Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

Amelia, Ch 246


"I must admit, they are impressive," Secretary Brown agreed. "Some of them took punishment that would have demolished a tank. How easily can they be manufactured?"


ConcernSuspicion. "The models you're seeing there are special," Taylor informed the man. "Significantly more difficult to produce than the standard models, requiring advanced tinker tech and rare materials. You won't see more than one or two per major city. The standard M7s aren't nearly as capable, but their ease of production more than makes up for it."


"That is a pity," he replied. "They are a significant force projection, and could be used to achieve stability in areas that badly need it."


He's talking about deploying them to other countries, I realized. "There's also the range considerations," I added. "They require tinker tech relays to extend their range past a couple hundred meters."


"The control mechanism you use for the anti Endbringer creatures seems to have a much longer reach," he pointed out.


"Those are under my direct control," Taylor responded. "My power does the work."


"Control over arthropods, I recall," he responded.


"Those weapons are, functionally, nothing but large insects," I added. "Their bodies are heavily modified, of course, but the brains are only a little more advanced than what you might expect from a cockroach or jumping spider." Which is still exponentially more advanced than the best non-tinker computers ever designed. But 'really big cockroach' is less disturbing than the idea of a perfectly programmed war machine that has no instinct except to hunt and kill. Not even the instincts needed to protect themselves or recognize danger.


"Fascinating," the man replied. At this point, I imagine he was just fishing for whatever information he could gather. We hadn't told him anything that wasn't already part of our records, though I didn't know for certain if he'd read them or not. "Are those as difficult to build as the M7s we saw today?"


"A great deal easier, honesly," Lisa responded. "Most of the difficulties we see in producing the remote robots are a matter of control and relaying information. These are things that Taylor's power handles for her, allowing us to circumvent a significant amount of the efforts. In addition, thanks to Taylor's ability to process information, we don't have to include the same fidelity of senses in our EB weapons. Only one needs echolocation or infrared senses to serve for an army of thousands. While the M7s need every model to have every feature to be effective."


I could imagine every one of the Directors memorizing every word that was just said, trying to discern a weakness in what they'd just been told. Costa-Brown, I was certain, knew better. She understood the implications of our true threat. We didn't need to use the zerg as our main force. In fact, against anything that wasn't a city breaker, they were functionally useless. The modified insects, easily grown by the millions and utterly unobtrusive, were the true weapons at our disposal. Why use a massively visible monster, when instead you could make a billion mosquitoes that produced a custom variant of botulinum for the same amount of mass, and with so much less effort?


That's right, focus on the showy monsters we take out on parade. Pay no attention to the real threats behind the curtain.


"Of course," I added. "We would never deploy them on another nation's soil without the direst of need," I added. "They are meant as a deterrent, in case a foreign power feels a desire to attack us. And, of course, to fight the Endbringers."


"That is why we're putting such effort into creating the M7s," Taylor backed me.


"I understand you plan to give similar designs to other nations?" he prompted.


"Of course," I replied. "We see them as a form of humanitarian aid. That's why we maintain ownership, only lending instead of selling or even leasing. If a nation attempts to use them in a manner we're not comfortable with, we can easily disable them. Avalon wants to remain as politically neutral with Bet and its colony worlds as is humanly possible. Providing law enforcement tools is one thing, but we will not allow them to be turned into weapons of war." We're also pulling the exact same trick on you as we did with the sewers of Brockton Bay. Please don't notice that, either.


"Pardon the interruption," Dragon spoke. "They're nearly finished with the initial sweep of Nilbog's lair."


"I look forward to discussing this further," he told us before we turned our attention back to the immediate matter.


"We've found what appears to be Nilbog," one of the soldiers informed us. "I'm not a forensics expert, but he appears to have died of unknown causes, quite a while ago. He's frozen solid."


"You mean that thing in the building wasn't him?" Calvert asked.


"Sort of, sir? It'll be easier for you to see for yourself."


The viewscreen switched to the gruesome sights inside Nilbog's former home. Blood and unidentifiable gore coated the walls.


The main weapon for the M7s were sonic disruptors, due to their combination of nonlethal low settings and effectiveness against a huge array of potential powers. For whatever reason very few parahumans were resistant to sonic attacks, and a great many were especially vulnerable to them. Those weapons, when turned to lethal settings, tended to make bone tissue explode violently. The resultant mess was something normally reserved for bad horror movies. Somehow, it was less nauseating than what the goblins were doing before they were slaughtered.


We got a look at the frozen clone of Rinke that I had made. It wouldn't have been good enough to fool a really good test, if not for the damage caused by freezing and mild amounts of decomposition. The combination of which, plus any possible medical records of the man being over a decade old. It would fool almost anyone who didn't point some very specific parahuman abilities at the body, and our allies with Cauldron would make sure that didn't happen. It was connected to the destroyed bloated monster by a weird umbilical cord like growth.


"Well, guess that explains why our plans suddenly started working," Lisa quipped. "If he was already dead, of course he couldn't create new adaptive monsters to fight back effectively. Or a plague of mutant bacteria. Or whatever it was he kept doing that we couldn't find a way around."


"You didn't think to check?" Armstrong asked.


"That the target died of natural causes a few weeks after we started planning the mission? Or checking on plans we were told wouldn't work after finding one that would?" Lisa asked. "No, we didn't think to waste Dinah's very finite resources on such questions. Her power promised us a victory, and we got our victory."


"If I may," Calvert spoke up. "The objective being achieved by happenstance before the attack even began is irrelevant. The fact is, we retook Ellisburg. It's hard to consider this anything but a successful mission."


"If it makes you feel better," Lisa added. "There's no need to mention he was already dead. Your troops went in. Defeated Nilbog's monsters. Came back with a dead Nilbog. Everyone break out the good champagne."


"You both make excellent points," Costa-Brown agreed. "The operation was everything we wanted to achieve, even if not the way we expected. If anything, we can consider this a greater victory for Nilbog's death being discovered now, instead of in a month or two when he thawed out and really started to decompose."


Lisa's eyes widened. "She's right. Nilbog must have some kind of deadman's switch. Maybe it wasn't triggered due to the whole natural causes thing, but if we didn't act when we did, we might have faced the same... whatever... that caused the deaths seen in Dinah's predictions. Only worse because we wouldn't have been ready and anticipating the event. Don't think of this as not killing Nilbog. Think of it as disarming a ticking timebomb."


AmusementDismissive. I agreed with Taylor. You're hamming it up a bit, Lisa.


"Message received," the Secretary replied. "We'll keep this detail out of the public awareness. It wouldn't do anyone any good to have civilians wondering just how things might have gone if circumstances were slightly different."