by Skyler Grant
It was only after joining the fleet that I was finally given a mission file on what to expect. Queen Vinci recently had three outposts go silent. All were towards the Core and none were full-scale cities, but it was still alarming.
The outposts that Vinci had lost were in Bands Eight and Nine, close to the Righteous. Too close to the Righteous for the Scholarium to be comfortable normally, so the outposts were almost certainly espionage or military operations.
The fleet jumped first to Band Nine. We materialized above a stretch of desert wasteland with a few brown structures. I had my sensors operating at peak from the instant we arrived. I wanted to make sure I was aware of exactly what had happened. It was what we were here for.
I wasn't detecting any life signs from the outpost and there was evidence of weapon fire.
That meant it had likely been a Righteous assault. I relayed my preliminary information to the fleet and the military vessels sent down shuttles. I didn't go that far, although I did dispatch a few research drones.
Kinetic weapons fire to the buildings was consistent with the Righteous. My drones were picking up corpses now and I went in for a closer look. The dead were Vinci's people, and the base was definitely military. The power armor was similar in design to what I'd seen her guards wear, but there were some unique differences. Some units were clad in a version that seemed far more primitive. The power battery designs were lower yield than the others, and the well-built weapon systems were antiquated, gunpowder-based kinetic weapons.
There was only one real reason I could think of for that. They were designs meant to operate in a Reality Zero environment. The Righteous dampened the abilities of those in their presence. At times this was inconvenient and in battle sometimes near-fatal. In Reality Zero conditions all abilities and powers were suppressed completely.
But these weapons and armor designs were more than any readiness against power-dampening assaults. They went beyond self-defense. Vinci was preparing for a war with the Righteous. I had to say that I approved. The Righteous had occasionally been allies, yet I'd never for an instant trusted them. We were simply too different, they wanted to render all the Powered into something powerless and that was incompatible with who and what I was.
Vinci's people had fought back, but they hadn't fought back quite like they should. The defensive patterns I was seeing didn’t make sense. Her most effective resources hadn't been utilized, and what little defense had been put up came from the Reality Zero units—that was alarming.
Even with a Righteous dampening field fully in effect and the local environment being unpleasant, the Powered units still should have given some fight back. They hadn't. Something had rendered them useless.
I sent along an update of my findings and quickly got a comm back from the lead Vinci ship.
"This is Captain Lora. You're certain of this?" Lora asked. They sent a visual from the bridge of the ship. Lora was a woman in her forties dressed in a plain gray uniform, but she wasn't what interested me. The ship behind her was odd. Every console had two panels with one being a far simpler and more primitive design.
"Captain, you obviously weren't given command of a ship because of your looks, which means you must be capable of some sort of basic reasoning. This isn't even a surprise to you, is it?" I asked.
I'd stopped scanning the environment and was focusing upon the Vinci vessels now. They had shielding to block my scans but SCIENCE really was my strength and I wouldn't be denied. Duplicate or even tertiary systems weren't uncommon on combat vessels, but these massive ships had the vast majority of their systems duplicated in a configuration to work in a Reality Zero environment.
Lora said, "We've been told to play nice with you so long as you are useful. Telling me what I may or may not know is not useful."
Well, she had a point. The Vinci ships were designed to operate far into Righteous space. They thought this was an attack on their facilities and they were prepared to go deep and draw some blood. That didn't mean that they really knew what had happened here.
"It seems to me that only one of us here is useful and it isn't the one in the poorly designed, dual-function ships. According to my scans the only troops that put up a good fight were your experimental forces and they fought a defensive action here," I said. “They were stopped in their tracks.”
"Those forces were expected to go deeper. They shouldn't have been utilized here at all. You're suggesting some new form of Righteous weapon was deployed," Lora said.
Well, she wasn't completely stupid.
"You really should be the one telling me what happened here. You've had forces here and deeper in, presumably to spy. They haven't encountered anything new?"
"We're developing defensive weaponry just in case they should attempt anything, but we haven't seen anything that could do what you are suggesting. Conditions past Band Four however are extremely negative for our technology," Lora said.
This conversation was getting me nowhere. It was obvious to me that Lora was lying. She said it herself that weapons like they were developing wouldn't be necessary unless one went further in past Band Four. Again, there was nothing defensive about this, it was all offensive planning.
While what had happened here was a mystery, it suggested I needed to be concerned for my own wellbeing. Just how well would my own ships and technology hold up in a Reality Zero environment?
I knew from experience my Bio-bombs worked just fine aboard Righteous vessels in spite of their power-dampening effects. The bombs had at their core the seed of a Bio-reactor and my ships and even powered armor would likely maintain function. The same could not be said of most Scholar ships, because they used powdered crystals to fuel their reactors, a far different source of power.
Most of my ship’s major guns were beam cannon variants and those wouldn’t function. My kinetic guns and rifles were based upon magnetic acceleration instead of black powder—that should still work as intended. My drones were independent personalities capable of functioning and fulfilling tasks on their own, although in a Reality Zero environment I'd probably lose direct contact with them as that was controlled from a power crystal.
I ordered the engineers across my fleet to begin upgrading the hardware communication systems.
Really what I needed was to figure out exactly how the Righteous made themselves an exception to their own powers. They had a way, I had seen them use beam weaponry and their ships utilized jump drives.
I let my science crews go about their tasks analyzing the scenes and opened a comm line to Blank. Blank had once been a Righteous captain and now housed a Source Orb and an Amplification Crystal. It had massively boosted her nullification powers and made her something of a pariah to her one-time comrades.
"Emma, what do you want?" Blank asked. It was quite a rude way to answer.
"Your expertise, it is about all the value you have left. Do you know how the Righteous allow their own equipment to function even in a Reality Zero environment?" I asked.
"How do you think? Our own nullification abilities are a power, ironically enough. Our engineers set up a counter-engine so the ability feeds back on itself, nullifying the nullification. Why do you ask?" Blank asked.
It was another lie. Oh, it sounded true, but it wasn't consistent with what I knew. What she described might work aboard a Righteous ship, but it wouldn’t allow those vessels to work in a band where the physical rules were similar to old Earth.
"I don't know if you are liar or fool. That doesn't make sense. Your ships would never be able to leave Reality Zero," I said.
"I'm neither a liar or fool, and our ships don't. Our shipyards are based in Band Five for that reason. There is an overland passage between the bands, because a jump drive won't function," Blank said.
That was more acceptable.
"Can we copy the design of this counter-engine?" I asked.
"I'm not an engineer, but I don't see why not. You would require me to make that counter work, however. Without a Righteous it wou
ld do nothing," Blank said.
That wasn't quite true. I'd require a Righteous, but those were easy enough to capture. I'd at different times had a fair number of them under my control. Their neutralizing ability was useful.
"You've been almost useful," I said.
"And now you're going to give me an explanation of why you want to know," Blank said.
Blank had proved her loyalty often enough. I filled her in on where the ships were and what had been uncovered.
"Why didn't you tell me? I should be there," Blank said, agitated. "Do you have any idea how delicate the situation is?"
"You know I hate politics almost as much as you humans hate logical behavior. Anna knows what is going on."
"Our Queen doesn't understand the situation either and you're both in over your heads. You must understand this about my people. They are sincerely and earnestly trying to do the right thing, and in the pursuit of that there is nothing they won't do. Every encounter you've ever had with them has been more than just a confronttation. They were a part of the greater effort to save a world not yet ready to be saved," Blank said.
"I remember my first encounter. They wanted to take me back with them," I said.
"Before you are whatever it is you are now, you were an artificial intelligence and thus one of the pinnacles of technological development of the old world. They were desperate to obtain you and put you to work solving the greatest problem of them all. Restoring the world to the way it was," Blank said.
My own goals had since become very similar to that. To use SCIENCE to save the broken world. I had to wonder what life would now be like if I had accepted the offer the Righteous made. Perhaps right now I'd be running data in Band Zero.
"You think this is related to that goal?" I asked.
"I think that secret bases and weapons testing go both ways. If the Righteous had discovered a way to change the nature of reality, at least in the short term, and wanted to test the military applications of that, you're flying above one of the closest targets," Blank said.
That all made a lot of sense. If the Righteous were preparing to go to war, then these bases would need to be removed anyways. You always should get rid of the spies close to home before moving an army.
"So we've just joined up with an army preparing to take a war to the Righteous on their own turf, just as the Righteous appear to be developing a powerful new weapon that would neutralize most of the weapons the Scholarium can field?" I said.
"And that is why I wish you'd brought me. We might be sitting on top of a bomb about to explode and that’s the last place we want to be. I want to reach out to some of my old contacts in the Righteous military and see what I can learn."
"Even in the unlikely event that you had friends before, it seems even more dubious that they would want to talk about their secret military plans to you now that you've turned into a genuine abomination. Run it by Anna," I said.
"I'll do that. And Emma, if I am right here, you do realize what a fleet sailing towards them means?"
I had a keen scientific mind and I knew exactly what that would mean to me—and not what Blank was thinking. Valuable data. If it was useful to learn what a new technology could do against isolated ground forces, then our scouting fleet presented an opportunity to test them against an aerial target.
"Understood," I said, and killed the comm.
The Vinci ships were winding up their own survey of the area and signaling their intent to move on to the second, silenced base.
I might try to give them a warning, but I doubted that they were going to listen. Besides, if there were any danger, really I wanted this fleet to run headlong into it.
I backed up the entire crew of both ships while I had the opportunity. If they went into a power neutralizing situation I might not have the ability to do so later. Engineering had made sure hardware communications were functional. It was a far more limited. At least it was available.
Where possible, I'd prepared the ships. I wished Vinci had given us some sort of warning about all this.
The ships jumped.
4
I knew in an instant that something was wrong. The connection to my drones was severed cleanly. It was then a long, agonizing wait for the more primitive communications equipment to provide me sensor readings and status updates.
The vessels had materialized over another base, this one on the edge of a vast forest beneath a crystal clear, blue sky. That sky was filled with Righteous vessels. There were seven of them and they opened fire as the fleet materialized.
None of the shields were operational, but even my research vessels had armored plating. The shields not being operational meant there were larger issues. Reality Zero conditions were in effect. We couldn't jump out and a significant number of ships’ systems wouldn't work.
The fleet was probably already lost. I'd known that ahead of time, it was why I had made sure to back my crew up. So my response to this crisis wasn't about saving lives or inflicting damage, it had to be about SCIENCE. I needed data, all the data that I could gather while there was still time.
There were two questions that I needed answered. The first was what was causing this effect? Reality Zero conditions shouldn't exist here. The second was, why were their airships still functional?
They were perhaps the same question. If the Righteous had found a way to amplify their nullification powers, then their traditional system of keeping ships airborne would work. Reviewing the scans showed Righteous ships quite different in configuration. Massive fan-driven propulsion units helped to keep the ships aloft instead of their typical engines.
Their nullifiers weren't working and that meant instead of amplifying those fields, they were somehow fundamentally altering the rules of reality around them. Six of the vessels were of similar design and obviously warships, but one was larger and different. A vessel that had a long, flat oval shape covered in antennae.
That craft was the most likely, obvious cause of the Reality Zero effect. The Righteous warships were focusing their fire upon the Vinci ships, who were returning it. If the Vinci captains were smart and managed to even out the fire a bit, they should have over two minutes before their vessels were destroyed. It was virtually an eternity where my thought processes were concerned, but far from forever in regards to sensor data.
I needed readings of that ship—however I wasn't getting them. They had some sort of energized armor plating preventing me from getting a proper scan.
I opened a comm channel to Lora.
"About time. I need your ships in the defensive formation," Lora said.
"You and all your people are dead. You already realize this and even if I were so inclined, there is nothing I can do to save you. You can die for a good cause instead. I need the armor plating stripped off that larger vessel," I said.
Silence answered me for seconds, too many seconds.
"Acknowledged."
Good, Vinci's people knew how to listen when it came down to it. I only wished that she had done so sooner. The second jump to this outpost was a tremendously stupid idea from a survival standpoint since it meant possibly getting into a situation from where there was no escape.
I pulled up the fleet status.
Toil (84%)
Sweat (71%)
Steel (44%)
Alpha (98%)
Vigilant (50%)
Hawkeye (91%)
Observer (100%)
Delerium (100%)
Theorem (100%)
Madcap (100%)
The science vessels weren't being targeted, good. I sent each a comm transmission advising them of new positions to take up and requesting they open broadband data channels from their sensors. I needed to get all the information they could provide.
I also took a nanosecond to compile a report of what was happening and send it off to Vinci. It was unlikely that she would have a way to rescue her people, but I should at least afford her the opportunity.
The Vinci vessels shifted their fir
e, attacking the circular vessel. Their kinetic cannons were not as strong as the Righteous, but they made some dents. It wasn't enough. The Steel passed between two Righteous ships taking fire on both sides. With smoke pouring from the engines it crashed to the ground.
It was all so stupid. Why send airships on a mission like this when the craft used crystal power and wouldn't operate in this sort of environment? Was this an issue Vinci had thought would be solved when they got here?
I signaled that I still needed more data.
The other research vessels acknowledged my instructions and moved into position. The whole fleet was committed to getting whatever readings we could.
Alert
The leader of your Capital City, Crystal has been overthrown and executed
District Lords have sworn allegiance to a new leader
New leader is Ophelia
Sylax has been promoted to a District Head
Ophelia and Sylax chose now to stage a coup? It was really perfect timing, while I was distracted—they must have had this planned for some time. I'd put Crystal in charge because, with the Agate being housed in Aefwal, I needed someone I could trust ruling the city.
Ophelia was the person I trusted least.
This was tremendously bad news.
I spared a nanosecond to review what happened. They'd hacked the systems of the Central District to disable outgoing communications, then Sylax and her school along with Ophelia had set upon Crystal. The students weren’t a match for her in raw power, but essentially immortal from Ophelia and her healing aura they'd been enough to get the job done. Sylax had torn her apart, ripped the upgrade crystal from her chest and plunged it into her own. Sylax now had an upgrade core.
Ophelia, or at least Amy inside of her, understood enough of my capabilities to know that I would access these information logs. These had been deliberately left for me—they wanted me to see what had transpired. It was a peace offering of a sort. They weren't trying to defect from the province, but just changing rule.