauma of his ghosts into a chaotic flood to prevent unwanted entry. At once, his former guests were cut from his mind, ejected in spooling ejection of phantasmal matter back into the Nether. He would tune back into the public broadcast if he wanted to hear what they were saying. Right now though, he savored the peace that greeted his mind.

Atop his Metamind, a blazing hand clung to a misted spire by sinews of interlacing thought and will. More and more ghosts began flooding into the sequences to support his new augments.

New functions and interfaces manifested in his Metamind. The cog-load grew. Scanning through the functions he momentarily deactivated, Avo grunted in disgust. Too many phantasmics and not enough ghosts poached. He would have rather it be the other way around. The Osarai Memguard wasn’t exactly what he wanted for a sequenced mind-ward either. Too porous, too simple, and a half-century out of date.

The mind-ward was currently running at a flat twenty-five percent upkeep for his ghosts. It would spike if someone tried to intrude into his mind, but through skill and mentalism, the cost could be reduced. He'd examine the patterns of the other phantasmics later. Right now, he still had a Bodkin to brick.

Without hesitation, he slotted the locus back into his new drone and poured his mind into it.

Menus and interfaces manifested in his awareness, Avo mantled the drone. There was a certain risk in the action he was about to undertake. A high likelihood of death, but he didn’t have nearly enough ghosts to guide the machine from afar with his Ghost-Link. That would overclock his processing capacity exponentially and would have required him to have at least a few hundred ghosts to direct or be linked to a local nexus.

That meant he needed to keep close to the drone and stay close. He fought the urge to sigh. Looked like his old passengers were right: he was going for a ride.

The downed Bodkin was barely larger than he was, and the damage it sustained made it whistle and crack under his weight. Multiple damage reports from the drone screamed inside his skull so loud he could scarcely hear himself think. The drone’s hull integrity menu displayed catastrophic damage to the left engine. Whatever it sucked in must’ve completely shredded it.

With a thought, he routed resources from the damaged engine and shifted over to the others. Three thrusters roared to life as he felt the Bodkin’s power core begin its spin.

Beyond swaying belts dangling amidst the devastation, the last drone was descending on him, accelerating toward him like a spear cast by the gods. It was his good fortune that he was dealing with an old platform from two centuries ago instead of a modern war golem.

Avo commanded whatever capacity of ghosts he had left to calculate impact trajectories. His perception was twisted and restructured as ghosts ferried through his mind. Within the center of his mind, his Phys-Sim flashed. Lines of transparent blue bled into red; the calculations of the ever-changing velocities affecting his surrounding environment became known to him. Impact estimates were fed directly into his mind, warning him that his flesh had no capacity to survive direct contact with the incoming drone rapidly accelerating to Mach two.

He inquired his ghosts about possible options to avoid the drone, his mind plotting vectors of evasion. Each dissolved within seconds as intercepting lines threaded through them, pruning his paths. On foot or atop his new drone, he had no chance of fleeing the incoming threat. It had four functioning engines. He had two.

So, he moved on to what he didn’t want to do. Intercepting it instead. He commanded his ghost to plot a new course for a near-miss.

PHYS-SIM CALCULATING - 44%

Avo looked at his frequency blade. He looked back up at the impending drone. A feeling of absolute madness settled over him. Above his head, his previously scant halo rippled with new complexity, growing to take the structure of a crown. Peering down beyond the skin of reality, he tuned more of his perception to the wavelength of the Nether. It was better to use the incoming drone’s leaking thoughtstuff to track it. Less chaotic to sort through than the sheer sensory havoc that was spatial existence right now.

Reality faded. The space around him dissolved into a sea of impulses fed by spilling thoughts leaking from reaching ghosts. He could see countless tendrils reaching down from the great locus above, the small hydra-like heads of ghosts directed by the spectators lashing at the minds of the boy and his father. They were huddled together. Their thoughtstuff leaked without order, coming from them like pooling porridge, free to be sampled by any and all. It was a fascinating horror to behold them, then, realizing that they were as vulnerable in mind as they were in flesh.

In them, the denizens of the city were certain to find easy prey.

CALCULATING - 66%

A thousand spectating ghosts wisped around Avo in a spiral, their constructs like drifting tadpoles. They were leashed through nigh-transparent streams of thought, the faint contours of the minds that piloted them burned like embers within the ghosts. Leading down from the locus above in chains, the metaphor of the forest stayed. Instead of one being constructed of metal and matter, Avo stood amidst a grand willow of memories, the branches all bleeding over into each other.

Through the thick of the Nether, past the emotional residue of his surrounding ghosts, Avo found the massive corona of circling patterns directing the incoming drone. A chain of ghosts coiled around it like a knotted flagella as, from a distance of unknown miles, a pilot tugged the drone to its final destination using thought and will alone.

If Avo had enough ghosts to fuel his Possessor, he could have assailed it from afar. Tried to crack its sequence. Sadly, what he had was woefully inadequate for para-psionic combat. He needed to solve this physically.

The incoming Bodkin was within a hundred feet now. His Phys-Sim’s impact lanes flared red. Avo directed the drone he was standing by to rise. He let the ghost do the flying. His cog-cap spiked into the nineties. His halo swirled as his mind felt like it was starting to cook. Even with so much support, the sheer logistical overload was bleeding over into him. He needed to see this done fast.

All he needed to give were the commands.

CALCULATING -99%

A sudden golden path materialized in his mind. His possessed drone rigged itself to the rails of its new pre-determined path.

TRAJECTORY LOCKED

His cog-feed marked the incoming drone with a target reticule. A simulation pre-played in Avo’s head. It was a straight path to hit him. His drone needed to make up for a missing engine along with a compromised hull. The incoming Bodkin was too fast. No counter-impact would save him from the shrapnel either.

Instead, it would meet it head-on and deviate from its path at the last moment.

Avo snarled and pushed the remaining engines of the Bodkin to maximum thrust. He clung to the drone with his left hand and angled the frequency blade with his right. It would dodge. He would cut. And if this went right, his would be the only drone left.

The world blurred. Avo ordered his possessed drone onward. He dipped momentarily back into reality. Matter and sound flooded back into the world. The winds were screaming. The chorus of spectators held their breath. Avo sank his focus back over to the Nether.

On folding winds, he rode to meet his adversary, their titanium phantoms fated for a final clash.

The drone-jock’s mind coiled violently. The incoming Bodkin twisted up and curved down at an angle. Avo hissed. The trajectory dissolved. New paths manifested before him, unfinished in their calculations. Yet, the nature of his take hadn’t changed. He chose the vector that would put him in line with his incoming adversary.

The impact loomed.

The winds howled.

Avo’s drone dove.

Unthinking, he lashed up with his blade. Its singing vibration became muffled for a microsecond, meeting resistance. An inch overhead, engines screamed and sputtered past. Something splashed to his left and right. Shards of metal and flashing fires burst across Avo’s vision. The heat licked at him, close and intimate, the thrill of surviving on the edge like a drug. This was how the Low Masters made him. This was what drove his kind.

Roaring with savage laughter, Avo pumped his sword into the air as he spun to stare at the parting pieces spilling from his enemy’s bifurcated drone. It splashed and tore across the ground in a tumbling ball of fire. Here was a martial feat he wouldn’t soon be repeating. Avo grinned. He would have made quite the snuffer in another life.

+Dead fucking gods!+ a spectator cried out into the lobby. Avo had tuned in just in time to hear the uproar; he needed to get a glimpse into where the next threat was coming from.

+Holy shit. The ghoul just out-jousted a godsdamn recon drone.+

+Told you this one’s differe—+

Avo didn’t hear the last accolade he earned. Something sharp tore out his cheek at an angle, entering through the back of his skull. The world went white in one eye. Only then did the ringing sound of a gauss gun follow.

As a flash of light silhouetted the contours of an immense shadow in his peripheral vision, Avo noticed broken strings of cog-data and half-finished physics calculations trail out from his parting jaw. Most of the strings were dedicated to his spraying blood while a single slide vector highlighted in red due to already impacting his person marked the path of what he could only guess to be a mag-fired spike. The strings lasted a moment longer before they dissolved, his Metamind glitching with the sudden relocation of his brain matter.

Avo stumbled back, toppling from the drone. Who shot him? From where? He tried to reach up and check his wound. His arm wouldn’t raise. His thoughts grew sluggish. The ground drew close. The last droplets of coherence bled out of him as warning vectors flashed through his cog-feed as his Phys-Sim calculated an imminent impact between him and the ground. He didn’t care. Wasn’t enough brain matter left in his opened skull to care by this point.

Dying felt calming. Dying was easy. Dying came as a relief when felt his skull splatter apart against the ground.

But calming as death was, it wasn’t going to last.

VESSEL DECEASED - PRESERVING CONSCIOUSNESS

REVERTING TO LAST STABLE INSTANCE OF ONTOLOGY