by Skyler Grant
I wanted to keep the specimen alive for study, but stunners wouldn’t be very effective against a target that size. Still, if I could just keep my people clear of its talons they would eventually overwhelm it.
I waited until it swooped down and had one of my drones roll out of the way while I unleashed a series of stunner fire. The bird swerved at the last moment and a claw dug into one of my drones, pulling him into the air.
That changed things. Losing one person, the odds were suddenly further against me being able to stun it at all, not to mention the bird was proving faster than I’d anticipated. I had my drones break out the beam weapons.
The bird was soaring away with its prize when a beam lanced one wing, digging a burning furrow in the flesh. It dropped my drone who went tumbling into the river.
He must have died on impact, my awareness fading the instant he hit the water.
The bird was circling around for a second pass. The injury surely hurt it, but that wasn’t keeping it from flying. My best option was to further focus on the wings. If I could bring the bird to ground then I could use the stunners to subdue it. In captivity, I could set a medical drone to work repairing the damage while I made a study of its physiology.
My drones opened fire as the bird swept in, fire lancing across its wings even as it reached them and talons disemboweled one drone with a clean swipe. It was strong, more durable than it should be.
Strong wasn’t invincible though and it was definitely hurting as it came around for another pass. This time the blasts of fire sent it crashing to ground and tumbling forward in a spray of dust. I moved my remaining drones closer, still keeping some distance as they fired one stunner blast after another into its head.
It took eight at close range for the bird to finally go still, sprawling unconscious. I dispatched a heavy ground vehicle and several workers from Aefwal to help transport it back.
I had an unexpected mystery to solve. My drone that had been dropped in the river was making his way out onto shore and I still had no communication with him. He looked around with a blank gaze.
I’d come up against things that could dampen my connection to my drones before, especially power-dampeners.
Full submersion could very well have removed him from my connection. Interesting. I sent one of the remaining drones to get a sample of the water. The instant his hand touched the river I lost control as well as he stared at the sample tube, confused.
Perhaps something more like the Ooze of the Oozelord then. Even a touch of that to Anna’s flesh cut my connection with her. They didn’t seem to be suffering under the effects of compulsion however. They were both just confused.
Well, I had a short-term solution at least. My one drone still standing walked forward and put a stunner shot into both their heads. They went down soundlessly and without resistance.
I needed to move them into a proper testing chamber.
I was concerned. Not so much at the river itself, it would be easy enough for me to tell people to avoid it and I could determine other options for a water source.
Rather I was troubled about other watery weather effects. What if a fog rose from the water? What about the next time it rained?
For the time being I’d have to be alert to those kinds of weather conditions developing and make sure all citizens had adequate housing to keep them under cover. The city had an extensive underground series of maintenance tunnels. For now I could convert them for transit and when necessary put up roofed walkways. At least until I could study exactly what was happening.
162
When the transport arrived at the scene I had workers in environmental suits load the bird and my stunned drones, as well as gather an assortment of samples from the river. I took everything I could find, both water and local plant life, since you never knew what might be the cause of the effect.
By the time they were finishing up I was getting a signal from another of the scout teams I’d sent in the other direction along the river. They’d found something.
I switched over to one of their members. What they’d found was both impressive and gratifying.
They’d discovered a city.
It was ancient, with rusted bridges hanging haphazardly into the river and the skyline filled with collapsing skyscrapers. These ruins were big, larger than any others I’d found. Individual old world buildings still existed, of course—I’d once been one of them, but this was on a completely scale.
That this place existed at all and hadn’t been completely picked clean spoke of how isolated it was.
A bit of exploration revealed the buildings full of skeletons. Whoever was here had died in a hurry. The same had happened in my facility, way back when. The buildings weren’t showing any signs of combat—unarmored structures like this would be clearly marked by weapons fire.
I sent visuals back to Aefwal. A comm from Mechos was quick in response.
I told him, “I do hope you aren’t going to tell me again about how little you remember of the past.”
“You’re in Cincinnati. I mean, the skyline looks a bit different, but it has been a long time,” Mechos said.
“This would be the same Cincinnati you assured me was destroyed?”
“It isn’t as absurd as you think. In the Breaking some cities wound up duplicated, while for some it was like they never existed at all,” Mechos said.
Mechos was just full of information when I wasn’t asking for it. Still, I had no reason to disbelieve him. If this was an alternate version of the Cincinnati it raised some questions.
“You said it was your belief that the Sword of Light destroyed Cincinnati. Was Vattier involved?” I asked.
“Not to my knowledge. It was after his time. I know, I know, it is a bit of a coincidence. I don’t have a good answer for you, Emma. I just thought you’d want to be aware”
On that much he was correct.
As soon as the report of something interesting had come in I’d called my science drones to the area. They were starting to give me reports on the city.
The people here had died suddenly and analysis of the bones didn’t suggest any sort of chemical attack. If anything, it seemed they had died of some form of radiation bombardment. Whatever it was I wasn’t detecting any trace of it. My drones were fine and high-energy emissions would have been detectable.
There weren’t any signs of post-Cataclysm activity. Nothing to suggest anyone survived that singular event.
I could only draw one conclusion. It had to have been the Cataclysm itself that killed them. That was something else I hadn’t encountered. The cessation of electricity, disease, the Powered—all these had killed a lot of people in the aftermath of the Cataclysm, but for it to have wiped out an entire city something special must have happened here.
I should be able to identify what. An energy source strong enough to kill everyone would have left residual traces everywhere. My science drones should discover something.
I set them to scan around the city and soon had my answer. A powerful energy surge had struck the city, hitting strongest in the northeast.
Seven kilometers away I found what I was looking for. The crater was almost a kilometer across, the landscape in its immediate vicinity still barren after all this time.
Something had crashed to earth here. It very much looked to be some sort of meteorite impact, but the crater wasn’t quite deep enough for that.
Whatever it was, it was long gone, and from the looks of it something else had since vanished too. The crater contained the familiar shimmer of crystal dust. The churned-up earth suggested more than just dust had once been here. Actual crystals.
So many crystals that the dust was considered worthless and left behind. It was an embarrassment of riches these days.
It wasn’t something I could ignore now even in the interest of leaving the site untouched. I took all the measurements and recordings that I could and dispatched workers to gather the dust and bring it back to the main reactor.
; There wasn’t really that much, but enough to get all of the city lights back on and bring back the main communication network. I might even manage a few uses of the teleportation gates.
It had always been a mystery what had caused the Cataclysm. Even in the Scholar records most didn’t seem to know. Few had survived from that time and most of those were deeply mad from having been bonded to crystals for so long.
Mechos knew, of that much I was certain, but for some reason he kept those secrets. I didn’t see how it could profit him, but I thought it must be connected to me and my creator. Mechos thought I had a purpose.
I thought so too, and I didn’t think I could let his secrecy stand much longer.
163
I didn’t have long to dwell on what Mechos was holding back before I had yet another scout team locate something of interest. This area really was one of riches, albeit far more spread out than most places I’d been.
I switched into a drone. They had found an abandoned village. A place of plainly more recent construction than the city.
Shacks surrounded a central building lined with sandstone sculptures of flawless humans.
I wasn’t detecting any signs of communication and nothing was showing up on auditory, visual, or thermal scans.
Still it was best to be cautious and I advanced my drones slowly. They were equipped with a mix of beam and kinetic weapons, and a science drone capable of scanning for any traps or hazards.
The shacks were simple affairs. Straw mats for sleeping, with chimneys and hearths for cooking. Primitive, but organised. This settlement didn’t suggest people being isolated or the settlement being old at all.
The shacks having turned up nothing much I moved the drones towards the central building. The shacks had little in the way of the ornamentation, but here it was everywhere. Paintings, carved stone, all centered on figures usually surrounded by a glow. If I was judging this properly it was a religious aspect. This building was a temple of some kind.
The interior was luxurious, again far more so than the shacks. The vibrancy of the colors in the paint and the general condition of the structures confirmed that this village hadn’t been derelict for long. A few years at the most.
I switched out of my drone and sent a summary to my council. They were quick to respond this time.
“Divines,” Sylax said.
Why did Crystal let her have a comm interface?
“I recognize some of the iconography. An Aphrodite, a Thor,” Anna said.
“A Shiva too,” Mechos said.
I said, “Would anyone care to stop making up words and start making sense?”
“If having great power and a dose of insanity weren’t enough, imagine getting delusions of genuine divinity on top of it,” Anna said.
“It was more common after the world first Broke. Every ass with a lightning crystal went around buying a hammer and calling himself Thor. There used to be Thor fights. Seriously,” Mechos said.
Anna said, “It turned out to be a really shitty idea from what I know. Crystal recombination.”
“That at least sounds interesting, which is clearly implausible for anything Anna says,” I said.
Mechos explained, “You haven’t really seen it, but very similar power sets when they kill each other can actually absorb the crystal of the defeated and grow stronger.”
“I’ve killed three other pyros. Damn, it feels good,” Hot Stuff said.
This made a degree of sense. Hot Stuff’s abilities were narrow but strong, far stronger than most Powered that I’d seen. In head-to-head matchups she always won.
“So when one of these Thors would kill another one they’d grow even more powerful in their lightning abilities,” I said.
“Not just the abilities. Crystals bonded to an individual have a flavor, a style that is partly the wielder’s and partly what they choose to be. They didn’t just get stronger lightning powers, but got closer to the human definition of divinity,” Mechos said.
“So why haven’t we bumped into any before this?” I asked.
“I’d kill the fuckers on sight if I saw one,” Sylax said.
“We would do the same,” Blank said.
“Scholars would in general. It is best to be safe,” Anna added.
It was a murderous, murderous, world.
“Well, at some point someone seems to have struck some kind of a deal to come here,” I said.
“That seems likely. In the past the Scholarium made deals like that with powerful threats we weren’t ready to face,” Crystal said.
“So if it comes to a fight, how do we kill them?” I asked.
“With difficulty. Hot Stuff just said how she is in some ways similar to one herself, and you’ve seen how abnormally defensive her ability is. Almost everything trying to harm her burns away before it can get close,” Mechos said.
I’d taken note of that. I was wary, but not too concerned. I’d managed to bring Hot Stuff down even when I was far weaker than now. Formidable was not the same thing as invincible, and the same powers that gave someone strength could also be their weakness.
“I should be of some help. With my Amplification core I should be stronger than them,” Blank said.
Mechos cleared his throat. “Maybe. You’re comparing yourself to known qualities, but I’ve met some of these back in the day. Your single Amplification core isn’t going to be a counter for someone who has absorbed a dozen of an elemental.”
Was that really possible? I had to conclude that it probably was. A pyrokinetic of Hot Stuff’s strength would be in little danger wandering the world hunting other pyrokinetics—and winning. Stretch that out over a long span of time and they might get just that strong.
“Then we’ll need all of you at your best. I’ve already had research teams looking at equipment that might play off your abilities in combat. I’ll move those requests to the top of the queue,” I said.
“Focus on solutions against electricity, love, and fire—based on those drawings in the temple,” Anna said.
That wasn’t a good idea. I wouldn’t restrict it just to those, but it would be foolish to ignore what intelligence we had on a possible enemy.
I might not have long to wait, I was getting another distress signal from a team.
164
The scout team at the village had come under attack. I had one drone go out of commission and the others signaling distress.
I switched into one of the drones still standing.
It wasn’t a Divine, or if it was they were shape-shifters. It was lions, twelve-foot tall massively muscled lions. My drone was in the middle of firing his rifle and the bullets barely seemed to penetrate flesh as a lion bound towards another drone to tear her apart with a huge swipe of its claws.
I didn’t know why the kinetic weapons weren’t working. I’d already fought one giant beast though, enough to know that beam weapons and stunners were effective, if not quite so much as I would like. Unfortunately this team had neither.
I could call in the airship for support, but I’d rather not distract it from its own mission. I still had three drones on their feet. That might be enough with a few alterations.
I upgraded all three with accelerated healing, teleportation, and the Fire Matrix. Now the body of each would serve as something of a makeshift energy weapon, and the teleportation should ideally keep them from harm. The healing just made extra sure that if they got injured they should still be in the fight, although they’d take a bit of time to patch up.
With the alterations made I teleported my drone onto the back of one of the lions and seized its mane between my drone’s fingers. The fur was smoking from the touch, but at a slow rate and a fierce toss of the head sent my drone tumbling into the grass.
The grass sent up a thick cloud of cloying smoke. The lion was already bounding forward with jaws wide to take a bite and I activated a second teleport to get behind it.
A roar from a second lion sent another of the drones tumbling across the ground
as if they had been punched. Enhanced musculature meant an accelerated exhalation of air. Useful to know, but not yet relevant to my fight.
I did a third teleport leaving me with only one remaining. This one was to directly under the lion. I reasoned that if an assault on the upper body wasn’t working the underbelly may prove more sensitive. I flamed the drone with as much intensity as I could. I didn’t even see the paw that got me, eviscerating the drone and kicking my consciousness clear as it died.
The remaining drones didn’t last much longer. Accelerated healing could only do so much at that level. Traumatic damage would still put them down.
The drones had lasted a total of two minutes and seven seconds since encountering the lions. A frightfully short amount of time, especially considering my stepping in to add tactical support and upgrades.
I ordered the airship to abort its current mission and deploy to the village. Even eviscerated, if I could get the drones back into a Medbay they’d come back eventually. I also wanted to capture at least one of those lions. Besides my own research, Crystal could work wonders with something like that—and right now we needed wonders.
That fight hadn’t been even close to being fair, and it was against the simple animals of this place. Still, we’d come out behind.
There was hope to that. I’d come here seeking strength and power, and there was no shortage of either. I’d simply expected us to be holding our own better.
The first thing I’d have to do is to stop swarming with drones. In the past I’d taken a Juggernaut upgrade to allow me more strength on my individual units, but I wasn’t acting in line with that.
In my rush to get the city operational again I’d been mass-producing drones, and for some functions such as research or city repair that made a lot of sense, but for combat units I needed to go with a different approach.