Ragnarok

Chapter 34 - Ghost

For all that V.I.s were thought to be free of emotional complications, Rei could not deny a high level of tension in her liquid metal form, enough so that she chose to drop her human seeming and become a smooth, reflective figure of silvery metal. The fact that she now knew Smith contained some sort of Trojan kept her on edge. Smith himself probably wasn't even aware of what was lurking inside his mind, and Rei had been warned about telling him herself.

She was privately glad that Micah was asleep as the Sephirot began its landing approach, though since she existed partially within Micah's own brain, she supposed that her human host was no more safe than if he had been riding along. The Rei that rode with Smith and the Rei that was in Micah's implant, though, weren't necessarily the same Rei, merely parts of the whole.

If worst came to worst, Rei would sever her connection to this body as if it was a limb that had become gangrenous, collapsing the Voidgate behind her when she left. At least in theory, her body would self-destruct within moments of her severing the connection, but the planet they were landing on had already demonstrated technology well in advance of anything she had seen, even on Olympus, so she hoped that she didn't need to test that theory.

The Sephirot's descent was smooth; Ragnarok had long since lost any atmosphere that might cause the sort of turbulent re-entry that one could expect on Earth or Mars. As they approached the massive planet, she could feel its gravity well before the surface. It was light at first, barely noticable against the thrust of the Sephirot's engines, but it increased steadily as they got closer to the planet. When the gravity hit twice Earth normal, there was finally a bit of a shudder in the ship, as its thrusters now turned towards slowing its descent.

The flight crew had picked a large, open square near the edge of the massive city that continued to face straight towards the Sun, which from this distance, was still barely distinguishable from the rest of the stars visible all around it.

Jupiter still loomed large ahead of the alien world. From this distance, it looked about the same size as the moon from Earth, though half of it was in umbra. The side facing away from the Sun was not invisible, however; the dark side of Jupiter rippled with firestorms, the blazing after-effects of the cosmic hailstorm that had cost Jupiter two minor moons and Enceladus. The King of Planets still enjoyed an embarrassment of riches, but its wide-spread empire was in turmoil nonetheless.

Rei found that studying Jupiter's chaotic surface helped distract her from the cyclopean architecture that was rising up around her. A glance at her scrolling HUD showed that Mia was doing a running commentary, which Rei in turn was beaming back to the Solar Datanet, routed for the moment through, naturally enough, Jove itself.

Apparently, these gigantic, broad towers were largely hollow inside, but braced in surprisingly clever ways. Not many of the buildings had more than a few floors, despite the towering facades; Mia hypothesized this was because on such a high-gravity world, jumping or climbing from one level to the next would be exceedingly difficult. More natural, cavelike slopes were present in some of the highest towers, like spiraling conch shells of some sort of extremely high-tensile material. They seemed largely sized to fit only one inhabitant, however, with a single broad basement to hide their harems and young; this was a culture of a few high-perched elites, and a large collection of outcasts, breeding females, and apparently a priest ... or perhaps a scientist. Mia was not entirely sure if it was one, the other, or both.

Finally, with a shudder, the Sephirot settled onto the massive planet. It was as gentle a landing as could be asked for, but with the heavy gravity, even that caused a hydraulic lurch as the landing gear responded to the heavy burden of landing on Ragnarok's surface. Then it perched there, silent, as around it a long-dead city waited in airless stillness.