Chapter 25
-VB-
"W-What is that?"
I glanced over my shoulder at my mom's question as she clung to dad.
I sighed. "One of the things I've developed because of my … not undeserved paranoia," I replied so that they knew it was not something that had popped out of nowhere.
After all, I brought it into the house in one of those boxes I left in the living room while we ate. The other box was what saved our family and house: a shield generator that had been on ever since I had it set up.
The T-Doll - named after the game - was a prototype I've made from a combination of my knowledge of AI Software Development, Material Engineering, Gundam Engineering, and Special Forces. It wasn't Gundam but it carried within it a very prototypical mini-fusion engine not found anywhere else in the Inner Sphere, Periphery, and the Deep Periphery. My personal experience and knowledge of Special Forces thanks to the Inspired Inventor was what allowed me to properly program its near human-like movements.
I said near-human like because the T-Doll didn't need to move like a person to achieve its … optimal combat performance.
"This is what I mentioned when people will come for you," I sighed as I gestured to the slaughter that the T-Doll had caused in the span of a minute.
It, a tall and slender blue humanoid covered from head to toe in light blue steel plates, pulled its hand and arm out of the last ComGuard soldier. The soldier went down gurgling blood out of his lips and nose, and T-Doll turned to me for orders.
It didn't need to, but I've programmed human-like behavior so that it wouldn't feel too uncanny or stiff.
"On standby," I ordered verbally, though needlessly. There was a pre-programmed hand gesture that I could have used but I said the order out loud for my family's benefit.
Next to all of my family, Amy and Armas sighed.
And they sighed with the air of someone who had to deal with this kind of shit, though this had been the first time it had been up close and personal. I could see that the attack had affected them but they were doing their best to play it off, again, for our family's sake.
Anton, Katrin, Marco, mom, and dad all stared at the scene around them, at me, and then at Amy and Armas.
"This is why I was trying to convince you to come with me. Even if I died right here with no other casualties, these people would have killed you on a less than 1% chance that you might had something to do with -."
"You ruined our lives."
I paused and looked at Katrin, my oldest sister.
I stared at her, at the fury building up inside of her. I could see the telltale signs. The trembling, white-knuckled fists. The gritting teeth. Clenched jaws. All classic signs.
She always was the most honest of us all.
"No," I said to her pointedly but also as softly as I could. "These bastards have been ruining everyone's lives for the past five centuries, doing it in the dark where they weren't seen by the public. If you ask if any of the Great Houses trust ComStar, then you would be told that none of them did. This … this is just them coming after the obvious could-be improvement."
"Could be?" dad frowned.
"Could be because there is no way in hell that ComStar will let this go," I said as I walked up to the nearest ComGuard corpse and kicked it over. "They'll doctor footages. They'll have their noble cronies raising ruckus. They'll deploy their ROM and ComGuard. Hell, they'll even deploy their warship if they have to!"
"No one has warships," Anton spat, angry just like Katrin but not at me, surprisingly. If anyone had the right to be angry, then it was him. Then he paused as he stared at me. "...Right?"
"They have the most number of warships, spread out among their hidden worlds," I shrugged. "But you have to make a decision. Are you going to come with me where we can attempt to run or are you going to stay and try your luck?"
"We'll go with you."
I turned to look at Marco.
His response surprised me. "Really?"
He nodded resolutely. "But you better give me a cushy job, you hear? Make me a captain of one of your ships or something. I'm willing to learn," he grinned. Even though he was trembling just like the rest of the family.
I grinned lazily. "Amy's been learning how to be a spy from me. I'll make sure you'll be the best ship captain there is."
My offhand comment drew mom's surprise. She looked at Amy with wide eyes, and Amy responded … by pulling out knives from places we didn't even know was possible. "Always have to be ready, mother," she giggled, trying to play it off.
"Oh, she's my spymaster, essentially," I added. Amy threw me a glare, telling me to stop, and I did.
I turned to mom and dad. "Mom? Dad?"
Dad hesitated.
I understood why. He was the pastor. He was the shepherd. He tended to the flock. Even if it was for his own life, leaving his flock was … it was not an easy decision. I knew that because he was a true Christian, not the demagogues of mega churches and cults of isolated rural areas. Hell, if no one else in the family was involved, then he really might turn the other cheek!
But family was his weak point. Like any good man, that was his weakness.
"We'll go," dad said with an explosive sigh. He quickl;y turned around and went back into the house to get his and mom's stuff. I looked at mom, and saw her rather upset look. She gave me a glare, demanding an explanation wordlessly. I nodded, and she followed after dad.
"Oh, and leave any replaceable valuables behind! Just the barebones will do!" I shouted after them. "I can literally print gold by the bullion!"
Katrin twitched.
I snorted, and she glared at me.
Wordlessly, like mom, she demanded compensation. I nodded. She grabbed Anton, who looked at her and then me before nodding resignedly.
…
I had to thank ComStar.
If it wasn't for them, then I wasn't sure if all of them would have come with me.
Now, I had to deal with their little shenanigans.
I pulled up my left arm where my gadget-watch was and called up to my ships. "G1, land on my location. G2, G3, secure Solo Killing. G5, G6, keep orbital watch." Then I scrolled through the options available to me. G6 was special among the Glimmer droneships in that it was not just a Glimmer droneship but a slightly special Glimmer command droneship. It had a suite of communication, ECM, EC, and more built into it, and all of those equipments were lightyears ahead of anything ComStar and the Inner Sphere was using. Using it, I punched through the jamming on the planet and started dumping data to … basically everywhere.
Unless ComStar nuked this world to kingdom come, footage of the attack on the ground and in orbit will leak, countering whatever ComStar had to say.
Chapter 26
-VB-
Armas Arlaoskas
3003 January
"Now what?" he asked his brother while the rest of the family and crew had gathered up in the mess hall of Humpty Dumpty. They had to leave Kendall in a hurry after that brazen two-pronged attack.
But they didn't leave Kendall System entirely. No, the entire fleet was now positioned in the shadow of the outermost gas giant, waiting on his brother's orders.
"Now, we have to discuss what we are going to do," Edward replied. "Honestly, my first response is to get some payback in a very … unorthodox sense."
"How unorthodox?" Amy asked with a raised eyebrow.
His brother grinned. "I'm going to find a Star League memory core and distribute it everywhere, which is the exact opposite of what ComStar wants."
The room froze before several people stood up. They all began talking at once, but Armas wasn't among their number. None of the core crews were. Why would they? Sure, Star League was the glorious past of the Inner Sphere but he and the crew had been around technologies his brother had built by hand for the past few years.
Alternate FTL, weapons that outdid anything Star League had, energy barriers, microfabricators and even a nanofabricator Edward treated like his baby, artificial intelligence, drones, and so much more…
What was Star League compared to that?
His family - his other brother, sister, parents, and their families - looked at how the crew didn't react.
"Wouldn't it be easier to just dump half of what you knew instead?" Miguel asked. "Hell, your FTL communication tech alone would bankrupt ComStar."
"Probably," Edward shrugged. "But if I go that extra distance to fuck with them and they do collapse, then all of the retards suddenly don't have much to lose, now do they? They're going to start doing stupid shit like bioterrorism to get their way instead of spying and wiretapping."
"So you want to hurt them … but not hurt them enough to push them over the edge," dad spoke up as he slowly sat down.
"Bingo," Edward grinned. Then he paused. "Hold up for a second…" he muttered as he blanked out.
'Ah,' Armas thought as he recognized what was happening. This happened every time Edward suddenly got new ideas and technologies. "Anything new?"
"No, just a way of making better AI."
"Cool."
"Cool?" Marco drawled. "AI is cool?" he asked incredulously.
Of course, everyone in the family had been told about the other dropships and how there was no one inside of them. That every single one of those dropships except Humpty Dumpty and Solo Killing were FTL-capable drone ships that followed Edward's orders.
"You know, if I don't find a wife for myself soon, then I might make myself a robot wife or something," Edward joked. Then he paused. "Or make a robot nanny for Jeremiah."
"Yes, please," Armas grunted out and Amy giggled. He looked at her and shrugged.
What parents wouldn't want free reliable nanny for their babies?
"I would've liked one a few decades ago," mom joked, too. Then she got serious. "And then after you had your fun with ComStar?" she asked.
"We can leave for the periphery," Edward hummed. "Staying in the Inner Sphere with my tech and with how loudly I've been exposed just means everyone and their spy agencies will be looking for me. What we talked about back home on Kendall. Because even when I break out the Star League memory core from where it's hidden, I will still be technologically superior. The Inner Sphere houses will start making warships, but it'll mean jackshit when I have energy barriers that I tank their biggest guns."
Armas nodded, briefly remembering how the ComGuard tried to firebomb their house, only to be thwarted by Edward's preparations.
There had been a good chance that half of the family here wouldn't be alive to think about all of this if Edward hadn't thought multiple steps ahead of his assassins.
And speaking of which…
He wanted to ask Edward how he knew to be paranoid about ComStar from the get-go, but he wouldn't do it here in the open.
See, it was one of those things he learned by osmosis from being next to Amy, who was learning all about the psychology and everything. Questions and criticisms happened in a good workplace, which this crew (fleet?) was because his brother wasn't an idiot sandwich. However, openly asking questions that was best left discrete meant things got hairy quickly.
He did provide a decent explanation back at home, but it had been weak then.
He glanced at Edward, and saw him notice his stare and nod.
---
"So?" Armas asked once they were out of the way in the noisy manufacturing chamber of Solo Killing. "How did you really know to avoid ComStar at all cost from the get-go?"
Edward tittered. He looked like he wanted to answer but … he also looked like the answer might give someone an aneurysm. Because when Edward got crazy, it did give someone an aneurysm before.
"Come on, I'm waiting, bro."
Finally, he sighed and answered.
"Do you want the most believable explanation or what I believe I am?"
Arms frowned.
When Ed started asking questions like this, Arm knew that Ed was serious because he was thinking about how to explain himself.
"What you believe."
"I'm someone who reincarnated from another universe that had insights into this universe in the form of a fictional media spanning across books, board games, video games, and more."
Well.
Um.
… He wasn't delusional, Arm knew that. A delusional man wouldn't be capable of making technological wonders or predicting how an interstellar organization like ComStar would behave.
…
"We're real, right?"
"You're real, don't worry about it," Ed huffed. "If this wasn't real, then I would have gone off and done something far more ridiculous."
Arm pulled his head back. "This isn't ridiculous enough?"
"... Well, I always did dream of a harem in my past life."
Armas nearly choked to death on the spot.
But he finally got an answer out of his brother… and that only led to more.
"Wait, wait, wait," he asked as he got the tears out of his eyes and got his choking under control. "So … what … you saw how the Inner Sphere's future goes?"
"Yup. Mad Max is going to do something stupid, First Prince Hanse marries the future archon's daughter, they form a united nation, and then the descendants of Kerensky's Star League come back as a neo-barbariac confederation who don't understand the basics of war because they spent too much time ritualizing it."
"... Huh?"
Ed grinned. "I'll tell you when it becomes relevant. And speaking of relevant," he said before wrapping his knuckles twice on the microfabricator. "This thing is a technology from another fictional media from my past life."
Armas filed the bit about the future for later. "... You're talking about how you're getting your technology."
"Yup," he popped the word. "I can access any skill or tech, one arbitrary level at a time, from any and all fictional media from my past life. And since this 'fictional media' is real and everyone here are living breathing people, all of those fictional medias are real as well, and thus I am not making shit up as I go but rather drawing them from … other realities, essentially."
"... Damn."
"Yeah."
"How far can you go?"
Ed snorted.
"Nothing is out of my capability. The only limitation is time."
"... and you just want to tickle ComStar? After they tried to kill everyone? Amy, Jeremiah, and our parents?" Arm asked a little hotly.
"The other option is to be responsible for the deaths of billions in the decade to come," Ed replied with a sigh. "I may really only care about my family, but I'm also not one for senseless death. What I intend to do will hurt ComStar on a fundamental level. Trust me."
-VB-
A/N: So Ed finally told Armas and, by extension, Amy. They've been with him through thick and thin, and after a very front and personal attack on their lives, he decided to be more open with them than before. It's a secret, however, that has little to no impact beyond strengthening the brotherly trust. Even if it gets out, so what? It's not how he gets the power but what he does with it that matters here.
-VB-