Authority wip, part five
Friendly Fire, part 5/?
The Authority belongs to Warren Ellis and Wildstorm comics. No profit is being made off this unauthorized fic, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Warnings: Cussing. Lots of passive voice.
The Carrier
Approximately 23.5 minutes later:
Re-evaluation of data analysis indicated that errors had been made. Newly collected data now supported the theory that the smaller organic parasites functioned as a primitive defense system for the organic life form. Individual particles of the /00110111/ had been destroyed by extreme heat before they could reach a particularly rich concentration of raw material, preventing the /00110111/ from converting the primitive computing equipment it had located into a compatible form.
Those portions of the /00110111/ which were traveling towards the organic lifeform’s power center had also encountered resistance. The organic lifeform had activated a defensive subroutine not found in the /00110111/’s memory. Data readings from the vicinity of the power source were anomalous, and a small percentage of the /00110111/ had ceased transmitting information, vanishing as if they had never been.
The /00110111/ added these variables to the projections of successful harmony and found them problematic, but not insurmountable. The organic lifeform and its primitive defenses were but one, and the /00110111/ were many.
"Well,” Apollo said, “we know melting them works. Too bad I can't incinerate them all without taking the rest of the Carrier with them."
Apollo’s grasp of the painfully obvious was always impressive.
The film of silver clinging to the deck like an oil slick oozed forward another inch. Apollo vaporized it once more, leaving a strip of scorched deck planking, the metal pitted and stained where the nanites had half-dissolved it. A few moments, and it was covered in the things again.
//Doctor?// Jenny broadcast. //We’re bailing out a sinking boat with a teaspoon, here. If you’re planning on pulling a Harry Potter for us, now would be good.//
The Doctor’s voice echoed in her head, nervous and faintly apologetic. //Machines aren't my strong point, and these… every time I get a fix on them they change, move. If you could shut them down for even a second or two, we'd be in business, but as it is?//
Fucking brilliant. Jenny eyed the steadily encroaching tide of nanites and wondered if they could eat through human flesh as easily as they could walls and floors. She was betting on ‘yes.’ She was also betting that death by nanite-absorption was both excruciatingly painful and disgusting to watch.
After successfully destroying Sliding Albion, being eaten by sentient metal would be a humiliating way to die.
“The navigation computers are still clean, but the warning lights are lit up like a fucking Christmas tree.” The Midnighter didn’t look up from the navigation console as he added, “If Angie was right about these things replicating, we have about fifty-six minutes of exponential growth before they eat enough of the hull to vent the ship to vacuum.”
“Don’t worry,” Jenny said. “We’ll explode long before then.”
The nanite tide slide another few millimeters closer. They didn’t seem to be approaching all that quickly, but every time she took her eyes off them, she looked back to find a visible decrease in the amount of clear decking.
She could feel them, she realized, a constant, low-grade hum of energy that blended insidiously with the background “noise” of the Carrier.
Apollo poked tentatively at the nanites with one foot, then cursed and sent a flash of laser-heat at the film of silver that transferred itself to his boot.
//Don’t try to touch the nanites// Shen’s voice came over the commlink, calm and even in a way that made Jenny want to shriek profanity for her. //They will adhere to your skin and eat it off.//
“Now she tells me,” Apollo muttered. He took a step backward, moving his now-bare foot a little further away from the nanites. “A man covered in these things would take a long time to die.”
“In your case, two hours. Two hours and thirty-seven minutes, in direct sunlight.” Midnighter shrugged one shoulder. “We’ll blow up first.”
“We are not sodding blowing up,” Jenny snapped. “Not if I have anything to say about it. I can feel the energy they give off, which means there has to be a way to shut them down.”
"Sometimes,” Midnighter growled, “it's not how hard you hit something that matters, it's where you hit it. What kind of power source do they have?"
“Fucked if I know, but they hum like bloody florescent lights.” //Angie?// Jenny asked, //Power source?//
//I'm not completely sure; they're like nothing I've ever seen before. But they give off an electronic signal. I think it's how they communicate with one another.//
//So, we assume electromagnetic.// Jenny shook her head, her hands clenching with frustration until she could feel her nails cutting into her palms. "Damn it, if there were only some way I could suck the energy out of them! It's too diffuse, spread out all over the Carrier-"
"So don't. Overload them instead. Fry the little bastards."
"No,” Apollo interrupted forcefully, making a slashing gesture with his hands. “Bad idea. Seriously bad idea."
"And a minute of free fall wasn't?" The Midnighter asked. His voice was flat, emotionless, but the impression of snideness came through anyway.
"I know, I know," Jenny said. She pinched the bridge of her nose, headache still pulsing behind her eyes, and resisted the urge to tell them to save their pointless relationship arguments for later. "I might accidentally shut down Angie's nanites, too, not to mention fry half the systems on the Carrier."
"If those things get into the engine room, we're all dead anyway."
//We're going to try something, Doctor. If I overload the nanites with energy, it might give you a window to work your magic in.// Jenny took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and reached out to the steady pulse of energy that powered the Carrier’s systems, drawing the power into herself until her body tingled with it. She could feel Apollo at her back, humming with the faint electrical field every human body generated, feel the Midnighter behind him, artificially bright, feel the diffuse, oh-so-faint energy field of the nanites… Even through closed eyelids, she could sense the lights in the Carrier dimming as she diverted energy away from them. Only days ago, she had fried every shiftship in London, but she had had all the force of a major city’s electrical grid behind her then.
The power she had to draw on now was a fraction of that. It would have to be enough.
//Brace yourself, Engineer. This will probably hurt.// You and me both, she added silently. Sorry, Angie. And she let the gathered-in power go, shoving it out through the ship in a single, split-second burst.
The world flared blue-white even through her closed eyelids, and the communications link went dead, vanishing from her awareness as if it had never been as the surge of electromagnetic energy knocked the nanite-enabled telepathy offline.
Jenny sagged to her knees, drained down to the soles of her feet, her ears ringing not from the blast-there had been no explosion, after all-but from the effort she’d expended. She could feel the leftover energy crackling in the air, a static charge strong enough to make her hair cling to her face, but the hum of the nanites was gone.
The only energy fields left in the control room besides her own were Apollo’s steady glow and the tangle of random electrical impulses that was Midnighter. And in her head, where the minute crackle of feedback from Angie’s nanite-comm should have been, there was silence. Dead silence.
It was all up to the Doctor now.
^_~.
On to Part Six
The Authority belongs to Warren Ellis and Wildstorm comics. No profit is being made off this unauthorized fic, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Warnings: Cussing. Lots of passive voice.
The Carrier
Approximately 23.5 minutes later:
Re-evaluation of data analysis indicated that errors had been made. Newly collected data now supported the theory that the smaller organic parasites functioned as a primitive defense system for the organic life form. Individual particles of the /00110111/ had been destroyed by extreme heat before they could reach a particularly rich concentration of raw material, preventing the /00110111/ from converting the primitive computing equipment it had located into a compatible form.
Those portions of the /00110111/ which were traveling towards the organic lifeform’s power center had also encountered resistance. The organic lifeform had activated a defensive subroutine not found in the /00110111/’s memory. Data readings from the vicinity of the power source were anomalous, and a small percentage of the /00110111/ had ceased transmitting information, vanishing as if they had never been.
The /00110111/ added these variables to the projections of successful harmony and found them problematic, but not insurmountable. The organic lifeform and its primitive defenses were but one, and the /00110111/ were many.
"Well,” Apollo said, “we know melting them works. Too bad I can't incinerate them all without taking the rest of the Carrier with them."
Apollo’s grasp of the painfully obvious was always impressive.
The film of silver clinging to the deck like an oil slick oozed forward another inch. Apollo vaporized it once more, leaving a strip of scorched deck planking, the metal pitted and stained where the nanites had half-dissolved it. A few moments, and it was covered in the things again.
//Doctor?// Jenny broadcast. //We’re bailing out a sinking boat with a teaspoon, here. If you’re planning on pulling a Harry Potter for us, now would be good.//
The Doctor’s voice echoed in her head, nervous and faintly apologetic. //Machines aren't my strong point, and these… every time I get a fix on them they change, move. If you could shut them down for even a second or two, we'd be in business, but as it is?//
Fucking brilliant. Jenny eyed the steadily encroaching tide of nanites and wondered if they could eat through human flesh as easily as they could walls and floors. She was betting on ‘yes.’ She was also betting that death by nanite-absorption was both excruciatingly painful and disgusting to watch.
After successfully destroying Sliding Albion, being eaten by sentient metal would be a humiliating way to die.
“The navigation computers are still clean, but the warning lights are lit up like a fucking Christmas tree.” The Midnighter didn’t look up from the navigation console as he added, “If Angie was right about these things replicating, we have about fifty-six minutes of exponential growth before they eat enough of the hull to vent the ship to vacuum.”
“Don’t worry,” Jenny said. “We’ll explode long before then.”
The nanite tide slide another few millimeters closer. They didn’t seem to be approaching all that quickly, but every time she took her eyes off them, she looked back to find a visible decrease in the amount of clear decking.
She could feel them, she realized, a constant, low-grade hum of energy that blended insidiously with the background “noise” of the Carrier.
Apollo poked tentatively at the nanites with one foot, then cursed and sent a flash of laser-heat at the film of silver that transferred itself to his boot.
//Don’t try to touch the nanites// Shen’s voice came over the commlink, calm and even in a way that made Jenny want to shriek profanity for her. //They will adhere to your skin and eat it off.//
“Now she tells me,” Apollo muttered. He took a step backward, moving his now-bare foot a little further away from the nanites. “A man covered in these things would take a long time to die.”
“In your case, two hours. Two hours and thirty-seven minutes, in direct sunlight.” Midnighter shrugged one shoulder. “We’ll blow up first.”
“We are not sodding blowing up,” Jenny snapped. “Not if I have anything to say about it. I can feel the energy they give off, which means there has to be a way to shut them down.”
"Sometimes,” Midnighter growled, “it's not how hard you hit something that matters, it's where you hit it. What kind of power source do they have?"
“Fucked if I know, but they hum like bloody florescent lights.” //Angie?// Jenny asked, //Power source?//
//I'm not completely sure; they're like nothing I've ever seen before. But they give off an electronic signal. I think it's how they communicate with one another.//
//So, we assume electromagnetic.// Jenny shook her head, her hands clenching with frustration until she could feel her nails cutting into her palms. "Damn it, if there were only some way I could suck the energy out of them! It's too diffuse, spread out all over the Carrier-"
"So don't. Overload them instead. Fry the little bastards."
"No,” Apollo interrupted forcefully, making a slashing gesture with his hands. “Bad idea. Seriously bad idea."
"And a minute of free fall wasn't?" The Midnighter asked. His voice was flat, emotionless, but the impression of snideness came through anyway.
"I know, I know," Jenny said. She pinched the bridge of her nose, headache still pulsing behind her eyes, and resisted the urge to tell them to save their pointless relationship arguments for later. "I might accidentally shut down Angie's nanites, too, not to mention fry half the systems on the Carrier."
"If those things get into the engine room, we're all dead anyway."
//We're going to try something, Doctor. If I overload the nanites with energy, it might give you a window to work your magic in.// Jenny took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and reached out to the steady pulse of energy that powered the Carrier’s systems, drawing the power into herself until her body tingled with it. She could feel Apollo at her back, humming with the faint electrical field every human body generated, feel the Midnighter behind him, artificially bright, feel the diffuse, oh-so-faint energy field of the nanites… Even through closed eyelids, she could sense the lights in the Carrier dimming as she diverted energy away from them. Only days ago, she had fried every shiftship in London, but she had had all the force of a major city’s electrical grid behind her then.
The power she had to draw on now was a fraction of that. It would have to be enough.
//Brace yourself, Engineer. This will probably hurt.// You and me both, she added silently. Sorry, Angie. And she let the gathered-in power go, shoving it out through the ship in a single, split-second burst.
The world flared blue-white even through her closed eyelids, and the communications link went dead, vanishing from her awareness as if it had never been as the surge of electromagnetic energy knocked the nanite-enabled telepathy offline.
Jenny sagged to her knees, drained down to the soles of her feet, her ears ringing not from the blast-there had been no explosion, after all-but from the effort she’d expended. She could feel the leftover energy crackling in the air, a static charge strong enough to make her hair cling to her face, but the hum of the nanites was gone.
The only energy fields left in the control room besides her own were Apollo’s steady glow and the tangle of random electrical impulses that was Midnighter. And in her head, where the minute crackle of feedback from Angie’s nanite-comm should have been, there was silence. Dead silence.
It was all up to the Doctor now.
^_~.
On to Part Six