by Skyler Grant
The group in the park was having a lot of success as well. Caya and her perfect people were almost deserving of the name. Excellent reaction time and visual acuity meant that their shots went where they aimed them and beam weapons against plant monsters were making this a one-sided affair.
Oozelord and his people were having a more challenging time. The defense droids they fought weren’t organic and his abilities didn’t have any effect on them. Without the compulsion nature of his power set he was also rather useless for most purposes except for being somewhat acidic.
I scanned the interior for something that might be helpful. There, a storage room containing stockpiles of bacteria used for keeping the pools and drains clear. I had a Gunslinger open fire with a chain-gun and soon organic sludge was pouring across the floor. If anyone knew how to make the most of sludge, it was Oozelord. As soon as he dipped a foot into the substance waves of orange rippled outward and pseudopods of orange slime began to writhe in the air knocking drones down.
“Yeah! You want some of this!” Oozelord bellowed as their carapaces cracked apart.
“I’m reasonably sure no one ever has or will,” I said, taking over a drone for a moment. “But follow me and I can find you more of that stuff which is nearly as disgusting as you are.”
“Babe, once you go slime you never go back. It’s all about the friction,” Oozelord said.
Perhaps one day I’d have him in a testing cell and I could experiment on that properly. Trapping a slime monster between high speed panels of hyper-friction material to properly judge how it held up under such adverse conditions. I could call it the Frictionater. I doubted he would be a fan.
The defense drones weren’t stopping, but after another three storage rooms had been blasted into fragments and added their contents to Oozelord’s mass they weren’t as much of an issue.
That was good, because now it was another group having an issue.
The park had stopped throwing golems and instead there were six humanoid defenders fending us off. They were each dressed in a different color and seemed to have wildly divergent weaponry. Blue was armed with some of spear that fired energy blasts, red had gauntlets wreathed in flame. Each wore a badge stating “Park Ranger”.
They were a good bit more dangerous than the defenders before and the exchange of fire had Caya and her people taking cover.
Caya tugged on the arm of one of my drones. “Emma?”
“Not exactly her at the moment lady,” the drone answered. That was true, the drone was Emily and was something of an underachiever looking at her record.
“Then put her on,” Caya said.
“It doesn’t work …” Emily started to say before I proved her wrong and took over.
“This is Emma. While I realize that it is sadly typical for perfect Princesses to flirt during firefights I assure you, it would be difficult to find one less interested than I am,” I said.
“This perfect specimen of humanity is more than aware of how to handle herself in a firefight and she even recognizes where the designer of this ship got some of his inspirations. If those Rangers start to lose, they’ll combine into a giant robot with a super-weapon,” Caya said.
That was utterly absurd. Who would possibly build independent combat units far weaker than a combined form they were meant to transform into? Certainly not someone as intelligent as Vattier.
Still there was something unusual in the design of these Park Rangers. Proportions that weren’t quite right.
Maybe there was something to this perfect human thing? Her instincts were right on, it was a brilliantly stupid design choice and thus tremendously unlike Vattier, but I couldn’t argue with what my sensors were telling me.
“Focus your fire on green. They are the center point and without them there won’t be any giant robot,” I said.
Caya spoke into a wrist comm and in unison her people opened fire on the green. I had my drones do the same, even when it meant leaving themselves open to fire from the others. The goal was to take that one down quick and to do so in such an overabundance of force that it wouldn’t stand a chance.
It worked, in an explosion of green flame we neutralized that target and the others redoubled their efforts. Individually they were still problematic, but at least the bigger threat had been averted.
There you are … I was wondering if we’d get a chance to speak
The voice was coming from nowhere and everywhere. The closest comparison I could make was to it sounded like when I was in the head of Sylax.
But nobody was in my head but me.
Not true, strictly speaking. I was disappointed it wasn’t you to find the Sword.
Vattier was supposed to be long-dead. We hadn’t seen any signs of him being still active. I wondered again if the ship had an artificial intelligence.
It does and I’ve hacked you through it, but we are not the same. I see your plan and I may allow you to walk away with the Agate if you prove worthy. I appreciated the aims of the Society even while I felt their means lacking. If you should survive this tell my daughter and Mechos to come find me.
My world exploded in agony and I blacked out.
45
It wasn’t the first time I’d been knocked offline, I’d even taken some precautions for if it happened again. My drones having such a high level of autonomy and personality wasn’t just because of utilizing a human template, I wanted my various parts to still largely keep working even when I was absent.
I’d rigged subprocessors to kick in and streamlined my reboot configuration. Even so, it had still been over seventeen minutes that I’d lost and I was sluggish as parts of my network continued to come back.
Vattier—or an AI masquerading as Vattier—had really done a number on me.
As my sensors began to come up I quickly realized it was worse than I’d thought. They had turned on the teleportation gates and used them to bring in various threats throughout the city. Enemies composed entirely of some sort of Von-Neuman machines were fighting in the streets of Districts Two and Three. There were jungle beasts in districts Four through Seven, and it looked as if we had King Boreas’ soldiers in Districts Zero, One, and Eight. If anything had been so foolish as to try to invade Flickers’ District Nine, it was probably lost for all time in the licensing bureau.
I’d taken most of the city’s Bioreactors up on the airship to blow the Sword. We were operating off emergency power and the fixed cannon emplacements were down. There were over a million drones in this city though and in times of crisis all could wield a gun. There were also the District Lords and their focus, none of whom I’d taken on the Sword mission because of my intention of scuttling the ship.
“Emma, you’re back up. About time. Kill the jump gates,” Anna said through her comm.
Of course that was the first thing I did. I’d cut off any enemy reinforcements, but we still had to deal with those in the city. That was no problem, most places.
District Zero was another matter. It was filled with corpses.
I replayed the security logs. Zero was the one district where I’d kept the power online for the city core. Within the first minute of me being down my own automatic defenses put most of the population there to death. Fortunately, they were drones, I could bring them back in time, but it left me undefended.
Worse yet, the reactors had been overloaded and so those automated defenses weren’t available now to kill the real enemy.
I said, “Once again you unerringly choose the least interesting and most obvious thing to say. This was Vattier’s doing, or something pretending to be him. They neutralized my defenses and are moving on my core.”
“I know. Hot Stuff was coming to assist but some flame giant thing put a sword through her. I’ve got the Graven incoming to give some support,” Anna said.
That would be helpful, but it wouldn’t be enough. The enemy force wasn’t large, however it was Powered. Three teams of three, each with a time-shifter and two others of more diverse abilities.
One of them probably had a Compulsion core. If they could get to my processor core they could try to control me.
Enemies that diverse were dangerous and the time-shifting only made them more so. I needed big guns to stop them and I could only think of one person without a district of their own to defend that had kind of firepower, Sylax’s academy. First of all I had to check if they were already in use.
Crystal had insects out in force to defend her district. They buzzed through the skies and tore people apart with massive mandibles. In the past she’d made heavy use of hybrids, but she seemed to have gone more old-school into her past. Perhaps a part of that was the result of Sylax’s fall from power, perhaps the humanizing bits had been hers all along.
I opened a comm to Sylax.
“Emma, you’re siccing enemies on your own people now. You grew amusing faster than I’d anticipated,” Sylax said over the video feed. It looked like she and her students were still in their school—no, locked in their school. Crystal wanted to make extra sure they’d be unable to join the fight. That didn’t work for me, not now.
“Not my doing. I’ve got Powered squads closing in on my core and my defenses are down. Can you and yours assist?” I asked.
“We’re ready for a fight. You realize that if I save your skin I’ll expect things in return?” Sylax said.
Sylax never was one for subtlety, it was one of her few good attributes.
“You know I take care of my friends. I’m opening a teleportation gate into your central courtyard and sending you what I have on the enemy forces,” I said.
“Three temporal manipulators, a disassembler, disruptor, voider. My, we really did get his attention didn’t we? I’m on my way,” Sylax said.
I didn’t doubt it. I’d have to trust her, as absurd as that concept was on every single level.
More of my systems were coming online and I was regaining use of my long-range sensors and reestablishing connections to my non-city based drones.
The Sword of Light was on the move, it was coming to Aefwal.
46
What was Vattier doing? That voice in my head sounded almost friendly, but these actions were anything but that. Forcing me into a shutdown, sending troops throughout the city, bringing the Sword of Light here.
Was he attempting to destroy me? No, if that were truly his goal he could have done it. While my main systems were down he could have taken steps to assure Aefwal was destroyed. He was testing me.
The Divine tested me, Vattier tested me—a part of me had to admit to the fairness of it all. I tested people all the time. A part of me also didn’t like it and was determined to make them pay for their bravado.
I hadn’t solved Vattier’s riddle first, yet had been getting ready to run off with his prize. That realization forced him to increase the difficultly level, to make things harder, to make me earn it according to his twisted sense of logic. I’d have much preferred logic puzzles to a superweapon surging at my city but then, in some sense, the two were the same thing.
I’d been waiting for the perfect moment to steal the Agate. I analyzed where the fights had progressed since I’d gone offline. Shield control had been reached and the team was nearly to Weapons control. The fight for the bridge had gone poorly and several Righteous had been reduced to piles of goo by well-aimed shots from time-shifting snipers.
I could say that with the Sword of Light closing on Aefwal I’d been forced to take steps to bring it out of the sky. But there wasn’t a one of them that wouldn’t question that. Asking how I’d done it, what I might have seen or learned in engineering to make it happen.
If Vattier had hacked me through the ship’s AI then I should be able to do the same in reverse. I reviewed my system logs and tracked back the connections.
And I was expected, that much quickly became clear. I was being allowed to walk into certain areas of the systems too easily while others were impressively well-defended behind puzzle barriers that it would take even me some time to crack.
I was getting tired of puzzles.
I didn’t have access to navigation. I had limited access to Weapons control for both target selection and intensity. I had a surprising amount of access to environmental control systems, more than would seem necessary. I had limited access to the jump drive.
They were all pieces of a puzzle I was meant to assemble into a solution to accomplish my ends and, if I were smart enough, I could unlock even more pieces. I didn’t think I’d need them. A plan was coming together with what I had here and although it would be tight, I thought I had a real chance at achieving multiple objectives.
Before any of that I needed to get all teams in place. Helping the Righteous capture the bridge was a priority.
With access to the ship’s sensors I knew exactly where the Boreas snipers were and even with their ability to time-shift I had Gunslingers with chain-guns. A few carefully placed teleports and I cleared the way with the snipers having no space to maneuver out of harm’s way.
“Good work,” said one of the Righteous as they stepped past the Gunslinger onto the bridge. It was a sweeping and cavernous room with an absurd number of screens showing readouts of all sorts. “We’re in motion.”
I took over the drone. “How talented of you to be able to gather the barest basics from a navigational display. It is no wonder the Righteous have been so successful at putting reality right. And yes, the ship is closing on my city, can you do anything to assist?”
I knew they still wouldn’t be able to. The navigational controls were in a locked area of the system.
A Righteous technician sat down at one of the consoles and tapped at the keys. “If I’m reading this properly they’ve locked out helm control. I’m attempting to override.”
They were talented, I gave them that. They attempted to gain access to the evasion systems and to use a short-range burn to put us off course.
“Negative. I’ll keep trying. We’re on automated systems so if I can trigger the collision alarm I can probably get us to set a new destination,” the technician said.
I wondered if they were looking for a job. The Righteous kept proving both inconveniently willing to wipe out of existence while simultaneously being very competent at anything put in front of them.
I didn’t think that they would succeed here though and I switched over to another team.
Caya had finished with the park rangers while I’d been down and made her way to the Weapons control. As a high security area it had more of the drones like I’d encountered in engineering, but it seemed she had neutralized them by shooting out all of the local sensor arrays. I could still see through my drones, but the ship was blind in this area now.
“Negative on exploding the warheads in mounts,” said one of her technicians.
I slipped into a drone. “This is Emma. What is your status?”
“You went absent, we kicked a lot of ass, and according to ship’s sensors we are now on our way to your city. We’re trying to disable the ship’s weapons before we get there,” Caya said.
From what I could tell she was being sincere there. It was unexpected, while she’d helped me once Scholars were almost always out for themselves. We might be an ally against Boreas, but we were a threat as well. Many Scholars would have been content to let Aefwal be reduced to rubble and to deal with the consequences later.
“I’m under attack. I have Boreas’ agents loose in my city. Thank you for doing what you can,” I said.
“It’s the decent thing,” Caya said.
I wondered if human perfection was some counter to the worst effects of the crystals. Caya wasn’t quite like any of the other Scholars I’d met. Whatever else happened here I needed to make sure she and her people came through this alive.
47
I lost contact with three-quarters of my surviving team that accompanied Oozelord to the shield emitters. It was betrayal. He had timed it well and by using pseudopods to throw my forces against a wall managed to breach their protective shell
s and let his ooze reach them.
I teleported the survivors a short distance away.
This disrupted my plans. It wasn’t really a surprise that Oozelord would grab the opportunity to try to seize the Sword of Light, but it was inconvenient timing. I’d thought he’d have captured his section first and then offered to help securing the bridge.
The Sword had found its way to Aefwal and targeting data was flowing through the computer. The scanners were seeking out sustained energy sources emitting a particular pattern. The dimensional barrier—it was seeking the equipment powering it.
Given the strength of the scanners on the Sword of Light it didn’t take long for them to locate it. I was able to scale down the first blast of power. Even so an energy beam tore a skyscraper in half and I had fifteen thousand drones that would need to go back to the vats for rebirth.
I was being allowed limited interference in the systems, but not enough to fully blunt the offensive. If they brought down that shield the other factions would be able to bring in more ships. I didn’t need a massive aerial battle over Aefwal.
A second shot tore through the fundamental of the city, opening a hole towards the high-energy regulators that I was using to power the effect.
An airship, it would have to be. The Bioreactor wouldn’t be capable of the sustained energy requirements of the shield, but I might be able to manage rapid pulses. That would provide shielding about ninety percent of the time. It would have to do. I made the alternations and killed the emitter in Aefwal just as the cannons were charging up for a third shot.
The targeting computer moved on instead to blast apart one of my bigger defensive arrays. I wasn’t troubled, at the moment I didn’t have the power to run them anyways.
I switched back to one of my drones on the bridge where the Righteous were still trying to gain control of the ship.