Chapter 98

***This article contains spoilers.***

## Highlights

* Irillith hacks into the Brimorian flagship and ~~steals~~ requisitions their shield tech, leaving a backdoor. However, she felt something malevolent watching her on the network.
* Jade meets Helene, a humanoid with Terran features working in an underwater farm on Brimor. She claims to be one if the Abandoned, and calls the standard Terran language Jade speaks, "the old tongue."
* Deep Lord Athgiloi offers John their most advanced shield tech in exchange for the method of manufacturing eternity crystals. They have to obtain it from the Vulkat, an advanced species of zombie cyborg spiders.
* When Lynette Devereux tries to contact John via the Maliri to ask for help, the call is cut off and Buckingham arrests her for treason, for collaboration with an alien race that poses a direct threat to the Terran Federation. She is shot trying to call and warn Charles.

## Notes

### Miscellaneous

* Deep Pool has seven members. Deep Lord Athgiloi says that John Blake arrived at Sequathis just as Athgiloi informed. They intend to honor the \*letter\* of the agreement and give shield technology to Blake, because the Terran Federation cease to exist within weeks anyway. Plus, they need a sufficiently tempting lure to convince him to venture into the Desolation of Vulkat. They plan to keep keep the Terran Federation's champion far from Terran territory in their time of direst need, without revealing any outward signs of their collusion with the Kintark Empire.
* When Jade was swimming in the Brimor ocean, she found an underground farm with teal-skinned humanoids. When Jade tells Helene, the most beautiful one there, she means no harm, Helene was shocked that she speaks the "old tongue." (Jade was speaking Terran standard.) Helene is "of the Abandoned."
* John is as exaggeratingly over-sensitive as always. Edraele finds out about Tashana's Bolon rape. Luna convinces her to finally stop feeling guilty.
* Desolation of Vulkat is the remains of the Vulkat Empire, a once-mighty civilization. They dwell in nomadic fleets that roam their territory and hunt any who trespass into their space, but they do not leave the boundaries of what must have been the Vulkat Empire. They are impossible to reason or bargain with. Somehow the Vulkat have harnessed the power of powerful devices, eternity crystals, that they use in their shield projectors.
* Deep Lord Athgiloi offers John their most advanced shield tech in exchange for the method of manufacturing eternity crystals. John agrees if they include pre-built devices.
* It turns out Lynette Devereux was on John's side the whole time. From inside the inner circle, she was able to avert most of the more dangerous threats. Devereux goes to warn Charles Harris about the invading Kintark and ask where John is. Charles mistakes what she's talking about, and mentions the upcoming war with the other Progenitor, thinking she's been read in. Devereux pretends she is and, realizing Charles is more important to the survival of the Terran Federation than her, doesn't tell him about the Kintark. Trying to contact John will likely result in arrest or worse, so it is down to her to reach out to John. She'll only get one shot. The moment she uses her security clearance to override the comm blackout and attempt to contact him in Maliri territory, she would tip her hand to Buckingham, so she had to be sure that the message would reach him.
* Vulkat ships: The images were obviously taken from battle footage, showing a series of black ships banded in orange. They were frighteningly alien in design, with a central tear-shaped body that was surrounded by bent ‘limbs’ that swept back from the main hull. In one of the pictures, missile racks were exposed on the black hull, with propellant trails shrouding the ship in a grey haze as it opened fire with scores of tiny projectiles. The Vulkat were eight-limbed arachnids, their pallid carapaces a faded black and orange, with glinting metal attachments all over their bodies. More unsettling than that was the strange appearance of decay to the hideous looking creatures, as though their bodies had been gradually decomposing for quite some time before the picture was taken. At least seven feet tall and they must be quite heavy with all those cybernetic parts.
* Helene looks like a beautiful, blue-eyed Terran girl, except for the fact that she has light-green hair, teal-coloured skin and elegant, turquoise fins on her forearms and calves. She stands about five and a half feet tall and has a toned, shapely figure, with well-muscled legs, a buoyant bust, and a compact, perfectly-rounded bottom.
* Lynette Devereux tried to contact the Maliri from her office in the Citadel on Terra to get word to John. However, she was cut off and her call rerouted to Buckingham. He'd had her under investigation for weeks. Since she violated a direct order from the Fleet Commander, he's charging her with treason, for collaboration with an alien race that poses a direct threat to the Terran Federation. She tried to run to get word to Charles while evading arrest, but she was shot before she could.

### Minor Characters

* Athgiloi: Deep Lord. Deep Pool. Leader of the Brimorian Enclave. 120 years old.
* Rilosash: Lord. Deep Pool.
* Semord: Lord. Deep Pool.
* Sibhaloi: Lord. Deep Pool.
* Paotegh: Lord. Deep Pool.
* Celphna: Athgiloi's concubine and gift to him. Lenarran.
* Charles Harris: Admiral. John's old friend.
* Lynette Devereux: Admiral. Scared of John but strongly believes the Terran Federation should work with him.
* Dacres: Rear Admiral.
* Janet Wilson: Lieutenant.

### Ship

* Hyperion
* Nereus

### Species

* Abandoned: Terran features. Fins at their wrists and calves. No tail.
* Vulkat: Zombie cyborg spiders.

### Ancient Program

There were scores of hunter-killer programs running in the data streams, gliding around the network like watchful aquatic predators as they sought out intruders. Their sensor suites were not particularly efficient though, meaning that dodging them was easy, but with so many swirling around the network she had to keep a constant wary eye to avoid having one simply blunder into her. Gritting her teeth in irritation, Irillith went to work on the first internal security net.

Meanwhile, deep within the network, another uninvited presence stirred within the Brimorian Cyber-Realm, detecting a faint tremor caused by Irillith’s newly-inserted code. This program was ancient, predating the Brimorian engineers who had built this network by several millennia. The six-legged, jet-black intruder drifted to the data streams and impaled one of the passing hunter-killers with a razor-sharp limb, making the Brimorian security program flicker and convulse as its code was rapidly rewritten.

Set loose once again, the hijacked program set off in the data stream, swimming innocuously in the currents just like its hapless peers. It circled around the network, homing in on the new intruder, and carefully observing Irillith as it drifted past. Once it was beyond detection range, it thrashed with furious swishes of its tail, racing around the network until it was in range once again. There it slowed, cruising at a languid pace past the Maliri hacker where it renewed its surveillance, then repeated the same cycle again.

Irillith felt a shiver run up her spine and she glanced around carefully, checking to make sure one of the security programs hadn’t detected her. She was running a tap on the network’s alarm subroutine, so if the Brimorians should detect her, she’d be able to bolt to safety from the Cyber-realm. That tap remained undisturbed, so she mentally shrugged and figured that she was just being paranoid.

Moving on to the fourth firewall, she started breaking through, but couldn’t shake the creepy feeling of being watched. Pausing every few moments to check her tap and to watch for Brimorian detection programs, she saw nothing outwardly alarming, just the dumb hunter-killer programs drifting past. Figuring that the alien nature of this digital network was getting to her, she hurried on with her code breaking, slicing through the security net then prowling on towards the fifth.

By the time she was onto the sixth firewall, the feelings of being watched had intensified so much that she was spending more time looking for potential attackers than working on her hacking. She set up another code-breaker, letting it handle the work, while she focused on watching for threats. When she received the notification that the sixth firewall was breached, she rushed on, feeling her heart pounding in her chest.

Irillith had never felt this anxious before, not even when she’d hacked into Nexus’ realm. Finding the relevant tech repository, she did a cursory search and found the schematics for the shield generators used aboard the Brimorian flagship. Uploading them to a portable data store, her eyes darted left and right, while she spun around to check that nothing was sneaking up behind her. She sobbed with relief when the data store chimed that the information had been successfully uploaded, then fled from the Brimorian network with her stolen tech in tow.

The rogue hunter-killer returned to its new master once its surveillance target had left the network. It waited patiently for the six-limbed program to impale it with a data-jack and absorb all the tracking data it had recorded. As soon as that information had been archived, the ancient program deactivated the Brimorian hunter-killer then created a simple unmodified replacement. Its job done, the black program returned to a semi-dormant state, watching and waiting in case it should be triggered into action once again.