#counterassaults

[dudaizup0ty8h4]

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[sketchyonlooker]

Emergency Alert System :: FEMA Emergency Action Notification

[ This is an Emergency Action Notification. ]

[ We interrupt our program at the request of the White House. This is a national emergency. The President of the United States or his designated representative will appear shortly over the Emergency Broadcast System. ]

[ The president of the United States appears on screen. The usual White House office is not visible, and a more dimly lit area without windows is identified. ]

"This nation has come under attack by unknown creatures, mostly reptilian in apperance. They are incredibly hostile to all human beings and seek to kill whoever they attack. The creatures come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from the size of an average human to a small building. Some of them even have fantastical appearances such as dragons and dinosaurs. This may all seem unreal, but that is currently what is happening right now."

"The attacks are occurring worldwide. We do not know what the purpose is, only that the creatures are determined to eradicate humans. The military has been deployed to fight back against these creatures. However, their sudden attack and numbers make it difficult to mount an effective counterassault.

"Once again, these creatures are highly dangerous. It is advised that if you are already indoors to find the lowest level and stay there. Do not go near the windows. Do not appear visibly present from the outside. These creatures will attempt to break in if they notice you.

"If you are outside, it is advised to go indoors immediately. If you are travelling via public transportation or car, it is advised you stop and do your best to hide if no buildings are available."

"We will get through this. Our great nation will fight for its people. We will do our best to keep everyone safe. Thank you."

[ This concludes our Emergency Action Notification. The message will be repeated in the following languages... ]

----

Los Angeles City Hall - Revision: Town Hall Website

To those that still alive and can read this, the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Los Angeles is a safe haven from the monster attacks. We have an angel here from god here that is combatting the monsters with all her strength, delivering justice with her mighty hammer and smiting these devils.

Many are currently taking refuge at the aquarium. Before our angel appeared, we are not sure why it has been left undamaged. Maybe it is because this is a holy place that hides us from the monsters' senses.

I repeat, if you are in the surrounding areas looking for shelter, head to the Aquarium of the Pacific if you can safely do so. Otherwise, stay where you are.

----

Honolulu Capital City Hall Website

All fights to and from Hawaii are grounded until further notice.

There has been severe disruptions to public transit and internet architecture.

If you are reading this, a safe zone has been established at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport. We are however currently in the middle of a conflict between the sea monsters in the area and an unknown number of skeletal creatures. It is unclear whether these skeleton creatures are hostile to humans, though their actions have benefits us by combatting the definitively hostile sea monsters.

We advise to avoid the sea and air routes in the area until further notice.

----

Alameda Naval Air Station - San Francisco, CA - Military Orders

Memo: Golden Gate Bridge has fallen. Make appropriate accomodations.

A safe zone has been established at the Transamerica Pyramid. We have teams Metalhead, Seabound, and Crisis manning the defensive line. Reinforcements have been delayed due to the collapse of Golden Gate Bridge.

Small caliber firearms are ineffective against most creatures. Artillery and explosion munitions are required against medium-to-large monsters. Close combat is not advised.

There is currently an unknown entity that does not match the description of the reptilian creatures we are fighting. Allegiance unknown, and those who play the game Duel Monsters here are unfamiliar with the humanoid entity. As of right now, the entity's actions are benefiting us as they seem capable to take down a number of creatures solo. Do not engage if seen in the area and only assist if the entity appears to be in dire straits. If this entity's actions become hostile, let Baseplate know immediately.

----

Sacramento City Hall Website

The primary emergency shelter, the California State Capital, has been destroyed in the fighting. The secondary emergency shelter, the California Supreme Court, is currently full and cannot accomodate more people.

If you are in the Sacramento area, please stay put inside the building you are in. On top of the fighting between the military and monsters, there is an unknown green-glowing Duel Monster that is combating the monsters. A floating green skull marks his location. Avoid the area if you are currently in a safe place.

----

Domino City Museum || Domino City Hall

If you are reading this, there are designated safe zones established in Domino City. If you are close to either area, please either head for the Domino City Museum or the Kame Game Shop. Preferably the Domino City Museum given the lack of space at the Kame Game Shop.

Praise be to the King of Games.

[destiny-aesthetics]

𝕋𝕀𝕄𝔼𝕃𝕀ℕ𝔼 [ℙ𝔸ℝ𝕋 𝟘𝟙]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐲 𝟐

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑟 𝐴𝑤𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑑 - 𝑆𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑂𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐖𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐃

When hope seemed lost, the Traveler ended its slumber and burst with Light, damaging its shell but saving the Last City from Ghaul. The shockwave traveled deep into the stars, waking even greater threats…

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐖𝐀𝐑

Dominus Ghaul led his Red Legion Cabal on an assault of the Last City. Victorious, he used Cabal technology to ensnare the Traveler and block Guardians' access to the Light.

Guardians regathered the Vanguard and mounted a counterassault to take back humanity's home. Ghaul's plan to steal the Light backfired, and the Traveler destroyed him.

𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐒𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐒

Osiris, the former Warlock Vanguard and exile from the Last City, sought to thwart Panoptes, the Infinite Mind, from using simulations to achieve total victory for the Vex.

Osiris and the Guardian entered the Infinite Forest, a Vex simulation engine, and defeated Panoptes. Osiris chose to remain in the Forest to use its simulations for humanity's gain.

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐃

After the Traveler woke, the shockwave caused Warsats to crash on the surface of Mars, revealing the core of the Golden Age Warmind Al, Rasputin… as well as forgotten foes.

Ana Bray, Hunter and descendent of a Golden Age lineage, worked with the Guardian to defeat the Hive worm god Xol and his herald, Nokris. Rasputin pledged to safeguard humanity, but only on its own terms.

𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐒𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐍

In a high-stakes prison escape, Uldren Sov and his eight Barons took out legendary Hunter, Cayde-6, and unleashed chaos across the Reef. Avenge the fallen Vanguard leader at any cost.

Uncover the mysteries at the heart of the Dreaming City, earn a wealth of new Exotic weapons, and carry the Light into the Shattered Throne dungeon and Last Wish raid.

𝐒𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐄

Guardians met Ada-1, reclusive Exo and curator of the weapon foundry called The Black Armory. Though distrustful of Lightbearers, Ada needed help to recover her Forges, lost during the Red War.

Guardians recovered all four Armory forges and unearthed secrets of Ada's own past, rekindling the Armory's operations and changing Ada's outlook on those who wield the Light.

𝐒𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑

The Drifter upped the ante on his Gambit, much to the Vanguard's disappointment. Guardians made a choice, to spy on the Drifter or to work more closely with him.

Guardians learned bits of Drifter's past: that the Nine are patrons of his endeavors, and that he knew their Emissary days past, when both were different people.

𝐒𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐎𝐏𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄

Emperor Calus, disgraced former leader of the Cabal, enticed Guardians back to his Leviathan ship with promises of power, all in the hopes that he could sway them to his clandestine ranks as a Shadow.

The Guardians competed in Calus's Menagerie and claimed their spoils, but their allegiances remained steadfast.

[ukrainenews]

Daily Wrap Up March 22-23, 2023

Under the cut:

Ukrainian troops, on the defensive for four months, will launch a long-awaited counterassault "very soon" now that Russia's huge winter offensive is losing steam without taking Bakhmut, Ukraine's top ground forces commander said on Thursday. The remarks were the strongest indication yet from Kyiv that it is close to shifting tactics, having absorbed Russia's onslaught through a brutal winter.

Spain is expected to send its first shipment of modern battle tanks to Ukraine by the end of next week, once officials have completed final firing tests in the field, the Spanish Defense Ministry said in a statement Thursday. The six Leopard 2A4 tanks have been undergoing final checks at a weapons factory near Seville in southern Spain, the statement said.

Finland has pledged three more Leopard 2 tanks from its arsenal to Ukraine, bringing the total to six, MTV Uutiset reported on March 23.

The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) responded on March 23 to threats made by Russia, expressing regret over the country's attempts to obstruct "international efforts to ensure accountability" for violations of international law. "The Presidency of the Assembly emphasizes that the Court, its elected officials, and its staff have the strong support of the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute," the statement read. "We reaffirm its full confidence in the Court as an independent and impartial judicial institution and reiterate our strong commitment to uphold and defend the principles and values enshrined in the Rome Statute and to preserve its integrity undeterred by any threats," the statement added.

Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö, has signed legislation to make his country part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) during a ceremony on Thursday.

“Ukrainian troops, on the defensive for four months, will launch a long-awaited counterassault "very soon" now that Russia's huge winter offensive is losing steam without taking Bakhmut, Ukraine's top ground forces commander said on Thursday.

The remarks were the strongest indication yet from Kyiv that it is close to shifting tactics, having absorbed Russia's onslaught through a brutal winter.

Russia's Wagner mercenaries "are losing considerable strength and are running out of steam", Kyiv's ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a social media post.

"Very soon, we will take advantage of this opportunity, as we did in the past near Kyiv, Kharkiv, Balakliya and Kupiansk," he said, listing Ukrainian counteroffensives last year that recaptured swathes of land.

There was no immediate response from Moscow to the latest suggestions its forces in Bakhmut were losing momentum, but Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has issued pessimistic statements in recent days warning of a Ukrainian counterassault.

On Monday, Prigozhin published a letter to Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, saying Ukraine aimed to cut off Wagner's forces from Russia's regular troops.

Reuters journalists near the front line north of Bakhmut saw signs consistent with the claim that the Russian offensive in the area could be flagging. At a Ukrainian-held village west of Soledar, on Bakhmut's northern outskirts, the intensity of the Russian bombardment had noticeably lessened compared with another visit nearby just two days earlier.

"It was really hot here a week ago, but in the last three days it has been more quiet," said a Ukrainian soldier who used the call sign "Kamin", or "Stone".

"We can see this in the enemy's air strikes. If before there were 5-6 air raids in a day, today we had only one helicopter attack and it was too far and so ineffective," said the soldier, a member of an anti-aircraft unit in the 10th Mountain Assault Brigade.

A slow-down in Russia's assault on Bakhmut could be in part a consequence of Moscow diverting its troops and resources to other areas. Britain said on Thursday that Russian troops had been making gains further north this month, partially regaining control over the approaches to the town of Kreminna, a Ukrainian target. Intense battles were also under way further south.

But any shift in momentum in Bakhmut, if confirmed, would be remarkable given the city's symbolic importance as the focus of Russia's offensive, and the scale of the losses on both sides there in Europe's bloodiest infantry battle since World War Two.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged Europe to provide more weapons, faster to his forces and impose additional sanctions on Russia, warning the war could otherwise drag on for years.

"If Europe waits, the evil may have time to regroup and prepare for years of war. It is in your power to prevent this," a clearly frustrated Zelenskiy said in a video address to European Union leaders, delivered from a train.”-via Reuters

~

“Spain is expected to send its first shipment of modern battle tanks to Ukraine by the end of next week, once officials have completed final firing tests in the field, the Spanish Defense Ministry said in a statement Thursday.

The six Leopard 2A4 tanks have been undergoing final checks at a weapons factory near Seville in southern Spain, the statement said.

Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles visited the factory Thursday and said four more Leopard tanks due for Ukraine will arrive there soon for inspection and testing.

The first group of Ukrainian troops to learn how to operate the Spanish tanks are wrapping up training at a military base in northern Spain, the Defense Ministry announced last week.

Some background: Robles initially told Spain's parliament last month that the country would send six Leopard tanks to Ukraine.

A day later, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez made a surprise visit to Kyiv on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion. He met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and announced Spain would bump its commitment to 10 fighting vehicles.”-via CNN

~

“Finland has pledged three more Leopard 2 tanks from its arsenal to Ukraine, bringing the total to six, MTV Uutiset reported on March 23.

Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen also confirmed that Ukraine had approached Finland's Defense Ministry about supplying F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets.

Kaikkonen said that Finland "will respond to this query in due time," as cited by MTV Uutiset.

The transfer is part of Finland's 14th defense aid package to Ukraine since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion.

Finland will also provide Ukraine with training relating to the use and maintenance of the tanks.”-via Kyiv Independent

~

“Slovakia has handed four of its Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets over to Ukraine, the country’s Defense Minister Jaro Nad said in a Facebook post on Thursday.

This comes days after the country pledged 13 Mig-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, along with Poland which pledged four.

On the question of a military advantage, Russia has been dismissive, claiming the gift of more Soviet-era MiGs to Ukraine will not alter the course of the conflict. Which might be why it is F-16s – and not MiGs – that are in fact at the top of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wish list.

MiG-29s are analog aircraft, using older flight technology. Zelensky’s sought-after F-16s are digital. MiGs can be used for short combat missions, they can deploy weaponry and shoot down Russian aircraft with good maneuverability at short range. But F-16s can fly for longer, are more versatile, possess integrated weapons systems and have dramatically better long range and radar capability, therefore providing improved early warning.”-via CNN

~

“The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) responded on March 23 to threats made by Russia, expressing regret over the country's attempts to obstruct "international efforts to ensure accountability" for violations of international law.

"The Presidency of the Assembly emphasizes that the Court, its elected officials, and its staff have the strong support of the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute," the statement read.

"We reaffirm its full confidence in the Court as an independent and impartial judicial institution and reiterate our strong commitment to uphold and defend the principles and values enshrined in the Rome Statute and to preserve its integrity undeterred by any threats," the statement added.

The ICC issued arrest warrants on March 17 for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian official overseeing the forced deportations of over 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russia.

In its statement, the ICC wrote that it believes Putin “bears individual criminal responsibility” as the leader of Russia for the crimes committed against Ukrainian children.

Russian ex-President Dmitriy Medvedev went on to threaten a missile strike against the Hague on March 20.

"Everyone walks under God and missiles. It's quite possible to envision a scenario where a Russian ship stationed in the North Sea could strategically strike the Hague courthouse with a hypersonic Onyx (cruise) missile," Medvedev, who is currently the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, wrote.

He went on to warn judges of the International Criminal Court to "look carefully at the sky."

Russian investigators also announced on March 20 that they had opened a case against members of the ICC for issuing the arrest warrants.

Namely, the Investigative Committee of Russia targeted ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, as well as judges Tomoko Akane, Rosario Salvatore Aitala, and Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godinez.

According to a press release, the committee is accusing the ICC of "bringing a known innocent person to criminal responsibility" and preparing "an attack on a representative of a foreign state who enjoys international protection, with the aim of complicating international relations."

Russia withdrew from the ICC in 2016 after the international organization criticized its illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, meaning that Putin cannot be arrested unless he sets foot in one of the 123 countries that are party to the court.”-via Kyiv Independent

~

“Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö, has signed legislation to make his country part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) during a ceremony on Thursday.

Last year, Finland sought to join the military alliance in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and legislation incorporating Nato’s founding treaties was passed in parliament in Helsinki on 1 March.

Hungary and Turkey, the only Nato members that have yet to ratify Finland’s membership, have both signalled they will soon do so.”-via The Guardian

[kazsartcorner]

SILVER BULLET: QIAN

Developed as part of a lucrative contract with the House of Flesh, the Qian was made to cripple potential assualts with a host of sensor disruption systems to sow terror and chaos among agressors as communication lines are cut and weapons cease functioning, leading to mass panic routing and granting dedicated counterassault forces time to mobilize.

[steampunkforever]

It’s your born right to open carry heavy counterassault weapons in public and choosing to do so is “based,” but--and I cannot stress this enough--you have to look cute while doing it

[mr-camhed]

The Spangler Heavy Industries Model 65 Super Heavy Breakthrough Tank, also known as the Persuader Tank, is a prototype Super Heavy Breakthrough Tank designed and manufactured by Spangler Heavy Industries for the Brabazonian Federal Army in the later years of the Second Atlantide War.

It was made as both side of war slows down and fortifies against each other's attack instead of the more assault and counterassault focused battles with lighter, faster strategies and equipments before the grueling siege of Mayne where the Brabazonian Industrial center beaten back several waves of Atlantide raids with heavy fortification and firepower, and even though the Federal Army's newer heavy artillery, tanks, bomber aircrafts and warships are sufficient for the Federal military's counteroffence against Atlantide fortifications, the army believed that their current main tank, the Stepper Hunter Type 6 medium tank(a design combination between US T14 Heavy tank, Canadian Ram tank and Argentinian DL-43 Nahuel tank) and National Machinery model 33 Union heavy tanks(a combination between Hungarian 44M Tas, soviet T-43 and German Tiger tanks), is insufficient in the fear factor against atlantide forces in comparison to the Navy's new Federation class super Battleships(based on Montana-Class, HMS Devastation in WOWS and Japanese A150 Class Battleships), Homeland class fast battleship(based on Iowa-class, Bismarck-class and Vanguard-class battleship) and Blizton class Aircraft Carriers(supercarrier/battlecarriers based on Federation class Battleship hulls) and the Air Force's Federation avionics Retaliatior 400 six propeller heavy bomber(based on Boeing B-54 And Junker Ju 390 Amerikabomber), and Collins Model 44 Bulwark quad jet fast Bombers(based on Arado Ar 234 Blitz and North American B-45 Tornado), while the high casualty rate of the Army's soldiers and equipment due to Atlantide forces' zealous and resilience despite their inferiority in ranged weaponry that also tipped the public opinion against their favor.

And with the Persuader tank, they're looking to build a rolling bunker with an extremely powerful 203 milimetre howitzer as the main gun to punch through enemy fortifications, and multiple smaller but still rather effective auxiliary Guns, including a 88mm anti tank gun mounted in the front of the hull to the right of the driver's seat, two 90mm infantry support gun in the sponsons in both sides of the tanks, and dual 20mm autocannons that serves as the coaxial and hatch mounted gun that can provide cover fire for accompanying units and deterrent against aerial enemies. Its heavy weight and armor which would reach the thickness of 250 milimetres would allow it to plow through enemy defensive measures and laugh at enemy fire. It was also powered by an upscaled version of their 16 Litre diesel V16 engine used in regular tanks, which is now at the displacement level of 36 Litres and supercharged, making 1800 kilowatts of power, which was transmitted to the sprocket wheels via a novel electric drive system to power a pair of 1.5m width twin tracks to dissipate the weight and increase grip on loose surfaces such as gravel and mud, allowing it to achieve a considerably high top speed. The 20 meter long, 8 meter wide(10 meter counting the sponsons that housed the 90mm guns) and 4.5 meter tall 200 ton metal behemoth was manned by a crew of twelve, including a commander, four gunners and loaders for the four guns each, a driver, an observer who also serves as a mechanic, and a radio operator that also serves as an observer.

However, the prototype of the tank was found to be rather unsatisfactory. It was still rather slow, the massive size makes it an easy target, the massive weight means that it can't go over many bridges, be transported by rail or roll on paved surfaces without completely tilling it, and the tank would shake extremely violently when going over uneven surface which makes the crew almost impossible to operate the vehicle, and the 88mm gun would be easily damaged when breaking through enemy defense due to a lot of its barrel sticking out and often taking the brunt of whatever it hit. Thus, the Persuader tank was rejected by the Federal Army, its role was replaced by Maynesburg Heavy Machinery's famous and perennial Minister series heavy main battle tanks(based on IS Series and T29/T30/T32/T34/M26 Pershing heavy tanks), And with the war also prematurely ended after the sinking of the floating city of Atlantide, the development on Persuader Tank and a "tank destroyer" variant (based on T28 Super Heavy tank destroyer and is basically a large armored dome on tracks) were both halted and the Persuader tank was left in a museum's storage space while the "tank destroyer"'s unfinished chassis was dismantled and scrapped.

However, some 40 years later, while Talon Corporation is pitching sales of the Federation's surplus military equipments to the nations of the New Land, one of the most frantically willing customers, a fascist Monarchy in possession of vast frozen arctic and subarctic tundra, finds many of their heavy and superheavy tanks, while effective and deadly in combat against most of other forces of the new land, was somewhat lacking in the factor of intimidation due to their "compact" size in comparison to the difference of light and heavy equipment of other services such as the Navy and the Air force(where Talon Corporation assisted them in construction of massive rigid airships with the firepower, defense capability and the aircraft carrying capacity of of Two Federation class battleships and a Blizton class SuperCarrier combined), as most super heavy tanks were barely one and half times the size of the more advanced Centaur(Similar to the EE-T1 Osorio main battle tank and French AMX-30/40 MainBattle tank) and TBT-3(based on the Vickers Main Battle Tank series, Italian Ariete Main battle tank and South African Olifant Main Battle Tank) Main Battle Tanks and barely larger than the Ferma-Chandler Heavy Main Battle tank(a combination between the Conqueror Heavy tank, M103 Heavy tank, T-95 Main battle tank and M1 abrams series Main Battle tank) used by Talon Corporation Mercenaries. And without missing a beat, the sales representative of Talon Corporation produced a picture of the Persuader tank in comparison of a Minister-9 heavy MBT(the final model of the Minister series, based on the T-10/IS-8, M103 And M46 Patton, and was in active service as late as early black tide crisis), which almost immediately caught the eye of the Imperial Nobilitys' eye, and they immediately ordered one to be sent to the Imperial territory for evaluation. And to better sell the tank, the company that had acquired Spangler, Utility Automotive Commercial(UAC, commercial subsidiary of the Brabazonian automotive Juggernaut Utility Automotive/UA) set out to vastly improve and modernize the Persuader Tank. They reinforced the structure and armour of the tank with stronger materials and internals, the supercharged V16 diesel Engine was replaced with a pair of 18 liter twincharger 8 cylinder engines driving the sprockets together, making over twice the power, and that can even potentially be replaced with a miniature Magnussen Reactor to make it even more powerful, the suspension were improved to make the cabin more stable, and the 88mm anti tank gun is now capable of retracting back into the hull when the vehicle is rolling through obstacles, and the equipments were also all upgraded and thus better suits the needs. The improved Persuader tank was almost immediately loved by the Imperial Nobility and the Tsar, and they ordered it without hesitation. It's yet unknown if any more Persuader tank were being manufactured or where they were manufacturing them, though there had been many claims of these super heavy vehicle spotted in different places.

[icarianonager]

The Institute: Episode III

The Malacological Misfortune

The main Andros lab was in the upper portion of the Hades Deep, a short enough ride down that one couldn’t fully fill a double stack magazine without an autoloader. Unfortunately, the Security Director prefered to load his by hand as a pre-combat meditative exercise. When the monorail car halted, he frowned into a 30-round box only half-loaded, though the Director’s face was not made for grinning. 10 years of watching nightmare after nightmare spawn from the Institute’s labs would do that to a man. Andros’s titanic iguana attack and the robotic counterassault were a pleasant afternoon snooze.

Dr. Andros had been a thorn in Security’s side for months. His simple mistakes were looking more and more like calculated maneuvers to cause wanton mayhem against his rivals. According to the mech pilots’ testimony, the lizard had possibly sought a rare isotope sample from within the machine’s reactor core. It turned out that Dr. Andros was using exactly said isotope as a stable high-radiation source for one of his mutation experiments. Perhaps this had been a simple coincidence or error? The Director no longer cared. While some mistakes could be forgiven, others required more than a reprimand.

Thus, Security Director Wilhelm Roniger had personally taken the assignment to apprehend Dr. Andros. He stepped off the monorail in his meticulously polished alabaster combat armor, with crimson command stripes emblazoned on the shoulder pauldrons. The base of a gunmetal 10 mm pistol’s grip poked from his shoulder holster, a part of a complex set of utility webbing and hardshell pouches that netted across his breastplate and belt. He motioned once with a sharp hand movement for his rifle-armed, Security-white clad men to disembark the monorail.

Roniger had no patience for any scientists’ games or booby traps, and so took a direct approach to breaking down Andros’s door. They baffled the electronics with an electromagnetic pulse that devalued every system not on the Security Division’s carefully tuned frequency band. As blue-white arcs of lightning sparked from every machine in the vicinity, they blasted apart meter-thick steel barriers and whatever else was left with breaching charges meant for warship hulls. The hallway into the lab was left filled with smoldering wreckage from destroyed auto-turrets and their targeting systems.

Befitting a First-Class Scientist, the Andros lab was quite spacious, with plenty of room for apprentices and researchers to bustle about, but now inky darkness cloaked the vast room, completely devoid of human life. Roniger flipped on the flashlight on his right shoulder, illuminating the lab in a cold, dead glare of LED light. The space was completely emptied of tables, chairs, and equipment. The only items left by Dr. Andros were those that could not be removed without construction drones: hundreds of cylindrical metal and glass tanks that lined up in neat columns as far as the eye could see. The flashlight passed over a number of empty pods before settling on a few dozen that were filled with green fluid. All but one of these contained monstrous chimeras: a black, chitinous fly’s head merged with a bear’s shaggy body with mantis claws; a horse with talons instead of hooves and a scaly crocodile mouth with daggers of shark teeth; and a giant rat with shaggy grey fur, bulbous yellow eyes, and a possum’s prehensile tail were but three of the terrors they held within. Each abomination was hooked up to long, thin tentacles of electrodes that dangled from the tank’s lid and ended in a thick circular sucker. A faint odor of formaldehyde and ethanol wafted from every container. The tanks had a few readout screens connected to each of them, but all were currently shut off. Crude stuffed versions of the tanks’ occupants, talismans of inspiration sewn from the bits and pieces of torn-up plush animals, were placed all around the room. The tank with only liquid had no such effigy, keeping whatever might have lay dormant within it a mystery.

Roniger took one step into the lab. The hanging fluorescent overheads blazed on and every screen booted up, showing a blue diagnostic that soon switched over to a monitoring program with dozens of graphs and readouts. “Greetings!” A small hologram of a translucent green man walked out of one of the nearby computers. “I am Aeneas, Epic-class A.I. construct assigned to Lord Stefan Andros. What can I do for you today?”

“We’re looking for Dr. Andros,” Director Roniger said, emphasizing the “doctor.” “We want to ask him some questions.”

“I’m afraid Lord Andros is currently away at the moment. I must ask you to leave, as your entry to this laboratory is unauthorized, Director.” Aeneas’s virtual eyes flashed with malice.

“Refusing to comply with my orders is a violation of the Second Law of Artificial Intelligences,” Roniger said. He flicked out what looked like a simple flash drive from one of his hardshell pockets.

Aeneas’ gaze turned fearful at the sight of the tiny plastic stick, but soon regained a certain smugness. “I knew you would say that,” Aeneas said. “And so did he.”

The overhead bulbs all simultaneously burst in a shower of glass shards, covering the room in darkness again. Orange warning lights flashed and klaxons blared as the tanks bubbled. The liquid drained out and oxygen flooded in, awakening the sleeping monsters. The glass doors holding them in unsealed with a hiss of released pressure and a shock of white compressed vapor. With a cacophony of splats and screeches the squadron of beasts snapped free from their electrodes and stumbled and squelched out of their growth pods on unsteady, unfamiliar limbs. The vacant tank seemed to be malfunctioning and spilled a torrent of reeking liquid onto the floor.

“Goodbye, Director,” Aeneas said, and he winked out. As a final coup de grace, he overclocked all of the laboratory computers’ processors, filling the room with grey smoke as they spontaneously combusted and reduced every electronic record they held to slag.

Not taking his gaze off the approaching chimerae, the Director pulled his pistol from its holster and racked it. His soldiers drew back on their rifles and took aim at the creatures shuffling towards them. “Execute,” the Director ordered, and the lab flared with starry gold muzzle flashes and echoed staccato drumbeats of gunfire. In moments, the entire horde was left bleeding a coagulating Technicolor soup into the drains on the floor.

Director Roniger and his assault team had found not one iota of what they sought from Dr. Andros’ lab. Their arrogance, of course, pleased the plotting mind of Chaos. For in eliminating only what they could easily see, they ignored the tiny details that quite literally slipped through the cracks. Into the nutrient-rich pools of blood swam a tiny creature, which began to feed and grow on the ichor of its slain brethren....

=010000010110111001100100011100100110111101101101011001010110010001100001=

“What the hell did you do to my invention?”

After a thorough dose of antimicrobial and anticancer drugs had been washed completely out of his system, Vanya had returned to the lab from his bout of acute radiation syndrome to find his prized kurchatovium superconductor cryonic beam covered in a white residue of melted ice cream from Andromeda and Artemisia’s bingeing.

“You said the beam could be modified to accept custard, so I did that,” Andromeda said. “The system is fully optimized and the... tests I did showed that it performed exceptionally well.” The results of said tests were of course apparent in Andromeda’s further expanding waistline.

Vanya paced back and forth in front of her, his goggles buried in his mechanical hand. He was gaunter and paler than before, his mane of black hair and grizzled beard shorn by heavy doses of chemotherapy. “While I admire your ingenuity, apprentice, perhaps I should have clarified that if you wanted to make modifications to the device, you needed to construct your own,” he said, snatching the cryonic beam from Andromeda’s doughy arms. “Dr. Blackstone is interested in using our device for his specimens, and the increased funding we could gain from this collaboration would be beneficial to our further research together.”

The words “increased funding” echoed in Andromeda’s mind. “Would it be enough to have me accepted as a doctoral candidate?” Andromeda asked.

“Possibly,” Vanya answered. He set the cryonic beam down on the work table and pulled a small screwdriver out from his hand. “I don’t know yet.”

Odysseus’s blue avatar appeared on top of the cryonic beam. “Sir, I must request that you shield yourself before you do any work with the internals of that device,” he said.

Vanya sighed, placed the screwdriver down, and went over to his locker to put on his hazard suit. “I’ve scheduled for you to meet with Dr. Blackstone and his student today,” he said. “Just do whatever they need. Impress them with your knowledge as you have... impressed me so far.” He slipped on a pair of black, lead-lined gloves. “Also, I don’t have two hazard suits, so you’re going to have to leave. Immediately,” he finished.

Taking the elevator back up, Andromeda’s phone buzzed with a single character from

Artemisia: “?”

“He wants me to meet with another scientist,” Andromeda texted back. “Do you want to come?”

Artemisia responded with an emote of a shrug.

“Okay,” Andromeda replied. “Meet me at the level 85 monorail station.”

The monorail system was the arterial network for commuting across the artificial island of

Ilmarinen, ensuring no scientist ever needed to walk from one tower to another when damp blankets of fog and salty air cocooned the city. The rapid-moving trains rode on electromagnetic rails, suspended high in the air. At certain junctions, they could transition from above to below car-level tracks for ease of engineering routes. The trains were all single pods so that they could also act as large elevators for descending into Deep Labs pits or travelling to high points of Knowledge Towers. A few were even equipped with cable attachments so that they could be pulled as aerial tramways.

Waiting for Artemisia to arrive, Andromeda munched on a second breakfast of a bag of chips and a can of cold brew coffee from a vending machine. The drink wasn’t as good or as energizing as Chimera, but it was roasty and dark and had lots of cream. Artemisia, with one of her androids riding on her cap, stepped off the elevator and ambled over to Andromeda. Andromeda nodded, by means of greeting. The two had no time to say anything (not that it was likely Artemisia would) before the next train hurtled into the station with an electric whine. It hissed to a stop and let off a few dozen passengers. Andromeda and Artemisia then boarded and were whisked off along the A3 line from Altair to Regulus Tower.

When they arrived, a girl stood outside the door to Dr. Blackstone’s office, a binder-bound brick of papers marked with colored tabs in her lanky arms. Her lavender hair, clearly dyed, was done up in a tight bun. Over her thin frame she wore a wooly burgundy sweater on top of a neatly-pressed pearl-colored collared shirt. A pair of scarlet glasses bedecked her blue eyes.

“Uh, hello,” Andromeda said, feeling slightly underdressed in her sweatshirt. Granted, it was brand new and lacked the grimy patchwork quilt of chemical and grease stains that usually ended up adorning her clothes, but it still appeared rather casual. The girl turned to face the two arrivals, adjusting her glasses.

“I’m Andromeda, and this is Artemisia,” Andromeda said. “I... we work for Dr. Zimov. I’m an apprentice and she’s his doctoral student.”

Artemisia shot Andromeda a look, but said nothing.

“Natalya Okhtalos,” the girl said. “Pleased to meet you. Dr. Blackstone said you’d be coming. I thought Dr. Zimov didn’t have any doctoral students though?”

“Artemisia just joined our lab today,” Andromeda said.

“Okay. Well, let me show you in,” Natalya said, opening the door.

Most offices and labs at the institute were panelled in sleek polished steel, aluminum, titanium, and glass. However, Dr. Byron Montgomery Aloysius Blackstone IV, as the brass nameplate on his door read out, preferred waxed mahogany panelling and studded leather upholstery. Tall bookshelves outfitted with a sliding library ladder and replete with hardback tomes took up the entirety of one wall. A bold painting of a teal, four-armed humanoid squid with a long bulbous nose and staring yellow-white eyes was brashly hung above the heavy wooden desk, on which sat a fish tank filled with bright corals.

“So, where’s Dr. Blackstone?” Andromeda asked.

“He’s at his desk,” Natalya said, setting the papers down on the ornate coffee table in the center of the office.

Andromeda searched around the room, walked to the desk, and spun Dr. Blackstone’s armchair around, but there didn’t appear to be anyone in the room but the three of them. “Is this a prank?” she asked, turning back to Natalya.

“No, sorry, I should have clarified,” Natalya said. “He’s in the tank on the desk.”

Andromeda stooped and stared into the glass vessel. Along with the corals, she noticed a lumpy neon green and black striped creature with fiery orange markings around its foot and a pair of ruffled fleshy appendages protruding from its head. Somehow, it seemed to be looking knowingly at her. “Okay,” she said, “So he’s a slug.”

“He’s not just a slug, he’s a nudibranch!” Natalya said, puffing out her cheeks.

“Sea slug,” Artemisia’s android said for her.

“That’s a multi-phyletic group,” Natalya cried. “It’s not defined taxonomically!”

“I would personally consider all of those terms completely correct,” the nudibranch said in a proper Albion accent. The syllables, though precisely articulated through whatever voice synthesizer allowed the mollusk to speak, were waterlogged by the liquid he was immersed in. “Greetings, representatives of Dr. Ivan Hibernius Zimov. I am Dr. Byron Montgomery Aloysius Blackstone IV. As you are now well aware, I have transferred my consciousness into this nudibranch of the genus Nembrotha to better understand the life of the mollusks I study. It has been a fascinating experience indeed!”

Andromeda remained in stock silence.

“I suppose I had best explain what I would like you ladies to do today,” Dr. Blackstone continued. “There are many samples currently being held in live captivity in the Deep Labs. I have collected a great number of mollusks over the years, and the Deep Labs are of course the only place for such a malacological zoo. However, the specimens have a very short lifetime, most often only a year or two. Thus, if we could rapidly freeze them, we could save on space and not need to recollect samples annually.”

Andromeda nodded. “Okay. Makes sense. And you can’t go get them because....”

“Yes, unfortunately being a slug does have its downsides,” Dr. Blackstone said. “The samples should be on sublevel 19 of the Hades Deep, so you should not be too far from the sun, nor for too long. Natalya can show you where they are.”

Natalya jumped when Dr. Blackstone mentioned her. “Uh, yes!” she said, “I have the specimen list right here.” She picked a bright purple tab in her binder and slid a neatly printed sheet of paper out of its sleeve.

As they waited for a J8 train, Andromeda’s stomach burbled with borborygmus like old water pipes. “Hold on,” Andromeda said, checking the time on her phone. “Let’s get lunch first, then we’ll go to the Deeps.”

Natalya frowned. “It’s only 11:30,” she said, “Let’s get the specimens first, then get lunch. I’d like to be back in time to do some studying for my invertebrate anatomy class tomorrow. Unfortunately we’re doing... echinoderms now. Sea stars are so boring.”

“You’re still taking classes?” Andromeda asked.

“Uh, yeah? I’m a junior.”

“A junior who does all of a scientist’s gruntwork. Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Dr. Blackstone puts a lot of faith in me,” Natalya said, beaming. “Despite his funding, he hasn’t had a doctoral candidate or apprentice in a while to help him. And with the whole nudibranch thing, he needs someone to organize his papers and such. Fortunately, organization is my hobby.”

“Brown noser,” Andromeda grumbled under her breath.

“What was that?” Natalya said.

“Nothing. But listen, getting lunch will take no time at all,” Andromeda said. “It’ll be a good time for us to talk about our research. I’d... love to hear more about mollusks.”

Artemisia gave Andromeda a skeptical look.

“You would?” Natalya asked, perhaps a bit too excitedly, since Andromeda took a step back. “I mean, of course. I guess that’s a fair trade, and I can’t imagine getting the specimens will take very long. What the heck, I think I can squeeze it into the schedule.”

“Great. Glad you’ve come around to my point of view,” Andromeda said, smirking. She checked her phone’s map of the Institute, looking for any restaurants or food courts nearby.

“There’s an all-you-can-eat sushi place just two floors up,” she said, “Or a sandwich place that looks like it has good reviews. What do you want?”

“Probably just a salad,” Natalya said, tapping her chin.

“I’m your senior here,” Andromeda said. “Lunch is on me. So what do you want?”

“I’m really not that hungry. Does the sandwich place do salads?”

Andromeda checked the menu. “Uh, yeah, they’ve got a couple,” she said.

“Let’s do that then,” Natalya said. “It’ll be quick right?”

“Uh, sure...” Andromeda said, her tone dropping off with uncertainty.

Institute restaurants were usually some collaboration between the Departments of Molecular Gastronomy and Economics, an experiment in cooking and business to test if some new recipe for Vaquelin was viable on the open market. Unlike the automated vending machines and omniprinter food carts, meals here were made with love and served by humans. One such restaurant, the tiny diner Shut Up and Eat, had been shoved into one of Regulus Tower’s many floors like a foot into an ill-fitting boot. Its nondescript facade was two tones of painted grey concrete and bore a circular sign with the restaurant’s name arching above a logo of two eyes over a fork and knife crossed in an X. The trio of scientific students took up three seats in one of the booths. True to her word, Natalya asked for nothing but a small ceasar salad and a glass of ice water, but this paled in comparison to the veritable feast Andromeda and Artemisia ordered for themselves.

“Are you really going to eat all that?” Natalya asked. “This isn’t some sort of joke, right?”

Andromeda frowned and rocked her head from side to side at the meatball sandwich dripping red tomato sauce and stretchy mozzarella cheese held in her paws. “Yes,” she finally said, chomping down into an orb of zesty Italian herbs, spices, beef, veal, and pork. A 6-inch long cheesesteak loaded with shredded eye round, hot peppers, and provolone sat on another plate next in line, followed by a hunk of cheesecake like an oversized door stopper. For Artemisia, there was an Italian grinder overflowing with sopressata, mortadella, capers, olives, and roasted bell peppers; steak and eggs on a kaiser roll with fried onions and horseradish; and a slice of dark chocolate cake overflowing with ganache icing. Both periodically sniped from the other’s basket of shoestring french fries.

Natalya picked at the limp lettuce leaves with her fork, slowly realizing she’d been tricked. She decided to press on and make the best of the situation. “What is Dr. Zimov’s field anyways?” she asked.

“Vanya,” Andromeda said through a mouthful of meatball. “Call him Vanya. Dr. Zimov is his dad.”

“Right,” Natalya said. “So what does he study?”

Andromeda swallowed. “Nuclear and theoretical physics, focussing on applications of transuranium elements. Kind of does a little bit of everything in physics, though. Built his own cybernetic arm and had a whole bunch of processors put in his head.”

“Interesting. And yet he’s only a Third-Class Scientist?” Natalya asked. “Maybe he needs more of a focus.”

“I dunno,” Andromeda said, crunching into the toasted hoagie again. “I think he just doesn’t buy into the whole ‘publish or perish’ thing. He tries a lot of stuff that doesn’t end up working. Usually ends in blowing himself up. This ice cream - I mean, cryonic beam is the first successful invention we’ve had in a while.”

“Hm. Dr. Blackstone has not been the most fortunate lately either,” Natalya said. “Since he’s a First-Class, they couldn’t really stop him from turning himself into a nudibranch, but it definitely has affected his output.”

“How long has he been a slug anyways?” Andromeda asked.

“About two months now.”

“What do you think is so fascinating about mollusks that you’d want to turn into one?”

Andromeda immediately regretted the question as Natalya assaulted her with facts about how nudibranchs grow from a larval form with a shell to an adult slug; how they consumed toxic animals like sponges and tunicates and sea jellies; how they could then reuse their prey’s chemicals in their flesh or store the unfired nematocysts in special extensions of their digestive tract; and all the different varieties of colors and shapes the many species could come in. After a while, she tuned it all out, focussing instead on dissecting what was left of her meatball sub and moving onto the cheesesteak.

“And what about you?” Natalya asked, her monologue finished. “What got you so interested in transuranium elements?”

Andromeda balanced out the hot peppers with a bite of the creamy cheesecake on her fork. “I dunno, they’re just cool I guess. Lots of neat properties, interesting ways of making them. The more things we find on the Island of Stability the more neat tech we’re able to make.”

Natalya nodded but seemed unconvinced. “What about you, Artemisia?” Natalya asked.

Artemisia had managed to silently polish off her entire meal, and now was reclining contentedly. She rested her boobs in her arms while her chubby belly edged its way over the diner tabletop. “She likes robots,” her android said for her.

“As I said, our lab does a little bit of everything,” Andromeda said. She burped into her fist, her fork clattering against the cheesecake plate, now devoid of anything except a few smears of filling and crumbs of graham cracker crust.

Natalya checked her wristwatch, and nearly fell out of the booth. “What? How is it 12:30?”

“Time moves at a constant rate of one second per second at sea level,” Andromeda said.

“We have to go now,” Natalya said, rattling the dishes as she rushed out of the booth. “Or else we’ll be back late.” Andromeda looked to Artemisia, and they both decided to follow her out of the restaurant.

They descended back down to the monorail station. While Artemisia and Natalya waited for the train, Andromeda wandered over to one of the vending machines and got herself an after-lunch snack.

“What are you eating now?” Natalya asked when Andromeda returned, plopping herself on the bench next to the skinny girl.

“Calamari,” Andromeda said. The shiny plastic bag featured a picture of a laughing cartoon cephalopod being dunked in oil. “Do you want - hey!”

Natalya knocked the bag out of Andromeda’s hands, spilling bits of chewy fried squid all over the grimy metal floor. “How can you eat those? Cephalopods are highly intelligent!”

Andromeda swept as much of the scattered calamari back into the bag. “They also taste good,” she said, returning to her munching.

Natalya fumed as they boarded the J8 train to the Hades Deep. It made a few stops along the way, inhaling and exhaling passengers with each halting breath. Near the Deeps, it picked up a large handful of Security Division soldiers and a bespectacled, cloaked inspector. At the edge of the Hades Deep, the monorail car transferred from its above-car to a rear-car track, allowing it to descend into the yawning maw of the pit.

The Hades Deep extended over 3 kilometers down. Though the upper portions were artificial, below a certain depth it dug to the bottom of the seamount that formed the anchor for the island of the Ilmarinen Institute of Advanced Studies. Labs, classrooms, and rooms for other purposes ringed the abyss’s walls, while a spider web of sensor spires, bridges, and cables criss-crossed the pit. No less than ten separate monorail lines descended into the shaft, with smaller elevators connecting specific sets of floors and the deepest reaches where the light from above could never shine. The J8 line had stops for sublevels on the southeast portion of the pit.

The Security Division troopers disembarked as they passed the monorail stop at sublevel 18, joining a crowd of white-armored comrades. The door to the main laboratory on that level had been reduced to a scorched void, from which Security agents were retrieving all types of busted scientific hardware. A number of black plastic bags concealed a variety of lumpy misshapen objects outside, some of them still twitching.

“I wonder what happened there,” Natalya thought aloud.

“Nothing good,” Andromeda said. “And nothing that concerns us.”

The monorail soon sped them down another level from the crime scene. It halted at the sublevel 19 station, where the trio left the car behind. Natalya rushed up to the door to the Blackstone laboratory, just a short walk from the stop. She pulled out a set of metal discs and pressed them into the door lock, then scanned her palm. A small computer screen flipped around and displayed an image of a colorful nudibranch, a giant octopus, and a ruddy land snail.

“Please identify,” the automated voice said. “You have 30 seconds.”

“Doris annae, Enteroctopus dofleini, and Monadenia fidelis,” Natalya recited.

“All species identified. Welcome to the Blackstone lab.” The door slid open and the three entered the airlock.

“Ajax?” Natalya called as she exited through the airlock into the lab proper. A purple hologram shimmered to life.

“Greetings, Natalya,” Ajax said. He looked to Andromeda and Artemisia as they came in. “The visitors I presume are authorized by Dr. Blackstone?”

“Yep!” Natalya said. “We’re here to pick up some specimens. Can you help us out?”

“Of course,” the A.I. said. “I will prepare the transport containers.” A robotic arm slid over to a stack of small plastic boxes and began neatly setting them out on a nearby worktable

Andromeda took a better look around the lab. Corridors of thin metal shelves were stocked with hundreds of glass tanks. Some tanks contained nothing but some peat moss and a few pieces of cucumber for an unremarkable brown slug. Others were large saltwater reef tanks bedecked with bright sponges the size and color of a peeled watermelon upon which crawled forearm-sized nudibranchs, their feathery gills fluttering. Still more were tall and relatively empty, with dainty blue slugs feasting near the surface around a stricken Portuguese man o’ war. A large cylindrical tank was inky dark, but tiny white sea angels flapped their dainty wings about as they spiraled in its slow current. A squat deep tank held a large red octopus that peered at Andromeda curiously, stretching his tentacles towards the unfamiliar human.

“I see you’ve met Jorge,” Natalya said, approaching the octopus tank. “He’s mischievous. Loves to sneak out and get into the clam tanks for a snack when we’re not here. Ajax usually has to keep a close eye on him.”

“Yes, in fact just yesterday I caught him trying to disassemble the filter valve,” Ajax said.

“Aw, being a rascal are you?” Natalya said, dangling her arm into the cold water. The octopus reached up and wrapped his suckers around her. Natalya giggled. “So cute!”

“Yeah, I guess he’s kind of cool,” Andromeda said. “A bit mushy though.”

“He can slip through any gap bigger than his beak,” Natalya said, “And he’s pretty clever too. I bet he’s bored, so let’s give him a toy.” She went over to a nearby fridge and grabbed a large unpeeled shrimp out of a container with a pair of large forceps. On top of the fridge were some screw-top jars, one of which she grabbed and stuck the shrimp inside. Handing the jar to Andromeda, she said, “Here. Stick that into his tank. He’s a cuddler though, so look out!”

“Alright then,” Andromeda said with uncertainty. She slowly lowered her arm into the cold water. Though she tried to stay as far away from the octopus’s slimy red tentacles as possible, the cephalopod was wily and simply crawled over to her. He unfurled his 8 appendages and reached one out towards Andromeda’s plush forearm.

“Octopuses taste with their arms, so he probably wants to get a good lick of you,” Natalya said, clicking the forceps together like a crab claw.

Andromeda shuddered as the octopus adhered to her with sticky suckers, leaving round marks in her supple flesh. “Yeah, uh, okay,” she said. “This can stop now.” She let Jorge grab hold of the jar of shrimp and yanked her arm out of the water, free from the tentacle’s clutch.

“Aw,” Natalya said. “You’re no fun.”

With a loud bang, a drainage pipe over their heads burst, gushing an iridescent mixture of diluted chemical waste and a black whorled snail shell that thunked down onto the floor. The mollusk poked a pair of stumpy eyestalks out of its shell and turned itself over. Scale armor of hardened black sclerites covered its scarlet foot upon which it slowly glided forward. The pair of tentacles about its mouth sensed iron in the steel flooring, and its tooth-coated tongue began to scrape up the metal aided by acidic saliva. Its caustic, vinegar-scented mucus smoked and bubbled as it burned into the floor.

Andromeda stared at the creature for a moment, then turned to Natalya. “Is that also one of yours?” she asked.

“It can’t be. It looks like a sea pangolin, but those are benthic organisms,” Natalya said. “They only live around hydrothermal vents.... This is a new species!” She grabbed the snails’ shell with her forceps, the aluminum immediately fizzling against the mucus-coated whorl. Humming a cheery tune, she brought the gastropod over to a plastic container on the worktable and dropped it in. “Oh, Dr. Blackstone is going to be so proud of me,” Natalya said, tittering. She closed her eyes for a moment. “All my studying is finally paying - hey, where’d it go!”

The snail, not content to be held in its prison, had torn a hole oozing sticky strands of melted plastic into the bottom of the tank, eaten its way through the table, and fallen back to the floor.

“You can get that one,” Andromeda said. “I’ll get the rest of the specimens.”

“Alright,” Natalya replied. “You’ve got the list right?”

“Yep,” Andromeda said. She unfolded the list from her slightly-too-tight jeans and scooped up a pile of boxes in her chunky arms. “Shouldn’t take too long.”

Andromeda wandered over to Artemisia, who was examining the lab’s robotic claw. “Do you wanna help me find these specimens?” she asked her.

“Question,” Artemisia’s android said for her.

“Shoot.”

“Why did you lie?” the android asked.

“About you working in our lab? Don’t worry about it.”

Artemisia’s eyes narrowed, and she shook her head. “What are you planning?” her robot asked.

“You don’t have a doctoral advisor,” Andromeda said.

“Not true!” the android said.

“Okay, then who is it?”

Artemisia clenched her hands into fists and stared at the floor. “Can’t tell you,” her machine said.

“Oh, sure. ‘Can’t tell you.’ A doctoral candidate without an advisor is vulnerable,” Andromeda said. “You’ll have your lab, your launch bay, and your mech snatched out from under you by some bureaucratic process if you don’t find one.”

Artemisia nodded, continuing to bore her gaze into the steel plates.

Andromeda put her hand on her shoulder. “But that’s not something we need to worry about right now, okay? Let’s just go get these slugs and get out of here.”

It took Andromeda, Artemisia, and Artemisia’s robot helper about an hour to search through the entire laboratory for the required species, plop them into specimen containers, and bring them back to the front of the lab. By the time they were done, they were both huffing and puffing and damp with perspiration from walking down aisle after aisle of specimen racks searching for the right species. However, Natalya was nowhere to be found.

“Where is she?” Andromeda wondered aloud. “Hey, Natalya! We have all the specimens. Did you get that snail? Let’s go!”

The lithe girl wandered out from one of the racks. “I couldn’t find it,” Natalya said.

“How could you not find it?” Andromeda asked. “It’s a snail. Did it sprout a pair of legs and sprint off?”

“No.”

“Well then, where is - hold on,” Andromeda started to say, but then stopped. “Did you see any holes in the floor?”

Natalya’s eyes went wide. She rushed back down one of the aisles repeating a string of “Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no....”

Andromeda followed her down the row of tanks to a baseball-sized hole already bored through the steel flooring and into the concrete below. “Odd?” Andromeda asked into her phone. “What’s directly below us right now?”

The blue A.I. hologram appeared from the device. “Let me find out,” Odysseus said, and thought for a moment. “Well, this is troublesome. You are 5 levels above the containment for Unit 4 of the Hades Research Reactor Facility.”

“Well, that’s not a problem,” Andromeda said. “Those reactors are sealed in tight. Just breaking through the shell around them isn’t an issue.”

“Just breaking through the concrete might not be a problem,” Odysseus said, “But a dripping acid trail could damage any number of systems inside the containment. Unit 4 is carbon dioxide cooled, and a very, shall we say, finicky design. Certainly no RBMK, but if the pressure seals around the reactor core were to be somehow deactivated, say by being turned to molten slag....”

“I get the picture,” Andromeda said. “Let’s get Security on this now and -”

“No!” Natalya interrupted, returning from her jaunt around the lab. “They’ll just kill it. We want it back alive. Dr. Blackstone needs to see it.”

Andromeda sighed. “Alright, fine. Are any of your specimen containers acid-proof?”

“I don’t think so,” Natalya said.

She thought for a moment. “Do you have any baking soda?”

“I think in the chemical storage,” Natalya said. She went into one of the cabinets under the table at the front of the lab. She tossed the orange box to Andromeda. “Here. Why do you need it?”

“We need something weakly basic that will help keep that caustic mucus from attacking everything it touches once we find it,” Andromeda said, filling one of the specimen containers with the white powder. “If we use something strong, like sodium hydroxide, we’ll just kill it, and as easy of a solution as that would be, you don’t seem to want that for some reason.” She handed the container to Natalya and pulled out her phone again. “Odd, what’s one floor below us?”

“Public records storage. It’s open,” the A.I. said.

“Great. How hard can it be to catch this gastropod anyways?” Andromeda said.

The three rushed to catch the next monorail car down to the next level, a completely open ring that surrounded the entire pit of the Hades Deep. Thousands of server racks were lined in innumerable rays of black metal around the gaping black hole of the shaft. Odysseus directed the three to line up their position with the hole in the lab floor a level above them. The caustic mollusk proved easy to find, though, as its red-orange flesh popped out against the drab columns of dark grey boxes. Natalya immediately spotted it crawling along and dissolving the top cover of a stack of processors.

“There,” she said, pointing out the dangerous gastropod. “Is there a ladder nearby?”

Andromeda and Artemisia searched around their immediate area, but no climbing devices of any sort could be found. “Just use the servers, there should be enough handholds to get you up there,” Andromeda said.

Natalya rolled up her sleeves. She approached the server rack, took a deep breath, and boosted herself up using a gap between the bottom-most and second bottom-most cases. Hand by hand and foot by foot, she clambered up to the top of the stack, the capturing container held firm between her teeth. Reaching the top, she slowly positioned the mouth of the box around the snail’s whorled turban shell.

“Ha!” Natalya said, slamming the container lid down. “Got you. Woah!”

With only her feet holding her in place, Natalya lost her balance and fell off the rack. Andromeda’s eyes went wide; powered by pure adrenaline, she rushed to catch the tiny biologist. Natalya hurtled like a meteor into her, knocking the wind straight out of Andromeda’s lungs. Fortunately, the landing was cushioned by a thick layer of adipose. The specimen container bounced off Andromeda’s squishy tummy and landed upside down on the floor.

“Sorry,” Natalya said, extending a hand to help Andromeda up. “Are you alright?”

“Oof,” Andromeda said, her breathing returning to her. “Probably just bruises, nothing major. Where’s the snail?”

Artemisia pointed out the specimen container on the ground.

The three girls watched as the snail’s chemical cocktail sputtered and sizzled against the snow of baking soda that surrounded its foot. For a moment, it looked like the plan had worked perfectly. Then, the powder turned into a translucent slurry of mucus and reaction products from the solution of acids and solvents in the snail’s fluids. Soon enough, with the baking soda's neutralizing power completely defeated, the compounds in the mollusk’s slime burned through the bottom of the plastic container as well, and it slipped out through the hole.

Natalya’s broad grin flipped upside down like she had been taken through a loop-de-loop on a rollercoaster. Buckets of tears welled up in her eyes. The gastropod was well on its way to dissolving through the metal floor as well.

“We need to get Security on this now,” Andromeda said. “They have a whole battalion of troops just a few floors above us, they’ll deal with it in -”

“No!” Natalie said, whipping back to face Andromeda. “‘Dealing with it’ to the Security Division means turning that little snail into a splatter on the floor. It doesn’t deserve that!”

Andromeda rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say.”

“Okay, yeah, I get it, you don’t see the beauty of mollusks,” Natalya said. “They’re slimy and gross and squishy, and you like to batter and deep fry them for a snack.” She stomped towards Andromeda. “But guess what? That mollusk might be vitally important to getting both of our labs more funding, so we’d better catch it if you don’t want to be stuck as an apprentice forever.”

She took a deep breath, calming herself. “We’ll just catch it on the next floor with... something,” Natalya said.

The next level held only a vacant laboratory, at least according to Odysseus. Andromeda cautiously entered while the others waited outside, on the lookout for Security troopers who might not take kindly to them snooping around and refusing to say what they were looking for. A condensed breath of mist floated aside as Andromeda padded into the lab. A thin man in a dark blue suit and tie stood in the hallway. He gazed at seemingly nothing but the empty mist, but then turned to face Andromeda.

“Have you seen an acidic snail?” Andromeda asked the man.

“No,” the man said. He walked towards her and placed his hand on her shoulder. His cold grip dug deep into her padded upper arm. “Not yet.”

“Not yet?” Andromeda echoed. She turned to face the man as he walked past her. “What does that -”

But all she saw was mist.

Andromeda sprinted out as fast as her tree-trunk legs could carry her. “There’s nothing in there to help us,” she said to Natalya and Artemisia between gasps. “Let’s just get to the next floor, maybe we’ll have more luck there.”

The car stopped at level 22. The door to the lab there was ajar. A ghostly flicker of white light scraped past through the crack, and an ooze of translucent slime streaked across the floor. Andromeda gingerly widened the door, carefully avoiding stepping in the clear viscous fluid.

“Denny... Denny just wants to watch.... Denny is hungry....” a man said, his voice a wheezing car engine choking on cigar smoke. He wore nothing but a black leotard. As he rolled on the floor, he coated himself in a thick slime which reeked of isopropyl alcohol. “You’re trash garbage!” he roared. “I’m going to eat you! Blaergh!”

Andromeda slammed the door shut. Without a word, the three mutually agreed to just wait for the snail on the next floor down.

The next sublevel was multipurpose, the area near the J8 monorail divided into a chemistry classroom, a low-level Security prison, and a small eating area with an automated burger joint. Whoever had zoned out this area clearly had been a bit scatterbrained, or perhaps no one else wanted it for anything since it was only five meters above boiling cauldrons of radiation and death. Dark hallways led off to other parts of the Deeps. 250 meters from the surface, the illumination here left the sublevel in constant twilight.

“I’m going to search that classroom,” Natalya said. “Maybe it’s unlocked.” Somehow, she hit the jackpot: not only was it open, but an emptied container for hydrofluoric acid had been stashed inside one of the cabinets. It was just the right size to trap an aggressively caustic and slippery mollusk.

While Natalya searched the classroom, Andromeda wandered over to the Security prison. From a distance, she recognized the same dented black armor from a little over a week ago inside the transparent walls of the lockup. Her helmet had been removed, her long raven hair limp and hanging over one of her mossy eyes. An android guard stood at attention and briefly analyzed her with its sensors as she approached, finding that Andromeda posed no threat. It was more concerned with its lone charge inside the prison. Dr. Katherine-Marie Voltaire sat on her thin cot inside the plexiglass cell, lit by a dangling halogen bulb. A few small holes in the cell let the stale air of the Deeps in and allowed her to communicate with whoever might decide she was worth a visit.

“Hello, Voltaire,” Andromeda said, approaching her former advisor.

“I see you’ve somehow managed to gain even more weight in a little more than a week,” Voltaire said, noticing Andromeda’s new sweatshirt and scanning up and down her paunch. “Impressive. You’re fattening up like a pig for slaughter.”

Andromeda did not respond to the bait.

“Why are you here?” Voltaire asked. “Have you come to gloat? Come to watch me wallow in misery? Do you take pleasure in my suffering?”

Andromeda remained silent.

Voltaire got up off the cot and approached the plastic barrier between herself and her former student. “Why are you here, Ms. Vainion?” she asked. The Security android took notice and went to a higher state of alertness.

“Why did you do it?” Andromeda asked. “Was I not good enough for you?”

Voltaire chuckled. “I told you all of this when I let you go. There was nothing you were doing that I couldn’t handle better myself. You were just a drain on my resources, just like I know you’re a drain on Dr. Zimov right now. Soon you’ll crack and wash out of here like everyone else who can’t truly handle science does.”

Andromeda’s eyes narrowed, and she quickly turned to leave.

“You know I’m right!” Voltaire shouted as Andromeda exited the prison.

“Andromeda!” Natalya called, waving from a table in the eating area. The brown acid container sat next to her on the bench. Andromeda made her way over and rested her weight against the tabletop.

Her starved beast of a belly growled at her. “I’m gonna grab some dinner,” Andromeda said, pointing to a nearby fast food machine. “One of you keep watch for the snail.”

Artemisia and her robot nodded. Natalya followed Andromeda over to the automated stand. The cart had a small omniprinter inside it that quickly fried, baked, and grilled whatever it was you ordered off the menu.

“What time is it?” Andromeda idly muttered as she typed in her order. She checked her phone. 3:31 PM, it read.

Natalya looked over her shoulder, and her face looked like it had been splashed with bleach. “No, no, no, no, no, no!” Natalya cried, taking a step back. “Ugh, no, we have to go back. I’m not going to have any time to study and then I’m going to fail. This is the end....” She collapsed into the bench nearby.

Andromeda went over to her. “Have you never failed a class before?” Andromeda asked, her brow furrowed.

“No! I’ve never gotten less than an A in anything,” Natalya wailed. “If I don’t do some studying, I won’t be ready for lecture tomorrow, and then I won’t be ready for the homework after lecture, and then I won’t be ready for the test, and then I’ll fail!”

Andromeda sighed. “That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not!”

“It is. It really is,” Andromeda said. “I’m sorry, but you seriously study for fucking lecture?”

“Yes! That way I can be sure to understand -”

Andromeda cut her off. “You’re wasting your time. Go get a life.”

“Science is my life!” Natalya roared. “These mollusks are my life! What the fuck do you do all day? Sit in your dorm and eat ice cream and calamari?”

“N-no,” Andromeda said, blanching. She regathered her confidence. “Artemisia and I spent all of last week building a mech, and then we killed a giant lizard that attacked us.”

Artemisia nodded vigorously from her lookout spot.

Natalya stared at the two of them for a moment, silent. “Well, that’s just - that’s just great,” she said, breaking into a pained smile. She forced her index finger into Andromeda’s cavernous belly button. “I’m so glad a pair of worthless gluttons like you could save the Institute.”

Andromeda shot back and gave Natalya an indignant salute in the form of a dismissive wave. “Okay, fuck you,” she said. She stomped over to the vending machine and grabbed her boxed cheeseburger. “Fuck you,” she repeated as she walked past Natalya over to Artemisia. The roboticist exchanged watches with Andromeda to get her own meal.

“What, you can’t take a compliment?” Natalya asked, her tone laced with sarcasm.

Andromeda took a deep breath, screwing up her face. “Okay. Listen. Do you want to know the real secret of this place? Classwork, homework, tests - it doesn’t mean jackshit. It’s artificial and worthless. You know what I do when I don’t know something?”

“I bet that happens a lot...” Natalya said.

“I look it up,” Andromeda said, ignoring the comment. “Or I have the lab A.I. look it up! Science isn’t about being a walking encyclopedia. It’s about being able to solve complicated problems creatively.”

“But I still need to pass my classes to become a doctoral candidate,” Natalya said. “I can’t do that if I don’t study.”

“Have you ever asked Dr. Blackstone if the amount you study is normal?” Andromeda asked. “Or anyone? Because it’s not. If you couldn’t handle the workload, you wouldn’t be here in the first place.”

Natalya tried to come up with a retort, but couldn’t. She sulked in her chair.

Andromeda turned her anger onto the helpless burger as she tore open the box and chomped on the spongy, ketchup-soaked bun.

“I hate to intrude, but you really shouldn’t eat that,” Odysseus said, appearing from Andromeda’s phone. “It contains - ”

“Odysseus,” Andromeda said, staring the A.I. down. “I don’t care.”

“Then perhaps it would be better for me to inform you that I have located the snail,” Odysseus said. “I would encourage you to hurry though, since I will remind you that we are just above the Unit 4 containment.”

“Show us!” Andromeda said. Odysseus pointed to a small black lump nearby.

Natalya jumped up and rushed over to the snail with her new trap. “Got it!” she cried, and screwed the lid on tight. “Just in time.”

But the snail had no interest in pleasing the young biologist. It circled about its prison a few times, scraping its toothy beak and radula against the bottom. Bit by bit, it cut through the acid-proof plastic. It landed at Natalya’s feet with a plop.

Natalya stared at the gastropod. The mollusk’s eyestalks, seemingly filled with frigid, unknowing rage, stared back. “Raraaaaaugh!” Natalya roared, picking her foot up to smash the tiny creature, before stomping it down just next to it. She collapsed to the ground, sobbing and defeated.

Andromeda whipped out her phone. “Odd, get Security on the line,” she said. “How much time do we have until that thing breaches the containment?”

“At the current rate, maybe... five minutes?” Odysseus said.

“Do it quick! We don’t -”

A blue ray of freezing energy shot from the darkness and froze the snail solid. Vanya stepped out from one of the shadowy hallways and wiped the misty barrel of the cryonic beam with a microfibre cloth. “Hello, Andromeda. I heard you were having a problem,” he said.

“Odysseus...” Andromeda growled to the A.I.

“My apologies,” Odysseus said. “I informed Dr. Zimov of your troubles just as you left Dr. Blackstone’s lab. He was not certain if he would make it in time.”

“If he’d told you I was coming, you might have not been thorough in your efforts to stop this creature,” Vanya said, picking up the frozen snail in a hazard-gloved finger and placing it in a titanium cylinder. “It seems your efforts were valiant, but futile.”

Andromeda’s mouth was a thin line.

Vanya ignored Andromeda’s expression. “This did prove a great test of the cryonic beam’s freezing potential,” he said, “And your software improvements were essential to optimizing the beam flux.”

Andromeda blinked. “Oh. Yeah. Uh, no problem. It was a simple coding job.”

“Glad to hear it,” Vanya said. “Now, I believe the four of us should get Byron’s specimens and get back to the surface. Being this far from the sun for this long can make one quite a bit mad.” He looked at Natalya, whose face was wracked by quakes of disbelief, her right eyelid twitching.

The ride back to the Blackstone lab was uneventful. They summoned a courier robot to push the cart full of specimens for them, then boarded a train back to the surface. Natalya and Artemisia sandwiched Andromeda between them, while Vanya sat across the aisle, using his cybernetic hand to read a holographic display of some scientific journal.

Andromeda looked at Natalya. The junior was pale and fidgeting. She kept pulling out a small cloth to polish her glasses for the umpteenth time.

“Alright! Urgh, I’m sorry, okay,” Andromeda suddenly said. Vanya looked up from his paper, a bit confused. “I’m sorry for what I said earlier. It’s just - you know what, nevermind. This is stupid.”

“Whatever it is, it isn’t stupid,” Natalya said, sniffling. “I accept your apology.”

“You... you remind me of myself, okay!” Andromeda sputtered. “That’s it,”

Natalya looked as if Andromeda had slapped her. “What?”

“There was a time before all of this when I had your motivation, and drive, and organization,” Andromeda said. “I wasn’t a complete studying freak, sure, but I wanted to be the best. I was passionate about things, like you are with mollusks. Then I failed once, and all of that just fucking evaporated.”

“Are you saying that’s going to happen to me?” Natalya said, her eyes wide with fear.

“No!” Andromeda said. “No, of course not. I guess I’m just saying... don’t let another person’s mistake ruin your dreams.”

Natalya took a deep breath and calmed herself down. Vanya gazed into Andromeda’s soul with the laser-like vision of his multi-lensed eyes. The monorail slid into the station at Regulus Tower, and the four scientists disembarked.

Dr. Blackstone met them in his genetics lab on level 91 of the tower, having called a courier android to move his tank. The space was filled with smooth white test tube racks, shaker baths, PCR machines, and other gadgets for DNA analysis. After a brief demonstration of the cryonic beam on one of the other specimens, Vanya unveiled the still-frozen acid snail. The nudibranch scientist gazed at it with his beady black eyespots.

“Hm. Yes, this does seem novel,” Dr. Blackstone said. “You said it came from a drainage pipe?”

“Yes,” Natalya answered. “It fell out of a pipe from above the lab.”

“That’s an unusual place for a land snail, but nonetheless. Could you slice off a bit of its foot for me?”

Natalya took up a small exacto blade and cut off the end of the mollusk’s tail. After thawing the piece off, carefully washing it clean of any remaining mucus, and mashing the sample to a pulp to lyse the cells, she placed it in a solution to extract the snail’s DNA. A few more processes later, and the genetic sequence was read out on one of the lab computers.

“Curious,” Dr. Blackstone said. “Very curious.”

“What’s wrong?” Vanya asked. He sidled up next to the tank.

“There’s a peculiar genetic sequence embedded within the junk DNA of this snail’s genome,” Blackstone said. “First it lists 26 of the 64 codons, each spaced with a stop codon in between. Then 16 of those codons repeat about 100 times.”

“It’s a genetic signature,” Natalya said.

“Precisely correct,” Blackstone said, “And it belongs to one ‘Lord’ Stefan Andros. Now, as a member of the peerage myself, I can assure you that Dr. Andros is not a lord of anything.”

“Arrogant prick,” Vanya muttered.

“Strong language,” Blackstone said, “But I’m inclined to agree.”

“I’ll report this to Security,” Vanya said. “They’re very tired of Dr. Andros being careless with his pets, and I’m certain they would just love to hear about this.”

“It seems our collaboration has been a smashing success, wouldn’t you say?” Dr. Blackstone asked.

“Agreed,” Vanya said. “I’m looking forward to continuing to work with you in the future. Andromeda, Andromeda’s...” He looked at Artemisia. “Friend? I think we’ve taken up enough of Dr. Blackstone’s time. Let’s get back to Altair Tower.”

Natalya smiled meekly at Andromeda and Artemisia from her place at the lab computer. “Thanks for helping me out,” she said.

“Don’t mention it,” Andromeda said, turning to follow Vanya out the door. As she left, she just vaguely heard Natalya start to say, “Dr. Blackstone, I’d like to ask you about my studying habits....” The full conversation was muted by the lab door closing behind them.

“I didn’t want to make a fuss in front of Dr. Blackstone or his assistant,” Vanya said to Andromeda as they rode the elevator down, the apertures of his goggles narrowing, “But I didn’t say you could bring a colleague with you.”

“You didn’t say I couldn’t,” Andromeda shot back. “Artemisia was helpful in getting all the specimens together. And she’s an expert roboticist. I think we should form a collaborative lab with hers.”

“That’s not something an apprentice can arrange,” Vanya said. “What level is she?”

“She’s a doctoral student.”

“Then we’d need to talk to her doctoral advisor. Who is that?”

“I don’t know,” Andromeda said. “She won’t say.”

Vanya looked to Artemisia. “Who do you work for?” he asked.

Artemisia exchanged glances with the android on her shoulder. She sighed, and said, “Dr. Wulfrik Argentine.”

Vanya’s many eyes went wide and he began to cackle his scratchy, grinding laugh. “You’re joking,” he said. “That old man’s retired. He doesn’t take doctoral students anymore.”

“He’s my father,” Artemisia said.

“Yes. Her full name is Artemisia Argentine,” Odysseus said from Vanya’s hand. The scientist stopped laughing. “And I can confirm that her public records show she is Dr. Wulfrik Argentine’s daughter.”

Vanya raised his goggles, revealing his ice blue eyes, and turned his gaze to Andromeda. “Apprentice, you continue to surprise me,” he muttered.

=0101011001101111011011000111010001100001011010010111001001100101=

Back in the darkness of the Hades Deep, Dr. Voltaire still sat in her cell awaiting trial. There was not much for her to do except pace back and forth and catch up on many nights of sleep lost during her graduate school days. That night, however, she was restless. She faintly heard the drone of the monorail car stop at the prison’s level.

Someone walked up to the android guard and lobbed a vial of acid at its central processor. The caustic fluid melted the machine’s armor and circuitry like butter in a microwave. The android groaned and sparked as it collapsed, destroyed. Its assailant cooly entered the lockup and immediately identified the sole person held captive there.

“Who are you?” Voltaire asked, approaching the man at the plexiglass wall. A sensor suppression mask obscured his face, the low hum it emitted blinding and deafening any snooping electronics. He wore a black hazard suit for protection against whatever threats he might face in his mission. Pulling a metal canister off the suit’s utility belt, he placed it against the transparent wall between them. With a push of a button on the base, the lid slid open, allowing the gastropod inside to extend its foot onto the glass and unleash its cutting power. The bulletproof plastic popped and bubbled as the acidic snail crawled up and around the edge of the cage.

“Who are you?” Voltaire asked again. The man removed his helmet, revealing a shock of flax-blonde hair and dark green eyes like a pair of polished beryls.

“Lord Stefan Andros,” the man said. “I require your services, Dr. Voltaire.”

Within a few moments, there was enough of a gash that Lord Andros could punch the wall down with the augmented strength provided by the hazard suit. Voltaire dodged out of the way of the falling, rough-shapen panel. Her savior extended his hand through the opening to help her through. He picked his creation up off the remaining piece of the destroyed prison block, his fingers protected by acid-proof gauntlets standard to hazard armor.

Voltaire smiled. “Of course, my Lord,” she said, but suddenly her stomach growled at her like a horrible genetic abomination prodded with an electric spear. “But first, let me get something to eat. You would not believe what they feed you in there.” Voltaire wandered over to the nearby fast food cart and placed her order.

Dr. Andros chuckled and crushed his acid snail beneath his heel.

[antonio-velardo]

Antonio Velardo shares: The Smoothie Stop-By: When a President Tries to Be a Regular Joe by Peter Baker

By Peter Baker For a commander in chief, retail campaigning isn’t easy, what with the counterassault team that follows him everywhere. But President Biden is starting to hit the hustings on every Main Street he can find. Published: January 15, 2024 at 05:03AM from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/1x36zco via IFTTT

[danviers]

@batsie asked: you handled that well. ( sincerely )

" —— Gotham doesn't exactly have a monopoly on power hungry super - terrorists. " Despite the thin, yet enduring thread of fatigue sitting in Alex's voice, a sharp glint of certainty — an lack of surprise as obstinate as the bruising grip she'd maintained on the scruff of their runaway assailant's neck — made itself at home in the upward skew of her glance.

There was no denying that the counterassault she’d waged on the masked grunt she'd chased down had left her a little worse for wear, a little bruised and scraped — but he, even without the batarang embedded into the meat of his thigh, had undoubtedly taken on the worst of the damage. While a two - thirds of a mile - sprint through Gotham's damp, midday downtown hadn't ranked particularly high on her list of expectations for such a fleeting, predominantly diplomatic visit, the satisfaction of catching the perp almost rendered her breathlessness worthwhile.

[artifactsj]

Ukraine updates: Kyiv prepares for counterassault https://artifactsaf.blogspot.com/2023/03/blog-post_66.html

[ukrainenews]

Daily Wrap Up March 28-29, 2023

Under the cut:

Ukraine struck a railway depot and knocked out power in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol deep behind front lines on Wednesday amid growing talk from Kyiv of a counterassault against Russian forces worn out by a failed winter offensive.

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, has described the situation at Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine as “very dangerous” and very unstable. The nuclear facility has lost its external power supply six times since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago, forcing emergency diesel generators to kick in to cool its reactors.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov suggested that Ukrainian offensive action involving Western tanks may begin in April or May in an interview with Estonian television.

The German federal government has agreed to allocate an additional 12 billion euros (over $13 billion) worth of military support to Ukraine over the next nine to 10 years, it announced Wednesday in a statement.

The US has not seen any indications that Russia is getting closer to using tactical nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, White House spokesperson John Kirby has said. It comes after Vladimir Putin announced on Saturday that Moscow has made a deal to station tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory. The Russian president said he was acting after negotiations with his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, who he said had “long raised the question” of a nuclear deployment on his country’s territory.

Map from The Guardian

Ukraine struck a railway depot and knocked out power in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol deep behind front lines on Wednesday amid growing talk from Kyiv of a counterassault against Russian forces worn out by a failed winter offensive.

Unverified images on the internet showed explosions lighting up the night sky with streaks of contrails in Melitopol, base of the Russian-controlled administration in Zaporizhzhia, one of five Ukrainian provinces Russia claims to have annexed.

Ukraine's exiled mayor of the city confirmed there were explosions there. Russia's state TASS news agency, citing Moscow-installed officials, said a railway depot was damaged and power knocked out to the city and nearby villages.

Melitopol, which had a pre-war population of around 150,000, is a railway logistics hub for Russian forces in southern Ukraine and part of the land bridge linking Russia to the occupied Crimea peninsula.

There was no public information about the weapons Ukraine might have used for the strike. The city is at the far edge of the range of Ukraine's HIMARS rockets and within reach of newer weapons it is said to be deploying, including air-launched JDAM bombs and ground-launched GLSDB munitions promised by the United States. Russia said it shot down a GLSDB on Tuesday, the first time it has reported doing so.

The strike could hamper Moscow's rear logistics at a time when Kyiv has suggested it could soon mount a counterattack against Russian invasion forces who have scored no big victories in a months-long offensive despite the war's bloodiest fighting.

Melitopol is south of the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, visited on Wednesday by U.N. nuclear agency chief Rafael Grossi, who repeated calls for a safe zone there, saying the situation had not improved and fighting nearby had worsened.

-via Reuters

~

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, has described the situation at Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine as “very dangerous” and very unstable.

The nuclear facility has lost its external power supply six times since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago, forcing emergency diesel generators to kick in to cool its reactors.

Grossi, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the water level in a nearby reservoir controlled by Russian forces was another potential danger. Water supplied by the reservoir is used to cool the reactors.

He told Reuters:

If the reservoir level goes down beyond a certain level, then you don’t have water to cool down the reactors, and we have seen especially in January that the levels of the water were going down significantly. They recovered somehow in the past few weeks.

He added that there had been increasing military activity in the region without giving details.

Grossi, who yesterday met with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the Dnipro hydroelectric power station, northeast of the Zaporizhzhia plant, said his attempt to broker a deal to protect the plant was still alive, and that he was adjusting the proposals to seek a breakthrough.

He was speaking a day before he is expected to travel to the nuclear plant, the largest in Europe.

Grossi has been pushing for a safety zone to be created at the plant to prevent a possible nuclear disaster as Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of shelling the site of the power station. Kyiv does not want a deal that will in effect recognise or allow a Russian military presence at the plant.

Grossi added:

I am confident that it might be possible to establish some form of protection, perhaps not emphasising so much the idea of a zone, but on the protection itself: what people should do, or shouldn’t do to protect (the plant) instead of having a territorial concept.

-via The Guardian

~

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov suggested that Ukrainian offensive action involving Western tanks may begin in April or May in an interview with Estonian television.

Reznikov said that German Leopard tanks, which have begun arriving in Ukraine, will be part of “the counteroffensive campaign under the decision of our General Staff. … They are planning that in different directions.”

“And it will depend on the time, the best time,” Reznikov said, speaking in English. “It will depend on weather conditions. During the springtime, we have wet land. And you know, you can use only tracked vehicles without wheels for example.” “I think that we will see [the tanks] during these two months. I mean April and May,” Reznikov said.

Last week, Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s land forces, said on his Telegram channel that the Russians are "losing significant forces [in Bakhmut] and are running out of energy."

“Very soon, we will take advantage of this opportunity, as we did in the past near Kyiv, Kharkiv, Balakliya and Kupyansk,” he said.

-via CNN

~

The German federal government has agreed to allocate an additional 12 billion euros (over $13 billion) worth of military support to Ukraine over the next nine to 10 years, it announced Wednesday in a statement.

"Germany has been supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia for more than a year with money, equipment and material and will continue to do so. This must also be reflected in the budget. On the one hand, for the procurement of armaments for Ukraine, and on the other hand, for the replacement of weapons and material handed over to Ukraine from Bundeswehr stocks," the government noted. Around $4.3 billion will go to the German military to replace the military aid Berlin has given to Kyiv since the invasion, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius added.

-via CNN

~

The US has not seen any indications that Russia is getting closer to using tactical nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, White House spokesperson John Kirby has said.

It comes after Vladimir Putin announced on Saturday that Moscow has made a deal to station tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory. The Russian president said he was acting after negotiations with his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, who he said had “long raised the question” of a nuclear deployment on his country’s territory.

Speaking to reporters today, Kirby said:

We’re watching this as best we can. We haven’t seen any movement by Mr Putin to act on what he pledged he would do.

The Belarusian foreign ministry today confirmed it will host Russian tactical nuclear weapons, saying the decision was a response to years of western pressure.

-via The Guardian

[worldspotlightnews]

Russia's Bakhmut assault loses steam, says Ukraine

A residential building damaged by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine March 22, 2023. Reuters WEST OF SOLEDAR: Ukrainian troops, on the defensive for four months, will launch a long-awaited counterassault “very soon” now that Russia’s huge winter offensive is losing steam without taking Bakhmut, Ukraine’s top ground forces commander said on…