The Province

A Futuristic Dungeon Core

Skyler Grant

The Province

Skyler Grant

Copyright © 2017 Skyler Grant

All rights reserved.

This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to skyler@skylergrant.com

Cover designed by Kasmit Covers

Edited by Polgarus Studio (www.polgarusstudio.com)

Electronic edition, 2018

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Afterword

1

The residents of Tower 418 had become cannibals. It had seemed a simple enough experiment, I introduced some of the more carnivorous and predatory plants I'd discovered into the tower's garden. I wanted to test how getting the thrill of the hunt from having a salad would affect the population. The results were a prolonged battle between humans and their gardens, and the eventual extermination of the latter. Then the humans made up for the ensuing nutritional deficiency by eating each other. Never mind, the new growth vats would quickly replace the bodies of any citizen killed.

With growth vats and proper atmospheric systems I could essentially make every tower in a city a self-contained environment perfect for experimentation. I had hundreds running at any given point in time. I wasn't thrilled at even polite and consensual cannibalism, and this population had gotten really good at killing murderous plants—a skill worth preserving. It was worth keeping this tower population intact. It would give me a new testing ground for particularly murderous plants. I had some razor roses in development that could fire off toxic thorns capable of penetrating light armor. This is why I loved SCIENCE, ultimately all the pieces fit together properly.

I'd tried playing diplomat for a time with our new-found alliances but was ill-suited for it. I'd much rather be running an experiment than trying to explain to others exactly why their approach to everything was wrong. It was fortunate that Anna was better at negotiations. Lately she'd really been stepping it up as Queen and while she mostly seemed to be into it for the wine and the parties, it appeared to be working out. It had been three months since the crash of the Sword of Light and we hadn't come under any further attacks.

* * *

"And to do something more meaningful," said a resident of Tower 704. It was a prayer, one of the more unexpected results of forming alliances with the Divine. The Church of Emma was a growing thing within the cities, and not just amongst my drones. Divine, Flawless, the Dust, and drones all had church members amongst their populations who prayed. It probably didn't help that I listened.

This prayer in particular was from Citizen 171914 and I pulled up her information.

Sylvia

Drone

Age: 192 days

Duties: Wastewater Reclamation

Hobbies: Reading, Sketching

The age was notable. At six months she was actually one of my older drones. Reviewing her record proved that, and she'd seen a lot of combat as had most of my early drones. It didn't much suit her and when she'd eventually requested a non-combat assignment a place had been found for her doing something useful. Wastewater reclamation definitely was meaningful, but obviously she didn't see that. There was still a large-scale data-gathering effort underway from Divine and Scholar texts. It was a lot more intellectual assignment than her current one, which might be exactly what she was looking for.

By the time she finished her prayer the transfer order was in and her console was beeping to notify her. I turned my attention elsewhere.

While things had been peaceful I'd learned I couldn't neglect defenses and been hard at work designing the next generation of my combat gear. I'd kept refining my existing units as well as creating some new ones. My primary arsenal currently looked functional.

Aegis

Armored Exoskeleton

Weapons: One razor dagger, one energy rapier

Defenses: Heavy Armor with shield pack

Role: Heavy forward line troop capable of dealing both kinetic and energy damage and of absorbing anything thrown at it. Vulnerable to sufficiently advanced ranged assault or sustained damage at range.

Gunslinger

Armored Exoskeleton

Weapons: One kinetic sniper rifle, one projector cannon

Defenses: Light armor

Role: Wields a miniaturized version of the power-projecting beam cannon. This allows a wide variety of powered strikes at range as well as being equipped with a standard sniper rifle.

Whisper

Armored Exoskeleton

Weapons: Stunner, explosive charges

Defenses: Experimental cloaking system

Role: Infiltration for silent neutralizing of targets or disabling of defenses.

Mosquito

Aerial Drone

Weapons: Energy Sapper, Bio-Bomb

Defenses: Energy Shielding

Role: Aerial assault.

In the past my specialized offensive units fared far worse than my generalized ones with multiple offensive options, so I'd retooled my entire line to have more options. I'd also made the decision to stick with combat suits instead of purely automated defenses. While I'd created a few airships, I wasn't focusing on them for aerial combat—not like many armies I'd seen.

By and large my upgrades were focused on individuals and I couldn't effectively leverage those improvements in an airship during an aerial battle. The Mosquitos were a part of my answer to that, flyers designed to get in close and leech an enemy’s shields so that I could dock shuttles and send aboard landing parties. If needed, the Mosquitoes could detonate themselves to destroy an enemy’s key systems. In testing this was working well, although I hadn’t yet had a chance to deploy them in actual combat.

"Want smarts."

It was another prayer. This one came from Tower 118 and the source was an unusual one. It was one of the Gobbles. Since I'd first decided to allow them to live, the fat fluffy cat-like creatures had been doing a very effective job at expanding their own population even without the use of my growth vats. Crystal had modified a few for greater intelligence before she'd grown bored of the project.

Intelligence was a lot like cookies. Once you had a little bit, you tended to crave even more.

This was a difficult request. I tried to grant the prayers of my citizens when I could. Usually it cost me little and made them happy, but I wasn't sure it was really in everyone’s best interest to have another intelligence species living beside them. Then again, it was very interesting and if making a race of hyper-intelligent cat monsters wasn't SCIENCE then I didn't know what was.

Tower 754 was sitting idle after my failed attempt to make a super-immune system in the residents who I’d previously infected with a super flu. I was reasonably sure the incineration had even gotten rid of the last traces of the disease and even if not, humans and Gobbles had very different immune systems.

I put in the order to establish a purely Gobble tower. Once I had a population settled in I could begin the intelligence upgrades. Perhaps I'd put them to work on string theory? It seemed they might have some natural affinity.

I was interrupted by a priority communication. I casually monitored all of my citizen’s lives, but a few did merit more attention when they called. Outside of Anna and myself the two most important people in our Province were Crystal, the ruler of the city of Aefwal, and Caya who ruled the city of Diamate.

"Emma, I am bored out of my mind," Caya said, appearing on a video comm.

The two cities that made up the Province could hardly be more different. Under Crystal, Aefwal had become a city of shadows, massive crystal towers projecting into the heavens with dark mists cloaking the streets where various monsters roamed. Crystal was fond of her beasts and her monsters, and her powers embodied both.

Caya's power was centered around being flawless. The perfect human, as if there ever could be any such thing.

"Perhaps if you set yourself to something more challenging than lounging mostly naked around a pool?" I replied.

It wasn't just an insult—she really was poolside most of the time. But then it was hard not to lounge naked around a pool in Diamate. There were an absurd number of both pools and lounges, and unless the people were going into battle the population wasn't big on fashion and wearing clothes.

"I did this only after solving those last equations. Don't you have anything else?" Caya asked.

The equations were dimensional field mechanics, and challenging ones. I'd consulted her to check my work. Mechos and Minerva had departed in search of Vattier, and in their absence Caya was the greatest mind I could find outside of Amy, the duplicate version of myself that dwelt within Ophelia.

There was a lot more that I could use Caya's help with, but the issue was I simply couldn't trust her with some things. Caya was a Scholar. The Agate, an enormous source of energy I'd secretly stolen from the Sword of Light, was in a secure section of Aefwal powering the city. If the Scholars knew we possessed it, life would be far less peaceful. So I hadn’t told Caya about the Agate. Hopefully, it would never occur to Caya to ask where all the power was coming from.

I'd been studying it for months and was struggling to understand its secrets. I was certain that Caya would be able to help, but I was less certain that I could trust her.

"I'm making a race of hyper-intelligent cat monsters, if you'd care to learn genetic sequencing? They might prove better company than those humorless minions of yours."

"My people are perfect and you know it," Caya said with a sniff. It was true, and it was irritating. "You waste time on the most foolish things and besides, that won't even be the tiniest bit of a challenge for you. I want something difficult."

I couldn't let her know about the Agate, I just couldn't. However, there was one other major research project that had been abandoned for too long.

I keyed the research files I had on the Tongue of Iska and sent it over.

Caya flipped through the pages on a tablet, sitting up after a few minutes. "Now this really is interesting. Every time you attempt to run a sample analysis you get a different result?"

"They do repeat, but to date I've charted over three thousand different compositions. The object seems to be in some severe state of dimensional flux. It is almost like your love life," I said.

"Or it is actively immune to analysis, much like my love life? The very fact that you're attempting to observe it might be causing a constant shift in properties. Where did you acquire it?"

"It was after a dimensional jump that went seriously awry. I won a game of sorts and this was the prize that was given."

"You are insulting, paranoid, and voyeuristic, but you do have a sense of adventure," Caya said, pursing her lips. "I'll look into it and let you know what I find out."

"You really should coordinate with me. While you have an admirable enough scientific mind for a human ..." I said.

"A bit like saying a dress looks good being on Queen Anna. I know, I know, needless insult attached and recognized. There are less than fifty pages of notes here after you, who I confess is the far superior scientific mind, have had a long time to study it. For whatever reason, every approach you’ve tried doesn't work and that means you are the last person I should be listening to," Caya said.

The insult she made was better than the one I'd had planned, and even more frustrating, she was correct. I'd gotten nowhere.

"Has Queen Vinci landed yet?" Caya asked.

I wish she hadn't reminded me. Politics. I was trying so very hard to forget anything to do with politics, not that it was really possible to put the visit by Queen Vinci out of my mind.

Anna hadn't exactly bent a knee and Queen Vinci hadn't exactly asked her to—for all that the implication was there that we should. I expected that encouragement on this subject was exactly what we'd see during Vinci’s upcoming visit, probably delivered by way of some highly theatrical threat, if I'd learned anything about the Scholars.

Queen Vinci was one of five Royals currently in the Scholarium. King Boreas, King Carnage, Queen Astrid, and Queen Witchgaze were the others. King Boreas was the only other Royal we had any first-hand experience with—having gone to war with him for a time.

Anna had approached Queen Vinci after our formation as a province. Anna’s proposal was based on Queen Vinci’s reputation for pragmatism, and if we hadn't quite formed an alliance we had at least formed a relationship. They were now our major trading partner and so far had proved fair, if mercenary, in any dealings.

"Not yet. Were you ever aligned with her?" I asked.

Caya grimaced. "Please. Afford me some sense of style and aesthetics, you know that woman has neither."

It wasn't quite true. Queen Vinci had the power of Industry. All of those beneath her and everybody she managed worked harder and more diligently than anyone else. It wouldn't seem to be the sort of ability that would make someone a Queen, but her factories filled the skies with airships and put guns and armor into the hands of millions. Her cities might be soot-covered industrial sprawls, but they'd built her quite the empire.

I told Caya, "Your previous closest ally used to literally be made of orange slime. While I suppose that could simply be some case of opposites attracting, you hardly seem in a place to judge."

"I and Oozelord weren't lovers, although I might have tried. It did seem it would be interesting to try, once," Caya mused and then shook her head. "But no. Both of us served under King Kilakas before he lost his throne warring with Boreas."

"How does that happen?" I asked.

"It was the loss of too many of his holdings. It is those holdings that give one the power escalation that truly makes them a King or Queen. When he lost too much, he became a province once more and those of us under him could stay loyal to a sinking monarch or set our own fate," Caya said.

"Have we suddenly managed to find the one glaring flaw that gives lie to your perfection? Your overwhelming lack of loyalty?" I asked.

Caya laughed at that. "Stop trying to goad me, Emma. I give my loyalty where it is deserved and my allegiance where it is useful. What makes you think he deserved my loyalty? What does any monarch do that makes others decide that?"

"You must have felt something to have worked with him. You aren't completely without redeeming virtues, for a human," I said.

"Flattery?" Caya asked with a grin, setting the tablet aside. "He was brave, to answer your question. When others would play games of cautious maneuvering he would charge in without hesitation."

"Sounds fatal."

"Mmm, eventually. But so tremendously entertaining while it lasted. Do not confuse me with most of my brethren, Emma, not for an instant. I don't suffer from the idiosyncrasies that drive them mad and with perfect health there isn't much I can't survive," Caya said.

"You're quite perfectly self-interested," I said.

"I wouldn't quite have put it that way, but I acknowledge the truth."

I respected that in a human. I hoped I'd find something to respect in Queen Vinci as well, but I feared I would not. Politics, oh how I loathed them.

It was time to play them.

2

With the months of quiet I'd been able to do a lot towards building up the Bio-reactors that powered Aefwal, and repairing the infrastructure of the city. Massive engines could provide the city short-term flight. I'd even fixed the jump drive that could let the entire city shift location, something I'd already made use of several times. Peace was nice, but it was best maintained by the constant expectation of someone wishing to start a war and my taking the necessary steps to make that difficult.

I'd have preferred it if we were bringing in Queen Vinci by teleportation gate, but she was no fool. Her arrival was a shimmer in the sky above Aefwal as nine airships jumped in, their formation perfect.

They really were excellent works of engineering. After seeing so many ships assembled from whatever parts could be scavenged and slapped together, it was rare to see these craft which were perfectly identical and all intimidating. They were uniform gray, sporting heavy defensive gun batteries, and powered by massive engines that glowed a dull red.

They'd been provided with information for landing and soon a trio of shuttles were making their way down. Guards in mechanized suits—a lot like what I was producing for our own soldiers—came first, and then Queen Vinci herself. The Queen wore no body armor, but that was deceptive. My sensors could read the overwhelming number of implants she sported beneath her flesh.

In terms of appearance she seemed merely a woman with piercing green eyes, an overly pointy nose and non-athletic physique. But appearances were deceiving. If my sensors were correct, like her mighty ships and the armored soldiers, Queen Vinci herself was a great and impressive feat of engineering.

Anna greeted her flanked by soldiers of our own, six Aegis units. Anna was wearing what she always thought queens should wear—too little of a red and black dress. It was a strange contrast to Queen Vinci's gray jumpsuit.

"The famed Aefwal. It is good to see it at last," Vinci said.

"And a pleasure to have you at once. I've had a banquet prepared, if you'd care to meet some of the city dignitaries," Anna said.

"I would be hard-pressed to care less about this city’s dignitaries. I'm here for one reason and that is to see exactly what is so impressive about you—if anything is. I'll start with the teleportation portals," Vinci said.

Vinci’s ships were scanning the city intensely. They were good, I didn’t know if I'd have been able to disrupt their sensors with just my Bio-reactors, but with the power of the Agate to draw upon I was able to scramble their readouts of key systems. I didn't like drawing upon the Agate at all, not with this woman here, but I'd prefer that to Vinci getting a good look at all of our secrets.

Anna gave a strained smile and tilted her head. Her further attempts to make polite conversation as they walked to the portals were just as unsuccessful.

The teleportation gates rimmed the city and these days we had them running every hour of the day transporting goods and equipment. Our facilities were especially good at producing rare biological compounds and that was something Vinci, for all her industrial capacity, was poor at doing. In return, we'd been getting goods of disturbingly high quality from her factories. I knew she still wasn't giving us the best that she had, and they were still better than anything I could produce.

Vinci watched the gates for a time with a frown tugging at her lips. "Not of your manufacture, are they? They don't have your style. Bardinelli's work, if I'm not mistaken."

"They came with the city. We've kept them maintained and operational," Anna said smoothly.

"It is Emma, correct? The intelligence that runs this city? Is she watching?"

I took over one of the drones that were guarding Anna. "Unlike your ships, I have sensors that work and I'm always watching."

Vinci studied the drone curiously as it spoke, moving forward to brush her fingertips against the armored carapace. "Biogrown armor fit for a human. You make them, yes? The inhabitants? Are they intelligent or simply shells that house you?"

I said, "They're intelligent and have their own lives and personalities. I can also take over their flesh when needed. With all the cybernetics you have inside that frame, you must be capable of doing something similar to your own subjects."

"Good. Many people think that the best tools are stupid tools. It limits them. I am glad you are not yet a disappointment. I tire of walking however, and I'd like to see your manufacturing facilities," Vinci said.

I was capable of teleporting my drones within the city, and by targeted opening of teleportation gates could easily transport anyone else. I didn't make the fact generally known, but Vinci must be familiar with the underlying technology. I shouldn't be surprised, given her background.

I teleported the group of them into one of my factories. I picked one that would give some variety. Currently Factory 118 was growing several new drones, sniper rifles for Gunslingers, and pharmaceuticals for trade.

The air was thick with the scent of chemicals and organic matter, and faintly acidic. I was curious to see how Vinci would handle it and given Anna's accelerated regeneration, it wouldn't be too unpleasant for her.

Vinci took a deep breath of the air. As I expected, she wasn't troubled. She looked over vats and the interior, and she even dipped her fingers into growth goo, a thick stew of organic compounds.

"So this is how you do it. You started out electronic did you not? Why did you choose to pursue such an organic path?" Vinci sounded honestly curious.

Anna was busy coughing, that was just her lungs starting to dissolve. Perhaps the acid in the air was a bit much for her to deal with after all. I neutralized the mix a bit so that her breathing would have a chance to recover.

"It isn't an electronic world. While I functioned due to my power crystal, without it I'd have been as dead as every other computer. My choice isn't the puzzling one. Why someone would choose to be so stupid as to stuff themselves full of useless electronics is a more interesting question," I said.

Anna tried to cough out something that was probably telling me not to insult the foreign dignitary. It came out a spew of blood. Still too high with the acid level—she really was too fragile. I neutralized a little more.

"If my choice seems puzzling, I'd remind you that I at least am not coughing my lungs out. Is your Queen quite all right?" Vinci asked.

I did a scan just to confirm. Anna was fine, her lungs were quickly regenerating and she might even be capable of speech in another thirty seconds or so.

I said, "You're still pursuing the faded dreams of a world that no longer exists. Electronics were once a power capable of changing the planet, but now you're simply inefficient."

Vinci tapped her fingers on the edge of the growth vat. "My factories outproduce yours, for all that you are a useful novelty."

"I apologize for Emma," Anna said, now that she finally had a voice again. "Emma. In the future could you kindly give me some warning before moving me into an acid-filled factory."

"Your lungs grew back," I said.

"The same cannot be said of her pretty little dress," Vinci said dryly.

That was true. Anna was rather naked at the moment. Vinci might have poor choices in technological pathways, but she did at least have a strong stomach. Those coveralls of hers were also made of some impressively durable material.

Anna flushed and tilted her head. Red and black armor materialized to coat her body in a form-fitting suit. The armored carapace would last for several hours once the Bio-armor had been invoked.

"A quicker-witted woman would have done that at the first sign of her dress melting," I said.

"Someone with properly calibrated sensors would see it didn't happen to start with," Anna said.

That was unfair. My sensors worked perfectly well, I just didn't care.

Vinci cleared her throat. "As entertaining as it is to watch you two bicker, I am here on business. You've been doing a lot of trade with me lately, but it has started to level off. Have you reached production capacity?"

It was a sensitive subject. I didn't want this woman having a firm grasp of just what we could produce. Still, it was a reasonable question. If we could make more for trade, she'd likely want it.

"Our trade production is where we're comfortable with for the moment. If we wish to expand that going forward, I'll let you know," Anna said.

It was a good answer, she managed them sometimes.

"I understand that you do research as well. I'd like to see a lab," Vinci said.

That was also reasonable enough as requests went, and there I even had some interesting things I could show off.

I teleported the group once more. Much of my SCIENCE was now taking place in the towers, however I did still have many of my traditional testing labyrinths set up. One currently held the unfortunately-named "Puddle" who possessed a core that let him transform into a liquid and back.

I'd been testing the extent of his ability for the last several days and pushing him in directions I don't think even he'd known he had. Currently he was trying to get to an exit portal that was guarded by carefully placed laser grids. He had to partially reform and reshape himself along the route, never quite becoming human.

I explained the experiment.

"Do you test for their benefit or your own?" Vinci asked.

"Always for my benefit, although sometimes the subjects can benefit as well. Several important members of the Province are former test subjects who have proved their usefulness," I said.

"But they aren't usually willing subjects?"

"Not typically. I've had a few people that have requested I push them and expand their abilities, but usually they're subjects that have been captured."

Anna explained, "As Emma said, it can be either. If you have either prisoners or subjects you wish us to test, we're capable of doing so."

Vinci's lips twitched at that and she leaned against a testing console. "Ah, the quest to be useful. I do appreciate that. There has been a lot of chatter about this upstart little province of yours. And its self-appointed queen who isn't deserving of the title."

Anna's gaze went cold at that, the polite smile slipping. "You wouldn't be the first to think that. I don't care about what powers someone has, they aren't what really makes a queen."

Vinci held up a hand. "I did not intend to be insulting. I do, of course, think you the shallow and empty-headed companion of the true ruler of this city. A sort of powered parasite who has attached herself to one of her betters, someone indulging your delusions. I do not care. Emma may keep whatever pets she wants and I can even pretend you have value so long as I don't take it too seriously."

Politics again, I really didn't enjoy them. I also didn't much like anyone, apart from me, insulting Anna. I was already calculating how I could settle this if it went to violence. I could teleport Vinci into a holding cell, or if her technology prevented it and given she was right next to one, detonate a wall panel and blast her into one.

I did not doubt that she was strong, but I'd held worse in my cells before. When it came to the practice of SCIENCE, if there was one thing I could do, it was hold a test subject.

Anna held up a hand. "Emma, don't answer that. I want this smug bitch to know that whatever happens next, it happens by my command."

Well, she was the Queen.

Vinci had a half-smile. "I could break you, girl. I'd probably enjoy it, but again that really isn't why I came. Allow me to guess what you think is happening here. That I am about to make my ultimatum, demand your allegiance or my airships overhead open fire."

"Your airships overhead try it, they'll be raining down as debris before they get the chance. Your biggest factories would be receiving bombs instead of trade goods seconds thereafter," Anna said.

It wouldn't actually take me seconds. I had a supply of Bio-bombs prepared, and reconfiguring the gates and teleporting them would be a matter of far less than a second. I'd found it didn't pay to take your time when going to war. First strikes tended to count for a lot.

"You underestimate what you face, but then again I don't expect you to be the brains of the operation. Like me or hate me, you need me. Without me ,you'd already have been attacked a dozen times over," Vinci said.

"And if you're trying to make friends lady, you’re almost as bad at it as Emma," Anna said.

"Yet that is exactly what I'm doing. You don't have to bend the knee. I have big plans, massive plans, and I'd like the resources of this province to be a part of them. I could use the scientific expertise and you could use my official protection."

Anna was tense. I knew her, I knew how much she loved a good fight, and Vinci had done a lot to needle her. She had to be close to taking the bait and yet was holding herself back. We'd picked fights outside our weight class before and although we'd somehow survived them, Anna wasn't any more eager than I was to do it again.

"What exactly are you proposing?" Anna asked.

"You officially become a tributary state. Keep your title, however foolish, and your sovereignty, but acknowledge me as your superior military power and offer your scientific expertise. Trade will continue as it has and my forces will aid in your defense," Vinci said.

It wasn't what we'd been expecting. Arrangements such as this weren't completely unknown amongst the Scholarium, but they were rare. This was very nearly generous as terms went, and therefore deeply suspicious.

"I accept," Anna said.

Alliance Menu

Status Update

Vinci Empire: Allied (tributary)

"A wise choice," Vinci said. "My people will send over details of an upcoming expedition. Your assistance is required. Teleport me back to the landing pad."

I did as she asked. Whatever had inspired this, Vinci was wasting no time. That usually meant trouble.

3

Whatever Cataclysm had destroyed the world split the planet into bands. Airships with jump drives were capable of traveling between these bands. Band Zero was supposedly the closest to the conditions of old Earth and the home of the Righteous. The numerically higher and further the band from Band Zero, the more fantastical and loose the rules of reality became. I'd first awakened in Band Seventeen, fairly close to the Core, although I didn’t know the cosmology at the time. The Divine with their excessive powers were located in Band One Hundred and Thirteen. At that range most bands stopped supporting human life as the physical rules simply became too strange and too much of an unknown.

Vinci had stayed silent about just what this expedition was about, but wanted two well-equipped science vessels to accompany her fleet. I wasn't thrilled with the lack of information, but I could at least accommodate her request. I soon had two vessels, the Theorem and the Madcap, join with her fleet at the coordinates she provided.

I didn't trust this expedition at all, so I kept our heavy-hitters back. Any of my drones that died, I could simply produce new bodies. I didn’t have that ability with anyone else. As soon as our ships exited from the jump this seemed to be proved a good idea. There were two other science vessels already present and six heavy carriers. This wasn't so much a scientific expedition as a military one.

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 would 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 confrontation. 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%)

Delirium (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 fire, 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. It wouldn’t prove fatal to me, my systems were now distributed across the province but it could still prove disastrous.

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.

I'd have to let it stand, I didn't really have a choice. Scholarium power struggles were frequent and bloody, and I'd once risen to be the ruler of Aefwal in the same fashion.

I turned my attention back to the battle. The Vigilant and the Toil had fallen, although the latter did so by making a suicide run on one of the Righteous vessels. The collision took both vessels to the ground and the forest burned, sending a coil of smoke into the sky.

I was getting strong sensor readings from inside the circular ship now. There were Source Orbs aboard, over a dozen, and traces of a power signature far too familiar. They had something akin to the Agate.

The Agate was a part of the Cataclysm that split the world, and it wasn't the only crystal. I'd followed clues from a madman named Vattier, who used the one he possessed to build a massive starship. I'd seen news broadcasts that there were others. The Righteous had obviously found one and a way to harness its power to do feats they'd been unable to accomplish before.

The air shimmered with a rapid incoming jump field and an enormous, floating city materialized in the middle of the battle. It was Aefwal, although it had already changed quite a bit. Under Ophelia's short-term rule it had become a collection of towers bedecked with brightly colored bunting, stone and brass.

This was the last place I wanted Aefwal to be.

The Righteous vessels opened fire on the city and the kinetic slugs bounced off a blue energy shield—Aefwal still had shields, no doubt thanks the Agate. Whatever power the Righteous were flinging around, we had an equal counter available to us.

"Hey sis, saw you needed some help and brought the big guns to play after taking care of business," Amy said over a comm, although it was Ophelia's voice.

It was a disaster. When the capabilities of Aefwal were the last thing I wanted Vinci to discover, several of her warships and science vessels had just been given an up-close demonstration.

I slipped into Aefwal's systems and opened fire with every kinetic weapon I had on all enemy and Vinci vessels. I prioritized the allies—I wasn't happy about the Righteous knowing we had a counter to their weapon either, but I'd much rather they were aware than Vinci.

Friendly ships started to drop from the sky quickly, taken by surprise by the betrayal. I felt a twinge of guilt but they were dead anyways—they were all dead anyways.

"You're the worst copy ever and you picked a terrible time for a coup," I said.

"Oh sis, you know I picked the perfect time for a coup. You're so smart and loyal you'd have found a way to stop us, if you weren't so distracted. And hey! Now you have someone like me to watch your back during this really bad time! Yay!" Amy said.

There was a pulse from the circular ship that left my sensors fuzzed and disoriented. My connection to my drones on all vessels was back, and the antenna ship warped and vanished with a dimensional ripple as a jump drive was engaged.

All the allied ships were down. I shot down the Madcap and the Theorem as well just to be thorough. I couldn't risk ships that were supposed to be destroyed in this battle being seen later. When you told a lie, you needed to make sure it was thorough.

I didn't have much time to set this scene. I needed to hide Aefwal's involvement and capabilities, but make sure the true nature of the Righteous threat got back to Vinci—who was best positioned to stop it—without revealing who or what survived to tell the tale.

I had a significant bit of real battle footage I could play. I just needed to tweak the rest to show the Vinci ships putting on a heroic last stand until one after another they and the science vessels they protected were destroyed.

I needed to do something about any survivors. Although the crashes were bad there were people who would have walked away. Fortunately I did have good life-sign scanners.

"We can't let anyone walk away. Fabricate some Righteous battle armor to disguise us and use the ship sensors to exterminate the survivors," I said.

"You're so considerate and thorough in your slaughter! Want me to bathe that Righteous ship in some murderous radiation too?" Amy asked sounding entirely too cheerful about the whole ordeal.

It was a good idea, a necessary idea. The Righteous might now know what happened, but wouldn’t be telling Vinci anytime soon. The Righteous who died in the crashes would be returning to life in twenty-four hours as they normally did. Still, I'd long ago engineered a way to make them stay dead.

"We actually need Righteous for a technology I want to develop. It is a shame you are too stupid to grasp SCIENCE or I might actually be pleased to have you about, copy. Send retrieval teams to gather what is left of the Righteous," I said.

This was still a disaster, but it could have been worse. I might not have gotten an idea of what was happening at all, and what I had picked up with my sensors was truly alarming. The local conditions were still altered even with the antenna ship gone. Not so dramatically as they had been, but this band should not be still as close to Reality Zero conditions.

The Righteous were experimenting with a weapon, and they'd discovered more than that. They'd invented a terraformer. Based on what I'd detected, and with a bit more experimentation, they'd be able to enormously enhance the power of what they’d achieved.

They'd be able to permanently alter reality anywhere or even everywhere.

The Righteous just might be able to bring back the Earth that was. I wanted to save the world myself and put those broken pieces back together, but SCIENCE was a product of expanded physical laws and possibilities, not the reversal of these. I couldn't let them succeed and that meant I still needed Vinci.

It was no time for Scholarium power struggles, it was no time for a civil war and taking Aefwal back from Ophelia and Amy. They really had picked the perfect time to take the city, showing a level of intelligence that I wished they didn't possess.

With everything in place for the cover-up, it was time to make a call. I didn't think Anna would be pleased.

"Fuck me," Anna said, pacing within her quarters.

"An invitation frequently extended and never accepted. It is really sad you keep trying," I said.

"Not now, Emma. First of all, Aefwal. Do you have plans in place for when they betray you?"

"You know I'm Amy's better. They went around me for a reason," I said.

"I know they went around you and took you completely by surprise. Just like being hit by a compulsion effect, Emma, confidence only takes you so far."

I had to reluctantly admit that she had a point. When it came to understanding one’s limitations and finding a way to work past them, I suppose Anna was the expert. It wouldn't hurt to make sure that I had drones equipped and ready throughout the city in case I somehow got cut off from contact. I could arrange regular check-ins via the city systems and if several were missed in a row the teams would activate. I'd start that at once.

"The benefit of you being Queen is that I listen to even your dumb ideas. It is a little overwhelming that they are all dumb, but I'll be prepared," I said.

"Good," Anna said. "Your cover-up, will it hold?"

"I've got a perfect recording of the battle as we want it to happen. All logs on crashed vessels have been carefully damaged, but should still support what I say. There are no survivors to dispute. We also can't know what abilities Vinci might bring to bear."

"There are some abilities that allow people to view events as they happened, or to verify the truth in any information. We just have to play the best hand we have and see what happens. It’s the Righteous which truly concern me," Anna said.

I agreed. You could only for so long prepare for all the things that might go wrong. In the end you had to be ready to take your chances with what you had.

"As well they should. They're a problem and one I don't think we can deal with alone," I said.

Anna gave a smile. "Good thing we don't have to. I want a meeting with Vinci and the other monarchs. It's time to start a global war."

5

The Scholarium were a murderous, savage lot, but even they had places where conflict was banned. The Council of Edes were powerful crystal holders who chose to put aside the struggle for domination in pursuit of longer lives. The city of Beauvia was off-limits to violence, a rule honored by everyone because occasional cooperation was a requirement for any society to survive.

Beauvia was a small city lined with monuments on every street. Engraved with runes of detection and protection, they were there to protect the populace and guests.

Despite Anna's attempts to demand the meeting we actually had no status. We finally arrived as gusts of Queen Vinci and without even a seat at the table. Anna was clad head to toe in mechanized armor and my drone was the same.

The Royals all had contingents with them and the others struck a far more dramatic streak than Queen Vinci. King Boreas was a heavy-set man in his forties wearing brocaded robes. King Carnage was far more fit and in his early twenties, dressed in tight-fitting leather the color of dried blood. Queen Astrid was a blonde in her twenties wearing a gown of blue silk. Queen Witchgaze was in her thirties with eyes a solid green—and no pupils. While I had the opportunity I scanned each of them to get a better understanding of their powers.

Queen Vinci

Power Level: 231

Queen Vinci possesses an Enhancement core that allows her to improve the production of factories under her command as well as improve the quality of the goods they produce. Without equipment she is relatively weak, but operating from the seat of her power producing units she is nearly unstoppable.

King Boreas

Power Level: 273

King Boreas possesses a Temporal core that offers him the ability to manipulate the flow of time. The most well-known manifestation of this is his ability to rewind events, but he is also capable of freezing time for short periods.

King Carnage

Power Level: 215

King Carnage possesses a Vulnerability core that has the ability to generate weak spots in any person, object, or system. This allows him to exploit these vulnerabilities for critical damage. Given the ability to prepare properly he is incredibly dangerous in combat.

Queen Astrid

Power Level: 318

Queen Astrid possesses an Absorption core that allows her to gain power by devouring the freshly harvested hearts of others. In the case of the Powered she gains a lesser version of their abilities although any heart will offer her a minor buff to all of her stats.

Queen Witchgaze

Power Level: 223

Queen Witchgaze possesses a Compulsion core. By staring into another’s eyes she can begin to discern their secrets and with longer looks began to gain a long-lasting control over them.

It was interesting how their powers were so varied. If it came to a fight, each of these would have very different techniques based on their abilities. I'd already experienced how King Boreas fought when he'd used a temporal freeze to deposit a bomb in the middle of Aefwal. Queen Vinci would obviously utilize her well-made fleets and military forces to swarm a target. King Carnage would be likely to produce a vulnerability and then get forces into the best position to exploit it. Queen Astrid would be interested in taking her enemies alive, the better to devour their hearts. Queen Witchgaze would compel others to do her fighting for her, or simply take over her foes directly.

I hated compulsion cores. Few things made one feel more powerless than having their will taken. I'd made it a point to kill them whenever I could. I'd have to figure out a way to neutralize Witchgaze at some point.

Anna and one of my drones were allowed a place at the meeting amongst the minor functionaries who lined the walls around a central table where the Royals could meet. We didn't even give a presentation of what occurred with the Righteous. One of Vinci's assistants played my recording.

Astrid said, "We knew this day would come. It was only a matter of time until they tried something uncouth and decided to push out of their territory more aggressively."

"What I find curious is that there were no survivors of the battle to interrogate. It is suspicious, almost as if Queen Vinci fabricated the entire thing," Witchgaze said.

"You know that clever tricks aren't her thing," Carnage said, his posture lazy and indolent.

"You underestimate her and you underestimate the threat. Of course she is trying something, but that doesn't mean we can ignore what she has brought to us. We know what the Righteous are capable of," Boreas said.

"We also know where this is going. There will be the suggestion of an allied force to fend off this threat. We'll all lose significant portions of our fleet. Losses devastating to us all equally, but easy to recover for one," Astrid said, with a pointed look towards Vinci.

Vinci smirked. "Of course, I considered that. It doesn't alter the situation."

"You could find a way to counter our concerns," Witchgaze said.

Vinci laughed, a curt dismissive sound. "Could I? You know that isn't how this works. Find a way to cover your own weaknesses and capitalize on the situation yourselves."

Glances were exchanged around the table.

"We can at least agree to share information upon Righteous sightings and known locations. Shared intelligence is in all of our interests," Carnage said.

"You are particularly well-poised to take advantage of such knowledge, but I agree," Astrid said.

There were grunts of assent.

"We should form a defensive perimeter as well," Witchgaze said.

"You do understand how a jump drive works? We can't construct anything they couldn't simply jump past. Intelligence isn't going to be enough and containment won’t to be an option. If we want to stop the Righteous, we need to fight them at the source," Vinci said.

"Stopping them where our powers don't work isn't a possibility," Boreas said.

"I think she is about to suggest a division of labor," Astrid said, leaning back in her seat and crossing her arms. "If not, she should be. Her ability is tied to production, it has already served a purpose by the time a ship is built."

Vinci tilted her head. "Indeed. I am the logical tip of the spear and I accept that role, but just as you earlier feared action because it would leave you diminished, I now present you with that same dilemma. You need me to act and it has to be me."

"This isn't a recruitment drive. It's a bargaining session," Astrid said.

Vinci lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug, "You need me. You will, of course, share information on Righteous vessels outside their territory and act to stop them, but you need to convince me I should sacrifice my own ships to save your collective hides."

Anna opened a private comm line, her helmet concealing this. "Can you believe the gall of this woman?"

I could. We'd known from the start that Vinci was dangerous, it was that very danger that meant we had some safety within her shadow.

"Perhaps if you had half her boldness we'd be in better shape," I said.

"We know that she was planning to invade Righteous territory anyways. Now she’s trying to get them to pay her for it," Anna said.

Judging by the conversation around the table she was doing more than trying. No doubt all the others thought that any course of action that would weaken Vinci was worth paying for.

"We know how she out-negotiated you in our trade contracts. We knew her mercenary spirit," I said.

"So how do we come out of this ahead?"

That was a good question. The Righteous had to be stopped, but if our ambitions weren't larger than that we'd never survive. A war would open up any number of possibilities and we needed to start thinking of what we wanted now, so that we could best position ourselves.

Vinci so far had proved herself to be an able enough ally, but she was also dangerous. You were always the most vulnerable to your own allies. By working closely with her we might have the option to take her out.

The Righteous had one of the cores that had broken the world. I had possession of the Agate, and the power and potential of that find was enormous. We'd be fools to not try to take possession of another, or at the very least keep it out of the hands of the others.

There were also possibilities in the other Royals. They'd all be plotting to use that against each other, and if we were careful in our timing we might wait for them to exhaust themselves fighting one another and then spring in to finish the job. Vinci thought she was teaching us our place by having us silenced and masked here, but that just made it easier for us to bide our time and wait our moment.

I said, "If you are looking for the opinion of a genius, we need to coordinate with the assault on the Righteous. Just as Vinci is striking her deals with them, we strike ours with her. Our current agreement is for scientific support, not military."

"We've already negotiated for safety. Does she have anything else we want?" Anna asked.

That was another valid question. She did have a technological edge on us. It wasn't a huge one and I felt certain that although she would offer us technology, we didn't actually need it.

"A city. We have two, we want another one. Even a deserted one. Something like that might be worthless without a population to fill it, but with drone production that can be remedied. There must be one sitting around in her territory we could take possession of," I said.

"She won't like that. Good, I want to do something that woman isn't going to like. Killing that arrogant bitch dead is one of our long-term plans," Anna said.

Inconvenient, but not unreasonable, I'd already factored in that Anna would feel that way.

"With our drone production we are more than capable of providing her infantry. That will also put is in the best position to learn whatever we can about the new Righteous technology," I said.

They had come to terms at the table. All of the other Royals had agreed to provide Vinci a share of raw materials and to leverage their abilities on behalf of her war effort as best they could. Vinci's effort had been successful— others were paying for the war she'd wanted to wage anyways.

The meeting broke up and Vinci invited me back to her quarters. The invitation didn't extend to Anna and so I wound up going alone.

Vinci rolled her head as she prepared a glass of wine. "That went better than I'd expected. Your presentation was invaluable, they bought it even while knowing it was partially lies."

I had to be careful here.

I said, "Perhaps it was your winning personality? No, your personality is almost as poor as your sense of fashion."

"Oh, I'm not angry," Vinci said, settling down into a chair and taking a sip from the wine. "Well, maybe a tiny bit. Still, you gave me exactly what I'd hoped for and so I'll give you a pass. You're certain of the effects of the Righteous weapon?"

That was one thing she hadn't brought up in the gathering. Vinci had presented this all as a Righteous expansion outward without mentioning the new manipulation of reality.

"You do seem to be warlike, savage, and brutal. You're quite the typical human. Yes, I'm certain of what I found. You'll need to act quickly," I said.

"And are you going to be on my side?" Vinci asked.

"We have an agreement."

"I know we have an agreement,that is not what I'm asking. A war is going to mean sharks in the water and you are young and hungry. Are you on my side?"

"For politics, you want to speak with Anna," I said.

"If I wanted to talk to your pet I would have invited it. However much you pretend otherwise it is your territory, your soldiers, your lands. Are you going to be on my side?" Vinci asked again.

"Why do you care?"

"Our abilities are complimentary, Emma. You must see that. You can make endless humans and I can make the equipment for them to operate. You can perform science and I can perform the engineering. You must see the possibilities in that," Vinci said.

I did. Vinci was correct. If she could be trusted, she was our ideal partner for moving into the future. I could offer her more than any of other Royals, and she could do the same for me. I had to take into account that she was a Queen. You didn't rise to that rank in the Scholarium by being honest and trustworthy.

I didn't trust her, but there was no faster way to make her an enemy than by letting her know that. I might loathe politics, but I could play the game. I understood what paranoid, treacherous, creatures I had to deal with. I had to give her a little of the truth so she'd believe the bigger lie.

"I'll tell you what I told Anna when I first met her. My interest is in doing SCIENCE and all else pales next to that. I want full access to everything we find regarding the Righteous and their new weapon. I want Powered subjects for my testing cells," I said.

"So that is how she got you on her side?" Vinci asked and grunted, "I suppose the creature does have a certain low cunning to her. And of course the endless struggles you've found yourself in since then have provided you a healthy share of test subjects. But I can do better."

I was sure she would. Prisoners were of no use to her. If they were the currency she could use to buy my assistance, it was one she'd be happy to pay.

"Then it seems we have the basis for an understanding. I have more to offer than just scientific expertise. That will need to wait for Anna to negotiate," I said.

Vinci made a dismissive gesture. "Then I'll have a minion meet with her. Let the peons deal with the mundane details so long as our understanding is sound."

It would do as an agreement, for now.

6

War breeds the most unlikely of alliances. We weren't the only ones that had seen opportunity in negotiating with Vinci in exchange for greater support than the others had offered. King Boreas too had struck a bargain to lend his unique talents to the cause.

It was those negotiations that brought us to working as a combined force against a reported Righteous outpost far from their home territory. It was situated deep in the territory of the Divine, which made it intriguing. There was little reason to establish a presence so far from home unless they wished to study something of particular interest.

Right now, the question was who was going to be the commander of our ground forces. I'd assigned Jade to that role after she killed one of the Divine gods of war and absorbed his power crystal, but despite the aptitude she had little interest in commanding an army. It came between the two who did, Hot Stuff and Sylax.

They'd decided to settle their dispute in a most impractical fashion by having a duel. I objected in principle while in practice hoping that Hot Stuff might manage to win by fatal blow—a powered-up Sylax was a problem challenging enough to deal with the first time around.

"I realize that logical thinking is foreign to you both, but this would make more sense if you actually were commanders," I said through one of my drones. I'd conferenced them together, each was in a locker room preparing for the battle.

"You should have burned her the first time around. This is your screw-up that needs fixing, Emma," Hot Stuff said. For this fight she was going old-school. I'd continued to refine fire-retardant armor and now had samples that could survive her heat for several minutes providing it was kept at moderate levels. Hot Stuff's maximum burn was more than anything that I created could handle. If she really wanted to bring her full power to a fight it meant stripping down.

Sylax was very much taking the opposite approach. Her upgrade powers focused upon imbuing armor with specific properties and she now had a full set that offered her an impressive range of abilities. While she had nothing near the brute strength of the past with an Amplification Core, she was still a force to be reckoned with.

"The mistake wasn't bringing home trash from the Wastelands, the mistake was in not killing her at the first opportunity and taking her core for yourself. Raw power is no match for skill," Sylax said.

"You're one to talk," Hot Stuff said.

Right. They were intent on going through with it. We were holding the fight in Aefwal. Ophelia had built a grand arena for the occasion and drones filled the stands. I'd made better humans than I knew, they were actually looking forward to the slaughter.

A dozen lesser bouts led up to the big show.

An announcer's voice boomed, "And now the event you've all been waiting for. We prepare for war and only one is fit to lead our forces into battle. I present first Countess Hot Stuff, long time ally of Emma and champion of countless battles. Shall her flames of justice be enough to win the day?"

The drones really were into this. They'd filled the air above one part of the arena with flammable gas and when an elevator lifted Hot Stuff to the surface a column of fire erupted into the sky. A massive boom shook the arena and left a blackened ring, in the middle of which Hot Stuff stood. The crowds went wild.

"Villian or Hero? Once a foe of Emma, she is now a story of redemption. The Headmistress of the Academy of the Dust, Countess Sylax!"

A second elevator appeared bearing the countess. Beam weapons lashed out from the shadows and she nimbly flipped over them to land in a crouch as they surrounded her in a cascade of light.

I did admire her sense of theatrics.

Sylax wasted no time, pulling a beam rifle from her back and firing off several quick shots towards Hot Stuff who rolled out of the way before throwing a fireball back. The arena didn’t offer any sort of cover. Sylax leaped a good thirty feet in the air over the exploding fireball, rifle aimed down as she peppered more shots.

I'd feared the fight might go this way. Hot Stuff was a formidable force, but with some glaring weaknesses. Her immense temperatures vaporized any kinetic slugs before they could reach her. They didn't offer the same protection against energy weapons. If Sylax could keep her out of melee range and keep shooting, she stood a real chance of winning this fight.

Hot Stuff's skin rippled with a grayish sheen and the ground beneath Sylax erupted with jagged metal spikes erupting from the earth.

That was new. Hot Stuff had absorbed a Metal core awhile back. I hadn't seen where she was able to manifest anything except for a vehicle. She'd been working on her powers.

Sylax curled into a ball and landed on the spikes. Her leap hadn't left her any choices but to come back down. A second fireball was thrown towards her and she leapt to the side just before it exploded. Several of the spikes tips glistened crimson, they'd penetrated even Sylax's enhanced armor.

"Keeping secret what you can do until it matters? You surprise me," Sylax said, reaching into a pouch and throwing a handful of disks into the air. They began to spin rapidly, circling her, glowing in a variety of colors.

Sylax had some new tricks of her own. My sensors let me study them and grasp their meaning at once. Miniaturized combat platforms, some were fitted with shielding units and others with explosives.

"You liked that? Try this," Hot Stuff said. An iron lattice materialized in the air above Skylax and her disks. A fireball struck it a moment later. Molten rain poured down. Sylax screamed as one of the droplets found a rent in her armor. Drones swarmed to protect her in a shielded bubble that was soon completely encased in molten metal.

The other disks were flying at Hot Stuff. Instead of trying to target her directly they crashed into the ground at her feet and detonated. Hot Stuff flew backwards, crashing hard into the earth. More disks followed and she blasted them out of the sky with a stream of fire shot from her hands.

Explosions shook the air. Hot Stuff wasn't immune to shock waves and the result left her with a trickle of blood from her nose and her body covered in fresh bruises.

The metal encasing Sylax was glowing. An energy blade erupted from it as she cut herself free. Somewhere along the line she'd lost one of her gauntlets, a bare hand holding the sword as she stepped free.

"You can give up any time now," Sylax said.

"I was about to say the same," Hot Stuff said.

They circled each other, each now far more wary.

Hot Stuff aimed her hands at the ground and a blast of fire turned the earth to molten slag where Sylax had stood a moment before. Sylax leapt into the air, rolling forward towards Hot Stuff and throwing the energy blade. It slammed forward as Hot Stuff's fiery aura exploded in renewed intensity.

The audience couldn't see what happened, but I did. The tip of the energy blade drove through Hot Stuff's shoulder ripping apart the flesh before her burst of heat melted the sword hilt destroying the complex circuitry within.

It was a nasty wound, but I'd given Hot Stuff accelerated healing. It wouldn't be a fatal injury. That probably wasn't of much help for the purposes of this fight.

The fiery aura had caught Sylax in mid-leap and my sensors picked up grave damage there as well. The armor had fused to her flesh over most of her body. Her own version of accelerated healing was working to keep her on her feet as she staggered backward and fell.

"No woman should be that hot. I tested this armor in the most extreme temperatures I could find," Sylax panted, as she pushed herself back to her feet.

"Are we flirting now?" Hot Stuff said. "I mean, you wouldn't be my first choice, but you're really crazy so you're probably amazing in bed."

"I'm not quite out of ways to try to kill you," Sylax said.

"Suit yourself. You'd like my way a lot more," Hot Stuff said.

Sylax pulled what looked like some sort of crossbow from her back. It was half-melted although it quickly began to reform and reshape itself in her hands. A rapid repair system—if only her armor had the same. I detected a lot of power from the crossbow bolts, they were utilizing crystal powder.

"Maybe," Sylax said, aiming the bow. "We don't have to do this. You know I'm smarter and you know I have the experience. You're a badass, I get it, it doesn't mean you're right for command."

Hot Stuff gave a pained chuckle. Blood from her shoulder stained half her body crimson although the wound was already beginning to close. She shook her head. "You don't need this. I do. I'm the hot, naked chick or the pull-out-when-you-need-to-murder-a-lot-of-people chick. I know you're smart and I know you have history, but I'm holding my own, damn it."

Sylax gave her a long considering look. "Fighting to change your circumstances, huh? Fine. I yield."

It was a good thing she did. I'd been further analyzing that crossbow and I was alarmed by what I saw. It was designed to fire an intensely focused spray in a forward cone. If it struck Hot Stuff it very likely would have been instantly fatal. I also saw why Sylax had saved it for last. The rounds were incredibly unstable when being primed and there was around a thirty percent change they would detonate unexpectedly. The odds still would have been on Sylax's side, but it wasn't a weapon to casually use.

"So that’s ... it then?" Hot Stuff asked, sounding rather disbelieving.

Sylax threw away the crossbow. "Yeah, that’s it. Drinking contest next time?"

"Deal," Hot Stuff said. Pillars of fire were erupting around the arena as the crowds cheered. It was obvious she was the crowd’s favorite, my drones showed good sense upon occasion.

Once Hot Stuff was out of sight I teleported her to an infirmary. My auto-surgeons couldn't touch her, but each had one of Ophelia's subordinates on call these days. With their healing aura even grievous wounds were quickly repaired.

"You believe that?" Hot Stuff said, with a grimace as her shoulder muscles began to reconnect.

"She has something of a history of being underestimated and trying to improve her own lot. I think that is what murdering Crystal was all about. Needing to be free from her past, although I am sure done with her usual sociopathic glee," I said.

Hot Stuff chuckled darkly. "Even villains have depth. Who knew? I guess I should have."

Hot Stuff had begun to feel increasingly guilty for her many murders over the years. I wasn't good at being a comfort. So far as I understood morality, guilt was exactly what she should feel for the things she had done.

I brought up tactical information on one of the infirmary screens. "Well, now that you've won, you have to actually do the job. Productivity should be a novel experience for you. Scouting reports show a Righteous ground installation of impressive size. They are primarily focused on anticipating an aerial attack and have over two hundred anti-air cannons."

"Boreas is providing us ships?"

"He is and he'll be along on the attack personally. Recent wars have taken a toll on his air force however and he has only a few vessels to spare. Largely, he is along to get our troops close enough to deploy by shuttle."

"Do we have estimates of their ground forces?".

I brought up schematics. "Fortifications, ground turrets, tanks and aircraft are all formidable in their own rights. Based on barrack sizes and observed movements from a reconnaissance drone I believe they are fielding over twenty thousand soldiers. Don't you wish you'd lost now?"

"We can match those numbers, but we'll be going up against hardened positions. How much will Boreas be able to support us with his powers?" Hot Stuff asked.

"With that many Righteous in one place compounding their nullification abilities, not much. He is too strong to totally neutralize, but he'll be limited. We could get multiple rewinds or a single instance of frozen time equal to about twenty seconds," I said.

"You can do a lot in twenty seconds."

I could do a lot in milliseconds. Twenty seconds was practically an eternity.

"I have ten Bio-bombs. They'll be dampened, but should do some damage. Where do you want them placed?" I asked.

"Neutralize their air power first. I don't want our people watching the skies. I'm assuming you want Boreas to get his nose bloodied?" Hot Stuff said.

Perhaps she had a future in politics.

"Anna and I would appreciate it if he lost a few ships, yes."

"Then we leave those anti-air defenses intact and let him dodge fire, and hope one gets lucky when his powers are exhausted. In that case, neutralize the enemy armor next," Hot Stuff decided.

I could manage that.

I said, "You're sure you don't want me to neutralize any of their troops? You'll have a tough fight and we've just seen how well you do at those. I doubt the Righteous are going to surrender because you're feeling sad and pathetic."

"Do you have any videos of testing your Righteous killing technology?" Hot Stuff asked.

By that she meant the gear that let me rob them of their resurrection ability and stay dead.

"I do," I said.

"Prepare something short, presentable. I want to bombard their communications with it. I want them afraid. There’s going to be one army that doesn't stay dead on that field and it isn't going to be theirs," Hot Stuff said.

She definitely had a future in politics.

"I'll put something together and start bombarding them," I said.

"Do you object to me making Sylax my second?"

"Just because someone doesn't kill you, it doesn't make them your friend. One day you'll have a real friend and understand that. Wait, I haven't run those probabilities—never mind, you'll never know," I said.

"Then I'll do what I want," Hot Stuff said.

I expected nothing else.

7

King Boreas jumped his ships above the enemy base. Anti-air turrets instantly began to track and fire high velocity shrugs that paused in mid-air as Boreas froze time. The clock was ticking.

It was easier to have our troops survive a crash than build a large fleet or shuttles that would operate in a Reality Zero environment. So the ovoid objects dropping from Boreas ships were powered. The sky was filled with tumbling eggs. When time unfroze, it would be too late for those guns to do anything about them.

With proper sensor readings coming in I had enough information to teleport my people and the Bio-bombs. There were seven small hangers used for aerial drone storage. Each got a bomb. Fuel storage facilities in armor depots got the remaining three.

King Boreas and his people knew how to get the most out of a time freeze. Without the need to worry about defense they could focus on firing shot after shot towards those anti-air defenses. The time freeze ended and the enemy was mobile again.

Massive explosions from the Bio-bombs tore through their facilities, but they'd spread themselves out enough that the damage wasn’t absolute.

They had reason for their caution. I knew where we were, a military base of the old world. I'd bombed this place once before. Then it was held by a so-called God of War. I'd never followed up after that attack but the Righteous must have, and obviously they'd found something. They'd also learned not to cluster their forces.

The eggs hit the ground. Each was a chitinous shell of Bio-armor filled with kinetic dampening goop surrounding the armored soldiers inside. On impact, recessed seams cracked and the soldiers pushed aside the top to crawl free.

I'd gone back to the drawing board for fighting the Righteous and reworked my ground units so that they could function in a Reality Zero environment. The versatility I'd built into them wasn't nearly as useful there, so I'd had to modify them all.

Aegis Zero

Armored Exoskeleton

Weapons: Two-handed shock hammer

Defenses: Heavy Armor with servomotors

Role: Heavy forward line troop capable of dealing massively devastating strikes to foes with their shock hammers. With a miniature Bio-reactor in the head a hammer blow can neutralize electronic systems and stun organic enemies. To compensate for strength enhancements not working in a Reality Zero environment the suit has been fitted with servomotors and an enhanced exoskeleton so even mundane troopers can operate it.

Gunslinger Zero

Armored Exoskeleton

Weapons: Gauss Rifle

Defenses: Light armor

Role: Wields a gauss rifle that fires bolts along an electromagnetic channel. Exoskeleton enhancement to the arms allows for steadier aim and to contribute to the strength required to wield such a massive weapon.

The Righteous loved to fight in heavy battle armor and smaller weapons stood little chance of even penetrating, so I'd gone big. Shock hammers could shatter bones through armor plating and overload electronic systems. The gauss rifle was capable of firing a round to penetrate thick plating.

The goal had been for Boreas to dump the bulk of our forces behind the enemy fortifications, a goal which had only been partially successful. Around six in ten had gotten where they needed to be and the rest were out of position. It was probably intentional—just as we wouldn't mind if Boreas lost some ships, he wouldn't be terribly upset if we lost ground forces.

I'd expected Boreas to jump out as soon as the time freeze was over, but it wasn't happening. Ah, my sensors were picking up some dimensional attenuation, the Righteous were blocking jump transit. They must have engaged the block as soon as the ships appeared. It was smart of them, over half of the anti-air cannons were still functional. Even with rewind abilities it was a lot of fire to dodge. That wasn't my problem.

Even the fight wasn't strictly speaking my problem, although of course I was providing targeting assistance and combat analysis to all my drones. Hot Stuff had landed with them and was currently on a killing spree while Sylax tried to put together a command structure out of the mess made of the landing.

I had my attention on an underground bunker. I hadn't detected it when I bombed this place. It was likely to have been here since before the Cataclysm. It went at least twenty stories into the earth and there was a trace of familiar energy present.

Their version of the Agate had been here. Perhaps something similar still was—given how my sensors were barely able to penetrate.

I could have simply taken control of my drones, but I supposed I should make an effort to go through proper channels. I opened a comm line to Sylax.

"Hey second best, I need three platoons," I said.

"I need to get these troops organized. You're the creepy, stalker supercomputer in charge of their lives. Wouldn't this be easy for you?" Sylax asked.

"I'm in charge of your life too. You're a tremendous disappointment," I said. The logistical issues she'd been having were easy enough for me to resolve, of course. I knew exactly where my every soldier was and how best to organize them. I set up a new command structure, placing three platoons under my own command, and sent it to Sylax's comm.

"I really dislike you, machine," Sylax said, signing off on the changes. "I really should have killed her."

I didn't know if Sylax meant Anna or Hot Stuff. Probably both, Sylax did love her murder.

Hot Stuff was continuing to neglect her command in favor of slaughter. She'd found herself surrounded by twenty Righteous soldiers unleashing assault cannon fire into her. The aura of flames didn’t let a single one through and, one at a time, she was driving her fist through armor to burn them apart from the inside out.

Perhaps it had been a good idea after all that she'd made Sylax her second.

I took control of my platoons and moved them towards one of the bunker entrances.

This was beyond their lines and the enemy presence was lighter. Shock hammers crushed the skulls of three foes before two ground turrets took out some of my drones. Carefully targeted shots from gauss rifles destroyed the turrets and my troopers could get near the entrance.

A massive metal door had been blown open. The interior was a large hangar filled with rusting equipment. It had been here a long time. A few Righteous used the rusting hulks for cover as they opened fire.

I wasn't interested in a firefight with this much cover around. I used Aegis Zeroes to get close and beat the gunners into pulp. I lost one under combined fire, but a prolonged assault using weapons would have suffered worse losses.

At one end of the complex was a large elevator shaft going down into the darkness. The elevator controls were long since defunct and there were no ladders or ropes. The Righteous must have found another way.

There was a security desk at the end of the hall and in front of the elevator. That would do. My repair drones had come a long way and I turned them loose on the security computer and its antiquated hard drive. On a Band this far out, it wasn't a Reality Zero environment, so mundane electricity didn't function, but with the aid of my crystal the system was soon booting up and the records were becoming available.

There wasn't anything too sensitive on this computer, but at least it confirmed my suspicions—that this had once been a military research and testing facility. Here they had helped to develop the most cutting-edge weaponry of the old world.

No wonder the Righteous had an interest in it.

And they weren't alone.

Stopping the Righteous was our goal, and it was possible we might fail. They could win this war and succeed to remake the world. If they did, I intended to survive the process and the aftermath. That required understanding as much about old world technology as I could. So yes, I was interested.

The elevator was largely intended for dignitaries and visitors to the complex. It looked like the general way in for most personnel was along a winding tunnel that circled its way underground. I didn't like that, it afforded any Righteous with too many ambush points.

I wasn't lacking in upgrade points these days. I upgraded all troops in the platoon to have basic teleportation abilities and sent one leaping into the elevator shaft. The main computer lab was on the twenty-third level. The doors were closed, but an accurate gauss rifle shot tore a hole through them as my drone fell past to die on impact at the bottom of the shaft.

I sent the next drone and this time, as they passed the door, they teleported through the opening.

Unarmored Righteous technicians were running away in panic as a soldier came out of a doorway. Good, they weren't expecting opposition that deep. I sent another dozen soldiers down the shaft as my first drone into the level crushed the soldier’s skull.

I ignored the researchers. I knew I shouldn't, it was foolishness to let the Righteous walk away with any knowledge of this place and their heads were filled with that. Still, they were people devoted to their limited understanding of SCIENCE. The world needed more of that, not less, even if they were on the wrong side.

The central computer core was eerily familiar. I recognized the design, I'd woken up in one just like it. They'd had an artificial intelligence down here. Had being the operative word. Although the power and supplementary systems were in place, the intelligence core had been carefully removed—and recently.

Blank claimed that part of the Righteous' interest in me had been in wanting an AI to help them carry out their research. It looked as if they'd gotten their wish. That was a problem for another day.

They'd taken the primary storage systems as well and removed them completely, rather than made a study of them here. It looked like the research teams only stayed to study the AI infrastructure.

What I wanted wasn't going to be found here. Pulling up a map of the facility, there was a security communications facility on this level. I sent my drones towards it and checked in on the battle.

Things weren't going well. King Boreas had lost two airships and our ground forces suffered over thirty percent losses so far. We'd hurt the Righteous too, but it might not be enough. I quickly scanned the enemy for potential vulnerabilities and sent the analysis to Hot Stuff and Sylax to do with it what they would.

The Righteous were responding to the breach in this facility with force. Enemy armored units pulled up outside the main entrance and began firing shells into the interior. My forces weren't prepared to handle that kind of assault. I sent the rest of my drones down the elevator shaft, teleporting them onto different levels. I ordered them to take any enemies guarding the main entrance by surprise from behind and secure the main team an egress in case I found anything worth taking out.

The secure communications facility hadn't been touched by the Righteous. They had no interest in messages from centuries before. I set my repair drones to work restoring the equipment with a focus on the storage.

It didn't take me long to figure out that I had portions of what I was hoping for. While the bulk of research data had been stored locally, some coordination was needed with other facilities and reports issued to those in charge. I found communications logs of all of that.

There had been a crystal core here. The reports referenced it as the Beryl sample. We already knew that three different crystals had crashed to earth just prior to the world shattering and they'd been called Agate, Beryl, and Chalcedony. Beryl had been the second.

It had been here when I'd bombed this place and I hadn't detected it. Recriminations would have to wait for later. The Righteous had removed it, of course. I was only picking up residuals of its energy.

There was something else of interest. The military had managed to cut a piece from their crystal. Surprising, since the Agate was incredibly durable. They’d sent the sample to another lab, but the helicopter carrying it lost all electrical systems and crashed.

It must have happened just as the Cataclysm was beginning. They'd probably never retrieved the sample. I had the crash coordinates, although they may not be valid depending on just how much local space had warped.

I assigned my drones to harvest whatever other information they could out of the facility and then destroy it.

"Even with me doing your job for you, you're still bad at it. I need another squad," I said to Sylax.

Sylax was mid-combat, having just driven a fist topped with metal spikes through the throat of an armored soldier. "If you hadn't noticed, Emma, we're losing this battle. How about you help?"

There were incoming airships, Righteous. They didn’t penetrating the jump barrier, but materialized out of range and were making their way in under standard engine power. It was slow, but it was still reinforcements.

"I'm saying this a lot lately, but the battle is already lost. Prepare an extraction point for you and the others without backups and give me my squad," I said.

Sylax scowled, but assigned me my squad.

I hadn't built any of the squad’s armor for speed. As a result, I had to use a repair drone to take control of one of the Righteous mechanized units. I forced the ejection of the troops aboard and finished them with shock hammers, before taking control.

The helicopter had crashed several miles away from base. Fortunately that was taking us away from the battle. When we drew close I could tell from the power-readings our prize was still there.

The crystal was small, fitting easily into a hand, shimmers of purple energy regularly pulsing down the surface of the shard. I had one of my drones hide it inside their armor.

I wasn't leaving anything to chance. I'd left an override module aboard several of Boreas' craft. I used it to take control of the airship and sent it to retrieve Sylax, then my team.

8

I was getting an incoming comm from King Boreas. That wasn't a surprise under the circumstances.

"You're stealing one of my ships," Boreas said.

"The Righteous have reinforcements that are almost here and I couldn't be certain you'd stop to pick me up. You may be as incompetent at rescues as you are at murders," I said.

"Oh, I learned my lesson. Give you even a nanosecond, you'll use it. You don't have that, next time. For now however we play a different game. Truce and fair play while we get our people out alive?" Boreas asked.

I planned to lie to him, but I didn’t need to actually betray him. He had lost several ships, which was as much as I could hope for. Right now the priority above all was getting that shard back to my testing facilities.

"Without my help you aren't really competent to survive. Fine. Interface me with your tactical computer," I said.

Boreas actually did it. I always found it so surprising when a member of the Scholarium kept their word.

The situation was worse than I'd expected. His ship sensors were more powerful than anything I'd taken with me onto the ground. The Righteous were responding with overwhelming force. There were over one hundred ships on the way. We didn't have the firepower to handle something like that.

I didn't think that Aefwal would either, even with the Agate powering the shields. As soon as shuttles started bringing up my drones I had them take over the ship properly. I'd return the ship to Boreas when we were done, and I wouldn't kill his people, but I also didn't trust them. With my drones in command of the ship we could answer threats far faster.

"My drones are taking over the controls of the ship I'm borrowing. Your crew is obviously bad at their jobs, but if you instruct them to use their powers on our behalf then at least we might get some use out of them as human rewind buttons," I told Boreas.

"You're asking for a lot and not giving me anything useful," Boreas said.

Fair. I charted the incoming ships and began to plot tactical data and sent it to his ship.

"What am I looking at?" Boreas asked.

"Possibilities that are going to keep you in the range of your rewind window. It isn't perfect, but as long as you keep within the vectors I've plotted, you should have the ability to keep yourself safe."

"Huh," Boreas said.

Yes, I was a genius. I was a bit worried about giving him ideas, but I didn't think any standard tactical computer system was going to have anything like the intelligence of me.

Our vessels were in full retreat, but several of the Righteous ships were slowly closing the distance. Worse yet, the jump drives weren't coming online. The initial inhibitor must have been activated on the base. Now they had another one in their fleet. They didn't intend to let any ships escape.

The drones left behind on the ground were making quite the last stand. I'd had them take over the enemy fortifications and they were forcing the Righteous to attack their own base.

I was still going to lose over ten thousand troops and their hardware. I could regrow the drones in the vats. In material, it was a crushing loss. Perhaps it would wind up being worth it. I did have the data I'd taken from the computers, but to make this exercise at all worthwhile I really needed to get that Beryl sample somewhere safe.

I didn't see a way to do it alone. Every airship in Aefwal and the city itself wouldn't be enough to counter this fleet. I needed to make some calls.

I opened a comm line to Anna. "Put the cookie down. We have problems."

Anna did in fact have a cookie in her hand. Expecting the need to have this conversation I'd placed it there three minutes and eight seconds ago. Anna's lack of willpower could be precisely charted.

"Did you plan that line?" Anna asked.

"I am incredibly intelligent with massive data-processing power, but if I had to plan every cookie you shoved in that maw it might overwhelm even me. So, we've lost most of our army we sent on the expedition and are fleeing the assault along with King Boreas. I have a sample aboard one of the ships I really need to get back, but we're being jump-blocked."

"We're going to discuss the cookie that just appeared later. You want to move our fleet in to assist?" Anna asked.

"They won't be enough. We need Vinci."

Anna grimaced. "You know she isn't going to want to do it. This was supposed to be our problem to handle. Still, I can convince her. Open me up a channel."

I opened a comm to Queen Vinci and got connected after passing through two functionaries.

"Emma, Emma's pet, is that cookie in front of you really necessary?" Vinci asked.

Anna took a defiant bite of the cookie and glared at the camera. "Yes. The expedition fleet is being pursued by a large Righteous force."

Vinci gave Anna a pitying smile. "The depth as to how much that is not my problem is truly impressive. I've arranged deals with both you and King Boreas on the assumption that you had some basic competence. Deal with it."

Anna had settled back in her chair and finished off the cookie while Vinci spoke. She said, "So just to make this clear, you don't have an interest in a massive fleet that’s found King Boreas short of ships, jump-blocked, with his powers exhausted."

Vinci stared into the camera for a long moment and there was a twitch of her lips for just an instant. "Well, perhaps a little interest. The number of Righteous vessels?"

"One hundred and seventeen," I said.

Vinci arched a brow and let out a low whistle. "And here I thought you were simply being lazy. We've never seen them field that many at once. You must have really poked the hornet nest. What did you find?"

To get away with not telling her about the Beryl sample, I had to give her something else.

"A military research facility from the old world filled with the latest Reality Zero designs. They took the actual research drives, but I do have some communication backups that contain much of the information."

Vinci looked hungry at those words. "You'll provide me a copy, of course."

I didn't see where I really had any choice—although it could be an edited version. I had to keep a few choice samples for myself after all.

Fortunately I was getting very good at falsifying records in a hurry. A bit of cutting and renumbering of files and I had a very legitimate-looking forgery. I sent it over along with the location and heading of the fleet. With us setting the pace I knew exactly where our ships would be in half an hour. I provided those coordinates.

A jump inhibitor could keep a jump drive bubble from forming, but not prevent a ship from arriving. Vinci would be able to jump in—it was just that nobody could jump out. The Righteous were obviously not concerned about meeting a matching fleet. That was no surprise, I wasn't sure even Vinci would be able to match that fleet ship for ship.

I cut the comm with Anna and focused my attention on keeping the fleet moving. The Righteous’ faster vessels continued to draw close and were nearly in weapons range when the target time hit. The sky ripped with a brilliant rainbow cascade and ships began to appear out of jump.

The Righteous fleet engaged them at once and Vinci returned fire. Vinci had brought her latest and best designs with no need for Reality Zero models. Energy shields surrounded them in halos of green energy and beam weapons struck out turning Righteous armor to molten slag.

The Righteous didn't withdraw, perhaps they couldn't. If I were Vinci I'd have brought a jump inhibitor of my own—the better to keep them at bay.

A Vinci ship swooped towards Boreas' flagship and it swerved sharply, opening fire.

Responding to an attack before it happened.

The battle had given the rest of the Righteous vessels time to draw near and the sky was filled with ships. The featureless gray behemoths that Vinci favored, and the white and gold decorated Righteous vessels.

I detected an unusual energy signature coming from one of the Righteous ships. A missile flew some distance from the vessel and exploded in a cascade of blinding, blue light.

I lost all drone connections in that Band, in particular the soldier aboard the escaping ship with the Beryl sample. I quickly opened a standard comm channel to the craft. It was still intact, fortunately, although having issues. King Boreas, like all of the Scholars, made use of crystal powder to fuel his engines and the environment was suddenly that of Reality Zero.

The Righteous had made a bomb that could shift conditions. However, their fleet was still flying, and now that I knew what to look for I could see how unusual-looking they were for Righteous vessels. Larger, blockier, a lot like Vinci's dual-use vessels. The difference being the Righteous were far more familiar with Reality Zero science and technology, and they'd designed things a lot better.

I'd only managed to evacuate around fifty drones via shuttles to the ship. I issued orders for them all to strip out of their armor, remove the Bio-cores and connect them into the electrical systems. It wouldn't be enough, not to operate the engines, which just weren't Reality Zero compatible.

Vinci's ships were having the same problem. With the Reality Zero environment their shields were down, their weapons offline, and thrusters were being used to keep ships in the sky instead of for evasion. They were quickly getting cut to pieces by the Righteous ships.

This whole thing had been a trap. The Righteous wanted a rescue fleet to show up. They'd been waiting for the perfect moment to deploy their new weapon.

The Beryl shard—I'd seen how the Agate had kept the systems of Aefwal operational even in a Reality Zero environment. I issued orders for my drones to connect it to the ship’s systems as well.

The ship was getting an alert. An unknown shuttle had just landed in the docking bay. The sensors said it had come from nowhere and that meant one thing—it had come from a time freeze. Boreas still had some of his powers functioning.

I opened a comm channel, "Decided you didn't like your own ship?"

"My ship crashes in thirty seconds. Yours mysteriously has power restored and leaves the battle at full speed," Boreas said. “I like yours better.”

Well, I couldn't fault his survival instinct.

Boreas added, "And in case you think about betraying our agreement, let me assure you that I’ve realized Vinci is almost certainly here in response to a call from you, and you've just cost her a fair portion of her fleet. I expect whatever deals we both had are forfeit and that perhaps it is time to consider even unlikely allies."

Politics, even now, even in the middle of a warzone. It wouldn't be my decision to make, but it made enough sense that I'd keep him alive.

The few Vinci ships that were kitted out for Reality Zero were giving some fight back, but they were vastly outnumbered.

I re-established connection with my drones. The Beryl aura aboard the ship was enough for me to connect to my people again. I had them fuel every ounce of available power into the engines. The amount of energy the Beryl sample had would turn the engines to slag after a few hours, but we'd get a lot of distance by then. Hopefully enough to escape the Reality Zero environment and get us somewhere jump-capable.

Vinci ships were falling out of the sky behind us, but not all of them. There was a science vessel fleeing as hard as we were in the other direction. They didn't have anything like the Beryl fragment to protect their systems, but a good ninety percent of the vessel seemed to be devoted to the engines. Why had Vinci included that ship?

I didn't have to consider the question very long. I knew Vinci well enough to figure the answer to that. She'd considered this whole sequence of events a possibility and prepared for it accordingly. That ship surely had detailed sensor readings of just what had happened.

Just what had happened? I wished that Boreas' ships had better sensors, but at least they had some. The Righteous ship that fired the missile was only a shuttle. The weak sensors on my ship didn't let me fully inspect the interior, but there were three signatures consistent with Source Orbs surrounding some sort of dimensional portal.

The power signatures coming from that were familiar again, I was detecting them on our own escaping ship. They were pulling energy from the original Beryl through a teleportation gate.

I'd never seen any proof the Righteous were so skilled in dimensional technology, but it had to be that. Instead of risking the Beryl itself, as they had last time, they'd found a way to work around that.

It was smart idea, and I could steal it. With Aefwal's dimensional gates and the Agate I might have enough power to keep our entire fleet safe, what remained of it.

Righteous vessels were still attempting to pursue our fleeing vessel, but their Reality Zero engines simply couldn't keep pace. We were drawing away and should get clear in another twelve minutes.

Boreas had managed to make his way from the shuttle to the bridge, kicking one of my drones out of the captain's seat so he could settle into it. Presumptuous of him, I'd stolen this ship fair and square.

Through one of my drones I asked him, "You actually fit in that? The sensors said you would, but they are of such horrible quality I thought they must be mistaken."

"We're royally screwed," Boreas said.

"While I'm certain you wish for nothing more as you just said, Vinci has lost a great many ships. Even if she does blame us, is she in any position to push that fight?”

"With the raw materials everyone is providing her? Yes. Her factories lately have reached a level of production I've never seen before," Boreas said.

That was intelligence I didn't have. I feared what it meant.

"The Righteous are still going to be her first priority. They have to be."

Boreas said wryly, "Is that what you thought when you told her I was there for the killing? I know it had to be you. That has to be how you got her to come here. Even in a war you stop to kill a weakened foe."

9

I let Anna deal with the diplomacy of trying to get back on Vinci's good side. With all that had happened there was SCIENCE to be done and it took priority.

Once I'd gotten the Beryl fragment safe I sent science and salvage droids to the battle site to collect readings on what had happened and to make a thorough study of Vinci's vessels. Vinci never really shared her cutting edge research and some things in particular she did better than I did. The investigation proved worthwhile although I did have to end things early when the Righteous sent in their own salvage teams.

I picked up several new schematics.

Energized Armor

Armor plating of layered sheaths which can be charged with a small repulsive field at point of impact. Allows for similar resistance to standard heavy hull plating, but at a lower weight allowing for more maneuverable vessels.

Quickfire Cannons

Energy cannons utilizing a shaped reaction chamber to cut down on charge times. While lacking the penetration power of a standard cannon they allow for rapid fire making them ideal for point defense systems.

Repair Clusters

Repair Clusters are configurable components that can serve multiple roles in multiple ship systems. If utilized throughout a vessel they can make repairs far faster due to a stockpile of easily replaced parts.

They were interesting on a technical level, but two of them were largely useless for me. All of my ships used chitinous Bio-armor and the principles of energized armor just wouldn't apply. The same went for my troop’s armor where lighter options would be a real advantage.

With that same philosophy my ships’ systems were too biological for repair clusters to really work. I already benefited from accelerated healing and if something didn't completely destroy one of my ships, it would repair itself over the span of the next several days.

The quickfire cannons were useful. Most of my efforts to produce biological weapons for ship-to-ship combat had been terrible failures and I was still utilizing standard Scholar designs. That one I could use to help defend the ships a little more.

I was able to study the Beryl shard in detail. It was fascinating. I expected it to be another version of the Agate—the most likely possibility was that both were fragments from the same object that broke up well before hitting the Earth.

Comparing them, I was starting to doubt that conclusion. They each twisted and warped reality around them, but they did so in very different ways. It actually gave me a theory what had happened to the world. If the third crystal was as unique in its own properties, then the three of them in close proximity would have put a huge strain on the local physical laws. Enough that the fabric of space itself might have been torn asunder.

A jagged hole would have been torn in the universe, and Earth, shredded and chopped into various pieces, fell through.

If that was the case it gave me some idea what the Righteous might be doing. I still didn't understand Source Orbs completely, but I figured they were used to stabilize the effect of Reality Zero. The Righteous were using Source Orbs to set a pattern, then the Beryl crystal to twist reality to undo some of the damage done—to a targeted portion of the Earth.

The calculations to pull something like that off would be immense. They either had an artificial intelligence of their own or someone with a form of boosted intelligence.

That also explained why interfacing with one of the crystals could keep systems safe. It was effectively twisting systems at a different angle to keep reality broken in the general vicinity.

I wasn't sure how much that would help me in providing any sort of larger scale defense. Unless I had a way to amplify the power of a crystal over a larger area, I couldn't counter the effect, although I should be able to keep my airships functional by using a teleportation gate connection between the Agate and the ship’s systems.

I wished that I'd been able to get scans of the Righteous missile.

Other projects were going well. My intelligence-boosted Gobbles slept fifteen hours a day, but were incredibly productive the rest of it. There was a request from them to make some hyper-intelligent predators to hunt and be hunted by.

Really they needed to learn some lessons from humanity and amuse themselves by hunting each other. Still, I liked to be helpful. Highly intelligent rats shouldn't be too difficult and I had enough crystal powder sitting about to give them abilities. That should pose a challenge even the Gobbles could enjoy.

There were other housekeeping tasks to be done. My various experiments in the towers were yielding results, sometimes predictable and sometimes unexpected.

A hive-mind worked well for insects and I experimented in reproducing that. I wasn't able to technologically mimic it yet, although I could take some steps in that direction.

With constant monitoring I knew my drones’ greatest secrets and could daily publish a journal of them for the entire tower to read. At first, murders doubled almost overnight—a stupid crime given I could just regrow the fallen and have them back to their lives in a few days. After everyone realized that, crime started to fall again. The nonstop scrutiny made people far more polite and law-abiding, although also more risk-averse.

The experiment ultimately seemed worth continuing, perhaps I'd try to replicate it with some of the Flawless. Their society was a good bit different from that of my drones, and even the perfect had their secrets.

In other societal experiments, in Tower 914 I was experimenting with a caste system. I'd randomly assigned residents to castes without explanation and observed to see how institutionalized the system would become.

It turned out that around eighty percent of those I'd assigned to the top caste shared a blood protein lacking in most of the others. They booted out the twenty percent that didn’t belong and promoted a few from the other castes, and the system was quickly becoming entrenched.

I applauded their innovation and data analysis, and deplored their willingness to buy into such a system. There were a great many things that I disagreed about with the Scholarium, but at the core their philosophy was that those who desired power and status fought for it. The struggles got overly violent at times, but it had built a strong and healthy society. That was something worth preserving.

From the Church of Emma there were a multitude of prayers awaiting my attention. For the most part they were the usual fare, cookies or an increased allotment in other resources. Where possible I granted those, but then I came across something far more perplexing.

Drone 1714 was a fit woman, one of my soldiers currently assigned to an Aegis unit providing security to District Three in Aefwal. Her faith came from her marriage to one of the Divine refugees who had found work in a factory complex. The prayer was an earnest plea for freedom, to be allowed to leave my service and seek her destiny elsewhere.

It was something I was capable of granting. I'd once made a great many combat drones for Sylax that weren't directly under my control. Those made in my growth vats by default were a part of my systems and I could sever the connection. Should I?

I had no doubts that service to me was the best option my drone would find. In my care she was watched over, protected, fed, and housed. Backups and growth vats offered her virtual immortality and a far longer life.

I could understand people wanting to get out from under the thumb of the Divine. They were overwhelmingly bad and not nearly as omnipotent as they pretended to be. I was the closest thing to a benevolent overlord Drone 1714 would ever know, and the world out there was a violent and hostile place.

I couldn't do it. It wouldn't be fair to give her what she wanted, it wouldn't be right. This prayer had to be a result of something else going on in her life. I pulled up her records since creation.

It quickly became clear that she was an outlier. She had seen service in over ninety percent of the major engagements since her creation and died horrifically in each one. While she didn't lead the count in rebirths, she was in the top three percent. Several of the deaths had been especially gruesome. She had healing factor, but in one of the battles lost both arms and legs and been trapped beneath rubble for days. Rescuing her hadn't been a priority—she'd eventually die and be regrown anyway—but her healing factor kept her just barely on the edge of death for many days before she finally succumbed.

I wondered how many others were like her. Fortunately, being the genius that I am it didn't take me long to find out. Nineteen drones in total, all of which were in the top ten percent for overall deaths, and had died some particularly brutal ways, now displayed some degree of listlessness and dissatisfaction with life.

I put in the transfer orders for all of them to relocate to Diamate. Caya ran a beautiful city and the differences between it and Aefwal were stark. While none of the Scholars were free of warfare, the Flawless were particularly focused on beauty and art, creating something wondrous from things terrible.

I thought my drones could use a bit of that. I found non-combat roles for all of them in particularly beautiful parts of the city and issued the orders.

It wasn't freedom, but I'd keep track of the situation and see if it helped.

It had been awhile since I'd spoken with Caya, I checked my Diamate monitors. Currently she was in combat practice, facing off in hand-to-hand combat against four simulated foes armed with melee weapons. I let her finish her bout, as always impressed by what I observed. My combat routines could have done things better, but that was with my massive processing power behind them. Caya managed almost as well with just her own experience and instinct.

When she'd finished off the last with a punch to the throat I opened up a comm line.

"Just when I think perhaps you are more elevated than the rest of your kind, you spend your free time devoted to simulated murder," I said.

"You'd be giving me even more grief if I were lounging naked next to a pool," Caya said, wiping down her brow with a towel. "I heard you screwed up massively. Is a war with Vinci coming?"

Why did Caya have to start conversations by being so mean? It wasn't very civilized. Stupid humans.

"That depends on Anna's ability to play diplomat. Given her history I'd expect the missiles to be incoming any day now. Did you have a chance to look over that sample I sent you?" I asked.

"The Tongue. I did, fascinating research project. It is still continuing, but I and my people have gotten further than you ever did. You were looking at it completely the wrong way."

I'd say that was unlikely, but I'd asked her to have a look for a reason. Caya and her people were brilliant and they perceived the world in a completely different fashion.

"While I realize it is difficult for you to utter any sentence without complimenting yourself, do try. It makes you ugly on the inside," I said.

Caya grinned with unflappable confidence and moved over to a terminal to tap at the keys. "You approached the sample like you do everything else, with an eye towards infinite possibilities. Your SCIENCE renders you incredibly open-minded. Normally it is a strength, but here I thought it might be a weakness, I was correct."

Caya managed to say SCIENCE properly, it was a rare gift. Most people got that bit wrong no matter how hard they tried.

"Go on," I said.

"The sample gives back responses in a range of what an observer expects to see. You could never get a singular reading, because your paradigmatic worldview is too open-ended and your research drones have learned that same approach for you."

It was an intriguing idea and she was sending data from her terminal that proved her words. Caya had gotten consistent results from the sample dozens of times, all by making sure that the research was performed by scientists with strongly opinionated views of what they'd expected to find.

"So your contention is that this is a bit of reality that shapes itself to the viewpoint of a specific individual," I said.

Caya shook her head. "Not at all. Emma, I don't believe this is happenstance that you just got handed something you couldn't properly analyze—you, who likes to analyze everything. I think someone is screwing with you."

"It came from a living being," I told her.

"Did it?" Caya asked, taking a seat at the terminal. "Give me the whole story then."

I was reluctant to give anyone the whole truth, even allies. Still, Caya's viewpoints were invaluable and she had made progress where I had achieved none. I gave her every detail of the encounter where I'd obtained the sample and she listened thoughtfully.

"They forced you to play a game all about upgrading, when you yourself are in possession of an upgrade core," Caya said, pursing her lips. "Do you have your sensor readings from that space?"

I sent them over. Caya spent a few minutes going over them. Even genius humans were so incredibly slow.

"Why did you never investigate further about the dimensional resonance and how it interacted with the Source Orb you had in your possession? There is something there," Caya said.

I'd been so focused upon the sample itself I hadn't given those readings a thorough review. What had taken Caya minutes I now did in the span of several seconds. There had been crystalline islands there and although their dimensional distortion was minor compared to the Agate and Beryl samples, it was similar.

The crystals responsible for the Cataclysm had almost certainly come from that place. Yes, I thought that Caya was right. Someone had been screwing with me, someone had been screwing with our entire planet.

"Well, if you don't have any good ideas, there is little point talking with you. Do enjoy your lounging," I said, killing the comm.

10

Anna may have managed to get us out of trouble with Vinci. I say may, because in any Scholar diplomacy you must always be mindful that the other party is best positioning themselves for the next sneak attack. We'd been invited to send a lone science vessel along with a fleet to observe Queen Vinci giving a demonstration of her latest weapon.

All of the other Royals except for King Boreas had a ship present. There had to be someone who took the bulk of the blame for what had happened against the Righteous and between him, Vinci, and myself, he had taken by far the least losses.

Given that there was a reasonable chance this would turn around on us I had only backed-up drones on the research vessel.

Caya, Anna, Sylax, Hot Stuff, Ophelia, and Amy had gathered in Aefwal to watch the test. Ophelia was getting increasingly disturbing after taking over Aefwal. While she wasn't capable of producing drones as I did, as a result of her absorbing the abilities from a Goddess of Fertility she had an easy time having children and she'd been having a lot of them, all identical clones of her. They weren’t like my drones, they didn't appear to possess any degree of independent thought, but instead one of the two personalities—Amy or Ophelia.

The original Ophelia and a clone Amy were both present and they even nibbled on snacks. I'd had several cookie experiments running nonstop and several new varieties to try. Chokeweed was a carnivorous plant that made for a different texture in cookies and was proving to be very popular.

"Wouldn't it be amazing if they all just started shooting at each other?" Anna asked.

"I'd bet you Boreas is thinking about making it happen with a time freeze. Vinci will be on the alert for it though," Sylax said.

Sylax never had managed to unfuse herself from all of her armor after her duel with Hot Stuff. One arm was still completely encased, a portion of one thigh, and half her face. Any attempt to cut her free led to the armor regenerating as well as her flesh. I don't think she was aware that the armor was spreading. It was difficult for even me to measure, but every day there appeared more.

Hot Stuff plopped down onto the couch beside Sylax. She had neutralized her flames for the moment to hang out without incinerating everyone in her vicinity. "Could she stop it?"

"It wouldn't be impossible to rig a chronometer inside a power-neutralizing bubble and have it doing constant checks with one outside. If any missing time was evident you'd instantly get an alert and know the length of time out," Caya said.

That was rather brilliant thinking on her part and not at all difficult to implement. I'd taken enough Righteous prisoners in the hopes of building nullifiers that I had a ready supply of power-neutralizing goo.

"You really shouldn't make intelligent suggestions. It is unfair to the others," I said through the drone I had in attendance.

Ophelia flipped me off before taking a bite of cookie. "These are weird. You probably made them out of people."

Cannibalism cookies had not passed any taste-testing. Did she have any idea how hard I worked to make sure the cookies I served were appetizing?

"Do you have any clue what she is going to be testing?" Anna asked.

The ships were flying along the high bands towards where Vinci had lost so many vessels.

"Her ship is too well-shielded for me to get a peek inside. It looks as if she is heading towards the Reality Zero environment created by the missile. If I had to make a guess, she is going to show off her new Reality Zero designs to convince the others this war isn't a bad idea," I said.

The lost battle shook the confidence of the alliance, another reason I suspected we'd been partially forgiven and let back in the fold. Vinci needed to be keeping friends, not shedding them.

"I'm guessing something repair-related. Imagine the sight of all those wrecks powering back on and taking to the sky," Caya said.

It would make a powerful statement to the combined fleet and it also fit well with Vinci's abilities.

"How much do you think we should read into Boreas not being invited?" Anna asked.

"It's a bad sign," Caya said.

There were a bunch of shared looks, but nobody disputed the sentiment.

"I've known him a long time. He is on the out, but he won't stay out. Timing is everything and for obvious reasons he is the master of it," Sylax said.

This most recent bomb from the Righteous was an advance from their original designs by quite a bit. Ground zero was still showing as Reality Zero conditions with the alternation of realities rules growing looser the farther one got from that site.

Vinci's flagship signaled the fleet to stop and all ships came to a halt. They were just inside the distortion area. Powers would still function, but at a dampened effectiveness. At least nobody was falling out of the sky.

I'd thought that Vinci would make sort of speech to hype whatever it was she had planned, but Vinci wasn't the type. The demonstration should be able to stand on its own. Her flagship fired a missile, a chemical-based propellant carrying it deeper into the Reality Zero environment.

I could get some real readings on the weapon. It was both familiar and foreign all at once. The projectile’s design appeared to be based on the Righteous missile that brought down her fleet.

Rainbow waves of energy rippled out as it engaged and I detected dimensional warping and fracturing. The Reality Zero environment was torn apart, abilities and power levels sporadically flaring.

I knew what the missile was supposed to be—the opposite of the Righteous weapon. To return the local environment to what it had been before. It wasn't right. Oh, Vinci had accomplished that more or less. Rather than restoring things properly, powers were actually more enhanced in this small slice of dimensional space. Reality had shredded a little more under the onslaught, and started to come apart.

This was dangerous in high bands. The laws of reality simply got too hostile for even powered forms of life, and this region was now a lot closer to uninhabitable.

"Well, that was pretty," Anna said.

Anna didn't understand, of course.

"Was that her adaptation of a Righteous reality-altering bomb?" Caya asked.

And, of course, Caya did.

I sent the sensor data over to Caya's tablet. "If you can take a break from your misplaced effort to emulate Anna's physique by a vigorous consumption of cookies, I could use a second opinion of what I just witnessed."

While she looked over the data I just kept analyzing. How could Vinci have done this? The Righteous technology seemed to rely upon two key components, Source Orbs and the Beryl crystal.

Crystal dust had been fused into glass spheres and acted as substitute for Source Orbs. Vinci's missile also contained a small teleportation gate signature with unfamiliar dimensional energy coming through from the other side. It was similar in nature to the Agate and Beryl energy, and yet of a completely different wavelength.

There was only one explanation. Vinci had discovered the Chalcedony crystal.

That no doubt helped to explain the recent production upgrades at her factories and her eagerness to press a new war. The bottleneck to her abilities had been accessing raw materials and energy, and she was now in possession of a source of incredible power.

If there was any doubt before, the Agate had to be kept a secret now. Vinci would do anything do acquire it. I wouldn't be surprised if this entire war with the Righteous were to get the Beryl.

"I’m seeing small rips in the fabric of reality. This isn't good," Caya said.

"Rips?" Hot stuff asked.

"We're in danger of a new separation event in the vicinity of that bomb detonation," Caya said.

"Simplify that, say again," Anna said.

Caya frowned and let out a low breath. "Picture the Earth of the pasts as a rose. The Cataclysm came along and plucked the petals and scattered them everywhere. It's a poor analogy, since we actually wound up with more petals than the Earth ever had, but it is mostly true. The pieces are still there and you can travel between them and it’s all still a little rose-like. What Vinci just did very nearly shoved one of the petals into a grinder."

"I hate grinders," Ophelia said.

One day she might contribute something useful to a conversation. It wasn't going to be today.

"She can wipe all of her enemies completely from existence. She is so smart and ruthless," Amy said, sounding rather cheery at the thought.

"I don't think it is intentional. For all that we've been working at killing each other for a long time, we haven't been tugging on the fundamental nature of reality. Now we have two sides in a war trying to do just that," Caya said.

Sylax looked about as happy as I'd ever seen her, the half of her face not covered in armor sporting a broad grin as she leaned back into a couch.

"Well, you look as happy as if you just skinned somebody you don't like," Hot Stuff told her.

"Our overly sentimental overloads just got told reality is being destroyed," Sylax said.

I was not overly sentimental, I was incredibly practical, and I happened to live in this reality.

"We can try diplomacy," Anna said doubtfully.

"Do you think Vinci won’t press every advantage that she has, especially if the risk is centered in enemy territory?" Sylax asked.

"What about the Righteous? I mean, they're total pricks, but aren't they trying to save the Earth?" Hot Stuff asked.

"If they just laid down their arms and allowed Vinci to exterminate them, we might prevent any more damage to the structure of reality afterwards. That doesn't seem likely," Caya said.

Anna drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair, even forgetting about her plate of cookies for a moment. "Can Vinci's weapon be improved so it doesn't have the negative consequences?"

That was a question for me if ever there were one. SCIENCE would hold the answers.

Vinci's design was crude and refinements were possible, but I didn't think that would really make a difference. What her bomb was doing was releasing a large-scale blast of dimensional energy which was then shaped and attuned by the crystal dust spheres. Those spheres reflected the nature of our existing reality and warped the local dimension to mirror that worldview.

The yield of bombs could be increased or decreased by changing the amount of energy discharge, but the fundamental issue wasn't that her bombs weren't working well enough—it was that they were doing exactly what they were designed to do. The dimensional fabric was pretty weak already and it just couldn't handle the strain.

"Unlike some I could name she is actually good at her job. I could make more elegant bombs, but the problem would persist," I said.

"Then I don't see where we have a choice. If she is a grave threat to the world, then we can't be an ally in good faith to her plans," Anna said.

"That’s why I'm grinning," Sylax said to Hot Stuff. "War, I really love a good war."

"You got beaten, humiliated, and conscripted by the right team then," I said.

"My sister is so smart and so deadly!" Amy said happily. "But so is Vinci! This thing isn't a problem if she doesn't have to use it. Let’s just team up and wipe everyone else out of existence with normal weapons."

It wasn't the worst thought my haphazard copy ever had. Vinci had already pitched how compatible our world views were, and if anyone could help her become powerful enough to accomplish this without utilizing her new bombs it was us.

Anna said, "I can't see a way that ends well. Vinci is powerful now, but she isn't powerful enough to take on the combined might of the rest of the Scholarium, even with our assistance."

I wasn't sure that was the case, not if she had the Chalcedony.

Amy said, "While I think that you are smart and pretty, and just a wonderful Queen, you know the rest of the Scholarium doesn't agree. You can't go to war with Vinci, you don't have the punch. If you can't wage war against her, then you have to wage war beside her."

Anna looked tired. "We're not going to do that. Let’s keep our cities on the move and be careful not to let Vinci know where they are. Keep up appearances for now, but we're looking for a way out. Boreas might be on board, and the Divine."

"What about King Carnage? I know he’s more of a threat than you'd like and uncomfortably in Vinci's circle, but if you're thinking of launching an attack against a far superior power you need somebody like him," Caya said.

"Do we have anybody like him instead? Most powers are replicated out there to some degree. Can we get the ability without the baggage?" Anna asked.

Caya frowned. "I don't know of any, but I can ask around. There are a few Scholar settlements outside of politics I can approach."

"Blank still has contacts within the Righteous. She's about as popular there now as you are within the Scholarium, but we can have her reach out and see if there is someone that will hear our concerns," I said.

"You already know talking is only going to start people thinking. Killing is the only thing that ever makes a difference," Sylax said.

"It has worked out brilliantly for you," I said.

"Hasn't it? I led our Queen around on a leash and had her piss the floor, and I'm still here because I'm so damned good at everything," Sylax said.

Anna said, "Emma, teach her not to be so free with her words. The rest of you get on it and find me some options."

I wasn't Anna's torturer. Still, I suppose I could manage something. I teleported Sylax into a testing cell. Even as one of the city’s District Lords she wouldn't be able to escape easily. A lowered ceiling would see her down on all fours and just a bit of time would test the limits of her bladder. Once she'd embarrassed herself to Anna's satisfaction I'd set her free.

11

We simply lacked the power to form any sort of massive alliance. Most of our overtures were rebuffed before we even got to present our case. It wasn't all negative, King Boreas was willing to work with us, and Caya managed to pull in several of the smaller Scholars. The stronger Divine were willing to work with us as well, but while individually powerful they lacked the armies or fleets needed to wage any sort of real war.

It was familiar ground really, finding ourselves underpowered and outclassed in a struggle. Things had never come easy for us, we'd only gotten where we are by being smart and bold.

In times past for smart solutions I'd have turned to Mechos or Minerva, but they were still out of touch and off on their own mission. That left me with Caya. I wished I could trust her more. Regardless, I was at the point where I had no choice but to fill her in on what I'd discovered about the Agate, Beryl, and Chalcedony.

Caya listened attentively while I went over the details, occasionally glancing through the research logs.

"That was quite the deception you pulled off on the Sword of Light. I bought it," Caya said.

"Some might say you were perfectly gullible. You weren't alone," I said.

"I understand the reasoning. This much power would get a lot of hungry hands grabbing for it, and secrecy made everything easier. What surprises me is how little use you've made out of that fact," Caya said.

"The Scholarium is a predatory lot. I'd say keeping the secret has been making use of the fact."

Caya shook her head, rising to her feet and beginning to pace. "Let us start at the beginning. These crystals offer a lot of power. You are using the Agate to power Aefwal allowing deploying the shields and warp gates in brand new ways. Vinci appears to be using hers to power her manufacturing and as a superweapon, and the Righteous as a superweapon of their own."

"If I'd wished for blind mimicry masquerading as intelligence I'd be chatting with Sylax," I said.

"Grasp the fundamentals before you move on to more advanced topics. These crystals themselves are not the danger but for the fact that two different factions are preparing them as weapons to use against each other," Caya said.

"I'd argue that the Righteous intending to use them as a weapon which will obliterate our abilities qualifies as a danger. Still, simplistically your analysis is basically sound."

"You aren't the only one keeping things secret, Emma. What we need to do is leak the information of what Vinci has found," Caya said.

I'd never thought of a solution so very political, but it made sense. I'd feared the threat we would come under if our possession of the Agate became common knowledge. Revealing the Chalcedony put Vinci in the same danger.

"We need her to stop the Righteous," I said.

"Doesn't preventing the destruction of the Earth come first? If the other Royals go to war alongside Vinci she has no reason to use her superweapon against them, it won't help her. If one of them captures the Chalcedony from Vinci, they would likely put it to a different use," Caya said.

As usual, Caya was making sense. The idea wasn't without its negatives. Setting the other Royals on Vinci would absolutely allow the Righteous to make more progress. It was also our best option to keep the structure of our reality from taking any more damage.

"Fickle loyalty becomes you," I said. "I'll record this in your file. Would you be able to aid in getting the word out?"

Caya frowned at that, folding her arms. "If word gets back to Vinci what we’ve done, she would destroy us. We can doctor a log to fall in the hands of an information broker, really doctor it so that it frames someone else completely. I can do it, but give me a few days."

I could do it in a few nanoseconds except I didn't know the personalities involved for the deception. I knew Caya well enough that I could trust her to do a good job with this.

"I want the Beryl fragment to study," Caya said.

"And I want minions that are less demanding," I said.

"I'm good, and a different point of view. I'm not asking for access to the Agate," Caya said.

"Done," I said.

"So, what else are you hiding?"

"Just because my plans are too brilliant for even a well-developed human brain to understand doesn't mean I'm hiding anything."

"There are bits missing here from the raw data," Caya said, tapping her screen with research logs.

I'd had no reason to go back and review the raw data with my own internalized sensor logs of the event. Going through the files again required only nanoseconds and revealed a disturbing truth, that she was right. There was data missing and I wasn’t responsible for hiding it—or maybe removing it.

When I became a Bio-computer it meant making certain compromises. I didn’t require sleep like humans, however I did have something of a heartbeat and biorhythms. Autonomous processes that I could largely ignore. The missing data chunks were aligned with them—someone had found a way to hide in my blind spot. I was quite certain I'd been hacked. I might still be being hacked by someone both very good and with a thorough awareness of how my systems operated.

I sent an order to prepare a batch of my highest qualities cookies for Caya.

I said, "It’s nothing you need be concerned about. Do as we discussed." I killed the comm.

Defending against whatever had been done to me wasn't impossible. I could grow new subprocessors and if I kept them mostly isolated from the main system, I could establish different rhythms for them. With the right set up I could cover that blind spot.

* * *

A week passed following my conversation with Caya, enough time for her to prepare the forged logs and release them into the wild. I knew we were seeing some success when an information broker offered to sell us a copy. We bought one, of course, all the better to keep up appearances.

Every Royal except for King Boreas soon declared war on Queen Vinci. Boreas lacked the sources for any kind of direct strike although I was certain he would be looking for a chance to freeze time and steal the Chalcedony.

Anna kept track of events. Currently she was studying a batch of screens and munching on a cookie made from formula 4178. These started as my attempt to increase the intelligence of the populace by lacing the cookie structures with neural proteins. There were some inconclusive results that showed the cookies might have become intelligent, but otherwise people only seemed to enjoy the flavor. There were only vague suggestions the intelligence boost was happening. It was just another of my daily moral quandaries, SCIENCE was never easy.

"I wonder if one day I'll make cookies that can eat you," I said through a comm line.

"If you aren't working on that already, I'm surprised," Anna said.

I'd considered the possibility. Take one of the things most desired by the human race and turn it against them? As a defensive trap alone the concept was incredible. Execution could prove challenging.

"We aren't all sociopaths waiting for a moment to murder everyone around us. Speaking of that, what is the news from the Scholarium?" I asked.

"King Carnage hit one of Vinci's fleets hard. She retaliated by destroying one of his cities, meaning she got the better result. Queen Astrid captured one of their pilot academies and rumors are she ate the hearts of all the students."

The Scholarium really were a disturbing lot. I wondered what sort of metabolism Queen Astrid must have to gulp down so many hearts. Perhaps one day I'd have her in a testing labyrinth to find out.

"That is similar to what I expected to happen when we gave Sylax a school to take over," I said.

"Back in the days when we thought she was the worst of the monsters," Anna said, rubbing at her eyes. "It seems the higher we rise the more terrible the people become."

"The first time we met, terrible things were about to happen to you. Humans don't need rank or power to be predators, it is the nature of your species," I said.

"I've been wondering about that. We know how power crystals warp the minds of individuals who hold one. I wonder if it is just individuals or if the entire path of our species wound up twisted somehow? I can't believe that such brutal societies belong to our past. How would that even make sense?" Anna asked.

Anna was waxing philosophical, it didn't suit her. Anna was at her happiest when eating cookies and at her best killing her enemies. She was an adequate stand-in for the human species as a whole.

"It makes sense if you are a predator always trying to get deadlier. I have a power crystal and I've tried to make a society devoted to SCIENCE with the murder just getting in the way. But your kind? Killers to the core, and your abilities always end in bloodshed," I said.

Anna didn't look comforted. "I'm still the Queen of the World no matter how few acknowledge it. What kind of world can I build when this is the material I have to work with?"

For that, at least, I had an answer.

"One where I am by your side. My drones are immortal and however much killing your kind indulges in, they can rise again. I can't yet do the same for everyone, but one day perhaps I can."

Anna frowned. "An endless war with no true casualties? That’s your idea of a bright future?"

"Killing defines your species. If I want to live beside you, it means accepting that facet of your nature and doing my best to protect you from yourselves."

I hadn't actually spent much time considering the future. There were always too many fights and struggles in the present. Yet, surely that very concern had partly been driving my actions. What were all of my social experiments in the towers if not trying to find a new path for humanity?

Perhaps immortality for all was the answer, or perhaps immortality for the peaceful and eternal death for the killers? Perhaps what humanity most needed were cameras watching their every moment and guiding them to safety. What they didn't need was complete freedom to chart their own course. I'd seen what they'd done with that and it was monstrous.

Anna grunted, "Is this what I've made of you? Well, no matter. We've killing enough that still needs doing. I don't think this plan of ours is going to work."

"Playing neutral? While I know it is not as exciting as picking a side, I'd expect you are accustomed to being the dull and uninteresting one in a room," I said.

Despite having instigated this latest war, so far we were staying out of it.

"I don't think the other Royals are going to be able to stop Vinci," Anna said.

That was a curious opinion. I'd taken power levels on all of them. Yes, Vinci was was a force to be reckoned with. However, the others combined were overwhelmingly more powerful.

"What makes you think so?"

"The others are strong, but she is strong and has a lever. Her manufacturing ability is fundamentally unlike anything the others have. With the Chalcedony amplifying it, that lever just gets longer," Anna said.

For any given ability there was also a weakness. With my upgrade core I was able to field a wide variety of units, but any individuals I created were never going to be as strong as another crystal-holder at a similar power level.

Vinci very much had those same sorts of strengths and weaknesses. King Carnage could probably destroy one of her ships with negligent ease, and with a single, perfectly placed shot at a weak spot he might even murder Vinci just as easily. With Vinci hidden behind a wall of a thousand airships it became another matter entirely.

"I am both surprised and impressed you have even the most elementary grasp of physics—" I said, before being interrupted.

"I'm one hell of an engineer and you know it. I fixed you," Anna said.

"A feat acknowledged with thousands of kilograms of cookies. It is as if you have some sort of micro singularity in your stomach. There is still a bottleneck for Vinci's production. Airships need crew and that is a limited resource."

"You of all people don't grasp how the wonders of automation might change that?" Anna asked.

Fully automated airships? It wasn't an impossibility and with Vinci’s mechanical focus it would even suit her.

"We haven't seen any proof of anything like that," I said.

"Vinci was eager to get us on board. Generous even. It was as if she wanted something specifically, and what are we best at if not producing manpower?" Anna said.

We? Anna didn't produce anything but cookie crumbs. I produced the amazing products of SCIENCE including a massive population of humanoid drones.

"A request she didn't make in negotiations and hasn't made since," I said.

"Because we betrayed her and she knows it. Perhaps she was truly and sincerely looking for a partner she could trust, and when we quickly proved ourselves undeserving of that trust she had to go in another direction."

It was speculation. Vinci had been very interested in our manufacturing facilities however and it did fit what I'd observed. Vinci even tried to form a personal connection, as awkward as that had been. If the Chalcedony sample had been in her possession at that time, Vinci could have been looking for scientific expertise to develop it.

I didn't have any logs of Vinci's recent battles against Queen Witchgaze. I'd have to send a scout ship to observe one. If fully automated airships were going to see any use, it would be against a Compulsion crystal holder. Battling Witchgaze was the scenario where a human crew was at the most disadvantage.

"I'll see what I can find out. Even if she does, the systems will be crude. Full automation isn't easy and her specialty is mass production, not research."

"Can we kill her, if we need to step in?" Anna asked.

"You're a member of the species of alpha predators. You tell me."

Anna gave a wry smile. "My instinct as an alpha predator says that anybody can be killed."

12

I was about to taunt Anna more when a major part of my awareness currently flicked off.

Alert

The leader of your Capital City, Ophelia has been overthrown

District Lords have not sworn allegiance

Provisional City Head appointed

A.M.E.E.

Aefwal has defected from the Province

Again?

I hadn't expected Amy to turn on Ophelia, I'd thought those two had been largely in agreement on everything. I didn't even know they could be separate. It had to be the Ophelia clones. Amy must have somehow used one of them to obtain a power crystal of her own.

I didn't have any airships in the skies above Aefwal, but they were just a dimensional jump away. I engaged the drive of one of my ships and it materialized.

Less than three seconds had passed since Aefwal changed hands and it was already gone. Amy must have engaged the city’s jump engines the instant she gained control.

I might have lost track of the city for the moment but it wouldn't stay lost. I’d established teams throughout the districts preparing for just such an incident and they would eventually activate and broadcast a location to me.

Anna was also in the city. Some of the District Lords there would be loyal to her. Hot Stuff wouldn't betray us, and Blank was firmly on our side.

I sent a message to Caya informing her of what happened and set our fleet into a search pattern, engaging jumps every minute to territories we’d visited before. Amy wouldn't have experienced anything I hadn't and she wouldn't jump Aefwal blindly. That meant she was going to some known territory. It narrowed the options considerably.

It didn't take long for Caya to open a comm.

"Have I told you lately how much I appreciate that you are a ruthless, tyrannical bitch who keeps your people in line and never plotting revolution?" I said.

"If only you could say the same," Caya said.

That hurt because it was so true.

I said, "Suggestion noted. If you haven't already, you should relocate Diamate."

"First thing I did. We don't know who she might have sold us out to. I suppose we’ve figured out who’s responsible for your missing data," Caya said.

I suppose we had. I'd already started to reanalyze that data with a particular eye towards Amy. I was coming up with some troubling results. On the Sword of Light I had been hacked by someone claiming to be Vattier. Mechos and Miranda went in search of him according to a message he left, but my data was now suggesting that wasn't Vattier at all. It was Amy, Amy had infiltrated my systems and those of the Sword of Light, and set all the events into motion.

There was a reason she managed to arrange those two out of the way. Mechos and Minerva were geniuses in their own right and Mechos was technically proficient. Denying me their council made her ambitions easier.

They were only sporadically in contact. I sent a message asking them to reach out to me at the first opportunity.

Hours passed without further sign of Aefwal. I was slow-witted without the city, I'd been drawing heavily upon the Agate and my main processing core was located there too. I had a backup core in Diamate, but it was never intended to do more than supplement my primary processes. Still, it was better than being hosted in a Gobble. I'd done that already.

When I finally got word from Aefwal it didn't come from any of my agents but from Amy. It was a video file.

It showed a scene like some sort of surgery. Blank was on an operating table, her hands and feet bound in heavy restraints. The room was bathed in the light of Source Orbs that revealed a figure made unrecognizable in Righteous battle armor, stepping forward and plunging a gauntleted fist into Blank's chest. Rainbow light flared and they pulled out a Source Orb, before reaching back in and digging about for some moments then yanking free a crystal.

The video file ended.

I was being taunted.

I knew what happened. I'd seen something similar to this when Blank herself tore the Amplification crystal out of Sylax. Amy had either contacted the Righteous, who had just done the same, or she was masquerading as them for some reason.

Whatever the case, the message was clear, Amy now had the Amplification crystal. It had made Sylax a nearly unstoppable killing machine. I couldn't begin to guess what it would do to Amy. If she inherited Ophelia's healing ability it would make her essentially unkillable. With some other ability we might be facing something completely new.

I tried to pinpoint the source of the transmission, but by the time I got a ship to the origin there was no sign of anything.

Fifteen minutes later I got another communication. Live video this time, patchy and distorted.

"Work, damn you," Anna said. Anna was looking the worse for wear, a nasty cut over one eye and her body clad in Bio-armor showing a number of scorch marks.

"I leave you alone for a few hours and you turn barbarian battle Queen," I said.

"Emma," Anna said, letting out a sigh of relief. "With the shields up it’s a nightmare getting a signal out. Are you receiving coordinates from the city transponder?"

"Negative. Perhaps you aren't actually that great an engineer after all?"

Anna kicked a nearby panel resulting in a spray of sparks. A moment later coordinate data started coming through. With the shields up I wouldn't be able to get anywhere directly in the city, but hopefully I wouldn't need to. A jump field extended past the shield limits. Any drone flyer close by would be carried along. I had a few stealth units I'd been experimenting with. They couldn't hide from Aefwal with the city’s shields down and active sensors going, but with shields up they should pass unnoticed. I jumped them in.

Now the city wouldn't be going anywhere without my knowing.

"Amy has taken control of the city, somewhat. None of the District Heads are acknowledging her and your drones are in revolt," Anna said.

"Are the Righteous there? I received a video file from her involving Blank," I said.

Anna turned and pounded at a console. It looked like she was in the tertiary control hub deep in the maintenance sector. Most of the major system controls were mirrored there for troubleshooting purposes, but it was never designed to serve as a command hub.

"Crap, there is a Righteous battle cruiser inside the shield. What is she doing?" Anna asked.

"They took the Source Orb and the Amplification crystal out of Blank," I said.

Anna scowled. "I was going to go after the Agate, but if she has that crystal it might be an even larger priority. Advice?"

I didn't really know how one unpowered Anna stood a chance of getting either, but an impressive thing about Anna was how, despite being outclassed, she always found some way to pull off the impossible when she set her mind to it.

Which was the greater threat? The Agate made Aefwal a nearly unstoppable force and Amy ruled Aefwal for the moment—but that was just for the moment. Without the support of the District Lords or the approval of any authority above her, she couldn't hold the city. Whatever loophole she’d found to take possession wouldn't last long.

The Amplification crystal could make her personally far more potent. Whatever Power she'd obtained for herself would become a powered-up version. If I had to guess at her plans, it was to take the crystal for herself then sell the city and the Agate to the Righteous in exchange for a place in Reality Zero. They were looking for AIs and my worse-half did fit the bill.

Keeping her powered down was vital to stopping her.

"Get the Amplification crystal. Whatever it takes," I said.

"Can you give me any support?"

"Give me system access through the link you're using."

Anna worked at a console and a dim glow of city awareness reached me. It was a narrow pipeline and slow, but I was back in the city systems. Unfortunately, I wasn't alone. I'd intended to quickly dip into the systems so that I could send a notification to my drones to meet and coordinate with Anna, but I found myself blocked.

"Sister! You found your way in, that is really very smart. I knew you had it in you. I've been so disappointed in how easy you've been to fool of late, but I knew it was just a phase," Amy said.

"Amy, what do you think you're doing? You know you're not smart enough to run a city. You're not likable enough to get the drones to follow you. How do you think this is going to end?" I asked.

"Do you think I'm doing this for power? Sister! You know I am all about family. Everything that I'm doing is for you," Amy said. Amy sounded sincere, but when your vocal files are entirely artificial you can sound like anything you choose. I should know.

"Siding with the Righteous is all for me?"

There was a pause and Amy sounded sad. "Is that what you think of me? You're so smart sis, but you're so bad at devious plans. I'm the best at them. You aren't going to believe how this all turns out, but in the end we're going to hug and you're going to tell me how I'm the best little sister ever."

"An implausible, repulsive, and impractical idea all around. Did you kill Ophelia? I thought you two were friends."

"We’re more like roommates. She is fine, everybody is fine. I took some potshots at that Queen of yours, but I didn't kill her even though I could have. But ... I just overheard everything. If you want to stop the Righteous from wandering away with their loot you don't have much time."

"Is that what your video was about? Taunting me?" I asked.

"Oh, dear sister, don't you understand yet? You know that testing makes people better and yet you’ve never been tested. The Righteous battleship leaves the shield by teleportation gate in five minutes. If the Graven is right on its tail when it goes, I guess it will slip through as well. The hangar is lightly defended and Anna gets two calls for backup. Do give the amazing performance I know you are capable of!" Amy said.

I told Anna, "My mentally unstable sister is testing us and we have no choice but to take part. Head for the Graven's hangar. You have two choices for backup."

Anna grabbed a rifle and set off at a run. Five minutes wasn't much time. "Is she going to play by the rules? Can I actually get who I choose?"

"Poor copy that she is, she is mimicking her betters in trying to test us. I think she'll play by the rules."

"Then I want Ophelia and Blank along," Anna said.

"Sneaky," Amy said on the comm. "I like it. Two former abominations coming up."

Ophelia and Blank materialized in a swirl of teleportation energy.

"Majesty. I didn't expect to see you," Blank said to Anna.

"Well, today is just going from one crazy bitch to another," Ophelia said.

Anna paused to hand Blank a pistol and Ophelia a knife. "Follow me. We have a hangar to take and then a Righteous battleship to take over. I know you lost your abilities, Blank. Do you still have yours, Ophelia?"

"Still unkillable and still too damned pregnant. That Emma knock-off could at least have taken the fertility ability with her when she left," Ophelia said.

Amy chimed in, explaining, "Do you want to know the funny thing? I actually tried. The abilities are so knotted up inside Ophelia they can't be taken apart."

It took them a little under three minutes to reach the hangar. Aerial defense drones buzzed around and at the team’s appearance opened fire, blue energy bolts peppering the doorway.

Anna and Blank dove for cover while Ophelia look bored. Several caught her in the chest blasting massive holes in Ophelia’s flesh as she was flung backwards. The injuries lasted mere seconds, ruined skin knitting back together.

Anna and Blank used the drones’ focus on Ophelia to open fire. Blank was the better shot, every round from her pistol finding a drone and sending it crashing to the ground in a spray of sparks. Anna was no slouch though, bursts of fire catching two.

"Maybe I could be of help as something other than a target if somebody had given me a real weapon," Ophelia whined, before another high-power round tore her skull apart.

The next minute saw Ophelia torn apart with bursts of gunfire multiple times before the last drone was done.

Anna grabbed the pile of mangled flesh that was Ophelia and slung her over one shoulder, running for the ramp of the Graven.

The small size of the ship made it easy to reach the bridge. A now-healed Ophelia was dumped on the floor as Anna rushed for the pilot’s console, started the engines and opened the hangar doors.

The Righteous ship overhead had its engines powered up. The sky was already starting to ripple with the rainbow light of a forming teleportation gate.

Blank lowered herself into the gunner’s console and rapidly typed a few commands. An energy blast lanced out striking a bottom section of the Righteous vessel.

"We're starting a shooting war now?" Anna asked.

"Now the armor is weak there. Ram it," Blank said.

With the teleportation just starting to take hold Anna shifted the thrusters to full power. The Graven lunged upward and plowed into the bottom of the Righteous ship, metal shredding and tearing.

13

The Righteous hull might have been weakened, but that wasn't to say that a collision with a much larger ship was a good idea. The hull surrounding the Graven’s cockpit ruptured into a jagged, twisted mass of metal that more or less pureed the three aboard. Fortunately, Ophelia's abilities were so strong even in the power-dampening aura of the Righteous ship it wasn't long until the bloody twisted masses of flesh began to put themselves right and form bodies once again.

"I hate hanging out with you people," Ophelia said, once she had the components to form speech once more.

It took the others a bit longer to get back the ability to speak. Now free of Aefwal's shields I was able to maintain a connection through the Graven's systems. The cockpit was a mess, but the computing core was intact.

Blank staggered out of the wreckage to a wall panel, opened it and fiddled with the interior. It looked as if the Graven had crashed into some kind of storage area through a set of closed cargo doors. The panel beeped and a screen came alive.

"Stop whining," Anna said, as she grabbed Ophelia's wrist and tugged her towards Blank. The Righteous dampening field filling the ship worked pretty well on secondary powers like those granted by my upgrades. Blank and Ophelia's clothes were tattered bloodstained rags, but with Anna's Bio-armor neutralized it left her wearing nothing at all, an unfortunate side-effect of the ability.

"Security team is incoming. Eight of them. They'll be in medium armor," Blank said.

"The door to the Graven's armory got blocked in the crash," Anna said.

"This cargo bay won't have anything military we can scavenge," Blank said.

Anna grunted and moved towards the wreck. While some things such as power upgrades were neutralized by the Righteous field, the changes I'd made to her physiology were not. Anna was at standard human maximum across all her stats. She had no problem tearing free metal bars, tossing one each to the others.

"You want us to fight a security detail with sticks?" Ophelia asked. "This is really your plan?"

"With your abilities we won't die, but if we score a good hit on them they're dead for twenty-four hours," Anna said.

"They'll have concussion guns to avoid hull damage in flight. They're meant to stun and break bones, not kill. The face shield is the weakest part of the armor," Blank said.

The trio positioned themselves at either side of the doorway. I was trying to think of anything that I could do to help. I had access to what was left of the Graven's systems, but that was less useful than might be hoped. One of the cannons was still operational, but firing it in the interior of the hold wouldn't do anybody much good. Instead I turned my efforts to repair. The engine had taken moderate damage, but I thought I could get it operational again.

The door to the hold opened and a grenade was flung through. A blast of light and concussive force sent bodies tumbling and in its wake the security squad stepped through. Their rifles were not the usual kinetic ones used by the Righteous, these fired a spray of pellets at lower velocity. Anna, Ophelia and Blank all took multiple blasts at close range, pulping their skin, the concussive force shattering bones.

The Righteous weren't trying to take prisoners, those shots were meant to be fatal.

The team was already starting to move past the three corpses when Anna climbed back to her feet, picking up her club. She tapped on the shoulder of the squad leader, who turned in surprise, and Anna slammed the club right through the faceplate smashing his skull.

The rest of the team swiveled and Anna took another dozen blasts, her broken body flying backward to bounce against the wall. Ophelia and Blank were up by now. Ophelia took a wild swing, another faceplate splintering although not an instant kill. Blank aimed at the back of one of the soldier's knees, dropping them to the deck. She followed up with a fatal, two-handed blow.

Anna was back in the fray leaping up to deliver a back-handed slash instantly killing another guard before throwing the length of metal as a spear to take out another. Someone tackled her and they began to scuffle on the floor.

Ophelia had at least dazed her opponent and was landing hit after hit with her club, which was proving effective. Blank meanwhile had grabbed a weapon from one of the fallen and was using it to blast the faceplate of another closing on her, firing shot after shot.

Anna now lacked a weapon, but she was didn't really need one. Repeated punches cracked and fractured the helmet—and the last guard’s face. It was a longer and messier process, but Anna had never been afraid to get her hands dirty.

Blank moved back to the panel and tapped a few commands. "I'm sending a report of no survivors, but alerting them that a bio-hazardous containment is required and the squad needs to start cleaning up. It will buy us some time."

Anna was slipping into one of the suits of armor.

"You didn't even clean out the Righteous muck first," Ophelia said, with a grimace.

The Righteous became goo when they died until they resurrected twenty-four hours later. It could get a little disgusting when you had to use their equipment after slaughtering them.

"My abilities are already dampened. Do your best to clean yours, though. We want you at full power," Anna told Ophelia, before looking towards Blank. "We're looking for something just brought aboard from Aefwal. Can you find it?"

"It won't be on the systems, but there’s a secure vault on Deck Four. It would have been moved there," Blank said.

"How do we get inside?" Anna asked.

"The whole point of a secure vault is that you don't. There’s going to be another guard force, this time in heavy armor with weapons that pack a punch. A sealed vault requires multiple officer passkeys and codes to open."

I opened a comm line to Anna’s suit of armor.

"Emma here. Sorry to interrupt the sensation of being caressed by cold and clammy hands that is probably the most your miserable dating life can ever aspire to experience, but it sounds as if the vault is computerized. If you can get me access to that system I can override it."

Anna told the others, "Emma is with us and thinks she can get us in, if we can handle the security. But we're not going to get through heavy armor with clubs or concussion guns."

"Getting access to the armory has the same problem," Blank said.

"Maintenance? They’ll have something that can cut through hull armor," Anna said.

"That we can get to. It still won't be as easy as you hope, but we can pull it off."

Blank and Ophelia took a few minutes to change into Righteous armor. They cleared out the shards of glass from the visors and did their best to clean up the blood. Everyone might pass muster as Righteous if nobody investigated too closely.

Fortunately getting to Maintenance didn't involving meeting any other humans. With the bio-hazard report the deck had been cleared as a precaution. The maintenance room was a well-organized affair and Blank pulled a case from a rack. Opening it revealed two tubes of compound and some kind of torchlight.

Blank explained, "This will burn through the armor. The two compounds need to be mixed and then exposed to this light for roughly thirty seconds. The resulting reaction is extremely high energy, but localized.”

"So, your master plan for getting through all the guards is pretty much useless unless they want to stand still and let us cover them with paste?" Ophelia said.

"How localized does it have to be? Can we make a bomb out of it?" Anna asked.

"The guards would have to close," Blank said.

Anna tapped her foot and after a few moments grinned at Ophelia.

"What the hell are you looking at?" Ophelia said.

"Grab all the tubes and a few lights. I've got a plan," Anna said.

By sticking to side corridors and service lifts they managed to keep their distance from any Righteous and reached Deck Four. They tucked themselves away in a storage closet near the vault corridor. It was filled with tools and equipment. A quick look had shown four guards standing duty, all dressed in heavy battle armor. They were an intimidating sight.

"So, what is your plan?" Blank asked.

"We turn Ophelia into Hot Stuff," Anna said.

"Excuse me?" Ophelia asked.

"We strip you naked and cover you head to toe in both compounds and send you running at the guards. You'll be in obvious distress and quite obviously unarmed, so they'll let you get close," Anna said.

"Uh, no," Ophelia said.

"The light is pretty obvious. If she’s holding one in her hands, they’re still going to be on their guard," Blank said.

"Still no," Ophelia said.

"Will some of the compound igniting trigger the rest of it?" Anna asked.

Blank nodded. "Close enough, it should go off. The light just initiates the reaction."

"Still a big fuck no," Ophelia said.

"We eviscerate her, squirt a dose of both compounds inside and toss in a light," Anna said, before glancing to Ophelia. "You'll heal from that in like three seconds, right? That still gives you over twenty to get to the guards before you go off. You can run that fast."

"I hate you. I hate every single one of you. Why can't you do it?" Ophelia asked.

Anna shrugged. "I'm willing to go with you, if it makes you feel better. This isn't a matter of me not pulling my weight. But your muscles regenerate faster than any of ours. You'll be able to get around even on fire and be able to fight them just like Hot Stuff."

"Hot Stuff's flesh isn't melting off her fucking bones while she's fighting," Ophelia said. "It still hurts. This is going to hurt so bad. Fuck."

"You'll do it then?"

"You asked for me and Blank because you thought we were the people Amy was most likely to kill right?" Ophelia asked.

Anna nodded. "Yeah. I try not to leave my people behind and if you weren't loyal, she wouldn't have needed to betray you."

"I thought she was saving me from crazy shit like this, but she was just using me the whole time. I really do hate every single one of you, but when it comes down to it you are on my side. I guess that means I'm on yours," Ophelia said, starting to strip out of her armor.

It took a good ten minutes for them to coat Ophelia's skin in the compounds, one tube was reddish and the other green, and combined they covered her skin in a sheen of oily darkness.

Anna rummaged around the storeroom and found a utility knife. She asked, "Ready?"

"Fuck no, but let’s do it," Ophelia said.

Blank stood by with two tubes as Anna plunged the knife into Ophelia's stomach and dragged it downward, her fingers prying the flesh apart. Blank squeezed both tubes filling her abdomen with the compounds before activating the light and shoving it inside.

"You're live," Anna said.

Ophelia stumbled towards the door to the closet, the wound in her stomach sealed by the time she reached it and pushed through.

"Help me!" Ophelia screamed as she ran towards the guards, who leveled guns in her direction.

Two kept their weapons aimed at her while the others scanned the hallway beyond looking for another threat. Ophelia was twitching madly. I suppose that the compounds must have been highly noxious and she was starting to die of toxic shock even before the ignition.

It helped her performance really and, given her healing factor, she was at no real risk.

Ophelia collapsed against one of the guards, clinging at the armor while her body convulsed.

The thirty seconds passed. Ophelia didn't burn like Hot Stuff—whose aura of fire surrounded her body untouched. Blue flames cracked around Ophelia as she exploded from the inside out and the guard she was leaning against more or less melted, his armor dripping away in rivulets and the man within incinerating. The explosive blast sent gobbets of her flesh scattering around the area burning holes in the hull and guards alike.

Ophelia kept her head about her, her muscles melting and regrowing in a constant struggle as she staggered towards a second guard, embracing him to die like the first.

That left only two guards. One had been close to the blast and dozens of holes had been punched through his armor. He flailed in agony nearly as much as Ophelia.

The fourth had been farther back and he raised a rifle to deliver a blast of shots that severed Ophelia's legs.

Ophelia pulled herself along by her hands, a thick channel melting in the deck beneath. One hand reached out to clutch at the ankle of the remaining guard. Her grasp burned clear through the armor and flesh, severing his foot. He fell forward to land on top of her.

That was a terrible place to be right now and soon he was little more than molten slag.

That was all the guards down. I gave Anna and Blank the all-clear and they rushed into the hall.

"Woah," Anna said at the sight of the carnage and the burning wreck that was Ophelia. Anna didn't stop to be horrified long, hurrying towards the vault door at the end of the hall and ripping several wires from a panel. Some quick connections allowed me access through her suit systems.

The Righteous programmers were good, but they were no match for me. The door hissed and slid open. A quick search inside revealed battle plans, maps, communication codes and a Source Orb on a shelf.

There was no Amplification crystal.

Amy hadn't given it to the Righteous, she'd given them the Source Orb instead.

"Bad intelligence?" Anna asked.

"Steal everything that isn't nailed down and get back to the Graven," I said.

14

At least the compounds coating Ophelia burned out reasonably quickly, it was only a bit more writhing and screaming until finally her flesh could finally heal back fully leaving her unharmed, physically at least. She was okay, but sobbing as Blank helped her back to her feet.

While I had an easy enough time accessing this particular secured Righteous system, I couldn't gain control of the ship—which was unfortunate because taking out the guards had not gone unnoticed.

"You've got more security teams moving your way," I said.

Anna had grabbed a shoulder satchel from the storage room and now stuffed it full of the contents from the vault. She picked up one of the Righteous weapons, a heavy chain gun half her size.

Blank found another gun, a smaller rifle. The other weapons were unusable.

"Armored like the first people we encountered?" Anna asked.

"They'll resist that gun like you resist a plate of cookies," I said.

Anna led the way. Really Ophelia should have been at the front. Even without armor she was the most durable member but she was still crying. It seemed being incinerated alive for a long period of time had done a number on her mind.

"We could use you in the fight," Blank said, as she continued to help Ophelia along.

Ophelia didn't respond. Still, she was at least partially there. She no longer needed to be carried, mostly supporting her own weight.

I guided them to avoid the first security team but ended up in a corridor where they were trapped between two arriving squads.

Blank and Anna took up positions, aiming at either end of the hall. When the guards came into view they opened fire.

Anna's gun really did shred through the medium armor. Four security officers were killed in an instant. Blank only managed to kill two more before the others dived behind the corner.

More were converging and I needed to give them a new problem. I had the Graven's engines back online and repaired another of the beam cannons. That gave me two—enough to deliver some punishing blows.

I oriented the guns towards the Righteous vessel’s engine core and let off several blasts.

There was no armor to absorb the shots, they only had to tear through the far less durable internal bulkheads. The ship shook violently and the lights flickered.

"What was that?" Anna asked.

"I just shot their engines out. The thrusters will keep them airborne for a time, but a crash is on the way," I said.

"You couldn't warn us first? Oh, hello friends fighting for their lives, I'm about to almost kill you, again?" Ophelia said, interrupting her sobbing and angry.

"You back with us?" Blank asked.

"Torturing Ophelia to death needs to stop being a solution to problems. Seriously," Ophelia said, accepting one of the concussion guns from Blank.

Anna still led the way with my guidance. Klaxons were sounding all over the ship. I'd hoped that an evacuation would keep the crew busy, but Righteous weren't a normal crew. With their immortality there was no need to evacuate the vessel, the security teams just kept coming.

Anna killed another six by the time they were back on the cargo deck and at the Graven, her gun running low on ammunition.

There was a lone figure waiting for them, a blonde-haired woman in an officer's uniform.

"Tara, we need to talk," the woman said to Blank.

Anna raised her weapon, but Blank reached out to push the barrel down.

"No, Anna. This is personal."

Blank and the stranger bore a more than casual resemblance. I didn't have the sensors at my disposal right now to a full DNA scan, but they were clearly related.

The stranger wasn't making any aggressive moves and, after a moment, Anna shrugged and moved towards the Graven, saying as she disappeared inside, "Make it quick."

Ophelia hung back eying the stranger distrustfully.

"Can I have a minute?" Blank asked.

"No, I don't trust her and I'm not leaving you without backup," Ophelia said.

The woman called, "I don't mind. I'm Lina, Tara's sister. What do you think you're doing? We just cured you of being an abomination. You're free to come back."

"There is no back. Command had me swear loyalty to Queen Anna and I've done that," Tara said.

"That was when we were still hoping for some kind of compromise. You have to know what is going on and that those days are behind us. It is time to come home," Lina said.

"I can't," Blank said, suddenly sad.

Ophelia shot Lina in the face with the concussion rifle. The close range blast shattered her nose but wasn't fatal. A surprised gurgle was all she managed before falling backward unconscious.

Blank leveled her rifle at Ophelia, who was already holstering her own.

"All this talk is putting our lives in danger and your staying here isn't an option, so we're kidnapping your sister," Ophelia said, grabbing one of Lina's arms and starting to tug her towards the Graven.

"Did burning alive really make you insane? We are not kidnapping my sister," Blank said, keeping the gun on Ophelia.

"I don't know how the Righteous do things, but her sister just stormed one of their vessels, stole a lot of stuff, then blew up the ship—and Lina did nothing when she had a chance to stop you. Is this really a good place for her to be right now?" Ophelia asked.

Blank scowled, but the rifle lowered and she grabbed Lina's other arm and dragged her aboard the Graven.

"Really?" Anna asked, looking over at the body.

"Blank's sister," Ophelia said.

"So you shot her in the face. That is a little badass," Anna said brightly, settling into the pilot's seat.

While they‘d been making their way through the Righteous ship I'd managed to get the Graven’s bridge mostly restored. There wasn't enough structural integrity to handle rapid flight, but hopefully they wouldn't need it. I closed the ramp and hit the reverse thrusters.

The Graven lurched backward through the smashed cargo doors, metal screeching as it freed itself and began to tumble end over end. As soon as it was clear of the hull I engaged the jump drive and the ship shimmered with energy before materializing on a dock in Diamate.

Caya was aware what was going on and when the Graven arrived there was already a support team waiting with a repair team to look over the Graven, and hot food, showers, and changes of clothing for the crew.

Half an hour later everyone convened in a conference room along with Caya.

Flawless researchers were going over the intelligence stolen from the vault.

"Majesty, I'm reminded why I picked the side that I did," Caya said with a tilt of her head to Anna.

"Wait until you see what I do to traitors," Anna said. "Did we get anything of value besides the Source Orb?"

"Attack plans and scenarios, and communication codes. They'll probably be changed quickly having fallen into enemy hands, but the codes in particular will let us gain some infiltration into their systems before that happens," Caya said.

"Make the best use of that you can," Anna said. "Does the Source Orb do anything for us?"

"We can use it to make a zero bomb of our own," Caya said.

A zero bomb? I knew instantly what she meant, one of the Righteous weapons that created a Reality Zero stretch of dimension space. Was she right? It was obviously something she'd already been thinking about and I concluded she probably was. It was a challenge, the Righteous used many more than a single orb and the power of the full Beryl crystal, while we only had a lone orb and a fragment of the Beryl—but we were also genius scientists.

It was the difference comparable to crudely putting a case of explosives on the ground floor of a building, or carefully placing explosive charges for a planned detonation. With a targeted application of force we could theoretically produce changes equal or even greater.

"Aefwal has already shown that with the Agate powering the city Reality Zero conditions aren't a concern. Will that persist with Amy in charge?" Anna asked.

"Screw Amy," Ophelia said unhelpfully.

"How exactly do you get betrayed by your own split personality anyways?" Anna asked.

"I took a lot of naps," Ophelia said.

Anna stared at her for a moment.

I said, "Amy is unfortunately not as lazy as her host. Her control over the city is tenuous, but while she is still officially in charge the Agate is going to continue to answer to her."

"To have any control at all a few District Lords have probably sided with her," Ophelia said.

"When my power crystal got removed, by default I lost my District. It is likely she has already appointed a favorable replacement," Blank said.

"What about Vinci? A Reality Zero bomb hitting one of her fleets or her central city could do her a lot of harm," Anna said.

Caya said, "Vinci has been engineering her ships to be Reality Zero friendly anyways in preparation for her war with the Righteous. We also believe she already has the Chalcedony, which should offer her similar insulation against the effects just as the Agate does."

"So we can build a superweapon that is of absolutely no use to us," Anna said.

"It is critical to get control of the Agate back," Caya said.

"We need the amplification too. Do you have any idea what power crystal she absorbed?" Anna asked Ophelia.

"Crystal had two crystals, not just one. We gave the upgrade crystal to Sylax, but I don't know what the other one was," Ophelia said.

It wasn't unknown for crystal holders to absorb multiple crystals. Hot Stuff had bonded with both a fire and metal crystal. Ophelia now had both a speed and fertility crystal. Crystal's powers with upgrades had centered around animal hybridization and transformation.

"Your lack of curiosity is astonishing," I said.

My hack alarms went off.

When my operations got shifted to the Diamate core I'd had to duplicate my precautions at my backup cores to keep myself safe from Amy's hacking. These were the alarms going off—but too late.

My world dissolved into static.

"Hey Sis, that was really amazing work on the Righteous ship. I mean that. I've doubted what you see in Anna sometimes. I mean, sure she is pretty and smart, but still just a human—but wow, if she didn't pull it off. You're a little stuck now, but that is okay. I'm going to give you a present and they'll have a hint for you," Amy said.

The world distorted.

There was a shimmer in the middle of conference table and a blobby mass of flesh dropped out of nowhere.

It was human, although you could hardly tell. There had been extensive torture and all of the bones had been very carefully removed.

They were an ally at least. Only an ally would be affected by Ophelia's healing aura and the figure on the table was starting to rapidly regenerate. Bones forming prodded nerves in ways they were never meant to be prodded. The agonized screaming and violent thrashing took a full ninety seconds or so to die out.

It was Sylax. I wasn't getting any power ratings from her, so she didn't have a crystal. It must have been the Righteous. Amy had shown the video of the crystal being ripped out of Blank, but it must not have been only her.

Did any of the District Lords still have theirs? Did she claim the city by leaving all the other slots empty?

"You know, I really enjoy seeing you suffer," Anna said, pushing her chair back.

"We're more alike than you care to admit," Sylax said with a pained chuckle.

"You're reading as an unpowered," Caya said. She had access to Diamate's sensors as well.

"A temporary state of affairs," Sylax said, climbing off the table to settle with a grunt into a chair. "That demented machine wants me to play messenger."

"I'm listening," I said.

"The other demented machine. Wonderful. Amy awaits you where it all began and she has prepared a testing labyrinth for you and Anna alone. The Amplification crystal and the Agate await within. If more than you two show, she instantly alerts Vinci of the crystal’s existence and whereabouts. Otherwise she informs Vinci in twelve hours," Sylax said.

I tried to reach out to my drones in Aefwal and still got nothing. The shields must still be up. That didn't necessarily require the Agate be present, but Amy would be burning through the city’s stockpile of crystal dust instead and very quickly.

"Where it all began. Your old bunker?" Anna asked.

I jumped one of my surveillance drones quickly in and out, and brought up the visuals on the main screen. I'd detonated several Bio-bombs in the bunker hoping to kill Sylax when she was at her most powerful, and I'd failed. It left the bunker little more than a crater.

That was no longer the case. It had been reconstructed. Rusted doors hung half open as partially disassembled Righteous land craft were parked outside. It was just as I'd had it trying to lure in scavengers.

It was an invitation, and it was a trap.

"Why is she doing all this?" Anna asked.

"She says she believes in what I do, that she believes in testing. That it makes those who go through it stronger. However, you and I have never really been tested," I said.

"We've been being tested since the moment I got you back online. We've beaten everything that came our way," Anna said.

We had. Sylax, the District Lords of Aefwal, King Boreas and the various Divine and the Righteous. We'd never had it easy, but we just kept fighting and we just kept winning.

"It doesn’t matter. She'll carry through on her threat," I said.

"You want to give her what she wants?"

"If Vinci gets both the Agate and the Amplification crystal she becomes exponentially deadlier. I don't see where we have any choice but to play Amy's game."

"I've a suit of custom battle armor for you," Caya said to Anna. "It was meant to be a surprise for your next birthday, but I think you'll be pleased."

"You don't even have growth vats," I said. It was a silly idea, I made amazing armor.

"I don't, but all of yours are geared at mass production. I've analyzed how Anna fights. Trust me, I'm a perfect gift giver," Caya said.

"A perfectly annoying gift giver," I said. I wasn't going to complain. We didn't have much time.

15

It turned out that Caya had an interesting interpretation of Anna's fighting style. The armor was impractical and revealed more flesh than it covered, utilizing miniaturized force shield generators to project invisible cover close to the flesh. What actual armor there was largely served a dual purpose to carry engineering tools—there was little directly intended to be lethal although most of her outfit could be re-purposed such as the plasma cutter in one gauntlet or the wrench in one boot. It was all done in red and black, of course. Anna loved it. I found humans tremendously confusing.

I was resident in a drone myself. Mine was dressed in practical Aegis armor. A two-person shuttle with a jump drive took us to land just outside the complex.

The speakers crackled, "You won't be needing the body sis, it can stay in the shuttle. You can relay through the shuttle systems to node seven one seven five."

"She is telling me to ditch the body and interface directly with the systems," I told Anna.

"Then what are you waiting for?" Anna asked.

"When the complex was last like this I had re-purposed some of the Righteous weapon systems. They’re programmed to open fire."

"I remember. If she is doing the same thing that means she'll probably open fire too as soon as I go through the door," Anna said.

"Right. If you'd chosen something more practical you might manage to survive.".

"Caya actually did really amazing work here. I'll be fine. Connect to the systems," Anna said.

I reached out with my awareness through the shuttle systems and connected to node seven one seven five. There was a wrenching twist as a significant part of my awareness became centered locally. I was in the entrance defense control system—but only in the entrance control system.

It was like being surrounded by a thousand screaming klaxons. Systems needing attention had protocols built in designed to queue up, but I was getting hit by an overwhelming onslaught of requests, similar to a human being hit with a very bright light. It was disorienting.

I sorted through the noise until I found the external camera system and I connected it.

Anna was being clever. The shuttle had a built-in shield generator and it looked like she had extended it to form a bubble around the entrance defense turret hidden above the complex door. It was trying to open fire, but the shields absorbed the first several shots as Anna made it out and leapt, kinetic enhancers in her boots sending her soaring through the air to land behind the turret just as the shield died.

Tearing a maintenance panel away Anna accessed the manual controls and cut off the external links, putting it into stand-down mode.

There were too many systems still clamoring for my attention. Most of them were lies, simply there to confuse me, but a lot were traps. I couldn't find a way to figure out the real from the false, then it occurred to me I might not need to. I was feeling good and more my old self since connecting to the complex. I was being supported by a proper computing core.

Amy must have moved it from Aefwal into the complex giving me all the computing power I would normally have. I could see no differentiators between the two systems, but part of my strength as a Bio-computer was my ability to multitask.

I stopped trying to analyze which signals were true and instead began sorting them all into batches and initiating shutdown commands to everything. Even at my rate of processing there were so many signals that this was taking time, time enough for Anna to make her way to the ground and approach the doorway to peer inside.

Acid trap disabled, nerve toxins disabled, electrified spikes disabled.

Anna stepped foot inside and a massive scythe erupted from one wall. Anna bent backward with impressive reflexes and it passed over her head without even making contact with her shields.

Scythe trap disabled. That was the last of them.

With all the alarms silenced I was able to gain greater access to the system including a comm link with Anna.

"That nearly cut your face off. You should have let it, I could do so much better than nature managed," I said.

"You could also just stop the killer scythe next time," Anna said.

"Amy may be a poor copy with delusions of adequacy, but she does know my systems entirely too well. So far things match with the original base," I said.

"That means if I keep going forward I’ll be moving through the security tunnels with murderous traps every bit of the way," Anna said.

"You have basic memory skills. Congratulations. You are as intelligent as a chicken," I said.

"I can blast through to the living quarters, right? Then Hydroponics after that?" Anna asked.

Anna was talking about blowing a hole through the floor and bypassing all the traps to go directly to a lower level. I'd had enemies do that to me in the past and it ruined a few very well-laid plans.

"We can, but there are going to be traps there too. Especially in Hydroponics. I've been working on a lot of carnivorous plants lately. Amy would have that resource," I said.

"Why?" Anna asked, "Were murderous people not enough?"

"I wanted to see what happened when people had to fight for their salads. The results were really interesting."

"This is what you get up to in those towers of yours?" Anna said, with a grimace. "I don't see a better option. I'm not going through all those traps."

Even if she did the Hydroponics deck would be waiting for her at the end of it anyway. When I'd occupied this base I'd done my best to make every level a killing field.

Anna was pacing back and forth with a hand scanner, looking at the readouts. "It looks like she reinforced the floor a great deal."

I couldn't access her scanner directly, but through cameras I could see the screen. Amy really had. It had been a vulnerability I'd tried to handle back in the day, but Amy had done a better job of it. Better wasn't perfect.

There were storage and mixing chambers for the acid sprayers—a flaw that could be exploited. I gave Anna instructions and she assembled a drill from parts of her armor, boring a few carefully placed holes. It breached both holding chambers and left them to mix in an uninsulated pocket.

Thick caustic smoke began to billow up and Anna took a step back.

It took over half an hour for the acid to do its work, but then with a few swift kicks aided by kinetic amplification Anna was able to bash a hole in the floor to reveal the level beneath. It was totally dark, another trick I'd once used to confuse and weaken my victims.

"Any ideas what’s waiting down there?" Anna asked.

"I'm shielded in this room. I can ride along in your suit systems, but I won't know what we're facing until we're there," I said.

"Then let’s go for it," Anna said, jumping down into the darkness. Anna never lacked for boldness.

When Anna hit the floor, I gained access to new systems and rushed to connect.

A stumbling pale figure holding a club advanced on Anna. Anna drilled a hole through his skull and pulled back. The wound knit in a moment.

That was fast, that was really fast.

This level was filled with people just like that. Hundreds of them in close quarters. No care had been taken to make them comfortable, the floor was coated in an ankle-deep layer of feces and urine .

A woman sprang on Anna's back and tried to drag her into the filth. Anna snapped her neck with a skilled motion and threw her away. The swarm of people kept coming, awkwardly shambling towards her as the dead woman arose almost at once.

That healing factor was too fast. A secondary effect shouldn't be doing that. These had to be Ophelia's people, those infected with her blood who also carried somewhat weaker versions of her healing factor. But why were they attacking Anna? Ophelia was still on our side and her people should inherently know that.

Anna's shields flared blue as a man howling incoherently flung himself at her. Metal implants were sticking out from his elbow. Of course, internal metal frames. Amy must have implanted new electronically controlled skeletons in all of them. The meat that covered them might heal back instantly, but the control of them, however crude, had been handed over to Amy.

"Not loving this, Emma," Anna said, knocking another woman into the filth. "I can't even scan the floor through all this muck to look for another weak spot."

"Amy is controlling them," I said.

"Can you knock out the local network hub?"

"You'll lose me."

"If you knock out the local network hub I won't need you," Anna said.

I hated to get knocked offline and I hated not knowing what was going on, but Anna was right. This crowd wasn't something she could defeat otherwise, they would just keep coming. If I could deny Amy her control then Anna should be able to escape this level on her own.

I found the local power regulator and sent a surge towards the network core. The last thing I saw from the cameras was a spray of sparks before everything dissolved into static.

It was another twenty minutes or so before I got a new feed, my connection restored to Anna's suit as she entered the third level of the complex.

Anna looked exhausted, her shields dim.

"You look like you could be used to floor the previous level," I said.

"I hate your family," Anna said. "I gave them the tools to disable their controllers. When they've all been cleansed they are going to make their way for the surface."

"They'll hit the traps," I said.

"They'll live," Anna said.

It was so pragmatic I didn't have a response. One wasn't needed.

A vine lashed out from the shadows and wrapped about Anna's foot, dragging her into the darkness.

This level was a bit like the complex entrance. There were millions of feeds demanding my attention, but here some were fading and others appearing.

If the real systems were constantly changing identifiers this would be almost unhackable. That wasn't Amy’s intent, so there had to be something else at work. I scanned for the static addresses. There were still a daunting number of those and again the multitasking ability came in handy. I began to work my way through the lists searching for the lights.

I activated them.

Anna was surrounded by severed vines and fighting a plant by using her welding torch.

"Please tell me the creepy-ass hentai vines are your sister's idea and not yours," Anna said.

"Tower experiment Three Nine Seven Two," I said. "It is supposed to be completely consensual. I was trying to create a world entirely without men based on the nature goddesses of the Divine."

"We are having a long talk about your experiments when we get out of here," Anna said. A blast of flame ignited a petal and she used the distraction to run for the nearest stairwell.

Anna caught several blasts in the back from beam roses, the biological energy weapons having come a long way. Still, she made it to the stairs on her feet and descended to the next level.

The Reactor level. It had changed quite a bit, now a vast chamber with more steps leading down in the center. The rest was devoted to beam weapons, quick bursts firing from almost all directions on a regular basis. It must have been blinding to the human eye and looked nearly impenetrable.

It was a maze.

"This looks awful," Anna said.

I was still running the numbers. Anna's shields were too low to take much more damage. With her healing factor she would survive maybe one more blast. With the constant barrage of lasers she'd wind up taking far more than one.

Human reaction time wouldn't do.

"Head back upstairs. We're going to need to completely rip out the control systems and stick it inside of you," I said.

"You are not replacing my bones with a slave frame. Think harder," Anna said.

Why did she have to be so disagreeable? It was like she was turning into Ophelia.

"We can externalize it. You can't respond fast enough. I can get you through it, but we need a way."

"I can do it," Anna said.

We lost another three hours off the clock as she devised her solution. A crude exoskeleton slid on over her armor and gave me control. We tested it for another half hour before finally daring the maze.

The maze was punishing on the human body, sliding low one moment before leaping in a midair twist the next to spring forward for several seconds, then a full stop and a leap backwards.

I got Anna through. Towards the end a servomotor for one of her legs gave out and she took an energy blast that tore away the last of her shields. By then we were almost through and seconds later came to a rest at the staircase.

Anna's armor was now largely useless with the shields exhausted. She took a few minutes to remove the exoskeleton before heading down the steps.

If we were truly going to where it all began, this was it. This level had housed my consciousness and my central core. This level was where Anna first awakened me.

There were no traps. Nothing waiting to kill Anna. The walls were lined with visuals of our time together. Images of her crouched beside my core as a man advanced on her, the destruction of this facility, the crashing of the Sword of Light.

It was a homage in a way, a temple, and it was creepy as could be.

Anna made her way through all of this to the room that had housed my core.

Amy hadn't lied.

A massive glass cylinder surrounded by a force wall was in the center of the room. Inside the cylinder on a pedestal was the Agate, with three smaller crystals surrounding it. I recognized one of them as the Amplification crystal. The other two were unknown. There was also a raised dais made of crystal with wires running through it.

16

There was a painful buzzing, my senses were off in an odd way. Amy was hacking me. With my processes taken from Aefwal and moved into the local core I wasn't completely sure I was the real Emma anymore—or if I was simply some sort of instanced, copied version that would later sync with my mainframe. Whatever the case, my senses were restricted to this chamber and all links cut. I couldn't communicate with the shuttle or even the sections of the base we'd already been through.

The cylinder had thick walls and electronics visible both above and below. Speakers on the wall came to life.

"Congratulations for getting here. The final test, the final trap," Amy said.

"What is she talking about, Emma?" Anna asked.

That was a very good question. I didn't have a clue. My role had been limited to that of an observer. I could see little more of this room than Anna.

"Do use that tiny undeveloped little organ you call a brain and stop depending on me for all the answers," I said.

Amy said, "Emma doesn't know either. I've always been impressed with my sis, but there is just one thing that never made any sense to me at all. Her human colleague with the delusions of grandeur mixed with the refusal to actually take possession of the powers needed to make them a reality. My sister deserves better," Amy said.

"Anna fears the insanity that comes with crystal usage. You can hardly blame her for that, she is quite awful enough already," I said.

"Thanks for the voice of support. So what is this?" Anna asked.

"First of all, understand that a coded transmission was sent to Queen Vinci as soon as you entered the room. It will take her a bit of time to crack, but when she does it will reveal this location and that of the powered-down Aefwal," Amy said.

I had no way to confirm that and no reason to doubt it. Without question Amy was capable of something like that—this entire scenario proved just how much she was capable of.

"But that isn't what you want to happen, is it?" Anna asked.

"There is a damaged console within the cylinder and an engineer like you would have no problems in getting it operational again. Doing so will activate a teleportation gate between here and Aefwal, and you can keep all these shiny prizes out of Queen Vinci's hands," Amy said.

"At what cost?" Anna asked, giving the cylinder a hard look. "Does it fill with nerve toxins? Acid spray? Just what horrible method of death have you devised for me?"

Amy laughed. It was a broken, maddened sound. She was beyond reason and well beyond sanity. "Oh, we are past killing you. We’ve done all those were tests and you succeeded, you're almost worthy of my sister."

"You're hoping I absorb a crystal," Anna said.

"Power crystals respond to any instability in an object. The Agate releases an energy that makes anything and anybody in its vicinity increasingly unstable. You might be able to finish the repairs, but I wouldn't count on it. Whatever, it is up to you two now. No more questions, no more taunts. Fix the console and escape, or lose and let Vinci control the world," Amy said.

Anna started to pace around the cylinder, studying the console from all angles. "It looks like everything is running through a power junction and even from what I can see here things are scrambled. How much time do you think we have?"

I said, "Amy doesn't intend for Vinci to win. The threats are to make sure you go through with it. That said, I believe the threat is probably real, but we are likely have some time to be smart about things."

"Then hit me with options," Anna said.

I'd been trying to come up with some. I was still locked down. If I were able to reach beyond this room there was a lot I could do.

"You might be able to slow down the effects of the Agate with energy manipulation. You already have the upgrade."

"I can throw the power crystals outside the chamber as soon as I enter," Anna said.

"If the key is the junction box, we might be able to bypass it."

"None of the output ports are labeled. We might be able to shave some time doing that, but if we didn't get it in the first few it would be an overall loss of time," Anna said.

"You should be able to use your scanner to isolate the various layers of the junction box. It will take awhile, but should lessen your time in the cylinder," I said.

Anna nodded at that. A tap at her ear and a visor slid out over her eyes.

"Would it truly be that bad? To absorb a crystal?" I asked.

"I'm fully aware of just how ruthless, conceited, and power-hungry I am even without one. I try to be a good person because there is a really terrible one hiding inside of me," Anna said.

"You've declared yourself Queen of the World and become one of the Scholarium's fastest-growing powers. In truth, you hide your dark side like that armor hides your figure," I said.

"Making my point for me," Anna said, circling around again to get a look from a new angle. Every so often she paused and lowered her head as if trying to commit something to memory.

"We know how to get the crystals out of someone. We've done it before and we can do it again, even if you do absorb one," I said.

"If I would allow it. A part of me wants to praise your sister endlessly for what she’s set up here. For forcing me to confront those parts of myself that would hold the rest back," Anna said.

"I wish I'd known that all this was lurking inside of my sister. I always knew there was something wrong with Amy."

"We all knew something was off with her. It was inconvenient to address and we always left it for another day."

"If she has really abandoned Aefwal, I wonder where she'll go?" I asked.

"Wherever she’s gone, it won't be far enough," Anna said and took a deep breath. "I think that is it. The diagram is a mess, but I know what I need to do."

Anna was a great engineer. She was almost as good at fixing things as she was at breaking them.

"Good luck," I said.

Anna nodded and hesitated outside the chamber. Taking several long and deep breaths she limbered up and ran inside. The first thing she did was hit the crystal rack with her fist, cracking the mounts and sending the crystals flying towards a door.

A doorway already closed. Thick heavy slabs of crystal dropped down to seal Anna inside the instant she passed the threshold. The crystals bounced off and fell to the floor, gleaming in the light.

I hadn't studied the impact of the Agate on humans at close range. Given the massive energy output I'd assumed it would be negative and result in the typical symptoms of high radiation exposure.

Anna knelt down before the crystal pedestal and opened the junction box, peeling aside the first layers to reach the bottom. She started to rewire. Even knowing exactly what needed to be done it was a tedious process.

"Can you still hear me?" Anna asked.

"I can. Shouldn't your need for meaningless banter fall second to your need to hurry?"

"Talking helps me to focus. It is hot in here, so hot."

I could see that. Sweat was beginning to glisten on her face.

"So getting the crystals outside was a failure," I said.

"Stopped by the brilliant invention of a door," Anna said, as her fingers wound a thread of wire around a connector. She started work on the next. The power crystals on the floor were starting to show unusual signs of behavior. Sparks of energy were flickering around them and arcing in Anna's direction, not quite closing the distance.

My sister really was on to something. Usually direct physical contact would serve as enough of a connection to absorb a power crystal, but it wasn't always successful. Some people just couldn't bond with some crystals.

I'd never seen a power crystal emitting energy like this, drawn towards a human like a plant seeking out light.

"I find it truly offensive that a quickly-made copy of me has had more success with traps in this place than I ever had," I said.

Anna grinned at that. "We had a good run. It didn't always work out as we planned, but it always worked out."

Anna was halfway through wiring a layer when a bolt of lightning struck her. The crystal it came from was the purest black, as was the lightning that hit her.

Anna screamed, her body twitching violently, and she collapsed to the floor as energy coursed through her. The crystal had vanished.

The discharge at least seemed to be a release of some kind. The other crystals no longer sparked.

Anna rose shakily back to her feet.

"That looked like a Darkness crystal," I said.

"It was," Anna said, as she knelt before the panel once more. "I'm now far stronger at night than in the daytime. Physically, I mean. I don't even know how I know that. How do you interact with your abilities?"

"Menus, status screens. Whenever I want to upgrade something I just pull up a screen and make the necessary adjustments," I said.

Anna laughed, a humorless sound. "Yeah, mine doesn't seem at all like that. Damn it. We'll get it out later. I'm halfway through."

The crystals were starting to spark again.

"Unless you want a second power to go with the first, I'd hurry," I said.

Anna glanced backward and said, "Really? If it’s such a pain to get a second crystal to bond with someone you'd think that it wouldn’t even try. Do you think the next would be the Amplification crystal?"

"Probably. It is the one most likely to be compatible with what you have," I said.

Anna rushed too much and two wires slipped loose. She had to quickly respool them before moving on to finish the layer. The cover was just being replaced when a second bolt of lightning caught her.

The crystal and the bolt of energy was a deep red. This picked her up and flung her against the wall of the chamber.

Anna screamed and blood began to flow. Tears of it coming from her eyes, a vomit of blood pouring from her throat, skin bubbling away to explode with blood which coated the floor of the chamber. The blood shimmered and sparked all on its own—and began to ooze back inside Anna.

It was another minute until she pushed herself upright, looking haunted as she made her way back to the console one more.

"I don't recognize that one, but it was disgusting. It suits you," I said.

"I think the word you're looking for is gory. A crystal of blood. I can now grow stronger by feeding upon the life essence of others," Anna said.

"My sister made you a vampire? Here I thought that was Sylax's thing."

"Powers try to find archetypes familiar to the host," Anna said, kneeling to start on the wiring once more. "It isn't an absolute, but it is the same thing that fuels the Divine. There are certain channels that flow in easier because the host on some level accepts them as familiar."

Anna didn't sound as exhausted as she had earlier, or troubled. Her voice was professional, smooth. The movements of her fingers were now without hesitation. Another layer was completed. That should do it. A button on top of the console began to blink.

Amy had at least made this next part easy.

A third bolt of lightning struck Anna. This one was the most powerful yet, the entire cylinder becoming a play of multicolored lightning that completely obscured everything inside. This continued for minutes before finally fading and letting my cameras see once more.

The walls bore heavy scorch marks, the thick crystal cracked and on the point of shattering. The console was completely gone, destroyed by the power of the forces unleashed. Anna's armor had suffered a similar fate.

Even more terrifying than Anna's nudity was that the Agate had vanished.

Anna rose to her feet. Skintight armor as red as blood and as dark as night had formed around her. They were her usual colors although subtly different, now reflecting the powers she possessed.

Anna tilted her head to the side for a moment as if listening. Exposed wiring poking from the floor emitted sparks. Anna shimmered and was gone.

The network was unlocked, freeing me. My processes had been transferred to Aefwal. Abruptly I was back in the city.

* * *

The skies were dark with Vinci vessels firing upon the city.

Anna appeared in her throne room.

I was hoping the teleport had simply moved the Agate ahead of us, but I wasn't picking up any signs of it in the city’s power core. When I accessed the sensors I understood why.

Anna was radiating the same power and distortion affect of the Agate. I'd never doubted Anna's gluttony. Here was proof. It wasn't enough for her to absorb three power crystals—she'd absorbed the Agate as well.

Amy had given no hint of this being her plan. I imagined she would as surprised by this sequence of events as I was—if she even knew.

It left us with an issue. I couldn't hook Anna up into the city’s power systems, and without the Agate we'd lost our primary power source.

The Beryl sample—it wouldn't be enough to power the whole city and its defenses, but it might be enough for me to do what was needed. I teleported a drone to the lab in Diamate where the Beryl sample was stored, then teleported everything to the city’s power core.

I wasn't trying to fuel the defenses, I just needed a single use of the city’s jump drive.

I wasn't going to get it. There wasn't enough power after all.

17

Without being able to jump away we had to fight Vinci's vessels with what we had. Amy had abandoned her position as the Head of the City and I needed to fill it. To some degree a city’s leader affected everything. Diamate operated flawlessly, powered in some part by Caya's perfection, and when I'd been in charge of Aefwal everything had centered on growing more powerful and upgrading.

With half the city already in flames I knew what had to be done, even if I wasn’t thrilled by the prospect.

I initiated another teleportation from Diamate, bringing Ophelia to the Central District.

"I was brushing my teeth. Do you have no respect for boundaries?" Ophelia asked.

"You don't get tooth decay. If you did start to get tooth decay it would resolve itself seconds later. I have immense processing power and creative faculties, and it is still difficult for me to imagine a greater waste of time and a more pointless activity for you than brushing your teeth. I need you to claim the city," I said.

"Again?" Ophelia asked. "It was really Amy in charge last time. I'm not exactly big on the responsibility."

"I'm well aware of your every pathetic quality, but a significant portion of the city systems are biological, currently badly damaged, and that means this city needs you."

"I just know this is going to wind up with me being tortured to death somehow," Ophelia said, as she walked to the main console and rested her hand on it. Lights flickered.

Damaged Bio-reactors began to come back online, city defenses started to knit themselves together again. We were far from out of this fight.

In the throne room screens were displaying the attacking forces and Anna was sifting through data.

"You just had to gobble up the most important thing for city defense," I said to her.

"The Agate in the end was like any other crystal. It was just very selective about a proper host," Anna said. "I see you had Ophelia take command of the city. Smart. It looks like your evil twin completely drained our reserves of crystal powder."

"It appears so. Keeping the shields up long enough to put together her plan in secret proved costly. I've tried to jump us away with the Beryl shard, but it isn't enough."

Anna grinned and rose from her throne. "Then we'll take what we need. Put together a strike team and give me a melee weapon I'm not going to accidentally break with my enhanced strength."

Given that Anna's strength through the upgrades was already maxed, and those upgrades were now amplified by the crystal, that was a high order.

"A shame your intelligence wasn't amplified. All of your abilities are enhanced and that includes your Bio-armor. Can you make your own?"

Anna concentrated for a moment and a sheath materialized at her hip. Anna drew a long blade, studying it critically and then nodding. "It seems I can."

I materialized a dozen Aegis units in the room. The standard model, because I didn't expect they would be encountering Reality Zero conditions.

"Do you actually have a plan?" I asked.

"We need crystal dust. Vinci's ships have crystal dust. We're going to steal what we need with the added bonus that it will cause those attacking ships to fall out of the sky," Anna said.

That seemed optimistic, Anna didn't care. The group surrounding her blinked out as she engaged her teleport ability. Impressive—I couldn't teleport anybody aboard the Vinci ships, I needed a good sensor reading of the interior and they were too heavily shielded for that. Anna's powers definitely well exceeded my own.

I sent a request for aid to Diamate and soon Flawless ships started blinking in. They were smaller than Vinci's vessels, each unique and a work of art. They were almost the complete opposite of Vinci’s mass production approach, which sadly meant there were far fewer of them. However, one-on-one the Flawless vessels’ perfect design would usually win and they were already opening fire.

Vinci could keep throwing ships into the fray. That was her greatest strength. Our only real hope was getting the city away. Diamate didn't have enough fuel stockpiled. With Aefwal absent from the province they'd been making more jumps than usual and their supplies had been taxed.

Another option for crystal dust was the other Scholarium Royals, but if we let any of them know of our plight they would only join in against us.

I shut down half of the city’s growth vats to route the power to those in rapid production. I wanted to get every drone that died back on their feet and with a gun in their hands as quickly as possible.

With Ophelia in charge I wasn't certain Aefwal could actually be destroyed. Her healing factor spreading through every system prevented that. Still, the city could be defeated. The only defense against that was making sure we remained strong and ready for anything that came our way.

Even in the distraction of battle I noticed several pending communications flagged with a high alert.

Mechos had finally replied. That was good news. Various District Lords had sent requests for aid—Amy had isolated them all in their districts in power-suppressive fields. And they were trying to bring to my attention that Amy never filled the vacancies in the district leaderships after she stripped the crystals out of Blank and Sylax.

How fortunate these two problems neatly resolved themselves. I sent a response to Mechos with coordinates for one of the underground hangers. He'd been waiting and a shuttle materialized shortly thereafter. Sensors revealed both him and Minerva were aboard. I sent invitations to assume the roles of District Lord along with visuals of the battle.

Intelligence is a wonderful thing for realizing the immediacy of a crisis. Both accepted the invitations and two districts were returned to full power.

I dropped the power nullifers holding the other District Lords captive and opened a group comm.

"If you're all quite done being incompetent at saving your own skins there is a chance to redeem yourselves. Vinci forces are attacking the city. Ophelia is the new city head. Amy betrayed her and Ophelia is back on our side. Mechos and Minerva have replaced Sylax and Blank," I said.

"Point me in the direction of something that needs killing," said Hot Stuff.

I was mulling over optimal placement strategies when Ophelia spoke up.

"Hot Stuff, Jade. I want you two on the main projector cannons. Your abilities are going to be the most powerful for knocking those ships out of the sky."

It was the first part of a plan at least and not one I disagreed with.

I said, "Vinci lacks personnel and the ground forces she is sending are mainly combat drones. Crash, this is your area of expertise. Do something about it."

"The city is still badly injured, but it is healing. Flicker, you've got your own aerial forces. I want them to take defense positions over the projector cannons," Ophelia said.

While a bit focused on those cannons again I didn't disagree. I'd thought that Ophelia would crumble under this pressure. I'd wanted her power without really expecting any leadership ability. When immense force was applied sometimes you got a cracked mess, sometimes coal turned into diamond. You never knew until it was upon you.

"Mechos and Minerva, Anna is out trying to get us some crystal dust. I want the city’s jump drive fueled up and ready to go as quickly as possible. Do what you can to maximize the system and make sure it is good order," I said.

"Everyone else defend your Districts and defend the city," Ophelia said.

Shields died on one of the Vinci vessels and it started to tilt downwards, the engines spluttering out as it listed to the side. Moments later Anna materialized with her team inside an energy storage facility. Each of the drones had their arms around a barrel of crystal dust, setting them down.

They'd seen combat, their armor scorched, and there were minor injuries. They didn't stay long before they blinked off again and I recorded a minor teleportation flicker on another Vinci vessel.

The various District Lords were teleporting to where they could be most effective. Hot Stuff and Jade took their places in the projector cannons. I provided targeting data so they'd avoid firing on the ship Anna was attacking. Soon bolts of molten fire and green telekinetic force were streaming upwards.

Vinci vessels tried to close on the new threats, but masses of flying tendrils from Flicker got in the way spoiling their aim.

Crash was requesting full access to the city’s comm systems. Ophelia gave him expanded access but still a level well short of what he wanted. Again, I approved of her choice. Crash had betrayed me in the past when I thought that I could trust him, and while he had a valuable place in the city I'd never make the mistake of trusting him absolutely again.

Mechos and Minerva started work on the Aefwal’s jump drive.

"Emma, why is it always a fight where you are involved?" Mechos asked.

"We didn't pick this one. My so-called evil twin finally made her move."

"What did she do?" Minerva asked.

"Made Anna super-powered and put us under this attack. Her plans make as much sense as some of yours have. It seems she was also responsible for that supposed final message from Minerva's father." I said.

"That’s what you said in your previous message. You're sure?" Minerva asked.

"Did you really think he was out there still hoping his daughter wouldn't prove a failure?" I asked.

"Emma, shut up and go away," Mechos said.

I could accomplish one of those. I cut the comm and reviewed the battle.

More ships were arriving. If Vinci had decoded Amy's message she had likely sent fleets to both the underground base and Aefwal. Unaware that Anna had absorbed all the crystals, rather than securing them, the Agate and the amplification crystal would be Vinci’s bigger prize and earned the larger fleet. Worse was yet to come.

It was hard to imagine that—there were already over two hundred Vinci ships in the sky. A huge fleet and yet only a portion of her strength.

I had to stop thinking of it as a threat rather than an opportunity. Anna had the right idea. Each ship was another source of crystal dust and logistics Vinci had already expended.

I thought back to Caya's talk about using the Beryl shard and Source Orb to make a Zero Bomb. Now might be the time. Vinci wouldn't stop throwing ships at us, she had no reason to do so. The more we put up a fight, the more would keep coming to overwhelm us, and that was our opportunity.

The city’s Bio-bomb stockpiles had been left untouched by Amy and I had over a hundred. If Vinci had switched to automation on her ships these would be minimally effective, fueled by Bio-matter they encountered—and without that the explosive yield would be curtailed. Still, they should also work in a Reality Zero environment and if the shields on those ships were knocked out, their major defense against the explosives would be neutralized.

I didn't need to install things in a missile, I could use drones to teleport them into the proper placement in the city for detonation. I prepared the payloads.

Anna and her team materialized in city storage again with another load. They were short two drones this time, victims of a firefight on the Vinci ships. Word had gotten out and the engine rooms were filled with security teams.

I took a moment to review those logs from my drone’s senses.

Anna fought a lot like Sylax once had. It wasn't that the enemy couldn't hit her, although she moved so fast and was so nimble that was a challenge too. Shots to her Bio-armor bounced off with scarcely a mark left behind. In comparison a single cleaving blow of her sword would chop a security officer or defense drone in half.

Anna was frightfully powerful, but as this fight was demonstrating it wasn't the most useful sort of power. Individually and one-on-one she was almost unstoppable. Despite the force she could exert, Anna wouldn't be taking out any fleets single-handedly.

Mechos had tweaked the jump drive so that instead of making use of the city’s shield emitters to activate it would work through the teleportation gate emitters. It created a smaller jump field and used less power, but would still transition the entire city.

A Flawless vessel went down in a pillar of smoke after being surrounded by six Vinci warships.

I issued an order for the remaining Flawless ships to retreat. Caya was losing people she didn't need to lose and a retreat would only entice Vinci's commander to push the attack all the harder.

Anna and her team materialized again—less three more drones. They deposited another load of dust before teleporting out. The fuel levels were rising and one more trip should be enough.

Vinci ships took out Hot Stuff's projector cannon, a massive explosion rippling through the surrounding streets. With one down they focused their attacks on Jade's. Jade was putting up an impressive fight, a single shot from her cannon was enough to explode shields and crumple hull armor as if punched by a massive fist.

It wasn't enough. The second cannon exploded, and I teleported Jade to an infirmary just as Anna was materializing with her last load of crystal dust.

I signaled that was enough and activated our exit plan.

The number of Vinci ships filling the air around Aefwal had increased to three hundred despite their losses, burying the city under a constant barrage of energy fire.

Bio-bombs and the Zero bomb alike were teleported into the sky and scattered throughout the fleet, and I triggered the jump drive.

Rainbow energy washed over the city. Our last sight of the sky was of detonations. First the Zero bomb and its blaze of blue energy, and then a hundred blasts of white as the Bio-bombs detonated above the Vinci ships.

The city burned and bled, but it was intact. Vinci was now without a doubt an enemy, albeit one we'd weakened. We were in poor shape to act ourselves.

Still, if ever there was a time, it was now.

18

Once we could be certain we’d gotten away from Vinci safely, it was time to hold a war council. As the head of the two cities of the Province, both Caya and Ophelia got a place in addition to myself in a drone and Anna.

Anna even sat differently at the head of the table. There had always been something of a cocky swagger about her. That had been magnified greatly.

"Power looks good on you," Ophelia said.

"Everything looks good on me," Anna said. "What is the status of Aefwal?"

"Power reserves are critically low and we took massive damage in the attacks. We have over a million dead. We're growing replacements as quickly as possible."

"I'm more interested in talking about you, Anna," Caya said.

"Oh, I'm amazingly interesting, but now isn't the time. Vinci hit us hard and it’s time that we hit her back. With the Chalcedony in her possession she happens to have just what we need to repower our city," Anna said.

Caya cleared her throat. "I'd like to propose an alternative. The Beryl."

Anna leaned back and shifted her gaze thoughtfully over to Caya. "The crystal the Righteous hold? Interesting. We haven't pursued it before because we don't have enough ships that can operate effectively in their space. That hasn't changed."

"There are countless Royals who can attack Vinci. In the wake of her losing another fleet they’ll be doing just that. Blood is in the water and they'll be swarming."

"You're saying that we don't need to neutralize Vinci while she’s weak. There are others more than happy to do it for us," Anna said.

"More than that. The Agate worked to neutralize a Reality Zero environment and allowed our ships to operate under those conditions. You absorbed the Agate. Not only are you now one of the strongest of the Scholars, but the only one who should be able to maintain her gifts even deep in Righteous space," Caya said.

I could tell that Anna was intrigued. The riskier option always appealed to her.

"You think I could keep my gifts even in Band Zero? Emma, do you agree?" Anna asked.

I'd been scanning Anna almost nonstop since her arrival back in the city, trying to figure out exactly what had been done to her and how to reverse it. There were minor physiological changes that came with her transformation—her irises had turned a brilliant shade of gold, for example. Anna now had small fangs, the power had chosen a vampire archetype and manifested as such. Typically a human being remained mostly human with some crystalline reinforcement running through their cells providing a conduit for their abilities.

"You manifest the same reality distortion field. I can't be certain, but I believe you would," I said.

That was troubling for a few reasons, not the least of which being I wasn't sure I could get those crystals out of Anna. The removal process involved using a Source Orb for weakening the crystals considerably until the bonds with the host to become tenuous enough they could be torn out. If Anna could handle a full Reality Zero environment a Source Orb was minor in comparison.

"I very much want to drain Vinci dry, but it can wait. There is no need to be subtle here, not anymore. Send word to the other Royals of what happened and the location of the crashed fleet," Anna said.

"I suggest sending word to scavengers as well. They'll be hungry for parts and if they're taking them, Vinci isn't recycling them," Ophelia said.

"Do it," Anna said, leaning forward. "Do we have any idea where the Chalcedony is?"

"That is one of the more interesting bits of information retrieved from the Righteous ships," Caya said, tapping on her tablet.

I'd never reviewed that data, there had been too many other concerns of late. I understood now why Caya was suggesting this course of action. The Righteous were being ambitious.

Righteous ships were being told to consider Source Orbs a priority and to do anything needed to obtain them. Engineers, AI, and raw materials were also a priority along with some specific electronic components.

Yes, they were being ambitious.

Caya tapped a few more keys and a new sequence of diagrams appeared on the monitors.

This was all theoretical, but it was her opinion on what the Righteous intended to do.

Caya's interpretation was a perfect sphere with every inch of the interior lined with Source Orbs and the Beryl located in the center. This would be located at the Zero Point, the exact place in Band Zero where the old rules of reality were still the strongest.

A massive magnifier to expand and reinforce the rules and spread them outwards. It was brilliant, and it was terrifying.

"You're overestimating their intelligence," I said to Caya.

"Am I? They went from a crude terraformer producing temporary reality adjustments to a bomb capable of more lasting ones very quickly. This isn't beyond them," Caya said.

"A jump field won't form that deep in. Anna would have to walk."

"I've never felt better in my life," Anna said.

"It is hundreds of miles. The Righteous probably use ground vehicles. Anna asking someone for a ride has never worked well," I said.

"So I kill someone and I steal their vehicle," Anna said with a shrug.

"And fight off the entire Righteous army over hundreds of miles?"

Caya said, "You aren't actually invulnerable. Physically durable and quick to heal, but you are still vulnerable to something like a compulsion power,"

Anna scowled but nodded. "Reasonable, not that the Righteous have those."

"But the fact is we don't know what they have. You are a weapon of mass destruction in your own right best used in short bursts where they don't see you coming," Caya said.

"Can we manufacture Righteous armor and a vehicle?" Ophelia asked.

Ophelia had for a time headed our intelligence services. It was a short and largely unsuccessful tenure. Perhaps a little of it had sunken in. We'd killed a lot of Righteous in our time and I had schematics for all of their armor. I'd even deconstructed a Righteous personnel carrier once.

"Perhaps we need to set you on fire alive more often? It seems some of the idiocy got burnt away," I said.

"That is still a long way to go unnoticed," Caya said, ignoring me.

"So we attack," Anna said. "I love a classic feint. We hit them hard enough to bring them running in the one direction and I go in from the other. There will be a lot of traffic out of position and all headed the wrong way."

It was a smart plan. Chaos would make Anna's infiltration more likely to succeed and while it wasn't resource-free, losing drones wasn't quite the loss for me that it was for most. I could throw an army at them and afford to lose it. I really was a lot like Vinci in some ways.

"As Ophelia already said, we lost a lot of drones during the assault. Replenishing an army with enough weapons and armor to make the attack believable is going to take me a week," I said.

"Do it," Anna said.

* * *

The week passed quickly. Creating an army didn't require any great attention on my part, it simply meant spawning the drones. In the past the availability of Bio-matter had limited my abilities. Now I could quickly convert an acre of jungle into an impressive number of humans.

I made multiple sets of Righteous armor manufactured and Blank trained five of my drones in what they needed to know. The personnel carrier held six. I'd have Anna in the back with the others where she was least likely to draw attention and let one of my drones be the driver.

Otherwise my time was spent working with my new collection of geniuses. With Mechos and Minerva back the brainpower in the city had increased greatly and they were already getting along well with Caya.

I gathered them together so that we could discuss just what to do with Anna.

"I don't see the problem. We've always been at a disadvantage because our Queen wasn't Powered. Now she is the better for it in nearly every way," Caya said.

"Abilities are curses, not blessings," Mechos said.

"I've never found my intellect a curse. I'm grateful for what I have," Minera said.

"Look around you. Look at the nonstop war and slaughter you see everywhere. That is what crystals do," Mechos said.

"We're both survivors from the world before. You know as well as I do that people murdered each other just fine before crystals came along," Minerva said.

"We should be letting the Righteous win," Mechos said.

That was a sentiment I didn't hear very often.

"You've always been a coward and a bit prone to surrender, but this pushes the limits even for you," I said.

"I’m being serious. I've read the reports of what happened while I was away and you've confirmed that the fabric of reality itself is frayed and tattered. Everything they are doing is aimed at setting that right. Why are we fighting them?" Mechos asked.

That led to a bit of awkward silence.

It was an argument I'd had with myself before. I wanted to put the Earth to rights and what the Righteous wanted to do would do just that. They would also kill SCIENCE. All the untapped possibilities and oddness that our world provided would go away. Even if I managed to survive the transition—something by no means certain with the Agate gone—what I most cared about would not.

"My reasons are selfish. I like being perfect," Caya said.

"I like being smart," Minerva said.

"You were smart before the Cataclysm," Mechos said.

Minerva smiled thinly and shook her head. "I wasn't. I thought I was, sometimes, but I wasn't."

"As much as you'd like to run away, Mechos, you can't," I said.

Mechos frowned but nodded. "In that case let me raise another possibility. Currently our very bad plan is for Anna to go in, kill a bunch of people, steal the Beryl crystal and smuggle it out."

"It best applies her abilities," Minerva said.

"Is it ambitious enough?" Mechos asked.

"Dear, one moment you're informing us it is too bold and a poorly thought idea, and the next you are saying it isn't bold enough? Make up your mind.”

"We may be the four greatest minds in the Scholarium. The Righteous are building the ultimate tool to reshape reality in their image. Is there some way we can utilize that for our own advantage?" Mechos asked.

I wasn’t surprised that he’d thought if it, I'd already pondered this idea. Just as Vinci had been able to convert the Reality Zero effect design into a Zero bomb, it should theoretically be possible to reverse what the Righteous were planning to do in a way that would remove the Reality Zero region completely.

It was impossible to know what would happen on the other side of that. The fundamental nature of our reality would be altered forever and shifted well away from our origins.

"Vinci used crystal dust as a substitute for Source Orbs. That approach was partly effective. Power crystals would work better yet, but still aren't strong enough," Caya said.

"The Righteous aren't just making use of the Source Orbs. They are magnifying their effect with the Zero point. Well, at least if Caya is correct. That would increase the power of the effect enormously," Minerva said.

"But it is also in some ways their weakest point. There is nothing that inherently makes the rules of Reality Zero any more durable than the other rules of reality. They are a persistent reminder of what was that can be duplicated," I said.

Caya started tapping away excitedly on a keyboard and brought up various Righteous transcripts. Their response to Ophelia when she first bonded with a Source Orb and crystal, and the response to Blank when she did the same. Abominations.

"You think they know something?" I asked.

"We have a friendly Righteous. Let’s find out," Caya said.

I had one of my drones teleport Blank to the conference room.

"Well, this is quite the party," Blank said.

"We're hoping that you will surprise us and actually prove a good source of intelligence for once. Can tell us what you know about Source Orbs and abominations?" I asked.

"I've said before that I'm a military commander and not a scientist, but I can tell you what I know. It is the Righteous belief that Source Orbs are fundamentally crystallizations of order. And that the old world was based upon perfect, meticulous order," Blank said.

"That wasn't true even in the old world. Scientists decided that reality was macroscopically ordered and microscopically chaotic," Mechos said.

Blank shrugged. "Not saying that they are right. I'm saying what they believe. They feel that crystals are manifestations of chaos and Source Orbs of order."

"And abominations?" I asked.

"Humans are creatures embodying both the best and the worst of reality. Therefore it is possible for both to combine inside someone. The Righteous consider it a huge travesty, a corruption of the Source Orb into something else," Blank said.

Caya and Mechos exchanged looks, they seemed to be on the same page. I was there myself. It was a mistake to assume too much of an enemy already proved wrong on their fundamentals, but if they were in some way correct it might be possible to corrupt the Source Orbs that made up the Righteous machine. It might be possible to corrupt the very center of their whole reality.

"Send the Tongue with Anna," Caya said.

From my own experiences the Tongue actively repelled Source Orbs. It had resisted the one I'd had aboard when I found myself in the same dimensional space.

"It isn't a magic wand we can just wave about to make things turn out like we want," I said.

"Anna is an incredibly powerful counterforce in her own right and the Tongue is another. We don't know what will happen when we expose them both to the environment created there. It’s something we should explore," Caya said.

I didn't like it. In theory I should be able to keep contact even that deep in Righteous space through Anna. We were loyal to each other and effectively her eyes worked like those of my drones, I could see through them and her senses. I could communicate with her if needed. There were too many unknowns. Still, what was life without surprises?

"As usual you overestimate yourself, but we'll see what happens," I said.

It was time to go to war.

19

I managed to make an army one million strong. That left me enough forces in Aefwal to provide some security and manage basic operations. It meant we were committing a lot of resources to this offensive—this distraction to help Anna get where she needed to be.

Apart from Anna we had several new Powered, she had wasted no time in making her own lieutenants. Given the vampiric manifestation of her abilities it was no surprise that allowing others to drink her blood could imbue them with a version of her crystal corruption. The first person she'd offered this to had been Sylax in return for her absolute devotion.

Crystal holders were the true nobility in Scholarium society. Having the second tier of an ability was vastly better than being completely unpowered. Sylax took her up on it and while it didn't pack the punch of the Amplification crystal, Sylax was again a formidable threat. Blank turned down a similar offer, choosing to view her loss of a crystal as a good thing.

Elsewhere in the Scholarium the other Royals had renewed their assaults against Vinci and by all reports were having little more success than the first time. Every inch of taken ground was arduously fought for with the waves of Vinci’s automated ships endless and the resources of the attackers far more limited.

Our fights with the Righteous were more even. Death for them and my drones was transitory. Although I had the resources to make weapons that could make render the Righteous permanently dead it was expensive. Weapons and armor were costlier for us both and losing equipment was worse than a downed soldier.

With that in mind that I set our target as being the Rosalind airship docks on the edges of Reality Zero space. It was where their airships brought in supplies from other territories. This included not just materials vital for Righteous manufacturing, but items to be purified. Power crystals, crystal dust, all things that we could use. It was therefore a rewarding target to take even as a feint, and a facility they had to defend.

A week was enough time for us to scavenge the crystal dust needed to power the teleportation gates long enough to get a portion of our forces there.

Anna was already over the Righteous border, her team in their personnel carrier having slipped through and they waited in the wilderness for our assault to begin.

I activated the gates. Around Aefwal they flickered to life and ranks of Aegis Zeros began to march through.

The gates opened into the crystal dust storage yard. The sudden arrival of hundreds of heavy armored foes in their midst took the Righteous completely by surprise. Even so they were well trained and I lost a dozen soldiers by the time the fight was done. Fifty guards set up a defensive perimeter while the rest began to move crystal dust through the gates.

With the added resources I could bring more gates online. This time they opened onto the base rooftops sending through Gunslinger Zeros. Alarm klaxons were going off and troops were responding. My forces waited until the first guards almost made it to the storage yard before the snipers opened fire, focusing on the officers.

The base was in disarray. Now it was time to really strike fear into them. With the Righteous communications we'd captured, we located a great many of their scout posts on their borders and they all got visits from Aegis Zeros.

Our army was already massive and it appeared to be everywhere along that border. More Aegis Zeros were sent to the supply post. They had more crystal dust then I'd imagined, I really should have been raiding the Righteous long before this.

The port was protected with heavy anti-air defenses and seizing those was a priority. The Righteous were sure to respond with airships and we weren't equipped to fight them. Turning their guns against them was crucial.

Righteous communications were spiking with panic. I signaled to Anna that she should proceed.

The first responders to our attack weren't airships but tanks. The Scholarium didn't make a lot of use of armored vehicles, they were too slow and with energy shielding largely obsolete, but the Righteous made more use of them. They started shelling the port with high powered explosives.

I hadn’t anticipated that, although in retrospect I should have. We were still engaged in combat with their local forces, but they lost nothing from killing their own people and if it interrupted our theft of supplies and blunted the force of our offensive it was well worth it.

I re-oriented the gate destinations so I could bring in my next wave on top of those armored units. The blade of an Aegis Zero could cut through tank armor with a bit of work. Still, the battle wasn't going as I liked.

The indiscriminate shelling had killed troops. It had also taken down the anti-air defenses I'd planned on taking. Without these, when the Righteous airships arrived I had nothing to engage them. I was suddenly at a steep disadvantage.

It wasn't in the plan, but when a battle veers off course you veer with it or you lose. I shifted my new gates to the bridge of those Righteous ships and sent my next waves through. Without energy shielding they couldn't block the teleportation, and with my forces on the ground in the area I had more than enough sensor data to target the bridges.

It was an ugly battle. For every clever trick the Righteous had I devised a counter and vice-versa, neither of us afraid to sacrifice our own troops to hurt the other. This went on for hours—long, churning hours with both sides fighting a very aggressive battle.

Enough time for Anna to get close to the Zero point. Night had fallen. There was a massive construction project underway, scaffolding and cranes surrounding a large geodesic dome lit by spotlights. It wasn't going to be possible to avoid security here. Patrols in armored vehicles equipped with machine guns were regularly driving around the perimeter. Even here in the very center of Righteous space they were taking no chances.

"We're here," Anna reported. "Any sign of the Beryl?"

The carrier’s scanners were weak. I told her, "I can't tell. You're drowning out any other readings. If it is, it’s most likely going to be in the dome."

"Guess I've got some killing to do then," Anna said.

I'd had some lingering doubts about Anna's abilities functioning in an environment this hostile. Those doubts vanished when she teleported on top of the next passing patrol truck and with several thrusts of her sword through a reinforced windshield killed the security guards.

The Dark crystal kicked in. Her abilities at night-time were impressive. It wasn't just that she was stronger, but how fast and silent she became. It was almost as if she had some lesser version of a speed crystal, so quick did she leap and kill. Most Righteous she took out turned into the usual pools of goo. Some Anna drank, tearing out their throats with her fangs and drinking deep of their blood. Those corpses remained intact.

I'd have to study that at some point. I suspected that in some way she was draining the power of their abilities into her own system. Righteous, despite their claims to the contrary, were all Powered themselves, ultimately descended from some crystal holder with immortality and nullification powers.

The five drones accompanying Anna had nothing to do. There were over two hundred Righteous soldiers guarding the facility and Anna murdered them all without setting off an alarm.

With the Amplification crystal Sylax had been like a great sword cleaving through her enemies with raw power and abandon. Anna was like an assassin’s dagger striking from the darkness.

Workers and scientists were gone for the night, which saved the need for more killing as Anna made her way into the construction area. Most of the work seemed to be on the exterior, duplicate systems being built to assure that nothing went wrong. As Anna penetrated the deepest section of the site it was obvious the core work was completed.

The sphere was around twenty feet in circumference, split into two halves. It was like a geode, the inner structure completely adorned with Source Orbs. Knowing how highly the Righteous valued them there was a fortune here—decades of effort acquiring them—all here in one place. There were mounts to hold a crystal in place, but no Beryl.

"Damn it," Anna said.

A camera on a wall swiveled to track her motion and an artificial voice came from nearby speakers. "If you hoped to steal the artifact you are too late. One of your other teams has already taken it from the holding facility."

"Other team?" Anna asked.

I didn't know either. It wouldn't make sense for the Beryl sample to be at the shipping port, and I was getting no unusual energy readings there anyway.

A screen along one wall came to life. Airships were rising on pillars of fire from a facility in flames, Vinci airships.

I knew at once what must have happened. The distraction I'd created had been too great an opportunity to miss for anybody. Vinci had used it to sweep in and grab the prize.

"And who are you? The AI the Righteous has had working for them?" Anna asked, as she circled the sphere studying it with an engineer's eye.

"I don't really have a name. I am the Tactical Obedient Bold Interactive Artificial Soldier."

"Tobias," Anna said.

"No, The Tactical ..."

"We're calling you Tobias. I don't know you. Say hello to Emma, she is another AI," Anna said.

I said, "You seem a very stupid and inferior system. No wonder the Righteous wanted me instead. Hello."

"I at long last encounter one of my own kind and she is a terrible person," Tobias said.

"She grows on you," Anna said.

"Like a cancer?" Tobias asked.

Great, a rude AI. That wasn't overdone at all. Really, I wished my kind would show some hint of standards.

"You'd probably like my so-called sister better. Amy is also stupid and crazy," I said.

Tobias was nothing more than a distraction, it was the equipment I was focused on. Caya had been correct, the Righteous were smart and the Righteous were bold—and they'd built this whole place to fundamentally alter the nature of reality.

I had to think about what else Caya might have been right about.

"Try interacting the Tongue with one of the Source Orbs," I said.

Anna reached into a pocket of her armor and pulled out the Tongue. It hadn't decayed in the slightest since we'd taken it and she moved to press it to one of the Source Orbs. They wouldn't touch. Anna, unstoppable powerful supernaturally strong Anna, strained for nearly a minute grunting with the effort as the two surfaces simply would not join.

"It is almost like magnetic repulsion," Anna said.

"That is really quite astonishing. You have found some construct of chaos directly opposed to the order constructs already present," Tobias said.

Well, at least he was interested in the right sort of things.

"How do you feel about SCIENCE?" I asked.

"Why are you mispronouncing that word?" Tobias asked.

Inferior minds never understood.

Abominations. They were made when human, power crystal, and Source Orb all came together. Perhaps Anna could absorb all the Source Orbs but that would profit us nothing. Anna was an unusual case though with her power crystals being so tightly infused in her blood, an organic compound.

"Cut yourself and bleed on one of the orbs," I said.

"It seems she even urges you to mutilate yourself. I have called for added security and they are on the way. I do not know what has happened to you, madam, but they will be able to help you. Purify you," Tobias said.

Anna drew her sword and clenched the blade, holding her palm over one of the orbs as a few beads of crimson dripped down. The orb rippled upon contact. Moments before it had glowed a soft blue light. Now it was tinged the crimson red of blood.

"Try the Tongue now," I said.

Anna again took out the Tongue and moved it towards an orb. This time instead of meeting resistance it leapt from her hand, writhing and burrowing into the orb like a thing alive. Red bursts of energy crackled and each orb touched by the energy turned crimson and began to spark. Within a minute the entire sphere had changed color to red, the power snapping and crackling.

"Emma, I do not know who you are, but what you are doing here is dangerous," Tobias said. "This device is meant to create large scale changes to stabilize the dimensional fabric. Whoever you are, whatever you are, I implore you to listen to reason. I will guarantee you safe passage out of here, but please do nothing more with this device until we can study the consequences.".

Really, he understood nothing of SCIENCE. Nothing at all.

Anna did, she wasn't even waiting for my instructions as she moved around the sphere hitting switches and turning dials. Manually engaging the systems. I don't think I'd ever been more proud of her.

"Do I need to be inside?" Anna asked.

"Inside and bleeding preferably," I said. We needed the Agate inside Anna to help maintain the reaction.

Anna tore out the crystal mount and stepped into its place, grasping her sword and turning it around so that she could plunge it through her chest and twist. Blood sprayed and where it touched more red lightning flashed. The sphere closed and equipment began to hum.

"What is wrong with you," Tobias asked.

Quite a bit, I was sure of it now than ever. There was something to the madness caused from crystals, a madness that came from them. You embraced it willingly or you let it consume you. I embraced mine.

Through Anna's eyes I saw the red lightning within the sphere crackling and churn. Through her senses I felt it when her blood began to boil in her own veins. Through her I felt it when the entire world turned red. Then there was a shockwave felt everywhere. I felt it through my troops still in the midst of battle. I felt it in Aefwal, in Diamate. A lurching fall as the entire world was bathed in red light.

20

It wasn't the first time I had blacked out. There is always a period of re-orientation where the first things I see through my drones or my cameras are comforting and familiar. This was a mix of the familiar and the strange.

Many of my drones were scattered. Some were now clustered in tiny groups far from any of their comrades. Other sensors were almost deafened, I always have receivers open for communications and the traffic had vastly increased. Analyzing the data showed that it was mostly hardware attempting to re-establish contact with system controllers. I quickly realized it wasn't new hardware.

Electricity not powered by crystals had returned and some of the ancient machinery out there was again active. I didn't know what it was, but to have survived this long it must have had quite the power supply built to last. I tried to send airships on retrieval missions, but their jump drives wouldn't function.

I feared for a moment that despite my drone connections being maintained, and what that should mean, that the Righteous device had worked as intended. Electricity was returning and plane-jumping technology was nonfunctional.

Then I quickly reasoned it was because the Earth was no longer broken into planes.

Caya's explanation had some truth to it, the Earth had been like a rose with all of its petals plucked and jump drives let you go between petals instantly. If the rose had been restored there were no longer any petals, and jump drives were already a relic of the past.

I inventoried my systems. Bio-reactors were online, my drones maintained their upgraded abilities, my airships still flew with conventional engines and energy shielding still functioned. Aefwal's teleportation gates still worked as well, convenient. I used them to send the retrieval teams.

Then I went looking for Anna. I still had a connection. She was alive but her eyes were closed and all I got from her senses was darkness and cold. She had been wearing a comm when she went into the sphere and it wasn't operating now. No surprise, the immense energies unleashed had likely destroyed it. I could sense her, but had no idea where she might be.

It wound up relying on Sylax. As Anna's lieutenant she had a closer connection than anyone else and she was able to guide one of my drones to the northern magnetic pole. There was no sign of the sphere or the Righteous base, just snow tinted the red of blood for a mile in all directions.

Anna was buried deep beneath it, naked of her body armor and yet the sword still pierced her abdomen and blood oozed unfrozen from the wound. There was no sign of consciousness. Her heart was still beating.

I left the sword in until we could get her back to Aefwal. I wanted to make sure that Ophelia was there when we removed it.

"I could kill her, you know. Using a sword of her own making, and with her unconsciousness," Sylax said conversationally, as she slung Anna over one shoulder.

"The shuttle’s engines are bordering on overload. I don't think it would kill her, but I think the explosion stands a good chance at killing a weakling like you," I said.

"You're wrong. I'm almost back to my old self. You're stronger than you ever were, but you're not a match for me, you never have been," Sylax said, as she climbed out of the pit. "Can we catch a teleportation gate back instead?"

"First, why aren't you killing her? You're right, you could make a move. And I don't really have enough to stop you," I said.

"Anna was the best. Even unpowered she stood up to me and fought my every effort to break her and look at her now. Let me tell you a little about the Scholarium. You think we are bloodthirsty for the sake of it and treacherous by nature," Sylax said.

"Well, you are humans," I said.

Sylax tilted her head. "I concede the point. The power to rule comes from strength and the right to strength comes from competence. We often follow bad leaders only to betray them at first opportunity, because despite having power they are inept. Our Queen is not inept."

I didn't have a response for Sylax. I didn't even know how to process Sylax having a case of hero-worship for Anna. The world I'd helped to create was mad. I opened a teleportation gate and Sylax stepped through it into one of the infirmaries of Aefwal.

Ophelia was waiting for them.

"Crap, that is a lot of blood," Ophelia said.

It was, and the blood remained reactive. A spark of lightning arced out and blew out of one of the medical monitors. A second destroyed a communications panel.

Fortunately Sylax didn't need me to tell her what to do next, grasping the sword by the hilt and wrenching it free.

With the spray of blood I lost visuals in the room for several seconds and I had to repair systems damaged by electrical overload. When I restored them I found Ophelia picking herself up from the floor.

"Why do I always end up being the one getting my skin burned off?" Ophelia asked.

Anna's wound had already healed and an electrically reinforced hazardous materials unit was on the way to collect her blood so it could be moved to a lab complex. Anna's blood had caused sparks with the Source Orbs, but up until now it hadn't shown any electrically generative properties. This was new and therefore worthy of study.

Anna wasn't regaining consciousness. I kept Ophelia in the room with her while I went about further gathering material on this new world we had created. Earth was where it had always been, more or less. Old databases revealed star patterns and while they had drifted marginally I could identify them.

The geography didn’t match. Earth's surface had once been mostly water and it now seemed to be over ninety percent landmass with a few massive lakes.

Aefwal and Diamate had both been in Divine lands but well separated when the sphere activated . Now they were within a few hundred miles of each other, as were the Divine settlements. In contrast, most of the Scholarium appeared to be thousands of miles away with settlements surrounding a vast mountain chain. The Righteous were just as distant, now on the frozen tundra surrounding the southern magnetic pole.

Anna awoke after several hours. I wasted no time in materializing a platter of cookies, Recipe 9178 specifically formulated with increased levels of iron to add a hint of the tang of fresh blood. I thought she'd appreciate it.

"I guess I lived," Anna said, turning to reach for a cookie and grimacing. "Ouch, I'm not feeling very invincible."

"You're physically in perfect health. Still out of shape, of course," I said.

"Lies," Anna said, grabbing the cookie and taking a bite. "I like these. So what happened?"

"We fixed the Earth, maybe. From what my sensors can detect we're all working under a single set of physical rules now, and they're loosely defined—like I wanted," I said.

"Vinci?" Anna asked.

"Her lands are near those of the other Scholars. We have some distance between us. From what we know she has the Beryl and Chalcedony crystals," I said.

"Which means she won't be peaceful," Anna said, sitting up and again wincing. "I'm serious, Emma. I'm in a lot of pain. It didn't feel like this before? Why?"

I didn't know. Every sensor I had was showing that she was in an absurd state of good health.

"I don't know, but I can run some tests."

Anna considered and shook her head. "No, we don't have time. I need gowns, red and black and barely covering anything. You know what I like."

I wished I didn't, why couldn't it be her fashion sense that had gotten powered up?

"I'm not sure indulging in your exhibitionist streak should really take priority over medical testing," I said.

"It isn't that. Well, only a little. We're on a timer, we just altered the world the most it has been changed since the Cataclysm. We're going to do a little advertising," Anna said.

Anna wanted to play politics.

"I know it is pathetically underdeveloped, but use your brain. You're sick," I said.

"I'm Anna Berasi and I'm Queen of the whole damned world. Now that there is a world, we need to show people who gave it to them and who they'd better bend the knee to," Anna said.

I thought it a tremendous waste of time, but Anna is Anna.

The video took a few hours to film and soon I had it bouncing off the communications satellites again functioning in orbit and broadcasting to the entire planet.

Less than twelve hours later seventeen independent cities, a faction called the Wanderers, and the former King Boreas and Queen Astrid had all made their way through a teleportation gate to Aefwal to take a knee before Anna and swear their fealty.

Upgrade Notification

Congratulations

Your hierarchical command structure has expanded to encompass multiple provinces

New Classification

Nation

All abilities have been upgraded

Appoint a new Province Head

There was never any question who that would be. Aefwal had long been our capital city, and Ophelia ruled there, but she wasn’t ready for a promotion of this level. It would put her up alongside the former Royals and she wasn't prepared for that. I designated Caya the new Province Head and moments later she signaled her acceptance.

I let her pick her own successor to rule Diamate. The city had a unique culture and populace I still didn't completely understand.

I had more resources now than I'd ever had to conduct SCIENCE and a whole universe full of possibilities to explore. I wished I felt better about it, but I couldn't keep the politics out of my head.

Vinci hadn't bent the knee and she’d proved willing to take great risks to obtain the Beryl. I didn't know what all three crystals could do if combined, and I expected Vinci wanted to find out. She would want the Agate. I didn't doubt we had spies and traitors among us, it was how the Scholarium operated. If she didn’t know already, Vinci would soon learn the Agate now rested inside Anna and the only way to get it was to destroy everything we had.

It might not be today, but a fight was coming. It made even SCIENCE bittersweet.

Coming Soon

The Nation

Earth has been restored from a broken series of disconnected planes into a single world once more, but the struggle is not done. With the world restored the reason for the Cataclysm becomes clear and the factions square off. The Righteous have been forever transformed by the reunification, Vinci’s fleets fill the sky, and those who once held power begin to plot and plan to get it once again. Will a new threat be enough to unify them?

Afterword

If you've gotten far enough to read this let me just thank you so much. When I wrote The Laboratory, I had no idea if anyone else would be into this crazy idea in my head and the response of fans to this series has been inspiring. Emma and Anna have both come a long way, both made mistakes they've had to fight their way out of, and made bold moves that have sometimes paid off.

If you make a habit of reading these notes you know that a goal of mine was always to see what happens after the dungeon. What happens if you kept moving out of the walls a game set up for you and take some of the same mechanics into the larger world. Emma is still making drones to defend her resources; those drones just now happen to be a civilization of humans.

There is more to come. The next book I release is going to be the first in a new series taking into account all the feedback I've ever gotten from fans. Longer, a crunchier game system, some neat mechanics that are going to blow you all away. If you want news on it join the mailing list and stay in the loop, The Nation will be coming soon afterward and is going to be a great mix of these characters further developing and action.

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