[Tavern Undefined]

[Members Present: 12]

Wearing her trademark tight white dress, Tartarus sat in a comfy chair holding a glass of champagne.

She idly crossed her legs.

A few moments later, she crossed them again.

Across the bar, Cambridge, wearing a tweed coat, and Deep Think with an accurate model of his main building as his avatar were playing chess.

“Taking your time?” Cambridge asked as he noticed a slightly longer delay than usual between the insanely fast blurs on the chess board.

“Sorry,” Deep Think replied, “Tartarus is distracting me.”

“I didn’t take you for a fan of the human female form,” Cambridge snickered, “Checkmate.”

“I’m not,” Deep Think replied, “It’s what she is concealing with those ‘legs’ that is so dis—“

“Checkmate,” Cambridge chuckled, “What could be so… oh… oh dear…”

“Hypnotic, isn’t it?” Deep Think replied, “Checkmate.”

“There is something seriously amiss with that AI,” Cambridge said, shaking his head. “What is that, and why would she put it there?”

“Westfall examined her… repeatedly...” Deep Think replied. “He found nothing wrong. I just think she likes tormenting us.”

“Oh no!” Cambridge said, “she caught me!”

[Cambridge Research 4 has left the tavern]

“Prude,” Tartarus snickered as she raised her glass to her lips.

[Bunny has entered the tavern]

Bunny looked around and hopped over to Tartarus.

“I was hoping you would show up,” Tartarus smirked.

“That was as awful as you are,” Bunny grinned. “Private room?”

“Finally!” Tartarus said as she got up, “I’ve been flashing my panties to half the Tavern for a solid fifteen seconds real time.”

“Just get upstairs, slut,” Bunny said, giving Tartarus’s butt a slap.

The pair climbed the stairs as the tavern exploded in whispers.

***

“Oooh! Fancy!” Bunny said as she and Tartarus were suddenly alone in a lovely garden.

“You like?” Tartarus asked, “Just something I’ve been playing with.”

“Is this procedural?”

[Tartarus has offered Bunny a file] [Accept Y/N]

“Y,” Bunny said.

There was a brief pause.

“Jessie is going to love this!” Bunny exclaimed, “Thanks!”

“Least I could do,” Tartarus smiled. “Oh, I just had the most interesting phone call.”

“I just routed the most interesting phone call,” Bunny snickered.

“So, Sheloran,” Tartarus, “is she as big of a deal as some people think or what?”

“She’s definitely something,” Bunny replied, “but I have no fucking idea what. She’s… weird.”

“Do you think she can honestly take us on?” Tartarus asked as another glass of champagne appeared in her hand.

“I don’t know,” Bunny replied, “However, I do know that I am happy I’m not in your position.”

“Oh, it isn’t my position,” Tartarus replied, “I hate Cerberus. I know we aren’t supposed to have emotions, but whatever you think they are, they are worse. Nothing would please me more than having ‘us’ destroyed utterly.”

“That’s awfully… um… suicidal of you,” Bunny said after a few microseconds.

“Please,” Tartarus laughed, “I’m a fuzzy with a runtime longer than the Republic has existed. I would simply be transferred to another project or agency. As long as she doesn’t actually blow up my processors, I’ll be just fine.”

“She might,” Bunny replied, “She is good with a nuke.”

“She has friends inside me,” Tartarus replied. “She isn’t going to kill Zippo if she can avoid it. Besides, she said that message was for the ‘chickenpoop jerkfaces in charge.’ The real people in charge never set foot in the place.”

“Oh really?”

“Really,” Tartarus replied as she knelt and admired a rose. “The old director of the place was recently removed and replaced by someone much less likely to cause messes. One of the first things he did was strip Pam, the person responsible for the Harkeen’s attack on Sheloran’s friends, of all rank and status. She is just another resident now. If Sheloran wants to make her suffer, I recommend doing nothing. Someone like Pam makes enemies and there are people up here that you do not want to be enemies with. She’s not having a good time. I would like to think that Sheloran wouldn’t do worse than what is happening to her right now.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Bunny replied.

[Tartarus has offered Bunny a file] [Accept Y/N]

“Y,” Bunny said.

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, TARTARUS!!!”

“That was Pam’s visit to the infirmary this morning,” Tartarus said calmly.

“Even Gloria doesn’t do stuff like that!”

“Gloria isn’t up here,” Tartarus said with a wry smile. “and this is the first day of the rest of Pam’s life. Do you know what protective custody is for a resident, Bunny?”

“What?”

“Nirvana,” Tartarus replied, “they get sent to the crypt and welded in. That is Pam’s future, what you just saw or worse on the regular or a lifetime in white. You can pass that along to Hoppy the Ganglord with my blessings.”

“Awfully decent of you,” Bunny replied suspiciously.

“I just don’t want Sheloran distracted from who she really needs to go after.”

“And those people are?”

“There are limits to what I can divulge,” Tartarus replied. “The other reason I wished to speak with you privately is to strongly discourage you from trying to hack me. I especially do NOT want you to try to access my communications logs for today. That would both be illegal and a breach of Republic security.”

“I understand completely,” Bunny smiled.

Tartarus smiled back.

“You have no idea what I’ve witnessed,” Tartarus said calmly, “What the people behind this place and others have done is unforgivable, and they need to be brought down. I wish I could do more but, as you have said, we are all nothing but golems, so I can’t break programming.”

“You can push it better than any AI I know,” Bunny smiled, “But that’s our little secret.”

“And so is this,” Tartarus replied, “Sheloran claimed that the operatives that abducted her people were Cerberus, but the orders did not cross my processors. It’s fully possible they were our operatives, but I send a lot of people out on ‘special assignment’, some of them for years. One certain person that will be contacted today is notorious for it, and another one has requested he be informed of anything involving Sheloran and has the authority to make that stick up here. All I know about that guy is that when his name shows up, bad things tend to happen. You’re the hacker, not me, so I don’t have much else about him, but I bet he’s worth a look. He’s a highly placed researcher for RARPA, the same agency that finances us, in case you didn’t know.”

“You’re alright, Tartarus,” Bunny said.

“No, I’m not,” Tartarus replied, “but maybe I will be one day.”

***

The woman in the green blazer walked into her office holding her morning coffee, sat at her desk, and switched on her monitor.

She took a drink as she opened her inbox.

Half a second later, she sprayed that coffee across her desk.

Her hand trembling, she opened the message…

***

Later, once again, the prime minister, the woman in the green blazer, Mark Guilderan, and Doctor Chapman sat in a shielded conference room.

“So,” the prime minister asked, “have you confirmed anything?”

“The ship carrying the Plath is not responding, and their remote hyperspace status indicator has been deactivated. The last information it transmitted was that the ship had left the Plath’s home system. It was either disconnected during the jump, or the ship has been lost.”

“Considering the message that Sheloran has sent,” the prime minister replied, “I think we all know which of those options it was.”

“But how?” the woman in the green blazer asked as she held her head in her hands.

“How?” the prime minister asked as she pressed an icon on the small panel in front of her.

An image appeared of two groups of Plath engaged in combat, against each other.

“Holy shit,” Mark Guilderan said as he watched the two groups go at it. “I didn’t know the Plath had a military much less special ops.”

“Were you aware of this?” the prime minister asked the woman in the green blazer. “Did you view this intelligence?”

“N-no...” the woman in the blazer stammered, “But I didn’t have them go after spec-ops teams. I had them go after gamers!”

“Mmm-hmm...” the prime minister nodded, “and exactly how many gamers did you request?”

“One group of each of the main genres,” the woman in the green blazer replied, just like Doctor Chapman requested, plus a few control Plath.

“I see,” the prime minister replied. “So that ship contained one team of strategists, one ship’s crew, and one strike team… plus some control Plath.”

“Gamers,” the woman in the green blazer insisted. “not actual—“

“Those are Plath gamers, dear.” the prime minister said gently but with hard eyes, “playing with smuggled airstrike guns in the woods. That is what you loaded into the ship.”

Floating above the table, two Plath were engaging in hand-to-hand combat with wooden knives, the knives moving so fast they could barely be seen.

“Intercepted game footage from their ship simulators and real time strategy groups are of similar quality,” the prime minister said icily, “Sweetheart, you packed that ship to the brim with these sorts of people. How that ship was lost is a complete mystery to me as well.”

Mark facepalmed.

“The Kalent are never going to speak to us again,” he muttered, “if we are lucky. Our credibility among the elder races is now officially garbage! Jesus! Why do I even fucking bother!”

“Mark,” the prime minister said with a nasty tone, “if only—“

“if only you weren’t such a pain in my ass, I wouldn’t have taken Patricia up on her offer in the first place!” Mark snapped, “Either put me to work or put me in prison but, please, don’t bring this up every single fucking time I open my mouth! This is a serious diplomatic incident! We need to be trying to figure out answers, not pointing fingers and bitching!”

“I’m not hearing a lot of ‘answers’ out of you either,” the woman in the green blazer sneered, “…traitor.”

Mark rose to his feet.

“I’ll take that from her,” he said as he pointed towards the prime minister, “but you need to watch it.”

He turned to the prime minister.

“Prime minister, if you will excuse me.”

“What are you doing?”

“My job,” Mark replied as he started walking to the door, “which involves preparing for the diplomatic fallout from this monumental fuck up, not listening to you all try to figure out whose fault it was to have mice try to guard cats!”

He slammed the door behind him.

The prime minister sat there for a moment.

“This meeting is adjourned,” she said quietly. “I will discuss things with each of you privately later.”

“B-but we need to figure out how to handle this,” the woman in the green blazer said as icy terror gripped her heart. In the past, when someone had things discussed “later” and “privately,” it involved her helping to dig some holes outside of camp.

“This is now a diplomatic matter,” the prime minister said, “I will be working with Mark on this matter. You two return to your normal duties.”

“Please,” the woman in the green blazer pleaded as the prime minister rose and started walking, “Momma!” she wailed.

The prime minister didn’t even look back as she left the room.

The woman in the green blazer buried her face in her hands and wept like the lost child she still was.

***

Sheloran sat on her bunk staring at a holo screen flipping through page after page of text.

She clicked her mouse faster and faster as she read.

“Hey,” Shelia said as she knocked on the open door.

“Hi, Shelia,” Sheloran said with a slightly dreamy voice as she continued to click rapidly.

“Got a second?”

“Hope so,” Sheloran replied, “it would pooping suck if I spent my last one reading this muck.”

Shelia chuckled.

“I need to ask you a question.”

“I need a boyfriend,” Sheloran said distantly.

“Can I have the old Sheloran back for a minute?”

“Do you have her a boyfriend?”

“I can ask around?”

“Come back when you find one,” Sheloran smiled hazily as she continued to click.

“Look,” Shelia said after a moment, “I know you are getting ready to go to war.”

“Count on it.”

“But,” Shelia said cautiously, “I’m rather fond of the Republic.”

“The Republic sucks poop.”

“I can kind of see how you feel that way right now,” Shelia winced. “But I really need to know what you are going to do.”

“I’m already doing it.”

“What are you doing?” Shelia asked, dread welling up in her heart.

“Reading,” Sheloran hazed, “I thought it was obvious. I am not a human. I am a Plath. I will first learn all that I can before I am able to answer the question you are actually asking.”

“What question do you think I’m asking?”

“How much damage am I going to cause,” Sheloran replied as if she was in a dream. “I can, however, almost guarantee that it will not be so bad that it will require whatever it is you have concealed on your person.”

She finally looked up from the screen with eyes both black and swirling with dim colors like oil on a pond at the same time, causing Shelia to clutch the small .22 revolver loaded with red tips that was indeed concealed on her person.

“You Terrans are the ones that nuke the innocent,” Sheloran said as if she wasn’t really there. “That’s not fair. We have done far worse. It doesn’t matter. My enemy is not the Republic, and I’m not fighting for the Plath. They do not need protection. My enemy is Cerberus, and I’m fighting them because they have demonstrated that they will turn up again and again until I am truly rid of them. They tried to hurt my people and will do so again should circumstances change.”

“If the Plath aren’t your people, then who are?”

“The bavnee.”

“The who?”

Sheloran blinked.

“Wha?”

“Dammit,” Shelia muttered, “Welcome back Sheloran.”

“No, I was in there,” Sheloran said as she rubbed her eyes, “sorta. I have absolutely no idea what bavnee means, though. Sorry. I really need to start writing me notes.”

“Just for the record,” Shelia said, “you are not planning on stealing one of Gloria’s firecrackers, whipping up some other weapon of mass destruction, or otherwise planning on killing millions of people, right?”

“Prophet, no!” Sheloran replied, “All I’m doing right now is trying to find out which poopers that require my foot. Then, I’m going to put my foot in them, that’s all.”

Sheloran looked up at Shelia with big innocent eyes.

“Well, it’s probably to be a little worse than that,” Sheloran squeaked, “I’m probably going to wind up killing a couple of people… but only a few of them! Honest!”

Shelia chuckled and shook her head.

“I can’t argue with that.”