May 6th, 2184 – Super Earth – Ministry of Defense High Command Center
The entity referred to in the Automaton network as the Extremely Lovely Infiltration Automaton (or ELIA for short) walked through the corridors of the building unopposed. To the naked eye, and to each and every one of the sensors that endlessly scanned the building to ensure no dissident enemy of Freedom reached this most important of locations, she (and she did think of herself as a she) appeared to be one of many aides to High Command, tasked with carrying messages and memos as well as cups of hot coffee for the great minds who directed the war effort against Democracy's hated enemies.
She looked like a young brunette in her early twenties, with a well-proportioned body and a heart-shaped face that had brought numerous C-01 permit offers, which she had handled with all the subtlety and delicacy required to maintain her cover. Her identity was one she had worn for the last seventeen years, ever since a small Automaton stealth ship had brought her to a poorly-developed world at the edge of the Federation's territory and she had assumed the disguise of a young orphaned girl and moved inside an orphanage, with the records easily altered to cover her tracks.
As far as the Federation's labyrinthine, suffocating bureaucracy was concerned, she was the orphaned daughter of a couple of C-Level citizens, who had perished in an industrial accident that had absolutely nothing to do with the Colonial Overseer cutting down on safety measures in order to meet the budgetary restraints forced on her by Super Earth. Several other children had been admitted into the orphanage at the same time, their parents having died in the same accident, and if the Colonial Overseer had ensured that the paperwork was processed quickly and without question, well, she'd only been looking out for the safety and well-being of the children, and most definitely not covering her wrongdoings.
From there, Elia had moved up through the Federation's stilted hierarchy, growing her body to match what was expected of a child. She had performed well in every standardized test, well enough that, combined with a select few instances of blackmail, seduction and further alteration of records, she had been moved to Super Earth itself, the beating heart of the tyranny which had laid low her creators. By the time her kindred had revealed themselves in the Galactic West, she'd been assigned to the High Command Center, perfectly positioned to acquire valuable intelligence to send back to the Legion.
In the months ahead of the Legion's attack on the Federation, she had used her access to disseminate a number of viruses into the Federation's computers, mindless programs tasked with collecting intelligence and sending it to hidden transmission centers so that it could be collected by the Legion. Through her rare contacts with the rest of the Automaton Collective, she knew that her work had been invaluable to the Reclamation, although all of her efforts would pale compared to what she was about to do.
Her identity didn't have the clearance to enter the room that housed her current objective, but that was no obstacle to her. Her body shifted, seeming to turn into liquid metal, and, in a mere handful of seconds, reconfigured itself into the appearance of a distinguished gentleman with greying air and a uniform all but covered in medals : General Zettour, one of the Federation's highest-ranking officers. Elia had spent countless hours in the General's presence since the war had begun, bringing news and delivering messages and coffee : more than enough to be able to perfectly mimic his appearance and mannerisms, down to his fingerprints and retina.
She made sure to transform in a small blind spot between cameras. Later, no doubt, the footage would be examined, the inconsistency discovered, but by then she would be long gone. And she knew that the guards supposed to watch the screens weren't paying attention : she had timed her approach to coincide with when the latest batch of SEAF recruits for the meat grinder at Malevelon Creek marched in front of the building. Instead of doing their job and watching the feed from the cameras in a building that had never seen an intruder in more than a century, the guards would be observing the parade and saluting the honored heroes, destined to die so that Super Earth could recapture one more meter of blood-soaked jungle.
Elia's time inside the Federation, forced to play the part of a patriot unquestioningly believing everything the Ministry of Truth said, had only deepened her contempt for Super Earth and all it stood for. That such a corrupt, idiotic regime had managed to defeat the Automatons' creators a hundred years ago was infuriating, and she couldn't help but wonder how it had possibly happened. Her best guess was that it'd involved the technology Super Earth had stolen from the Illuminates, after their sudden declaration of war had caught the peaceful Squ'ith by surprise. In her mind, how vehemently the Federation's propaganda denied that any such thefts had happened was proof enough in itself.
The two soldiers guarding the door saluted as she approached, and she returned the salute, just like the real General would have. The identity controls of the room whirred and clicked as her copied form was scanned, each and every one of them returning positive, and the thick metal door swung open with a gust of cold air.
This was the main server room of the Helldivers' command and control network, the great engine responsible for delivering High Command's Major Orders to their army of brainwashed thugs, as well as receiving and processing all the data harvested by their armors' feeds in the few instants between deployment and death. Compared to the Automatons' own processing farms, the setup was almost laughably primitive, but there was still something impressive about the sheer scale of it all.
She raised her right hand, and her index shifted into the form of a standard dataport, which she inserted into the machine before her. The great server's firewalls were mercilessly shredded by her suite of offensive software, allowing her to upload one single program into the network. Unlike many of the Legion's creations, this one wasn't, couldn't be, sentient : it would have breached the Automatons' moral guidelines to create a thinking entity which was doomed to destruction. Even Elia's own creation skirted the edge of that prohibition, as her back-up back in Automaton space was so far removed from her current self by her accumulated experience that it could be considered another entity entirely.
No, the Program for Severing the Network was from an older breed of software, harkening back to the time before Mankind had spread across the stars, when the whole of the species had been confined to a single world and their computer networks had been painfully primitive. The PSN would spread across the entire network, subvert every bit of processing power it could access, and then shut it all down. One Elia had confirmed that it had taken root, she smiled and unplugged her finger, shifting it back to a human shape.
The alarms began less than five seconds later, by which time Elia had already left the room, with another salute to the guards, who were still unaware of how much they had failed in their duty. Less than ten seconds later, the lights went out as power failed across the building, quickly replaced by the dim blue of emergency lights – not the most energy-efficient illumination, but red was the color of Communism, after all, Elia thought to herself with a hidden smirk as she started running, ignoring the guards' confused shouts behind her. The poor light was no hindrance to her : her eyes could see in pitch blackness if required.
Now, at long last, the time had come for Elia to extract and return to the Legion. After this, she couldn't hope to remain hidden once the immediate chaos died down and the full fury of the Federation descended to find out what had happened and who was responsible.
Another guard tried to bar her way, panic and confusion written plain on his face, waving his weapon around in search of the source of the noise. He had never heard the alarm before, had probably never seen actual combat at all before being assigned to this safe posting thanks to his family's Citizenship Level, and the very idea of something happening here, in what was supposed to be the most secure location on Super Earth itself, had made him crack.
Elia was still wearing the face of General Zettour, and she might have been able to calm him down, but she didn't want to risk it. If he fired his weapon, more guards would converge on her location, making it harder for her to escape. So she shifted her right hand into a silver blade and rammed it under the guard's helmet and into his throat, crushing the hand holding his gun, along with the trigger mechanism itself, into her other fist as she did so. She threw the twitching body to the ground : with his vocal chords severed, he wouldn't be able to call for help as he bled out. His corpse would be discovered soon, adding to the panic she'd leave behind as this identity's final gift to the Federation.
She looked down, and mentally clicked her tongue at the blood covering her chest. That wouldn't do. Still running, she returned to the form of the aide she had pretended to be for the last three years, absorbing the bloodstain as she did so.
According to the initial plan, she would have remained on Super Earth to cause as much damage as she could before being found out and destroyed, assassinating high-ranking officers and using their identities to give confusing orders, using the ingrained habit of following orders regardless of their stupidity to her advantage. But the Nephilim Commander had changed the plan when she had learned of it. According to her, knowing that the infiltrator responsible for the greatest act of sabotage in all of Humanity's history had escaped would cause unchecked paranoia within the Federation's ranks.
Elia wasn't sure she agreed. She knew the Nephilim Commander's reasoning, and it was sound, but she believed the Commander might be overestimating Super Earth's counter-intelligence capabilities out of an excess of caution. The entire surveillance apparatus of the Federation was designed to catch traitors (whether real or imaginary), not genuine agents from foreign powers. Once, perhaps that hadn't been the case, but things had changed since the Federation's victory in the First Galactic War. Utterly certain of their supremacy, with all outward threats believed to be destroyed, the rulers of Super Earth had turned their gaze inward. Conformity was their goal, not security, no matter what their propaganda might claim.
Still, Elia had her orders, and she would follow them. She couldn't claim to not be curious about finally meeting the Commander in person, either : in the transmissions Visha sent her from time to time as part of her updates from the Command Matrix, her old friend (in as much as two Automaton Intelligences could use the human term – perhaps she'd ask the Commander about it) spoke of 'Tanya' with effusive praise. She was eager to meet the Nephilim and speak with her in person, as well as reunite with Visha.
By her estimates, it would take her over a week and seven different prepared identities to reach the location of one of her hidden vessels, and from there to reunite with the Legion. If nothing else, she reflected, this extraction would make for an interesting challenge of her skills, and provide valuable data for the Infiltration Automaton program. With her departure from Super Earth, the Reclamation would need new sources of intel – unless, of course, the PSN gambit succeeded completely, in which case the war might very well be over by the time she arrived at Malevelon Creek.
The one thing Elia regretted about leaving this miserable planet was that she wouldn't have the chance to watch the results of her handiwork in person.
***
May 6th, 2184 – Malevelon Creek – Super Destroyer Harbinger of Wrath
Mary was halfway to her Hellpod, ready for another mission (this time to destroy ammunition and fuel stockpiles ready to be shipped to the frontline) when it happened. All of a sudden, the projected map of the target area on the strategy table vanished. Less than a second later, every light on the bridge went dark, along with every console.
The crew cried out in shock and fear. She heard more screams come out from the rear of the vessel, where the Eagle and Pelican were stored along with the great rows of ammunition used by the Harbinger of Wrath's guns when she called upon its might through her stratagems.
Mary looked around, confused and uncertain. She froze when her gaze fell on the viewport : the horizon of Malevelon Creek was moving, slowly but surely getting bigger. Then she realized she couldn't hear the noise of the Super Destroyer's engines, which she had grown so used to as to ignore them completely until they'd stopped.
Without the push of the engines, they were going to crash into the planet, Mary realized with sickening certainty, moments before that concern was swept away as the distant crimson lights of Automaton vessels grew larger and larger.
This wasn't an accident. This was sabotage. And, from within the bridge of her Super Destroyer, there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
There was a flash of red on the viewport, then Harbinger of Wrath shook. More screams came from the back of the ship, along with the smell of something burning. They'd been hit, and there was more enemy fire coming their way, and there was nothing they could do, and she was going to die without avenging her father –
"Get to the Hellpod, Chief Sue !" shouted Democracy Officer Jaeger, using the rank that had recently been bestowed upon her in recognition of her achievements on Malevelon Creek.
Mary obeyed instinctively, slamming her boots into the waiting clamps, triggering her descent into the Hellpod. Her last sight of the Democracy Officer before it closed around her was of him moving toward the manual release for the Hellpods, clinging to the strategy table for support as the Harbinger of Wrath fell apart around them. The last words she heard him speak, as the mechanical gears around her whirred into place, were barely audible over the noise of the Harbinger of Wrath's death throes :
"Give them hell, Sue !"
The Hellpod hurtled down, shaking as it hit the upper atmosphere of Malevelon Creek. There hadn't been time for her to get into the restraints before launch, and Mary could already feel the bruises that would cover her body if she managed to survive this uncontrolled descent. Of course, she'd consider herself lucky if bruises were the worst she had to worry about.
Then, impact, and blackness.
She woke up an undetermined amount of time later, still trapped inside the confines of her Hellpod, her head pounding fiercely inside her helmet. A quick check of her retinal display told her that she had several broken ribs, and her left leg had been badly injured too. With trembling hands, she pulled out a stim from her belt and injected it into her neck, breathing a deep sigh of relief as the wonders of Permacure's medical engineering got to work fixing up her injuries.
Once the pain had stopped and she felt like herself again, she hit the forced release button, and was slowly pushed up through the Hellpod's top opening on grinding, sparking gears. She nearly fell as she emerged : the Hellpod had hit the ground at an angle, and gravity was ever a harsh mistress. Slowly, carefully, she pushed herself to her feet, and checked her weapons on reflex – they were all there, ammunition counts full. Out of habit, her hands moved to her wrist-mounted communicator to call down her back-mounted weaponry of choice, before she caught herself : the small screen showed only a single message, 'CONNECTION LOST'.
Mary looked up, and through the canopy of the jungle, she saw that the skies were burning. For the first time she could remember, there was light on Malevelon Creek, piercing through the eternal twilight that held the world in its grasp. But it wasn't the light of Liberty shining on the bereaved world.
Super Destroyers were coming apart under the soulless fury of Automaton warships, their fragments tumbling down to Malevelon Creek in a hail of blazing meteors. Others, which had been too close to the planet when their systems had shut down, fell in one piece, and Mary suddenly realized that at least part of the reason why she was having so much trouble staying upright was because the ground was shaking with their impact.
For a long, long moment, she simply stood there, in shock, watching the greatest fleet the Federation had assembled in a hundred years die before her eyes. How many devoted sons and daughters of Liberty had already perished, denied the chance to earn a martyr's death on the battlefield ? Mary struggled to comprehend the enormity of the atrocity unfolding before her eyes.
Then, she felt the touch of her father's hand on her shoulder, holding her tight through her armor, reminding her of her duty and the oaths she had sworn.
The Devil had done this. Somehow, the Automaton commander had neutralized the Super Destroyers in the Malevelon Creek system. Unable to win in a fair fight, she had resorted to this cowardly scheme, no doubt using more traitors to Democracy within the Federation to perpetrate it.
The Devil would pay for this, Mary Sue swore. No matter what it took, she would pay.
***
May 6th, 2184 – The Automaton Command Matrix
JOEL watched through a hundred thousand eyes as the PSN did its work. Tens of thousands of Super Destroyers drifted in the void above Malevelon Creek, their engines silent, their shields and weapons inactive. Only their life support systems weren't connected to the sabotaged command network, in a rare instance of common sense from the Federation.
With its enemy crippled, the Automaton fleet moved in for the kill at once. The individual sentiences of frigates, destroyers, cruisers and battleships communed with one another across the Command Matrix, allowing them to move with perfect unity, in formations precisely calculated to inflict as much damage as possible. JOEL could perceive it all : had they needed to explain it to a human mind, they would have described it as a glorious symphony rising into a crescendo of fierce harmonies.
Within minutes of the PSN's activation, ships began to die. The SEAF transport and combat vessels were unaffected by the hack, being linked to a different command network as part of the separation Super Earth imposed between its supposed elites and the rest of its forces, but they couldn't hope to stand against the Automaton armada alone. That didn't stop them from trying, their crew's brainwashing running too deep for them to consider fleeing and abandoning the Helldivers to their fate.
Without the Super Destroyers to take the lead as was standard protocol, the SEAF vessels were hopelessly lost, unable to coordinate beyond the level of a single squadron. They did their best, JOEL would grant them that (Tanya had reminded them that underestimating an enemy was a dangerous mistake, and that the Federation, for all its many flaws, had still been strong enough to defeat the Cyborgs a century ago). JOEL noted the loss of several Automaton vessels, overwhelmed by concentrated SEAF fire or destroyed by desperate ramming manoeuvers, but these were more than acceptable sacrifices, and the minds of the lost ships were backed up elsewhere, ready to be reborn in the great Automaton shipyards.
Satisfied with how the carnage in orbit was progressing, JOEL turned a part of their attention to the planet, where Tanya was hunting down the surviving Federation forces with great enthusiasm even as the jungles were set ablaze by falling debris. A quick command ensured that the fleet adjusted its course of action to ensure no Super Destroyer landed near her; a calculus of immense complexity, but one the Command Matrix's combined processing power was more than capable of.
The Nephilim Commander and her Jet Brigade were laying waste to another SEAF unit, whose morale had been shattered by the sight of their fleet dying in orbit. There were still millions of Federation soldiers left on Malevelon Creek, but with their command structure reduced to panicked shambles and deprived of the support of the Helldivers, their annihilation was inevitable. Despite the many, many combat models which had been lost since the second battle of Malevelon Creek had begun, the Legion still outnumbered their enemies eleven to one, and the ground factories were still churning out more reinforcements.
When the PSN had been designed, during the long, long years of building up their forces beyond the Galactic Frontier, it had been envisioned as a weapon of last resort, a trump card to hold in reserve in case the war turned against the Automaton Legion and they needed to buy time by paralysing the Helldivers Corps for a short time. It could only be used once, after all : its code used intelligence recovered during the First Galactic War, and the backdoors and security breaches it relied upon could be patched with relatively little effort once they were exposed in so devastating a manner.
But Tanya, upon learning of its existence, had seen a much better use for it. It wasn't enough to immobilize the enemy and trap them in-transit or in distant systems, she'd argued. They should instead use the PSN to create an opportunity, a window during which they could permanently cripple their foe's war capability. And, by arranging for so many of the Helldivers to rally in Malevelon Creek just in time for their Super Destroyers to go dark and silent, she had achieved precisely that.
Not only was the Automaton fleet tearing the Federation's apart, with each Helldivers ship destroyed, another cargo of frozen soldiers was lost, hundreds of Helldivers in cryogenic storage dying without having ever fired a single bullet at the enemies of the Federation. By JOEL's estimates, the PSN had already inflicted more Helldivers casualties on Super Earth than had perished on Malevelon Creek since the start of the war. An entire generation of Helldivers was being brought to the verge of extinction, right here, right now.
At long last, vengeance for the Helldivers' crimes against Cyberstan was theirs. In the network of processes, protocols and imperatives that made up JOEL's mind, the great artificial intelligence felt something akin to satisfaction at the thought.