by Skyler Grant
I started the attack with twenty Bio-bombs dropping from orbit. They looked like falling stars as they came down, glowing brightly in the Martian sky. As expected it wasn't long until they drew fire, the detonation sending the cargo of bacteria scattering along with debris down to the surface.
That was the time for my ground forces to move in. Because of the Sedara’s regenerative properties I'd gone with Aegis heavy assault units armed with acid sprayers. The acid sprayer was a classic weapon of mine. I'd largely phased it out awhile back due to its complete uselessness against energy shielding, but I'd yet to see a Sedara using any shields. Acid seemed like just what was needed.
The defenders responded quickly to my attack and I got to see the effects firsthand. A bearded man with a scar across his face was the first to get in range of one of my attackers. The massive energy pistol he held had already done a lot to deplete the shields of an Aegis unit.
When the acid-sprayer hit him with a burst of deadly mist he began to scream, the sound more a gurgle as his lungs quickly dissolved. A spray of my weaponized acid could reduce a standard human to a pool of goo within thirty seconds. It wasn't having quite the same effect here. Oh, the victim partially melted, flesh dripping away to reveal the silvery strands that ran through his body. However the strands weren't exposed for long before quickly starting to grow layers of new flesh.
The drone was relentless, stepping forward to spray him from head to toe. It was enough to expose more of the network of wires within and their core. There was a thick bundle in the chest cavity that resembled a ball of yarn. I ordered the drone to deliver repeated kicks to it, attempting to dislodge it from the body.
He'd almost succeeded in getting it free when a series of shots drove the drone backward, the last of his shields flickering away and the final round penetrating his helmet to blow his head apart.
Similar scenes were playing themselves out across the battle lines. The acid guns were quite effective against the enemy’s regenerative abilities, but in turn their weapons were potent enough to penetrate even an Aegis' heavy shielding and armor. The numbers were in the Sedara’s favor and the battle was a quick, brutal, and largely one-sided affair.
At least my drones were being a good distraction. In the holding compounds my shuttles were landing, opening their ramps to reveal the teleportation gates, and I already had people coming through.
I couldn't be as certain the bacteria was doing its work. There I'd have to wait and see, only time would prove the effectiveness of the attack.
33
I kept up the pressure of the assault for as long as I could. After the initial wave of Aegis units I sent in some Gunslingers to add support. Acid rounds weren't nearly as effective as a sprayer, but they still had some effect. They were designed to penetrate and release a small amount of acid into the bloodstream dissolving someone from the inside out. With the limited quantities of acid released the effect was short-lived, which was a negative when your enemies had regeneration.
Still, it quickly became clear that not everyone we faced had that capability. The front-line combatants did, but as my Gunslingers targeted those further behind only about twenty percent of the Sedara seemed to have implants.
With a few well-placed snipers and the occasional squad of ground units I managed to draw the battle out for three hours. Time enough that my bacteria should have been able to establish itself, time enough to rescue over seventy thousand Sinalara from captivity.
It was too many for me to provide adequate housing. At least it was easy enough to tool my growth vats to produce food for them.
Then it was just a matter of waiting to see if my attempt to disable the Arks had succeeded. I had no shortage of other things to occupy my attention.
It took roughly three minutes for beam weapon energy, moving at the speed of light, to travel from Earth to Mars. When the enemy Arks reached the halfway point that was ninety seconds. With some precise targeting I could start firing on the enemy ships from a considerable distance. Forcing them to take constant evasive action would slow their approach considerably and give me more time to prepare.
A standard beam cannon would have issues with beam fragmentation over that distance. Power projector cannons could form a more coherent blast, the crystalline power helping to maintain integrity and while it might lose that eventually, by the time they were in range a little diffusion would actually be useful in assuring the enemy took some kind of hit.
On Earth there was a large-scale relocation effort underway. Many Scholarium cities were mobile and relocating them to the equatorial safe zone was straightforward. Others required more work.
It wasn't long before the planet had a vast, built-up ring of cities at the equator with the rest of the surface largely vacant. A stripe of civilization running around the middle of the planet. Once it was in place I began construction of large-scale shield emitters and projector cannons. I was even assembling orbital weapon platforms.
Of course, despite being a massive engineering challenge this was also a societal challenge. The Righteous and the Scholarium had been at war for generations, and even after both had joined the Empire and the Righteous had become the Fallen, a good part of the peace being kept was thanks to the distance that separated them.
That was more challenging now. I could keep the worst of enemies on opposite sides of Earth, but there were only so many arch enemies I could separate that way. Given the number of Scholars who had gone to war with each other over the years, and the number of similarly themed Divine whose natural inclination was to kill each other and enhance their power, and the natural enmity between various factions—well, it was a constant juggling act.
I could send some to orbit. With the weapon platforms and the Space Juggernauts I had a large presence there. Others could go to Mars—Mercury and Triton weren't as accepting of new visitors.
To date we'd found no other ruins or signs of past civilization on Mercury. There were some fossil records and remains of biological matter that suggested the world has once teemed with life. Life that was long gone.
Triton was quite the opposite. After the discovery of that first city the Flawless had gone on to discover five more and all were now protected by force domes and had research teams. Attempts to contact the native-like locals had been less successful, although Caya had been able to make some friendly overtures—and dig up a few of their graves to get me research samples. We were still a long way from figuring out just what had befallen their world.
Comparisons of the skeleton remains found in buildings with those of the savages confirmed they were the same people with some slight genetic drift. If they had any unique abilities, I hadn't been able to discover it, although given the structure of their skulls and the development of their musculature they were an intelligent and physically capable species.
Two days after I staged my attack the final ten Arks began their ascent, lifting off the planet. Two didn't make it, they shouldn't have even tried. Even from a distance my sensors could detected the holes in the hulls and the crude patchwork.
The stress of leaving orbit caused them to implode and crash back to the Martian surface. I was already assembling research and salvage teams. To be safe, I had to wait for the other ships to leave.
If I could capture an entire Ark, so much the better, but even samples and up-close scans of wreckage of their technology might be invaluable in the battles ahead.
Julasa claimed her people would be able to offer me more knowledge on the Arks, and they had, somewhat. The Sinalara had no written language at all and didn't keep physical archives. They had a telepathic and spoken records, which wasn't of much help. They were all networked and so I had access to their minds, except I had no other telepathic species. That knowledge had to be accessible, and I'd reach it eventually, but time wasn't a luxury we had.
34
I was building an even larger version of the massive power projector cannon, this one in orbit. If the original was considered exp
ensive in resources, this one was even more so. It was vital to planetary defense.
It wasn't fully ready to go yet and only at a stage where I could start testing the components. I needed the most powerful power-holder to operate it. That was Hot Stuff.
As she settled into the focus chair it wrapped itself around her metal-shrouded form. As soon as readings began to come in I knew I'd have to make some modifications. The power regulators would handle her firing only a few shots.
I asked, "How are you finding life outside the Mountain? Ready for me to throw you back into a cell so you have some excuse for the mendacity of your day-to-day life?"
"Glad to be out. Wish I could eat something. Wish being sheathed in metal let me feel anything during sex," Hot Stuff said.
Really, she had nothing to complain about. The poor fellow who'd been inspired enough to try sex with the equivalent of a metal statue had come away with some serious injuries.
"Talk to Mechos. While nearly indestructible, the metal shell does vibrate and if he can't build you something to make use of that fact he scarcely deserves to call himself an engineer. I would, but I don’t actually care about you that much, I am disgusted by your needs, and I am too busy saving the planet—ranked in that order," I said.
"Are you really going to be able to make me normal again? Or even normal for how I was?" Hot stuff asked.
"You know I can't give you a real answer to that. I think it likely. From what we've seen the Mars colonists—the Sedara—possess some ability to dampen power crystal abilities. They even dampened Sylax, a second generation from the Agate. I haven't figured out how yet, but I think if we can defeat them they may hold the key to giving you your life back. You can return to being no good to anybody," I said.
Hot Stuff was silent for a few moments. I used the time to install a new regulator.
Hot Stuff said, "I like being important. I like having people answer to me, look up to me, being at the table when important things are discussed. I hate that I can't have any of it without imagining the scent of roasting flesh and screams."
I could understand that. I couldn't blame her for regretting her own death toll, when I regretted mine.
"Apart from being an incredible, destructive force you are also a potent power source. If I can't fix you, if we survive this, I'll find a way for you to use that. Perhaps you'll be the captain and power supply of our first ship to head to the stars, and you can start a new life as an engine instead of a flamethrower?"
The new regulator was holding even as I ramped up power, but the storage batteries weren't strong enough. There was a buffer of power reserves that got used before engaging the cannon and Hot Stuff would cause them to explode with repeated use. I couldn't make them more efficient, I didn't have that capability, so I'd just have to add more of them. It would slow down the fire rate, which I didn't like, but I preferred that to my weapons not exploding.
"You could do that? Would you let the Chalcedony out of your sight?" Hot Stuff asked.
"I don't thrill at the idea, given how the last person to have control of it tried to exterminate me. Still, you have it inside of you at all because I trust you. You've never hesitated to step up and do what is necessary," I said.
"Have I done enough?" Hot Stuff asked.
"Vinci would rule the world now if it weren't for you. The surface of the planet would be covered in factories, and if any people survived it would be more by accident than intent. That industrial might would have moved out into the rest of the solar system. You're a murderer, but if we're keeping score you've saved more lives than you've taken."
I added a duplicate of the existing battery, set them to work in tandem and ran through the tests again. This time the results were looking positive.
Hot Stuff said, "I'll help now, and I'll add some more to the dead column, but after this I'm done being a weapon, Emma. Cure me or not, give me a starship or not, I'm done being a killer.”
It wasn't the first time she'd expressed sentiments like this. It was the first time she'd been this filled with conviction. Killing hadn't used to bother Hot Stuff at all, but after taking out a Divine doubt had begun to bother her. I didn't know why, if the gods felt any guilt about the horrors they committed, I hadn't seen it.
It was an inconvenience. For pure one-on-one murder Sylax was number one, but when you needed environmental destruction Hot Stuff had always been my go-to. I had also built an empire where people got to choose their fates and that included Hot Stuff. And, if a human really decided to set aside their killing nature and to try to be something better, they deserved a chance to surprise me.
"I'll get to work designing that starship," I said.
35
There was so much to do the time seemed to pass quickly as the Sedara’s ships advanced. My efforts to get some technology from the crashed Arks had succeeded and between those samples, studying the Sinalara, and what the teams from Mercury and Triton were providing, I was awash in alien SCIENCE.
My studies of the Sinalara had turned up some interesting features of their physiology. Between my own drones, the Gobbles, and the many creations Crystal had left behind, I had a lot of experience studying genetically modified species—and the Sinalara had definitely been modified at some point.
Their philosophy of pacifism wasn't so much one of choice, modifications had been made to their systems that suppressed the more aggressive parts of their minds. The technical portions of their brains were under-utilized to bolster their natural creativity and telekinetic potential. They even had several segments for skin sensitivity that made me think their preference for nudism was a response to a biological factor imposed on them.
They were a peaceful, cultured, kind species, but I didn't think they'd started out that way. More than that, I recognized the genetic signatures of the alterations. It was Venusian technology, which made sense given their biological expertise.
If I had to speculate, I'd guess that at some point in the distant past the Venusians and Martians had gone to war and instead of wiping them out, the Venusians had effectively pacified an entire species by changing their nature.
I'd always assumed that their terraformers on Earth were there to wipe out humanity, to change the environment to something hostile to humans. Now I wondered if that were so. Certainly, it was being made more Venusian, but from what I could tell their world teemed with life. Changing the environment may have been the first stage to changing humanity.
If I were going to guess further, it was after this the Martians encountered the Sedara in their original form, who then converted a portion of the Martians into hosts altering their physiology. When the Earth colonists showed up, the Sedara decided humans made even better hosts.
As to who or what the Sedara were to begin with, I still didn't have any answers. The solar system was littered with mysteries and although I was sure they fit together somehow the pattern they formed was still a puzzle.
The Sedara seemed to infuse themselves utterly with a host, exerting some sort of compulsion or mental bonding. This kind of extreme shape-shifting of an intelligent, metal-like material bore similarities to what we'd encountered on Mercury, although the Sedara showed no signs of the glyphs that the technology on Mercury did.
Were the Sedara remnants of the Mercurian race? A more advanced version of what we'd encountered, or a more primitive?
When I'd had to face off against the Venusians they had been extremely effective at disrupting my psionic network to my drones. The Venusian station I captured was lined with psi-blockers. I'd since had the opportunity to study them, and while they were effective in some ways against me, they would be even more effective against the Sinalara.
That just confirmed that Venus and Mars had been at war in the past, since all Venusian military vessels contained a defense against Sinalara psionics—which the current Sinalara wouldn't now use offensively anyway.
The Sinalara didn't have answers, I was sure of that. The telepathic archive of information was
incomplete when it came to their own history, probably altered by the very people who had adjusted them to hide their tampering.
I was capable of reversing what had been done to them. I didn't know if I had that right. They were a peaceful, happy, society and for all that they might have been made to be harmless, they seemed content in that life. I thought my best option was to devise a solution and offer it to them, much like the brainworms with the other populations I'd encountered.
If you wanted to fundamentally change the nature and the essence of what you were, I could provide the option, but not force it.
On the Mercurian side, Mechos was discovering a lot more. What we'd found hadn't been a vault so much as a graveyard. The bars were the stabilized essence of Mercurians who were by their very nature fluid. When they came to a stop they died, although some semblance of their memories remained in the bodies and so they were kept, archived.
Although the Mercurians hadn't been organic life, they weren't electronic life either. They had been metallic shape-shifters capable of merging and separating their essence at ease into new aspects.
They considered all life as similarly adaptable, they sculpted even the organic life of their world with ease. There was no mention of any other intelligent species in the solar system.
I had shifted Mechos' focus to determining how they had altered their environment. If we survived the Sedara invasion, we still had to fix Earth. It was the original reason I had sent expeditions to other planets.
Triton was an interesting case. Caya was getting a real sense of their history and it was one of a planet overheating. Far from worrying about an approaching cold spell, the Tritons had been obsessed with a warming planet and terrified of the environmental degradation that would result.
Given how suddenly disaster had befallen them, it raised the question of if they caused their own destruction? Had some brilliant scientist found a way to lower the global temperature and badly miscalculated?