by Skyler Grant
Provided I was willing to take the tour and let them make their pitch, they were willing to intercede with the library and allow my organic companions to make a few discrete inquiries.
The library logged everything, recorded everything. Information was information and whoever sought to learn was valuable. It didn't mean you couldn't anonymously seek information. Only with enough credits or the right connections it was possible to be discreet, but even those anonymous transactions were logged.
There had been a lot of searches of late on matters related to crystalline technology, the crystal ships, dimensional-drives—none of that was a surprise. Many agents of the council were all launching their own investigations to figure out just what had happened and how to get a cut of a reward.
They didn't have the information we did. An obsolete Jenakar fleet had hit the crystal ship’s homeworld and as a long-extinct species there should be few recent searches for them. There were more than I thought, their ships were still in service around the galaxy and people always needed a technical manual. Broad searches for genetic manipulation along with a search for Jenakar greatly narrowed the field. Only one of those results had also searched for information on the Scythe.
They'd gone through a local library branch on a pirate's moon, the payment tendered in energy-focusing crystals for use in weapons technology. What they hadn't been able to buy was access to a sealed council file. I wasn't surprised given the file told me that we didn't have the clearance to even know how truly classified the file was.
I barely had the resources to think about it just yet. The Balakai were busy showing me their waterfalls. Cascading data streams of high level data to create ever-shifting new intelligence constructs. It was brilliant but I could barely keep up. They were all terribly excited about the possibilities of such an approach in a genetic engine.
I said through Anna's wristcomm, "Our hosts are being very distracting and you've just about used up our welcome already. Figure out a way to get what we need." Only she and Caya had been allowed into the library. This branch wasn't designed for biologicals and they'd done their best. The interface room appeared to be modeled on an Earth kitchen with simulated sheep perplexingly eating the tiled floor.
"I'm not rewiring technology vastly in advance of ours," Anna scowled.
"Let me see what I can do," Caya said, a green glow surrounding her as she tapped away at the library interface.
"You're not rewiring their technology either," Anna said, peering over her shoulder. "What are you doing?"
"I'm looking for a back door. Those on a path to ascension have access to a wider array of data. While it shouldn't include classified files, they may have been careless," Caya said.
The Balakai were having me build them a sheep. What was it with sheep? Organic life was well within their capabilities already, but perhaps they wanted to observe how I worked a sequencer.
Caya was answering mathematical queries from the library system as fast as I could follow. Complex mental constructs, the system was testing her. It made little sense to me. I might be brilliant, but I wasn't ascending.
I was having my own dilemma. The Balakai were suggesting some technique refinements that, while not really needed, were fairly brilliant. I found myself designing a more advanced sheep capable of surviving a vacuum for long periods of time. It was an interesting theoretical dilemma.
Anna for her part was rewiring the library. It was a hopelessly rudimentary exercise that should never have worked, but this branch really hadn't been configured for physical interaction. Somehow she seemed to have opened the side of the ship, a complex data array shimmering from within the bleating animal which wasn’t the least disturbed by her attentions and kept trying to jump on the counter.
Security should have pegged her. The library system was too busy working on keeping pace with a half-ascended Caya, who was consuming every bit of its processor cycles.
I'd designed a sheep with a system that could easily go into hibernation and reanimate from extreme cold, and I was now working on a sort of heat-resistant wool. If the sheep would need to survive the vacuum of space, it only seemed practical they be able to enter and exit an atmosphere.
The Balakai were testing me, but they were also showing me what they could do. By pooling our resources even the absurd because possible. Super-powered jumps to carry the sheep into orbit wouldn't work or be at all practical for space. The Balakai agreed and we went to work on a jetpack design.
Anna was covered in wool, somehow the sheep just seemed to be producing it now in a fine spray that had coated her. In practical terms data was now flowing loose, free, and unrestrained. I didn't have the resources to grab any. I did flash a message to Amy who started to siphon off what data she could without the library catching on.
Caya screamed in pain, a jagged wound had opened in her hand and from it green light was flaring.
Anna, puffing wool off her face, was working on reconfiguring rewiring the sheep. Caya was outputting enough energy that the rest of the kitchen was beginning to melt and the library intelligence seemed to be getting distinctly unstable.
The Balakai wanted the sheep to be able to navigate stellar disturbances. Earth birds had some compatible navigation genes and with the Balakai's resources I was soon able to engineering something of a solution.
The library environment in the meantime had begun to stutter and waver. As the physical environment around Anna and Caya was collapsing, Anna sealed the sheep back up before rising back to her feet and patting it on the head.
Lights flickered and the simulation rebooted itself. That was a good thing as it stopped whatever was causing Caya such distress and she collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table, clutching her hand.
“I didn’t get what we needed. I can go back in,” Caya said.
“I think I did. You need to put a bandage on that or something?” Anna asked.
Caya grimaced. “I’d just burn through it. I didn’t think there was any danger, but it pushed me a little further than I wanted to go.”
“Can you, uh ... I don’t know. Cram all the enlightenment back in? Is that the way it works?” Anna asked.
“Not exactly,” Caya said dryly and closed her eyes. After several seconds the light erupting from her hand faded. “My body just isn’t precisely my body anymore. It is a part of me, but not the whole of me. Emma might understand that.”
I did, very well. In a strange way each of my drones was like an appendage of myself, as was every ship, every tower. They were all me and yet I was also something altogether immaterial and separate.
I let the Balakai know I’d had enough sheepy fun. They implored me to stay longer as I disentangled myself from their systems. It wasn’t that I was disinterested in what they had to offer, quite the contrary.
Humans were my creations, and in some cases my friends, yet we truly were very different species. It was nice to be able to communicate in nanosecond time. I really did need to seek out Flower more, and my sister. They both might be enemies, in a way, but less so than something like the Balakai, and if I were going to seek out such company it would be better to be close to home.
23
Once we made our escape from the Balakai it was time to go through the data we’d managed to get from the library.
Anna’s trick hadn’t got us any sort of categorized data. What we had was a mess. The request for the sealed file had been in there and hopefully it was included. There was no way to be certain except for sifting it out.
Access logs, birth records, entertainment from a thousand worlds. The library didn’t consider any information to be useless, but I disagreed. Only a few things were worth saving. Technical specifications, for example. Not all were for equipment we even had the technology to comprehend, but anything of that sort was worth preserving and turning over to research teams who could attempt to reverse engineer it.
Entertainment programs were valuable too. Anything that helped us to understand the culture of a
ny of the other species in the galaxy was a potential advantage going forward and worth preserving.
It took three days of searching to be sure—we didn’t have it.
Either we had missed it in the wild dataflow or library security wasn’t as lax as we might have hoped—which was quite likely. We were always being tested, why should the library be any different?
Sylax had woken up. As soon as she was awake and active we were running her through experiments. She wanted to know what the crystal had done to her as much as I did.
Sylax effectively tested as having no crystal-given abilities whatsoever. Her boosted strength, teleportation, accelerated healing, all those powers she had gotten from Anna were gone. The metallic claw did remain, still shape-shifting in response to her thoughts. That power wasn’t crystal-given, but everything else was gone and she was testing as baseline human.
“I am not staying an unpowered. Get me a crystal,” Sylax demanded as she paced within her containment cell.
The others had gathered to check in on her and wish her well.
“You should maybe consider it. It was nice being sane,” Anna said.
“Then you should have absorbed this thing. I’m a member of the Scholarium, I’ve always been a member of the Scholarium. I will not be unpowered,” Sylax said, spinning to face the others.
“If she wants one, we shouldn’t stand her in her way. She’s earned it. Do we have any in storage?” Anna asked.
Power crystals varied in their rarity. We could produce them now, but not quickly and not easily, and by far most were just basic elemental crystals.
“Any special requests?” I asked.
“Give me an ice. Me and Hot Stuff can do some badass contrasts thing,” Sylax said.
I loaded the crystal into her containment chamber, air fogging up around the shimmering blue crystal. Sylax reached out for it, resting her fingertips on it. Nothing happened.
That wasn’t unusual. Not every crystal was a bond for every person. I tried an electricity next, it was also a failure. Fire, wind, darkness. They all rejected Sylax.
“We know that the one you absorbed was called a power regulator. It must have set you at your current state and is rejecting any new crystals as throwing you above limits,” I said.
“So how do we fix it?” Sylax said, pacing back and forth again, her agitation clear.
“If we kill you, we get it out. Unless you’re Networked, in which case it rejoins you when we grow you a new body,” I said.
“Not helpful. No killing me,” Sylax said.
Of course, if she remained unpowered that was likely. Sylax had hurt a lot of people over the years. Someone would kill her.
“She did say the crystal also gave some kind of reality alteration powers. Are you sure you can’t do anything?” Anna asked.
Sylax punched one of the metal combat drones in the cell with her human hand, then she punched it again and again until the skin of her knuckles was broken and blood smeared the floor. I knew what she was doing, pushing herself. Before, she’d gained access to a greater share of Anna’s powers by stressing herself.
That I could do. I activated the combat drone. Sylax knew it was coming but she was used to being faster than a bullet, she wasn’t now. The shot spun her across the room with a chunk taken of her thigh.
“Emma? What the fuck?” Anna asked.
“No!” Sylax shouted, rising to her feet and charging the drone low. This time it hit her with a smack and I heard fingers breaking as she tumbled away.
These wounds wouldn’t kill her. Even without accelerated healing my Medbay could heal injuries like this, but I needed her to hurt. I needed her to let that monster inside her out. If she had power still, it was somewhere there, somewhere deep.
The next round left Sylax with a deep furrow across one cheek and a missing tooth.
“Maybe you’re wrong about the sadism because I have to say ... I’m enjoying this a little bit. I really do hate her still for what she did to me,” Anna said.
“Heard that,” Sylax said, spitting out blood and going again. This wasn’t getting us anywhere. This time I broke a few ribs.
I’d hurt her bad enough that by this point it was only force of will and spite keeping her on her feet. Still no trace of accelerated healing, still no other gifts.
No ... wait, her eyes. It was there, just a touch of pink. Medical scans said I hadn’t ruptured any blood vessels there. Power.
“You’ll have all the revenge you want when her past victims tear her apart. If you don’t do it yourself, now that you have no use for her,” I said.
Sylax charged again and this time I broke her arm in three places before smashing her face-first into a bulkhead, crunching her nose.
The Graven trembled. It was almost as if we were going through a dimensional shift.
I needed to stop this, but Sylax was already pulling herself back up and charging once again. Screaming in rage and frustration as she kicked at the drone, which had now gone still.
It was raining blood. Quite literally human blood, forming in space outside the Graven, instantly freezing and pelting the shields.
Anna screamed, her leg shattering in a dozen places even as Caya’s nose exploded in a spray of blood. I had problems of my own, the ship’s spine was cracking and my nerve sensors were registering agony. I dampened them.
I teleported Sylax to the Medbay and hit her with a dose of tranquilizing gas. The effects hit her at once and she passed out, the oddities around the ship fading at the same time.
Anna’s wound hadn’t instantly healed, but it was starting to now. The same for Caya’s nose.
“What was that?” Anna asked.
“There were some tremors in the dimensional fabric like there would be with a jump. Manifestation of blood outside the ship, and damage to almost every ship system,” I said.
“Broke my leg, and I think I might have been having a heart attack,” Anna said.
I checked the medical logs, confirmed.
“I think it is the same process as when we use dimensional shifts to alter a planetary atmosphere. Sylax was directly altering the surrounding environment,” Caya said.
“To blood and pain? I guess that does sound a lot like her,” Anna said with a frown.
It did, unfortunately. We’d just given reality alteration powers to a sadist and a sociopath.
“Do we let her wake up?” Caya asked.
That was a real question. This crystal was powerful, and dangerous in the wrong hands. It had been intended for Anna, and it would be much safer there. Killing Sylax would see it got there.
Anna said heavily, “Sylax has been loyal. The moment that changes you two can do whatever you want as hard as you want, but we don’t turn on our own. Figure out if you can get it out of her. If not it, is going to be up to you to teach her control, Caya.”
“She and I aren’t exactly friends,” Caya said.
“I don’t care. You’re holding back half-ascended energy and seeing her like this gets my bloodlust going. It is you or no one, so it’s you,” Anna said.
It might have to wait. I was getting a distress call, Hot Stuff needed us.
24
It was an hour later. Enough time for me to repair the damage to Sylax and wake her back up for the briefing.
Anna, Caya, Sylax and Flower were in the briefing room and I was occupying one of my drones.
“What have we got?” Anna asked.
I brought up a display of the Casanali system. Six planets around a yellow star.
“Hot Stuff was here based on a theory of Warmonger’s that a portal to some legendary treasure would appear. It seemed unlikely, but the system is also home to one of the Earth colonies from this universe and I thought she’d make friends,” I said.
“What happened?” Sylax asked.
“The portal opened, she went treasure hunting, and the colonists were waiting and attacked and tried to rob her when she was returning. Hot Stuff and her landing party were
forced to retreat back through the portal, which then closed. Warmonger remained in control of the Flare, and the ship and its crew have been captured. There was incompetence on every level, as you’d expect,” I said.
“What is the colony’s status?” Anna asked.
“Unofficial,” Sylax said, after tapping away on a tablet. “They’re not a council-authorized colony. We kill them all, nobody would raise a fuss.”
“Let’s not go straight into mass murder. Population?” Anna asked.
“They’ve had a few centuries to grow since the original colonists. Population is around one and a half million between Casanali Three and its first moon,” Sylax said.
That was a lot of people, which didn’t make that much of a difference.
“Technology?” Anna asked.
“They had interstellar vessels when they left Earth and they’ve had a few centuries to trade with whoever they could find. They likely have a technological edge on us, but not a huge one,” I said.
“I don’t like that they were able to take the Flare. We put a lot of our resources into that ship,” Anna said.
“If Hot Stuff wasn’t aboard then most of those resources were doing nothing. I built it to feed off her abilities,” I said.
Anna nodded and paced. “The portal she went through was on the second planet in the system?”
“Correct. Warmonger didn’t give us any further details and they’ve since discovered and killed his transmission. He was, of course, too useless to fight them off,” I said.
“It was most likely some sort of dimensional tunneling or something like an unstable wormhole. If you get me on site and I can take some readings, I may be able to figure out how to reopen it,” Caya said.
“I doubt the locals are going to be too friendly about you doing so. Fortunately, I don’t care about making friends. Do you have time to fabricate some battle armor for Sylax?” Anna asked.
Her existing suit relied upon a super-strength she no longer had.
“I can modify an Aegis suit for her,” I said.