by Skyler Grant
I sent the details to Sylax's visual overlay.
"Wolf's reinforcements. I don't recognize the vessels," Sylax said.
"He was expecting to take the city. Would he have already allied himself with a new power?" Anna asked.
I thought we already had the answer to that. Wolfson's unusual upgrades, and now these new ships, suggested that he had. What I didn't understand was why. Wolf had proved himself to be a capable, intelligent enemy almost always a few steps ahead of us. If he entered into negotiations with a foreign power for the city’s benefit after taking control, he would be in a far stronger position than if he was still fighting and the result wasn’t guaranteed.
That might be a strategy to use if he were in danger of losing, but despite the damage I and others had managed to do he'd been in a winning position since soon after Sylax's disappearance.
More alarming still, if he had revealed the position of this city we were now far more vulnerable to attack. These ships needed to be neutralized.
Sylax said, "May he was already aligned with one and they haven’t been told their help isn’t really needed? I can take one of the ships. Are you capable of handling one of the others?"
Anna lacked any sort of visual upgrade. She had to lean out the doors to look up at the sky. "Three others. We've got them."
Sylax arched a brow, but didn't question Anna's confidence. Instead the world dimmed around us as we teleported.
The bridge of the ship was a majestic affair with stations sporting large screens showing scientific and tactical scanners from the ground.
"Teleportation trace from below," said one of the ships bridge officers. He looked like a giant humanoid tree. They were all giant humanoid trees.
"Track it," said the tree that must have been the captain.
"Let me help you with that," Sylax said, delivering a punch that sent the captain soaring across the room to crash into a display.
"Alert! Intruder on the bridge!" shouted another officer. Sylax picked up what might have been the Captain's chair and threw it at what would have been the head on a human being.
"Can you give me any sort of tactical data on where to hit these things?" Sylax asked.
I almost replied that I wasn't a botanist, but of course, I am one. I'm every kind of scientist, I'm just that good.
Their design was quite unlike anything I'd seen and I didn't have any scanners to properly analyze. Still, a basic visual analysis could serve to identify joints and breaks in the bark.
I brought up a targeting overlay for Sylax who began to set about slaughter with mad abandon. I didn't mind, I appreciated the chance to infiltrate their systems.
They were an interesting people who called themselves the Paraxins. They were vassals of the Parali alliance, which wasn't currently involved in any of the Scholar wars. Interestingly, they didn't have or utilize power crystals themselves, although they'd all formed a symbiotic relationship with a sort of powered moss.
This was neither here nor there. While fascinating, I needed to focus on what they knew. Fortunately, it wasn't much. They'd been ordered to assist Wolf, who had sent his own people to configure their jump engines for the journey. They didn't have the coordinates.
If we could kill them—and killing them was just what I had in mind—there wouldn't be more reinforcements. I brought up a diagram of the ship for Sylax and highlighted engineering.
If the first few murders had been clumsily done, Sylax was getting far more skilful by the time we made it down two decks. She had taken to snapping off a branch that I'm fairly sure served as their sex organ and then driving it through a weakness in the trunk roughly equivalent to a nostril.
Engineering turned out to be field of flowers with spores fluttering in the breeze and forming tiny whirlwinds in the air.
"Tell me I am not seeing this. Tell me these pathetic creatures aren't trying to power an airship with plants," Sylax said.
"We're powered by crystals, I'm not sure we're in a place to judge," I said.
"I'm judging. I'm really really judging. How do I burn this place down?" Sylax asked.
I highlighted the third and eighth pipes running through the nearby wall. Sylax put her fist through each and gasses escaped. They burst into a geyser of flame that began to torch the room.
144
When Sylax teleported us back to the ground it was just in time to see the ship starting to lurch unsteadily in the sky. It was a slower demise than was meeting two of the other airships which were in the process of plowing into each other.
Through the city’s sensor array I could detect the powerful magnetic fields surrounding them and I determined the source. Ratticus. Perhaps this was his Ultimate ability coming into play. So powerful were the ripples of energy coming off him it was tough even to look at him.
Anna and Hot Stuff materialized a minute afterward, with the fourth ship beginning its slump towards the ground.
"Well, that was disappointingly quick. Can't anyone give us a decent fight?" Sylax complained just before she was decapitated by a high caliber round.
When it regrew she was looking for the source of the shot. Those ships weren't the only reinforcements.
The Professor was there, riding on top of a tyrannosaur that looked to have almost as many cybernetic upgrades as Wolfson. Zora had shown up too, flanked by a force in tight-fitting armor and sporting submachine guns. Crash was present as well, although his army of mecha had been considerably reduced by the recent fighting. Flicker appeared with her wire golems and Ophelia arrived flanked by her army of townspeople.
It was a lot, and if they all used their abilities to help each other they were bringing an enormous amount of power to the fight.
"No man in charge? How disappointing," Sylax said, as she cracked her knuckles.
"Then let me make your day. You've raised a lot of fuss looking for me, but this isn't going to go your way," Wolf said, stepping out from behind a mecha. He was alone. Perhaps we had finally whittled the Wolves’ numbers down too much.
Wolf had also defeated and compelled Jade and Crystal. Their absence probably meant that he was planning something. Wolf was always planning something.
"Have you been watching me fight?" Sylax thought to me.
"You know I have, I've been giving you tactical information this whole time. Am I going to get to watch you run away now?"
"You're going to take over."
"While I approve of your belated desire to put someone competent in charge are you convinced now is the time?"
"We need to win, Emma. The city and every district are in ruins and I cannot force the compulsion of any of them as I am the head of the city, but you can."
I understood her thinking. There was a minor problem of location, but if I could access Sylax's ability to teleport we could remedy that. I could defeat one of the District Lords and then move them back to their own district to force their submission.
I'd been thinking Anna and the others might need to handle everyone else while we focused on Wolf, but in reality we'd need to do exactly the opposite.
I sent a condensed version of the plan to Anna and got her acknowledgment a moment later. She understood and agreed.
Crash would have to be the first target. If we were right about him dampening the abilities that Sylax was getting from Crystal, then taking him out and forcing his submission could quickly restore her to full power.
Wolf might possibly be her equal then, but he wouldn't be her better.
"Let's do it," I thought to Sylax.
It was awkward fitting into her skin, like I didn't quite belong there. Settling into any of my drones had always been a very natural sensation, but this was something different.
I moved to run towards Crash and felt my body being torn apart. Dimensional turbulence, it was a bit like walking into an invisible meat grinder. Slices of me fading out of existence and then popping back into being in entirely the wrong spots.
Although the accelerated healing tried to c
ompensate, it was having trouble with not all parts of me on the same dimensional plane. While my physical host might be having some difficulties, mentally I was still functional and my access to the city systems was intact. I'd used the teleportation gates to interact with Flicker's reality before, I just needed to do so again.
I opened a portal beneath Sylax's feet and we fell through, my pieces reorienting and realigning as we went. I lingered briefly in Flicker's dimension—long enough to punch her in what passed for a nose—before another gate allowed me to grab Crash and teleport us to his central core.
Massive screens filled every wall and they shattered most magnificently when I threw Crash into them. The man screamed as he fell to the floor. A wrist computer he wore beeped ominously and I settled for silencing it with a swift kick that crushed both it and the wrist.
Perhaps I'd been watching Sylax a little too much or perhaps it was just a result of being in her head. I found myself enjoying this.
"I know you, Crash. I know you've probably done some brilliantly devious bit of work on a timer, and with you hurt and that computer destroyed it’s just waiting to unleash all sorts of unpleasantness," I said.
"Something like that," Crash said, sitting up and letting out a pained chuckle. "The central reactor..."
I cut him off there. Did he intend to blow up the city? That was my plan.
"I don't care, Crash. You can submit and live, or not and die, and I'll deal with your clever little plan just like I've dealt with every other clever little monkey-plan so far," I said.
"Emma? You're riding her as your host? That’s why the disruption program wasn't as effective as planned," Crash said.
I didn't need him figuring things out. I needed him speaking the words. I smashed his other wrist.
"You know. I think we could be friends. It's just so rare to meet someone that really shares my hobbies," Sylax thought.
"I submit," Crash said between sobs.
"Stop the city from being destroyed, order your forces to support my allies," I said, and teleported away. We weren't even close to being done.
145
I teleported back to the central tower. The battle waged on.
Hot Stuff must have invoked her Ultimate for she was blazing more brilliantly than I'd ever seen her, cascading waves of heat deforming the world around her as she marched right through the gathering of Ophelia's forces.
Ophelia's town folk couldn't heal from being vaporized. Normally I wouldn't think that Ophelia could be vaporized, so quickly did she heal. With the intensity that Hot Stuff was burning I thought she might now—and I didn't know if Ophelia could survive that. I'd have intervened to stop the vaporization from happening, but Wolf was on me the instant I reappeared.
It seemed the others weren't that well at holding him off. I shouldn't have been surprised, the first time we'd faced Sylax with a Powered force we'd been neutralized in seconds. The difference in power level with her amplification crystal was just too great.
The blow that Wolf dealt me would have eviscerated me a short time ago. It still left a few bloody gouges in Sylax's flesh for all of the few seconds it took for them to heal.
My answering punch sent him soaring through the air.
"Mind if I cut in?" Sylax asked.
Well, it was her body.
I mentally took a step back and let her resume control once more.
Sylax activated Bio-armor. I'd seen this utilized by others and used it with my own drones, and it produced a set of armor roughly equivalent to a medium or heavy kit, capable but not extraordinary. With the boost from the amplification core Sylax got something different. Besides just providing defense there were entire new offensive options added as a heavy suit of muscle and bone formed around her.
Leaping at Wolf, a bone sword projected from her arm and she speared him through the throat before flinging him across the room with his head half decapitated.
It was an impressive visual, but unfortunately Wolf's regeneration was very nearly as good as ours. Despite the grievous wounds he was down for only seconds before springing back to his feet with a growl.
Hot Stuff's burn had completely wiped out Ophelia and her forces. In the aftermath, when the flames faded away, Hot Stuff was left staggering on her feet. When one of Zora's soldiers aimed a submachine gun at her and fired, the bullets clipped her arm and shoulder and sent her spinning to the ground.
That was useful to know. While her Ultimate had allowed her to perform some feats that she wasn't normally capable of, that added power had come with a cost of some downtime during which the normal defensive heat of her flames was gone.
With her accelerated healing that burst of gunfire shouldn't kill her, but it would take her many hours to heal.
Wolf had managed to get a good grip on Sylax and used it to break her arm. The snapping noise was surely temporarily satisfying, but ultimately as useless as nearly decapitating him had been. A moment later she was throwing him against a nearby support column that cracked at the impact.
This was a battle of juggernauts that was going nowhere fast. Getting Sylax her full powers back had made this a draw, not a win.
Ratticus was blasting at golems with bursts of lightning and Crash's mechs had turned to support our side. I didn't see Anna.
I opened a comm through the city’s systems.
"I'm okay, Emma. I'm working on a plan," Anna said.
"That is an interesting way to describe running way," I said.
"Seriously. You're going to like it. How in control is Sylax? Compared to you?"
I didn't know exactly where this was going, but I could guess. Anna likely wanted to kill Sylax and thought she had a way to accomplish it.
I couldn't argue with her thinking. Crystal wouldn't like it, but at this point Crystal's approval hardly seemed to matter. If Sylax were killed then Wolf would no longer be able to mirror her amplification core. We might actually stand a chance against him.
"It is her body and she takes priority. I believe I could take control, briefly, but she'll be able to fight me and is probably able to uninvite me," I said.
"That’s perfect. When the time is right I'm going to send you a comm burst with a set of coordinates. Teleport there and be your full insulting self to get her to show you the door," Anna said.
I rather thought I'd be ejected anyways when Sylax was killed. Still, I couldn't be certain of that. It was good of Anna to be concerned.
"I understand," I said.
In the meantime I had to do all I could to help those still here. I focused on the surrounding golems and indicated weak spots on each. Sylax did a poor job at picking those up on her own.
"Losing sight of the big win?" Sylax thought.
"I thought that you might be getting a little bored and would enjoy hurting something that didn't heal seconds later."
It seemed that Sylax did. The next time she sent Wolf staggering back several steps with a punch to his midsection she swiveled and plunged her fist through the chest of a golem, grabbing a string and pulling.
It took Anna ten minutes and sixteen seconds since she broke off communication for her next comm burst to come through. It was an eternity in a fight, although it seemed that Wolf and Sylax could go at this forever.
Time enough for another seven golems to go down, time enough for Sylax to amputate one of Wolf's limbs three times before he snapped off her bone sword to stab it into her shoulder. Time enough for the fight to go nowhere.
I forced myself into control of Sylax's body and activated her teleport to the coordinates.
146
I materialized in a room lit only by a blue sphere. From the coordinates I had to be somewhere back in my district.
"What is this you do, machine?" Sylax thought.
"The betrayal you always knew was coming because you're so incredibly unlikable," I answered.
Sylax responded just as I thought she would—by fighting back. I felt my consciousness being pushed out of her and a moment later
reconnecting with my district.
My view of the room swam suddenly as it switched from being out of Sylax's eyes and through the wall cameras. It was one of my testing facilities.
With my return to the District the lights came on.
Anna and Tara were in the testing chamber as well, just inside the force-field wall meant to contain the test subjects. Tara was holding the source orb that Ophelia had given me—that was the source of the blue glow.
That wasn't all. My teleport hadn't just brought Sylax here. Wolf had pushed his attack at the last moment and I'd brought him as well.
"This isn't to plan," Tara said.
"Not a time to worry about it. Do it," Anna said.
Tara nodded and a white aura burst around her. It hurt my sensors just to look at her. Sylax and Wolf turned their gaze as well.
Tara stepped towards Sylax, leaned in and plunged her hand into her chest.
Sylax screamed and dropped her knees—surprisingly Wolf did as well. What was happening?
Tara seemed to be struggling with something. She looked for all the world as if she was pulling on a rope tied to a heavy load.
Sylax looked murderously up at her. I was sure it would be murder in a moment. Sylax had only one answer for every problem.
With a brilliant explosion of multicolored light Tara staggered back from Sylax. In her hand was a power crystal. It lingered for only a moment. Another flare nearly burned my cameras out for a moment.
Tara was a mass of colors. Out of one hand came an overwhelming blue light from the source orb, from the other a multicolored rainbow from the power crystal, plus the white aura around her pulsing and throbbing as a thing alive.
The light faded and all that was left was Tara. Both the power crystal and the source orb had been absorbed. Anna was pulling her back over the line of the energy barrier.
"Lock it," Anna said.
I tried. I did, but nothing was happening.
I could reason out what was wrong. For all that it was unexpected I could put the pieces together.