Chapter 48 – Ursula’s Escape

 

Chapter 48 – Ursula’s Escape

 

Approximately 3 months after the Xistress's return, the Harmony diet offices of the Galactic Alliance of Xi, led by Star Charity were raided. Supporters of the Sandra sisterhood shut down the Premier's reelection campaign aswell as arrested all government officers on sight in an aggressive takeover and restoration of Sandra's executive powers. Shortly after, the local government server house and all of the evidence regarding the Premier's corruption was destroyed mysteriously.

Although this event was generally agreed upon as the end of Star Charity, many groups who opposed the political practice of Ursula’s rhetoric continued to operate in secret and some, such as those who joined Star Guard, were allowed to maintain their organization. Due to lack of funding and influence Sandra’s government withheld after Star Charity's collapse, Star Guard had no choice but to disband its operations and join the High Fleet in their offered alliance. Any hope or talk of a counter-revolution or freeing of the political prisoners of XU became null and void.

 

 

Liu had never been one for violence. But the recent turn of events had made her reconsider things, and her enlisted time with the Star Guard had changed her beliefs even more.

She sighed, exiting her office and leaving the door ajar. Stepping outside the glass corridor of space, she looked into the sky, a massive glass dome covered most of the penitentiary city, a few stars could be seen if the sun were to set soon, but today and forever after there seemed to be only the deep dark blue ahead.

Star Guard officer, Kace Li Huang watched the footage of the Premier and her cabinet arrested over and over. Her long straight black hair and split bangs went down her white-purple suit with optimized standards of appearance, a dull beauty whose sharp insights were more valuable than any processing power in the prison's system. The department needed a good human element, and she was as ‘human’ as they came. Moody, nostalgia, parental traumas yearning for solace as her overworked job got in the way of much reflection. The sight of the old footage of Ursula arrested reminded her of her own XU-supporting helicopter parents back then, barging into her room after catching her listen to Xi songs and anthems. The same ones she sung as she joined the Star Guard, getting yelled at by drill sergeants, being lectured by the snooty commanders for smudging her makeup and not adhering to aesthetic principles and beauty regimens. They called her a sheltered rich kid with no real problems, looking to join the military out of spite. She turned to another screen out of twenty along her monitoring station, watching several inmates taken to a transfer shuttle. Ever since the recent prisoner mobility reforms, many prisoners received lightened sentences in faraway locations, less severe, less strict, some like a luxury vacation even. But not the specific prisoners under her watch. Five specialized screens monitored footage, heartbeats, radiation, bio-schematics and auditory data on repeat, the Cascade powered temporal-broadcast processing the data through an unknown scientific method. The container of digital walls blocked all light between the internal and

external spaces, utilizing the same means. Regular electronics, electromagnetic radiation and quantum computations of any nucleus and light emitted from electrons outside of the nucleus wavelength bands utilized by common surveillance technology were forbidden in the room. Any such wavelengths or light were being processed outside of the room in a nearby facility that the Cascade linked to. The reason for this was simple- one of the inmates could manipulate such data trivially. Not she'd have any access anyway- the prison rooms were essentially Warp Stations, cornered outside of the flow of space-time or anything connected to Xi except an AI ciphered signal analyzing the room’s spatial perimeters constantly.

Digital computers, quantum, electronic, even analog of course all could be hacked trivially by the most advanced of artificial intelligences and machines, but the same could not be said for biological based lifeforms. Prisoner 1025 was the exception. The Cascade signals powering both the walls and surveillance had a cipher code which was changed every day by an AI, just in case. Which is why when Kace read data anomalies on the AI's encryption protocols, she grew immediately suspicious. A point flow error with the Warp station’s dimensional matrix maybe? Huang had to think, she knew of course, that the system was designed and created by a mysterious AI, but it couldn't have been manipulated from the inside, right? Not while the data was encrypted- Cascade encryptions were an unknown hypothetical even decades ago. But the thought of the AI being compromised would mean an outside factor, and that meant one could have infiltrated the system. If that AI had encrypted every piece of data known to man, and had processed it at the speed of light, then there had to be an outside access point, or an error in the code. Surely it could be turned over to the tech department to figure out. She reported the issues and the tech was taken to the lab as a replacement AI system was utilized temporarily.

Kace Li Huang was told by the techies that they hadn't discovered any abnormalities.

Strange. She went back to her job as usual with the same routine, same duties, same watch. No deviations. Only to have another day pass, and then that same week pass, all while staring at the screen wondering where her life was heading.

"Are you done with work for the day?" An officer spoke, "Aren’t you sick of watching her?" Radar aide Hance Rothman asked, pressing his flat holographic tablet one poke at a time to clock in. "Not yet, have some parental dinners I'd like to avoid." She said, watching prisoner 1025's cell.

The footage was always about 30 seconds ahead of the present due to the way the temporal technology worked, a glimpse into the future if they tried escaping, and could even be accelerated to 30 minutes with sufficient power overrides. The prisoner was said to possess precognitive abilities, so powering the predictive algorithm to see into the future even farther than she could was another precaution taken, the minimal edge for security purposes. The two looked at the white haired woman sitting in her cell. "She's just been there for 25 years, sitting in that mirrored room huh?" Hance laughed, shaking his head. "Can you believe the new Citizen Department wants to transfer her to a more lenient prison?" He paused, and then pressed his tablet's screen, pulling her data. "She can pull one over us with even a pocket calculator, and yet that idiotic flowery council-"

"She can really pull off miracles?" Li Huang asked.

Hance shrugged. "Our objective is not to really monitor her, but optimize the system for her confinement." He lit a cigarette. "Our military could've just killed her in a heartbeat. But public executions wouldn't go well with Sandra's legwork with the Star Guard, right?" She looked at him apprehensive.

"Oh right, you're from there. Forgot. You're kind of a living relic for our department, aren't you?"

She nodded and turned away, staying attuned to work. "You know we've been keeping her in a cell with just six feet of space and 9 feet of height? That's barely a portapotty. Why is that?" Officer Li Huang said. "Even the other prisoners were given 20x12 rooms. Guess the Xistress wanted her punishment to feel genuine. Not every query is meant to be chased Li, just stick to the stats." He took a drag and turned to walk out of the room.

"Hungry at all, prisoner 1025?" She asked. Li Huang watched the teleportation mechanisms send a plastic trey of food and glass of water appear next to Miss von Laya. Li Huang eyes turned back to the transport dropship taking Hance out, but inside her mind kept wandering.

 

 

Suddenly she looked at Ursula, who threw water over her glassy walls and began to breathe on them, the cooling of the room turning them to a murky fog. Once her wall was opaque enough, Ursula began tracing her finger across it, creating marks carefully, circles and lines. Ursula was meticulous, her fingertip taking pains to space the symbols like well-done calligraphy in an organized fashion. Kace Li Huang squinted, she changed the monitoring feed angle. She was well aware- these symbols were binary. Her classes in reading binary text were a little shoddy gradewise, but even she could read simple codes. The fogged walls warmed soon after and the message was lost. Li Huang went back and replayed the footage, zooming in.

01000010 01101111 01110010 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101110 01101001 01100111

01101000 01110100 00101100 00100000 01001011 01100001 01100011 01100101 00111111

"Bored night, Kace?" The digits read.

Kace Li Huang's heart raced. She'd only belonged to this prison department for a little over a year now, hadn't the Premier been in there for decades? It wouldn't have been possible for her to learn her name, she was still a greenhorn at the academy when Ursula was incarcerated. She typed out a short memo, and filed it through the Cascade network, then pulled up a new data-page with her hand. There was a holographic projection, the Cascade powered AI processing the data for whatever the AI would send back, and it did, a green circle spinning on her desk.

"Do you believe she has some sort of influence over the Cascade?" She asked the data- screen. No response. Her phone rang, it was Huang's assistant, Jing. "Perfect timing, I have something to report!" Jing cleared her throat. "It'll have to wait. There's been high-profile Intel that some sort of terrorist activity is taking place. I requested a transfer out for the next few

months, where I can better serve the law. I need a recommendation."

"Oh.." Li Huang sighed. "Affirm, I'll deliver them your performance report. You're a good egg Jing, you deserve a break." She logged off the data projection and got up to prepare for work to file a report. But then a message popped up on the data-screen, the AI system responding back quickly. "Negative. Influence over the Cascade or our systems from within a temporally- dislocated prison is impossible. In the event she has some form of unknown influence, all monitoring reports on the Starbreaker containment project should be filed right away." The screen was green, meaning no abnormalities were detected. She turned off the lights, taking her coat. She left the room into the city-sized prison, the dome outside the atmosphere between her and the luminescent stars.

She went upstairs, through the glass dome in the center, down a winding set of stairs, into the hallway into another room and to the mess lounge, where she ordered a milkshake and meatbuns from the cafe systems. After bringing her tray back down to her monitoring station, she sat down and slurped slowly. "Computer, replay the footage again from 10 minutes ago."

The footage from earlier played. This time, the cheeky little scene was gone. Ursula sat on the floor, completely inert. A single pillow and futon taking up the whole cell could be provided should she request it, but she merely sat. Li scrolled her finger up and down, going through time minutes, hours, then minutes again ahead only to find nothing but this. The feedback of her binary signing was gone- when she received her meal, she ate and drank tranquilly. "Computer, check for signs of data manipulation or footage.” It went through the footage, processing for over a minute and returned with negative. "Computer, find all traces of data abnormalities on my station from today." The computer returned once again with the same response- that no data could be found which was abnormal. A quick sweep through the Cascade grid revealed no abnormalities on her own computer either. "Computer, run a heuristics algorithm. Tell me any possible manipulation probabilities from both temporal and spatial domains."

"It's negative. The possibility of abnormalities in the data-grid is at 0%. I think I would know if it's a data abnormality. I've worked with temporal analysis and computer programming at a higher level than you can code." The computerized sassy response was usually an emotionless sterile voice. She blinked. The room Ursula was in, was specifically built to constrain her abilities with immunity from data, light and wavelength manipulation. Officer Li Huang rubbed her sore eyes, she told herself she must've been tired and exhausted from overwork. Psi wards in healthcare department could look at her for stress later, but it was clear to her there were no gaps in the system.

She sipped her milkshake slowly.

The days for Li Huang were tedious and trivial, most of the time she was left to herself, her supervisor was dealing with some Enigma-related incident halfway across the galaxy and barely checked in every few weeks anyway. Then, after about 15 days, it happened again.

Ursula von Laya sat on the floor of her cell. It was a clean surface, a single rug-like mat stretched out, no pillow or futon. It was a white room, glass-walls all around, no furniture, no

windows. No clocks, no radios, no books. A single plastic tray with food was teleported in, she ate her beef sandwich slowly. But 30 seconds later, the footage was distorted, an outage of white light covering the room for a second. 1's and 0's filled Li Huang's screen, scrolling so she could translate and read the words.

01011001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101110 01101111

01110100 00100000 01100011 01110010 01100001 01111010 01111001 00101100 00100000

01001101 01101001 01110011 01110011 00100000 01001100 01101001 00100000 01001000

01110101 01100001 01101110 01100111 00101110

"You're not crazy, Miss Li Huang."

She checked for a possible AI or computer-based interruption, and found nothing. She then reported the anomaly to the guard office. But after another 3 days, something happened. Three members of the guard office had been fired from their posts mysteriously and without word, and Li Huang never heard word of her report.

01010111 01100101 00100000 01101011 01101110 01101111 01110111 00100000 01111001

01101111 01110101 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000

01110100 01110010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01110101 01110011 00100000

01111001 01100101 01110100 00101110

"We know you don't trust us yet."

She blinked, the words were on the screen again, only this time, she had an AI-powered analysis and confirmation of the data. The report was different.

"It's permissible. The possibility of abnormalities in the data-grid is at 1%." Miss Li Huang's eyes went wide, she shook in her seat. How could that be possible? This confirmed to her one thing, that the Cascade Grid had been completely compromised. The moment the chance of the system being compromised was over 0.1%, the Warp Station tech holding her cell was supposed to automatically shut down, trapping her within the spatial pocket. 1%, may as well have been a certainty- She wanted access to that data, but didn't have the clearance to examine the back-end.

She did something above her paygrade that was by all means, grounds for her termination and immediate dismissal- Li wrote a digitalized message to Laya's cell, appearing as a holographic series of floating letters inside above Ursula. "Did you, hack the system?"

She'd rewritten the rules that'd bound her. More gaps in the code, more weaknesses to exploit.

Something else was more interesting though, something much more dangerous.

The woman was not alone, not recently anyway. Readings of radiation isotopes from the computer scanners told Li Huang that Ursula had someone with her, or at least was in contact with others recently. But even when she asked for a room scan- nothing showed up. "Computer, tell me the most likely location of all living beings or trace life-signs potentially described by

current data."

The computer took several minutes to crunch the data, and responded back with concerning facts. "Current indications would suggest, participants in cell originate from 12 million lightyears away, in another Galaxy. Data is consistent with textiles, trace dirt samples and pathogens of planet 'Ambera' of Harvest." But just as she was about to file a report, the footage from Laya's cell showed up again.

Greatland? That was, absolutely absurd. But there wasn't a chance in hell, Ursula would have the resources to transport an entire warp drive out from within a prison cell, and she knew Harvest lacked Warp Station technology. That, just wasn't possible she thought. "Computer.

Play back Ursula's entire timeline within the containment unit at 1000x speed over her entire incarceration." Years then played back at quickspeed. The screen started to play a few months earlier, Ursula was seen sitting, doing nothing. Consuming, using the waste module, sleeping, but otherwise simply sitting. She seemed like a porcelain lawn ornament, her white hair immaculate and skin gleaming in the light of the cell's fluorescent lighting. Doing nothing but waiting, for what? If for anything at all, perhaps to be witnessed like this. She replayed it all twice, seeing Ursula's entire tenure here over the long years just to see if there was anything suspicious. Any clue at all.

Li's monitor screen turned black, but when she touched it, she felt a static shock. There was an abnormal amount of radiation in the room, more than any AI could ever explain. Li Huang couldn't take the risk to continue.

She turned her monitors off, and took a step back. As she looked at the door leading to the exit, she found herself paralyzed, staring at the automated door for a moment. The feed on the window glass said 'Sit and rewatch' in perfect neatly fonted lettering.

Her heart skipped a beat. Nervously making her way back to her chair, Miss Li Huang sat down and looked at Ursula, who on the feed was staring upwards, as if directly at Li. Several numbers appeared- time stamps.

Li Huang went back in the long, ceaseless monitoring data, months, years to the exact moment the timestamps indicated in the present. In front of her on the screen, there were with symbols from the across the stars, Ambera, Harvest, the Galactic Federation. A symbol for Greatland, and then a symbol for Xi- a glowing white symbol with a slanted line vs a Red Star. How had somebody missed this? Or, more likely she questioned, had it ever even happened?

She sat back down, her eyes locked on the monitor and jumped back to the present- 30 second-future feed. On the screen the words appeared again. "0:00:00:00:01."

Literally one minute after Ursula had been imprisoned in this cell, back when she'd have still been a brat at the academy. What could that reveal? She had the computer pull up the feed from that far back, to see Ursula holding a piece of paper that read 'XUXU, Ursula <3 You, Miss Li Huang'.

Von Laya gave the feed a big kiss. "The Grand Premier will be there for you, always,

Huang." She said outloud.

Li Huang took a deep breath, it seemed clear she'd rewrote her own history in the system to deliver these messages, but how from within her cell, she couldn't possibly say. She watched and then, suddenly began to type. "Computer, do not transmit the feed to any other AI, Cascade or departments and any communication or data which you transmit is limited only to Li Huang- Authorize only Officer Li Huang to receive this data." She said, before the computer affirmed.

She returned to the present, Ursula sitting with her arms folded. "Why would you go this far?" Li Huang said to herself. Numbers appeared, this time not on the monitor but in open space, following her when Li turned her head around. “W-what?!” Right in front of her own eyes, there were bright numbers pulsing. Another timestamp. She rubbed her eyes, went to the sink in the bathroom to wash them and looked up. Still they remained, not visible in the mirror but within the boundaries of her own vision.

Kace went back in time on the footage to see Ursula sitting in the same spot at that monitored moment, when she began to speak from the distant past, responding on footage from a decade ago. "This far in, yet you're the one choosing not to report this? Let me ask you a better question. Why is a little mousy Star Guard Officer like you hiding in every crevice of the Xistress's government. Could it be you're some kind of scapegoat for the system? Or is it the other way around, and the system was created to turn talented visionaries into garbage like you?"

Li Huang slapped her glassy table. The screen blinked, then, with a static shock, the words of Ursula's rant went onscreen, her face suddenly appearing on every monitor at different points in the monitor's timeline at once. "If you wanted to come see me- I’m already here. We have a lot of catching up to do."

"Why would I ever want to do any catching up with you?!" Li Huang shouted.

Ursula smiled gently. "Unwanted and underwhelming as you may be.. a meaningful existence is still within reach within my world." She told her.

Kace's hands calmed. Her face blushed. For the past hour, she had just been reading the data in disbelief, and then she'd realized the computer had been sending out the data through every monitor in the building, and soon, it'd likely spread to the outside, with every possible device, and Cascade network node.

"How is this even possible, computer?" She asked the system.

The AI responded with static, an image of Ursula's smiling face and another number- time stamps.

And so Li Huang had begun her dialog with the Grand Premier. The former messages, locked in the monitor's timeline feeds had already been replaced and distorted, becoming mere dim recordings of Ursula sitting in place silently. Over the next few weeks they'd chat with one another in brilliant philosophical depth, all range of topics from culture, Huang's own history, economics and politics to the deep existential quandaries of existence.

Ursula von Laya's data was being rewritten in every system in the prison. As the Xistress's empire crumbled around Huang in her mind, and for the first time she questioned. Who really was to blame for the Enigma? Had Ursula done this, or was it all some misunderstanding? In the meantime, Li Huang found it easier to believe the AI had tampered with her entire life, and it was all her fault for not taking the data more seriously. But of course, the notion she was actually talking to the charismatic Ursula was far more attractive in the back of her lonely mind. She watched in fascination, the computer began to display holograms from Ursula's own datacubes, revealing her life back on Ambera, from her early inception into their politics and integrating into their society, to her time as their Supreme premier and "Mother."

Over the next few weeks it soon became clear to each other the two developed a mutual affection for one another. A shared love and respect for science, and a distaste for the common barbaric ways of Xi. Their love of philosophy was something Li Huang never could've imagined she'd shared with such a figure, especially one she was supposed to guard. One day, Li Huang was called to the Psychic Wards for mandatory evaluations. The Psychic staff who read her mind found her to be as stable as ever, perhaps with a slightly higher level of intelligence. She was then dismissed back to her post.

As she walked back, Li Huang wondered why she hadn't been found out and compromised? The first hypothesis she had was that the inspection ward was themselves a double agent or perhaps had made contact with Ursula too, but she quickly dismissed the notion. As she sat in her work chair and looked at Ursula on the monitors, another thought crossed her.

What if Ursula had tampered with her mind? "Computer, how has your system changed my personal biochemistry?" The computer told her all the information it knew of her. "You have been administered psychic medication and biological enhancements by unauthorized personnel at least 18 months ago. They are still present in your system to this day, and are most likely the cause of several of your symptoms including fatigue and mood suppression." She thought about it- the augmentations in her frontal lobes were meant to help bring her up to speed on the computer systems and make her more effective.

But they could also serve as a gateway. Bio-Hackers weren't unheard of, if very rare and highly exaggerated. But if Ursula could alter the feed and footage, and even the Cascade grid meant to contain her, who’s to say, as improbable as it was that she couldn't have tampered with her mental functioning and neurons via the processing chips in her head? Suddenly she felt paranoid about anything she'd said, done, thought or felt and if the AI was being influenced by Ursula. But she found that when she asked the computer for a trace of her own mind, the AI said the data was inaccessible. It could read her state, but couldn't be sure if she'd had her mind altered or was in fact the original 'Li Huang'.

Maybe the Li Huang currently that was growing so fond of Ursula, was merely an imprinted construct, a manipulation by Ursula herself. Her affection and conflicted feelings, between duty and limerence, the two were bound to merge into the perfect tool to accomplish the ultimate goal of the Grand Premier. Li Huang had been completely owned by her, and she took full advantage.

Kace knew this, but as time went on, it worried her less and less. Her curiosity for Ursula grew to love, and love grew to obsession. Of course, it was possible her skepticism and possible fear of mental tampering, itself was the product of more tampering. Li Huang was well aware of this. This lead her to question her every action, feeling guilty about letting herself be tampered with and lead astray this way. Feelings of guilt for doubting her Premier bled into their conversations.

She told herself she had to kill the Grand Premier. One night, when most staff had gone away she'd resolved to hack the AI encryption and go into Ursula's cell herself. She would likely be caught and arrested after, but didn't care, maybe she could re-encode the Warp Station to escape after. She walked over to the Station's entrance points, a long silvery hallway full of digital cells that showed the other Starbreakers in their own containment units and approached Ursula's, plugging a COMM into the micro-slot to override the command codes. Slowly the bridgehead opened and she walked in, the door closed, the Warp Station activated and then the second door in front opened.

With a gun, Kace stepped forward.

The cell was empty. Ursula was nowhere inside to be seen.

Both indignant rage and disappoint filled her. She felt her blood pumping as her heart beat out of control. Li Huang herself was the only one that knew this. She went back out, changed the Cypher and left to her monitoring room. That day she'd been called up to the disciplinary offices, a security guard had supposedly seen her sneaking and swore she'd punched in at the prisoner's gates. She was asked if this was true, which she denied earnestly.

The facility footage showed her back in her work station properly at that time. The Intel on the gates revealed she was nowhere in sight near Ursula’s cell. The guard insisted she'd altered the footage somehow, but with no evidence of hacking or alterations, their accusation was summarily dismissed and they were fired shortly after.

The officer didn't have those kind of resources afterall. She was just as locked into the system as the rest of everyone here.

Li Huang found herself a hostage to this world, aswell as to her own feelings. Synthetic or not, a love had developed between the Officer and the Grand Premier. It made sense, she told herself, if she had been manipulated mentally as easily as the footage- she was the only one with the Datagrid insights which offered surveillance on the Starbreakers, officers and every single department in the penitentiary.

Through her, the system itself had found the ultimate tampering. As long as the Starbreakers were within the system's web, she could be guard and gatekeeper. She held the keys.

And she could free them all.

Present

Caleb, Veronica and Jel watched as the door was slowly opened up, sparks flying, a blowtorch finishing blustering through the hinges before the thick metal gate was finally opened. A figure was waiting, they all could feel the warm temperature of the fire ahead, the sound of breathing, but even if they tried, they were unable to see what was waiting inside. Some sort of clunky robotic suit with verde plates, gauntlets and roller tracks on two-leg pieces stood in front of them, the bloated chestplate and metal abdomen like an egg with a visor around the wearer's head, stomach and torso. "Come in." They heard, filtered through clunky vinyl grates.

They rushed inside, and the figure closed the door, welding the steel gate back shut.

"An XJA-SP5 Recon Model Armament system with an X-500 Mk II Cognitotronics firing module, damn." Veronica eyed the bulky arm-grafts with fascination. "Efficiency needs no sentiment huh?"

Slowly they heard hissing steam and the suit began to open up. Out came a woman with black hair, swept bangs over one half of her face and a white-and-purple shoulder-padded suit alongside crème gloves and violet lapels on her jacket. Her white hair was still neatly styled, and she was smiling at them. Her eyes had rather large bags, as if she’d been up late every night the past month and her hair was abit frizzled, she seemed like a lady who lost her sanity along the way.

"She said you'd come." Li Huang told the trio. "My name is Officer Li Huang, formerly an Officer of the Star Guard, currently Systems Monitor head of the Starbreakers containment project. I am the only one with direct access to the Grand Premier's data in any system. I've been speaking with her about our hopes for a better existence, for several months."

For several months, Ursula had been in her head. Every talk bringing her closer to her way of seeing, every conversation filling Li Huang’s ideas with visions and ideas, deepening her devotion in an ever clutching spiral of reverie. By the time she’d finished her indoctrination, there wasn’t a shred of the reasonable Officer left- only a zealot who had danced with the devil, who’d do anything for Ursula no matter the cost or sacrifice. Li Huang felt that she belonged to Ursula mind, body and soul.

Veronica's brow furrowed. "Then you're here to do something about the Enigma?"

Li Huang chuckled. "Oh that's so cute." She flicked Veronica's hair. "But come along, we need to hurry. Xi authorities will be here soon. The longer we take, the more we're at risk. I'll explain the rest as we go." She told the 3 kids.

Kace Li Huang smiled and turned to the door. "Come along." She said. The three began to follow her through the top-level secrecy internment halls of the facility. On every path, stairway and hall they went by the three saw bodies bloodied and littered throughout the section, all personnel seemed to have been terminated not too long ago. Veronica fingered one of the bodies. "They're, still warm?" The person struggled to wiggle, shocking the group.

"Did, you kill all these dudes?" Jel asked. "Where are the holes?"

"They were small bullets." Li Huang replied, taking out her handgun. She shot the wiggling guard several times until the body stopped twitching.

The group began to bicker. Li Huang turned to them, with a look of disapproval.

Eventually they made their way through the prison system, finding the central halls of the prisoner's gates. Li Huang stopped at the last door and held up her hand, the computer's AI systems scanning and recognizing her as an officer running a routine Warp station inspection. She opened the door, a silvery hallway revealed ahead.

Over the past two years, the three had been undergoing extensive martial education.

Caleb himself had signed up for Echocreek's local Highfleet volunteer network, and slipped thru the rift raft to get a recommendation to a prestigious military academy, Xiaocan Starfort HQ, graduating in time to be the youngest Xi Military officer of a tenth-level rank in the past 50 years and becoming a skilled Highfleet pilot in the contracted mechanical guard company Ballistics Empyre after. Both Jel and Veronica joined up after, becoming trained military. Jel leaned into Llavalite linguistics, tactics and asymmetrical warfare along with the details of a field-sniper curriculum. Veronica herself had gotten themselves into a similar school, trained for counter- terrorism protocols and intel on fugitives with terrorist intent, with a minor accreditation in Military journalism. Her report on the insurgent activities of ENIGMA-rioters and 'activists' aswell as espionage of Setenka-VII Luminary guerrillas on the eastern galaxy districts were cited several times in high-level conferences among Highfleet meetings. She was immediately spotted for her intelligence by SPARTA INTEL TRUST’s special military-intelligence organization and quickly went to work undercover to infiltrate and sabotage enemy insurgent networks, getting hands on experience among SPARTA operatives, learning the utilization of Hi-Tech Weaponry and covert methods of overt power projection. At the time neither Jel nor Veronica had fully finished their training, while Caleb had six months left before he could start a proper field post.

The three had a long journey, from their time together at school, to their current roles and mission today. They'd trained themselves, each other, and among the elite, building the kind of skills to defend Xi, that would be mostly useful in eventually fighting back against Xi. And they were ready. In the back of his mind, Caleb remembered the discussion Goliath had with the three when his Decade began- the three could become the instigators in places where he could not reach.

Inside the silvery hallway, so brightly lit that it hurt one’s eyes in raw intensity they followed Li Huang from behind. Caleb sped ahead and had taken lead as the first one down the chute leading the group. He stopped, the ground was hit with a shockwave.

They turned to one of the cells, seeing somebody leaning inside. She had long straight sheeny green hair went vertically down to the floor, large antlers growing out of her head- they appeared to be themselves shedding leaves? Caleb squinted, never having seen a figure this lithe or fair since his time on Orchid. The flowers and vines in her hair gave Caleb similar vibes. Her chest was fully exposed, as a metallic device pulsed and droned at her chest, before the rubbery, gooey suit began to close in around her body, covering every bit of skin, shocking her. She ripped it apart and took a hacky sack, a small plastic, plush ball and tossed it into the wall. The toy traveled so fast it created a sonic boom and sent a blastwave over the wall of light that

contained her. She continued to toss it casually at the wall and back, as if playing with a toy bored.

"Tsk." Caleb said.

"She's in a Warp Station, different locality. She cannot actually hurt us, relax." When the woman waved at Caleb, he noticed her hands weren't entirely fingers- they were made up of strange, smaller spiky flat lobes clapped together, not unlike a venus fly trap that twisted together into green hands. A smaller prison cell next to her held a black bird of some kind- a large vulture.

The next two cells opposite each other contained chronostasis tubes, inside were two woman, both dark smoky skin. One had wavy black hair with a red visor, wearing shiny black lipstick in contrast to the other's white lips, her strongly built form bulkier than her counterpart who had other silvery white hair pulled back in two extremely long white ponytails, the latter woman tall and sporty. Her visor was white with a purple afterglow. The red visored woman gave cool nod to Caleb, folding her arms. She reminded her of the stoic imagery of White Nebula from years back, delivering beatdowns to Becca in those bygone days. The two were motionless, suspended in time as it were within their tubes since the start of their inception into this jail, having not aged a day since they arrived.

The group kept walking.

The next cell was empty. Li Huang typed in the clearance codes to open it, as the Cascade grid powering the computer's system had been overwritten and deactivated since. The Warp Station activated revealing the bridge space between, revealing a room with glossy mirror for surfaces on all 6 sides, 1 side shifting upwards. Slowly someone walked out of it. She was taller than Li Huang, her white hair flowing straight along her backside like a silky cape over her pure- white suit. She had a very slight frame but was still muscularly fit. Ursula was free.

Li Huang herself couldn't hold back. Once Ursula entered the hall, she immediately threw herself to her knees, the devotion in her eyes turning to a swirling madness. Immediately her lips perched onto Ursula's booted heels, and she began to kiss the base with a level of passion few could've ever seen, she kissed at Ursula's legs, her knees, her thighs and her hips. "You're back, Mistress." She cried out. She wiped at the tears of joy streaming from her eyes. "I missed you so much." She reached her hands up to touch Ursula's waist, licking her tongue against Ursula's boots slavishly.

"I'm so sorry it took so long, we'll get you out of here. I love you, I love you, I love you." She said, her voice turning to a hushed-tone, her lips trembling. Her body heaved like a child, hugging Ursula's knees with a level of intimacy Caleb and the others could barely comprehend.

Ursula walked forward, her heels dragging. She grabbed Li Huang's shoulders and lifted her. "I was told you'd return." She told her, a smile on her face. "Progress waits for no man, for this particular woman? It simply cannot advance forward without." She pat her on the head and rubbed Li Guang's cheeks gently. "Your efforts, have been well-spent." Ursula nodded at the other three, taking notice of them. "Your work, has served my purpose well, Officer Huang." She

grabbed Li Huang's cheeks, and kissed her forehead, then gently stepped aside her to confront the other three. "Caleb. Veronica. Jel. I've been given good word about you three. I hope to get to know you, very soon." Her smile was warm, a mother's smile, her cheeks flushed pink.

Caleb, Veronica and Jel took a step back, not sure quite what to do.

Li Huang looked up and smiled. "We need to move out now, mistress. They'll be here soon." She said, running to a console built on the wall at the end of the corridor. She plugged her comm in and quickly hacked the systems. "Ordinarily one needs 3 separate passcordia inputs from different wings of the facility to unlock this, but they've all been... disposed of, courtesy some deliveries of mine. So I can override this quite trivially." She programmed the system afterall. She turned and winked at Ursula. "This'll take about 5 minutes, then we'll be able to leave." She said. She looked at Ursula and smiled, stepping close.

"That's very thoughtful of you Miss Li Huang, but we don't have that kind of time. That won't be necessary." She stepped up to the console and removed a shiny white rubber glove, pressing her hand to the apparatus and closing her eyes. The data-display went haywire, a million symbols, text and lines of data and codes appeared and disappeared in seconds. The system began to overload and then a sudden flash overwhelmed the apparatus, optimized to Ursula's own measures.

Suddenly, the prison's Warp Station overrides were under her control, just as her own had been a mere few minutes after she'd first entered her own cell decades ago. She turned around and with a simple wave of her hand, the lights on the Warp station cells began to flicker, releasing their inmates.

Veronica, Jel and Caleb all looked at one another, their faces slack-jawed.

They turned to three cells farthest in the room, the two chronostasis chambers releasing cold steam as the time began to resume for the two incarcerated. Despite a sluggish entrance, the two within the tubes hopped out and gave an agile stretch, joining the green-haired woman. The other three freed stepped to examine an empty cell. "Sats, come check this out!" The white ponytailed woman yelled, her shrill voice alerting the group. "Sup with Croix? What the hell?"

They all looked around. There was still nobody in sight within the cells. Ursula folded her arms. "It’s as I suspected.. sis didn't stick around." She lamented the cell next to her own.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jel asked.

Ursula, smiled a knowing smile, as if her eyes could see deep into the soul, of the very cells she'd spent nearly three decades held within, and at the same time never spent time any at all in. "She sold us out is all it means. I knew from the start she'd never rot here with us, sister never was a fan of the word 'wait'. Her and her lackey cut a deal with the Xistress and was granted her freedom after. That's all there is to it." She said, as if it were her own fault for giving somebody her greatest weakness- her trust.

The antlered woman reached for an opened cell to "My name is-"

"Satsuma." Veronica interrupted, to her cheeky shift of the eyes towards the girl. "Aren't you, Satsuma Satori? You used to be a challenger for the Domina! The previous Domina's top commanders and disposed one's challengers. You stalled Lyras Nezura and her army for almost 8 long years in a bloody campaign along her Decade, before challenging Lyras herself for the throne. They say she outsmarted you. Are you even an Xi'an? What are you doing here?" The two locked eyes, and theirs was a familiar look of fascination.

Satsuma's eyes flickered rapidly, her antlers sparking with electricity. "Quite prudent! Aw, I cannot be mad at an admirer. Yes, I served my holiness once, overtaken by that usurper." Vines came out of her leafy arms, wrapping around and tickling Veronica. "Its true, Satsuma is no Xi'an. But you may call me by my name, Satsuma if you please." Satsuma said, with a slithery, menacing tone that came with her words. "Be nice to the kids, they came all this way to fetch us out." Ursula told her. "Of course, m'lady." Satsuma told Ursula, observant of her authority. To the three who'd come to prisonbreak them, both of them looked so strong, and powerful and had such a highly refined sense of presence about them, Ursula's off her calm and controlled mannerisms, Satsuma's from her sheer unpredictability.

"Wow, you sure have been a busy girl these past two years huh?" Satsuma said, with a sarcastic tone.

"Why are you here, Miss Satsuma?" Jel asked. Satsuma smiled, her red antlers tensing.

"After coming quite charitably close to the Domina's seat myself, I, Satsuma defected from Orchid and joined the Premier in her, short-lived military campaign effort against the Flora Church. No rule that says a Starbreaker has to be an Xi'an, just as long as one has the means.." She slid her vines away from Veronica's body and back into her own arms.

Satsuma laughed. "I'm here to get us out of here. We have a war to fight." Caleb's eyes flashed in admiration. "With Xi?"

"Does a dragonfly sweeten in the blood of one's nectar?" She replied with an icy tone. She slowly lifted the vulture onto her shoulder, petting it gently. The bird seemed to shed feathers which floated to the ground, but seemed to be just light and weightless, the very ends of them extremely sharp as-quills.

“Ursie!” One of the visored figured with 2-pigtails said. She ran to Ursula and nuzzled into her, as if she were a cat missing their own. “O-oh, hi! My name’s Zari.” She told Cal and the others, holding Ursula’s hand and looking back.

“After the Xistress returned I tried to hold her guys off for you to escape, but there were so many of them and some of my equipment broke! They were superstrong too, ohhho I wanted to return to you so badly! But I knew you’d return, and we’d take back XU in no time!” Zari saluted, standing as ready as a soldier at Ursula’s disposal.

Beside her, the red visored figure folded her arms and gave a sligh ‘Hmpff.’ She turned to Ursula. “You left us behind. We were captured thanks to you.” She said coldly. Ursula shrugged. “I had other priorities. Don’t get all moody on me or in your usual brooding, Serena.” She stepped forward and pulled her cheek. “No one likes a rock that sinks other’s boats.”

Serena slapped the woman’s hand off her face and clenched her fist. Suddenly the empty cells came online as flickers of light.

Li Huang panicked. She took out her comm, a port connected to the back of her spine and began to shift through the system, her nervous system's integration running through the cybernetic data of the facility's security systems. She ran to Ursula. "My Premier. The AI grid is under enemy control, and 'she' has a backdoor in the entire system." She told them. Ursula rolled her eyes.

"Racquel." Ursula muttered with gentle frustration.

"What?" The trio gasped, the three looked at the gates and doors began to lock up. "An onboard warp-ready scouting team of 180 Highfleet infantry has been sent with

auxiliary Star Guard support via dropship." Li Huang gasped as she projected a holographic display from her comm unit of lights moving towards them. "They're already boarding an en route this wing." She told the group.

Satsuma smirked. "Give me their coordinates. Exactly, in latitude and longitude."

"2.5 Kilometers east, coming down the stairs, splitting across a hallway on the upper and lower decks."

Satsuma stretched her flytrap arms and green leafy hands, cranking them, turning her hand to her vulture. With a clench of her fist, her fingers grew long sharp nails just like the birds, veiny massive bloated muscles spreading throughout her arms. She plucked fifteen feathers into her clamped traps.

"What are you planning to do?" Veronica asked.

"Chill. You might want to step back for this." The woman in the Red visor told her, Serena stepping aside. Veronica, Jel and Cal watched from a distance as Satsuma took careful observation of the figures moving on the holographic display, their coordinates, angles and distances written in tiny details and numerals as they moved like bugs.

Satsuma began to unsheathe the quills, slowly, as if drawing swords. The vulture cooed softly, it's plumage swelled.

"It’s time to play darts with our Xi friends." Satsuma said, her eyes darting over to Veronica, Caleb and Jel. She stuck out her tongue, then cranked her arm back as if trying out for the major leagues. They watched her eyes turn to strange swirls, lotus symbols appearing in place of her pupils that stayed in place while the rest of her eyeballs spun.

Satsuma shot the feathers with a single throw of her vine-like arm. The darts zoomed across the holographic display, penetrated the walls, moving towards the infantry and their armored vehicles. Concrete, steel, titanium building materials, anything hit by the feather's trajectory became penetrated and were effortlessly passed through and displaced. The light feathers zoomed traveled about 5% light speed, hitting each and every armored vehicle, soldier and target with ease. Her precision was immaculate, all 12 trucks, 60 highfleet personnel, and 15 mecha breached, even taking out a large chunk of a dropship above the facility's roof itself with one single stray dart. With one arm, Satsuma had decimated the entire contingent from afar. To the warp-ready scouting team and dropship crew, one second they'd been traveling, and the next were filled with red bloody holes in their body, their machinery exploding into mechanical chunks as the feathers flew out.

She'd decimated over half the infantry, with mere feathers.

The group looked at Satsuma in wonderment, the three shook their heads. "How can I learn that?" Jel asked.

"Not from a mere mortal, for I am Satsuma." She said. She turned to Li Huang. "Peon, hand me a bullet."

The girl took one out of her handgun and gave it to Satsuma, who clamped it into her

traps.

On the holographic display she received the location of the Mobile Warp station unit.

"Better kill their spawn point too. Let's close the curtains." She pinched it, and with a whip-like flick, flung it like artillery across two dozen walls and floors until it shot the unit all the way down, through the Warp Station.

One moment within the dropship there was no bullet, and the next a mile away, there was a bullet. A woman in a metallic suit of armor plunked in the head with it as she screamed and fell to the floor. The shot felled her and damaged the station's modulating systems. Several soldiers in advanced Gen-V Purgetor suits similar, but sleeker than the eggy bulked one Li Huang had worn earlier started to pour out by the dozens. Satsuma flicked her eyes over to the holochart, eyeing the soldiers and the remaining warp-ready forces on the upper deck.

"Alright then, let's do some house-keeping before we go." She said. "Satsuma- wait!" Ursula yelled. She threw the vulture feathers at the infantry across the room, the flocks of feathers exploded far away from her, each like a shotgun, as if each one were a missile on its own. The soldiers were dazzled and briefly distracted by the spray which would've cut down ordinary soldiers like machine-gun fire, but had little effect on the new armored group. They got up in their steely armor and continued on.

"Now, they know our location." Ursula said, palming her forehead.

"They must've calibrated shielding armaments to withstand Sats' attacks in advance for such an occasion." The Serena said.

"How the shit is that happening?" Zari, her plucky ponytailed counterpart asked. "Quite doable when they have intel on all of us. Snake in the grass.." Satsuma hissed. "Croix.." Li Guang dreaded.

"And that won't be the heaviest manpower they bring in either, we need to act quickly.

They've got the numbers and time on their side right now, and the longer we take the more intel we lose to.. her." She knew all too well the dangers of having a Genus Loci on your enemy's side. "Fucking typical." Serena scoffed.

"You two, accompany me. Satsuma, I need you to guard Li Guang and make it down to the systems mainframes. Li, if I count on you to hack the system back how long can you keep power and informational redirection for the facility?"

Li Guang shook her head. "Not long. If it's Racquel we're talking about 5 minutes- no, I can run a Red Herring trojan virus, to buy us.. maybe 10, 15 minutes at most and that's a miraculous 'Maybe'. We'll need much longer than that to secure and punch in coordinates for any working Warp Station escape, which she’ll already know how to shutdown easily."

Ursula smiled. "We don't need a Warp port. Just keep power and regain control of the systems." She turned to Caleb, handing him a headset connected to Satsuma's small radio comm. "I'm trusting you three, can you go down to the fusion engine chamber and keep the lights on?"

"Don't you think we should've run together instead? What's the point of us splitting up?" Veronica asked.

"They have full intel us on, so we have to assume they've already calculated our next move. That's why they're sending their reservists to the southern wing. If the power goes out to the mainframe, we're sitting ducks and they can send as many reinforcements as they need, in which case we're done for. It’s only a matter of time before the big guns come in and we have no room to negotiate our own conditions. You three have to get down there and keep that power on until we have some time to work things out." She turned to Satsuma. "Satsuma, flank and provide them cover as they go."

Caleb nodded, adjusting the headset. "We won't disappoint you ma’am."

"That's Miss." Ursula corrected. She turned to Serena and Zari women. "Come now."

The three separated from the Starbreaker group and began making their way towards the remaining infantry. A man with a cybernetics interface implant in his forehead bulging out scanned the group from three hallways away and leaned his rotating gun barrel-head down- Veronica recognized his armor and insignia, a Spartan Steel Operator. Experts in heavy duty weaponry, powersuits and melee shock tactics. "Insurgents at 240m." His Pincer-Blitzer began firing, the sound of massive fireworks and engines revving echoing in the hallowed halls.

"HIT THE DECK." Caleb pushed back as sprays of shrapnel tore through the walls. The

two women dodged and rolled to avoid the bullets. The woman with the antlers and black- feathered vulture observed the grouping on their datacharts a floor below and took aim at the floor, flinging at the infantry, the feathered quills zooming and piercing through armor as if they were the spear-tipped feathered arrows of ancient times. These caused superficial injuries in their joints, nanitic biofluid in the Shield Operator already repairing muscle and organic tissue from the impact like self-repairing meatloaf.

"Satsuma Satori, leader of the Exodus Dominatus's holy brigades, and her underlings at your mercies." She flung a handful of her feathered darts at the soldiers, who were still unable to move past their armor and bio-regenerative wounds as she flanked them from above. The forehead-bulged man turned his Pincer-Blitzer upwards, the spray of rapid shots redirecting towards Satsuma. Her claptrapped hands rapidly flapped and swirled in a dance of death, each clap and grab picking up molten metal traveling upwards to 8,779 m/s towards her, arms flailing wildly to intercept and deflect the bullets as if her arms were weedwhackers. Her people had once caught sound-barrier breaking insects on her primitive homeworld before her race could even talk, able to clap them as if they were in slow motion for the daily consumption they'd provided, and here an eon of evolution later, the metal danced in her eyes like specks of flung droplets she could easily catch. The Pincer-Blitzer's gun barrel stopped spinning, heat overheating gasoline out the long handle. "In 3 seconds, run forward and charge." Satsuma said on a radio. "3.. 2.. 1. GO!"

She sent a massive barrage with both arms, sending the metal shrapnel she caught back to the floors below at the personnel team. Caleb and the two behind him ran as fast as possible, taking short-range electric positronic mines to detonate at the attacking group. Veronica looked back and saw the mines already activated, and watched the explosions take out the armored vehicles and the electronics of their armored suits, a thick wave of electrons ripping through the room. "Harmless for people, not great for machinery or armor." Veronica said running ahead.

The miniature EMP left the suited enemies like statues temporarily. "How long will those hold?" Veronica asked.

"I'm guessing not long." Jel grunted. They reached the elevator and began to go down. As it slowly descended, the lights flickered and the entire platform jolted. Darkness crept over. "S- shit!" Caleb yelled, smashing the buttons. "There goes the power."

"Fuck this." Jel swore, taking out her rifle. She shot at the ceiling, opening the hatch by force and crawled out. "We have to get down on our own." She said helping the other two out. They looked at the long shaft below. Suddenly metallic clanking and footsteps were heard above, the personnel from earlier turning flashing lights their way.

Jel shot a soldier from far down, the bullet grazing their faceplate and puncturing a dent around their eye. The three watched him fall over, probably meeting an end from gravity rather than her bullet.

"GO GO GO." Caleb shouted.

The trio began to climb down and dropped in the elevator shaft, jumping down on an

emergency landing until the footing. They reached the bottom and reached an opening to a room filled with wiring and machinery.

"This is the engine chamber!" Caleb shouted. "We can restore power from here, but we'll need something to jump it. They likely turned it off digitally, so we're back to our old tricks to get it going again." He said, flipping open a control panel and looking at the room's data. "These aren't the most advanced but they're what we're stuck with."

"If we put a crosswire positronic mine to the circuitry, we can get it back on and have fusion power up and running in a few minutes, at best." He said. Gunfire began to reign down from the shaft. "We don't have a few minutes!" Jel shouted. Veronica began to take the perimeter, hiding behind some metal crates. "Buy me some time." Caleb told her. He began to pull out some equipment, pulling out some electronics and a small box from a case and then began to work.

The three took cover.

Jel took her rifle and began to shoot at the personnel above, as they fired at the group.

Her SLAVA-scopecore bullets took them out with ease, trained to fire inbetween the thick armored segments and cause enough to impede a soldier whist their self-repair systems kicked in. The bulletproof plates of her enemy had holes and nicks in them that her bullets had torn through, but the group seemed to be advancing.

"What the hell were- they thinking, leaving us behind anyway?" She turned to Veronica. "You were trained in sniper warfare. All snipers get left behind on the battlefield, Jel."

Veronica said, taking her bolter and shooting a steam vent and causing heat and sparks to fill the room in a hiss, turning thermal displays to static.

"VERO, HOLY FUCK. We need this power to work goddamn it!"

"Purgetor suits use Thermal-vision settings as one of their modes to see, and other forms of dense electromagnetic radiation will make for a bad view on any other setting in a fusion generator engine chamber. Which means.."

One of the infantry, unable to see anything, began to pop off their helmet- Veronica shot him in the forehead immediately.

"Hah! That was my plan. Don't look at my bolter, look at what it can do for you." She smirked.

Caleb began to fiddle with his mini computer-console, flipping some switches.

"I know what I'm doing, I've come up with 18, 23 different plans and 47 different ways to get us down there. How long do you think I've got for this? I'm sure you know how to count, Jel. You only need to count the bullets that come out your rifle. You're no new kid on the block." He said.

"Wow shame you didn't think of that many brags or pickup lines because that one

sucked." She was shooting like the sniper she'd been trained to be. The incoming group, taking stock began to leave their helmets on.

"I'll take that as a compliment." He grinned. He was working frantically, opening a panel, connecting some wires and typing some numbers in.

Veronica's weapon ran out of charge. Caleb typed a set of numbers on the console and pressed the button, a wave of electricity went out, a massive electrical wave blowing down the elevator shaft, shutting the lights on again. "See, I knew we wouldn't have time to get the power on." He looked up as two dozen infantry started to slide down the shaft, some hanging from the slowly descending elevator. "So I rigged the backup power to come on for a minute."

The personnel group looked up, as the elevator slammed down and descended, crushing the entire group in the impact over them.

Caleb ran out to help Veronica and Jel as the elevator slowly opened up, the trio jumped out and began to take cover. The bulge-headed man from earlier stepped out of the elevator, quite cross with his team, him and two of his rank and file female soldiers began shooting ahead, and a shootout began.

 

 

Up on the top floor, Satsuma had nearly escorted Li Guang to the system's mainframe.

Even with the lights cut out, her impeccable vision could see gunmen ahead. She looked around, saw a sandbag nearby and punctured it. Her planted hands clamped in as much sand as she could and gave it a good hearty chomp, before spinning her eyeball rapidly and swinging her arm. The shots went off in sequence before the soldiers ahead were sprayed by sand going off like a shotgun, splattering them into gore.

Li Guang ran to the mainframe and began to type in numbers on her console, before turning around to Satsuma.

"Satsuma, we've bought a bit of time. I can regain the facility's power from here if we can get to the generator chamber's main relay in 10 minutes.

Satsuma got on her radio and messaged Caleb. "We can reactivate the power from here, but you have to rewire and relay it from the main chamber." She told him.

"Rewire, are you kidding me? I just rewired it OUT of the auxiliary." Caleb said, firing between shouts and cover.

"Boy, I am Satsuma. Don't question me, this is do or die here." She told him. "Yeaaaah.. But Satsuma, you know the X-13's power operating system was the first

system ever built with newer Puion-physics programs, and its 100 years old. Jel, Veronica, Can you two give me a minute?" He began to shuffle into his miniature computerbox by the fuse and typing away furiously.

Veronica shot one of the soldiers in the eye, breaking the glass of her faceplated visor.

The two remaining combatants managed to tag Jel as she dashed, bleeding her leg. "Jel!" Vero threw her last portable flarecloud stick at them and grabbed her, dragging to the side behind a huge storage tank. The explosion of light and gas imploding gave enough cover for her to look around the room and grab a metal crowbar. Veronica climbed up a large stack, the two soon leaving the dissipating smog. "Ya gonna beat us with that?" The Shield Operator asked.

"Melt your hearts, I always do." She slammed it over a barrel and pried, kicking it forward as the acidic and radioactive contents went raining on the man his subordinate below. The subordinate immediately fell in agony, the chemical bath stinging away her flesh into a soupy burnt chunk smelling of battery acid. The other man managed to escape, just barely steaming his shoe. As the bulge-headed man raised his gun, at her, Jel jumped on him from behind with metal razorwire, slitting it into his throat and strangling him, pulling into the sharp metal discs that madeup the chain sliced into his jugular and sent blood trickling out. The other two watched on in amazement, Jel gasping for air as she pulled herself off the man's neck. "Huh? What?" Jel said wiping sweat from her forehead.

He got back up, his face like a half-melted oozing wax sculpture. As he reached for his metal baton, a series of pencils and pens flew, penetrating from the ceiling- piercing his skull and filling him to the brim until he fell over. Satsuma radio’d to the 3.

“You’re welcome. I suggest you not play around any longer.”

Cal ignored her and looked down at the finished computations, his last keypress restoring power to the facility temporarily. "It worked! I redirected the-" The lights turned back on. Suddenly everything for him, Satsuma, Li, Ursula and her two lackies alongside newly entering security teams inverted, their bodies flying to the ceiling as high as possible. "Analog- controlled power supply from the gravity generators." A male and female soldier who'd descended on the stairs saw the trio, before they could fire at Caleb, the inverted gravity sent them flying to their depths atop the stairway until their acceleration hit peak atop the ceiling.

Splat.

"Cal, you idiot!" Veronica yelled.

Back atop, Li Guang saw the lights restore in the System Mainframe, Satsuma's long overextended vine arms and leafy tendrils wrapping around her and keeping her anchored. She floated up and began working with the circuit boards and control circuits, plugging her comm in and getting to work. Within a few moments, she was back in the system and all encryption to the building's AI computers were scrambled. Satsuma radio'd Ursula. "Your mainframe is online."

Ursula cracked her knuckles, a gigantic simulator room present. "The whole system is now working off analog-signal power from an outdated system. Racquel will have as easy time figuring that out as reading your old granny's Parkinson’s handwriting. We've got ourselves 25 or 30 minutes of power." She pressed her hands to the simulation module's sides. The simulator began to flicker and change rapidly. "Now, the real game begins.."

She was interrupted by a series of screens zapping up around them.

In a holographic display in a dark-lit room, Satsuma and Li Guang saw four faces on the screens.

The matured and serene Machine Mother.

The energetic and sunny deposition of Racquel. The determined look of Ameisa Byte.

And the imposing warrior-glance of Rondo Mayhem. “Feeling a little too liberated today, do we?” Ameisa told her.

Ursula ignored the holographic screens flashing behind her, the four squares may as well have been the backlit for a windowsill for her in the moment.

Li Guang looked at her, the AI computers working to disable the facility's lockdown protocols, preventing any further security teams from making progress as gates, hallways and doors shut down stranding soldiers. Ursula took the 4-squared screen and began to manipulate the data behind it, the four computer-system avatars moving about on it, as if to manipulate her own vantage and hide whatever she was doing from the view of the other side.

"You're back online, yes Ursula. For now. I am Machine Mother, I wasn't present in Xi the last time you were free. I was expecting you to get away, but to waste so much time. Did you.. have a hand in this riot then?" The gooey singularity of a lady told her.

"I did what needed to be done. What other options were there?" Ursula didn’t pay them any mind.

Ameisa scoffed, folding her arms. "Stay in your cell until the sun explodes, leave civilization to us." She said. "You'll never be satisfied unless you're in charge, will you?" Byte read on her side whatever schematics Raquel could provide, although the information was distorting heavily around Ursula's presence.

"Troublemaker? Why? Because I want to bring about order? Or because I want to keep harmony?"

The simulated reality from the hologenerator behind them began to twist and morph, Ursula walking through halls and rooms, to where inside the stimulator she entered a room with technologically advanced Electron-density Micrography Emulation-Elements, effectively a 4D printer.

"They're already trying to retake the security and encryption systems." Li Guang told Satsuma, who was flicking her vulture's feathers at llavalite guardsmen rushing from 50m across the hall, shredding them like a house of cards with weightless paperplanes. "Analog is definitely slowing them down, but given enough time..."

"They've already given us ample time. Ursula wanted it this way." Satsuma said. "Once she gets what she needs online, we'll have already won." Li Guang took note.

Within the Counterpane Control ship out in space, the five elderdragons deliberated.

Rondo Mayhem, the sculpted-body of the former human warrior, began to move a finger, as if to scratch his goatee. His imposing size stood in contrast to the lanky tall Machine mother in all her slick and permeable glory. Flicking like a projected image, Raquel went over the data. "It doesn't make sense, the power is flowing and the facility is back in working order.. They're using oldschool generation. So where are the two billion watts we were missing?"

With her own face-on-screen, Machine Mother folded her arms. "They're in the room with the machine." She said. "There's only one room in the entire facility with that kind of power supply. It's being used right now, but that room is technically not a Warp station. It's only a sort of photonic artificer. A room for running simulations." She tried to examine the data on her end to see if there was anything she missed.

"Maybe they're trying to have one last vacation before we close in." Rondo scratched his head. "That or attempting to rig it to set a trap, but it's useless outside of its own interior parameters."

"The entire facility has a killswitch to that room, that's the purpose of it." Ameisa said. "Ursula doesn't have the authority to turn it off. We can of course- but why is she prioritizing a simulation room? This doesn't make any sense."

Back within the prison, Li Guang gasped as she looked on the other side of the room, Ursula's hands worked like clockwork over the stimulator system, changing its internals. Her hands danced, weaving both floating decimals and rewriting an onslaught of mechanics and fiber optics along the machine itself. She seemed as if in trance, her hands working with perfect efficiency. Rewiring. Welding and wrenching. Reprogramming. Doing a dozen tasks of highly technical skill in rapid succession with no loss of focus inbetween, each step meticulously woven into the next. In reality, her technopathic connection with the systems were rewriting everything at rapid speed, refashioning its structure like a sculpture does fine marble.

"Ursula is smart, but she took us for granted. We only know she's in that room, but we don't know where she's going or how she's going to use this simulation." Rondo pointed out. The image on the other side of the connection flickered, machine mother and Raquel taking note, seeing it all like a blurred-stream. They couldn't fully make out what Ursula was doing in the simulator, seeing what was happening in the machine behind her instead. The data was moving too fast for any of them to see, and when Raquel tried to focus and intuit the systems, she found herself looking through a digital fog, unable to perceive much. Much of her processing was being spent working through retaking the analog power system Ursula and Caleb had jumpstarted.

The main perimeter projector for the simulator had been turned into what looked like some kind of crane or nozzle device.

"That isn't all!" Racquel spoke up, seeing the entire facility's security footage in real time. "She managed to disable a lot of the lockdown protocols in the building and some of them got past our soldiers. I'm getting an encrypted and distorted network message coming from the other side, it's encrypted with her style on it. She's doing something about that room right now,

but what? What is she even doing in there?"

When Ursula put the last sparks on the reconfigured machine, she levitated at least 20 different metal devices around her in orbit to work rapidly for a few moments at highspeed. To Li, it looked as if someone had called in a set of repairs, recorded it and then replayed the footage at highspeed. Suddenly all her devices fell to the ground with a CLANK. "It's done. Call the others back up." Ursula told Li Guang. Li radioed Satsuma and Caleb's crew, telling them that the job was complete. Satsuma, Caleb and Li made their way back up, Satsuma's vulture cawing loudly, its tail trailing behind her in a cloud of iridescent feathers.

On the other end, as Li Guang made her way back up to Ursula, she put away the equipment and looked at it, with no sign of repair or maintenance. Ursula seemed to look at her, her face changing slowly and in a distorted manner, with 20 different projections of Racquel appearing around them, one directly overtop Ursula as if her own face had been replaced by Racquel's own.

"What are we doing? They'll be sending backup in no time at all." Li Guang asked her, with Racquel looking at her on each projection. Ursula smiled, she had a little bit of time to kill before the others arrived. For the first time since escaping her cell, she sat on a chair and put two hands out, palms forward in midair. Electromagnetic spectrum radiating around the room began to make the machine dance to life, keys rapidly typing in code at thousands of strokes a second, writing on the nearby screen new instructions, as if a programmer at a rapid pace was working with an ungodly speed on the system itself. The crane-like jet began shooting a laser through the walls, a cascade of light which converted the projector into the observation tower just a floor above them. Down to the last picometer, an entire weapons system began to materialize, overlaying the cylinder radiograph scope just as Raquel had her imagery over Ursula- the difference being, this flood of light began to find radiance from its quantum onset and solidify in real time.

With her hands in an overwatched position, Ursula looked around. "Li Guang, head to the observatory deck. Operate and give our friends here a little light show." She told her assistant. Nodding, Li Guang ran up the stairs, entering the observation room only to find everything restructured- and the window of the room covered by a glass mirror. Her finger began to flick, moving in a wave pattern, the light beginning to come and bounce against the window, making digital spiderwebs and light-rings in front of her as she controlled the WAVE HUD from the panels and infographics organizing in mid-air around her fingertips. Caleb was the first to see her, entering the elevator and immediately being blinded by the light. The beam- weapon was ready to fire, but it would take a little while to ready the computer’s targeting systems and coordinate a proper target.

Back in the Counterpane, the 4 discussed their next move. Raquel interrupted their wild theorizing as her analysis yeilded a disturbing breakthrough. "Wait- Something's reading on my scans. This energy, the thermal data and energy output suggests- a next-gen Adaptive Optics Positronic Turret? That's impossible." Ameisa corrected. "The facility doesn't have an AOPT." She looked at the data Raquel showed her.

"Something has been modified." Raquel told Ameisa. "This used to be the Observation

deck. There was a radiograph tower there before. It's a prototype model I've never seen before. Some kind of experimental ship-killing turret, like the ones used in Jalan-PX within the past 6 months around Luminary borders. But Ursula wouldn't know about that kind of technology, and to have one built on the facility would take-"

Machine Mother looked at her. "Ronda, that turret is reading from the facility, and the facility's power-grid is being used to project the beam itself, all the data feeds back to the simulator room. Whatever is there isn't just a hologram or a makeshift turret- or what she did to it to make it behave like one." She gave her teammates a worried expression, a hint of maternal care with her elocution and manner of tone. "We must assume, however absurd it is to have materialized into existence, that the turret online right now is fully functional. "I don't like the sound of that." Rondo nodded to them, his face distorted by a flicker of the screen. "That means, we're going to have a problem getting any heavier payloads in, shipwise."

"It's firing!" Raquel shouted. The elderdragons in the counterpane froze, their eyes widening.

Back in the facility, the turret began to move as Li Guang operated it, the beam-weapon scanning the skies and sweeping the air before it, a constant pulse of violet energy. It didn't do a whole lot, just a few blips of energy as some projectiles and a few small ships were struck from the stars and destroyed in a sweep, like a massive bug zapper catching flies in its midst. The damage to the High-Fleet divisions were minimal, practically a loss of a few reconnaissance and scouting ships. Still the shot's intent was clear- a warning, showing the weapon was more than operable.

As soon as Ursula got the beam online, her hands fell to her side and slumped. She looked down at the floor and began to speak softly, almost unbelievably calm. "They've made a grave mistake." She looked up at Satsuma, Li Guang and Caleb's crew who had just made their way back. "They didn't want me to get out, did they?" She told them.

At this point, Li Guang and Satsuma made eye contact, Li Guang's hand still on the control-panels of the turret's projected module screens, Satsuma with her bestiary feathers draped around her shoulder. They made eye contact for a long solemn moment. Ursula turned to the two in the back of the room with folded arms. "Black Rock. Shooting Star." She told them, a single tear trickling down from her eye.

Serena took a deep breath. "I never wanted to kill anyone. Don’t make us do this."

Ursula's face broke. Tears began to stream down her face, her face beginning to break from an emotion she had never felt before, the humiliation she experienced rushing all back at once. She wiped her eyes. "Shutup. No more tears for Xi scum." She spoke with a robotic monotone, her hands flailing. "That's the last time anyone shall ever cry over the destitute Xi'ans." She could hardly keep her ego from exploding.

Li Guang got alerts popping up around her. Her hands rapidly swiveled and began operations again. "Highfleet Reaperships closing in. They're surrounding us, approximately 445,000 ships incoming. With even more in row some lightyears behind them." The turret

began to blast out a massive beam, with some ships destroyed in the wake of the blast. It fired again, organic starships coated with metallic sails and thrusting through space like battering rams through interstellar space. After about a third shot, the beam took a few hundred more ships out and began to overheat, slowing and steaming.

"The recoil is abit much.." She said. On the outside, thousands of starships and spacefarers took note. "Breathing fire!" The commander of one proclaimed. The surrounding ships began firing at the AOPT, Li Guang fleeing and heading back out of the turret’s perimeter, watching as it went up in flames and was until slagged and blasted into smoldering debris.

They were too numerous. Li Guang's face on the Counterpane ship’s monitors changed, now a projection of Racquel's. Racquel overlayed the holographic imagery and datascreens around her and looked to Ursula on the screen. "You're just wasting time. We'll be there soon. It's a matter of when, not if."

"You and the others don't deserve the world. Neither does the Xistress." Ursula turned away and started to walk back towards the strange crane-like machine. Satsuma. Black Rock. Shooting Star. Girls.. It's time." The three followed her and positioned themselves below the device. As it began roaring to life and shooting them with the strange light, Caleb's eyes widened at the light shining down from above. "What.. is it?"

Ursula smirked. "Back in Harvest.. we call it 'Datalyte.' Think of it as a 4D printer." Her hands began to type in the data, the machine beginning to operate at a high RPM. Her hands went to work on the device, reprogramming it with all the fervor of an engineer's ingenuity. "With the right power backed up, it can build.. things. People. Machines. Entire planets. An entire city."

Li Guang smiled. "The power of the simulator is enough to power a space drive."

Ameisa slammed her fist. “Give up! We have the entire prison surrounded, you cannot seriously think we won’t fight you to the death?”

Ursula watched Satsuma, Serena and Zari step under the laser as it started spinning around them, infusing not only their bodies with new augmentations but the signature Starbreaker gear Ursula had innovated in the last two decades.

“Be careful what you wish for.” The Premier told Ameisa, waving her hand to flicker the holographic projections away.

The three Starbreakers began to bathe in the light, which shined into hard metallic armor. The luminescence materialized into stylish suits on three, 1-woman armories built with armaments. Wires and hoses started to plug into the trio's bodies as it augmented them with integrated suits.

Serena watched as her plastic viser became enhanced, three sharp obsidian points highlighting over her forehead and brow as a headplate and a sharp, cherry-red pyramid overtook her eyes. Her coconut brown hair, wavy and blotched flowed out her back over an industrialized body of plates over black latex, digitalized red lines flowing across her limbs and

down the wide of her hips. With the same cybergauging tech in her visor, her arms and fingers flexed, a wide-angle view of her body and a sleek black bodysuit as dark as obsidian with neon blood-red lines running across her it. Her arms were encased in a series of mechanical and cybernetic upgrades, a series of gears and cogs and metallic upgrades over her arms. Her eyes turned black and red, with a hint of blood-colored sclera. She looked around as she began to see more clearly, more detailedly, more intricately. "I’m doing what I must. Don’t consider this a party gift." She said as she looked to the others. She said, her slow breathing labored and real.

Zari Azevero, covered in the same light could see around her was silvery-white metal with a Petaly sheen over her, the chestplates, gloves and boots she wore looked like masterfully shaped aluminum The most impressive was her helmet, a white-on-purple design with no clear features, a droney helmet encasing her as a faceshield, just clean contours and pure metallic- white. Her dark dreads flowed out the back, the glistening armor encompassing her body. She pulled the helmet off to get a look at herself, her thick cornrow beginning to flow and wave with the force of the light, neon white-purple spreading into her eyes to remove visibility of her pupils and light up her hair. This feels amazing! I’m so weightless.. The prototype system didn't feel half as alive.. She thought. A purple belt and gauntlets adorned her wrists and forearms, with silver and indigo lines over the armor to highlight its detail and strength, her palms covered in smooth titanium plates. "AAAAAAAH yeah baby! Ka’pow psssssshchoo! That's one way to say I'm back." She said, jumping up and down rapidly and pumping her fists into the air rapid- speed. "Gives a whole new meaning to going Metal." She swung her hips fully around in 360 degrees, before flying all around the room like a flying jackrabbit, and hugging Serena tightly, cuddling and nuzzling her cheeks into her neck.

The third woman, Satsuma watched. Her hair was dyed from dark-green to pure white and flowed off her shoulder, her eyes and hair a stark and powerful contrast to her new purple- and-white armour, the hair and eyes a rich silver that sparked. Along her arms and shoulders was a massive armament of titanium and plastic, along the sleeves were girders and a series of hardened and layered armor, her arms wrapped in a series of thick gauntlets, with metal bands going around her forearm to give it a layered look and a series of neon wires lacing around her shoulder. Finally an overcoat formed over her regalia, with an extremely luxurious, silky fur boa around her neck. She looked to herself, the light reflecting off her eyes in a sharp and cold manner. "I thought you were supposed to be all good tastes in fashion? Red, white and Purple?" She gave them an icy stare. "Fix the color scheme at least."

Rolling her eyes, Ursula waved her finger. The datalyte began dying deep white streaks across Satsuma's hair, giving her silvery highlights and running the same shade along her suit. The metallic suit, especially around Satsuma's arms made sounds as they augmented their limbs and bodies in a way that had an industrial sound to them, reminiscent of the sounds you would hear while operating a machinery. The device materialized a gigantic ring around Satsuma's back that was attached to the bottom of her spine and hips, outsizing even her shoulderpads. To Caleb, it looked as if her pitcher-plant arms had become enshrouded in glistening metal and silvery latex with spheres, the gloves like robotic arms that resembled her original ones but made of reinforced titanium.

Zari smiled. "At least we won't have to worry about being too goth." She said. She

cracked her knuckles, a white light flashing from the spikes on her black metallic armor, her hair free flowing in the air like a drifting glowing cloud. The two girls, Serena and Zari looked at themselves. "Burning bright!" Zari said.

“Right. Burn bright or whatever.” Serena replied.

Zari shot out a spear of energy at the stars from the deck. As the beam began to reach its maximum output, the light intensified and pierced through another recon ship, turning it to atomic ash. Ursula's hands stopped, the energy around the machine becoming dense and hard, the hard-light coming to a halt. As the light slowly dimmed and subsided, Ursula stood, breathing hard. She looked at her three friends, now armored with newfound abilities "It's done."

"With data and science, anything is possible. Even the manipulation of fundamental physics." Ursula's finger twinkled as it hovered over the machine, the keyboard before her writing a code at lightspeed, overwriting the program with new code. "You three.." She smiled.

"Give me the stars."

 She looked out into the dark endless depths above.

"And break them."