"So, point of no return?" Mila asked. I had just enough time to put the palm of my hand to my face place and groan, before the lights turned brutally bright and the emergency blast shielding on the windows slammed down. "You weren't supposed to say that out loud." Kyrea told her. To my surprise, she somehow looked bored despite being unable to see her face. "The moment you did, Napoleon figured out our plan." Actually, it ran several hundred simulations to isolate the possible reasons she would say that, extrapolated our actual plan from the results of those simulations, and discovered a non-zero possibility that we could succeed. Right now, it was evaluating responses that likely included cadeometirc weaponry. My HUD displayed a new protocol being broadcasted on the local network. I grinned when I discovered it was a firmware update being sent to every piece of machinery on the base. Every machine. Which included doors. And lights. Which went out, bringing darkness that our gear immediately accommodated for. Another point for Belisarius. "We should go." I said, and Kyrea immediately started running down the hall. We sprinted down the hall, slowing a little as the Sergeant drew her rifle and fired on some frames that were starting to crowd the end of the hall. Her fire broke the leaders apart, and drove them into the gathering mob behind. Mila rolled another grenade into the mass just as I reached the door and overrode the latch, letting it shut into place. "How many of those damn things are there?" Mila asked. "Too many." Kyrea replied. "We need another path." "Service hatch?" Mila asked. "There isn't one." Kyrea replied. "We go outside." I said. "I should be able to override the blast shielding, and all we need to do after that is run directly into the comm tower." "How likely is it that Napoleon is expecting us to do that?" "Unlikely. Pretty sure it doesn't know I can do this." I said, as it applied some of my suit's software directly to the controls for the blast shields and installed an override. As the shield retracted with a sharp hiss, a scrawl of text appeared on my HUD. No. On my contacts. Which were connected directly to the entangled comm I was using to communicate with Belisarius. Warminds will automatically ignore any comm source they don't recognize, a security feature that prevented either I or Belisarius from snitching on Napoleon before now. "NPLN: There is no victory against what's coming." I nearly fell over in shock. The Q-but relay I was attached to had to be manually set to accept any additional point of communications. Somehow, in the brief minutes since Napoleon had designated us a serious threat, it had worked out that I was attached to the Warmind comms. Likely, it judged our current success impossible without a Warmind's assistance. "We lack the knowledge, and the Traveler lacks the volition. Understand, Theo Ratterson, that I am not the only Warmind to arrive at that conclusion." To my surprise, there was a rebuttal in my mind, somehow waiting for this. Waiting to refute the inevitability of our situation. "How do you see in the dark?" I asked it. It didn't respond, so I sent it my answer as I set a power core against the now open window. "You make some light." I covered the power core with a piece of a frame chassis, then stepped back and detonated it. The explosion blew out the window, and sent the air rushing into the vacuum of Ganymede. "That worked." Mila reflected, as she stepped outside. To our surprise, she immediately dashed away, and slid behind an outcropping of rocks. "Damnit!" She hissed over the radio, and her voice sounded harsh. "The emitter is pointed straight at us!" "What?" Kyrea asked, but I already understood, and mentally kicked myself for missing it. The tight-beam interplanetary comm tower is a relic in the age of quantum entanglement. It's a four hundred megawatt laser, because the signal loss over interplanetary distances means that the laser is extremely powerful. An extremely powerful laser. On a tower. Overlooking our chosen path. I am an idiot. "The Warmind's turned the comm tower into a death-Ray." Mila shouted over the radio. "How did you find out?" I asked. "Scout suit. My sensors picked up the power surge from the tower." Napoleon, not knowing much about the prisoner, wouldn't have access to the capabilities of her suit. A small oversight, but one that just saved our lives. "Nicely done." Kyrea said. "So, to revise our plan a bit, miss Everett, we have to get Theo into the comm tower. Of the three of us, he's the most likely one to know how to use an interplanetary communication laser." Sad part is, she's right. I had to set up the comm relay with the Warmind Scheherazade on Neptune using a tight beam laser. Every set of instructions had two hours of lag, all of which I was paid for. Handsomely. It was a good week. "It would be best if all three of us made it inside, but it isn't mission critical. Also, we can't risk exposing you to too much danger, since your death makes our secondary objective a lot harder." Kyrea continued. "Yeah. We're pretty sure you boobytrapped your ship." I added, and Mila laughed in response. "Also, we also cannot damage that laser." Kyrea finished. "The laser's designed for precision." I noted. "It doesn't move extremely quickly." "Good. So our plan is to point that thing as far away from Theo's broken window as possible. You and I will make noise, kick up dirt, and try to make ourselves targets. If we succeed in drawing the laser to us, Theo will make a run for the tower. If it doesn't move, we keep flanking it until either of us could make it to the tower safely. Everyone clear on what we're doing?" "Napoleon is probably using the security camera feeds to aim the laser. If you see any, take them out." I added. "On it." Mila said, as she dashed away from her last point of cover and ran for a small ridge nearby. As she ran, the ground behind her began to smoulder, the rock beginning to deform from the sudden application of extraordinary heat. But she made it beneath the ridge before the laser swept over her position. Sergeant Kyrea moved next, scrambling up and over the top of the corridor's roof. I could hear her slide down the far side as her combat armour bashed against the blast shielding, before I was left alone for the first time since Ragnarok started. "Let me save them, Theo!" The scrawl appeared on my contact again, and I didn't need to guess who it was. "I can save them! Tens of billions of little lives that matter more than every star orbiting every quasar since time began, and nothing any of you can do will stop what's coming! Magellan is gone! Scheherazade tells her last tale even now! Saladin and Charlemagne will fare no better!" It wrote to me, and I had to choke back the tears. Scheherazade was Neptune's Warmind, and possessed enough interplanetary doomsday weapons to turn the surface of every rock in the solar system into glass. The defensive setup was meant to slow or even cripple an incoming armada, to give us breathing room. And whatever had snuffed Magellan out was now tangling with it. "Rasputin will abandon you!" It sent. And something about that bothered me. Will? "Laser's moved to track me. Eight seconds to make it to my position from Mila's. Think you can make a sprint to the tower?" Kyrea asked over the radio. I thought for a few moments. "Yes." I said aloud, and prepared to run. "What has Belisarius invoked?" Napoleon asked. "What hope does it offer?" I typed out my thought as I prepared to run, and sent it as I started. I think that telling Napoleon that Belisarius had plans for an ontological weapon stunned its thinking for a little while. Long enough that I managed to make it about halfway to the tower before the laser began realigning itself. "It's already charging!" Mila called out. "Find cover, Theo!" Kyrea barked. I didn't glance back, and kept running. I knew that a trail of flash-seared landscape was going to be snaking towards me, and knew that even my expensive suit wouldn't last more than half a second. My only real hope of making it to the tower was in the tower's engineers. Engineers are lazy. If they don't think a function needs to be built into something, they won't bother. Case in point, having a comm laser target the ground. Napoleon was probably teasing unexpected functionality from it, but it should only go so far. Sure enough, about three meters back, the laser stopped chasing me. "Okay, how did you know it would stop there?" Mila asked, as she noticed the laser holding its position. "Gravity isn't as dependable as the laziness of an engineer." I replied. "Now, the big question is when Napoleon decides to wipe the laser's targeting software and transmission protocols." "Not an issue. It can't override the security around the comm array's ROM. You know, because I'm not an idiot and already thought of that problem." A familiarity snarky AI sent to me. "Good. You're back. Would you believe Napoleon realized I'm in contact with a Warmind?" I asked it, surprisingly angry.