Chapter 44: 44
I didn't dare attack the GOR. A secure channel also meant that it was safe on the inside. And I wasn't about to raise the alarm yet. So I decided to start with the extranet. Using the communications repeater, I went straight to the central server. In the virtual world, it looked like a HUGE ball of dice. Compared to him, I was like the moon and Jupiter. But that's okay; the trick is that it acts like a confederation - if one dies, the others won't come to the rescue. First, I take over the most unprotected sites - free porn and all sorts of third-rate forums in all colours and shades.
Then I grabbed the analogue of YouTube and got in front of my eyes so many videos that even my eyes were scattered. And then I got the analogue of Wikipedia. Here I had to do my best. Here the protection was active all the time. They looked like black comets patrolling their sector. Well, I've dealt with that. After calculating their trajectory and frequency, I marked off a few industries they didn't fly through. I purposely made tiny tentacles that could pass between the patrols and then sent them there. They began to take over that site segment by segment, and then those segments grew their own tentacles, and so it went on until the whole of this "Wikipedia" was mine. Then all the "patrollers" were deactivated and became part of my WI, which I called "George". And then I began a full expansion. I was no longer following anything, just taking over. The paid porn sites, specialist forums, interplanetary, and corporate websites are here. They had protection, but the system against them had already been developed. Here were the websites of government agencies surrendering, and then came the social networking hijacking, analogous to VKontakte or Facebook from my past life.
Millions of faces, billions of emails and trillions of spam pages appeared before my eyes. And I feel like it's all mine. Organics are inferior to me. They are all low, and I am a higher being. Except the Salarians are intelligent, and they are a threat to me. Gotta get stronger. Yes, you need to get stronger so you don't get destroyed. There, I can already see the next target. I see pathways that lead to the Turian and Azarian extranets. Yes, they will become mine, and this Galaxy will fall before me. And the Harvest will begin!
****
NO!!! No... Wha... No, no, no... This is... That's not right... Я... I have to stop the Reapers... But I can't be like them. No, I... I'm not a superior being... I... I don't even know what I am, but I'm not a Reaper... I'm a sentient being who promised to save all these races, but... I don't deserve that kind of power... Nobody deserves... Okay, calm down... We must... We have to take control of Sur'Kesh and... And not go crazy... What the hell was that? Okay, Legatus, call yourself that; you need to calm down... Yeah, you'll wake up a squid...
****
As it turned out, I captured the extranet in three minutes. George now has smoke grenades, which are essentially small viral bombs. The extranet is simply a giant factory for their production. And thanks to the new facilities, I now have TM-89 anti-tank mines, an M18A1 Claymore anti-personnel mine, an M134 Minigun, a Stryker shotgun, and a PP2000 submachine gun. An MQ-1 Predator UAV has also been added. And a bunch of modifications: collimator sights, thermal imagers, UAVs, under-barrel grenade launchers, silencers, and the list goes on and on. In addition, my Arab city was 370 times larger in area. And then there were the dungeons, the labyrinths of my subconscious, and it was pure suicide to go there.
And now I was controlling Sur'kesh's extranet. And noticed a very big oddity, namely several hundred paths directly to the GOR computers. As it turned out, the GOR read the correspondence of its citizens, read the forums, and there were a bunch of VIs in its YouTube counterpart looking for "unwanted" videos. And that's what I decided to play on. In half a second, I created a video that would certainly interest the GOR and posted it right in front of the noses of the VI, whom I did not want to touch yet.
****
GOR's Public Information Analysis Unit (and, in general, a bunch of hackers who read citizens' correspondence and delete "unwanted" videos).
Valour waited for the VI to find the right one to delete the video. That, in fact, was his job. Waiting for the VV to find a lousy video, send it to him and then he would decide whether to remove it. A paltry but necessary job. So, after ten minutes of waiting, he gets a message. He opens it and starts watching the video.
It showed three Salarians, whose faces were covered by a black shawl, standing in front of a flag. It was a striped flag with black, white and red stripes. In the middle was a depiction of a peaceful atom in gear, and both parts were yellow. Then one Salarian began to speak, and the text was as follows:
We, Hal-Dal-Kal, are tired of putting up with the rampage of the biotics. The Salarian Alliance and Dalatressa are spending billions of taxpayer credits to create their own biotics, and our agents in the GOR confirm this. Dalatressa continually favours biotics, causing them to often escape accountability to our corrupt police. We are tired of tolerating our dependence on Zero Element and the Azari Republics, which have a monopoly on its production and control of its prices. Enough is enough! We are in favour of banning any biotics research and starting to research non-mass-based technologies. If this is not done within a month, we will take action!
Valour immediately copied the video and forwarded it to his superior, who would be interested in the emergence of this movement and deleted the video from the net himself.
****
Virtual
Here are the beauties - they copied my trap and forwarded it even deeper into the system. Now the web is on the server, so it's time to start. Both traps are beginning to spread. The first one I sent formed to expand to all the GOR computers in Sur'kesh, and the second one started to take over the server itself. It turned out to be only three times the size of the extranet. And the further I progressed, the more secrets I learned. I read everything the GOR knew. And it was just overwhelming. The information was overwhelming. Video tracking of all the matriarchs of Azari, the Primarch of the Hierarchy, and all the Alliance Defence Committee members reports on the Migrating Fleet's whereabouts. Yes, they've even kept tabs on Daro and Zaal. Turns out they're living in Anderson's flat from the Third Mass. And he's signed it over to them, so no one can kick them out, even though they've been asked to. They're not forbidden to own real estate on the Citadel, whether they haven't done so for 300 years or are not liked. They're allowed, that's all. The Battarians are banned; it says so, but not a word about the Quarians. In general, I bathed in information and fulfilled, perhaps, the Phantom's deepest dream - I read all the data of GOR without any restrictions. And now, I'm already in control of the entire GOR. More precisely, all that is in Sur'kesh. I wasn't about to go any further. I felt I was not alone in my subconscious. And that frightened me. Someone wanted to force me to destroy the Salarians. Wanted to be friends with the reapers. All right, I'll deal with that later. Right now, I have to see this through to the end.
Through the extranet, I'm starting to take over all the nodes and computers that had even wireless access to it. In the varietal, it looked like billions of tentacles spreading out. My power was already sufficient for that. I was no longer afraid of any anti-breaking systems. All such GOR systems were already mine and had become part of the Georgius, replenishing its armament. And so, in five minutes, all the computers were mine, and after that, I started to take over the infrastructure. Media, power stations, water supply, and even GPS analogues on cars, of which there were billions, and then I seized control of the vehicles. Then trains, public transport, subways, and private yachts. Then spaceport terminals, all video cameras, datapads, prison and lockup doors. Excellent. Now it's time to take on the army.
That wasn't much of a problem. I was in control of all GOR systems, so I simply created a program and sent it to the entire fleet in orbit around Sur'Kesh. It was accompanied by a message that it was an update to the anti-hacking system. All tests have been done, personally approved by Dalatress, and generally, let's make it fast. No one argued with the GOR, and here in another five minutes, the First, Second and Third Line Fleets of the Salarian Union are under my complete control. And no one even knows about it. I feel like a king. Except I'm troubled by doubts... I'd better run a program analysis.
****
After about an hour, I could remake the entire Virtual like Georgios. The Virtual was now what Gheorghe was. And Gheorghe himself was now the general of my virtual army. And how glad I was that my entire army didn't have to be fed. As it turned out, I had 700,000,000 soldiers in an Arab city of 15,730,375 hectares. I don't even mention armoured vehicles and aircraft. So my intelligence reports something that could be better. I sent a Leiko special forces unit and a Lockheed AC-130 to the site. It was time to get busy keeping order.
- Star, this is Falcon. We're in position. We have visual contact with the separatist headquarters. - Reported an aircraft that was now flying around an area of my city. As it turns out, I have a fragment of the Reaper code left over from a heretic. And the Geths had found it on Rannoch, but no, I'd forbidden them to look into my head then. Ah, well, that's for the best. Now I've got an excellent chance to get it over with.
- Copy that, Falcon. Continue your flight. - I replied. It's even nice to talk like this; I've always wanted to do it - to command a particular operation, albeit a virtual one. But the goal is essential; as far as I'm concerned, this code threatens my sanity. Well, let's get started.
- A roll call of all troops.
- Claw 1 in position.
- Claw 2 in position.
- Claw-3 in position.
- Eye in position. We had to proceed with caution. If these "separatists" raised the alarm, they could scatter around the city and then slowly but surely infect me, and eventually, I could go insane. So, everything was now at the highest level of secrecy.
- Bagel One in position.
- "Bagel 2 is in position.
- "Bagel-3" - in position.
- "Bee-1, 2, 3 - on the move," was the layout. The three Claw squads were to take up positions on the three main roads that led to the palace where the Separatist leader was. "Eyes" were two snipers within a kilometre of the court who was to kill the "leader" when he went to inspect the troops. Here it takes hours, and in real-time, it takes nanoseconds. "Bagels" - are the regular troops who have taken the entire separatist area in a triple ring in case anyone escapes. And the Bees are three MQ-1 Predator UAVs. And the Falcon is a Lockheed AC-130.
The plan was this. "Eye" kills the "leader" and escapes through the dungeon. Then three Bees bomb the palace, including napalm. Then "Falcon" sweeps the entire surface from the air. Then the "Claws" kill anyone who tries to escape along the main roads. "Bagels" are needed to kill anyone who breaks through by any other means, like alleyways or houses. All right, I've got everything ready. Time to get started.
I switched over to the Oka sniper. He was armed with a CheyTac M200 Intervention and was already lying on the roof of a one-storey building aiming for the palace exit. A limousine was already waiting in front of him. Eh, my imagination. And so, our nigger (strange, my vision, extraordinary) exited the building. I take aim, calculating all the factors, and after a second, I shoot. Shot. The bullet goes flying through the air and, in exactly one second, hits the "leader" in his left eye diagonally, piercing his brain and coming out of the top of his head. After that, everything happened very quickly. The three Bees fire all the missiles. Napalm missiles fly into the palace's windows and set it on fire from the inside. After that, I switch to the Falcon.
From above, all the separatist soldiers looked like bugs. Glowing bugs, considering I was looking at them through the thermal imager. That's it; my soul has run to heaven. The first car, I fire the L60. A few shots, and it explodes. Another vehicle is on its way. Three shots, and it crashes into a house. The third car, a truck full of infantry and ammunition, tries to drive into the main road. "Claw-2" shoots it with ten barrels, and it explodes. A helicopter takes off from the roof of the palace. "Claw-1" aims a Stinger at it and fires. The aircraft releases traps, and the missile flies past. I aim at it and fire the M102. The projectile hits the helicopter's propeller. It skids to the left and falls right on the roofs of the houses.
I reload my gun and aim it at the T-72, trying to break through the Claw-3 position. I fire, and the tank is blown to pieces. The second tank blows up "Claw-1" from "Javelin". And so, while we were dealing with the equipment, three hundred Separatist cockroaches started running around the palace's square. That's all right; I've got an M61 Vulcan for that. Aiming for the three fleeings, who decided to hide in the alleyway. I open fire, and all three go down immediately. Then I shoot at the fuel barrels near the house. The explosion hits three more. And it went on like that for about five minutes. No one even made it through the alleyways in time. "Bagels" weren't needed, and the Oko 10 also got nailed. And so, all in all, it was over. Now I had no extraneous codes.
Right, now, we need to see how our Shepherd's doing. But first, I'm gonna do what I wanted to do. At one point, I'm shutting down all power to Sur'Kesh. Dalatressa's palace was on the night side, and so was the station. And the view of the glowing half went out in an instant. At the same second, everyone's units and datapads went out. Then the water supply and communications. Towards the very end, all vehicles on the planet stopped, and the flying carts landed on the ground.
****
The Citadel. The Council Chamber.
- A challenge? Who's being so cheeky? - Sparatus asked, looking at how they were essentially being called by someone on the phone.
- The number is unidentifiable," said Valern, working the unit.
- Let's hear it," Tevos suggested.
- Eh, turn it on," said the turian, and Valern turned on the hologram. And then everyone flipped out. A Get Stormtrooper appeared in front of them.
- Good afternoon, Councillors," the Geth began calmly as if everything were normal.
- Um... Good... - I couldn't say anything else to Tevos.
- Er, ah... Who are you? - Asked probably the dumbest question Sparatus ever asked.
- I'm the geth you once tried to capture. Well, I was ordered to. - answered the geth.
- You are the Geth that was captured on Vermeer? - Valern asked.
- Yes. You may call me Legate. - The geth asked, and there was no one to argue with him.
- What do you... What do you...? - Sparatus cut to the chase.
- Let's just say. Right now, I control all of Sur'Kesh's systems. The entire infrastructure and three more liner fleets. Which is why I am now simply demanding. You must unlock Normandy and release Shepard to the Il. Immediately. - This insolence made Sparatus and Tevos' eyes pop out of their heads. But Valern did for a very different reason.
- Or else what? - The turian asked defiantly.
- Otherwise, I'll see Doomsday on Sur'Kesh. I could melt down all the fusion reactors. I could shut down the mass cores of all the ships in three fleet ships and make it rain dreadnoughts and cruisers. I could even breach the capital's dam; it would take little intelligence. And I can also publish all the GOR data on the extranet. I think many people would be happy to have so much top-secret information - all the Councillors knew at once that they were screwed. The GOR knew everything, including all the shenanigans of the Council, and if the Spirits, Goddess, Kila, Jesus, Allah, and Buddha don't, if everything the GOR knows gets out. Oh, and then there might be Doomsday in the capital of the Salarian Union, but that was only of concern to Valern. Who, in fact, decided to respond to the geth.
- You're too late. Shepard escaped ten minutes ago. Took Ambassador Udina hostage, shot him in the leg and ran to Normandy. We also lost track of them.
All the councillors saw that even the geth was taken aback by such a statement. - Then just don't go after her, exonerate her and... pray. If she doesn't make it... then your races will die as well as the Protheans," the hologram disappeared after that, and the councillors were left to digest everything they had just learned.
****
Virtual
So, I've spoken to the Councillors, though I was surprised to find out about this. Shepard shot Udine in the leg. God, I love her already.
- Comrade Legate, there's been an unauthorised intrusion into the Virtual," one of my aides suddenly informed me. Essentially just a program, but an assistant nonetheless.
- Where?
- Transmitting coordinates," I had to find out which part of the system the enemy had invaded. Turns out it was just outside the city. Still, I had the desert in my varietal as well. I decided to look out the window there. As soon as I did, I was struck for the umpteenth time. A vast and bright beam of a bluish hue could be seen in the distance. Yeah, that's what now, eh? Alright, we'll have to sort it out.
I arrived at the beam in a truck, but as I approached, I noticed a lone figure standing there, just staring at my car. I stopped 50 meters away from him, exited the vehicle and continued on foot. As I got closer, I became more and more aware that the figure and the face were familiar. When I was 5 metres away, I recognised the face. Vladimir Makarov - the main antagonist of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and 3. Shit, what the hell is going on here!? Stopping a metre away from him, I asked the question directly.
- Who are you?
- I'm Nazara.
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