Chương 203: B2 Chapter 203: Hold

A day later, Meno had reached rank three in Minesweeper Omega 5. It had taken almost everything since Aurelia woke beside him. He stopped for food only because Hyperion kept delivering it, slept when his body eventually forced the issue, then went straight back to the workstation whenever he opened his eyes. Chadculator was still above him, so the problem remained unresolved, but rank three was close enough that Meno could feel the boss starting to sweat.

He was halfway through another high-level board when the penthouse doors opened without warning and a small army of Hyperion people walked in. Xarr led them, followed by Zirya, several scientists Meno recognized from the XTachyon floor, and a uniformed man he had never seen before. The scientists were moving too fast, talking over each other, and checking their tablets every few steps. Xarr and the military guy kept themselves under control, but everyone behind them was on edge.

"We have an emergency," Xarr said. The uniformed man stepped forward before anyone could turn the situation into a joke.

"I am Commander Varthos. An unidentified mechanical entity has crossed the Ganymede wormhole and is pursuing the Carrier on its return vector to Earth. All attempts at communication have failed. We received a single response identifying it as Olutron." The guy talked like every extra word cost ammunition.

"Capabilities unknown. Mass significantly exceeds any Frame currently aboard the Carrier. I expect everyone here to understand the severity of that." Meno looked at the others. Hyperion had entered someone else's system, robbed their moon, disrupted the mining operation, crippled one combat machine, blown a hole through an orbital platform, and left. What exactly had they expected? A thank-you card? Meno had assumed the Carrier was armed. Apparently not. It was just a zero-DPS mount.

"Why not just blow it up?" Thorn asked.

"The Carrier has no independent offensive capability," Varthos said.

"Its combat package consists entirely of the SpaceAssault Frames it transports. Three surviving Frames are heavily damaged. Two remain operational. Every other unit assigned to the program was lost during previous mission attempts." Aurelia folded her arms.

"So you want two of us back in the capsules to stop it? Don't you have other pilots?"

"We do," Varthos said.

"None have demonstrated performance remotely comparable to this group. If the Olutron reaches Earth, public detection becomes likely regardless of the engagement outcome. A disclosure event at that scale could cause mass panic. The resulting casualties would not require the machine to fire a single weapon." Xarr took over.

"We require two pilots. Stop the Olutron at any cost. Compensation will match the previous mission regardless of outcome."

"There is something else," Zirya said.

"Resynchronizing through an XTachyon again this soon carries extreme neurological risk. If the connection is forcibly interrupted, including through destruction of the remote Frame, there is a serious possibility the pilot will not emerge normally." Varthos turned on her immediately. Xarr said nothing, but his attention snapped toward her.

"You were not authorized to disclose that," Varthos said.

"They deserve to know the risk." Minesweeper vanished from Meno's mind.

"You mean death?"

"Yes," Zirya said.

"There is a strong possibility." Arayu moved closer to Karmabeast.

"And if they survive?"

"If the connection ends normally, most likely you would be fine. But it has never been tested at this interval for safety reasons."

"Enough," Xarr said. Karmabeast shifted beside Arayu.

"But Earth can stop it, right? We have all the big guns here?"

"As I said, its capabilities are unconfirmed," Varthos replied.

"The most probable outcome is that Earth-based defenses could destroy it, but that assessment is not guaranteed. What is guaranteed is that an engagement near Earth cannot be concealed."

"So this is damage control," Aurelia said.

"Contain the mess before everyone sees it. Also, the Carrier is holding the astatine we harvested. I'm guessing you don't want to lose that either." Xarr did not bother denying it.

"The material is critical to Earth's long-term position in space. We spent years reaching the point where meaningful acquisition became possible. Losing that cargo now is not acceptable."

"I'm not doing it," Karmabeast said.

"No thanks. No rez shrine to spend the creds." Xarr remained composed. Varthos looked considerably closer to physically dragging somebody toward the XTachyon floor. Arayu shook her head.

"If Earth can't stop it, two SpaceAssault Frames won't either. If Earth can stop it, risking ourselves is pointless. The panic problem is yours. You created it. Deal with it. I take zero blame."

"Destruction is not required," Varthos said.

"We consider the mission successful if the Olutron stops its approach, breaks pursuit, or retreats through the wormhole. You do not need to destroy it. You need to force a change in behavior." That was like saying the same thing with different words. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Yeah, no," Thorn said.

"I'm out. Those Frames aren't bad, but they have no good cooldown. It's in the name. SpaceAssault. Quick hit, in and out. They're weak against huge reinforced targets with overwhelming firepower. Unless you have a SpaceBulldozer variant, it's hopeless." Xarr looked across the room.

"Five hundred million credits for each of the two pilots who accept. The remaining three receive one hundred million each." Meno looked at Zirya.

"What's the real chance of not coming out of the capsule if the Frame gets destroyed?"

"Approximately eighty percent." That killed it. No amount of credits fixed those numbers. Maybe there would have been a real decision if Hyperion offered them something stronger, but Meno already understood the SpaceAssault Frame and its limits. The blade was overpowered against anything it could reach, while the beam cannon took too long under pressure, extended fights destroyed the energy sustain, and the entire build survived by moving faster than the enemy could solve it.

Speed only beat raw power if you had room to ramp. Against a giant machine capable of chasing the Carrier, the matchup was trash. The SpaceAssault's strongest possible weapon was its own fusion core exploding. Meno was not touching that RNG. Part of him still wanted to say yes. That was boredom and restlessness talking, the same part of his brain that had spent the previous night throwing perfect Minesweeper runs into coin flips because stopping at rank three was lame.

But skill only beat the math boss when you found an exploit, and right now Meno did not have one. Varthos shot Zirya another furious look before facing the group.

"The opponent remains an unknown. Treating it as unbeatable is as irrational as treating it as harmless. Two pilots with your demonstrated performance may be enough to damage it and force it to disengage." His voice hardened.

"Understand what happens if we wait for it to reach Earth. It does not need to fire on a city. One visible extraterrestrial engagement could be enough. The World Government is already strained. Continental blocs start questioning collective defense, security agreements fracture, military postures change, and eventually somebody decides they are safer acting alone." He paused.

"Millions can die from that chain without the Olutron ever touching the atmosphere."

"Yeah, that astatine whatever really doesn't sound worth it," Thorn said. Xarr's answer came harder than before.

"Civilizations that wait for permission to secure strategic resources eventually answer to civilizations that did not. Hyperion spent years reaching that system because what exists there could alter Earth's position in space. We also had no evidence those machines would remain on their side of the wormhole indefinitely." He looked directly at Thorn.

"Now we have evidence they will not." He looked from Thorn to Aurelia, then toward Meno.

"Waiting would not have made us safer. It would have made us weaker when contact eventually occurred. Stabilized astatine gives us a path toward space-capable Frames powerful enough to defend this system on equal terms. I will not apologize for acquiring the means to prevent humanity from becoming obsolete."

"It is the price of scientific progress," Zirya said. Varthos clearly wanted the room back under military control.

"Even if everyone here declines, Hyperion will deploy the best pilots currently available. Our models give them approximately a twenty-percent chance of producing a meaningful mission result." His eyes settled on Meno.

"With pilots from this group, approximately fifty percent." That was barely better than gambling on Minesweeper.

"The consequences will not distinguish between those responsible and those who refused to act," Varthos continued.

"If this fails, blame becomes irrelevant. Everyone gets the result." Xarr rose from the chair beside the living-room table.

"Nine hundred million credits for each of the two pilots. One hundred million for each of the remaining three." His gaze moved across all five of them.

"That is my final offer. I could increase it. I will not. If everything you have just heard is insufficient and money remains the deciding variable, then you are not the people I need in those capsules. I would rather accept the lower probability with pilots who understand why they are there." Still no. They could offer twenty billion and it would not matter. Hyperion lied for a living. Feltforge lied for a living. Senfestra made other people lie for them for a living.

For all Meno knew, half of Varthos's speech had been prepared five minutes before they entered the penthouse because "millions will die" worked better than "please protect our trillion-credit rocks." Maybe Earth really was in danger. Maybe the Carrier mattered more. Maybe Hyperion just needed the wormhole program to stay buried. There would be other missions and more money. Once their nervous systems had recovered, they could go in again with better Frames and proper equipment.

Rank one also meant knowing when to hold. Mostly it meant pushing, but sometimes refusing to push was what kept the run alive.

"I will do it," Aurelia said. For a heartbeat, Meno heard the words without connecting them to Aurelia. Then he grabbed her hand.

"Aurelia, don't. Have you lost it?"

"What do you mean, don't?" she asked.

"You just told me that if we let other people make the decisions, we still get the consequences. You called me out for never being able to decide anything."

"This is not what I meant. At all. I told you to keep moving toward your goals without overthinking everything. You never wanted to do this in the first place."

"You're right, Meno. I never did." She did not pull her hand away.

"But now I do. Because I believe them. I can't sit here and let it happen just because somebody else caused it," Aurelia said.

"You will die. One hundred percent." Meno tightened his grip without meaning to.

"They'll put you in there with some clown who has zero understanding of how we think. You don't need the money. None of us need it. Don't."

"Meno, I am not here to keep you company while you drive yourself insane over the smallest thing. Like that stupid Minesweeper." That was completely unrelated.

"I admire your ability to tune out reality over the most idiotic thing," Aurelia continued.

"Unfortunately, I can't. I understand the risk, and I don't need to justify this to myself. It feels like the right thing to do."

"It isn't. Once our cooldown is gone and we can use the XTachyon safely, we can deal with this. Even if that thing reaches Earth, with the right Frames we'll stop it." Meno could hear himself getting louder.

"There is no reason to do this now. Don't try to be a hero. We can go back and get more rocks later. No problem."

"And what if I want to be a hero, Meno?" Aurelia asked.

"Then what?" Aurelia yanked her hand free from his grip.

"Are you the only one allowed to obsess over rank one? And what they said about the government being fragile is something I know for a fact. If there is a large-scale space battle anywhere near Earth, they won't be able to hide it. It will lead to war." Her voice stayed level.

"Humans versus humans. Again. The stupid history you never bothered to learn repeating itself. I do not want this." Why did she have to go braindead now? They had only just found each other again. Meno had spent the last two days getting emotionally farmed by one fake relationship, somehow fallen back into the worst possible timing with Aurelia, and now an alternate-dimension garbage robot had shown up to ruin that too. If he let her go alone and she died, he would lose his mind.

If he followed her, he was accepting a mission his own math said was trash. Lose-lose. This was not even RNG. RNG eventually gave you a result. She had given him two options and both deleted something he wanted to keep. Aurelia had somehow managed to make him angrier than he could remember being in his entire life. She got baited by a stupid quest. Which part of only suckers do quests had she failed to grasp? She was the dumbest, most annoying, overconfident, spoiled, daddy's-little-princess idiot on Earth.

"FUCK!" The shout killed every conversation in the penthouse.

"If we die, you still pay that money to my mother. Draw up the papers right now." Xarr said nothing as Meno pointed at him.

"And Veyrath 2. 0 does not release before I respawn. If you have to take over Feltforge, do it." He was furious enough that the words came out cleaner than everything in his head.

"Do you understand?"