by Skyler Grant
If I took time to enhance the dexterity, strength, and endurance of every human drone to the maximum, as well as give them telekinetic abilities, teleportation, temperature resistance and accelerated healing, I’d vastly increase their survival rate against most enemies.
I could do more than that, of course. The armor my drones wore was originally designed to impress Sylax. It was suited for Anna clones with low strength and could be manufactured quickly.
If I were designing for a drone with maximum human strength I’d be able to go for more armor plating. As well, as they’d be able to carry the extra weight for energy shields and heavy weapons platforms.
The resources to produce each drone would be daunting—with the growth vat space it required I could grow ten of the defense drones I was currently using. But I needed something that could hurt the foes we seemed to be facing. The fights were only going to get harder.
I should go with a variety of models. Kinetic weapons were more effective against some enemies, however a gauss rifle or heavy cannon were unwieldy in armor, but just fine for specialists. The same with a heavy beam cannon, or anti-air rocketry and shield-sappers.
While I’d love to design all of it myself, this is what I had people for. I put together a quick compilation of my best ideas and sent it to my research teams. The Professor could have been involved, but he’d once tried to conquer my district with dinosaurs and I thought the study of these massive lions perfect for him.
165
I’d had our remaining airship doing broad sweeps of the terrain. With the sensors aboard it could detect any signs of civilization at a far greater distance than ground units.
It had yet to pick up any technology, no airships or even communication networks. It had discovered another village. Unlike the last one this one seemed to be occupied.
I could have rushed in, but I was feeling cautious. Until I had completed the upgrading of my forces I didn’t want to pick a fight I wasn’t sure I could win. However, the long-range sensors were quite powerful and the results were encouraging.
The population was less than two hundred, and entirely female. Twenty or so seemed to be soldiers, armed with bows and spears and clad in tanned hides. The rest were pregnant, one and all at about seven months along so far as I could tell. In the central temple I wasn’t detecting any life signs at all. If any Divine were present they weren’t making themselves known.
It was a strange state of affairs to say the least. The population being all female was strange enough, but the mass pregnancy was even stranger. I’d observed human social dynamics enough to know that this was not the usual way they did things—for all that it did seem more efficient.
Were the villages constructed just to hold groups like this? If so why?
Next, my sensors were detecting a number of the pregnant women were in chains. Whatever this was, it was not a willing arrangement. I still wasn’t eager to pick a fight, but we needed allies and we needed intelligence, and these women might have both.
The question was how to get them free. The armor appeared to be made of the hides of the beasts we’d fought. It was reasonable to expect that it would share their resistance to kinetic damage. Targeted shooting might get around that, but it was chancy to depend upon marksmanship to win a fight. I was also wary of engaging in a firefight in an area with so many noncombatants I wanted to save.
I could try the acid guns. They were far less reliant on fine shooting and would work wonders on unprotected flesh, but my concerns were even greater of accidentally splashing the innocent.
There was tranquilizer gas, a nice peaceful solution that should work very well on non-enhanced humans, but again I was wary about blanketing the village in it when there were so many pregnant women.
It would have to be stunners. Their short range shouldn’t endanger the prisoners although it would be risky for my drones. Still, I was planning on changing military strategy anyways and these forces would eventually need to go back to the growth vats for proper upgrading.
It was also important to strike fast. Someone had left a guard force, so they felt there was something to fear, and that likely meant they had a way to call for reinforcements. I had to settle things quickly, if I didn’t want to face any Divine.
I opted for a short range jump with the airship appearing directly over the village, my drones lined up waiting on the ramp. Then they were dropping the few feet to the ground. I was in the head of each providing a tactical display of the positions of the guards and the prisoners.
I had a few teleporters ready for the prisoners. Inside a hut, they could extend their teleportation field to all present and bring them back to the airship where I had medical personnel and security standing by.
The guards weren’t pushovers. One put arrows perfectly through the throats of three drones before a stunner shot from behind brought her down.
The guards too were possible sources of intelligence—both for me and for the Divine. I wasn’t about to leave them behind to reveal just who had attacked this village. As soon as one went down they were teleported into a confinement cell.
In total the operation took seventeen minutes and four seconds, then the airship was pulling up and jumping back to Aefwal.
While I called them my human drones, they did have personalities of their own. They had their strengths and weaknesses and some were even personable. Within a few hours they started to get stories from the prisoners of what was going on.
The truth was disconcerting for me, and I think a human might have found it horrific.
All children there had the same father, a man named Ares styling himself to be a God of War. Far from being seven months pregnant they were actually around three weeks along thanks to the attentions of a Goddess of Fertility named Bast. With her aid he would impregnate them and a month later they would give birth. Then the cycle repeated.
The children were always daughters. Most inherited their father’s warlike mien and went on to be trained as soldiers. Those who didn’t established another village where the whole process would be replicated.
While a part of me could not help but admire the efficiency, a greater part scorned the approach. I was the very definition of inhuman, but I also worked to see those who allied themselves with me lived better lives. I tried to take care of those entrusted to my care. These Divine preyed upon their own populace, hurting them terribly and robbing them of all possibilities in their lives, so that they might have a greater army.
I did not approve.
Disapproval seemed to be mutual. Sensors were announcing movement towards the city. Lions, dozens of them, accompanied by a woman absolutely radiating crystal power. Bast, unless I missed my guess.
A fight had found us.
166
I sounded the city’s defensive alert and opened a communications channel to Hot Stuff and Anna. As the military and civilian leaders of the city, how we ultimately responded would be their decision. As part of the information I sent over, I included the testimonies of the rescued prisoners.
“Fuck,” Anna said.
“No kidding. We’re talking about when we fend them off, Emma?” Hot Stuff said.
“Because talking is what I keep you around for? Do you have a plan instead?” I asked.
It was a real question. This was my first test of Hot Stuff as a military commander. I’d seen Anna issue battle plans for a city before, but this was the first time I’d seen Hot Stuff do the same. I knew she was bold and destructive, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was a good leader.
Hot Stuff said, “Your testing cells will hold just about anything. We’ll get Jade and her people to handle the lions. I don’t care how sharp their fangs are if we just toss them up and throw them inside.”
Logical. I’d dispatch some drones with beam weapons and stunners as backup just in case it didn’t work out. I knew from my own plans how often a solution seemed obvious, but in practice a foe turned out smarter than you gave them credit for.
/> “She’ll be looking for her people,” Anna said.
“Emma can focus on keeping them secured. If it looks like she might get to them, transport them back to the airship and get them out of here. I’ll hit the Goddess along with the other Lords,” Hot Stuff said.
It was a plan.
Lions were circling the city and I sent Jade to intercept the largest batch of them. I provided the location of others to her lieutenants. Even if I didn’t directly command the District Lords in battle, I could at least be useful in coordinating them.
Bast was a voluptuous woman with dark hair. She went heavy on the golden jewelry and her robes left little to the imagination. She still went into a fight better clothed than Hot Stuff, who went out to meet her.
Bast looked her up and down. “If you are this city’s offering I am not displeased, although they really should have started by dispatching the concubines instead of stealing my people.”
Hot Stuff put her hands on her hips and gave an equally critical inspection right back. “Honey, if you’re looking for a roll in the hay you came to the right place, but I’m thinking you came for a bit more than that. Still the right place.”
Elsewhere the defensive forces were having problems with the lions. Jade was strong enough to force them into the force cages with her telekinesis, although it was a struggle. Her lieutenants were having a far more difficult time of it. The Lions were able to fight against the power.
That shouldn’t have been possible unless they were in some way manifestations of Bast’s power. They had the force of a crystal behind them. It made them a match for Jade’s people.
Bast gave a lazy smile. “It’s been a long time since someone sought us out here in our home. You are as bold as you are beautiful. Perhaps I’ll keep you after I’ve razed this city of yours.”
Hot Stuff’s flames surged as Bast stepped forward, claws erupting from her fingertips.
Bast wasn’t immune to the fire, her flesh crackled and burned when she entered Hot Stuff’s aura, which was a far cry from the vaporization that occurred to most. Those claws dug bloody furrows across Hot Stuff’s cheek and they both took a step backward.
Bast’s hand started to regenerate the missing flesh as soon as it was out of the fiery aura. So too did Hot Stuff’s wound although her accelerated healing ability wasn’t quite as strong.
Bast retracted the claws and raised a healed hand, still damp with Hot Stuff’s blood, and ran her tongue across it slowly. “You taste delicious, my dear.”
Hot Stuff wasn’t backing down, flames still blazed around her. “That’s usually my line.”
It wasn’t hard to see how this fight would go. They’d both hurt each other, but Bast healed faster. Left to it, Bast would win. But of course, Hot Stuff wasn’t alone.
Bast gasped as a flickering hand erupted from her chest, a barely visible hand wrenching her heart free and squeezing it into paste. Flicker had joined the fight.
Meanwhile Ophelia was next to Hot Stuff, unconcerned about the fiery aura as she stroked at the claw marks Bast had left in Hot Stuff’s flesh. The wounds closed instantly. With only a faintly pained grimace Ophelia pulled her hand back.
Bast spun and those claws extended again, shimmering for a moment as they somehow wrenched Flicker free of her own dimension. “All action, no foreplay,” she said, as she threw Flicker at Ophelia. The two crashed together and in a crackle of energy both vanished from sight into Flicker’s dimension.
That was a neat trick. I’d gone back and forth to Flicker’s dimension before, even rescued someone from it, and that wasn’t easy.
The other District Lords were all waging their own form of attack. Crash was holed up in an energy regulator attempting to hack Bast’s power usage. At least, he was until a lion that had already killed one of Jade’s lieutenants tore through the base of the structure and sent it crashing down.
The Professor’s attempt to arrive in the middle of the fight on a triceratops was aborted when a particularly massive lion leapt up and tore out the throat of the armored beast.
Bast smiled at the sight. “My monster’s bigger, and it works.”
Zora took that moment to blow her head off with a sniper rifle—just before a lion tore Zora’s arm off.
Blank walked out in battle armor. A lion made it perhaps twelve feet to her before it fell unconscious. A second cat followed a moment later.
My sensors had never had such a hard time reading Blank. When she closed the distance to the fray Hot Stuff’s flames flickered and dulled.
“Are you supposed to be the spoiler?” Bast asked.
“Something like that,” Blank said.
Bast sauntered forward, claws springing forth once again and she drove them into Blank’s throat and twisted. Blank’s eyes held surprise for a moment before they held nothing at all, the woman’s body dissolving into a pile of goop.
“Sad,” Bast said.
Hot Stuff hadn’t been standing idle. A hand grabbed at the back of Bast’s neck and she forced her face into the goop. Her flames were back, dampened by the close proximity to Blank’s remains, but hot enough that she forced Bast into only two choices—the puddle of goop or an inferno.
Bast struggled, but when she finally took a breath her lungs filled with the goop of a Righteous. The very essence of a Righteous dampened abilities and she was taking it inside her lungs, drowning in the same thing that neutralized her healing ability.
This wouldn’t do. Oh, I wanted Bast dead, needed her dead, but Hot Stuff shouldn’t be the one to do it. Of all the power sets among us, the one Bast displayed was closest to Ophelia’s.
It would mean triggering a jump gate. I had just enough power for that. I opened the doorway to Flicker’s dimension and Ophelia tumbled out to land on top of the drowning Bast.
Ophelia only healed friendlies, which Bast certainly wasn’t.
Hot Stuff understood as soon as she appeared, pulling her hands back and letting Ophelia finish things off. Bast choked her last and her body exploded into a cascade of light that infused into Ophelia.
“Oh, fuck no. You did not just give me creepy baby-making abilities,” Ophelia said.
I wasn’t sure really. We might have done just that.
167
The aftermath of the battle took some sorting out. On the positive it was a win. We hadn’t just driven one of the Divine back, we’d actually killed one. That said, I wasn’t sure if it could be attributed to our strength so much as to bit of good fortune and quick thinking.
Hot Stuff had made clever use of Blank’s passing to kill Bast, but only after Bast had single-handedly neutralized most of our defenders.
Jade had lost the majority of her lieutenants. Getting her back up to strength would be a priority, I’d have to send every new drone in an attempt to get her force replenished as well as ask the prisoners we’d rescued for volunteers. Telekinetics were too valuable for us to be this short of them.
The remains of Bast’s body had dissolved with the transfer of her powers to Ophelia. I had Ophelia locked up in a testing cell while we tried to figure out just what those abilities were. They did seem to be fertility-related in some way, but only with testing could I figure out exactly how.
Hot Stuff requested a meeting.
I took over a human drone and we met in a conference room. Hot Stuff toggled her powers off so she could wear something. For a long time her powers hadn’t afforded her that and it was still something of a luxury to her.
I said, “You did good work out there at distracting her with your dubious assets. It is a shame you were almost completely ineffective in every other way.”
“I know, I fucked up. Is Blank going to be okay?” Hot Stuff asked.
“I collected what is left of her and put it in her room. Other Righteous we’ve encountered always came back after twenty-four hours, I have no reason to think she won’t do the same, given her Righteous ability remains intact. You only need to have a dozen of Jade’s people on your conscience,”
I said.
Hot Stuff grimaced. “Cut back a little bit on the bitchiness when I actually deserve it.”
“It wasn’t a horrible plan. Just because something doesn’t work as intended doesn’t mean you did something wrong. While it is easy to understand why you would think so, not everything is incompetence,” I said.
Hot Stuff grunted at that. The woman really did look to be deep in thought and struggling with something she wanted to say. “Emma, am I a bad person?”
This was what she wanted to talk to me about?
“Do I really seem to be the right choice to be offering moral guidance?” I asked.
“Kind of. When I first met you, you killed my friends and tossed me in a cell. Now you’re running around getting us into bad fights because you want to save people.”
That wasn’t exactly what had happened in either case.
“If you want my opinion, yes. You aren’t quite the most horrible person I’ve ever met, but you’re up there. You’ve forced yourself sexually on hundreds, usually resulting in them being burned alive. When I first met you, you were burning as much of the world as you could.”
Hot Stuff took those words in and suddenly looked more tired than I’d ever seen her. “Yeah, I know.”
“It never seemed to bother you before,” I said.
“Never did before. Ever since I took control of a District though, something has changed. I’m feeling it, the weight of the things I’ve done. Not always, but sometimes,” Hot Stuff said.
Really? A District came with a power upgrade, but so far as I’d seen it didn’t come with a conscience. Like most things related to abilities, it seemed like it was almost the opposite. With greater power came greater disregard for those weaker than you.
Was this new realm impacting her or was it something different? I had an idea what might be responsible. Blank. The Righteous weren’t a part of any Scholar cities and their abilities in many ways countered others given by the crystals. Perhaps connecting Blank to our communal power network had to some degree dampened the shared insanity that affected all crystal holders.