The Metropolis

by Skyler Grant

  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 are 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.

  22

  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.

  23

  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 overconf
ident, 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 bullet—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.

  “Please, Bast was a crazy bitch and wasn’t really my sister. I won’t lie and say you did me a favor, but you didn’t hurt me like you may think. Nah, this is where I tell you what goes next. You see, I know there is something else inside this one,” Ares said.

  Ares could detect my presence occupying the drone? That was unexpected.

  “Say what you have to say,” I said.

  “You’ve a soft touch, saving that village proved it. I’m going to take your wounded people here back home and have my fun. By fun I mean the whole torture, rape, brutalize deal. You get that,” Ares said.

  “I’ve met your type. I turned the last one into a teacher,” I said.

  “Huh,” Ares said, not seeming to know quite how to parse that information. “I won’t be signing up for school. You and that soft heart of yours want your people back, they’ll be fifty-seven miles northwest of that village you raided. I’ll be waiting.”

  There were virtues to being able to think very fast and to be so distributed. It took roughly three nanoseconds to figure out jump coordinates based on those directions. Less than that to inventory the airship and the supplies aboard. Most of my reactors were going to the city, but I’d spared a few for bombs and I had three in the hold.

  Before the crew even knew what was happening I’d initiated the jump. Sensor readings showed a sprawling military base that, judging by runways and hangers, had once been devoted to fixed-wing aircraft. They’d been repurposed into hangers holding soldiers. Thousands of them. Ares was using those villages to build an army. By the time Ares finished saying, “I’ll be waiting”, detonating bombs were taking most of that army out and I’d already jumped the airship away.

  “Oh, I think you’ll be coming to find me. Have a good visit home,” I said, and executed shut-down commands to my drones. They spasmed as they died. I gave them priority queue space for replacement bodies in the growth vats.

  They’d earned it.

  24

  “Could you maybe not go full-on city warfare without consulting with the commander of the military?” Hot Stuff said.

  I’d decided I probably should describe to her and Anna what had just happened. It wasn’t going well.

  “You realize that a thousand-strong army might have been converted to our cause, and one of our greatest weaknesses is a lack of people capable of an associate bonding with a power core,” Anna said.

  “And now, instead of going all contentedly weird and rapey back at home, he is going to come gunning for us with everything he has,” Hot Stuff said.

  “You said he was completely immune to bullets?” Anna asked.

  I said, “Totally, along with a dose of super-strength and boosted reflexes. No traces of accelerated healing.”

  “Then at least we can wear him down,” Hot Stuff said.

  “Or you can try drowning him in Blank too,” Anna said.

  “Regardless. I realize you would have appreciated being consulted, but I didn’t think we were going to get a better option. He wasn’t going to anticipate a strike that quickly and the opportunity was too good to miss. Think of it as passing a cookie jar, or someone naked in bed, to put it in terms you both might understand,” I said.

  “I really don’t eat that many cookies,” Anna said.

  “Would you care to know the total weight of all the cookies you’ve consumed this month? I can share it with the entire city. It might inspire them,” I said.

  Anna paled and shook her head. “Let’s not waste their time. So, you seized the moment. What now?”

  Hot Stuff asked, “Will he strike at all? This is a man who showed patience after we took out Bast. He studied us first. If we’ve just disabled the bulk of his army, is he really going to push the fight?”

  “Are we ever going to be weaker than we are right now?” Anna asked.

  Anna had a point. If he was tactically minded—and everything suggested he was—we were someone that had hurt him and knew where he called home. He might not strike us at once, he’d probably try to gather a larger force first. But he would hit us.

  “Is there any possibility of getting the city shields up?” Hot Stuff asked.

  “None. We remain without the power to do that, but we shouldn’t need it. We’re fighting people with bows and spears. We haven’t seen any sign of them using any sort of heavy weaponry. Surely you and your people can handle that,” I said.

  “The fucking Goddess of Fertility kicked our combined asses. If we’re going up against War we need a better plan,” Hot Stuff said.

  “That is what you’re here for,” Anna said.

  Hot Stuff paused for a moment and then nodded. “Fair enough. We’ve seen that energy weapons can hurt them. Prioritize production of Aegis units. I also want all city defenders to have a supply of energy weapons and energy grenades.”

  “Done. Unless you’ve forgotten, you’re actually good at doing energy damage yourself,” I said.

  “I haven’t forgotten, but from what you’ve shown me he beats the hell out of anything that gets close to him. Bast could lay a hand on me, so can he?” Hot Stuff asked.
>
  Everything I’d seen suggested that he could. Ares would take damage from doing it and that wouldn’t heal back, but Hot Stuff was right to be concerned. Put the two of them in a room together and it seemed reasonable he’d emerge the winner.

  I said, “Likely so. We’ll keep you and your people at a distance then unless there is no other choice.”

  “The rescued women are no use. They’re all about to pop any day now. Their accelerated pregnancies haven’t slowed with Bast’s death, probably because Ophelia got her powers,” Anna said.

  That was unfortunate. Jade needed new lieutenants and psycho-kinetic barriers would be a lot of use against arrows.

  “If we can kill him, who is going to the deed?” Anna asked.

  It was something we needed to think about. Ophelia had managed to absorb Bast’s power because the regenerative nature of their power sets was so similar, even if the fertility aspect was different.

  “I may be our leader in war, but I’m not right for it. It might be hard to shoot me, but it’s not because I’m bullet proof and my strength and speed are normal,” Hot Stuff said.

  “Everyone’s strength and speed is normal. The only speed core we have is Ophelia and I’ll be damned if I’m comfortable letting her gobble down another Divine even if she is capable,” Anna said.

  “Wolf would have been the perfect choice,” Hot Stuff said.

  A war leader who hadn’t been bullet proof, but certainly super-strong and fast. It would have fit.

  “Do you still have his crystal?” Anna asked.

  “I do. But we lack a suitable host,” I said.

  “What about Sylax?” Hot Stuff said.

  “Did I screw up that badly in making you military commander? You wish to give deadly power at warfare to the sociopath that terrorized this city?” I asked.

  “Jade? Kinetic resistance is something of a fit and nobody has ever been able to say the woman isn’t a fighter,” Anna said.