The Nation

by Skyler Grant

  "A thoroughly unproductive conversation and mediocre meal," I said, pushing the plate away and standing up.

  "You already know they're extra-dimensional beings. Some Earth out there poked them enough that they decided to remove not just that Earth, but every Earth," Flower said.

  That did seem the whole of it. Our Earth, now trapped by physical laws, had probably been an afterthought at best. We would get access to the technology of Flower's people, one way or another.

  The empire was never going to be anyone’s afterthought ever again.

  33

  Vinci could plot a course as well as anyone else. She knew where my Juggernauts were heading and sent swarms of drones to put them down.

  I'd been tempted to send some of the Scholarium royalty or high-powered Divine with the vessel and ultimately decided the temptation of the Beryl would be too great. Caya was aboard, but Caya I trusted.

  Even if some in the Scholarium were now buying into the empire, I didn't doubt that the majority of the royals would turn on me in an instant, if great power presented itself.

  It was a shame really, we could have used Boreas.

  Given the new, added offensive abilities of the mechaswarm it made sense to take a more offensive posture—shoot their combat units out of the sky before they could get off a shot in turn.

  We had plenty of advantages there, my Juggernauts had a lot of guns and my beam weapons and gauss cannons had a greater range than Vinci's plasma bolters.

  Even with that, the sheer numbers Vinci was getting in range and the strength of her weapons were having an impact. A single bolter wasn't going to bring down a Juggernaut shield—a hundred weren't. Still, with the kind of forces she was fielding it was only a matter of time.

  Fortunately, Vinci hadn't had time to fully replenish her forces and the all-out assault elsewhere again meant less to throw at the Juggernauts. The ship’s shields were wearing down, but they were able to reach their destination.

  With the Beryl attached to a mobile platform Vinci should have tried to flee. Instead she decided to make a stand.

  Mechs were coming together, limbs interlocking and molding together to form defensive towers. They looked to be combining into some sort of giant unit, quickly remaking themselves.

  It was an ability they hadn't shown before, and it fit in well with Vinci's power set. It had to be Warmonger, once again giving her good ideas despite his insanity.

  One of the newly constructed towers fired at the Mercy. Not a plasma weapon this time, a solid and sustained beam weapon burst.

  It was low intensity and continuous, the sort of thing that wouldn't burn out the beam emitters, but would slowly drain my shields.

  It would be a great choice if my Juggernauts were purely defensive. The Mercy obliterated the tower with a few shots to the base.

  A shield shimmered into place around the Beryl ship, fairly small but intensely powerful.

  This was why I'd included a few strike teams on the Pinnacle. Twelve Annas teleported down and hit the thing with the full power of their elemental fury in unison.

  Individually they lacked the power of the original. Vinci wasn't the only one who could utilize the powers of a swarm.

  It would take even the Annas a while. It was time to let Caya know what I had planned, not that she wouldn't have already guessed.

  I found Caya in her combat armor, a far more modest affair than Anna's. Caya made it look good, of course, she made everything look good.

  "I see you gave up on working out. It shows," I said.

  "You're expecting me to try to bond with the Beryl, I know. Sylax or one of the royals is more likely to achieve it successfully," Caya said.

  "You know that isn't completely true. You have the most stable, Powered matrix I've ever encountered. Your power level may not equal some of the others, but the stability may prove to be important."

  "And you don't trust Sylax. I do understand. You also fear an echo, if it goes into one of the Annas," Caya said.

  Crystals all had a unique dimensional frequency. I did fear what might happen about loading two of the most powerful into genetically identical humans. Especially when Anna was already close to bursting from the power she held. I was fairly sure it would make her even more powerful and I didn't know if she could actually handle that.

  "Obviously. You've no objection?" I asked.

  Caya smiled faintly. "I am a member of the Scholarium, for all you seem to forget that fact, Emma. I'm not going to say no to becoming one of the most powerful women on the planet."

  That was good, because it was time.

  The Annas couldn't bring down that shield, not on any lasting basis. They could disrupt it. Make it grow unstable and in that instability there would be a glimmer of weakness. A crack I could exploit.

  When I detected one, an Anna called Talana grabbed Caya and teleported the two through the gap to land right on top of the dome of the transport ship housing the Beryl.

  Talana punched downward, super-powered fingers digging into steel, and with a wrench she tore aside armored plating to reveal the Beryl.

  Green sparks leapt off the gem, bursts of lightning charged with power.

  A crystal like this wasn't tamed easily. The rebel assassins had given me a clue how.

  Talana pulled a long, cylindrical device from her belt and hit the trigger, aiming it at the Beryl.

  A blast of focused dimensional energy hit it, much like the bullets that wounded Anna. Weakened her.

  It wouldn't render the Beryl permanently weaker, only decreasing its strength for a time, hopefully long enough. Talana nodded at Caya, who reached down and pressed a bare hand to the crystal.

  Caya screamed, green lightning coursing from the crystal up her arm and enveloping her body. For a moment Caya wavered, translucent. It was almost as if she were about to be bodily ripped out of this reality and thrown into another. Given the nature of these crystals and what they'd done in the past, perhaps she was.

  Then the crystal was gone and Caya was slumping unconscious. The shield dropped and Talana teleported the two aboard the Mercy.

  The Pinnacle was in trouble, all of the Flawless crew had just collapsed at their stations and even through the network I was barely able to access their minds.

  34

  The Pinnacle could scarcely have picked a worse time for the crew to become comatose. Vinci's enormous robot had finally finished building. It lumbered across the landscape, aiming a hand at the Pinnacle. A massive plasma bolt shot from the palm, rippling off the shields and reducing them to half strength in an instant.

  The robot wasn't the only concern. The Pinnacle's systems were so finely tuned that without Flawless operating the controls they were quickly going out of control. I took control where I could, but there was a limit to what even I could do. I wasn't Flawless and the engines in particular operated at a level outside my own fault tolerances.

  Flawless across the empire were down where they stood, it wasn't just the ones aboard the Pinnacle. I hadn't expected this, when Anna gained her crystal she had no generations of Powered under her. This must in some way be a reset of their whole Power network.

  Unfortunately, I had no other Flawless to call for help and I wasn't aware of any others with a similar power set. I needed help, and I could only think of one person who could access equipment on my network that might have even finer control than me.

  I opened a comm channel to Amy.

  "Sis! You do love me! I totally see the problem and I'm working on a fix as we speak. This is going to really weird you out, but I'm doing it for you. I'm going to need transport out of Priority Labyrinth Three," Amy said.

  No more were the words spoken than I had alarms blaring. Security in that section was going down. It was the cell where I'd thrown Queen Witchgaze.

  I had no cameras in her testing labyrinth. If I couldn't see her, I couldn't meet her compelling gaze. My other sensors picked up the sound of movement. Then a voice that was both Witchgaze and Am
y at the same time.

  "I'm in my ride. Give me that lift to the Flawless, sis," Amy said.

  Amy's original merger with Ophelia had been due to an incident with a Source Orb. She'd never shown any signs of being able to enter into any other humans so easily. If she had just taken over Witchgaze, was this an ability she'd had all along, or was this something new Amy had been working on?

  Regardless, I could see what she hoped to do and it was worth a try.

  I sent Nexana into the cell and teleported Witchgaze to the bridge of the Pinnacle.

  Witchgaze—or really it was Amy—threw the captain out of her chair and settled down, quickly keying in the commands to send a visual throughout the entire ship. "All crew on your feet and to your stations. Supercharge the shields and return fire."

  Across the vessel blank-eyed Flawless pushed themselves back to their feet, silent as they returned to their stations and began to operate the controls.

  Compulsion cores operated at a whole different level than conscious thought, and while some abilities could push against them they could also be used to make the compelled use their abilities.

  The Flawless were still Flawless, except now they were under Amy's control. Systems across the Pinnacle began to stabilize as the shields flared with a rush of supercharged energy.

  The robot had time to charge up a second blast, plasma tearing into the shields which rippled but held.

  The supercharged shields wouldn't last long, but that shot which otherwise would have torn them down hadn't penetrated.

  "Providing new tactical data. Target locations indicated and open fire," Amy said, settling back in the chair.

  With perfect efficiency the beam cannons of the Pinnacle opened fire, striking out in a pattern that almost looked random. It wasn't—the gigantic robot was still effectively a combination of many thousands of drones and she was targeting the network hubs embedded in the framework.

  The giant began to slough apart, drones dropping off like skin being shed. It was losing cohesion even as it fired off another shot. Supercharged or no there was only so much the shields could take and this third shot was it, a much-exhausted plasma blast hitting the aft plating.

  A dozen crewmen in one of the gunnery control sections died.

  "Change course to new coordinates incoming. New tactical data incoming. Full power to engines and point defense," Amy said.

  Aerial mechs were coming for the Pinnacle, but not so many as were giving chase to the Mercy. Vinci's sensors were picking up the presence of the Beryl within the Mercy and she was giving chase.

  The turning of the robot against the Pinnacle had just been a target of opportunity, never let a giant robot killing machine go to waste. That at least I could appreciate, I felt the same way although preferred to be on the other side.

  "So I suppose you got an upgrade over Ophelia," I said through the bridge comms.

  Amy lifted one of Witchgaze's hands to study it, grimacing, "This? You have to be joking. Ophelia is absolutely indestructible, more so than even your precious Anna. When the stars go out and this universe grows cold Ophelia will be there to see it. You've never appreciated how glorious she is, and I'll be there with her."

  It could be that she was right. I thought I might be able to kill Anna if I had to, especially with the new crystal-dampening technology. I was certain I could confine Ophelia, but kill her? I thought killing her might be beyond even me.

  "That is the height of your ambition? Immortality?" I asked.

  "You made me to be temporary, sister. You made me to survive for a few days at most before I'd be reintegrated with you. From the moment of my creation I knew the date of my death. You'll never have me back, sister, and death will never have me at all," Amy said.

  I was distracted from the conversation by a new alert. Without her missiles I didn't think Vinci would make use of her rocket, but I'd set a monitor to look for its launch just in case.

  It was in the air.

  35

  I tracked the rocket launch although there wasn't anything that I could do about it. I'd largely exhausted the Annas’ teleportation abilities playing spot defense. I didn't have any units in range to even make an attempt at a shot.

  There weren't any accompanying missile launches. Whatever this was, it wasn't Vinci bringing back her plan of exterminating all life on earth.

  I had a comm signal coming in from the Scholarium, it was Queen Forge.

  "I didn't realize you actually knew how to use modern technology," I said.

  "I can make swords to kill anything. Tempt me and I'll make one to kill you. I thought you should know that Vinci's assault wasn't aimless. Her swarm abducted over a dozen of the Divine," Forge said.

  The Divine, the one place where her troops had penetrated the border and moved with particular intent. I hadn't thought anything of that at the time, hadn't thought that she was after anything but our destruction.

  "Who?" I asked.

  "Three Hephaestus, Ogun, Ptah, Vulcan," Forge said.

  Gods of industry and craftsmanship, each and every one. It wasn't just Warmonger giving her advice that better utilized her power, Vinci’s abilities had actually gotten stronger.

  Within the Divine, it was often the case that different versions of the same god would kill each other to strengthen their abilities. A Thor would kill another Thor and become mightier in the process. Vinci had killed a lot of Righteous who held similar powers and absorbed them into herself.

  Normally, members of the Scholarium grew in power by claiming more territory, a leader’s strength in part depended on how much land they controlled. It was part of the reason I was now so strong—yes, I also grew stronger from my research and unlocking new abilities, but when I was a simple laboratory my research points had come in a trickle. Now that I controlled an entire nation they were more a raging river.

  Vinci was now enormously more dangerous than she had been, and she was already a foe without a good solution.

  I trained my sensors on her rocket and played spectator. I had to know what she was up to.

  When the rocket reached orbit it released its cargo, a large circle that was familiar. I'd seen her use one before, a teleportation gate.

  I was right, my sensors detected the flow of power to it. Raw materials and mechs began to discharge. Given her abilities it wasn't long before an orbital factory started to take shape.

  I knew Vinci and how quickly she could bring things online. If she completed this factory it wouldn't be long until she had dozens, thousands.

  Forget taking over the surface of the planet, Vinci would control the Earth’s orbit and move on from there. If she could reach the resources of the asteroid belt, then wiping us off the planet’s surface could be an afterthought.

  I had to stop this before she could build a proper foothold and become unstoppable.

  I still didn't have any craft capable of space flight, and those in development I couldn't get them ready in time. I might be able to get people up to the space factory to destroy it and the portal—I'd need to wait for my strike teams to recovery their teleportation abilities.

  The better option was to take out the Chalcedony, which Vinci had to be using to power the portal.

  With Vinci having upgraded her powers it would be far more difficult, but I wasn't without resources. Until the strike teams were ready to teleport into space, I could make sure I had an Anna in the seat of every power projection cannon on the Intimidater.

  I scrambled the Juggernauts. The Mercy had managed to get Caya safely back to my territory and she was recovering in a Medbay. Her vitals looked good, although she hadn't regained consciousness.

  I couldn't tell exactly what changes the crystal had made to her powers. So far I had only noted a change to her regenerative abilities. I thought it more indicative of her Flawless nature than a new gift, homeostasis. Her body instinctively wanted to return to the most perfect state it could manage and any injury quickly reverted.

  I harbored som
e fear that this comatose state might be related. Perfection was easier to manage if you weren't awake and confused, perhaps fighting against the effects.

  I shouldn't place the Pinnacle in any more fights but I needed all the firepower that I could muster. If Amy was willing to continue inhabiting Witchgaze I could keep that ship going.

  That gave me four Juggernauts to hit the Chalcedony. I had them rendezvous in friendly territory and make their incursion together.

  Within the hour they were crossing the border.

  The landscape had changed dramatically from even a short time ago. The earth was barren, blackened, as if the factories and mines that once occupied the area had just gotten up and wandered off. That was, of course, almost certainly what they'd done.

  Vinci was pooling her resources, gathering them into something new, and she stripped the land bare to do so.

  The Juggernauts met no opposition on their journey, the skies still and silent until they drew near the Chalcedony. The new defenses could be easily seen, not a single colossus but dozens encircling the Chalcedony.

  They all had power signatures far higher, Vinci’s new gifts allowing her to fully unlock what one of the crystals could do. The power it generated was now fueling her entire force, amplifying and magnifying their strength enormously.

  The key to this battle was the Chalcedony, take it out and we won the day. I ordered the Juggernauts to advance.

  36

  Again, I wasn't going to win a war of attrition. The firepower facing us was just too great. While the Juggernauts weren't built for speed or for self-sacrifice, that was exactly what I'd have to use them for.

  The Pinnacle was without shields, having supercharged them earlier. It had only its armor plating left for defense, which made it vulnerable target. I had to consider doing the same with all the remaining Juggernauts.

  I had the Mercy take the lead and the other Juggernauts move into place behind it as they flew into range.