by Skyler Grant
I’d made a fine choice for diplomat.
Ash didn’t look displeased. “Then we’ll see if you’re strong enough for such confidence.”
31
The three obviously had some way to coordinate and communicate, because it was as one they stepped forward into the city proper.
Hot Stuff was the first to respond, her flames growing in intensity as she moved toward Atlas and threw a fit at his midsection. His flesh transformed into stone. Flame met stone and he glowed. I’d seen Hot Stuff melt through thick layers of steel, but she didn’t melt through him.
“Pretty girl, a bit of heat. I like this,” Atlas said.
“Big and hard. I’m a fan too,” Hot Stuff said, flinging more punches that did little more than the first. “What are you made of?”
“Is this really the time to be flirting?” Crash asked as he gestured in the air. “I’m crap at this without a computer.”
The Professor, riding a triceratops again, smashed into Atlas from behind. The impact didn’t even cause the man to stumble and he looked over his shoulder.
“Big lizards, big cats. Why do people not just make themselves large? Saves time, yes?” Atlas asked.
Hot Stuff had turned the ground molten beneath her and Atlas as she continued to flail away at him. “Failure of imagination. I’m not going to be able to melt you am I?”
“Nothing but my heart,” Atlas said.
That fight was going nowhere.
On the other side of the city Blank had moved to confront Thor. Electricity arcing and sparking around his hammer faded and throughout the city there was a dim flicker of lights attempting to restore their power.
“I don’t think so. Your batteries are drained,” Blank said.
“A Righteous! I mean like, literally. Been forever since I ran into one of you. You’re all strong too,” Thor said, in a voice a bit too high-pitched for his rugged appearance.
“He’s lame. Why is everyone so lame?” Ophelia said.
“Give me a chance little miss emo,” Thor said.
Zora tried to shoot him in the head. Bolts of lightning erupted from his body and flung the bullets to the side.
Thor raised his hammer and the air trembled as the lights in the city went fully dark again. “See? For smart people, you guys are really stupid right? Nobody ever stops to ask, gee, why did all the lights in the world go out? Maybe it’s because their crystals have something to do with electricity.”
Blank had the strangest look on her face, as if reality had just stopped making sense to her. “You’re dampening my power.”
Thor hit Blank with an underhanded swing of his hammer that sent her soaring backwards, lightning crackling around her body. Ophelia didn’t waste a moment as she moved to her side, keeping Blank in range of her healing aura.
Zora snapped her fingers and Thor howled in agony, dropping to one knee. It was the first time I’d seen her use her ability, and I still didn’t know what it was.
A bolt of lightning erupted from the handle of the hammer and sent her flying backward to collide with Ophelia.
The fight against Ash was going no better. Telekinesis, extra-dimensional shifts, whatever they threw she deftly dodged and always had a countering blow. None were finishers, but she was clearly winning and grinding my people down.
I had more I could throw at them, but I wasn’t sure what good it would do. They weren’t even teaming up to make this a real fight and they were still withstanding the forces of this city.
“Enough,” Ash called, stepping back. Her voice again echoed throughout the city.
Thor and Atlas also took a step back.
“Was there a point to all of this?” Crystal asked, a good bit more breathless than earlier.
“We’re strong little ones and we protect this place. We were prepared to welcome you into our home. New blood has its place and a spirit of a city might have made a fine Athena. We know what Ares and Bast did and planned, and did not approve. Killing them we allowed,” Ash said.
“You were waiting to see what we did next,” Crystal said.
“And you waged more attacks on those who have done you no harm. Brought war where there was none. Stole what belonged to others,” Ash said.
I had sensors coming back online. Only a few and all in the central core, it was Anna’s doing. It appeared that she had rigged a liquid fuel supply into the emergency fire suppression system and was busy dousing some of my most sensitive equipment in flames. It was also fully vaporizing the fog and burning it off.
I opened up a comm.
“Petty vandalism instead of joining the fight? I really shouldn’t be surprised. Do you know Crystal is out there declaring war in your name?” I said.
“Good. I’m the Queen of the whole damned world and they need to figure that out. I should have burned off enough of the fog around the sun shield projector,” Anna said.
I’d already figured out why, of course, I’m smarter than she is. The sun shield had provided us light and climate control when the city was underground. By default it was disabled now that we were above ground, but triggering it should clear the fog.
“It still leaves us with the three of them,” I said.
“They disabled our guns for a reason,” Anna said.
She was right. Because of Ash most likely, I thought the other two could probably handle anything we might throw at them, but with tracking sensors fully enabled and given her nature the beam cannons could likely hurt Ash, perhaps even kill her.
I activated the sun shield. The sky blazed brilliantly for an instant and just like that the fog was gone. Two dozen beam cannons swiveled to point at Ash.
“Unexpected,” Ash said. “Not quite enough. Are you going to try?”
“Do we have to?” Crystal asked.
Ash gave a tiny smile and swiveled. Atlas and Thor did the same and in unison the three walked away from the city.
We hadn’t defeated them, we hadn’t even truly held our own. We needed more power.
32
I had to find what we’d come here for. There were various leads I might follow. I’d destroyed Ares’ base, but it might still harbor some secrets. Minerva or the other Divine might have information they could share. The more I thought of it however, the more I thought that I probably already knew the location of what Vattier had hidden.
I was looking for something of immense power that was well concealed and I’d already found a place that fit both those criteria. The tree was my best lead, but I didn’t think that was my target. Aefwal had been in a vast underground cavern, my original complex had been underground—when you wished to hide something away you put it underground.
And when you really wished to hide something you put another well-guarded secret on top of it.
My sensors hadn’t detected a cavern, but I wondered if the same technique that created the invisibility effect on the surface could serve to blind electronic sensors from detecting what was below.
If I was right, I knew how to get where we needed to go. The original jump coordinates through the satellite left an arc of possible destinations. We’d landed on one of them, the one most suitable for a city of Aefwal’s size, but there were other places we could have appeared—and one was deep beneath the tree.
Anna was less than enthused about me risking our sole, fully functional airship on the endeavor, but I had a solution for that too. Jump engines were tricky to build, but in an effort to give Hot Stuff the air force she kept requesting I’d been working on it—the first of a new prototype. Cultivating the hull of small ship in the growth vats took the better part of two days, but I had a scout vessel.
In addition to Hot Stuff wanting an air force I’d wanted some smaller ships of my own for research purposes. Craft loaded with sensors that could better survey terrain. I did have some mechanical research drones, but these were without the range a jump drive would allow.
There were steps I could have taken to try to confirm there was actually somewhere to go. Crash had sub
verted the masking effect once and could probably do so again. I was wary however about approaching the tree again. They were likely to be on alert next time and the city didn’t need another visit.
There was a fair chance of losing the ship and crew, so I wouldn’t send anyone I couldn’t replace. At least initially I’d need to just send drones I’d grown in my growth vats. In the event they fell I could always grow them again based off their last recorded pattern.
If they found something, I could have the vessel return to get others if needed.
A plan made, I gathered a crew and initiated the jump.
I knew within nanoseconds it had been a success. My connection to my drones didn’t fade, but all my readouts from the ship sensors went instantly dead. Through my drone’s eyes I could see the cavern was vast, as large as the one that held Aefwal, and the walls had been coated with what looked to be a layer of crystal dust.
The middle of the space was a shielded force bubble.
Here I thought Vattier was clever, and at the same time a shielded force bubble in a deep underground cavern was starting to seem quaint.
I had my drones take sweeping passes through the cavern. Without the ship’s sensors operational it made everything more difficult. We were finally able to locate an old landing pad.
All indications were that it was safe. I ordered the vessel to briefly jump home. I collected the keystone that Minerva had provided and made a place for her and Mechos, before returning to the cavern and setting down. Minerva had proved herself to be trustworthy enough so far, and I figured that she even better than Mechos would understand her father.
Thick layers of caked-on crystal dust had to be removed from a central pedestal to reveal a slot where the keystone could fit. It slid in with a click. A dim green luminescence filled the area and a hologram appeared.
It displayed an older-looking gentleman reclined in a chair. He appeared to look over those assembled.
“Claire, Kenneth, I always thought it might be you two to finally find the Sword. If you are here this means Claire has given up the Goddess idiocy and Kenneth has abandoned the goals of the Society, and you’ve both realized you are smarter together than apart. It is about damned time. Still, you know I give nothing to the unworthy and the following puzzles are my greatest yet. The race is on.”
The visual of the old man faded to a series of rapid images. They weren’t puzzles, not exactly. To another mind they might have seemed such, but in that instant I understood something vital. Vattier was completely mad—and Vattier truly understood the difference between SCIENCE and science.
“Well, that was rather embarrassing,” Minerva said.
“Quite, am I mistaken or were those power regulation equations?” Mechos asked.
“I thought I recognized a few related to the curvature of post-Cataclysm dimensional space,” Minerva said.
For humans they really were rather bright.
I said, “Your awkward social graces are proof that you are operating fully within expected parameters. Do stop pretending to be worthy of his pride and contribute to the manual labor you might be useful for and gather dust. There is enough here to keep the teleportation gates operating for quite some time.”
“Is that really a priority right now? We should be trying to solve this,” Minerva said.
It was a priority. As soon as the message had completed I’d regained my connection to my off-world ships. The distortion of dimensional space that safeguarded this place was gone.
The Graven and the Whimsey reported that they were receiving a copy of Vattier’s message and last puzzle. That was good.
However, the whole world could receive it. That was bad.
33
Vattier hadn’t included any coordinates in his last message, but I couldn’t be certain someone wouldn’t be able to trace the signal back here. I wasn’t sure any of the large factions would even think it worth sending a ship or two to investigate the message of a long-dead—and quite mad—scientist. He did have something of a reputation in his day.
The airships that had been away from the city had spent the months out of contact scavenging for supplies and fighting off threats. My drones in command had done well. I made sure the cookies were plentiful and gave them all upgrades. I jumped them here at once and set them to collecting crystal dust. Jumps left traces and I wanted to get everything I could out of that cavern and leave. Then leave it alone until I had an answer to the puzzles.
I devoted the full attentions of my research staff to the problem as well as assigning Professor, Mechos, Minerva, Flicker, and Blank to the task. Between them they had brilliant scientific minds, dimensional expertise, and an understanding of the science of the old world.
I had to decide just what I wanted to do with the crystal dust. The Scholars commonly used it as a source of power and while my Bioreactors were more reliable, the dust could generate short and high energy power bursts. I could do something similar when I detonated a reactor, but the applications of such power use went well beyond bombs.
Initiating a jump gate required similar power, so did a jump drive trying to generate a larger bubble. It could produce more powerful beam weapons, stronger shields, but all with a finite power supply. Part of the reason that the Scholarium fought so savagely amongst itself was because of this finite nature of their energy.
By studying the sample of the tree and the fruit I had a pretty good idea what was happening. Over generations something beneath the shield in that cavern was leaking power into the surrounding stone. That was manifesting in the cavern as layers of crystal dust, but wasn’t confined to it. Veins of energy-conducting crystal had formed beneath the earth and were being tapped into by the root structure of the tree. That accounted for the unusual growth, the luminescence, and the tree attempting to pass on those attributes to its own offspring through fruit.
The effectiveness and concentration levels varied, most of the tree’s fruit would be similar to consuming dust. Still, some others would be equivalent to standard power crystals, and a rare few provided a power set equal to the Divine.
It was the result of a long-term adaptation to that much power, I couldn’t duplicate it. Yet, if I wanted to however, I could give a low-grade Dust-like ability to anyone who wanted one, even adults. It could prove a powerful recruitment tool.
I didn’t think it was a decision to be made alone. I called my council together and presented them the options.
“Powers on that scale are a mistake. You’ve seen what a large population of Powered has done to the Scholars. Do you wish to replicate that in your own streets?” Blank asked.
Crystal said, “Is it that dissimilar to what Emma and I already do? We make people better with our upgrades. This is a whole new way to do that.”
“You know I love to burn, but militarily a few weaklings aren’t going to win us any wars. Mobility from warp gates is something else,” Hot Stuff said.
“Powers suck. I hate them,” Ophelia said.
I hadn’t even thrown her in a grinder lately, she really needed to stop complaining.
Anna said, “If you can solve this puzzle, doesn’t it become moot? We’ll have the power source that created all the dust to start with.”
“That is the hope. Right now we’re dependent on my intellect, because a dead man thought too much of his daughter and his would-be son-in-law and the rest of you are even more useless. I’ll solve it in time, but we could come under attack tomorrow,” I said.
“People are sick of living under the thumb of the Powered. I’ve raised armies with just my own ability to make people stronger. You’ve seen me do it. Think of that,” Crystal said.
“An army that is dead now because the Powered inevitably turn upon each other,” Blank said.
Their opinions were sharply divided, I’d expected as much. So were my own.
After I’d first been reactivated the ability to give a single individual a dampened ability of a power had been huge. Since then, I had done so
for hundreds. Now, this gave me the potential to do so for thousands.
“Let me take the decision off your hands, Emma. You’re torn and this council isn’t helping. I say, get the gates operational,” Anna said.
That drew more than a few frowns around the table, but nobody spoke up against her. All there had accepted Anna as their Queen, even if most weren’t happy about being under the dominion of an unpowered.
“I’ll have them up and operating within the hours. Perhaps if you were actually likable as a monarch we’d have some friends and allies to get in contact with,” I said.
“While not exactly friends, if you’re interested in trade I know the Righteous would consider your latest model of biocells for the beam weapons. They operate even in a reality zero environment,” Blank said.
That must be the term for the environment of old Earth they’d restored in the core.
“If we’re selling things, I can hook us up with some very keen buyers for all the crystal dust you can spare,” Zora said.
“If we can’t have friends, have customers. I like it. Do everything necessary to mask our presence and don’t trade anything we can’t spare,” Anna said.
Aefwal was open for business.
34
A week passed with no answer to the Vattier’s puzzles. We were making progress, I’d thought at first he was simply obsessed with understanding how the Cataclysm had altered the world—that he was focused on grasping the new rules of reality. But I increasingly thought it was more than that. He was seeking a way to define those rules, to craft his own.
The way he’d made this world more difficult to access made me think that Vattier met with some success. It made me feel a step behind, and that was impressive for a monkey with delusions of grandeur.
In the meantime life in the city went on.
Sylax requested my presence at her academy and I sent a drone to see what she wanted. The place was coming along nicely. A small part of Crystal’s district had been given a lot of resources to its construction and it showed.