by Skyler Grant
"I'm here to punch her if things go south?" Sylax asked.
I told Sylax, "When you drew heavily upon the Agate I noticed a small drop in Anna's power level. With that claw and the endurance of the alien implants now coursing through you, I think you might be able to survive intercourse with Hot Stuff. If you two couple enough for Hot Stuff to transfer her virus, it might transfer you from being one of Anna's lieutenants to one of Hot Stuff’s."
"Couldn't I just have sex with her?" Mechos said, before clearing his throat, "Not that I'm volunteering. Happy with Miranda, really."
"Why would I be having sex with anybody?" Sylax asked.
"Without an Amplification core you'd wind up draining even more power out of Hot Stuff. Enough, perhaps, for you both to lead normal lives. If, that is, you actually care about your friends. I expect you don't," I said.
"Well, this just got even more awkward. Thanks, Emma," Hot Stuff said.
"You are my friend," Sylax said to Hot stuff. "But we're damned-well trying the metal first. Mars was quite enough nudity for me."
"You went naked on Mars. Why?" Hot Stuff asked.
"To fight a dragon. I was amazing and now I have an alien metal claw," Sylax said.
I was glad she'd had fun.
I teleported a bar of Mercurian metal into the cell.
"Just reach out to it like you would with a fire," Mechos said.
"I know how my powers work," Hot Stuff snapped. The metal was keeping its form even in the intense heat of the cell. Hot Stuff stared at it and got no response.
"You're not focusing enough," Mechos said.
"And you're too stuck in your own head," Hot Stuff said, moving beside the bar and kneeling to reach out a finger to touch it.
The metal began to glow, a dull orange color suffusing it, then the bar began to shrink, the metal flowing up Hot Stuff's fingertip and rippling along her flesh. It formed into a shell around her, stopping at her neck but covering everything below.
If modesty was a goal this didn't help, the shell might have been a micrometer thick if that, although she did at least now look more like a sculpture of a nude woman.
The orange glow of the metal faded to become a dull gray and the blue flames that constantly burned around Hot Stuff since absorbing the Chalcedony faded—except her hair began to burn now as if each strand were its own band of living blue fire.
The temperatures in the room were still, well, extraordinary. A human setting a foot inside would quickly die as their lungs shriveled up from the heat.
Hot Stuff cautiously walked around the chamber. The metal seemed to do nothing to impair her movements. "This is different. It feels odd, not bad."
"Your hair looks amazing. If I have sex with her, can I have fire hair?" Sylax asked.
I looked to Mechos. "We have more of it. If I provide you designs can you shape it?"
"Of course. What do you have in mind?" Mechos asked.
The design was a challenge, but I was a genius. Still, it took me all of eighteen seconds to put the pattern together and send it over.
The necklace would look like nothing so much as a band of interlocking metallic flames. It looked good—humans did appreciate style. Beneath the surface they'd be far more. Fueled by the intense energy Hot Stuff put out they'd create a shield barrier around her head keeping the intense heat within and effectively rendering her energy neutral to the world outside.
Another fourteen seconds and I added a set of bracelets. Hot Stuff being able to live her own life was a problem fixed, but it was even better if she could still assist us in the fight. This would allow her similar shielding around her hands with the possibility of opening the metal and shielding for tiny durations. In effect, she'd be able to fire powerful fire blasts from her hands.
"Emma, these are brilliant," Mechos said, looking the designs over. "They're detailed work. It will take me a little bit of time, we want to get them right, but yes. I can do this."
"I'll be able to leave?" Hot Stuff asked, a tremor in her voice.
"You won't be normal. I'm still working on that. But yes, for whatever it is worth, you'll be able to leave the cell," I said.
Hot Stuff began to cry. Humans were strange.
30
Caya was brilliant. This wasn't news but something of a perpetual comfort. We needed power on Mars to energize a gate and my Bio-reactors just weren't a sustainable solution.
"While I approve of anything that incinerates more humans, are you sure this is a good idea?" I asked.
Caya had a team of her Flawless surrounding one of the local volcanoes. What I'd done with Hot Stuff she was trying to do here, although on a far more massive scale. Utilize a force dome and energy-absorptive shielding to draw power. Enough to maintain the force dome protecting the city from the endless snow storms, enough to maintain the gateway to Earth.
"It is an elegant solution. It will work," Caya said, as she checked some numbers on a tablet. "Are you certain you wish to have this war, Emma? I'd thought you were past that. I know you have ... regrets."
How could I not? I'd killed a lot of people since first activating. The fact that most of them were trying in some way to destroy me didn't lessen that burden. All I'd ever wanted to do was perform my experiments. Somehow it had all led to me being the backbone of an empire.
"They're human, Caya, though there is something alien there as well. Being human is enough. They'll keep trying to kill us until we prove we can kill them," I said.
"You really have got a dark view of humanity," Caya said. "Has it gotten better or worse over time, do you think?"
I'd once considered humans were unkempt beasts who would leave messes upon floor. That hadn't changed, I'd just learned how often those messes involved corpses.
"Isn't your own view as dark, now? Don't you think yourself their better in every way?" I asked.
Caya set the tablet aside to stare at the volcano, shimmering green energy rippling around the summit as the shields engaged.
"I am now filled with such terrible certainty, Emma. Such righteous conviction that I am right. Yet, there is this entire other part of me that realizes how dangerous that is and that I've never been more wrong," Caya said.
That much I understood.
"I probably understand humanity better than anyone alive, Caya, and certainly far better than the flawless little mimicry of them you have become. Most humans alive are now a part of my network and even those who aren't, I watch their every move. When I say they are a murderous lot, I speak only the truth, but it isn't all of the truth," I said.
Caya chuckled at that and flashed my drone a wry smile. "You struggle with it yourself. Is it darkness and light, or something different?"
"I don't think it is either of those. Such certainty is something I struggle with, although not as bad as you do. I used to think that I and the human race would ultimately be in a collision course. That Anna would turn on me, that I'd have to burn all I built. I think my sister still feels that way, that she is the adversary in their midst."
"But you don't?" Caya asked.
"Humanity these days are mostly a product of my creation. Their society in part something I created. Humans have always been about conflict, a struggle for dominance until the best ideas or the strongest come out on top. Physical battle, economic, political, whatever the arena, they battle," I said.
"And you've joined us in our fighting?" Caya asked.
"I simply recognize my place in that narrative. Anna originally woke me up because she needed a partner and I went along because I needed lab rats. We defeated Sylax because we had the ability to make friends of our enemies. It is one of the unique natures of our empire that have seen us triumph over the Scholarium and the Righteous," I said.
"And you see that as your doing?" Caya asked.
The energy readings from the volcano were still weak and she made some adjustments to the field strength.
"Is that what you think? No, that is Anna's doing and it was her agreement with me
that set the tone. I could have been humanity’s greatest enemy and, left to my own devices, probably would have been. It is a fight humanity always knew was coming. Instead, an engineer with a love of cookies and delusions of grandeur befriended me."
"I want to show you something. I know most wouldn't approve, but you might understand," Caya said, tapping at her tablet again.
Caya was sending me information, a lot of information.
Genetic data, design specifications. Right now the Flawless were perfectly functioning human beings, their systems primed to peak efficiency that made them faster, stronger, smarter than anyone else around them.
These were plans to become something else. On the surface they'd still appear to be human. Beneath they'd be far different. I'd built the Flawless a Juggernaut once that operated well outside specifications of my other ships and had error tolerances both I and human crews would be unable to meet.
These designs had elements of that on a biological level. I couldn't make drones like this, none that would survive. The error tolerances simply to remain alive were outside of anything I could manage. With a Flawless matrix in control of the body it was possible.
"They'd be fragile. A Righteous power-dampening field, or one of the Venusian dampeners might cause rapid cellular degeneration," I said.
"I know. The by-product of human evolution is a certain resiliency which is useless. I'm not thinking of this for my whole population. A few, all on your network, so if the worst happens they can survive," Caya said.
This would terrify the humans. Something different always scared them and this would be a whole new sub-species.
If the Flawless chose it, I thought I could keep the peace.
I said, "You must be confident to have done all this work. The designs are serviceable, despite having been made by a sunbathing layabout. I'll be interested to see if you are right. I can do up test samples, if you like, once the current crisis is over."
31
With the Triton facility now drawing energy from the volcano, the mysterious stone providing power was unnecessary. I brought it back to Earth through the Triton teleportation gateway, then used the power projector cannon to send it to Mars. It was more than up to the task of powering a gateway—I soon had three up and running.
Now I could prepare in earnest for the war to come.
The Sinalara were not of much help. They truly were pacifists, unwilling to fight even for their own liberation although they were prepared to provide us with information so we could fight on their behalf. It was disappointing. Planet-wide I began to upgrade them with accelerated healing. They didn't get combat enhancements since they weren't going to use them, but I could at least keep them alive.
Bio-matter and growth vats were the key to building an army and ultimately making Mars even more habitable. The Sinalara explained which areas of the Martian surface weren’t in use and I got to work.
Atmospheric gasses were key. If I was going to vastly increase the population of Mars I needed to make sure they had something to breathe and the Bio-matter needed to grow things. Fortunately, the Martian soil had much of what I needed although sometimes trapped in inconvenient chemical forms.
Still, I had plans to deal with that. Omega Four had been an attempt to solve the issue of the metal sea as well as take out airships in a single blow. It hadn't quite panned out as intended, the bacteria created eating its creators, but a modified form was just what was needed.
Soon bluish-green growths were stretching across Martian sands as my bacteria settled. In addition to spreading quickly on its own and releasing necessary atmospheric gasses, it was usable for direct Bio-matter conversion to fuel my initial growth vats.
It wasn't hard to determine where the Martian Arks were, there was massive activity surrounding them. The ships were mammoth, oblong blocks of silver and gold. By the time I had established a decent presence on Mars, five had already launched into Martian orbit and loaded with warriors and supplies.
That left fifteen still on the ground that I had some hope of being able to attack. The only question was how.
The Sedara proved to have power-dampening abilities of some nature that weakened Sylax and kept me from being able to teleport close. Power crystals in general were our greatest asset, but it wasn't the first time we were limited in their use. Still, what couldn't be taken down by abilities tended to die, if you just shot it enough.
Fighting the Righteous, I'd made up for it with Reality Zero equipment. Gauss guns replaced energy cannons, armor replaced energy shields.
This was something different. This new universe we found ourselves in allowed energy shielding and most of the things our powers gave us. This was something other than just a Reality Zero environment being opposed. It had to be an active countering of crystal abilities.
I had to wonder if it had something to do with the disappearance of this universe’s Earth. They had some warning the crystals were coming, they had a spacecraft and the ability to intercept. Had humans developed some sort of dampening ability? Or, if the Sedara were something even the Martians had only encountered after some time had they met those who had sent the crystals at some point in the past and waged a war against them?
While interesting to ponder it didn't really matter, how to fight them did.
I could try to hit the ships with ground forces. That seemed the least likely plan to succeed. The Sedara were strong one-and-one and they'd taken down Sylax in a fight. My Aegis or Gunslingers were going to struggle to have an impact.
That meant hitting them in other ways. With five Arks already in orbit I couldn't assemble any space craft. I could teleport supplies from Earth into orbit—and they'd simply open fire before I could build a weapons platform.
My bombing of the colony after Sylax fought her arena duel actually failed. They locals had anti-air defenses and deployed them. The bombs detonated above the city and without a supply of Bio-matter to amplify them inflicted only minimal damage.
That didn't mean bombs wouldn't work. If I was going to use them they'd need more armor or energy shielding so that they could reach their destination. There were also the Omega projects. I now had ten super-weapons that my homegrown little bands of rebels had created to bring me down.
They were some of the most formidable weapons in my arsenal, all so deadly it gave me pause to deploy them. If they got out of control they could do harm to the Martian biosphere too.
I could build in safeguards for that. The safest option was going to be a variant of the bacteria I had already released on the Martian surface. I could key it to specifically the metals that composed the Martian Arks and it was relatively easy to install a generational timer in them. The bacteria would only manage so many replications before becoming sterile.
I didn't need to completely destroy the Arks, I didn’t much want to. If they could be captured and studied, their technology would be of use and the ships themselves might be repurposed. I just needed to keep them grounded, or if I could weaken the hull integrity enough I might be able to keep them from leaving the atmosphere. I got to work designing a bacteria variant to do just that.
32
I put together the plans. I'd install the bacteria into Bio-bombs and drop them on the ships. It was a technique the enemy had seen me use before and I expected they would counter the same way—with anti-air fire. However, unknown to the Sedara the Bio-bombs would detonate with a wide dispersal of the bacterial agent.
I'd time this to coincide with assaults from ground forces. Enough to make it seem a genuine attack. It would keep them distracted while the bacteria had time to get established and do its work. That was important—if the Sedara realized what I was doing anti-bacterial agents could neutralize my attack, so I needed to keep the enemy busy.
I couldn't let the Arks be my only concern. Anna didn't want to tip our hand too much and I appreciated that, but the Sinalara were citizens now and a great many were being held enslaved by the enemy.
The military
targets would draw most of the enemy’s defenses and when it did would present an opportunity to play rescuer. Teleportation gates weren't a derivation of any crystal power but a technology in their own right, although one that had never functioned in Reality Zero. I needed to put that to a test.
Even a local gate required high energy. I sent the material for a shuttle from Earth and assembled it on Mars. Normally a shuttle was designed for a good cargo capacity or lots of passengers. In this case I converted all that room to house Bio-reactors with a teleportation gate in the rear. When the ramp lowered someone could run right through the gate to the other side.
The other end I established in one of the Martian caverns. That done, I sent the shuttle on an expedition into enemy territory. I knew that my ability to teleport drones could be affected, what I needed to see was if a teleportation gate could be maintained.
The shuttle passed the perimeter of the power-dampening zone and the gate maintained with no change in energy consumption. Not only could it operate within their suppressive zone, it wasn't burning more power to do so, which was an important consideration.
I landed the shuttle further in and made several tests sending drones back and forth through. It looked good. Rescue was a possibility. Given their limited capacity, standard shuttles alone wouldn't have been an option to get prisoners out in any number. With teleportation portals installed then the number of people I could get out made it worth trying.
I explained the plan to Julasa, who assured me that with the psychic link her people had they could be ready to make a quick and orderly use of the teleportation gates.
Unfortunately, I'd never been as quick producing things as the recently defeated Vinci. My growth vats were versatile, but they took time. It was three days until I had assembled what I needed for my assault. It was time enough for another five of the Arks to launch leaving only ten still on the surface.