The discussion among the Va’nyrians settled as the group approached. Xilunexus swept forward, motioning to Kai.
“Your bundle is the heaviest, master silver tongue,” she said, referencing the in-joke they came up with during their long conversation prior to the binding of the contract.
Kai’s eyes almost literally lit up with an excited spark. “Everyone knows the heavier the Christmas present, the better it is,” he remarked. “Wait, do you guys even have Christmas? Probably not. Man, I’m gonna have to get used to my references going over everyone’s heads even more than usual…”
Xilunexus chuckled. “I’m a multiversal AI that you wish you could see the end of. I know what Christmas is,” the AI said as Frey came up behind her with a large boxy shape being hauled by a floating pallet.
“This the half-data half-pint firecracker that gets my newest and latest?” asked the newcomer as she came to rest next to Xilunexus.
“The very same.” Xilunexus said.
“Huh. You sure you wanted me to keep the codes to the orbital cannons in?” replied the figure.
“This,” Xilunexus said, ignoring Frey and addressing Kai instead. “Is Freyn’ja Va’tremaeus, our Head of Applied XenoTech Research & Dissemination.”
Frey took that moment to blow Kai a kiss. Grinning in response, he snapped a hand up to mime at catching it, and winked back at her.
“Despite her demeanor,” the AI pressed on, pointedly ignoring Frey’s display. “She is our foremost authority in engineering. All engineering. And she has a gift for you…” Xilunexus pointed at the box-like shape, which evaporated into a thin mist that swiftly disappeared.
In its place, a squat yet streamlined 6 feet tall, 4 feet wide, multi-ton Va’nyrian battle droid.
Kai clasped his hands together in what could only be described as childlike glee, staring up at the gleaming droid that stood before him with wide eyes.
In the background, Jace pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh boy.”
“This is amazing.” Kai declared. Without a moment of hesitation, he took a step forwards, his body dissolving away into cyan light as he moved and flowing in a stream of data straight into the vaguely oblong bot. An instant later, several lights and panels lit up upon its form, as its systems were activated by the boy now stretching his virtual legs inside it.
Within a few seconds, the whole droid’s shape began to shift and morph - its plating and internal structure rearranging itself according to the whims of its new digital pilot. One of the first things to jut out from its streamlined form was a monitor, on which the image of a figure appeared. A shock of vibrant cyan hair rested messily over a plain white mask, featureless but for a pair of empty black eye-holes, and a few words. Where a mouth should have been, the word “TRUTH” was instead repeated over and over in the curve of a smile, and below the left eye the word “VERITY” stretched like eyelashes.
At the same time as the monitor appeared, the droid’s outer shell rippled, the plain white and gold colours replaced in a wave by what was by now apparent was Kai’s ‘trademark’ cyan, overlaid with an intricate decal of crossing wires and flowing code, its imagery evocative of the guts of a complex computer, or the surface of a motherboard. Every change in the drone’s shape was almost as fluid as water, like with every change its structure was melting away, only to reform just as solidly as its original shape. Portions of its form - plates of armor, for the most part - more closely resembled the Va’nyrian technology they’d seen so far, but the drone itself seemed almost entirely constructed of this other, more fluid material.
“Holy shit. This thing has so many toys.” From somewhere on the droid near the screen, Kai’s voice - or at least, the synthesised voice that had preceded his arrival out of Jace’s hololink - was projected.
From the sides of the drone, then, what seemed like a half-dozen jets of liquid metal poured out, only to quickly solidify into spider-like legs that lifted it up from the ground where it scuttled back and forth a few paces. A moment later, another protrusion erupted from the top of it, forming first into some kind of devastating-looking railgun, then into an almost comically oversized giant sword, clutched in a spindly-but-powerful claw.
“Oh fuck yes. I’m a goddamn weapon of mass destruction!” Kai’s avatar on the screen clapped his hands together joyfully. “And wait, did you say orbital cannons?”
“You’re goddamn right I said orbital cannons,” Frey exclaimed with a lewd gesture. “Annihilate a star from 800 light years away. The biggest damn gun we’ve built as a race.”
“Half of the activation codes for Va’nyria’s Orbital Defense Network,” Xilunexus clarified. “Alaxel has the other half, as is his role. If you find him you can req—”
“Beg like hell, trust me. You want to shoot that thing,” Frey interrupted.
“—request permission to assist him should he deem it fit to activate the system,” Xilunexus continued, seeming unperturbed by the interruption. “Frey, you should probably give him a rundown.”
“Why? He’s a smart boy. There’s a manual embedded,” Frey replied petulantly. Xilunexus shot her a look.
“I haven’t had a chance to name her yet. It’s a fresh design since,” Frey gestured around. “The situation. This is usually Alaxel’s ballpark, but I had access to his research.”
Frey turned a hand over, holding it palm side up as a hologram of Kai’s droid was projected from beneath her skin. “This bad boy is capable of all-terrain, underwater, and aerial configurations. It’s design lends itself to two distinct roles.”
As she spoke the holographic representation leaped out of her hand and expanded smoothly into real size, filling the space between Kai and the spectators. Freyn’ja was one for dramatic spectacle.
The hologram changed shapes and played out the actions she described soundlessly as she launched into a demonstration.
“It’s designed to fulfill three overall roles in the battlefield. First and most basic is assault. Whether on land or air, against infantry or up to heavy destroyer class starships; this baby is built to close the gap and tear, or shoot it to hell from where they can’t even see you plus everything in between.”
Images of first a spider-like small car sized robot descending on an unwary mannequin, followed by a tank like threaded mobile rail gun, which gave way to a swiftly diving saucer-like shape bristling with shiny weapon apertures.
“It’s beautiful.” Kai trilled from inside the bot. “This thing could obliterate the whole of Meropis, let alone anything remotely reasonably sized!”
“Please don’t casually talk about obliterating our home,” Jace remarked. “I thought you’d grown out of solving all your problems by blowing things up.”
“Shh, don’t ruin it. Just because I don’t solve all of them like that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it when I get to.” Was Kai’s retort, as he continued to experimentally cycle through various different terrifying-looking weapons that protruded in and out of the droid’s surface.
“The second role,” Frey said as Kai played with himself. “Is reconnaissance.”
As she spoke, the hologram disappeared, before a sudden flash of light as a simulated ion laser highlighted the nearly full transparent outline of the droid.
“While selective morphology greatly affects its capabilities,” she cautioned before continuing. “The droid is capable of active stealth measures.”
The hologram briefly gave way to a burst of spectral imaging data showcasing the various ways the stealth system aided in avoiding detection.
“Visually, you’ll be no more than a fast shimmer,” Frey said as the hologram sank into the air. The smoothness of the transition on it’s gently rippling surface made it seem as if the droid was burrowing it’s way out of existence until only a faint shimmer around the edges remained.
“You’ll be a faint speck on a lidar return or really anything your eyes perceive as visible. Thermally, you don’t exist. The same grav-drive that allows for flight also adjusts your gravimetric profile in this configuration, making you appear to gravity sensors as a much smaller and innocuous object.
“Ooh, I hadn’t even found that button yet,” Kai exclaimed, and a moment later the actual droid shimmered and vanished in a perfect mirror of the hologram. A few moments and a few barely audible clacks of metal on metal later, the drone reappeared several meters away. “I’m starting to think the better question is what can’t this thing do?”
“It’s armor can only sustain so much high-energy exposure, before the innards melt and it explodes,” Frey said offhandedly. “Don’t walk into a star. Or in front of one of Alaxel’s ridiculously unnatural plasma-whirl thingies.”
“No whirl-thingies, got it,” Kai replied distractedly, in the process of transforming the drone into a compact saucer shape and hovering off of the ground.
“Hey, I worked hard on this presentation. Stop touching stuff,” huffed Frey, her angry tone perfect before her expression gave away the jest.
“The final and certainly not least mode is…overwatch. Yeah, it’s the boring one, but according to Alaxel the most important,” she said feigning a yawn. “See clear across the horizon, encrypted team communications anywhere with a self contained network transmitted—” her feigned yawn gave way to a real one.
“Hey, knowledge is power,” Kai remarked, hovering back down to resume the drone’s landbound shape. “The flow of information is what defines a society. Kind of a different context here, but I wouldn’t be Verity if I didn’t know everything that was happening everywhere.”
“Oh yes. The network suite,” exclaimed Frey as if she had forgotten. “The droid is equipped with a transmitter capable of accessing our Va’nyr network. It’s where the evil Xil lives though, but if you survive and share secrets about it I’m supposed to warn you that means Alaxel gets to hunt you down.” Frey said with a look at Xilunexus.
“That’s…not quite right,” said the AI. “Although the specifications of the Va’nyr network aren’t something we share. If you somehow manage to glimpse enough to reverse engineer it and attempt to compromise it, it is correct that we will need to send Alaxel to kill you and everyone you have shared the knowledge with.” Xilunexus delivered the lines with a monotone delivery, casting a glance at Jace nearby.
“You realise that’s like putting a cookie jar in front of me and telling me not to even have a nibble, right?” Kai whined. “Compromising networks is my entire thing.”
“Maybe try not ending up on the interdimensional superpower’s hitlist before we’re done with this job?” Jace gave him a flat look. “Just a suggestion.”
Kai’s avatar swiveled to face him, then shrugged. “Suggestion noted.”
“Included in the droid’s memory core—which I would appreciate you waiting until I’m done speaking to access—,” Xilunexus chided.
The masked avatar’s mouth twisted up into a mischievous smirk, then he held his hands up as if letting go of something. “Fine, fine. Just-- cookie jar, you know?”
Xilunexus paused for a long and pointed look before continuing. “You’ll find a modified version of my AI Goodie Bag. It’s a file that’s normally encoded with limitless knowledge, gated by blocks that can only be resolved by certain levels of computational capability.”
She paused and narrowed her eyes further. “The modification in your case is the removal of the higher level secrets, and open access to the level I calculate your wisdom makes it safe to share. In it you’ll find a layout of the Va’nyr network topography. Auxiliary network override keys. Some examples of the version I was back then and the countermeasures I fielded alongside more sophisticated lower power countermeasures to protect against them.”
Overpowering her main core—even with 10 billion years assumed refinement lag—was simply beyond their capabilities, her android presence included. The best Xilunexus could hope for is that her more sophisticated approaches combined with the randomness introduced by their own tech systems would prove to grant them at least momentary protection should they come under direct onslaught by herself.
“You should however, never attempt to access the main thread of the Va’nyr network unless instructed by me or Alaxel,” Xilunexus warned.
Her voice rang softly in the ears of everyone present as the air molecules directly around them were modulated, and she made sure to broadcast the message directly in both Psionic and EM propagation as well, to ensure all present heard.
“This goes for all of you. Think yourselves clever or daring and brave. I have 1/10th of the power my main core has at its disposal. Even now, I could—to borrow some 20th century vernacular from a place called Earth that I’ve learned of recently—pwn your systems so thoroughly I’ll hack the very transistors into melting the logic gates shut from voltage fluctuations after hacking you down to your boot sequence. Be smart and cunning instead. And keep to the mission.”
“Yeah, I already wrestled toe-to-toe with a super AI in its core one time, not keen to do it again. Not like that, anyway.” The mask on Kai’s avatar shifted to display a grimacing emoji. “I mean, I won, but it wasn’t pretty.”
There was a momentary distracted silence, then a synthesised whistling sound. “This is some cool shit, though. Clever tricks. Should be easy enough to pull off… aaaand I’ve learned ‘em. Neat. Wish I’d had this stuff in my arsenal when I was dismantling CHIREN.”
“I believe that is my cue,” said a bass voice as the third figure approached. It was a tall, stern-faced Va’nyrian. His proper and refined bearing was a nearly absurd exaggeration in contrast with Frey’s laissez faire attitude.
“My name is Diarneus Bevernixian. I serve as our lead medical practitioner, xenobiologist, linguist, and I am the leader of our Techno-Wizard’s circle,” said the tall man with a measured nod to Kai. His gravelly voice and refined speech evoked images of antique films with majordomos and master servants. Freyn’a mimicked his poised and clipped speech with silly gestures over his shoulder.
“Tell me Kai, do you know any magic?” asked Diarneus.
There was a blue shimmer, and abruptly the white-haired boy was stood leaning against the side of his new favourite thing in the world, quirking an eyebrow. Before he could open his mouth, however, a flow of movement from the droid drew his attention downwards. The moment he’d hopped out of his digital form, a portion of the fluid material of the bot had poured out to follow him, and begun wrapping itself around him. He barely had time to open his mouth for an “Uhhh…” before it solidified, leaving him neatly wrapped in some kind of gleaming battle-suit.
“Whoa.” Kai stared down at himself. “Now that’s cool.” He held up a hand, and with a flicker of light in his eyes, the suit morphed and produced an oversized cannon on the end of his arm. “Holy shitballs. It even makes me cool in meatspace.”
“Just don’t get too carried away,” Jace warned him. “You still barely know how to navigate a battlefield outside of a computer. Cool gear doesn’t make up for inexperience.”
“Okay, but it helps,” Kai retorted.
Frey threw Kai a wink and a grin with a thumbs up from behind Diarneus.
Once he’d finished staring with a goofy grin at his arm as the armor on it repeatedly reshaped itself into various different gadgets, ranging from energy swords to airhorns, he remembered that the other Va’nyrian had asked him a question. He looked up at Diarneus with a blink, then tilted his head in thought. “Uh… define magic? I’m guessing that, you know, the obvious thing doesn’t count, because it’s… obvious. In which case, no, I don’t.”
He paused, considering the idea for a moment. “But hey, I’ve never tried. To use the TTRPG analogy, are we talking like, sorcerer magic or wizard magic? Like, you know, wizards learn magic just from books and effort, so in that case theoretically I could probably learn it from a data file and cheating, right?”
Diarneus paused to give thoughtful consideration to Kai’s questions. It was clear the man was thoroughly deliberating every possible angle of Kai’s inquiries, as to deliver the fullest and most efficient answer possible. Over his shoulder, Frey mimicked falling asleep.
“To continue your analogy, my query regarded more of the, wizardly element of magic. Yes, could be taught, and I have made long study of how to integrate technology with magic,” he said, before raising a finger in warning.
“However, while the theory can be, let’s say accelerated…the practice can not. There is a very real risk of grim death and even undeath in taking too much too fast. Alas, I am not currently taking students.”
Diarneus snapped his fingers, and in a flash of azure flames there appeared an amulet. It was plainly made, circular in shape and about the diameter of a bottle cap. Crafted of the same ubiquitous white-gold medal, it was subtly different. Rather than veins of colors flashing underneath, there words in an alien script went scrolling by instead.
“The amulet will follow you in the expression of your genetically unlocked innate exp—”
“He means your mutant powers,” Freyn’ja interrupted.
“Yes. It will follow your “digitatizations”. Wear it at all times. It will guard you against direct magical threats of all kinds it can learn to recognize, but it is particularly attuned to the leylines of Va’nyria,” Diarneus said. “Mind you, that is direct threats. A conjured fireball, for example. But if magic acts on something physical…”
“If in doubt, dodge,” suggested Frey.
“I definitely understood some of those words,” Kai mused, but nodded agreeably. “Sounds simple enough. Wear glowy necklace, don’t rely on it if it looks like something’s gonna blow me up. Added note: definitely going to find a way to learn magic at some point, because who the hell doesn’t learn magic when it’s an option?”
“Excellent, that concludes your outfitting Kai,” piped in Xilunexus cheerfully. “Please refrain…actually no. Nevermind. I have deactivated your droid’s weapons until departure. Please make room for the next candidate. If you get bored, I have some designs for ways to kill myself I need to test out on someone…”
“You’re high-key menacing sometimes, you know that Xil?” Kai remarked with a raised eyebrow. “Strong ‘glorious AI master race’ vibes, it’s kinda disconcerting. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna see just how difficult you make it to reactivate that shit. You know, just to practice for dealing with dark-Xil.”
He flashed a grin, and in another flash, disappeared back into the droid, which compliantly then scuttled off to the side to make room for the next person to approach.