Overflight

Maria

Razor's Banshee dipped with a stomach-wrenching lurch as he flew in a barely-powered dive down a crater rim. Petrarch Crater: the nearest major crater to Fantasma Colony. It was a plain of flat lava about eighty kilometers in diameter. The opposite rim was just barely visible against the horizon. The rim he had just flown over was a wall of blackness behind him, towering over him, blocking out the sunlight.

Inside the crater, he could see several small Cybrid facilities. Factories, perhaps, taking materials directly from the crater floor. A nexus or two: tall, spiky pyramids with networks of metal tracing patterns on the ground around them. Altas's Bolo below him was climbing down the steep slope. Altas activated his narrow-band AM comm system, a single frequency using an ancient amplitude modulation technique, barely audible through the solar static. The more common polarization modulation was too risky to use here, too likely to leak out of the area and be intercepted by the Cybrids.

"Gyl's detecting about five nexi in the crater. The last I knew there were seven, and we obviously haven't destroyed any."

"Perhaps we should," Razor retorted, wondering if the load of Minion missiles he carried would be up to it. Probably, but he had to save his payload for emergencies, like Altas's reverse-Trojan Horse scheme failing.

"This is insane, you know," Altas informed him.

"Del's idea," Razor said, and dropped the Banshee into a small rift in the crater floor.

"Exactly," the Cybrid retorted. Razor smiled faintly at that.

"Coming up on the first Nexus. We will have to pass by to reach the valley. This will be our test of whether this will work or not. Be ready to cover my retreat if I signal. Out."

The Bolo moved forward, toward the Nexus. A trio of Shepards came out of a garage nearby and approached Altas. Razor tensed, and readied himself to lift the Banshee straight out of the rift and blast the glitches in the same motion. A chatter of machine code, courtesy of Altas's secondary comm system, reached him. There was a short pause, then another burst, and then silence.

"They bought it," Altas said. "I informed them that I was damaged in a conflict with a human force while on patrol several months ago and require repair. They informed me that any non-critical repairs will be done at Nexus-Zero-Zero-M from now on. Their speech patterns reflect a change in Cybrid psychology since the last time I had contact."

"How so?"

"They are much more centralized now. Their concept hierarchy has been modified to include a command/priority concept independent of the old system..."

"I see."

"In the routine information dump they gave me, I have also discovered there are several more supernexi-type cities..."

"We'll worry about that later. Right now we have to get to Mofolo."

"Ascend to three hundred and take heading one nine five until you reach the rim, then fly over it, take heading one seven five and ascend to four hundred. Set speed to one hundred kilometers per hour."

"Got it." Razor added more thrust to the Banshee's two main engines, and the flier ascended.

"I'll meet up with you in ten minutes," Altas said, then closed the channel.

-----

It took an hour for the flier and the tank below to reach the perimeter of the supernexus sensor sphere, ten kilometers from the rim of Mofolo Crater. Altas set the Bolo on a course that would circle the sixty-kilometer-wide crater, as Razor brought the Banshee up to fifteen kilometers and remained hovering directly over the center of the city.

His first thought was that it was big. It covered more territory than the many-times-rebuilt Los Angeles Metroplex, and was as densely filled with structures as any industrial park he had ever seen. It was organized in a circle, with a cluster of massive nexi sitting on the central peak of the crater, looking down on the rest of the city. A radial pattern of transfer structures (roads? power lines? coolant conduits? he didn't know) lent the city the appearance of a vast, metal spider web.

He activated the telescopes in the Banshee's nose and panned the camera in a spiral around the city. At the level of magnification he was using, he could make out Cybrid vehicles among the outer structures. There were hundreds of them: Executioners, Adjudicators, and scurrying Seekers weaving a complicated patrol pattern through the buildings.

He frowned. Something was wrong. Why would the Cybrids need patrols in their own city?

His answer came as a flash of light near the southeastern edge of the city. Focusing on it, he was shocked to see a group of Executioners with gold markings squaring off against a large structure and blasting it to bits. The result of the earlier explosion was visible as a ragged hole in a power plant, the area nearby littered with debris.

A moment later, several Adjudicators in the area swerved in their patrols and intercepted the rampaging Executioners. After a fierce firefight, the Executioners were destroyed, Lying in toppled heaps of debris against one of the transfer structures. Three Adjudicators were also destroyed and one was badly damaged. A minute later, some crawling construction drones were in the area cleaning out the debris.

Had the civil war restarted? After news of Prometheus's destruction, the Metagen Cybrids had risen up and kept the Promethean Cybrids busy for quite awhile, and Fantasma had had a respite from attacks for months. They were finally put down, apparently, and the attacks and patrols had resumed.

Now, apparently some other Cybrid sect was not very thrilled with the primary circuit in the area and things were getting interesting.

His long-range comm system lit up. "Ko'ah to Ghosts. Get back here at once."

Cursing, Razorback brought the Banshee around to the northeast and fired the main engines.

-----

The Ghosts were all sitting around the briefing room table as Ko'ah activated the comm screen. It lit up, but no visual image appeared. Instead, white text lit up the black background:

{WE}SECT-cell rebel(Mofolo Nexus >> 5) WISH-desire || COMMUNICATIONS-negotiations >> treaty with {YOU}HUMANS >> resident FIRSTWORLD-Mercury >> 30S20W-Antipode region ||re: MUTUAL(you, us) ASSISTANCE-aid >> {THREAT}enemy(you, us(COMMON-mutual))(NEXT-Cybrids(PRIMESECT-leadership-Promethean)). CONTACT-hail {US}SECT-cell rebel(Mofolo Nexus >> 5) 25 HOURS-arbitrary human time units || PARAMETERS >> FREQUENCY: 155744515320 Hz-cycles/second >> MODULATION: AMPLITUDE >> ENCRYPTION: ALPHANUMERIC(ENGLISH, KEYPHRASE = "ALLIANCE").

Xenogears stared. Altas touched the screen, tracing the words with a finger, then shook his head. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Del demanded.

"If this is to be believed, there are some Cybrids who want an alliance with us," Altas said softly.

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