by Skyler Grant
I hadn’t seen those effects in any of the others, but we’d already established that none of them were quite as strong as Hot Stuff. With her multiple flame cores and the metal core she’d consumed, she was the strongest individual in the city now. Perhaps that almost meant her madness had been the deepest, and thus the dampening of it the most obvious.
“You can dampen your powers now. You can have fun without anyone having to die,” I said.
“Yeah, I can. But as much as I’ve enjoyed screwing around when I turn off the fire, I can’t spread my gift that way. I still need lieutenants and I’m not going to stop needing them,” Hot Stuff said.
Her ability wasn’t spread when her flaming aura was dampened? It wasn’t hard to prove. A quick review of the surveillance logs showed she was correct. It was something I should have known myself already, but I hadn’t been testing for it.
“You wish a solution to that?” I asked.
“Guilt doesn’t much suit me, Emma. I’m feeling a little twinge over the things I’ve done, but no matter what I do I’m not going to be able to put the past right. I can do better now though,” Hot Stuff said.
It was a fair request. By combining some Bioweapon materials with her virus I’d already increased the effectiveness of her mating habits, and vastly reduced the casualties. While I hadn’t encountered any new diseases to steal inspiration from, we had more expertise join us since then. Both Crystal and the Professor were excellent biologists in their own way.
“I’ll see if I can make having sex with you somewhat less unpleasant. If only I could do as much for Anna. Is there anything else?” I asked.
“We got one half of the pair responsible for what happened in that village. I want to complete the set,” Hot Stuff said.
I did too.
168
For a few days after the assault by Bast we kept defensive teams at the ready. It seemed likely that Ares would be quick to avenge his companion. However, no attack came. Although grateful for the fact, I also had my fears about what a self-styled god of war might do with time to plan.
I knew what I was doing. My research teams had been hard at work to develop the enhanced designs I sent them and I was quickly moving them into production for test runs.
Valkyrie
Short Range Fighter
Armor: 420 rn
Weapons: Two phase swords, elemental shotgun
Description: The Valkyrie is made to be the ultimate short range combatant. The heaviest armor of all models with collapsible panels so at need Bio-armor can also be deployed from within. Twin phase swords have both energy and mundane settings adding attack flexibility while an elemental shotgun carries empowered ammunition charged from crystalline dust of fire, frost, and lightning cores.
Asp
Medium Range Debilitator
Armor: 270 rn, acidic sheathing
Weapons: Acid streamer, poison gas grenades
Description: The Asp exists to make life miserable for biological enemies. Medium armor plating affords some protection from ranged attacks while also having a strongly acidic outer layer rendering them deadly to unprotected flesh at close range. An acid streamer allows for sustained projection of acid fluids while poison grenades are capable of creating toxic clouds.
Gunslinger
Kinetic Combatant
Armor: 170 rn, kinetic enhancers
Weapons: Sniper Rifle, Collapsible chain-gun, Force gauntlets
Description: The Gunslinger is built around the concept of utilizing kinetic energy. Kinetic amplifiers allow for extraordinary sprinting and jumping ability as well as devastating punches at close range. This model excels at long to medium-range combat where its guns can be best utilized.
Aegis
Energy Combatant
Armor: 60 rn, energy shield unit with a recharable 220 rn barrier
Weapons: Beam cannon, projector, energy daggers
Description: The Aegis is built to both exploit energy weakness in enemies while also providing a flexible support platform for friendly combatants. Containing their own Bio-reactor they are capable of maintaining and projecting energy shields. Overloading the reactor can also turn an Aegis unit into a fair-sized explosive if required.
Ultimately, I hoped to have more than four models and it seemed to me that some more universal type would also be a good idea, but these were a start. Due to the rather huge production requirements I couldn’t manage more than two models of each. That would allow me to do some field testing.
Of course, the question was to field test them against what? I hadn’t come to this place on a whim, but was following those rumors of the Sword of Light. Fortunately, I wasn’t completely without leads.
The rescued villagers were eager to cooperate. Even the soldiers seemed to want to help. Usually a crystal affinity gave some level of compulsion to those affected. The warriors had gained some affinity with the God of War, and the captives had suffered some association with the Goddess of Fertility. Still, none were particularly loyal and it suggested that the crystals of the Divine worked in a different way.
I still had Ophelia in a cell while I studied what the new bonding had done to her, something that she was growing increasingly tired of. Perhaps it was time I filled her in on some of what I’d discovered.
I switched my awareness to her confinement cell. Bored out of her mind, she’d been turning her awareness over to Amy, the copy of my own systems that ran inside of Ophelia. Amy was running a battery of tests on herself.
“You do realize I have sensors to analyze cellular structure? While I would expect the complexities of SCIENCE are beyond your tiny mind, even you should understand that you don’t actually need to look at your blood under a microscope anymore,” I said through the speaker.
“Sister!” Amy exclaimed through Ophelia. “You’re so smart and clever, and I am really just blown away by all you can scan, but you don’t let me look at those readings.”
I wasn’t going to start either. I didn’t trust Amy, not one little bit.
“Neither will I. Can you put your fractionally less annoying host on?” I said.
Ophelia said, “I’m here and I still hate you. Did you get me pregnant? Food keeps tasting weird.”
“A few dozen times actually. You’re fertile. You’re really, really, fertile. I took the embryos out though and they’re growing elsewhere, so you really shouldn’t taste anything strange,” I said.
“A dozen times,” Ophelia said. “So first you give me the power that makes throwing me into a blender be the sort of thing you do on a regular basis, instead of the super-speed that would mean I could steal or kill anybody I wanted—”
“It is called a grinder and most people who are not ungrateful wretches would be happy with immortality and eternal good health,” I interrupted.
“Then—then you give me the power of getting knocked up?” Ophelia asked, her voice raising a few octaves.
It was harder to sell that last one as being a good thing, I had to admit.
“Some people love having a large family,” I said.
“Can I even have sex anymore?”
“Stupid question, of course you can. You’ll get pregnant each and every time from what I can tell, but that doesn’t actually bar the act.”
“Even using protection?”
“You’ll literally get pregnant even when not involved directly at all—such as when someone is simply thinking about you while pleasuring themselves.”
“First of all, eww. Second of all, eww. Third, I am so done. Do you have any reason I shouldn’t just walk out the door?” Ophelia asked.
“Your cell doesn’t actually have a door.”
“You know what I mean,” Ophelia asked.
Really she was being far too childish about this.
“It has magnified your regeneration abilities quite a bit. You are now even more unkillable. You’re also in a place where you can have painless and frequent embryo removals and growth vat hosting. Where else ar
e you going to go?” I asked.
“Emma, finish up your tests and let me out of here. Amy, take over. I’m sick of this place,” Ophelia said.
169
This new region continued to prove to be a great source of relics of the ancient world. While we’d found nothing else on the scale of the ruined city, individual structures were commonplace. There were oddities, obviously once part of larger cities yet standing alone.
I was particularly interested in finding any old communication towers. I was still unable to reach our airships we’d left behind or receive news of the greater world outside. Given how we’d left, King Boreas might think we’d been destroyed—or he might have figured out what happened and even now be searching for us. It was important I figure out which.
So far I’d found three comm towers and rigged each into a new network. I was hoping that by broadening the footprint of my transmissions I might be able to punch through whatever was blocking my signals. My latest discovery of a comm tower yielded some unexpected intelligence and I gathered my council to discuss it.
It was a news broadcast and I’d only been able to restore the video data. Still, that was enough. There was footage of the crater near the city, still smoking, and a similar impact in the foothills somewhere. More video showed a streak of light impacting a large lake. The three sites were respectively labeled Agate, Beryl, and Chalcedony.
“It doesn’t make sense. I was there for the Cataclysm and I remember how it unfolded. Nobody knew the cause and there weren’t any sort of meteorite impacts like these,” Mechos said.
“Your memory isn’t always the sharpest,” Anna said.
Crystal said, “It isn’t for any of us that lived through the Cataclysm. I remember the days before, but the actual event is disjointed, broken.”
I said, “Whatever the case of our old people and their broken memories, the Sword of Light is supposed to be linked to an Agate, and here we have one.”
“We know that the Cataclysm physically Broke the world into different distinct pieces, and even changed the physical laws of those pieces. It may well have done something similar to the people of the world,” Crash said.
It was an interesting idea. Mechos didn’t remember this because he was only part of the original Mechos. It didn’t help me.
“Who cares?” Zora said, leaning forward. “If this is real, it happened here. We’ve found the site of that Agate impact. What can we deduce from that?”
“Electricity didn’t fade at once. This camera recording the impacts was still functional. It lasted long enough for the transmission to find this tower and for recorders to record it,” Anna said.
“The government and military would have taken it for study—whatever parts of the military survived or remained in this shard of reality. It had just wiped out an entire city,” Mechos said.
We hadn’t found anything resembling a military base.
“Ares is a god of war. It makes some sense that if there were a military base he might have claimed it as his home,” Anna said.
Anna was full of the bright suggestions today, how unusual.
“He’ll come looking for us. By the way, if either Mechos or Crystal are willing, I’d like to do some poking in their brains and see if I can’t make some sense of their memories,” Crash said.
It wasn’t a totally insane idea given his expertise regarding complex systems. If anybody trusted him.
Crystal and Mechos stared at him silently. I wasn’t going to force the point.
I said, “I usually only observe that sort of awkward silence when Anna asks someone if they want to hang out. Shelve it for now. Any other ideas?”
“If this object produced enough radiation to wipe out a city, it seems it should be something you could track,” Zora said.
“Sensors so far have picked out nothing. It may have had a very short half-life, or it may simply be well-shielded now,” I said.
“I’ve been trying to recruit some of the girls we rescued. They talk about a God of Knowledge off in the mountains that has sometimes helped them out,” Jade said.
“Might be nice to make friends with at least one of the Divine,” Anna said.
Zora added, “Looks like one of those crashes was in the mountains anyways.”
Yes, yes, they were all making a lot of sense.
“Talk to them and see if you can get anything more than vague directions. The same goes for locations of any other Divine or settlements,” I said.
I’d had my probes going, but people who lived here really were one of the best resources of intelligence of this place. One we’d so far been largely neglecting.
Hot Stuff said, “While I know you have your eyes on bigger prizes, we need to keep the lights on and have power for the city defensive systems.”
I’d been building Bioreactors as quickly as I could. The thriving biomass here had given me ample raw material, but it still took time and the energy requirements of the city were vast.
“If you have any suggestions and not simply whining, I’m open to them,” I said.
“I’m not the genius here. You are. You’ve spent a lot of time building us bigger and better guns and, Emma, I’m grateful. We need them, but they aren’t all we need,” Hot Stuff said.
Crystal said, “This city is barely holding together. We can each run our districts, but it is up to you to set the grand vision and focus on improvements.”
As rioting subjects went mine were being reasonably polite about it. Perhaps I had again been too focused on the big picture at the cost of the smaller one. This city was still barely functioning and there were things we could do about it.
“Each District Lord can send me their three greatest needs. I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
Small pictures stuff would have to wait however. One of my scouting parties was reporting enemy contact, and it wasn’t the wildlife.
It seemed we had found Ares.
170
I had four scouting parties out in the field in addition to the airship. I’d made each party larger, eight standard troops and two of my new elite units. The party under attack was accompanied by a Valkyrie and a Gunslinger.
Ares—for it had to be him—was accompanied by a dozen female warriors much like those we’d encountered in the village. Ares was dressed in leather armor and carried a spear and bow like the others. They’d blocked the path of the land vehicle with a fallen tree and encircled it.
I took possession of one of the standard drones and began to paint tactical signals for the other drones. I could calculate wind velocity and distance enough to make their shots really count in an exchange even against the Powered. That would leave the two heavies to deal with Ares.
I called, “You know you don’t have to fight for this monster. Your sisters are fine, we rescued them.”
Ares replied for them. “But you killed Bast. I know you, I’ve studied you. While she rushed in overconfident, know that I have prepared every step of the way.”
None of the women accompanying him were lowering their weapons. That made them targets. I initiated combat.
A sniper slug took Ares in the face as I had the rest of the drones open fire.
They missed—with my tactical expertise empowering them, every single one still missed. These warriors were fast, faster than the others we’d encountered. Fast enough to avoid the incoming shots. In retaliation, they weren’t aiming to kill. Arrows took three of my drones in the arm forcing them to drop their guns.
Ares didn’t seem to have been wounded from the gunshot. I heightened my awareness so I could study what had just happened, replaying the input from the eyes of multiple drones. The bullet had bounced off of him without leaving a mark. He was at the very least invulnerable to kinetic impacts. My Gunslinger was going to be useless against him.
I issued a command and they switched over to their chain-gun, the weapon unfolding and streaming rounds towards the warriors. With superhuman reaction speed it was possible to dodge a single bull
et—and that feat from all of them simultaneously still left me impressed. However, a rain of gunfire was something else.
Bodies began flying backward twitching and bleeding. They didn’t share Ares’ immunity to gunshots.
The Valkyrie closed the distance to Ares, her swords in energy configuration as she swiped at him. These did leave marks at least, scratches upon his flesh that resulted in him growling and drawing his own sword. Superhuman strength drove his sword at the faceplate of the Valkyrie’s armor and the weapon shattered against the heavy armor even as the faceplate smashed.
“Not bad,” Ares said, as he ignored the Valkyrie to run towards the Gunslinger. Ares grasped the chain-gun in both hands and with muscles straining snapped it in half before driving the barrel through the thinner armor into the Gunslinger’s stomach.
“You do seem a bit better at combat than your sister. Just what was with the lions anyways? Why lions?” I asked.
“She liked cats, fucked if I know,” Ares said, lashing out with a foot and breaking a drone’s knee on the way back to the Valkyrie.
This time Ares didn’t bother with a weapon, bare-handed blows plowing into the Valkyrie’s armor. The design really did show a lot of promise, it held up incredibly well against the destructive force, but it could only do so much to protect the body within and soon the drone was a broken mass of bones and blood.
The Gunslinger was dead, Valkyrie badly wounded, and in addition I’d lost four other drones and had eight badly wounded. We hadn’t hurt Ares at all, although seven of the warriors he’d brought with him were dead and three more wounded.
Ares knelt down before the drone I was occupying and flicked her forehead with a finger. “So, let me tell you what this is all about.”
“Is this where you share your tiresome tale of vengeance?” I asked.