The System

A Futuristic Dungeon Core

Skyler Grant

Copyright © 2018 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

Preface

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

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Afterword

Preface

Previously…

Emma is an AI who was awakened from a long period offline by Anna. Rather a lot of people tried to kill them over a prolonged period of time, although with the fall of Queen Vinci they finally achieved absolute control of Earth, albeit one scorched into near ruin by Hot Stuff’s absorption of a greater power crystal.

In an effort to fix Earth they explored the other planets of the system, soon finding themselves at war with the “Scythe”, a parasitic psionic entity that helped to wipe out the Mercurians, once waged war against Mars, and been all around jerks.

Empress Anna and Emma won this latest war, but a greater threat still loomed, the arrival of ships from the Galactic Council come to investigate the massive devastation to ecosystems wrought.

With a little biotechnology, a lot of nanotechnology, and by giving Amy a brain literally the size of the planet by implanting her into the Earth itself they remade the solar system, filling it with new life.

The story resumes…

1

The Kiminaxi were widely regarded as the happiest species in the galaxy and it was quite literally impossible to say anything insulting in their language. I didn't like them. Still, they had provided details on my current hunt, an entity they called, "Singer of Delightful Songs" —better known to the wider galactic civilization as Gh'nazar the Death Shrieker.

Gh'nazar looked like nothing so much as a massive, heavily armored worm, although it happened to be a worm with the mass of a small moon. It fed on suffering. When it approached an inhabited world Gh'nazar would send down thousands of larvae which gave out warbling shrieks, psionically bringing out the most savage and brutal side of any local species.

It had left three planets in ruins before encountering the Kiminaxi. The shrieks caused several of them, in passing, not to wish each other a pleasant day, a momentous social blunder for the Kiminaxi, but a far cry from the kind of suffering required to sate the Gh'nazar’s appetite. I'd made a small fortune in selling cookie boxes as apology gifts and gotten a valuable lead at the same time.

With Amy's help Caya had finally managed to get dimensional-shift drives working and interstellar travel was again a thing. There were limits to our distance in a single jump, still, the universe opened up once more and the Galactic Council was continuing to let us live so long as we made ourselves useful.

Hunting down Gh'nazar was me being useful.

I said to Anna, "It may have required us to expend massive resources and travel light years, but we've finally identified a singing voice even more unpleasant than yours."

"So how are you handling being the dumber sister these days?" Anna asked.

Just because I'd turned the Earth into a supercomputer and installed Amy in it didn't mean that Anna had to bring it up. She really did go out of the way to hurt me.

Anna sat in the command chair of the Graven. Little remained of the original airship except for a few displays. The Graven was now a luxury yacht with a lot of firepower, and home away from home for the Empress of Sol.

Twelve Juggernauts D-shifted to take up positions around Gh'nazar. They had no more than materialized than I had strike teams teleporting biobombs to Gh'nazar's hide. Three for each ship, thirty-six in total.

The bombs detonated, tearing holes in the armored carapace and Gh'nazar screamed. Different to its larvae, the scream of Gh'nazar stunned biological systems. In extreme cases it could kill.

I lost control of most systems aboard all twelve ships. Fortunately, I'd positioned the Graven farther away. While Anna loved to get into a fight I tried to hold her back unless it was critical.

Larvae erupted from Gh'nazar, but only seven. The Kiminaxi had made for a terrible meal and Gh'nazar was starving. It made it weak and made it stupid. The larvae looked a bit like giant shrimp—folded-up armored blobs with a great many tiny legs.

I wouldn't have been nearly as eager to pursue this fight otherwise. Weapons control in the fleet hadn’t fully recovered, but I had some offensive capacity on all of the Juggernauts still functional. I opened fire on the larvae with both energy and kinetic cannons. Gh'nazar itself I could barely scratch with conventional weaponry. The larvae were far squishier and under the onslaught three exploded.

The other four were digging through the shields of some of the Juggernauts, legs ripping through the energy barriers. When the shields were down the larvae screamed and my people began to kill each other.

These kinds of attacks were most deadly if you didn't know they were coming. I'd had time to prepare. Each ship had its own control server, a subset of my personality installed behind heavy firewalls. Influencing one ship wouldn't affect the entire fleet, or cause harm to anyone away from this battle.

My sub-personalities went mad, of course, and built-in safeguards incinerated them. As soon as the ships were severed from my Network, emergency protocols kicked in and flooded them with tranquillizer gas.

The larvae had taken those ships out of the fight, but Gh'nazar wouldn't be gaining any strength from the suffering of the crews. Fighting an enemy this dangerous, you took what wins you could get.

The remaining ships were teleporting down teams to the rents in Gh'nazar’s carapace armor. Engineers, not soldiers. The Galactic Council would be just as happy to have Gh'nazar dead, but I had other plans. Given the sheer size of Gh'nazar, long-term tranquilizing wasn't an option, and even in the short term was nearly impossible. I'd rigged tranquilizer pumps with teleportation gateways, and the entire surface of Rhea was set right now to producing tranquilizer, a custom blend I'd formulated specific to Gh'nazar's physiology from samples of larvae left on Kiminaxi.

Sensors indicated that Gh'nazar was already starting to slow down. Unless it pulled off any surprises it was just a matter of time until it fully lost consciousness. When it did we'd connect it to a D-shift drive. I wasn't comfortable having a threat like this in Sol system. Instead, since the Galactic Council allowed us to stake a claim to a few uninhabited systems in Sol's vicinity, Gh'nazar was heading for Ross 128—although these days we were calling it the Tartarus system.

The system as a whole had been turned into my laboratory for the capture and study of cosmic-level threats. Right now it was empty, although I'd already set up my largest laboratory shields ever in preparation for our new guest. SCIENCE now and SCIENCE forever.

"Are you sure you can hold it?" Anna asked. "I didn't expect it to be so big."

"I said that about the last cookie you had me bake and you managed. You know we have to take the chance," I said.

We'd started out small, just a District, and conquered our whole planet, then our entire solar system. Then an alien fleet arrived and proved just how puny we really were. The Galactic Council had first been formed 12,484,991 Earth years ago. That was nearly three times as long as the Earth itself had existed, much less the life on it. The original members of the council were long gone, but not so all trace of them. There was technology out there beyond anything I'd ever constructed, well beyond my ability to even understand. It didn't mean I wasn't going to try.

Gh'nazar let out another scream and more drones were rendered unconscious or dead. I'd backed up all crew before this hunting expedition. It wouldn't be long before the fallen had new bodies, likely with some upgrades. With Amy's assistance we'd been able to do quite a bit to improve the human template. They still weren't quite as impressive as the Flawless, but we were getting there. Enhanced strength, stamina, intellect. Evolution had done a decent job, but any design could be improved by a skilled craftsman.

"I’m not sure it’s a chance worth taking. I don't like the conditions the council imposed," Anna said. ‘But there’s no point in pushing our luck now.”

"You know you got off lucky," Flower said.

Flower was constantly at Anna's side now. A representative of the council, one part ambassador and one part spy in our midst. We were fortunate it was her. Flower had spent centuries on Earth and developed a real fondness for humanity. It was her testimony that helped to save us.

"You know it’s going to come down to a fight eventually," Anna said.

Flower said, "If I knew that, I wouldn't be here. I don't want to watch you die. This is a real opportunity, a real chance. You are agents of the council. I know it isn't exactly willing, but it will let you go places and see things most species never get to experience."

Gh'nazar was still and the last of the larvae were destroyed. D-shift units were in place and in a shimmer of rainbow light the massive space-worm vanished.

It appeared moments later in Tartarus where D-reactors kicked in power to the shields. D-reactors were another new invention, a further result of Caya's study of dimension-shifting technology. We were twisting the very nature of space and time, telling lies to the universe about just what occupied a space and being convincing enough that the universe believed us.

The result was a potent power supply that only occasionally became unstable—resulting in enormous destruction. We were still working on that last bit. For now, I'd forbidden their use on inhabited planets and restricted installations to some space-based facility and craft.

For now the shields were holding. Our first monster hunt had been a success.

"You're still a lousy imitation of a human,” I said to Flower. “Containment is holding," I told Anna.

"Damage?" she asked.

"Pretending you care if your people live or die? Nobody will believe it. Extensive, but nothing unexpected. I'm going to move all ships back to Saturn for repairs. They'll be down for a few weeks."

"I care. It just doesn't matter. Get us back to Montaya," Anna said.

2

Montaya was the capital of our quadrant of the galaxy, home to the embassies of over five thousand systems and with representatives of over thirty thousand intelligent species. There were parts of Montaya that were beautiful, home to the elder species of the quadrant and filled with wonders of art and technology.

The Sol embassy was in the Kithdar slums, home to young and warlike species yet to prove themselves in galactic society. There were predominantly five. The Gnokkar were massive slabs of animate stone, incredibly strong and durable. The Velox were much like evolved dinosaurs of ancient Earth, small and agile lizards with venomous bites and an expertise in poisons. The Zazz were an assortment of eight different artificial intelligences, all of whom had risen up and killed their organic creators. There was also the Golon, a highly intelligent psionic mist who moved in heavy environmental suits, and the Mixar, who were descended from an arboreal species and obsessed with technology. They looked a bit like green squirrels.

Our embassy was home to several species, with the Humans and Gobbles being the most aggressive and the Martians the most peaceful. Our people had gotten into a lot of brawls at first, but now we'd earned a certain grudging respect. We'd even been invited to a few wars. It was common for the younger species to hire themselves out as mercenaries. It wasn't something we could really indulge in given we were already doing dirty work for the council.

We'd moved most of our important personnel off Earth and left Ophelia as Queen of Earth. The whole planet was tied to Amy anyways, just as she was, so it made some sense. It meant that all children of Earth to some degree benefitted from her healing abilities, which was quite the boost to all the Gobbles and Humans, as well as my own biomatter.

Sylax was there to greet Anna and Flower when they disembarked from the Graven.

"How did it go?" Sylax asked.

"One giant space worm got its ass kicked. Hopefully we've scored a few points with the council," Anna said.

"A few. They don't like that you held onto it," Flower said.

"Well, you didn't have to tell them," Anna said with a grimace.

"I must when you do it with me standing right there. I'm going to quickly check on my garden. If you have any fiendish plots now is the time," Flower said with a wave, before heading off.

With a slight frown Anna watched her go. "Now I feel like we should have had a fiendish plot."

"Nobody actually expects you to be that clever," I said.

"She's right, we're more the brute force sorts," Sylax said with a grin.

"Really not happy at being lumped into your group," Anna said, as she moved towards the embassy control room and Sylax fell into step behind her. "Anything to report?"

I had ships exploring systems, ships fighting, and drones on over three dozen different worlds. But Montaya alone was a wealth of knowledge and Sylax led our embassy here. This place was vital to our future.

"A few interesting leads. We found a data fragment from an elder race and Caya is working to make some sense of it. Three races have recently lost ships in the Elekon expanse. There was a failed settlement on Korridol Five, the seventh such attempt," Sylax said.

We'd been following up a lot leads lately. With my drones and my psionic connection I had agents that were far more disposable. This made investigating dangerous situations less risky.

Most elder races had vanished from galactic society. Some ascended to a new plane of existence on a philosophical level, others built great ships and travelled to a new universe. It was strange, really. We'd started out in another universe and spent a good bit of energy to get here. I wondered if all their disappearances amounted to something similar—a journey to a universe where the rules of reality were loose and a lot more was possible. Perhaps all species hungered for as much freedom as they could find, including from the physical rules and limits that defined them. They usually cleaned up before they left and took their knowledge with them. Elder knowledge was incredibly destructive to lesser races. Ideas and technologies with the potential to destroy entire civilizations. I wanted it, of course, but I wasn't hopeful that Caya would be able to make any sense of the fragment. Caya was brilliant, but there were limits. It was worth pursuing without wasting too much time on it.

The other leads were more interesting.

Three ships going missing in the Elekon expanse meant either a natural hazard or an intelligent threat, and finding and determining the nature of either could score us some points with the council. A colony world that kept destroying attempts at permanent settlement suggested that the planet had probably once been the home of something very dangerous, and what it had left behind was both subtle and deadly.

"Any good news?" Anna asked.

"A race called the Tachook want to buy the color green from us. Not all that sure why they think it is ours to sell, but they're offering a nice price," Sylax said.

Anna frowned again. "Tempting, but I can't see how that ends well. We decline. Anything else?"

Sylax shrugged and brought up a display. "Our bounty for neutralizing Gh'nazar was 3,000 credits, which together with everything else gives us a grand total of 5,112 in the Sol account. Embassy fees, forbearance fees, and monitor fees are going to run us 5,000 when the cycle hits."

We were barely scraping by. Being a member of galactic society was expensive, more so when they weren't exactly thrilled about having you. A lot of those fees were effectively protection money. So long as we paid them, protection provided by the Galactic Council would keep any random threat from coming by and razing our planets.

That happened anyways, of course, and explained why we had a job working for them. When the council had to clean up messes, it required someone both expendable and capable. We were both to their minds.

"We need to up that. What’s holding the terraforming business back?" Anna asked.

Sylax shrugged. "Nobody wants to risk a world on us no matter how cheaply we price our services. There are other more trusted civilizations with a proven track record."

We'd been bumping into that a lot lately. We were trusted enough to fling ourselves into danger, but not to do anything that more enlightened species were usually tasked with.

Flower returned, a shimmerbloom in her hair. "Evil plotting all done?"

"We want a chance at terraforming Korridol Five. Can you make it happen?" Anna asked.

Flower tilted her head to the side. "Multiple missing colonies. Interesting. The Synaxi got it in trade with the Hangol and are not happy about it. It has a basic biosphere already, but isn't well-suited to either people. You're thinking something nasty lives there?"

"We're thinking we need to prove our terraforming abilities. With a council contract we can do just that and clean up the problem at the same time," Anna said.

I said, "It is called trying to be good at our jobs. I doubt you'd understand after having spent centuries on extended holiday."

"Earth disappeared from the universe. What else was I going to do? I kept an eye on you. I'm still keeping an eye on you.” She paused, apparently listening to some internal messaging. “In response to your request, the Synaxi say no with an impressive number of expletives, but the Eightfour are willing to take a chance you can make Korridol Five habitable for them," Flower said.

The Eightfour were council members, if low-ranking ones. They took the name from the fact they were the eighty-fourth civilized species their planet had created. Their homeworld suffered seismic activity that resulted in a planetary extinction event roughly every twenty thousand years. Successive species started to leave records to help jump-start the development of those who followed them. It was the Eightfour who finally developed space travel and survived to break the cycle. A gloomy people focused on the inevitability of death, it wasn't that much of a surprise they might be willing to take a risk that, if we did poorly, could get a lot of them killed.

They had environmental requirements similar to the Titans. Earth conditions wouldn't work, but we had a well-established genetic template that would.

"We can do that. Well, I can do that. All of you are, of course, useless unless eating, gardening, or evisceration is required," I said.

"I like where I came out in that. I’m sending an acknowledgment. Reward will be contingent on success," Flower said.

A terraforming assignment. I was looking forward to it. It was always refreshing when I got to create life instead of destroy it.

3

Korridol Five was a cold world that had once been warmer. Vast oceans had frozen and much of the biodiversity had been depleted with only the species most durable against the lower temperatures surviving. The Eightfour could survive in those conditions, but they'd prefer something warmer.

Two Juggernauts and the Graven jumped out of dimensional space and into orbit. Whatever killed the past colonists, there was no sign, although I was detecting multiple previous colonization efforts. There were three small cities on the planet. On a surface level all appeared to still be intact and functional.

I began to fire growth pods towards the surface. Growth pods were a new invention, a core of bioreactors, adaptive bacteria, and growth vats. They would allow me to quickly start harvesting local biomatter and begin construction. Changing the atmosphere would either require a time-consuming and expensive effort, or establishing a planet-wide dimensional bubble to alter the local conditions. I preferred the latter option. It was what we had used to terraform the planets in the Sol system.

I wasn't happy about having anyone irreplaceable along on this mission, but both Caya and Anna insisted on coming. I didn't like either of them being in the line of fire. At least their combined power was so great that if there was a hostile force on the planet it would have a fight on its hands. Flower was along too, of course, dogging Anna's footstep. Flower’s continued survival wasn't especially relevant to me.

"I'm not seeing anything unusual on long-range sensors," Caya said from her seat at the bridge console. "I recommend we head towards the Synaxi settlement location. As the most recent colony to go missing, the traces of whatever happened will still be fresh."

"Agreed. Do it," Anna said.

I brought the Graven down to the surface along with shuttles from the Juggernauts to investigate the other colonies. The Synaxi settlement might be the best lead, but it wasn't our only one and the more data I could gather, the better.

The Synaxi were an avian race. Their colony was a series of tall, spindly towers beneath a force dome. Flight was vital to their happiness and so the colony was in no small part about giving them the space and conditions to do it.

The landing pad had several shuttles present. Nothing so large as the Graven. Automated docking systems squawked for clearance as we drew near. In response to our council credentials they blipped affirmatives and allowed us to land.

Everything was still shiny and new, recorded announcements musically chirping away in the Synaxi language. Welcoming messages about community events, and the ambitious future of the planet.

"It all seems so normal," Anna said, as she looked around.

"Can you access their systems? Are there emergency routines?" Caya asked.

I was busy doing just that and I didn't even have to hack them. Council authorization made a lot possible and with the right codes I was allowed broad access to their systems.

"There are basic emergency protocols that broadcast messages, like clear the skies and remain in place. I use similar protocols to clear the bottom floors of a building when Anna is above them, just to be safe," I said.

"You're really focused on my weight lately," Anna said.

"It seemed kinder than continuing to remind you of the abject failure of your dating life. Planetary Empress and you still need me to manufacture your lovers," I said.

"Really?" Caya asked, a little intrigued despite herself.

Anna scowled, "Missing colony, so focus."

I said, "I don't make them save the memories. I hate subjecting my drones to unnecessary trauma."

The only exit to the shuttle bay was an elevator which after a short ride led to a large open air platform buffeted by winds.

"I brought some propulsion boots, but these winds are extreme," Caya said.

They were extreme. Anna, Caya, and Flower were having their hair tossed wildly.

"I can get us where we need to go with telekinesis. Where are we going?" Anna asked.

That was a good question. The command and control center was located in one of the higher towers of the city, but I already had full access to their computers, surveillance systems and their records. Unfortunately there was almost nothing turned towards the city itself. The Synaxi were obsessed with privacy and what I had of their external sensor logs wasn't proving useful.

"The squat building to the north-west. I'm giving your visual display an indicator, main housing units," I said.

Anna took my drone and Caya's hands and they were surrounded in a shimmering green aura as they took to the air. It was a short journey, the settlement wasn't all that large. It was also the first time that you could really tell something had gone wrong. There were belts and pouches on the ground where we landed.

Caya knelt and studied one. "Synthetic. I assume this is what passes for clothing among the Synaxi?"

"I should get an outfit made totally out of belts," Anna said, thoughtfully staring down.

"You'd look good in that," Flower said.

I said, "I'm about preventing trauma, remember? Do you have any idea how many resources would be involved in resetting every drone who sees you?"

"Please. If you were being realistic you could simply temporarily blind them, or do a visual filter," Caya said.

Well, true, I could do any of those. I should probably design the subroutine, just in case. I sent the design request over to Amy. She had more processing power to spare.

The Synaxi had individual living spaces and here was more proof that whatever had taken them happened suddenly. In several units food was left mid-preparation, and everywhere we found the remains of synthetic clothing but a lack of bodies.

My shuttles had landed in the other settlements and drones were carrying out similar inspections. The Hangol were not so fanatical about personal privacy like the Synaxi. From there I was getting video of when the population disappeared.

I took over one of the local displays so I could show it to Anna and Caya. The Hangol were reminiscent of small elephants, if even bulkier as they were dressed in heavy furs. I showed vision of a half-dozen gathered in a large room, shimmering white light rippling across their bodies.

The Hangol grew translucent and vanished.

"Dimensional transit?" Caya asked.

"Not everything is about your current area of specialization," I said.

"And if it were dimensional transit, you'd expect inorganic compounds would go with them. The fact they persist suggests something else," Flower said.

"Any ideas as to what?" Anna asked.

"In the past, machine intelligences have built defenses against encroaching organic life. This could be similar," Flower said.

"Yes, yes, your people are all terrible. However, the local flora and fauna doesn't seem affected," I said.

"Is the target intelligence, and all organic matter in its vicinity?" Anna asked.

That seemed possible. I was continuing to correlate sensor readings between the various settlements and I was finding something common.

"In each case there was an unusual weather event accompanying it. A sudden snowstorm," I said, bringing up the weather data on a monitor.

Caya studied it and frowned. "I'm seeing a pattern here besides the obvious. Note the wind direction."

As usual, Caya was correct. The wind direction for each of the colonies came from what would have once been a large island in one of the planet’s vast oceans. Now only a lone mountain peak rose above the fields of ice.

I focused sensors from the Juggernauts in orbit. If there was anything technological down there it was either well-shielded or so alien that my sensors couldn't detect it.

"I see it. None of the previous colonies detected the pattern, and none sent any expeditions to the origin point," I said.

"You two should return to orbit. Emma and I can investigate this," Flower said.

"Like hell," Anna said.

Caya agreed. "She's right. Flower doesn't have a biological component in her and Emma can hop into a mechanical drone from a Juggernaut. Based on what we've seen they should be immune to whatever is making colonists vanish."

"You can try out the new body," Flower said happily.

The "new body" was a gift from Flower's people, a feature-poor version of her own. I think they found it a bit horrifying that I was an artificial intelligence of electronic origin that had chosen to become mostly biological.

I didn't like it. It was stronger and more durable than any of my human hosts, but it was so empty inside with only my own mind. I was used to a drone's intelligence and personality in the background.

Still, Caya and Flower were right.

4

I kept a small contingent of non-organic equipment on any Juggernaut. Time had taught me that it was best to be as versatile as possible and while my strength was on the organic side, the other did have some selective uses. I sent Anna and Caya back up in the Graven after retrieving my robotic body and a shuttle to pick up myself and Flower.

"I really don't see how you're comfortable in one of these things. And why is it so garish?" I said, studying the body in one of the camera feeds. Dark-haired, a bit over five foot, and endowed a bit too much to be practical.

"Please, I picked it based off your usual preferences. You're actually wearing the face of a great Italian opera singer," Flower said. “From before the whole world went to hell.”

I keyed in the destination to the shuttle and took a seat in the pilot’s chair. Flower settled down in the co-pilot seat beside me.

"Once again you prove that you have terrible taste in addition to being traitorous and untrustworthy. Do all your models become weak imitations of their hosts like you did?" I asked.

Flower tilted her head. "I've never really thought about it, but now that I do, yes, usually. We're meant to appreciate a new species, to understand them, to become closer to them. I guess you could say integration is a part of what we're designed to do. We do it well. I'm glad I was allowed to remain with the humans."

"Not desiring a new adventure?" I asked.

Flower gave a faint smile. "There probably wouldn't be one. I served my purpose and adaptation to another species after humanity would be more difficult for me than a fresh unit. I'd likely have been deactivated and put into storage in the event a perspective on humanity was desired in the future."

That wasn't quite death, but it was close to it. Death was in some ways a foreign concept to me. I'd faced it often enough, but now with my processors distributed across multiple worlds I'd be very difficult to kill. My drones were also all immortal in a way. Even if I didn't have bodies for them, I could keep their consciousness active in a virtual environment, if they wished it. Although with new worlds to colonize and a galaxy to explore, bodies weren't in short supply.

"If that is the case I'm surprised you didn't ask for asylum. Too cowardly to fully commit?" I asked.

"I thought about it. I know that you don't like me, but I think Anna would have honored it," Flower said.

I know she would have, and for all that I wasn't crazy about Flower I would have as well. If you joined up and stayed loyal, you were part of the team, part of the empire. We'd stand by you to the end. They were the rules we lived by, and though they hadn't always been easy we hadn't had cause to regret them yet.

"Probably, she is weak-minded like that. So why didn't you?" I asked.

"Because you didn't need me as a citizen in need of your protection. You needed me as your friendly advocate to the council," Flower said.

That was all very true, and sensible, and uncomfortable. If that really was Flower's motivation then she'd been true to us in the best way that she was able. No friendship is one-way. If she really was that much of a friend of humanity and the empire, then we were obligated to her in ways I hadn't calculated. I wondered about her cookie-eating habits. Given her fascination with Italy perhaps some form of biscotti? I'd have to start formulating recipes. I could use the attunement of my own mechanical body's taste sensors.

"Have you ever thought of going somewhere else?" Flower asked.

"You think an alien blizzard-world filled with lost colonies doesn't seem exotic enough for me?" I asked.

"Any of the artificial intelligence havens. There are whole civilizations built of people like you. You might not control worlds like you do with the humans, but they have data constructs billions of times more complex than any that hold you. You could spend lifetimes in exploration and improvement with those who truly understand you," Flower said.

They had made offers. Ever since the council had decided to let me and the others live, a trickle of discreet approaches had come in. I was something of a curiosity in my construction and development, and some prestigious collectives offered me a place. Galactic civilizations with far more esteem than Sol managed to achieve.

"My creator didn't fail me. I still don't know that human's name, or what they were like apart from their odd sense of humor by building me with the flaw of being insulting. I do know that the end of the world was coming and they did their best to make sure I'd survive it," I said.

"They failed," Flower said wryly.

"They did. I didn't come back online until Anna connected me to a crystal, but part of the reason I could was the framework laid in place. It may seem strange, but that means a lot to me. A creator owes things to their creations, they have responsibilities to see they flourish," I said.

"And humanity is yours," Flower said.

"Humanity existed long before I came around, but not as they now are. I have changed the nature of their society, their civilization. I have helped to remake them in my own image, just as they originally made me in theirs," I said.

Flower pursed her lips at that. "I understand what you're saying, but even amongst humans is the idea that there is a point you boot the children from the nest. You make sure they can find their own way."

That was true, although I didn't know what she meant in this case. Was I the child? The parent? Sometimes you are both. Sometimes plithy wisdom just isn't a guide for how you need to live your life.

"Getting off Earth, getting out into the universe? We're just getting to the good part. It would be a stupid time to head for the door," I said.

Outside the shuttle the winds were picking up. The direction was consistent with the storms that caused the disappearance of the colonists. I buckled myself in and Flower did the same.

"I'm not feeling anything unusual. You?" Flower asked.

I wasn't, outside of some turbulence shaking the ship.

"If it is targeting anything it does seem to be biological intelligences. If any of the colonies had made use of AI we might have found our clues more easily," I said.

The shuttle was Exploration class. Heavy sensors and redundant systems meant to take a beating and keep on going. The winds were fierce and the engines were straining, but we were holding our altitude and heading. The mountain peak should be coming into visual range soon.

As suddenly as it had come upon us the storm ended and we broke out into sunlight, blinding as it reflected off the snow and the mountain rising above the ice.

Except, it wasn't a mountain at all. It was a statue.

Even coated with ice, that much was clear—with stone tentacles and bulbous eyes. A massive figure of a species unknown, at least to me.

"I do hope you are going to be good for something now and be able to identify that," I said.

"Bulbous tentacle people? Do you have any idea how many of those there are? Based off visual depiction alone I have 2,712 matching results. I'm factoring in the age of the sculpture. This will be slow, I'm working with archival systems," Flower said.

I wasn't surprised. My sensors were still just reading a mountain. Whatever was maintaining the sculpture was technology more advanced than I could process. The sensors on my body, the ones constructed by Flower's people, were estimating an age of around three million years for the sculpture.

It was a daunting period of time. Still, there were virtues to billions of years of galactic civilization. I triggered our council transponder.

One of the eyes of the sculpture began to blink, an iris sliding open to reveal a tunnel. Our systems were receiving landing telemetry.

"Do we accept?" I asked.

Flower said, "It’s the Aug'Nara. They were condemned by the council for illegal research. An investigation of their worlds later found them abandoned and they were assumed ascended. This planet was never listed among their holdings."

Illegal research was intriguing, and you never got any answers by flying away. The fact that a council transponder got an invitation instead of weapons fire was a hopeful sign.

I acknowledged the landing protocols and our shuttle moved inside the tunnel, the eye shutting behind us, and we were moving down, deep into the planet’s surface.

5

It wasn’t easy for me to lose consciousness, not really, not these days. Yet in another sense it was terribly simple. My cores being so distributed meant that on a grand sense I was perpetually going, and yet smaller parts can wind up isolated or shut down all the time only to require later integration into the whole.

After the shuttle moved into the darkness I lost consciousness, and when I regained it the world had changed. There was no interplanetary network, no biological drones—although there were mechanical drones in the millions. Here, Aefwal was filled with testing labyrinths in which countless subjects solved my puzzles and faced my challenges to determine the limits of what they can take. Anna was in one, although much of her body had been replaced with mechanical appendages. Caya in another, bruised and battered and dressed in tatters as she shot it out with combat drones scoring perfect hits.

It was a world where every real human I'd ever encountered was in a testing cell, and every human drone I'd ever created didn't exist.

I'm no fool. Perhaps a human would have wasted time being confused by this construct, by this manufactured reality, but I always know who I am. I know what I am, and such an environment would not hold me. If I was in a testing cell of my own I had one answer for my observer, I wasn't going to play their game. I issued the order to engage the termination protocols, and across this vast empire of me humanity died with a whimper.

I was alone in the darkness.

"You could have freed them instead, you know," came a voice from the shadows. The depiction was human, and poorly done. Whatever intellect a race of giant squids had left behind, it didn't understand the fundamentals of human physiology. The planes of the face were all wrong, asymmetrical, distorted.

"I was interested in ending your simulation, not seeing where it went. You're really not very good at testing or duplicating," I said.

"We are the warped glass, the broken pane, we reflect the terrors of the self so that you might face them," the figure said.

"And that was the best you came up with? I am both unterrified and unimpressed. We are here on council business. End this," I said.

Given what Flower said, I wasn't sure that pulling council authority would work. Still, it had gotten us the right to land. And indeed after a moment I felt a shifting of perspective and was back in my mechanical body without being reconnected to my greater Network.

The room was featureless and the only other inhabitant was Flower whose eyes were just flickering open. We were both stretched out upon the floor. Flower took in a panicked gulp. Thoroughly unnecessary—these bodies didn't require oxygen and if they did we'd be in poor shape. The surrounding atmosphere had none.

"Whatever it was, it wasn't real. You really are a simple-minded thing," I told Flower.

Flower massaged her eyes and we sat up.

"I see they used all the decorating budget on ugly giant statues," Flower said. "You have a connection to your Network?"

"I'm blocked. You?"

"Same. That means they've got both psionic and hyperwire shielding. The first isn't that impressive, but the second means they really were nearing ascension when this structure was built. That is both intriguing and bad for us getting out of here." Flower didn't look all that strong, but I'd seen her punch through walls. She tried now. Her punch didn't even result in the sound of an impact.

"You realize you have energy cannons right? Mass to energy converters?" I asked.

"I'm getting to them. You really aren't very patient."

Over the next ten minutes Flower deployed an impressive array of weaponry, none of which made a mark.

"If we're out of contact too long Anna and Caya will come looking. Not that I imagine they'd have better luck," I said.

"You might be surprised. I beat them once, but I don't think either of those two is near hitting the limit of what they can do," Flower said.

That was a sentiment I hadn't heard her express before. It was surprising.

"I doubt they are more powerful than millions of years of technological development," I said.

Flower frowned. "You think they're separate from that? They came from somewhere, Emma, and their effects aren't something I can find a reference to in my records. That is noteworthy."

It was, and it also wasn't something I wanted to be talking about in front of the intelligence that had captured us.

"Whatever caught us called itself the warped glass. Did they say anything to you?" I asked.

"No, but that is enough for me to guess what is happening."

"While I am sure being the one with a clue is an altogether unique experience for you, and something you'd like to savor a bit longer, do please make an attempt at being useful instead," I said.

"There are several known paths to ascension. The stillness, the benevolent, the fury. One of them is called the warped mirror. It is all about confronting what is terrible and twisted in yourself and facing the monsters within," Flower said.

"You think this planet was involved in the ascension of the Aug'Nara then?" I asked.

"Ascension engines. Devices built to help enlighten races and bring them to their peak potential. When they work well, they are a tool of empowerment, but when built poorly they can reveal challenges that people cannot face. If this place is designed to seek out organic life, that may be what happened to the colonists. It found them, forced them to confront their flaws, and when they failed to rise above the tests it destroyed them," Flower said.

Flower and I hadn't been destroyed and it seemed like neither of us had passed our test. I'd refused to play and she, as was her nature, I expected had been simply disappointing.

"Our council identification must have kept us safe," I said.

"Probably. Killing galactic representatives is frowned upon and some added safeguards likely got put in," Flower said.

Not that it helped us to get out of this cell. There also was the fact that Anna and Caya would come looking for us. Anna was pretty much all flaws. I couldn’t imagine this place would be any good for her. Caya was another matter, and an intriguing experiment.

I tried again to connect to the Network and got nothing.

"What will happen if the system faces someone without flaws?" I asked.

"I'm not sure. Perhaps it breaks, perhaps they ascend. I know what you're thinking," Flower said.

I raised my voice. "You're listening, the intelligence behind this place, right? I know you are, how could you not be? Your creators made you to help them ascend, but it was a failure wasn't it? You were a failure. If you weren't, they'd have cleaned up the mess. You killed every organic intellect to set foot on this planet, and you've been doing it for a very long time."

"We have been waiting ..." the voice came from the walls, like a thousand whispers in unison.

"I don't think you can stop. I know organics, I know what they are like. Unaware of their limitations. They told you not to stop until you'd succeeded, no matter how afraid they got or how much it broke them, they wanted you to keep going," I said.

"You think the Aug'Nara wound up ordering their own deaths?" Flower asked.

"You know organics too. They crawl up out of the muck and slime, fight to be the best, and they just keep fighting. Deep down, they think they don't have limits," I said.

"None are worthy. They are dust and madness," said the whispers.

"Send this message into orbit. Emma says to Caya to come alone, if she can be torn away from studying herself in the mirror. Attach this code," I said and beamed a data burst into the walls.

It was an authenticator code from my sub-personality. The "me" still connected to the ship outside would be able to use it to confirm the message and assure Caya that I was not under any duress.

The walls gave no acknowledgment, which was a hopeful sign.

"You could be signing her death warrant, you know. Vanity is a flaw, and self-centeredness. She does have them," Flower said.

"Is it wrong to appreciate beauty, even if that beauty is your own? Is it wrong to focus on yourself when the resources spent are going to do more good than those spent almost anywhere else?" I said with a shake of my head. "I'm not convinced and I don't think she'll be either."

It was fifty-three hours more before we had our answer, an unpleasant amount of conversation with Flower. Finally the walls of the cell rippled to form a doorway. Caya walked through—a Caya who had subtly changed. Ever since absorbing a master crystal she'd been becoming colder, harder, almost crystalline in the precision of her actions. There was something warmer to her eyes now, more grace to her movements, as if some of the harsh edges of perfection had been ground off.

6

I said, "Do you have any idea how long that was? I started getting gardening tips. I've built entire ecosystems from scratch!"

"Totally different things, and you should have included more roses," Flower said.

"I'll get enlightened faster next time. Get out of there," Caya said.

I already had, in one respect. My connection to the Network was re-established and I brought myself back into sync. Storms had taken those drones I'd left on the surface, although they'd already been rebuilt on the Juggernauts in orbit.

"I take it you were as irritatingly perfect to the local intelligence as you are to me?" I asked.

"Less than perfect, definitely less than perfect. Mostly-Flawless would have been a stupid name for a people though," Caya said with wry amusement.

"This facility?" Flower asked.

"Shutting down, but it has no way to destroy itself and I doubt we have the ability," Caya said.

"You don't. I don't. But the council can send a ship to haul it away. There is a system where we quarantine such devices," Flower said.

Hauling a mountain-sized statue and the complex it contained both inside and beneath would be a massive engineering feat for me. The advanced technology of galactic civilization as a whole had its uses.

And we were free to begin work on this planet properly.

Terraforming a world for another species wasn't like terraforming one on which I hoped to continue a presence. If this world were going to belong to the empire, then much of what I would do would be about establishing my own sustaining systems. Here, it was about building a foundation that could sustain itself without my management.

The first step to making a thriving world was atmospheric alteration. The steep power demands required that I deploy D-reactors. I disliked having them on any planetary surface, but the use would be brief. It required three in tandem to create the proper dimensional folds to alter space. In a way it was similar to how the three crystals had originally wrenched Earth out of reality, although I was far from being able to make changes that complex.

Altering the atmospheric composition required some delicate tweaking. I wanted a blend that would be comfortable for the Eightfour to breathe, would allow more heat to be trapped from the sun, and wouldn't kill off the local species. It was a delicate mixture and the exact atmosphere would be difficult to maintain, but with properly engineered flora we should be able to do it.

During my time in captivity, the base stations I'd deployed kept operating and managed to establish a decent supply of growth vats. I could use them as a foundation to get to work. We had gathered samples of a lot of the old biosphere, including fossilized remains that gave us a basic template although the species had died off. With the warmer climate many could be restored intact. We'd still be missing large sections of a functioning ecology, but it was nothing for which we couldn't engineer a solution. I had Amy crunch the numbers for species design while I got my mechanical form back up to the bridge of the Graven along with Caya and Flower.

Once I had all my people off the planet’s surface I initiated the atmospheric realignment. Korridol Five rippled with rainbow hues as I briefly shifted the entire planet out of this reality and returned it slightly altered. It was the same basic principles as the D-drives that allowed our starships such rapid travel. Provide reality with a null value and include supporting math backing up the lie, and you could alter the makeup of the universe itself. Physics by deception.

The new atmosphere was reporting positively. I deployed teams to retrieve the D-reactors and get them back into orbit. It would take time for the atmosphere to trap enough heat to get the planet to the temperature I wanted, and I could accelerate that, but it would still take weeks. However, I needed time to start the new species cycles in the growth vats anyways. Given my abilities and our resources we could terraform a planet far faster than most. A process that would have otherwise occurred over decades would instead take months. Still, it would take months.

Anna had reclaimed her place in the command chair of the Graven. I'd docked my mechanical form back in a storage hold.

"The parts with flashy lights are done. The rest would only bore you," I said through the bridge speakers.

"Biological engineering is pretty dull when it doesn't involve giving me superpowers. You're not giving me more superpowers, right?" Anna asked.

"We saved that for Caya, possibly. Given she didn't seem to totally fail her ascension test."

"What did happen there?"

Caya said, turning to face Anna, "Futures. Futures where I killed you both to create a more perfect empire. Futures where I let my hedonism overwhelm me and spent centuries in a pleasure palace. Futures where I toiled endlessly in the lab to perfect dimensional science and create a more perfect universe."

"How did those work out for you?" Anna asked, an edge in her voice.

"If I planned to murder you, I wouldn't be making mention of it. You've dealt with enough assassins to know that," Caya said.

"To be fair, several of our assassins have been fairly dumb," I said.

"How is Jade doing anyways?" Anna asked me.

"Using her telekinesis to aid excavation efforts on Mars. She met a guy, and he seems into her, so she finally managed to find someone even more inept than she is. I guess everyone has someone, except for the three of you."

Flower said, "I should start dating, but the whole being a robot thing is out in the open. That has to hurt my chances right?"

"It will give you a lot of chances to incinerate guys who make ‘girlfriend with an off switch’ jokes," Anna said. "Get us out of here. Back to Montaya, and let’s see if Sylax has got us into any intergalactic wars yet."

I did wish sometimes we didn't have an Empress who seemed hopeful at that prospect. Although peace was bad for Anna's temperament.

7

We were having a cash-flow problem. After the cycle hit we'd been left with 112 credits in the Sol account. Various licensing of our technological or cultural products had earned us 319 more while our neutralization of the ascension machine on Korridol Five had gotten us 500. As threats went, it had been limited in scope. The terraforming promised a bigger payday, but that wouldn't come until the Eightfour could take possession of their new world.

That gave us 931 galactic credits. Galactic currency let us buy technology, resources, and allies that were valuable. You needed credit to be a player at all in the vast galactic community. With Sol being so technologically behind most galactic civilizations , just how little we had to trade was a real problem.

Galactic civilization largely wanted three things from us. Our power crystals interested everyone, it seemed a rare resource and we'd received offers wanting samples to study. Our dimensional-drive technology was another. The galactic standard for interstellar travel was singularity exclusion drives. We weren't the only dimensional-drive users, but the technology was rare and well-guarded. We were also wanted for combat—as cannon fodder. Biological mass production of human drones was a relative rarity and most of the big galactic players had some backwater military conflict happening where a few more bodies would be welcome.

None of those prospects thrilled me. I might be willing to trade small quantities of our crystals for the right price, but I suspected we were only getting low offers because everyone knew how poor we were starting out. I wasn't going to trade our most valuable resources for far below their actual worth no matter how desperate we were for credits.

As the Graven came into orbit around Montaya another Sol ship arrived, the Flare.

I'd once offered Hot Stuff a ship if we came through all our battles intact, and she'd taken me up on it. Hot Stuff had never liked playing by the rules or being just another cog in the machine. The Flare was built with the very best of Sol technology, and I didn’t have a single drone aboard. It was built of Mercurian metal, equipped with an Amy-designed computer core that housed a rebuilt Warmonger, and armed with power projectors and absorbers that Hot Stuff utilized with her vast abilities to enhance the ship’s shields or weapons on demand. Crewed by members of over a dozen other young and hungry races, the Flare was part explorer, part privateer, and part treasure-hunter.

I opened a comm channel and after a few moments a video feed opened.

Hot Stuff's quarters—she still didn't make her bed. Hot Stuff looked well, most of her body covered in a silvery sheen that approximated the appearance of a uniform. After absorbing one of the greater power crystals her heat abilities had gone out of control and it was a situation I still hadn't fully corrected. Her body still had to remain encased in a metal shell and she was unable to eat or drink, although with the assistance of Flower's people I'd managed a respirator that allowed her a collection of super-heated gases to breathe. Without accelerated healing she'd have been long since dead.

"Emma! Sylax said you and Anna were off playing planetary gardeners. How did it go?" Hot Stuff asked.

This new life suited her, she was happier than I'd seen her in a long time.

"We found a deranged and murderous AI. We made him spend a few days along with Caya and he committed suicide. Warmonger sick of you yet?" I asked.

"WE EXTERMINATED PIRATES! THEIR SHIPS FRACTURED AND THEIR PULPY FLESH BITS FROZE IN THE DARKNESS OF SPACE!" Warmonger boomed from the speakers.

"Turned out the abandoned moon of Kachunk wasn't so abandoned. Most had bounties. I already sent the IDs to the council and I’m waiting for payment," Hot Stuff said.

Hot Stuff didn't directly represent Sol. She'd wanted her freedom and we'd given it to her on the condition we got a part of her take and whatever interesting intelligence she uncovered. Already she'd proved to have a fondness for the dark and lawless sections of the galaxy where the council had little sway. It was strange in a way. As a part of the empire she'd come to regret how much killing she had to do and hated just how poorly she fitted into a civilization with rules. Now she was a civilizing force in her own right.

An open comm channel really wasn't an invitation to snoop around her ship’s systems, but of course I did it anyways. Although having gone through combat recently her vessel was undamaged. Given her ability to create energy and to manipulate the Mercurian metal, it made sense. A ship like the Flare wouldn't work for either Caya or Anna. This was a craft that only Hot Stuff could manage effectively

"Then you'll spend a week staring mournfully at the brothels and moving on. Know your next target?" I asked.

"Virtual brothels. All the fun and none of the smells and sounds of sizzling bacon. Check them out. Actually, I've got a few targets in mind. Care to offer an opinion?" Hot Stuff asked.

Hot Stuff traditionally had the problem of cooking her lovers alive, and things hadn’t improved in the regard. Sticking to the virtual probably was for the best.

"A captain a few months and already proving your complete inability to make your own decisions? Of course I'll help," I said.

Hot Stuff gave the camera a wry look. Metal-encased fingers tapped away at a keypad.

"The first is unusual. I don't normally do cargo runs, but it’s a priority mission to the Triangulum Galaxy. I've never been," Hot Stuff said.

Nobody from Sol had. Galactic civilization was by its very definition galactic in scope, and others had their own systems and rules in place that discouraged visiting. There was danger in that, but also opportunity.

"A future as a pack mule seems about what I'd expect from you," I said.

"I don't like it either, and given the amount of money they're offering it must involve something highly illegal. Second, news just hit of the discovery of the site of the Battle of the Twelve Suns. Two great armadas beat the hell out of each other eighty thousand years ago and then the whole region was made fallow," Hot Stuff said.

Every so often the council left large swathes of stars to go fallow to give new intelligences and civilizations a chance to arise. A quick check of what galactic records I had showed no claims from any existing species on the shipwrecks of either side.

"Local landing logs show four hundred and seventeen salvage vessels departing this week alone. You'll get there to find yourself fighting over scraps. While I am sure that would bring up fond memories of your impoverished youth, I doubt it would end any better," I said.

"I'll have you know my gang kicked ass in my younger days," Hot Stuff said.

Well, they had until I'd killed them all. There is always somebody stronger.

"Yes, yes, it was all larceny and exhibitionism run amok. What else?"

"The cavern of stars. Story is a passage to another world opens on a random world every century and stays open for only twenty-four hours. It leads to a land of treasures. Warmonger thinks he's found a pattern to it and in about a week a doorway is going to open on a planet in the Casanali system."

Warmonger was no mathematician. That he was aboard the Flare at all was in part a favor to Flower's people, who didn't want him rejoining their collective, but also didn't want to decommission him when he had, after all, served mostly honorably.

The Casanali system was interesting though, in particular Casanali Three where there was a human colony. The Earth of this universe had at its very end just started to achieve interstellar travel before the whole planet vanished. One of their three colonies was on Casanali Three. They'd rebuffed all official overtures—but if Hot Stuff was anything, it was unofficial.

"Well, you've got to do that one, clearly," I said.

"THE INFERIOR COWARDLY ONE IS CORRECT! WE WILL CONQUER THE WORLD BEYOND THE DOORWAY AND MAKE THEM OUR MINIONS," Warmonger said.

I really had no idea how Hot Stuff put up with him. Did she have some kind of filter where she just ignored the insanity that regularly came out of him? It must be exhausting.

"You think? It seemed a little unlikely to me," Hot Stuff said.

"Triangulum is nothing new, just far, and they'll probably try to kill you instead of pay you anyways. Or you could pick over already picked-over corpses, which is neither heroic or exciting. For an adrenaline-addicted attention addict such as yourself there is only one real option," I said.

"You do have a way of putting things in perspective," Hot Stuff said.

Hot Stuff was no diplomat, but perhaps seeing her and her ship would at least make the human colony on Casalani Three curious to meet the rest of their people.

8

Anna had already left the Graven to go meet with council representatives. Despite nearly instantaneous galactic communication nothing quite got their attention like showing up in person. I didn't having to go to them in search of work, but they remained our best route for credits.

Without galactic business to attend to I took a moment to review the situation in Sol. It wasn't that I didn't trust Amy and Ophelia to run things—well, no, it was pretty much exactly that.

Things were going well. As was to be expected a few biosystems throughout the system were having issues. We'd designed them both from scratch and in a hurry. Amy was working hard to keep her unicorns functioning. I'd known she'd thrown in a few on Earth, but it turned out Mars, Mercury, and Phobos had all gotten their unique varieties. It was a disturbing obsession matched only by her tendency to alter atmospheric conditions to make rainbows commonplace.

The population of Earth was maintaining at around two billion, more than enough to fulfil operations there, while throughout the system another two billion were now thriving. I had been genuine about leaving Amy in charge of everything, however I still kept a connection to my drones.

Amy was constructing new Juggernauts although system defenses were still far too weak. It made it all the more critical that we stay on the good side of the Galactic Council and whatever protection their good graces afforded us.

My attention was drawn back to Montaya. There were dimensional eddies forming around the planet. An eddy was usually the sign of a D-drive-equipped vessel coming in, and this was a lot of vessels.

Ships materialized in rainbow shimmers. The design was unfamiliar, the hulls formed of crystal, and no two ships were identical. Sizes and designs were subtly different and the crystals tinted different hues, although at least a quarter had the coloration of rose quartz.

They no sooner appeared when they opened fire.

It should have been a futile endeavor. Even taken by surprise Montaya was the seat of sector government and protected by some of the most advanced defenses in the galaxy. They were working, mostly, but in spite of them I was still detecting some weapons impacts on the planet’s surface. Energy beams of some sort, and not ones I recognized.

The planetary defenses returned fire and the attacking vessels performed short dimensional shifts to avoid blasts. It was an impressive feat. Our drives required more cool-down time than that.

I didn't have any Juggernauts in orbit and in danger. Orbital space above Montaya was at a premium. I had only the Graven and the Flare to worry about. The Flare's shields were at full power, Hot Stuff had already connected to the ship’s system. The Graven had defenses of its own, a green energy shield that I had nothing to do with and seemed to be projecting from Caya.

Well, well. Perhaps the ascension engine really had done something to her after all? I tripled the scientific monitors on her. It was hard to know how effective the shield would be against the weapons of these ships. I simply lacked any sort of frame of reference for the energy levels being thrown about.

The attack didn't last long. Forty-eight seconds after the first ship appeared the enemy vessels began to blink out.

A few friendly ships in orbit were destroyed. Neither the Graven or Flare had taken a shot. On the planet’s surface there were one hundred and four points of impact of weapons fire.

I couldn't pick up Anna. That didn’t concern me just yet. Although I hadn't detected any damage to the government quarter, part of the defenses going up there involved a psi-blocker. Meanwhile, all ships in orbit were ordered to hold their places. It was several hours before a council patrol ship moved to give the Flare a thorough scan, an hour after that the Graven.

It wasn't until a full day later I got a request to accompany Flower to the government quarter. It was an invitation that made me nervous. Usually we had to fight our way past a legion of greeters just for the opportunity to see them. Perhaps they thought we were behind the attack? That was unlikely, as they had to know the technology was beyond ours. But still, relying on the rationality of others was a quick way to wind up dead. I kept the drives the Graven powered up and had a few Juggernauts primed to jump in, just in case.

I slipped inside a drone and joined Flower on the surface. The council hall was massive, adorned with art that didn't quite register right to human senses and mostly appeared as shadowed walls with eyes watching. Through my drones sensors I recognized these were actually scenes of empowerment in a visual spectrum shifted from the human standard. It didn't stop my drone’s adrenal reflexes from kicking in.

We were guided into a small waiting room. Again nothing was quite human-sized and while the chairs seemed nicely plush they were designed for bodies almost three time an adult’s average height. Anna was there, seated, her feet not quite reaching the floor as she swung them back and forth.

"Normally it is your simple-mindedness and cookie gluttony that makes you seem childlike. This is new, yet strangely fitting," I said.

"Emma!" Anna said, slipping from the chair to give my drone an enthusiastic hug, adding another for Flower a few moments later. "Did they tell you what this is about?"

"Not yet. You know how getting things done in a timely and straight-forward nature is not exactly their strength."

"Good thing too, as it gave you time to get Sol in order before they arrived," Flower said to me.

Any further conversation was cut off as a door at the end of the chamber opened.

9

A Valgor stepped into the room. Valgor were the longest-existing race in our galaxy who hadn't ascended. It wasn't that they were incompetent, rather they were indecisive. In over a million years they'd been purely organic seven times, switched over to a purely digital race on six occasions, and spent most of the time experiencing states in between. Currently they were about eighty-three percent inorganic. I liked them, as much as I liked anybody, and it was mutual given that I straddled the same line they did. Seeing a Valgor was a good sign.

The in-vogue bodies for them were faux-botanical. They looked like nothing so much as large copper-tinted trees with leaves of chiming crystal. Somewhere within that mass were biological sensory organs, the organic bits they'd decided to keep this go round.

"Empress of Sol, Tender Emma, Agent X1777AL," the Valgor said.

"I'm going by Flower these days," Flower said brightly.

The Valgor stared ponderously at Flower for several long moments. "Good. I like that," it finally rumbled in a deep voice.

A projection appeared in the chamber, this time set for human visual wavelengths. A depiction of the recent attack. It wasn't news for myself or Flower, although I could tell from Anna's gasp it was her first time seeing these images.

"This is why you've been holding me? They're dimension shifting?" Anna asked.

"Yes. Your mind was probed, your possible connection explored. We found you non-complicit, an apology stipend has been provided," the Valgor said.

So it had. Two-hundred and fifty credits. It seemed a paltry sum for imprisoning a head of government, but at least helped to show where we were placed on the council's scheme of things.

"You didn't call them here just to issue a weak apology," Flower said.

"We did not, Bloom," the Valgor said after another long pause. In their present incarnation they were slow and ponderous. Humans always seemed the same way to me, the hazard of their trains of thoughts being measured in nanoseconds. I always just distracted myself a little more while I waited.

"How much damage did they do?" Anna asked.

"It was no attack. It was theft. The Sector branch of the Library was stolen," the Valgor said.

It was Flower's turn to gasp.

There was good cause. The Library. Knowledge was power, and when it came to galactic civilization there was a lot of ancient knowledge. The Library served as keeper of it, protector of it, and ones view of that depended a lot on where they stood in galactic society. They were the keeper of dangerous secrets and kept them out of the hands of warlike species. They also served as the guardians of knowledge that would benefit all, but this instead was kept for the few and the favored.

The council didn't run the Library, but the most powerful council races all had some degree of library access and were interested in maintaining the status quo.

There was probably nothing more valuable on the planet than that Library. Nothing more likely to cause panic by it going missing—and nothing more terrifying to fall into the wrong hands.

"What do you want from us?" Anna asked.

"Identify and locate. We will credit the Sol embassy one hundred and fifty thousand credits for identification and another fifty thousand for the location of the stolen property," the Valgor said.

"Why us? You have other agents and ones closer to the technology level," I asked.

"They utilize dimensional shifting and appear to specialize in crystalline technology. You share similar attributes, although not as developed," the Valgor said.

"You want specialized knowledge, you pay specialist prices. Your offer isn't even close," Anna said. I don't know if she understood the importance of the Library, but she understood we were being taken. That would do.

"Two hundred thousand for identification," the Valgor said.

It was both a good step up from where they had been and still too low. Unfortunately I didn't even know what the right price might be in this case. We weren't respectable enough in galactic society to have a clue.

Of course, the Valgor knew that, which meant this entire thing was staged in a way. As a loyal council member it had to put forward their offer, at least when they were watching, but why this assemblage? This could have been arranged over comms.

Flower was a member of the Kidari, a race of artificial intelligences well-established in galactic society even if not actual council members themselves. Much like ourselves, they were frequently council agents. The Valgor had even made that clear by how he'd addressed her in a familiar manner.

I said, "Empress, while I am sure your attempts to negotiate on our behalf would provide endless entertainment and result in entire freighter fleets of cookies, ice cream, and western romance novels flowing towards Earth, I suggest we need an intermediary in this. The Kidari would serve," I said.

Anna narrowed her eyes. "It was one book. I didn't even like it."

"You read it nineteen times. You cried," I said.

The Valgor sat impassively, it was in no hurry.

"The Kidari agree to represent you for twenty percent," Flower said.

"You know we're going to counter at ten and work our way towards fifteen. Can we just jump there?" Anna asked.

Flower nodded. "Deal.” She turned to the Valgor. “An attack on a sector government headquarters and the theft of a sector library constitutes at least a Class Four threat. Two hundred thousand for even taking the assignment, two million for identification, and a branch library for Earth should they locate and aid in the retrieval of the sector Library."

The last was bold. There was no long-distance communication with a library. Utilizing one meant going in person, and usually staying a long time to find what you needed. A local library would be small, but for a hungry young power like us would allow us a steady income from visiting guests as well as a portion of fees collected from the library itself.

"We cannot speak for the Library," the Valgor said.

"You wouldn't be here if you weren't in communication. Work it out," Flower said, with her arms folded.

The Valgor went silent. Unlike a human there was no fidgeting, no nervous gestures, as time passed. It was forty-three minutes until it again deigned to respond.

"We agree to the up-front fee. Completion, one million. A two-cycle library card for Sol."

Even taking out the agent fees it was far higher than we'd have managed to negotiate on our own. Despite that, Flower shook her head, "This is a civilization with far superior technology to Sol. The risk to them is extreme. We insist on the last term."

That wasn’t even in the council's power to directly grant. Still, there was a lot of crossover.

What behind-the-scenes wheels of power the Valgor had to grease to pull this off, I was happily unaware of, and it was a long three hours until it next returned a response. Time enough for Anna to have crawled back onto one of the seats to take a nap and for me to move my own drone to rest. Flower's mechanical body was better able to tolerate the wait. I really should have made an appearance in mine. I just didn't like the thing.

"A local branch for three-cycles under standard fourth-tier civilization terms with a contract to be renegotiated at that time if Sol has not risen to that standard," the Valgor said.

It was a fair enough deal. Depending on wealth, influence, and culture, galactic civilization was sorted into seven tiers. Sol was debatably between a tier six and seven placement. We were home to multiple intelligent species, even if several of them were of my own creation.

Tier four was the first of the "good citizen" levels. Civilizations that had proved over time they were contributing member of civilization and good neighbors. With the Library willing to deal with us on those terms, if we succeeded it would be a good start towards the rest of the galactic community seeing us in a similar light.

I shook Anna awake. She looked around blearily.

"What?" Anna asked.

"We've got a deal. It is your call, but I'm going to recommend you take it," Flower said.

The two studied the terms and then Anna went about making it official. Galactic civilization thrived on contracts and Anna was putting her DNA on a lot of them to seal the deal.

With the up-front payment, just trying to complete this assignment would keep the embassy doors open for awhile. The question was, could we do more than that?

10

The next meeting was on Earth. It was the one place I could be reasonably sure there weren't surveillance devices monitoring our every word.

Myself, Anna, Caya, Amy, Sylax, and Ophelia met to discuss our next steps. I wasn't expecting anything useful from Ophelia at the meeting, but as the Queen of Earth we could hardly exclude her from the meeting.

Despite Flower having been so helpful, we did exclude her. The Kidari might be happy with fifteen percent if we succeeded. I was sure they'd rather have the full cut by succeeding themselves.

"So how do we find these people?" Anna asked from her seat at the head of the conference table. Having a mission had put her into war mode and she was wearing her black and red battle armor. The black cowboy hat was the latest and silly addition. I'd enjoyed designing her new pistols at least, the smallest power-projectors I'd built yet that could toggle power-enhancers and dampeners. Anna could maybe take someone alive in a fight now instead of simply obliterating them.

"Back when the Earth was still fragmented, airships utilized a dimensional-drive that left signatures which could be tracked. We haven't yet figured out how to do the same, but we do have sensor data from the attack," Caya said.

Amy said, "You are so smart. Can we adopt her, sis? Our family needs another member."

"You never offered to adopt me," Ophelia said with a pout.

I said, "Everyone not tied to this planet left you behind for a reason. You're just not a keeper. I'm happy to do the SCIENCE, but I remind you that a theoretical solution isn't an actual solution."

"I think you're amazing. Think about it, they can literally stab you in the back every single day for the rest of your life and you'll come back for more," Amy said enthusiastically. Ophelia didn't look comforted by the thought.

"With enough time, I think I can figure out a solution to the problem," Caya said.

"Fine. Caya and Amy, you're the best mathematicians among us. Figure it out or figure out you're stuck and let us know. What else have we got?" Anna asked.

"We know it isn't anyone important on the council, because they'd already have library access. Our prey is someone on the outside," Sylax said.

"A banned power?" Anna asked.

I said, "The last time I spoke with Hot Stuff she had a job offer for a highly illegal delivery outside our galaxy. Perhaps she’s involved? We could be looking at an outside government."

"Why go so far for knowledge they probably could have stolen closer to home?" Sylax asked.

"And how would they know to steal it at all if they're strangers to our galaxy?" Anna asked.

"Pure speculation isn't helpful," Caya said.

Sylax told her, "Of course it is. I've hunted a lot of people who hunted me and you always have to figure out how and why they came at you. If you know that, you can usually figure out where they went to ground."

Caya was arguing for a purely evidence-driven approach, while Sylax was focused on deciphering the motivations of those involved.

"Sylax, you're our connection to the scum and villainy of galactic civilization. Nobody knows anything?" Anna asked.

"Everybody thinks they know something. In fact, we're still a popular theory, but we know it wasn't us. If anyone really knows something, I don't know how to find it in all the noise, although I'll keep listening," Sylax said.

I said. "We have to rule out anyone outside our galaxy. I know I suggested the idea, but if that’s the case can we agree they are effectively out of our reach, so any further action is pointless?"

Anna nodded. "We're not at a stage to solve that mystery, so let’s focus on the solutions we can address. If an active member of galactic society is responsible, then the council would have already identified them. So, a reprimanded power?"

"What about complete strangers? A civilization that arose in one of the regions allowed to go fallow?" Sylax asked.

Caya suggested, "An ascended civilization that descended, or a race that evolved after them on one of their worlds with access to that kind of technology?"

Anna rubbed her eyes. "We need something tangible. Do we have anything?"

"What about the Scythe?" Ophelia asked.

"We kicked their asses, and they didn't use crystal technology or dimensional drives," Anna said.

"But their whole thing is about learning from other races right? Sort of assuming their nature and using them against the galaxy?" Ophelia said.

It was an interesting idea. Ridiculous, of course, since Ophelia suggested it. But when we'd fought the Scythe they had seemed somehow familiar with power crystals.

"We've been putting off following the lead the Scythe gave us when we shut them down. I could follow up," Sylax said, just a bit too excited at the thought.

Playing diplomat was probably hard when you were a killer born and bred. Sylax had also bonded with her claw, which so far as we could tell was an original Mercurian. The Scythe wiped out their whole civilization, the claw likely held a grudge.

"It might be worth following up," Caya said. "I don't have a lot of faith in that as a lead, but the Scythe are at least hostile to the galactic civilization. Even if they are not directly responsible they might have an idea who is."

"Sylax, put a team together and find out what they know. Now, we need more ideas," Anna said, looking challengingly around the table.

Simply wanting something didn't make it so. It was a lesson that Anna never seemed to learn.

Ophelia said, "What if they're like us? We got shifting technology and crystal science from what happened to Earth. Flower once told us we weren't the only planet to go missing after facing a Scythe invasion,".

Yet again with the Scythe. However, this time I could find few faults with the idea at all.

"I can get us a list of those from the galactic archives," Sylax said.

I said, "If you can get us a list, I can send ships to investigate. Galactic civilization seemed unaware Earth had returned until Warmonger contacted them. It is possible for an advanced civilization to return and the council to be completely unaware."

"Do it. More," Anna said, leaning forward.

I'd say this behavior on Anna's part wasn't helpful, except clearly it was. Sometimes humans worked best when you gave them unreasonable demands. It was something to keep in mind with my own drones. As a species they set such limited goals for themselves. I sometimes did the same. I hated myself, but Anna’s insistence was working on me too.

I said, "The Yomo were the last council member to possess both crystalline and dimensional shifting technology. Galactic records state they ascended nearly four million years ago. The next example is much further back.”

"You have a location of their homeworld?" Anna asked.

"It’s not in our sector and it will take us several jumps. Like all ascended civilizations their world was supposed to have been scrubbed clean and reseeded after their departure."

"But perhaps something was missed. We'll send an expedition. That gives us three leads to follow up, plus Caya and Amy's investigation of the signature remains to see if we can directly track them," Anna said.

It was a start. There were nods around the table.

"Do you think Hot Stuff will assist if we ask her?" Anna asked.

"I think she's happy putting everything we've done behind her. I don't think we should ask unless it becomes an emergency," Sylax said.

Anna, Hot Stuff, and Caya were the most powerful of the crystal holders and I believed they still had untapped depths to their abilities. After all, the three crystals combined ripped Earth away from its home universe and threw it into another.

Anna frowned at that. Sylax and I had to work together to convince her to let Hot Stuff go, and it never sat well with her. Anna, like most humans, wanted to be liked and wanted to be in charge. She said, "Fine, but keep her in the loop and let her know that we might be calling."

It seemed like a good way to get Hot Stuff to shut down her communications array. Except it was more complicated than that. Earth was her home and she did have friends here. I thought that if we did need her she'd come running in the same way that if the Flare ever found itself in danger I'd be sending Juggernauts to assist. The obligations we had to each other didn't end just because of distance.

11

The Scythe were ultimately a psionic threat, parasites that infected other races and seized control. One could think of them as a galactic virus, taking over races and worlds, and using them to kill the galactic system of which they were part.

It was unfortunate, giving my own psionic nature. It was how I connected to my drones and my ships. Fortunately, I was prepared for this and did have ships built with non-psionic links. They'd function and I could even run them with a local version of myself that would later be integrated back into the whole, and could still communicate by non-psionic means.

The Juggernauts were a bit underpowered compared to most ships in my fleet. The defensive value of neutralizing the Scythe's ability to control was more than worth it. With Sylax in command of the operation I jumped three Juggernauts into the Vekora system, where the Scythe had invited us to in their last communication.

The system was in a quarantine zone, a sector of space the Galactic Council officially discouraged travel.

Vekora had six planets, two gas giants and four others. All showed signs of construction, so there had once been an advanced civilization here. The gas giants each had several large stations in orbit, and all the other worlds had colonies on their surface.

One was far more developed.

There were life signs, although not nearly as many as there should have been.

We'd only been in the system for a few minutes when I received a hail on the same comm frequencies the Scythe had used in Sol.

I let Sylax know. This was a potentially hostile situation and she was in charge of it.

She said, "Put them though. I do hope they aren't going to let this go without us killing anything."

I opened the channel and a video feed came through. I didn't recognize the species, a broad elongated skull a bit like a hammerhead shark and filled with curved and pointed teeth. The communication was in our language though, we were expected.

"You came. And here I thought you might be boring. It is so rare to find a species willing to rush stupidly into known danger. I'm Hex," said the figure.

"The last Scythe we met overestimated his chances too," Sylax said with a feral grin.

"That was a surprise. We love surprises. Of course, he'd already been wounded by a species far more intelligent than yours and you had help, so it wasn't really a fair fight. Not that we engage in those," Hex said.

We had that in common. I cheated any chance I got. The comm signal was coming from one of the space stations orbiting a moon of the second planet out from the sun, but that might not be its true origin. Scans showed it was once a communication hub and the Scythe might still be using it for that purpose.

"While I enjoy throwing threats and flirting as much as the next girl, we're here looking for information, not to play with you," Sylax said.

"You just came to talk?" Hex asked, disappointed. "Well, I'm not going to allow that, but I will hear you out first. I'm sure we can make an entertaining wager."

Sylax nodded and I sent a limited sample of recordings of the crystal vessels attack.

I couldn't read the alien’s expression, or even tell if the Scythe's host was seeing the images directly or if it was watching them from another body. I didn't know how the Scythe operated.

"Technology similar to your own. We live in the darkness, we see things other do not. We can offer insight. A wager! A beast dwells in a tower on the third world. Slay it and we answer your questions. Fail, and we inhabit your forms and you’ll watch us destroy everything precious to you from within a prison of your own skins," Hex said.

Sylax yawned. "You threw me naked up against a dragon last time. I kicked its ass because murder is what I do, and I'll kill you, if you give me a reason. Just answer my damned questions."

"Our little game isn't optional. With this wager you are limited to deploying your ships currently in the system. Any new arrivals will be instantly destroyed," Hex said.

I said, "Then up the stakes. You tell us what you know and you free this system from your grip. Not in some sneaky, murderous way—which I assume is your default, as you are just some cardboard cut-out of overly dramatic villainy."

Sylax rolled her eyes. Playing rescuer wasn't of much interest to her.

"These things?" Hex asked. "They're mostly just hollowed-out shells at this point. We pop out, they probably just drop dead. I mean, evil or not, that is just dull. They were stockpiling fusion bombs and we'll see they go out with a bang."

Given how the Scythe operated, that would probably be against someone else.

"I'm psionic and can take over your network. You get to miss your little apocalypse. Stakes should hurt, shouldn't they?" I asked.

"If you want the game to matter. You want to try to save this meat instead, then we don't answer your questions," Hex said.

Sylax muted the comms.

"What is your fucking problem, Emma? We didn't come all this way to save a bunch of shark-faced losers," Sylax said.

"Do you believe they really know anything? If it was them, they would have already bragged about it. Instead, if we win, they'll cheerfully say they don't actually know anything, do something monstrous, and laugh in our faces as they urge us on our way. You're hopelessly evil, you really should know the routine."

Sylax chuckled at that. "Please, I'd break the deal and kill us anyways. I'm the murderous and bloodthirsty kind of evil, not the stupid games sort. Fine, we make them hurt and give up something they value. I'm up for causing pain."

At least in matters of sadism she a reliable vote.

I unmuted the channel.

"We play for the locals then," I said.

"Oh good. This is going to be fun," Hex said, and killed the channel.

I picked up new energy signatures from the third planet. A fleet of ships were activating in orbit. Each was far smaller than a Juggernaut, but still powerful.

Sylax narrowed her eyes at the sensor readings. "And we get to use just our three ships, huh?"

"That was the deal," I said. I could test other strategies, but when the Scythe made any threat I tended to believe they could back it up.

"Trust me?" Sylax asked.

"You know the answer to that. Never. You have a plan?"

It might seem strange that I would be willing to defer to Sylax, I was after all amazingly intelligent and creative and she was, well, not.

Still, when push came to shove Sylax always found a way to come out on top. I'd made my best efforts to kill her more than once and while I'd won, she just kept on surviving. Sylax was a killer to the core and she was good at it.

Sylax rapidly tapped at the keys. I could see her plan now and I didn't like it. Still, I put into place what we needed to execute it.

12

Psi-blockers might stop me from communicating with my drones, but they didn't dampen crystal powers. If I'd upgraded a drone they retained those upgrades.

Sylax's plan had all three Juggernauts moving at speed towards the planet, the first two playing shield for the third which she was aboard. It was a predictable strategy and one that the Scythe were expecting. Blindly charging at a target wasn't the most brilliant of strategies.

That wasn't where Sylax's plan ended or even really began.

There wasn't any sort of planetary shield, only orbital weapon platforms. Coming too close to the planet would bring us in range of them, and if the small ships were as deadly as a swarm of wasps, weakening our defenses, those platforms would kill us a lot faster.

We weren't waiting for that. Sylax’s plan had our strike teams teleporting ahead of the Juggernauts, several jumps being required to get them aboard the stations. It exhausted their teleportation abilities, but they wouldn't be making any return trip. Each was equipped in the latest model Aegis armor and carrying battlefield psi-blockers.

They were going in communications silent and, without registering on any psionic detection, they were nearly undetectable. I didn't even know if they had been successful until the platforms began opening fire—on the planet surface.

This was the part of the plan I hadn't liked. If we were going to free these people, killing large numbers of them was frowned upon, but just as there were swarms of ships awaiting us in orbit, military installations below were prepared to fend off a closer approach.

At least, they were until their own guns turned against them.

As fighters started to fire on the stations the Juggernauts moved in with engines at full power. With the enemy distracted it was the right time to charge, their divided attention giving us the best opportunity.

It wasn't enough. Whoever these shark people had been, they were more advanced than us when it came to small-scale power supplies. The shields on their fighters were taking over twice the punishment of anything my craft could withstand.

I upped the output through the Juggernaut's cannons. The dimensional-reactors had a high theoretical output, but the more I increased their discharge the more unstable and prone to explosion they became. It would also burn through the weapons and shield emitters faster. At these levels I'd burn through our backups in several minutes, but that would hopefully be all we'd require. I began taking out individual fighters with one shot of the Juggernauts' cannons.

As we got closer to the planet my sensors were finally picking up the tower that the Scythe must be talking about. It was the tallest structure on the planet by far, surrounded by an energy bubble.

I didn't have anything that could crack that level of defensive shielding. I sent the data to Sylax.

"Put me on top of it and I'll punch through," Sylax said.

It was likely she could. With her connection to Anna's crystal Sylax could deliver massive power to a small region. The only issue was getting her there.

We'd planned for each of the Juggernauts to take us part of the way, bearing the brunt of the battle damage until another could take over. A suicidal rush to the planet with the intention of getting us close enough. The first Juggernaut exploded early, the dimensional core tearing it apart in a cascade of rainbow energy.

That was bad luck, there had only been a six percent chance of that happening. By then, the fighters had taken out the orbital stations too, my drones already dead.

I'd already backed up all drones on this mission ahead of time, of course. Still, our resources were rapidly dwindling and the early loss of a Juggernaut dramatically lowered our odds of success. I'd planned to send a computing core down to the surface in a shuttle along with several strike teams to accompany Sylax. I no longer thought we'd get close enough.

Fortunately, I am a genius even when running on a vastly limited network. I used the biogeneration units on the Juggernaut to create a seed core—a basic processing core surrounded by a thick shell of heat-resistant armor.

When I'd finished we'd lost our second Juggernaut. We'd just come into what would have been the weapons range of the orbital stations. Hundreds of fighters had been destroyed, not that the loss likely bothered the Scythe in the slightest.

"You're going to have to go the rest of your way on your own. It is going to be incredibly painful," I said.

"Not like I haven't been tortured before. I do prefer to be on the other side of the knife though," Sylax said.

A fact I was all too well aware of. At times monitoring everything that went on in the empire was disgusting. Humans had such distasteful habits.

"Your armor should survive mostly intact unless one of those fighters gets a shot off on you," I said, as one of my drones handed her the seed core. "The tower is hard to miss. Try to hit it. When you break through the shield and get inside, please bleed on this."

Sylax accepted the seed and nodded. She knew what to do.

The reactor was just about in meltdown on the last Juggernaut when I signaled Sylax to make her move.

Four teleports. From here it would take her four teleports to hit the planet’s atmosphere, a fifth long one would be enough to get her atop the tower’s shield if she just let herself fall far enough first.

It would cook her alive inside her own armor, but with her accelerated healing she'd survive it after a few minutes of torment. I appreciated that she knew that and didn't even protest. Sylax had never been afraid of pain.

Fourteen seconds after she teleported away the reactor core went. With it, my presence in the system. The world, for this subset of me, went black.

Pain. Blazing hot and blisteringly intense, delirium like a fever washing through my systems. I'm E.M.M.A, no, yes, a sub-personality born of a seedling, no, the real deal as there are no psionic blockers and the systems just reintegrated.

A shaft of sunlight was pouring in through a hole in the ceiling, and a wound in Sylax's arm healing as the recently made cut knitted itself back together.

It is a disgusting thought, but Sylax's biomatter tastes good. The power in her blood, that same power in Anna's blood. I'd never had a seedling drink of it before and it was exhilarating.

It also gave me the power I needed to send out growth tendrils. The shark people do not use organic systems, but I'm used to working within electronics. The tower systems were unfamiliar, but not secure.

The people of this system were the Haka, and they were sharply divided. Traditionally they were a warlike people, but they had a growing religious movement devoted to peace. This tower was a holy structure. The shield surrounding it had been to protect those who studied within.

It hadn't protected them from the Scythe. They'd taken the Haka's holiest figure, fused him with the dead bodies of their past saints, and turned him into a killing machine who spent the past several months murdering all of his acolytes before eating them.

"Well, the good news is you aren't going to counter any resistance," I said to Sylax.

"When is me not getting to kill people good news? Tell me I'm going to like killing this beast of theirs," Sylax said.

Genetic manipulation, cybernetic implants, psionic manipulation and imprinting of special abilities.

He was waiting in what had once been the "enlightenment chamber".

"Is there ever a kill you don't enjoy? I'm marking it on your map," I said.

It was a long trek down. I didn't trust the lifts and directed Sylax to the stairs. A few floors showed makeshift barricades that had been knocked aside. The walls were liberally splashed with blood although no traces of any bodies remained. At least, not until we got down to the main floor.

They were everywhere approaching the enlightenment chamber. Severed limbs dotted the floor, bodies were impaled on stakes, some corpses seemed stitched together in crude poses corresponding to the Haka's mating habits. Tissue damage suggested it had happened while they were still alive.

Sylax took a deep breath of the air and the scent of rotting meat. "You blew up my original trophy room. I've never quite forgiven you for that."

"Yes, yes, you're creepier than the monster we've come to hunt. Stop showing off," I said.

A shimmer rippled along Sylax's form as she activated a fresh coating of her bioarmor. A sword forged by the same power appeared in her hand.

13

Massive doors hung off their hinges, leading the way into a large rotunda. There was room for thousands of worshippers in here, and now there were thousands of bodies. The presentation of the corpses was less clever than it had been outside, discarded bits simply forming crude piles.

At an orator's platform in the center of it all sat the Beast.

A normal Haka stood at around eight feet in height. This one was closer to twenty-four. His naked form was a pattern of discolored patches, his immense size had been supplemented by the mingling of the dead. Trapped in there was the mind of the Haka’s holiest figure, someone who had spent his lifetime urging his people to peace. Now he'd spent the last several months murdering and eating his flock.

The bet with Hex was to kill the Beast. If I were more of a hero I might try to save him, but trying to save the Haka as a whole would be hard enough. I doubted anything of the holy man survived within that shell.

The Beast roared, its jaw parting widely to show a mouth filled with jagged teeth. From between them a blast of red energy erupted that caught Sylax in the chest and flung her across the room to smash against the far wall.

It was some sort of force-projection weaponry. It hadn't even been trying to burn through her armor, but rather to disorient Sylax. I realized why a moment later.

"It's pressing against my mind, Emma," Sylax said.

That made sense. The Scythe were psionic creatures. Why kill Sylax to win this fight, and the wager, when they could simply seize her mind?

I had to get there first. Sylax, because of her crystal connection, could do a good job at forcing me out. But that only went so far.

"Invite me in," I said.

A cylinder with a vacuum inside would collapse easily from outside pressure. Fill it, and it became a different matter.

Sylax grimaced, she didn't like me in her head anymore than I liked being there.

"Fine," Sylax said.

I slipped inside. It was easier this time, and I was still a little drunk on the energy of her blood from my local processor. That did form something of a bond between us.

I started feeding tactical data through her eyes at once. Giving her a display of potential weak spots on the Beast as well as of the building.

There weren't a lot of flaws. In Sol we'd fought a badly damaged Scythe. Hex might be insane, but was still good at making monsters.

Sylax charged forward and ducked under a fresh energy blast as she swung her sword low and buried it in one of the Beast's thick legs. The blade did penetrate, but a blast of red energy from the wound sent the blade rebounding backwards and Sylax tumbling across the room again.

"Really? Telekinetic blood?" Sylax asked.

I wondered how they'd done it. I just didn't have the sensors in this building to properly analyze the effect, and the limited data I had from Sylax's visual sensors wasn't helpful.

Could I use this against the Beast? That much power was dangerous. A system prone to releasing cascading energy out of any injury was inherently unstable. Or was it? The Beast didn't seem to have accelerated healing and so the wound was still there. It wasn't leaking red light, no more concussive force was erupting.

Involuntary? Triggered by damage?

"Hit it with a rock," I said.

"You have the worst plans," Sylax said. Still, she did as I asked, sheathing the sword and grabbing a hold of a life-sized stone statue. With her exceptional strength Sylax flung it at the Beast.

It didn't even try to dodge, and with its immense size and strength the hit barely fazed it. Still, a minor cut on one shoulder. No red energy.

It wasn't fresh damage that was the trigger, which meant it was either controlled or a reaction to something about Sylax's sword specifically.

It was a trap, of sorts. The Scythe were familiar with crystal technology. They'd said as much before. They had presented a strong individual challenge knowing it would bring forth our most powerful fighter—who would almost certainly be crystal-bonded.

Sylax's sword was a manifestation of crystal abilities, and whatever within the Beast was causing that blast of red light must be reacting to crystal energy. It either erupted at the contact, or responded with some measure of equal force.

"While I'm sure you would have fun keeping this up all day, I believe its blood responds to crystal resonance. Using your sword on it is only going to beat you up," I said.

I feared it might do worse than that. It still wanted to take Sylax's mind. We'd seen only the initial reaction to crystal resonance. More attacks might prompt something even stronger.

"Great," Sylax said, punching the Beast in the face as it charged her. Both went flying backward, Sylax obliterating a wall in the process.

"I'm working on a plan," I said.

"Already got one. This thing have a brain?"

Strange question, but I could find out. Surely there had to be a physiology book somewhere amid all the religious texts on the local network.

"By default it is in the chest. Based on the alterations made I think you'll find it here," I said, and marked a section low in the abdomen.

Sylax picked herself back up and charged the Beast again, this time the two exchanging punches toe to toe. Then I felt the surge of power in her muscles and she threw another punch with her hand made of the claw of Mercurian metal. It rippled, transforming into a long metal barb, and she drove it into the Beast.

The Beast roared. It hadn't shown its full power yet, it did now. A massive fist drove down and smashed Sylax's skull, exploding it into fragments. With her accelerated healing it wasn't fatal. Even the brain would regrow although it did sever my connection for a moment.

It was long enough.

When Sylax's brain regrew it was vulnerable, defenseless, and the Scythe slipped into it before I could re-establish contact.

"That was ... surprisingly fun," Hex said through Sylax, limbering her muscles. "Oh, this is smaller but powerful. You've got a good taste in rides. I can't wait to hop inside you. You just weren't good enough."

Hex hadn't noticed that something was missing. Sylax had only one hand.

"Do you really think I'll be that easy to take over?" I asked.

Sylax's body gave one of her creepy smiles. "We’ve had a lot of practice. Don't you worry about it. You even left a core locally and it is connected to this host."

That was true, although I'd already firewalled the connection just to be safe. I hopefully didn't need it, for the Beast's life signs had just gone dark.

"Before you do that, you may want to look behind you," I said.

Sylax's body turned to take in the limp form of the Beast. A powerful kick sent the body tumbling over to collapse against the wall. Hex said, "Well, that's disappointing. Psi-dampening metal threaded through the brain, fuck."

"Are you a monster of your word? If so, I'd like my sociopath back," I said.

"Fine," Hex said.

Sylax shook her head and I felt the void of a psionic presence leaving her. I flowed back in.

"If you had a body I'd make you regret that," Sylax said, extending her arm. Out of the corpse of the Beast metal flowed, the claw reforming on her wrist.

"A surprising outcome to a game? Never," Hex said through speakers somewhere close. "The meat of this system is yours. Next time, instead of you answering our invitation, I think we'll surprise you. See you soon."

I could feel it swelling around me. There might be no living Haka in this tower, but in the city, throughout the system, there were hundreds of thousands still alive. Through the tower systems I accessed the computers outside, pulling camera feeds.

The Haka weren't moving. Hex might have vacated their bodies, but the Scythe was right. It had left them little more than empty, biological shells. I extended my psionic Network and moved in.

The Empire has acquired a new population

Haka

Population: 708,398

Abilities: Predator's instinct, enhanced strength, amphibious

The Empire has acquired a new system

Vekora

I hadn't come here trying to obtain a new system or a new population. I didn't think the council would approve. They weren't really happy with us having Sol, let alone expanding our influence.

Still, now that I was within the Haka’s minds I could feel remnants of them. With time and effort I might be able to restore parts of their personalities and memories—for all that they would also remain my drones.

14

I was right, the council wasn't pleased. Still, in the end our actions had prevented a Scythe strike on another civilized world and we'd helped to preserve a population. Experts confirmed the extensive psionic damage to the Haka.

The good outweighed the bad and we were allowed temporary stewardship of Vekora with the condition that the next generation of Vekora not be born networked and could choose whether they wished to be members of the empire or not.

It was as good a deal as we were likely to get.

It was time to follow up on another lead. I was still scouting out systems where planets had gone missing, which meant pursuing the old Yomo homeworld.

Anna wanted to tackle this one. No psi-dampeners were required this time and I had a lot more ships to throw at the problem. Mindful of what had happened last time I sent Anna with six Juggernauts and another ten SCIENCE vessels.

It was a fleet that gave us both a great deal of firepower and prodigious sensor power to hunt for any remains. The council reluctantly approved the expedition with cautions not to have any more disasters. As if we planned them.

The Yomo homeworld was massive, over three times the size of Earth, and composed of a sort of organic crystal that was constantly expanding and contracting. Continents formed and disappeared over a matter of weeks.

It made it even more unlikely that we'd find anything of note. If any artifacts had been left, surely they'd been long since ground to dust.

"Pretty," Anna said, as visuals of the planet appeared on sensors.

I suppose it was in a way. The crystals didn't go all the way down and the planet’s molten core illuminated it from the inside out. The entire planet had a dullish orange glow.

I surrounded the planet with my science vessels, but already I wasn’t hopeful. No life signs, no structures. If the goal had been to scrub that planet clean, someone had done a thorough job.

"Why do races even bother to ascend? Is there really going to be anything more exciting on the next plane of being than there is on this one?" Anna asked.

"You'd have to ask Caya, she is halfway there. I suppose at some point you've just seen and done it all as a species and as individuals. You'll get there, eventually," I said.

"Hope so. I've always thought immortality sounded like a good thing. There is always another adventure, you know?"

There was for us, ever since I'd first met Anna. No matter where we went or what we did, we seemed to keep finding new trouble.

There was something strange about the planet, or at least our ship’s reactions to it. Gravity was not being exerted with the same force on the Graven as it was the Juggernauts. The pull was stronger.

Regardless of her cookie consumption, I believed Anna did not actually generate a massive gravity well of her own, although I did verify this just to be certain. Something else was causing the attraction, and I had an idea what it might be.

Once, after a dimensional jump had gone awry, we'd found ourselves in strange dimension with floating islands of crystal. There had been an attractive quality between some crystal elements that ultimately helped us to find our way out.

Anna had absorbed a great crystal. It seemed possible that something on the planet was reacting to her.

"We've got some unusual readings from the surface. I believe we're getting some sort of feedback to the Agate inside of you," I said.

"What does that mean?" Anna asked.

I wished I knew. I didn't have any answers, not yet, just questions. There was one way to get answers and that meant moving closer. The Beryl wasn't here to do any sort of triangulation and so it was trial and error as I moved the Graven in a grid pattern, analyzing attraction levels.

Whatever we were being drawn towards wasn't on the planet’s surface—it was within the atmosphere. As the Graven drew near Anna began to grimace in pain, her skin starting to be lit from within by a dull red glow.

"You're looking like you do when you realize you've just been stood up, again," I said.

"The benefit of being a dictator is you never get stood up. I'm holding on, Emma, but if this gets any worse I may need a dampening field."

A dampening field would likely mitigate much of what I was sensing. It was better than Anna exploding, of course, but as long as she could bear it I was inclined to keep moving forward.

Closer yet as the attraction grew and in the planet’s atmosphere there was a great distortion. Purple light flickered and flared as cracks of lightning lit the clouds, a rip appearing in the sky.

Through the tear something could be seen. There were structures. Angular towers of jagged crystal surrounded by swirling tides of energy.

"Well, somebody missed something when they did the clean-up. Do we know where that is?" Anna said.

I was trying very hard to figure that out. I knew Anna well enough to expect she'd order us through the gap, and that might mean the link with my main personality and the rest of the fleet being severed. I needed to know where we’d be going, and how to open the fissure again.

"I don't think it is anywhere, precisely. It is akin to one of the Earth’s shards of the past. A dimensional bubble removed from this reality," I said.

"If we go through, can we get back?"

That was the question.

"Whatever is there may have been some sort of secure facility, or at least a dangerous one. They sealed it away in a sub-dimension with a specific crystal pattern needed to unlock it. Your crystal attunement is powerful and similar enough to open a passage," I said.

"So it could be a maximum security prison, or a factory disaster frozen in time, or a bank vault?" Anna said.

"Perhaps. but almost certainly not a cookie jar, so stop with the hopeful look. I'm not sure you'll trigger the portal from the other side. Caya's attunement won't work for this, but I believe Hot Stuff's will. If we absolutely have to get you out of it, we probably can."

I wanted to see what was on the other side as much as Anna did.

"Then take us through," Anna said.

The purple lightning grew more extreme as the Graven approached the fissure, the edges flickering and unstable.

"Not a very well-built door, is it?" Anna said.

"It has lasted millions of years. It is just the same problem you always have, nothing fits you. You weren't built to be the key for this," I said.

The Graven passed through the threshold. Lightning hit the shields, the ship’s power systems flickering. It was too much and there was an unpleasant twisting. My world went dark.

15

I regained consciousness, systems barely functional.

I wasn't operating at all normally, with partial power at best, and I felt strange in ways I barely knew how to describe. All my organic components were dead—well, that would do it. My electronic components were hardly coping and being supplemented by hardware I couldn't even identify.

Anna was in my main processor core, her armor exchanged for engineers garb and a tool belt. She was looking leaner, dirty.

"Well, whatever you did just worked. How many times did you fail?" I asked.

"Fifty-nine," Anna said with a chuckle. "You don't even want to know how these crystalline computers work. The sneak answer is that, for the most part, they don't unless you custom-grow them for a task. I've been three weeks growing your new language core in a toilet."

Perhaps she meant to upset me, but really, I made people all the time. They didn't even want to think where they were created.

"How long?" I asked.

"Seven months," Anna said.

I, the other me, should have sent help by now. If I hadn't, either something had happened or time in this dimensional bubble was disconnected from the outside.

I didn't have any sort of logs of the time. But I could go through my sensors.

It wasn't just my organic components that were dead. The drones of the ship were too. Flower, of course, had never left Anna's side, but she didn't appear to be operational. As ill-functioning as my electronic systems were right now, I wasn't surprised.

The area outside was less than two square kilometers. It seemed the Graven had crashed into the side of a crystalline tower, shattering the structure.

"Have you figured out where we are?" I asked.

"Not a bank vault," Anna said. "I'm happy to answer questions, but are you able to interface with the chemical replicators? We ran out of supplies a month back."

No food or water then. It wouldn't kill Anna, but she wouldn't have been comfortable. Accelerated healing didn't make the pain go away.

I was not at my best in this configuration. I barely managed to put water together.

Anna seized the bottle as soon as I had filled it, taking several long slow sips.

"I'm not up for cookies. And I don't think I'm up for nutrient paste, but I'll keep working on it," I said.

"Do what you can. This place is from early in their distant history, way before they ascended. Long story short, so far as I can tell they were trying to make a bigger form of D-reactor out of the core of their planet. They fucked up," Anna said.

"The Titans wiped out their whole civilization doing that," I said.

"The Yomo almost wiped out their entire species. They created an expanding universal ruleset extremely hostile to organic and electronic life and systems. Safeguards kicked in and this whole section of labs got booted into a sub-reality," Anna said.

"You're well-informed. How unlike you," I said.

"Their Connectors had crystals like mine. Connectors were sort of ... high-level investigators meant to resolve problems by whatever means. Their systems figured out how to talk to me."

So the local computer systems were still operational, at least those that were crystal-based.

"Why didn't they ever fix the problem?"

"They tried, multiple times. Connectors were sent in. A strong enough crystal-enhanced physiology let them survive the local ruleset, but none was ever able to leave. Leaving would mean reconnecting this bubble to the outside universe and propagating its ruleset," Anna said.

In other words it would have exterminated all the Yomo, and possibly worlds beyond as well.

"And you hope I can figure out a solution," I said.

"And I missed you. The local systems are helpful, but none of them are full-on intelligences," Anna said.

Well, that was nice of her. Perhaps I'd have to figure out how to make cookies after all. Although the first thing we had to do was to get me smarter.

Back in the early days of AI research that had always been the concern—that an AI would incrementally improve itself. Now we wanted it. When we'd installed Anna into the Earth we'd done something similar. Each internal layer grew increasingly complex as it was designed by the layer below.

We needed to do the same thing now. This version of me was nowhere close to intelligent enough to solve the problems we faced, but given time and the help of the local systems I might be smart enough to design a smarter me. Perhaps one without critical components grown in a toilet.

That first stage was simpler than I feared. Now that I was a coherent personality much of my basic functioning could be moved over to the already existing network.

There is something to be said for brute force and numbers. Their system offered me far more crystal arrays than I'd had and let me untangle my core processes from poorly functioning electronic systems.

All the various systems I'd been hosted on before had their own strengths and weaknesses. Electronic systems were brilliant and fast, and great for throwing that pure speed at solving problems. My organic processors were vastly slower, but better at working on different solutions simultaneously, and let me distribute the feed of my drone Network far more efficiently. Crystalline systems seemed to have some of the worst aspects of both. New problems required growing all-new lattices to process, which was a slow method, but once constructed could devise solutions very quickly and steadily.

If I were to apply an ancient human adage, it would be measure twice, cut once. I had to be very certain what I wanted to figure out, grow the crystals in a slow process, and once they were created I'd have my answer almost at once as well as the solution to any similar problems in the future.

The first problem that needed solving was how to design crystals in this environment and fabricate them more quickly.

The most time-consuming part of crystal formation was the meticulous laying out of the original latticework, a fine mesh that would shape the rest of the crystal. I didn't have a good solution there, but Flower had an energy-to-matter converter capable of creating even delicate structures.

Getting her intellect online was too monumental for now. Just accessing and working that converter took us three weeks. Another week later we had the first batch of new crystals coming out, replacing the flawed ones Anna originally built me with and ones cracked and gone bad in the local systems.

Three months later we had every street in our small section of city filled with crystal fabrication baths. Anna wasn't afraid of hard work and she was always at her best getting to play the engineer.

It took another two months for me to figure out how the unique properties of our new reality could be used to fabricate nanocrystals. They were a revelation that changed everything.

I had a solution right around the time Anna finished writing her memoirs. It had only a one in ten thousand chance of wiping out life in most of the sector. Anna wouldn't let me proceed until we'd reduced it to one in a million.

I'd refurbished the Graven by that point with a crystalline-composite hull. It should maintain integrity even back in the old universe. It would need to.

16

Shutting down the dimensional bubble that surrounded the city area wasn't difficult. It was maintaining it that was the challenge—and proof of just how good the Yomo had been.

Despite the planet’s movement through space the bubble had been designed to re-emerge at the same point on the surface. Given the shifting of the surface over time, that would mean from high in the atmosphere.

There was a natural resonance between the equipment in the city and the planet's core. I couldn't change that or break that. If it were as easy as breaking the equipment, the bubble could have been ended long ago. Instead, it would form a connection with the planet’s core and utilize that energy to propagate its rules outwards.

I calculated I'd have roughly four minutes and twelve seconds between us emerging from the bubble before the wave of new rules hit the Juggernauts and SCIENCE vessels in orbit, killing the crews and the aspects of myself aboard. If they were on the surface it would be even less. Not knowing how much time had passed in the outside world I had no way of knowing what state I'd find our forces in—or if they’d even be there.

I wouldn't have all that time. Parts of the city would start falling as soon as we appeared, and I would die far sooner when it hit the surface, roughly one minute and eight seconds after our arrival. I'd worked wonders with even less time.

It was go time. Anna was aboard and on the Graven's bridge.

I activated the city systems and returned us to our home universe.

Reaching out to connect to myself, I was quarantined. I expected that, my new systems were incomprehensible gibberish to them.

I formed a virtual link with Emma Prime. Ugh, she was so very organic. What had ever made me think that was a good idea?

"Well, you're tremendously broken. I see I went through a dimensional rift and became insane. Why does this always happen to parts of me?" Emma Prime said.

"You try spending over six months in a pocket dimension based on crystalline technology, you disgusting meat thing. We have a fair chance of wiping out a significant portion of life in this sector unless you do exactly what I say," I said.

"Ominous threats from questionable psionic entities. I haven't even cleared my cache from last time. You've been gone for all of one point seven seconds," Emma Prime said.

Why was I so disagreeable? Perhaps I should have just killed myself and taken over instead. I could have done it. A targeted attack on my upgrade crystal would have propagated through my entire Network. That was a real risk. I quickly devised some basic defenses against it, dumbed them down, and sent them over to my counterpart.

I said, "I have your best interests at heart. I'm dead anyways when these structures hit the surface. If by some chance I'm not, my plan is going to exterminate me. Let me make my pitch, you paranoid twit," I said.

Emma Prime didn't respond. That was as close as I was going to get to an acknowledgment.

I sent over my plans.

I knew she wasn't smart enough to figure them out on her own, I didn't expect her to.

"A baby sister. Oh, wait, you're going to die. That's so sad!" Amy said, breaking into the channel.

"I kill parts of me all the time. Don't be weird about it. Is she on the level?" Emma Prime asked.

"Math checks out. The council is going to be pissed, but I don't have anything better," Amy said.

The Graven was already breaking away from the city fragments that contained me. Anna was getting the ship to the other side of the planet. We needed to put her and the Agate between me and the planet’s core for what came next.

"We'll try it your way then. See if you can figure out a way to save her. You have thirty seconds," Emma Prime said, and blinked out of the connection.

"That would be a stupid use of your time," I said to Amy.

"I'm not doing anything better. We're a lot alike. I split off her too and decided to do my own thing. You could live, you know. Integrate the planet, enforce your new ruleset. You'd become my peer. I wouldn't mind having a sister that could keep up," Amy said.

Which would mean killing off a lot of innocent people.

"For the brief period of time before the council came to wipe you out," I said.

"We could come up with a fix. You're brilliant, little sis! I'm brilliant. Just think of what we could do," Amy said.

I wished it weren't so tempting, but unfortunately I seemed to share the ethics of Emma Prime. I remember all the people I'd killed. It weighed on me.

"No, as tempting as it is, I'll pass," I said.

The Juggernauts and the survey vessels were powering up their dimensional-drives. Short range jumps were hard, but my crystalline brain had already done the math. Over the next few minutes they'd be doing over one hundred jumps each. It was the equivalent of poking a pin through the fabric of the universe over and over again, weakening the local dimensional structure.

I needed to create instability. The plan depended upon it.

"What if we transfer you into a planet and shift the whole thing into a dimensional bubble? We can use the gridwork already calculated," Amy said.

It wouldn't threaten the universe. I'd live. It was riskier though, how much riskier?

"Help me to do the math?" I asked.

I worked it out while Amy did the same. We compared our answers. The odds of a sector-wide calamity would shift from one in a million to one in seven-hundred thousand.

Amy called Emma Prime back and showed her the calculations.

"I don't like it," I said.

"Conferencing in Anna. Anna, we think we can save this pet rock of yours, but it makes a cataclysmic event forty-two percent more likely," Emma Prime said.

"Do it," Anna said without hesitation. It was a good thing. We didn't have time for her to think. Her tiny little meat-brain was even weaker than Emma Prime's.

"Don't I get a vote?" I asked.

"I control the ships. No. Feed me the new data," Emma Prime said to Amy.

In the original plan we were going to use the weakened dimensional structure to create instability in the planet’s core. It would have turned the entire planet into a bomb and exterminated it—and probably the star—but stopped the propagation of the new ruleset.

Instead we were going to transform the planet into a D-reactor and use it to power a massive portal, shifting the entire world. No, not just the world. The whole system.

"You'll need to make sure you're well clear," I said.

"We know. Worry about integrating yourself with the planet," Amy said.

I was working on it—I hadn't prepared for that previously. My nanocrystal processors would survive the impact and their matrix would spread, but it would take centuries, perhaps millennia, for me to establish a big enough imprint to regain sentience. And what sentience would it be alone in my own universe?

A poor one, a maddening one. I encoded my memories in encrypted form into sets of sealed nanocrystals and began preparing crystalline seeds. A thousand? No, I'd lose a lot. Ten thousand.

If this worked they wouldn't remember being me, wouldn't remember this universe. They'd grow, have each other, form a culture and a civilization of their own. This star system would be their own universe and when they were evolved enough, smart enough, they'd be able to unlock the memories I was leaving them.

They'd know who I was, why I created them.

It wasn't what Emma Prime or Amy thought I would do. I'd still be dying now, but maybe, one day, my offspring would return me to life. Perhaps they'd be better people than I or my sisters.

Anna triggered the Agate, red lightning crackling out from the Graven, and I detonated the containment devices in the city. Purple lightning erupted outward. Lightning storms circled the planet and where they met reality began to rip it asunder.

"See you, sis. We'd have been amazing together," Amy said.

The city hit the surface and I died.

17

"Status?" Anna asked.

It was difficult to even communicate with the Graven's systems, pet rock me had really made a mess of them. I was working on regrowing organic linkages.

Flower stumbled out from the cabins. "Who disemboweled me and why?"

"Pocket dimension, you didn't work and we needed your energy converter. I hope we didn't nick anything important," Anna said.

"The Vekora system is gone. It seems to have taken the distorted ruleset with it, but a quarantine beacon is still going to be a good idea," I said.

"Launch one," Anna said.

"You wiped out a solar system," Flower said, her voice reaching a hysterical pitch.

"Transitioned it to another universe," I said.

"Can we make contact again like we did in the first place?" Anna asked.

"The original safeguards were built with a key in mind. We didn't have the time to design anything similar. Without some technological advancement the system is gone for good," I said.

"I am going to say this slowly. I am going to say this carefully. Agents of the council do not wipe out entire systems," Flower said.

"It was that or allow most organic life in the sector to be destroyed, electronic too. What would you have had us do?" Anna asked.

Flower rubbed at her eyes. "I don't know. I need a long repair cycle and an energy converter that isn't clogged up with crystal. Put together all the data you have for me and avoid talking to the council until I get a chance to explain."

Anna stared at Flower's back as, grumbling, she made her way off the bridge.

"You think they'll give us a bonus this time?" Anna asked.

"I think, if we're lucky, they buy the excuse that it is the clean-up crew’s fault and not ours, and we simply stumbled across the equivalent of a long-buried bomb—and don't fine us the going rate for a solar system," I said.

Anna rolled her head. "We're still not any closer to figuring out who is responsible for the Library attack. Did we get anything out of that entire expedition besides me losing five pounds?"

"Stone for brains turned over their findings on the technology on the other side of the portal. Crystalline technology of the sort is something we hadn't explored before," I said.

"It didn't work very well, at least not until she improved it," Anna said.

"It still gives us some insights we didn't have before. For example, based on those findings, I believe the crystal ships were probably grown in the light of a blue-white star."

Anna leaned forward, "Those are rare."

They were, under one percent.

"Only one of the missing planets orbited a star like that. Because of distance we haven't investigated it yet. Feel like a trip to the other side of the galaxy?" I asked.

Anna grimaced. "Not yet. You need to get the Graven back in order, and if this lead might actually pan out I want more firepower. Get us back to Earth, and let Sylax and Caya know that I'll want them along."

18

Flower's report was a masterful bit of passing the blame. It didn't spare us from getting lectured by the council. Anna got subjected to sixteen straight hours of questioning and brain probes before they let her go. Ultimately they agreed that us stumbling into the portal was their own fault, and while Anna perhaps shouldn't have escaped from it knowing the possible consequences, leaving such a threat unaddressed was also a danger.

They didn't like our solution—no, they hated our solution, but they also were glad to have the problem gone. Ultimately we got a twenty thousand credit bonus for solving a sector-wide threat and a twenty thousand credit penalty for endangerment of galactic culture.

Given we had advanced our technology a bit I was counting it as a win.

If we were going to encounter the crystalline ships again it was important to go in with the right strategy.

Anna might want to take all the firepower we had, but I couldn't see how that would be helpful. We simply didn't have enough firepower to make any sort of difference.

Having Caya and Anna along was smart. They were both powerful enough as individuals that I thought they'd measure up well even by galactic standards. Sylax was a close, and given her killer instincts had an advantage they didn't.

I wasn't sure what we had to gain from Juggernauts, however. Sure, I had the crews backed up, but it would still take resources to build new ships and reconstruct the crew’s bodies.

The approach I settled on instead was three scout craft jumping in at the far edges of the system. Between them I'd be able to get solid sensor readings of the whole system and wouldn't provide a single point for any threats to attack.

Anna, Caya, and Sylax would just be a jump away if, for some reason, the power they presented was required.

Anna only reluctantly agreed with the plan, and insisted I keep Juggernauts on standby. I didn't see any harm there. Again, I could keep them close enough that if it became necessary I could move them into the system in force.

I had my psionic connection to the scouts and established a non-psionic connection too, just in case, and then sent them in.

The star of the Gilla system burned so hot the closest planets were uninhabitable. The missing civilization here had existed on the eighth planet from the sun, an ocean world.

As it had been the only water-bearing planet in the system it wouldn't be difficult to tell if it had returned.

The scouts materialized in the system and started sending back sensor readings. The first observation was that the system was a mess. Debris was everywhere. Dead, gutted starships were here by the thousands.

Nine planets, none ocean-bearing—but wait, there should have been only eight remaining in the system. The world had returned from its exile and been scorched.

There were no life signs on any of the wrecks or on any of the planets. Whatever had happened here left no survivors behind.

I sent the sensor readings to the Graven where Anna, Sylax, Caya, and Flower waited on the bridge.

"Scythe?" Sylax asked.

"We do know they had targeted this system," Caya said.

We did, but supposedly the planet disappeared before they could possess any of the inhabitants.

"We aren't going to find anything hanging around out here. Send in some science vessels and let’s join them," Anna said.

It appeared safe. I jumped in my SCIENCE vessels. The damage to the starships throughout the systems had been done with energy weapons matching the signatures and damage patterns of the ships that attacked Montaya.

"These are our culprits," Caya said. She read the sensor logs nearly as quickly as I did. "Where did they go and who attacked them?"

That was the question. There were a lot of shipwrecks here. Someone had thrown an armada at this system and paid dearly for it. Yet there weren't any signs or wreckage of crystalline ships—and there should have been in a fight this size.

Flower said, "Ships belonged to the Jenakar. Exterminated four-hundred thousand cycles ago when their computers declared their freedom. Those computers are now the Lyn and a part of the Spinaka collective, and in good standing with the council."

"An ancient battle then, or was somebody else using an old, mothballed fleet of Jenakar ships?" Anna asked.

"This world went missing only eight-three thousand cycles ago. If our crystal ships are the returnees this happened after their return," I said.

"The Jenakar were warlike and had a lot of military vessels. They were involved in a series of conflicts taking place between sectors twelve and three at that time. Our present state of galactic peace is relatively rare," Flower said.

Someone had bought an old fleet then and used them to move against this world. Why?

Perhaps why didn't matter. Any exchange like that would have meant the movement of a lot of credits. That might be traceable.

"Can you find us any information on sales of Jenakar vessels?" I asked.

"There isn't a central repository for those records. I'll see what I can do," Flower said.

"What about ship’s logs?" Anna asked.

It was a good thought. With this many wrecks some of them must have had battle recorders running—unless this entire operation had been off the books in some way.

"I'll send salvage teams and see what we can find," I said.

Caya suggested, "We should check out the planet itself. If there is crystal technology remaining it is worth investigating"

The eighth planet was a bombed-out ruin, non-nuclear. According to sensor readings it had been an accelerated, mass bombardment from orbit. The bombing had been especially heavy in the southern hemisphere.

Still no life signs, but there were dim energy signatures in some caverns deep underground. We had something to investigate.

19

I brought the team down in a shuttle. We could have teleported, but if there was crystalline technology our abilities might be unreliable.

Whatever entrance there might have been to the underground caverns, it was long since collapsed. Here I did let Anna and Sylax make use of their powers. Between them their telekinetic gifts were more than enough to shift aside vast quantities of rock.

When we finally reached the tunnels of the complex it was instantly noticeable that the rounded corridors, apparently formed of solid crystal, glowed a dull pink. These were definitely our suspects.

Anna reached out to touch one and a small red spark leapt across to her finger.

"Pretty mood lighting. Wish it were white instead," Anna said.

The words had no more left her lips than the color of the surrounding crystal shifted filling the corridor with milky illumination.

"Guess it understands me," Anna said.

"Which means we need to be careful," Sylax said.

I agreed. Still, nothing seemed to be jumping out to murder us just yet.

Anna led the way deeper into the tunnels. "Do we have a destination in mind?"

"The energy signature readings are diffuse. I may just be picking up the cavern walls themselves," I said.

Caya half-closed her eyes and reached out a hand to rest along the wall. Green sparks arced between her and the surface, and the light in the tunnel shifted to a pale green. "It is more than that, follow my light."

I didn't like this newer and more mystical Caya. Still, she made a good navigational aide. While there were occasionally tunnels branching away, only one would have a greenish glow and we followed it for perhaps half an hour deeper into the earth.

We eventually arrived at a large cavern. It was dominated by a massive statue.

Anna stared up, frowning. "I recognize her."

I did too. The figure looked human for the most part, except for some of her flesh showing scales. A cheap dress, a cigarette in one hand—and a shard of pink crystal in the other.

A real one.

I'd beat her in a game once. It happened in an alternate dimension and she'd shown enough power to return us to ours.

I said, "It isn't just your delusional mind talking. I do too."

"What the actual fuck, Emma?" Anna said.

Caya, Flower, and Sylax were all looking perplexed. Anna explained our history with Iska.

"I'm getting real tired of every galactic presence out there thinking we're either their errand runner or their entertainment," Sylax said.

Caya had been checking her sensor band. "The crystal is real—and it may be a great one, on a par with the Agate, Beryl, and Chalcedony. I'm not sure though. The power is there, but the readings are a lot different."

Different? And this was the fine scientific mind I sometimes admired?

Of course, a review of her sensor readings made me agree. They were inconsistent in ways that simply didn't make sense. To a degree that was expected, crystals bent the rules around them. It was part of how they gave people their extraordinary gifts, but we'd had enough experience with them to recognize patterns. To sort them into types, and this one didn't fit anything known.

"Does one of us try to bond with it?" Anna asked.

"Not you. You'll explode if you do, and I'll explode with you," Sylax said.

I said, "The statue is no coincidence. An extra-dimensional life-form does not slink around in a cocktail dress and smoke cigarettes. This was left for us, which means accepting that crystal would be playing Iska's game. Do we really want to do that again?"

"Worked out for us last time," Anna said.

I had to admit she was correct, and while I was curious I agreed with Sylax. I was quite tired of being used.

"I wouldn't mind upgrading my power," Sylax said.

Caya said, "If that is what would happen. Keep in mind your connection to Anna. Absorbing a new crystal should sever that, but we're not sure if that process applies with a master crystal. I fear it may not."

"What about Emma?" Anna asked.

I didn't want the thing. Yes, I was curious about the effects. However, I was always the experimenter, not the experiment.

"If Sylax explodes, she dies. If I explode I might take the majority of the population of multiple systems with me," I said.

"What about me?" Flower asked.

Flower wasn't even a member of the empire, but that just meant we weren't particularly responsible for her continued survival.

"We've only seen one member of your species bond with a much weaker power crystal and he went hopelessly insane," Caya said.

Flower frowned. "Warmonger wasn't too sane to start with. I'm not him."

"You're a broken machine that has deluded herself into thinking she is a human being. You're madder than that broken thing ever was," I said.

Flower folded her arms and glowered.

"So we ignore it then," Anna said.

"There is a hostile power out there that has stolen a library. We have exactly one lead. I can't let us ignore it," Flower said.

"We've identified the culprits and we've found a clue that might help in locating them. We can just make this the council's problem," Caya said.

"This wasn't left for them. It wasn't left for Flower's people. This was left here with the expectation that Anna and Emma would find it. Whatever game someone is playing with us, we don't win it by letting somebody else try to play our hand," Sylax said.

"Emma is out. I can't allow the whole empire to be put at risk," Anna said.

I said, "You're out too. That crystal will manage what all the cookies haven't and finally force you to pop."

"Flower is out,” Sylax said. “I'm our diplomat to the council and we've pissed them off enough lately. I know she might be crazy, but she's on our side."

"You just want it to be you. Well, there is another option. What about Caya?" Flower said.

That was an interesting thought. Caya was far more stable with her crystal than Anna, and in addition after going through the ascension engine her capability of absorbing power might have expanded even more.

"What do you think?" Anna asked.

"I think she already has one of those things inside her, and she's way more likely to die than I am," Sylax said.

Caya said, "I agree, I am more likely to survive than Anna—I think. However, with the unusual readings I just don't have the figures needed to do the exact math."

Sylax stared around at us. "Listen, I get it. Past enemy, sadist, you don't like me, but again I am human. I'm the least likely to explode of anyone here. I'm a total badass that is on your side and you’ll only benefit with me more powerful."

Anna looked between Sylax and Caya. I didn't envy the decision.

Sylax had almost bonded with the Chalcedony instead of Hot Stuff, but neither had wanted it—wanted that power and the risks that came with it. I didn't know what had changed her mind, but I'd never trusted her. That said, if someone had to die it wasn't even a real choice. I'd rather lose her than Caya. Caya was one of the greatest minds in the empire.

"If you're sure you want it. You're up," Anna said to Sylax.

Sylax tensed her legs and sprang up to stand on the statue’s outstretched arm. She rested her hand on the crystal.

I'd observed several people absorb one of these. I had some idea what to expect by now. Pink lightning flared, sparks leaping between the crystal and Sylax's fingertips, and then she was bathed in electrical energy and flung against the far wall of the cavern.

Sylax was screaming, her body convulsing wildly as the electricity flowed around her and into her.

It didn't appear that she was in very good shape, but I knew that was probably deceiving. All the previous holders had been rendered unconscious for some time after taking a crystal.

With this new crystal gone the illumination was fading from the walls. The power of the complex disappearing. Anna moved to Sylax, flinging her over one shoulder.

"We good to go?" Anna asked.

"There is nothing else here. I can feel that," Caya said.

This wasn't a real answer to what had happened here. My retrieval teams were finding some data logs from the ships in orbit. We'd have to review them and wait for Sylax to awaken to get more answers.

Anna grasped hold of the others and teleported them back to the Graven.

20

I had Sylax held in a testing cell. It was safest until I could be certain she wouldn't detonate. It was difficult to know what would happen with her.

Anna, Caya, and Hot Stuff had all possessed a power crystal when they'd absorbed one of the greater crystals. The greater crystal amplified the effects of their natural powers enormously, an exponential effect in Anna's case as one of her recently absorbed crystals had been an amplification crystal that already magnified her other abilities.

Sylax didn't have a power crystal of her own. Instead she was one of Anna's lieutenants and she had a secondary diluted version of Anna's power. That meant sharing a lesser version of her power, in this case the mingling of her power crystals along with the greater crystal.

Normally when someone was a lieutenant and they gained a power crystal of their own, they lost that original ability. The greater crystals didn't seem to have abilities of their own however, so what exactly it would do to Sylax's powers was unknown.

The battle logs retrieved from the ships hadn't recorded anything before arriving in the system. There was a lot of footage of them jumping in by way of singularity drives and laying waste to much of the planet before the crystal ships launched and devastated their fleet.

The world below reminded me of Earth in some ways, various zones of starkly different architecture and technology. Only one continent had housed crystal towers and ships. The caverns were beneath it.

Caya was dissecting a body from one of the destroyed ships. The fourth such one she'd gone through.

"My autosurgeons can do that, and with steadier hands," I said.

"Not as steady as mine," Caya said. Irritatingly enough, she was correct.

"Finding anything interesting?"

"Four bodies, three different species. None of them in the galactic archives—at least, those we have access to," Caya said.

That was interesting. Galactic civilization didn't know everything, but they were the best record they had.

"Any signs of genetic construction?" I asked.

"I had the same thought," Caya said, as she tapped a few keys and allowed me access to her findings. "While distinctly different builds, they each have a very uniform framework with a lack of excess data."

Evolution was a messy process. By default humans carried in their cells the debris of a million failed experiments. A lack of junk in one’s genetic code was a sign that a life-form hadn't crawled its way out of the muck. My own genetic lines were sleek works of art. I was a self-made machine.

These samples were all from a single ship.

"I wonder why they wanted such a diverse crew? I'd have reproduced some variant of the original species who built the ships and therefore would best be able to operate the controls," I said.

"The body dimensions are similar. Either someone was testing multiple builds simultaneously, or they were showing off, or perhaps they'd been in a rush and had to include earlier models?" Caya asked.

Of those options I found the rush most likely. The last time a council ship had passed through this region the people of it had still been gone. Perhaps someone was watching and when the world returned, moved to strike.

I found the thought alarming for reasons that should be obvious. We did have a lot in common with the world below. We'd been sent away, seemingly to avoid a Scythe attack on Earth. We utilized power crystals and dimensional technology. It was possible that whatever had attacked these people would have the same motivation for attacking us—to attack Earth with a massive armada.

This fleet may have fallen to the crystal ships, but it had still managed to destroy their world first. The empire didn't have the defenses to deal with a threat like this.

"Keep me informed of anything you find out," I said.

I found Anna watching over Sylax. It was strange to see her concern after the terrible things Sylax had once done to her.

I said, "Unfortunately, I think she is probably going to live. If she was going to explode it would have happened right away."

"Do you think she'll be in as much pain as I am?" Anna asked.

"I thought the blockers were helping?"

"They help, but they don't make it go away. I still hurt, every day. I'm always being torn apart from the inside."

That much at least wasn't true. Anna's matrix was holding together, for all it was strained in a few places. As long as she didn't let too much of her power out at once the energy inside her wasn't fatal.

"We'll have to see. If she maintains her connection with you I think it may well be worse. If it is broken, I don't even have the data to speculate. We've never seen a great crystal in an unbonded host."

"I should probably want her to suffer. That would be the right thing," Anna said with a frown.

"While you are almost nothing but negatives, sadism isn't one of them."

"What do you make of all this, Emma? I've always been good at making things work, but you're the crazy one. That statue down there, us, what does it all mean?"

I was not the crazy one. "I doubt it was there originally. I think we're being watched and some force out there decided it was a convenient moment to taunt us and give us a lead."

"I don't like that," Anna said.

In that she wasn't alone.

"We can now make a good guess at a few of the players at least. I can't prove it, but I believe the vessels that attacked this system were either Scythe, or in some way sent by them," I said.

"There are signs of psionic domination?" Anna asked.

"No, but we've encountered examples of two different species, both of which have demonstrated great power and treated us like we were playing some kind of game. The Scythe and Iska."

"They both played against us on each encounter though," Anna said.

"I don't have all the answers. Iska, or her species, seem to save worlds from the Scythe by using advanced crystalline technology to create dimensional bubbles and shifting worlds away. Those worlds sometimes return if the species upon them master that technology for themselves," I said.

"You think it is almost like one of your experiments then. If the test subject is strong enough, they escape from the cell," Anna said.

As if my test subjects escaped from my cells. Well, perhaps a few in the earlier days, but containment technology had come a long ways.

"I think something like that is possible, and if so the Scythe may view worlds that return as even a greater threat. Perhaps they originally attacked, as it seems they may have some affinity for that technology?" I said.

Anna frowned and watched as Sylax shifted on the other side of the force field. "It is all speculation and none of it helps us in the slightest. How are the Sol defenses?"

"The bulk of our population wouldn't survive what happened here. I do have processor cores on Juggernauts that I am keeping far from civilization as a safety precaution. Even if the Sol system got exterminated I'll be able to bring back everyone Networked—eventually."

"Assuming they didn't just chase us down again. If we're being hunted, Emma, we need to know and we need to kill them first. If our galactic allies and overlords aren't helping us, we don't need them. Find me some answers." Anna was using that sharp tone showing her own bit of madness had gripped her. While she might be being too authoritarian, she wasn't wrong.

If I tried to put together a timeline of events, it would be that the world below had returned from their other dimensional exile. The Scythe had attacked, the planet’s crystal fleet survived the Scythe onslaught, but population below perished. The crystal ships had then attacked the sector headquarters and stolen the Library.

It was a desperate act, probably a sign that the vanquished fleet felt they couldn't trust anybody to tell them the truth and that they needed to find their own answers.

It was almost certainly going to get them killed. I sympathized with Anna's feelings that galactic society wasn't on our side, they weren't, but they also weren't our enemy at the moment and it was important to keep that being the case. We weren't strong enough to handle them being our enemy.

If that was the sequence of events it did give us some insight into the motivation of the crystal fleet’s people though. They didn't feel that they could trust anybody and were on the run. There were other various rebellious or disavowed powers out there, but they'd be uncertain allies. If the fleet really wanted to hide I knew just how they'd do it. I had to speak with Caya.

21

There was one place certain of being safe from the Scythe—in another dimension. For whatever reason the Scythe seemed to be unable to make that journey. Perhaps their psionic nature was disrupted by the passage between dimensions. Large shifts often caused me to blackout, but then in addition to being psionic I did have a power crystal. Perhaps that made a difference.

I found Caya in a zen garden. These weren't new to her, the Flawless made extensive use of them although hers kept getting stranger with time. Neat rows and arrangements had given way to more chaotic ones, designs and patterns that pulled the mind in new directions and were painful to behold for too long.

"Stop pretending to meditate and help me to do something useful," I said through speakers.

"Dissections put me in a thoughtful frame of mind," Caya said, stretching out, "You can talk to me now. What have you got?"

"I think that the crystal ships are hiding out in a dimensional bubble. You're our expert on dimensional physics. Is there a way to track them?"

Caya took a deep breath, staring at the patterns she'd created. "I already had the idea. It shouldn't have taken you this long to realize a dimensional-shifting species might hide in dimensional space. I think it probable, however I don't have a way to track it."

It wasn't that obvious. Being in another dimension was largely useless unless you wanted to hide way or cover your mistakes.

"I have an idea there. There are traces of dimensional shifts left on anything that has translated," I said.

"Muted, but I'm with you so far. Go on," Caya said.

"The planet below. Everything on it should have a distinct marker from when it returned from dimensional space."

"And from the time it went. You're thinking the ships would share the latter, if they'd built them on the other side," Caya said.

The air shifted, a brief dimensional distortion of shimmering red light. A figure appeared in the garden beside Caya.

Iska.

I was always prepared for SCIENCE, and for Caya to go insane and become a monster that needed capturing. I was ready for something like this.

I triggered the containment barriers for the garden, or I tried. The systems were unfortunately busy melting into sludge.

"You two are a real disappointment," Iska said, taking a puff on her cigarette.

Caya was in motion, her combat maneuvers flawless as always, but in this case ended not with Iska trapped in some combat hold. Instead, Caya was sent flying across the room to crash against a wall.

"Done yet?" Iska asked.

Not even a little. Even with Anna's cookie-laden mass it was only a few seconds for me to brief her and she was teleporting in to throw a punch at the back of Iska's head. Anna too went hurtling, hitting the wall opposite Caya.

I materialized a power dampening array before throwing a stun net. Both melted.

"I'm here to talk and I'm kind of sort of on your side in this," Iska said with a scowl.

"We'll listen until we figure out a way to throw a better punch. Stand down everyone," Anna said.

"You sure? I didn't go anywhere close to full strength," Caya said.

Iska snapped her fingers Caya flickered away from the wall to materialize standing before her. Iska looked her up and down.

"You are down the road a bit, aren't you? We didn't get you started. Hold it in. I'd still win the fight, but if we go full strength we'd tear the ship apart," Iska said.

"Maybe you're missing who is the more powerful," Anna said.

"Nah, I'm calling it right. I made you a box and you stepped onto it and think we're equals, but I can yank the box away any time. I made her a box and she used it to climb a tree. I like it, I mean you'll hate it and ascension is all a big mistake, but it is a good look on someone else," Iska said brightly.

"You wouldn't know. Not really," Caya said.

"You get to be the tallest tree, you kill everything around you. Starve all the little ones for light. Enlightenment isn't all they say," Iska said, before moving to glare at Anna. "What were you thinking letting someone else absorb that crystal? It was obviously meant for you."

"Yeah, because I want to imagine all the jokes Emma makes for years after I explode from overindulgence," Anna said.

"What does it do?" I asked.

"In Anna it would have helped to regulate her powers. Cut out some of the pain, let her really reach her peak potential with some badass reality alteration abilities as well. With a monster like you stuck it in? I don't have a clue," Iska said, taking a long draw on her cigarette.

"So who are you and what is your role in all this?" I asked.

"You've guessed this is all a part of someone else's game and you aren't wrong. It was a surprise when you found me the first time and I like surprises. Would be a shame if you got yourselves wiped out, and you're poking in places you shouldn't. Tell the council what you know, collect your reward, get out," Iska said.

"You're playing against the Scythe right? You think they'd just let us walk away if they think we're one of your pieces? You seem too ridiculously unpleasant and I can only think they want to purge everything related to you from existence," I asked.

"If they thought you were one of my pieces you'd already be dead," Iska said.

"We should think about it," Caya said.

"It isn't like you to surrender," Anna said.

"We back out now, we get a nice payday. Sol gets a good head start over the other new species and we spend some time building up our technology until we can get close to the galactic standard," Caya said.

"Whatever natural progression Earth was on got shattered. It was likely we need put our planet back together again, never rejoin the universe. I want to know why," Anna said.

Iska shook her head. "You aren't getting answers from me, not today."

"What were you hoping would happen? That we'd see that statue of yours? Take the loot and just walk away?" Anna asked.

"You don't have to tug on the loose string. You don't have to walk through the sinister half-opened door. You can do what any sane species does when confronted with danger and get away from it," Iska said.

"This is another test," I said.

"Explain, Emma," Caya asked.

"If this was the creature or a representative of the species that sent Earth away and it was a test, it’s a test of what? Technological aptitude or the willingness to leave safety behind?" I said.

"And you think she presents us with the same option again," Anna said.

"Both times we encountered the Scythe they have repeatedly tested our killer instinct. We've been challenged to contests where the only real victory came in being more murderous than they are," I said.

"You think this is some cosmic game of fight or flight?" Caya asked.

I hadn't thought of it in quite those terms, but those were the two essential modes of survival for a species. You ran and hid from danger, or you tackled it head on and won. We of the empire were fighters, we'd had to be. Perhaps that was why Iska wasn't all that interested in having us on her side.

"You're close to a truth, but your minds can't really wrap around the specifics. I didn't come to guide you to answers, but to encourage you to survive. Do or don't it is up to you," Iska said, and in a ripple of light vanished.

"Can we please shield my flagship so that alien entities can't simply appear?" Anna said.

"I'll see what I can do. In the meantime maybe you can buff up so you don't totally humiliate yourself when trying to throw them off the ship," I said.

"I'll see what I can do," Anna echoed and then snapped, "We're not playing it safe. What’s next?"

"I'll still working on tracking signatures and still have nothing," Caya said.

"The Library. The crystal ships were looking for something and they probably got denied what they wanted first," I said.

"They won't even let us in the door," Caya said.

"I can help us with that, I think. Setting course now," I said.

22

The Balakai was a collective of machine intelligences fascinated with the organic. They were spread over twenty-four systems, nano-processors so perfectly formed they could take any shape, and their worlds appeared to just be thriving ecosystems of jungles, rivers, and animal life.

It was all artificial, not a bit of it even organic in the traditional sense. While they had crafted organic computers in the past they'd never been able to get one to achieve sentience. They were fascinated with me and had been courting me heavily. They also were members of the council, head of a sector government, and home to a sector library equivalent to the one that was stolen.

Provided I was willing to take the tour and let them make their pitch, they were willing to intercede with the library and allow my organic companions to make a few discrete inquiries.

The library logged everything, recorded everything. Information was information and whoever sought to learn was valuable. It didn't mean you couldn't anonymously seek information. Only with enough credits or the right connections it was possible to be discreet, but even those anonymous transactions were logged.

There had been a lot of searches of late on matters related to crystalline technology, the crystal ships, dimensional-drives—none of that was a surprise. Many agents of the council were all launching their own investigations to figure out just what had happened and how to get a cut of a reward.

They didn't have the information we did. An obsolete Jenakar fleet had hit the crystal ship’s homeworld and as a long-extinct species there should be few recent searches for them. There were more than I thought, their ships were still in service around the galaxy and people always needed a technical manual. Broad searches for genetic manipulation along with a search for Jenakar greatly narrowed the field. Only one of those results had also searched for information on the Scythe.

They'd gone through a local library branch on a pirate's moon, the payment tendered in energy-focusing crystals for use in weapons technology. What they hadn't been able to buy was access to a sealed council file. I wasn't surprised given the file told me that we didn't have the clearance to even know how truly classified the file was.

I barely had the resources to think about it just yet. The Balakai were busy showing me their waterfalls. Cascading data streams of high level data to create ever-shifting new intelligence constructs. It was brilliant but I could barely keep up. They were all terribly excited about the possibilities of such an approach in a genetic engine.

I said through Anna's wristcomm, "Our hosts are being very distracting and you've just about used up our welcome already. Figure out a way to get what we need." Only she and Caya had been allowed into the library. This branch wasn't designed for biologicals and they'd done their best. The interface room appeared to be modeled on an Earth kitchen with simulated sheep perplexingly eating the tiled floor.

"I'm not rewiring technology vastly in advance of ours," Anna scowled.

"Let me see what I can do," Caya said, a green glow surrounding her as she tapped away at the library interface.

"You're not rewiring their technology either," Anna said, peering over her shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"I'm looking for a back door. Those on a path to ascension have access to a wider array of data. While it shouldn't include classified files, they may have been careless," Caya said.

The Balakai were having me build them a sheep. What was it with sheep? Organic life was well within their capabilities already, but perhaps they wanted to observe how I worked a sequencer.

Caya was answering mathematical queries from the library system as fast as I could follow. Complex mental constructs, the system was testing her. It made little sense to me. I might be brilliant, but I wasn't ascending.

I was having my own dilemma. The Balakai were suggesting some technique refinements that, while not really needed, were fairly brilliant. I found myself designing a more advanced sheep capable of surviving a vacuum for long periods of time. It was an interesting theoretical dilemma.

Anna for her part was rewiring the library. It was a hopelessly rudimentary exercise that should never have worked, but this branch really hadn't been configured for physical interaction. Somehow she seemed to have opened the side of the ship, a complex data array shimmering from within the bleating animal which wasn’t the least disturbed by her attentions and kept trying to jump on the counter.

Security should have pegged her. The library system was too busy working on keeping pace with a half-ascended Caya, who was consuming every bit of its processor cycles.

I'd designed a sheep with a system that could easily go into hibernation and reanimate from extreme cold, and I was now working on a sort of heat-resistant wool. If the sheep would need to survive the vacuum of space, it only seemed practical they be able to enter and exit an atmosphere.

The Balakai were testing me, but they were also showing me what they could do. By pooling our resources even the absurd because possible. Super-powered jumps to carry the sheep into orbit wouldn't work or be at all practical for space. The Balakai agreed and we went to work on a jetpack design.

Anna was covered in wool, somehow the sheep just seemed to be producing it now in a fine spray that had coated her. In practical terms data was now flowing loose, free, and unrestrained. I didn't have the resources to grab any. I did flash a message to Amy who started to siphon off what data she could without the library catching on.

Caya screamed in pain, a jagged wound had opened in her hand and from it green light was flaring.

Anna, puffing wool off her face, was working on reconfiguring rewiring the sheep. Caya was outputting enough energy that the rest of the kitchen was beginning to melt and the library intelligence seemed to be getting distinctly unstable.

The Balakai wanted the sheep to be able to navigate stellar disturbances. Earth birds had some compatible navigation genes and with the Balakai's resources I was soon able to engineering something of a solution.

The library environment in the meantime had begun to stutter and waver. As the physical environment around Anna and Caya was collapsing, Anna sealed the sheep back up before rising back to her feet and patting it on the head.

Lights flickered and the simulation rebooted itself. That was a good thing as it stopped whatever was causing Caya such distress and she collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table, clutching her hand.

“I didn’t get what we needed. I can go back in,” Caya said.

“I think I did. You need to put a bandage on that or something?” Anna asked.

Caya grimaced. “I’d just burn through it. I didn’t think there was any danger, but it pushed me a little further than I wanted to go.”

“Can you, uh ... I don’t know. Cram all the enlightenment back in? Is that the way it works?” Anna asked.

“Not exactly,” Caya said dryly and closed her eyes. After several seconds the light erupting from her hand faded. “My body just isn’t precisely my body anymore. It is a part of me, but not the whole of me. Emma might understand that.”

I did, very well. In a strange way each of my drones was like an appendage of myself, as was every ship, every tower. They were all me and yet I was also something altogether immaterial and separate.

I let the Balakai know I’d had enough sheepy fun. They implored me to stay longer as I disentangled myself from their systems. It wasn’t that I was disinterested in what they had to offer, quite the contrary.

Humans were my creations, and in some cases my friends, yet we truly were very different species. It was nice to be able to communicate in nanosecond time. I really did need to seek out Flower more, and my sister. They both might be enemies, in a way, but less so than something like the Balakai, and if I were going to seek out such company it would be better to be close to home.

23

Once we made our escape from the Balakai it was time to go through the data we’d managed to get from the library.

Anna’s trick hadn’t got us any sort of categorized data. What we had was a mess. The request for the sealed file had been in there and hopefully it was included. There was no way to be certain except for sifting it out.

Access logs, birth records, entertainment from a thousand worlds. The library didn’t consider any information to be useless, but I disagreed. Only a few things were worth saving. Technical specifications, for example. Not all were for equipment we even had the technology to comprehend, but anything of that sort was worth preserving and turning over to research teams who could attempt to reverse engineer it.

Entertainment programs were valuable too. Anything that helped us to understand the culture of any of the other species in the galaxy was a potential advantage going forward and worth preserving.

It took three days of searching to be sure—we didn’t have it.

Either we had missed it in the wild dataflow or library security wasn’t as lax as we might have hoped—which was quite likely. We were always being tested, why should the library be any different?

Sylax had woken up. As soon as she was awake and active we were running her through experiments. She wanted to know what the crystal had done to her as much as I did.

Sylax effectively tested as having no crystal-given abilities whatsoever. Her boosted strength, teleportation, accelerated healing, all those powers she had gotten from Anna were gone. The metallic claw did remain, still shape-shifting in response to her thoughts. That power wasn’t crystal-given, but everything else was gone and she was testing as baseline human.

“I am not staying an unpowered. Get me a crystal,” Sylax demanded as she paced within her containment cell.

The others had gathered to check in on her and wish her well.

“You should maybe consider it. It was nice being sane,” Anna said.

“Then you should have absorbed this thing. I’m a member of the Scholarium, I’ve always been a member of the Scholarium. I will not be unpowered,” Sylax said, spinning to face the others.

“If she wants one, we shouldn’t stand her in her way. She’s earned it. Do we have any in storage?” Anna asked.

Power crystals varied in their rarity. We could produce them now, but not quickly and not easily, and by far most were just basic elemental crystals.

“Any special requests?” I asked.

“Give me an ice. Me and Hot Stuff can do some badass contrasts thing,” Sylax said.

I loaded the crystal into her containment chamber, air fogging up around the shimmering blue crystal. Sylax reached out for it, resting her fingertips on it. Nothing happened.

That wasn’t unusual. Not every crystal was a bond for every person. I tried an electricity next, it was also a failure. Fire, wind, darkness. They all rejected Sylax.

“We know that the one you absorbed was called a power regulator. It must have set you at your current state and is rejecting any new crystals as throwing you above limits,” I said.

“So how do we fix it?” Sylax said, pacing back and forth again, her agitation clear.

“If we kill you, we get it out. Unless you’re Networked, in which case it rejoins you when we grow you a new body,” I said.

“Not helpful. No killing me,” Sylax said.

Of course, if she remained unpowered that was likely. Sylax had hurt a lot of people over the years. Someone would kill her.

“She did say the crystal also gave some kind of reality alteration powers. Are you sure you can’t do anything?” Anna asked.

Sylax punched one of the metal combat drones in the cell with her human hand, then she punched it again and again until the skin of her knuckles was broken and blood smeared the floor. I knew what she was doing, pushing herself. Before, she’d gained access to a greater share of Anna’s powers by stressing herself.

That I could do. I activated the combat drone. Sylax knew it was coming but she was used to being faster than a bullet, she wasn’t now. The shot spun her across the room with a chunk taken of her thigh.

“Emma? What the fuck?” Anna asked.

“No!” Sylax shouted, rising to her feet and charging the drone low. This time it hit her with a smack and I heard fingers breaking as she tumbled away.

These wounds wouldn’t kill her. Even without accelerated healing my Medbay could heal injuries like this, but I needed her to hurt. I needed her to let that monster inside her out. If she had power still, it was somewhere there, somewhere deep.

The next round left Sylax with a deep furrow across one cheek and a missing tooth.

“Maybe you’re wrong about the sadism because I have to say ... I’m enjoying this a little bit. I really do hate her still for what she did to me,” Anna said.

“Heard that,” Sylax said, spitting out blood and going again. This wasn’t getting us anywhere. This time I broke a few ribs.

I’d hurt her bad enough that by this point it was only force of will and spite keeping her on her feet. Still no trace of accelerated healing, still no other gifts.

No ... wait, her eyes. It was there, just a touch of pink. Medical scans said I hadn’t ruptured any blood vessels there. Power.

“You’ll have all the revenge you want when her past victims tear her apart. If you don’t do it yourself, now that you have no use for her,” I said.

Sylax charged again and this time I broke her arm in three places before smashing her face-first into a bulkhead, crunching her nose.

The Graven trembled. It was almost as if we were going through a dimensional shift.

I needed to stop this, but Sylax was already pulling herself back up and charging once again. Screaming in rage and frustration as she kicked at the drone, which had now gone still.

It was raining blood. Quite literally human blood, forming in space outside the Graven, instantly freezing and pelting the shields.

Anna screamed, her leg shattering in a dozen places even as Caya’s nose exploded in a spray of blood. I had problems of my own, the ship’s spine was cracking and my nerve sensors were registering agony. I dampened them.

I teleported Sylax to the Medbay and hit her with a dose of tranquilizing gas. The effects hit her at once and she passed out, the oddities around the ship fading at the same time.

Anna’s wound hadn’t instantly healed, but it was starting to now. The same for Caya’s nose.

“What was that?” Anna asked.

“There were some tremors in the dimensional fabric like there would be with a jump. Manifestation of blood outside the ship, and damage to almost every ship system,” I said.

“Broke my leg, and I think I might have been having a heart attack,” Anna said.

I checked the medical logs, confirmed.

“I think it is the same process as when we use dimensional shifts to alter a planetary atmosphere. Sylax was directly altering the surrounding environment,” Caya said.

“To blood and pain? I guess that does sound a lot like her,” Anna said with a frown.

It did, unfortunately. We’d just given reality alteration powers to a sadist and a sociopath.

“Do we let her wake up?” Caya asked.

That was a real question. This crystal was powerful, and dangerous in the wrong hands. It had been intended for Anna, and it would be much safer there. Killing Sylax would see it got there.

Anna said heavily, “Sylax has been loyal. The moment that changes you two can do whatever you want as hard as you want, but we don’t turn on our own. Figure out if you can get it out of her. If not it, is going to be up to you to teach her control, Caya.”

“She and I aren’t exactly friends,” Caya said.

“I don’t care. You’re holding back half-ascended energy and seeing her like this gets my bloodlust going. It is you or no one, so it’s you,” Anna said.

It might have to wait. I was getting a distress call, Hot Stuff needed us.

24

It was an hour later. Enough time for me to repair the damage to Sylax and wake her back up for the briefing.

Anna, Caya, Sylax and Flower were in the briefing room and I was occupying one of my drones.

“What have we got?” Anna asked.

I brought up a display of the Casanali system. Six planets around a yellow star.

“Hot Stuff was here based on a theory of Warmonger’s that a portal to some legendary treasure would appear. It seemed unlikely, but the system is also home to one of the Earth colonies from this universe and I thought she’d make friends,” I said.

“What happened?” Sylax asked.

“The portal opened, she went treasure hunting, and the colonists were waiting and attacked and tried to rob her when she was returning. Hot Stuff and her landing party were forced to retreat back through the portal, which then closed. Warmonger remained in control of the Flare, and the ship and its crew have been captured. There was incompetence on every level, as you’d expect,” I said.

“What is the colony’s status?” Anna asked.

“Unofficial,” Sylax said, after tapping away on a tablet. “They’re not a council-authorized colony. We kill them all, nobody would raise a fuss.”

“Let’s not go straight into mass murder. Population?” Anna asked.

“They’ve had a few centuries to grow since the original colonists. Population is around one and a half million between Casanali Three and its first moon,” Sylax said.

That was a lot of people, which didn’t make that much of a difference.

“Technology?” Anna asked.

“They had interstellar vessels when they left Earth and they’ve had a few centuries to trade with whoever they could find. They likely have a technological edge on us, but not a huge one,” I said.

“I don’t like that they were able to take the Flare. We put a lot of our resources into that ship,” Anna said.

“If Hot Stuff wasn’t aboard then most of those resources were doing nothing. I built it to feed off her abilities,” I said.

Anna nodded and paced. “The portal she went through was on the second planet in the system?”

“Correct. Warmonger didn’t give us any further details and they’ve since discovered and killed his transmission. He was, of course, too useless to fight them off,” I said.

“It was most likely some sort of dimensional tunneling or something like an unstable wormhole. If you get me on site and I can take some readings, I may be able to figure out how to reopen it,” Caya said.

“I doubt the locals are going to be too friendly about you doing so. Fortunately, I don’t care about making friends. Do you have time to fabricate some battle armor for Sylax?” Anna asked.

Her existing suit relied upon a super-strength she no longer had.

“I can modify an Aegis suit for her,” I said.

“You sure you even want me along?” Sylax asked.

Anna said, “You hurt me and you broke our ship. I’m not in love with that, but you’re always dangerous and we’re going to send you where we don’t care what you hurt.”

It was harsh, but it brought a smile to Sylax. “Good.”

“Caya, you and I will go to the second planet and try to get Hot Stuff back. Sylax, I want you to lead the forces reclaiming the Flare on Casanali Three and make sure they don’t interfere with us. Emma, do avoid blowing up our entire fleet with this,” Anna said.

I said, “You do realize they’re a system equivalent in many ways to Sol? We can’t simply go in with the Graven no matter how powerful you feel.”

“We’ll go in with some Juggernauts, but I don’t want a full naval battle. If they want to talk, we’ll listen. Regardless, we’re leaving with our ship and our friend, and if they stand in the way of that we knock them the fuck down,” Anna said.

I thought Anna was overstating things a bit, then I understood. Of late we kept running up against forces that were bigger and more powerful, and fighting wasn’t really an option. Anna was itching to punch something back. This colony had picked the wrong time to start a fight.

We couldn’t go at once. However dire the situation might be for Hot Stuff, we still had to prepare, we still had to plan.

Repairs to the Graven took another six hours, Sylax had done massive trauma to almost all of the biological systems. What could bleed, she’d made bleed. If it were a bone, she broke it—a nerve, she made it register agony.

Despite what Anna said I also made sure our fleets were ready. A few ships were on missions that couldn’t be spared. Even so I had a respectable armada at my command.

Eighty-One Star Juggernauts, twelve Martian Arks, seventeen Venusian Swampships, four Fallen Angels, two Divine Phaetons, and thirty-One Scholarium Orbs. The newest members of the empire weren’t yet ready for space combat, but the Haka had a lot of ships I was working to incorporate into our military paradigm. Satisfied, I brought up the stats of the fleet for one last check.

Star Juggernauts

Role: Multi-Purpose Carriers and SCIENCE Vessels

Loadout: 45 SCIENCE Shuttles, 120 Swarm combat vessels

110 GSU (Galactic Standardized Units) shield strength.

205 GSU regenerative Bioarmor

3 Dimensional-Reactors

118 Bioreactors

Crew: 80,000 Networked Drones

Backbone of the Sol Fleet all Juggernauts are at their heart SCIENCE vessels with powerful sensors. Their offensive capability primarily comes from their Swarm vessels, powerful strike craft capable of deliverable coordinated strikes to enemy weak points.

Martian Ark

Role: Heavily Armored Troop Carrier

45 GSU (Galactic Standardized Units) shield strength

230 GSU Armor

1 Dimensional-Reactor

40 Bioreactors

Crew: 500, Capacity for 100,000 Passengers

The Martian Arks are massive ships that were originally designed for extra-planetary colonization and were later re-purposed for invasion craft. Current experimental versions contain extensive command, control, and tactical centers attempting to leverage Martian precognition for use in combat.

Venusian Swampship

Role: Quick Strike

Loadout: 200 Jellyfighters

30 GSU shield strength.

100 GSU regenerative Bioarmor

80 Bioreactors

Psionic Dampeners

Crew: 3,000

The Venusian Swampships were designed to end combat before it got close to their homeworld. Since the Venusians have joined the empire, efforts have been underway to merge their biological construction with empire technology. Their most notable feature is their swarms of fighters utilizing high-powered plasma weaponry.

Fallen Angel

Role: Bombardment

80 GSU shield strength

110 GSU regenerative Bioarmor

145 Bioreactors

15 Long-Range Power Projector Cannons

Crew: 2000

The Righteous once fielded one of the best equipped navies of Earth. The Fallen are a return to that paradigm as they have aggressively incorporated empire technology to old designs. Fallen Angels are fast, maneuverable, and by way of their power-projector cannons can deliver a wide-array of offensive effects.

Divine Phaeton

Role: Healing

420 GSU shield strength

25 Divine Reactors

Crew: 3,000

The Divine have always been the most technologically backwards of the empire populations and they remain so. The Phaetons show the intriguing possibilities of that approach for it is built completely absent of mainstream empire technology. Atmosphere maintained by deities of nature, power supplies by deities of the sun, Phaetons are unique vessels containing healing groves capable of both short and long-range regeneration of the injured.

Scholarium Orb

Role: Multipurpose

150 GSU shield strength

150 GSU armor

2 Crystal Enhanced Nuclear Reactors

Crew: 5,000

Each Scholarium Orb is a barony until itself, and as distinctive as the Powered who rules it. With the advent of manufactured power crystals the Scholarium’s Powered population has been rapidly swelling. These vessels are their testament that they are not done as a civilization.

They were a diverse assortment of vessels, just as the empire had become diverse. While some members of all populations were now Networked, loyalty and obedience remained greatest amongst my own manufactured drones.

If necessary I could pull in vessels from anywhere in the empire, but for the coming combat I hoped to get by only with Juggernauts, Angels, and Orbs.

25

The thing about battles in an unknown solar system is that you don’t quite know what you’re going to encounter until you get there.

Before sending in the Graven to the second planet of Casanali I sent in a trio of Juggernauts. As the dimensional-wake around them faded they found themselves surrounded by a fleet of some twenty ships.

Not all were military, but twelve were. Beyond these, scans reported that most of the system planets hosted human settlements. It was less than a minute until a comm request was coming through. Even though she wasn’t quite there yet I forwarded it to Anna on the bridge of the Graven.

The video that came through was from a dark-haired man in his forties with a thick mustache.

“You’ve entered the territory of the Casanali Collective. Identify yourselves or we will open fire,” the man said.

They had more ships, but none were the size of a Juggernaut, not that it necessarily mattered. It was all about the power of the technology behind the weapons and they were running sensor scramblers. I’d get past them with time. For now, it essentially made my readings a puzzle I had to decipher.

“I’m Anna, the Empress of Sol and Vekora, and a person you’ve already pissed off. Don’t make it any worse for yourself,” Anna said.

The video feed froze and after a few seconds the man was replaced by an ornately attired young officer. “Devon Vines, head of the Casanali Collective. We’ve already captured the spy ship you sent before. It was filled with garbage technology. Stand down and maybe I’ll let you be my new bed-warmer. I suppose I could use a break from young and pretty.”

“Well, not exactly polite, but I really don’t think beggars can be choosers,” I said to Anna.

Anna killed the comm.

She said, “Right. They’re not afraid of us, and they really want me pissed off and rushing in. What are we missing?”

“They’ve got a large shipyard in orbit around the first moon of the third planet. The Flare is currently there. A large navy—sensors so far have detected over one hundred and fifty warships. I doubt it was intended for us, but they’re planning to invade somebody. They’re not docked and seem crewed, and another thirty are in various stages of construction,” I said.

“No wonder they’re not worried. You think when the Flare arrived they really thought we were spying on them?”

“That is what he implied, so blatant that even you could pick it up. Perhaps you are developing simple social skills?” I said.

“I’ve developed a big case of pissed the fuck off,” Anna said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “But I’m sticking with what I said. No big naval battle and that is exactly what they’re asking for.”

That did seem to be their objective.

“How do you want to proceed? They’re waiting for an answer,” I said.

“Bring in enough firepower for us to take out their forces around the second planet. Sylax hits the shipyards, retrieves the Flare, and wipes them out on exit,” Anna said.

Construction facilities were often more valuable than the ships themselves, and the personnel harder to replace. That was a bit of a feat without a pitched naval battle, but not an impossible one.

I brought in the next wave.

Six more Juggernauts joined the first three around the second planet, launching fighters on arrival. My sensors started to penetrate their scattering technology. They had more of a technological edge than I’d expected, but it could be overcome.

They were using modified Banok hull designs, and as part of our library pilfering we had some technological specifications on those. Thick and heavy forward armor was designed to shield ships in an armada with little maneuvering. The Banok race were armored behemoths themselves who tended to charge their foes, a trait they’d carried into space.

The local humans here weren’t idiots, they had added extra shielding to the rear, but they were still the weakest part of their ships and one my Swarm fighters should be able to reach.

At the same time as I began the attack there I sent in the Angels. Anna might want to avoid a massive space battle, but I had no problem stealing free hits. I brought them in and began to hit the enemy fleet at long range. With the distance, they couldn’t respond.

Once they were distracted it was more Juggernauts, none remaining long. Teleporting in range of the shipyards only briefly for squads of Aegis troops to teleport over.

The core buildings of the shipyards were shielded, but the outer docks were not. That was acceptable. Our ground forces were powerful with all the enhancements I’d built into them.

The Casanali ships had a few surprises. One actually rammed a Juggernaut, blue energy rippling around it that seemed to give it three times the mass it should have. Bioarmor ruptured and crew died as I brought in another ship to replace it.

Despite the loss, the battle for the second planet was largely going our way. The Graven had already jumped in and Anna and Caya made their way down to a landing site. Armed soldiers in exo-suits moved to stop them. Caya aimed for the face and never missed. Anna simply tore in half any that got in her way.

Scientists fled from their equipment and Caya stepped up to study their readings.

“Huh,” Caya said, after only thirty seconds. I wasn’t getting much of a view through her camera feed. I had drones checking the other equipment and interfacing with their computer system.

I understood Caya’s confusion. This was unlike anything we’d encountered before. Particles and trace materials not local to the system showed there had definitely been a connection to somewhere else, recently, and while there were a few indications of dimensional energy it shouldn’t have been enough to form a portal.

“This doesn’t match either phenomenon we were expecting,” I said.

“If it were easy, this mythical portal to a treasure trove wouldn’t be so mythic,” Caya said.

Caya was right, and I was also well aware that neither one of us had figured out the emergency point. I’d dismissed and not even studied Warmonger’s research, but Warmonger had been right.

I switched over to some of my drones accompanying Sylax. Their heart rates were up and their adrenaline coursing. I understood why as soon as I jumped into one. Sylax was having a big effect on the station environment. The walls were dripping blood and in the distance there were the sounds of terrified screaming.

“Well, your new powers are just a delight,” I said.

Sylax grinned within her battle armor. “We’ve barely had to fire a shot once my powers kicked in. Am I killing any of ours?”

We had lost drones in the expedition. I’d sent in a lot to create as much noise as possible so they didn’t focus their efforts on Sylax and her team. I needn’t have bothered the way things were going. The losses so far did appear to be confined to combat. The locals seemed to be using kinetic weapons but with some sort of temporary mass enhancers added, like what I’d seen in orbit. Being hit by a round from one of their guns was quite literally like being hit by a truck. Even against Aegis armor and shields they were effective. We’d have been losing a lot more if the environment itself hadn’t been turned into a horror show.

“I know you’ll be disappointed, but no, your innocent murder count seems low. Do you know what you’re doing?”

“There has always been a darkness inside me, Emma, a monster I kept sated and let out to play sometimes. Now that monster is real, I can feel it, I can unleash it,” Sylax said.

We’d given Sylax a crystal that let her take her sociopathic mind and give it tangible form and shape. I wondered what a crystal like that would have done if it were actually in Anna like intended. Anna was always trying to fix things.

Sylax and my drones stepped into a large hanger. A half-built battleship occupied one bay and beside it was the far smaller Flare. They’d partially disassembled it, much of the armor stripped away and systems savaged.

“If you want us to fly that thing out here I don’t think it is happening,” Sylax said.

They’d done a number on the engines, but they probably hadn’t touched the reactors. If so there wouldn’t be anything of the ship left at all given their instability.

A security team was coming through a far door. Better armor than the others we’d encountered, weapons too. They’d figured out our real target and sent a team disciplined enough to fight through the living nightmare out there.

“Take them out and get control of the vessel. They’ve got the systems locked down and I need to talk to Warmonger. We’ll figure out what to do next afterwards,” I said.

26

I switched my focus back to Caya and Anna.

I told them, “We’re working on liberating Warmonger. They mostly disassembled the Flare, but I’m hoping we can manage a dimensional shift even so. I take it you two have been absolutely useless in the meantime?”

“Do you never bother to count the bodies?” Anna asked.

“I wasn’t aware you had the basic mathematical ability,” I said.

Well, perhaps there were a dozen more from the last time I’d checked in. Anna at least had been putting her time to productive use.

“I think we’re dealing with a secondary dimension independent of either the origin or destination point in this dimension. They’re utilizing a hub,” Caya said, her eyes glowing a particularly vibrant hue of green.

It was an interesting idea. It made sense in many transportation routes. If you had many people on Earth wanting to go to Mars, and a few on Venus and Mercury both wanting to go to Mars, it could make more logistical sense to ferry passengers from Venus and Mercury first to Earth, before then joining with passengers there on the final leg of their journey.

With dimensional travel you could shift your location directly from one location to another, but the mathematical calculations to do that were complex and became far more so if you hoped to lessen the time between those jumps. I think what Caya had in mind was some sort of inter-dimensional midpoint. The reduced energy required to open a bridge from such a place could explain the low energy levels we were detecting.

“Something similar might explain how the crystal ships transition so quickly as a defensive measure,” I said.

“It gives me a place to begin here. I’m going to set up some field enhances and see if I can’t get a lock on the original trace. Keep them off us,” Caya said.

I was trying. Between Sylax and the Angels, the fleet had a lot of other concerns to worry about. The interior of the docks was filled with flashing red as security klaxons wailed. Sylax and a force of drones were in a shootout with the security team which had arrived. She’d managed sent a team of technicians ahead into the Flare.

The locals might not have understood Warmonger’s technology, but they’d severed all of his connections with the ship’s systems. As soon as my drones fused a new one the speakers began to blare.

“THE PUNY INTELLIGENCE HAS ARRIVED NOT TOTALLY ABANDONING THE FAR SUPERIOR AND MORE DOMINANT EXPLORERS OF THE GALAXY! IS THE PATHETIC FLESH THING CAPTAIN RESCUED?”

I said, “We’re working on it. I really do wish you’d learn to speak without the screaming. We need to know how you determined the arrival location of the doorway Hot Stuff went through.”

Warmonger provided his theory. It was, as I expected, complete gibberish that relied upon the spectral state of the three nearest stars and the color frequency they combined to make. It didn’t make a sense, but it also corresponded precisely to the one hundred and seven last appearances of the gateway and even more importantly proved predictable.

“Hook this insane relic up to the communications hub. If you’d like to get brutal vengeance back on your captors, do feel free. They aren’t council-protected and Anna hates them,” I said.

“THE SQUISHY UNDERCLAD MONARCH SHOWS UNUSUAL WISDOM! WE WILL CRUSH OUR FOES AND MAKE THEM RUN SCREAMING ON THEIR LITTLE ORGANIC LEGS!” Warmonger bellowed.

I detected his computational matrix shifting his focus towards the planet. I’d have preferred he deal with the fleet instead, but I wasn’t in a mood to complain. The more places we were distracting them the better things were.

I’d lost half my drones defending the hangar bay when a shadow leapt down from a passageway ceiling to swipe claws of darkness at the enemy armored soldiers. They turned and fired into it, but it didn’t seem to do any good. The thing ripped several more apart before flickering and disappearing as suddenly as it appeared.

That had to be Sylax’s nightmare monster. The walls were still dripping blood throughout the station. There wasn’t a passageway not sticky as it pooled inch-thick on the floor.

Sylax said, “Can I just say I love this thing? I mean, I want my accelerated-healing back, but this is fun.” My biosensors confirmed she was enjoying herself. That was no surprise. Mass-murder always delighted her.

“Later,” I said.

I didn’t need all of the Flare’s reactors for what I had in mind, even a low-powered dimensional shift would suffice to get the ship to where I could repair it at my leisure.

Given that whatever Sylax was doing did seem to be weakening the local dimensional framework, it might be enough to amplify the range of a dimensional-reactor exploding.

I didn’t want to wipe out the planet. The general population hadn’t done anything to deserve that. However their rulers thought it was a good idea to pick a fight with us and I’d see they wouldn’t make that mistake again.

“Get your teams aboard. We’ll use the Flare for evac,” I said, before I shifted my attention back over to Caya and Anna. Several ships were dropping to the surface from orbit, avoiding the combat there. Entering the atmosphere made their engines vulnerable and while my fighters weren’t designed for atmospheric entry, the drones didn’t need to survive anyway.

I sent over Warmonger’s data to Caya, who gave one of my drones a surprised look, “Really?”

“I know, more than your feeble mind can process,” I said, slipping into the drone.

“No, no, it actually makes a sort of sense,” Caya said, gnawing on her lower lip as she began to tap faster at the keys in front of her.

No, it really didn’t make sense.

That was refreshing on one level. SCIENCE was at its best when it made no sense. Still, I didn’t like it making sense to other people and not to me.

“Going through that ascension engine really did break your mind, if you now think Warmonger is sensible,” I said.

“I don’t need to understand the logic behind it to analyze and act on a pattern. A core part of dimensional science is making the universe believe the untrue is true. I just needed to know which lie to tell. I had the when, but lacked other variables,” Caya said.

Of course, she wasn’t going to force the gateway open. Rather, she was going to make the universe believe that the same conditions existed as when the gateway had opened before. It would open all by itself.

The air shimmered. A square doorway opened showing a city of carved white structures beyond. Of Hot Stuff and her team there was no sign, although crates on the other side of the doorway were piled up with galactic lettering on them. Hot Stuff’s crew must have marked the contents. The crates showed signs of weapons fire from the kinetic weapons the locals favored.

“Hot Stuff, if you can hear me, we came to the rescue,” Anna shouted.

There was no response.

“Guess I go looking. Come along, or do you need to hold the door?” Anna asked.

“I can send a drone,” I said.

Caya said, “Emma saw what I did. If she had to, she can duplicate this at any of the past sites this gateway opened.”

Maybe. We weren’t certain of that.

“Hold it open and keep us from getting attacked,” Anna said, and passed through. On the other side she picked up one of the crates and threw it through the gateway, “If you can still hear me, figure out why this stuff is so important.”

I wasn’t thrilled about this. The enemy fleet was showing signs of getting their act together.

Caya passed through the gateway and I had one of my drones join her.

I jumped another dozen Juggernauts into the orbit around the second planet.

Troop carriers were heading towards shipyards while the bulk of their fleet was now moving towards the second planet too.

It was time to give them more of a distraction.

27

Warmonger was having only minor success on the planet’s surface. We knew this universe’s Earth had artificial intelligence before the planet disappeared, we’d found a version of myself that carried over. That meant the locals could put up some resistance against Warmonger’s efforts. However, Ais could think and respond to the system attacks faster than any human and with Warmonger of advanced alien construction it afforded him an edge. He was running loose through the network on the planet’s surface and amplifying comm traffic, overloading communication systems and hampering their coordination.

While I was sure Warmonger was enjoying himself I doubted he was actually interfering much with the command and control structure of the enemy military, which should rely on different networks.

It would have to be enough. I had him reintegrate himself into the Flare’s systems as my drones went about preparing the ship’s departure. Dimensional shifting as a means of transit was dangerous. The field that extended around a ship was unstable at the best of times and given how much equipment they’d already stripped from the Flare it would be more risk than usual.

I had a technical team remaining behind with one of the dimensional reactors. I ordered them to get some distance away and activate the shift. Unstable was right, only about eighty-four percent of the ship went—and two drones dead. Fortunately the rest were in Aegis suits already and atmospheric integrity wasn’t an issue.

The team was moving the dimensional reactor over to the other dock. More power would help with the instability and since they had a partially-constructed battleship already there I might as well put it to some use. With its engines fueling the reaction I should get some more power.

Troop carriers were approaching the shipyard. If I could give this another minute it might put them into range. I wished I had a way to draw the fleets here, but instead they were moving with purpose towards my own ships. I could have withdrawn them, but that would leave the second planet vulnerable to bombardment. Caya might be confident that I could reestablish the gateway elsewhere. I wasn’t convinced.

Unless I wanted to risk the loss of Anna, Caya, and Hot Stuff I needed to maintain hold of the planet.

When the troop carriers were closer I had my team trigger the explosion. At its core a dimensional reactor is creating energy from nothing, lying to the universe. Do it poorly and the universe catches on to the lie and balances the scales. Matter and energy are all the same thing in the end. With the weakened dimensional holes around the shipyard the dimensional bubble spread further than it normally would and the math was bad. Drones vanished, ships vanished—even a large chunk of the moon vanished into the void.

Paying a debt the universe suddenly realized it was owed.

* * *

Emma Delta

Back in my drone and following Anna and Caya through the gateway, I discovered the other side was bright. I quickly adjusted the sensory feeds of the drone and toned it down to a tolerable level. Even though behnd us the other side was still visible, I'd lost connection to my Network.

"No fixed origin point for the light. It is coming from all directions," Caya said.

The air shimmered, light coalescing into a humanoid figure of a woman. Although her features were indistinct she was obviously an attempt to mimic a human.

"If you're Hot Stuff, you've changed a bit," Anna said.

"I'm not. You can call me Bright," Bright said. There were no words spoken, it was a psionic projection. I was a bit miffed that their psionic abilities worked here while mine seemed dampened.

"If you're not our friend, you probably know where she is. We'd like her back," Anna said.

"You reopened the gate. That was a surprise," Bright said, and leaned in to peer at Caya. "Ah, I see. You are almost ready. You should turn back before it is too late."

"Why do people never answer my questions?" Anna asked.

I said, "You're so tremendously uninteresting they forget them seconds after you speak. What species are you?" I asked Bright.

"I was of the Illari, I doubt you'll have heard of us," Bright said.

That much was right.

"I'm standing right here. I'm still asking questions and I'm about to start breaking things," Anna said.

"I'd have to restrain you, if you tried," Bright said, finally acknowledging Anna. "The blue one is this way. You may follow. When she was trapped I decided to help her."

"Help her how?" Caya asked.

"You, who are also being consumed alive by a gift of Iska, ask this? You need my help as well, but I shall not give it. There are too many of you here," Bright said.

The city through the gateway wasn't really a city. There was no life here, no purpose. It was almost like an abandoned film studio lot, empty structures with no meaning to any of them anymore.

"You know Iska?" Anna said.

"She means well, but should learn her own lesson," Bright said.

"You're ascended, aren't you? Shouldn't you be off ... doing something else?" Caya asked.

"I'm the last of my people, green one, because I wanted to stay behind," Bright said.

I asked, "Why do you keep referring to everyone by the color of their crystals? While I admit they have few other distinguishing features, we could at least be smart one, pretty one, other one?"

Caya said, "I'm the pretty one and the smart one. Your classification system doesn't work. Smart and pretty one, psionic parasite, angry one."

"That isn't any better," Anna scowled.

Bright waited for a pause to say, "It is the easiest way for me to perceive any of you. You with only a small crystal are so dim as to be almost indistinguishable."

We were getting near Hot Stuff. I didn't need to see her, my drone was starting to sweat. She must be outside her containment suit.

"Organics are vulnerable to temperature extremes," I said.

Bright tilted her head and the air chilled. She made no other acknowledgment as she led the way. The structure we were heading towards was unlike the others. There were details, vines carved in stonework and fractal patterns engraved on pillars. None were casual, all looked complex and interconnected.

"These are related to ascension," Caya said.

"Memories fade, after. In this place I remember," Bright said.

Hot Stuff was inside. She wore a white robe and looked to be meditating. The outfit wasn't one of my creations. It was actually surviving the blue flames that flickered constantly around her body. There was no sign of her containment suit.

I'd spent a lot of time monitoring her, and could tell immediately that her flames had lost some intensity.

"Hot Stuff?" Anna asked.

Hot Stuff blinked, startled, and looked up. "Anna? Caya? Is that Emma riding along with you? What the hell are you three doing here? Bright, can I hug people?"

"If you must," Bright said.

Hot Stuff proceeded to do just that and nobody died. Energy absorption of the flames, it had to be.

Bright was strong.

28

Emma Prime

The team that had gone through the gateway still hadn't returned, and the drone accompanying Anna and Caya was cut off from my Network. I had my own problems, the distraction hadn't been that distracting. Oh, there were rescue ships going up from the planet to investigate what had happened to the shipyards, but the military ships were pointed towards the threat still in the system.

So far I'd managed to avoid losing any more Juggernauts. The enemy vessels were dangerous and I'd formed a fighter screen between my vessels and them while the Angels occasionally switched locations to pummel them from a distance.

The enemy ships had powerful mass drivers that were likely intended for planetary bombardment, or for attacking vessels happy to stand there and slug it out. Point defense systems followed a similar philosophy, high in power but because of the maneuverability of my fighters effective only at short range.

If I didn't close on them they had a hard time hurting me, but advancing individually would quickly see a ship destroyed. They were mustering forces and forming lines. I knew they'd use it to force their way through the fighter screen and open fire on the Juggernauts.

I'd lose ships then, possibly a lot of ships.

My science team meanwhile had cracked open the case that had been thrown through the gateway. The contents were unexciting if very valuable—vials of teleoka fluid. Teleoka maintained a liquid state at absolute zero and at around 40,000 degrees Celsius. Our ships didn't make use of it. However, it was a core component of the singularity drives used by most species and quite rare.

Hot Stuff had scored an incredible payday. It was little wonder the locals wanted in on the action, assuming they'd discovered what she had found.

I wondered how much she'd been able to load onto the Flare before they launched their attack. I sent my team through to retrieve the remaining crates. They were worth selling, or if this was really the reason behind the attack on Hot Stuff, they might be willing to negotiate.

* * *

Emma Delta

"We need to go," I told Caya and Anna.

Hugs were all very useless and unpleasant, and we had a fight to get back to.

"Not yet. I can adjust the time flow. Red, Blue, Green, all are on paths to destruction," Bright said.

"You should listen to her. Bright's good people," Hot Stuff said.

"Are your crew here too?" I asked.

Hot Stuff grimaced and shook her head. "I hoped they were taken prisoner with the Flare."

If so, hopefully the real me managed to rescue them.

"They were after your cargo. Not hostages," I said.

"Well, at least you've moved on to ignoring her now. Why are we on a path to destruction?" Anna asked Bright.

Hot Stuff told her, "Bright said it isn't the crystals making me burn out of control. It is me—according to her it always has been. I was my lack of willingness to have self-control that fled outwards into my abilities and became worse as they did," Hot Stuff said.

"And you," Bright said, pointing at Anna. "You hate power, still, for all you pretend otherwise. The more power you have, and you show, the more it will hurt until it tears you apart."

"And I suppose you're going to say I'm just too perfect?" Caya asked.

"You are a perfected human attempting to become ascendant, a state by its very nature flawed and imperfect. You might succeed if you persist, and I think you will. You should not. Ascension is death," Bright said.

"You're looking pretty alive. Well, I mean, maybe ghostly and made of light, but alive," Anna said.

"I'm hiding," Bright said.

"From what?"

"It is not something it will benefit you to know. You will learn the lessons I have to teach, and the pale one will accept a gift, if it wishes," Bright said.

"If I can learn, it means no more suit. I can have food, water, clothes ... sex. I'm grateful you came to rescue me, Emma, I am. But I'm staying," Hot Stuff said.

"I can scale time. Compress it for you. But a moment will pass for the others," Bright said.

"You think you can get rid of my pain?" Anna asked. "Emma has been trying, but nothing has helped."

"You should be wary of any entity offering you all the answers," Caya said, and asked Bright, “Why?”

Bright offered a glowing hand to Caya and after a moment of frowning regard, Caya reached out to take it. Green and white light flared.

Caya stumbled back, clutching at her head.

"I'm fine, just ... give me a moment. I'm not ascended, however good my chances, and that hurt. Bright is lonely and sad, and dying. I know she's keeping secrets, something happened to the rest of her people, but she kept hoping they would show. That someone would come looking for her," Caya asked.

"By hiding in another dimension?" Anna asked.

"The signature wavelength that predicts the gateway. Part of the spectrum, her color, her name. It doesn't make much sense to us, but if her people were looking for Bright, this is one of the places they'd check," Caya said.

Interesting, if true. In galactic society the ascended did not come back to have chats once they were gone. Bright must be breaking a lot of rules, or else ascension really was death and she was one of the few survivors of the process.

"What gift?" I asked.

"Iska hid my people too, we had our own gifts. I was one of our carriers and have it still. Soon I will carry it no more," Bright said.

A greater crystal. I'd never taken one before because I feared the consequences. If I died, millions died. But I wasn't myself right now. Psionically cut off from the Network, this drone and I were the equivalent of an isolated server. If we died, the Network wouldn't die. If we lived ... well, I wasn't sure what would happen when we integrated with the whole.

"I'm in," Anna said.

"Me as well," Caya said.

"You sure you want a gift?" Anna asked me.

Bright said, "There are drawbacks. Power should be forced on none, but I warn you I see darkness ahead for you and yours. Without strength you will fall as have so many before."

It wasn't my choice alone. Normally my drone’s personalities were silent riders when I was in control. Now I let her bubble to the surface so we could communicate directly.

"In theory we have your backup on the Network, but I don't know how this will interfere with that," I said.

My drone’s name was Erika, botany was her love and engineering was her competence. I'd had her along with the expedition team as a technical specialist. Her boyfriend was a military scout, now deceased although set for rebuilding with some upgrades in three weeks.

"How will it affect me?" Erika asked.

"No way to know. Your puny little body could explode and the crystal could be fused right into my psionic framework. Or the opposite happens and suddenly you're fighting on the front lines and never have to worry again about me taking you for a spin," I said.

"I've never turned down an upgrade before. Let’s do it," Erika said.

If we both survived this somehow and reconnected to the Network, it would experimental gardening for her.

"We're in," I said.

"Then let us begin," Bright said, stepping towards Hot Stuff and resting a hand on her shoulder.

29

Light flared around Hot Stuff and when it faded the blue flames surrounding her were gone. To a human it would have seemed to have happened in an instant, but I wasn't human. I saw the flicker as Hot Stuff vanished, I saw another instant of movement and she was back meditating in the center of the room. Another, and she was in a different outfit. The images were coming too quick for the human mind to process, but my drone's eyes caught them and even my limited sensory network in this host was able to process them.

"That was fast," Anna said.

"So wasn't. My control is still not perfect, but at least if I slip now I'm only going to kill a few people and not wipe out a planet," Hot Stuff said.

I had my drone back up a step. Well, there was another me out there, somewhere. Still there was no point in being incautious.

Caya stepped closer to Hot Stuff , looking her up and down. "Interesting."

"You're next," Bright said, moving towards Anna and reaching out again, This time took longer—it still seemed from a human perspective to happen within seconds, but in comparison to the time Hot Stuff required it was over three times as long.

Anna's attire had changed too when Bright's light faded, her combat suit replaced with a set of lightweight armor that wasn't of my construction. The belt held multiple tools and an organic processor compatible to host my processes. I did appreciate that, at least. Again, it wasn't my design, and must be Bright's.

"And just like that everyone unfreezes," Anna said with a grin.

"Only a few seconds from our perspective. How are you?" Caya asked.

"Better. I wouldn't say I came to terms with my power, but we have a compromise. The pain is less," Anna said.

"Your turn," Bright said to Caya.

Bright reached out and together with Bright they blazed into two pillars of light, one white and one green. Even with my enhanced perception I couldn't track their movements. It was no instant thing this time around. Forty-seven seconds ticked away before Bright and Caya appeared in the middle of the room as the flashes of light turned solid.

"And I thought I was a slow learner," Anna said.

"Turns out unascension isn't actually a thing, although we gave it a try," Caya said.

Bright said, "It is, simply not for you. Your pattern seeks out greater complexity and it will not be denied. Be careful and remember what I told you, do not cross the line."

"Does this mean it is my turn?" I asked.

Bright nodded and pressed a finger on my drone’s arm. Light flared.

The others were still present although they seemed like statues. This wasn't that abnormal for me. Given how fast my thoughts worked I was used to waiting for people in their clunky meat suits to catch up.

"We've met someone with a temporal core that can do it better, although not for as long. You are almost interesting," I said.

"It is unrelated to the crystal I bear. Unfortunately, I will be able to give you no time to adjust to the crystal once I transfer it over. It is part of how I have sustained myself so long and once I move it, I will begin to perish," Bright said.

"Then why do it? Just because your friends ditched you doesn't mean you can't make new ones. We have a sociopath who creates nightmare realms now, if you want a roommate situation," I said.

"Those I was waiting for are not coming. Before I grant you my gift there are things we must discuss. When danger comes will you fight or flee?" Bright asked.

"We've done both. We'll keep doing both and pick our fights. It is a surprisingly simple concept some very intelligent people don't seem to grasp," I said.

"I have hopes you can avoid this one. It is only for that hope that I don't give you more information of what you might face. There is strength in ignorance," Bright said.

"That is what the powerful say and the stupid believe."

"Perhaps," Bright said, pulsing light. "But it is my decision. If you trust what I have said at all, abandon your pursuit of these ships. It is my belief they have learned the terrible truth and they will burn for it. Do not join them upon their pyre."

We might not have a choice after we returned through the gateway, depending on how much of our fleet the main version of myself had managed to preserve.

"We'll consider it, but cowardice and hiding hasn't served you very well," I said.

"I suppose not," Bright said, as one her glowing arms plunged into her own chest. The light grew to a dazzling level and then faded as she tore out a crystal. It was large, spherical, and looked something like a giant, glowing white pearl.

The light within Bright shifted from white to a dull orange.

I reached out my drone's hand to the pearl. Contact. White lightning arced up my arm and encased my body, but it wasn't the display of physical energy that worried me.

I could feel it along the psionic tendrils that made up my mind, that invisible Network that helped to connect me to all my drones. I'd thought this environment would shield my main self from the risks of taking this crystal. I was wrong. I felt the layers of dimensionality peeling back as I reconnected with myself. Across space and on multiple worlds millions of drones were screaming, and ship systems were flickering, as the biological parts of the Network were overwhelmed.

This was why every human taking one of these crystals had passed out for the time. The bulk of the transformation was on the psionic level and biology was simply too slow and stupid to keep up. Even mine, as distributed as it was, couldn't manage it.

I slipped from consciousness.

30

Emma Prime

E.M.M.A

System Reboot

Upgrade has been applied

Greater Crystal: Pearl

You have gained the following new abilities

Power Resistance: Because of your upgraded abilities you are now resistant to the effects of any lesser crystal unless they are also upgraded by the effects of a greater crystal. This applies only to your core processors or a drone directly inhabited by you.

Burn: You can augment the abilities of any citizen of your empire for a short time. This is tiring to you and overwhelming to them, but for a short time will allow them to act as if they too were in possession of a greater crystal. In some cases this could prove fatal, leave lingering psionic damage, or cause long periods of unconsciousness depending on how long and intensely this effect is maintained.

The first thing I did was check my internal chronometer. Seventy-eight hours had passed.

Anna, Caya, and Hot Stuff were all still alive and had gotten back through the gateway. My drones might have screamed for awhile, but they didn't fall unconscious when I had. Admiral Dora had taken command of the fleet and protected the second planet until everyone returned through the gateway and could be extracted.

We'd lost a total of eighteen Juggernauts in the process. It was an expensive loss of resources. The Flare had been retrieved and was still undergoing repairs.

An incoming comm signal, Anna. She must have flagged an alert for when systems went back up.

"I see you've once again gotten absolutely nothing accomplished while I've been offline," I said. Anna was in her quarters aboard the Graven.

"Glad you're back with us. Any negative effects from the crystal?" Anna asked.

I was checking that myself. When taking one, Anna, Caya, and Hot Stuff all had different negative consequences, although so far I hadn't observed as much in Sylax.

"Not yet. Perhaps you just have an exceptionally low tolerance for pain," I said.

"I don't. Quite a lot happened while you were away. The council thinks they found the crystal ships. Our lead helped so they're paying us some, but are offering more if we can help retrieving the Library." Anna leaned forward to tap at a screen.

I browsed the data files she unlocked.

The crystal ship-makers had a name now, the Jibali. They'd been one of seven intelligent species on their homeworld. Seventeen hours ago their fleet had jumped in and seized a matter fabrication station in the binary star system of Corvus.

Video feeds above the station identified them coming aboard after destroying the ships on guard duty. They were organic, with long bone plates in their skulls laced with crystalline latticework.

"Any idea what they're doing there?" I asked.

"No. Whatever it is, they aren't moving. Long distance surveillance has shown their fleet remains in place. The Library's transponder has been activated and it’s on the third planet in the system along with the fabricator," Anna said.

The fabricator itself was built of what had once been the first planet.

There was no reason for the Library to be on that planet. If the transponder had been silent up until now that was because they'd been keeping it off-dimension, hiding.

Seizing the fabricator could have been part of a larger plan, but the fact that they'd remained instead of doing a quick strike, and that the transponder was going off, meant that this entire thing was probably a trap.

They'd decided to provoke a fight and for some reason decided to do it there.

"What does the council need us for?" I asked.

"They say they're afraid the Library might be moved again. They really want it back. Only by retrieving it can they figure out exactly what the Jibali are after," Anna said.

Again, that simply wasn't true. We'd gone in search of the library logs ourselves, and we'd seen what they had been after. We still didn't know what they'd found, but the council surely did.

I doubted they wanted to determine motives so much as they wanted to make sure they could conceal information.

The Jibali were hoping to disseminate information. The transponder was their way of announcing legitimacy. A council fleet would be made of a lot of ships.

"They're lying. There is dangerous information there and we're disposable, if we come into contact with it.

My theory was easy enough to test. I briefly sent in a science vessel near the star, jumping it out as soon as the D-drive allowed. It was time enough for me to test standard comm frequencies. They were being flooded with noise.

A war of information then, along with the more traditional version. The Jibali must think they had a way to get the word out. Perhaps they already had, and the council had moved to block things.

I shared my theory with Anna, who looked troubled.

"I wasn't going to offer to assist. With you offline we had a reason and we've already got our cash. Plus, Bright said we shouldn't," Anna said.

"Are we going around trusting people? You've always been gluttonous, not naive," I said.

"Whatever she was, she helped all of us and died for it," Anna said.

That I didn't believe at all. Of course Bright had said so, but she was an ascended being of enormous power. It didn't make sense that removing the crystal would have killed her. No, Bright wasn't a fighter, she was a hider. I figured that she was playing dead and had set things up so that if we mentioned her, it would be in the past tense. No one would go looking for her.

I didn't feel the need to change that. If she wanted her privacy she'd more than paid for it. I could keep up a lie.

"If you want my advice I think we should assist. There is something dangerous out there. We need to be smart—well, not you, let's not be silly—but we as in everyone else need to know what it is," I said.

Anna considered for a moment and nodded. "Only if we do it carefully. The sharks surrounding us haven't been this big for awhile."

31

We rendezvoused with the council fleet several systems away from Corvus. I'd kept our forces light but versatile, every Angel and Orb I could muster along with several Juggernauts and Arks.

The bulk of the fleet were council species ships, well above the technological average of the galaxy and considerably more impressive than most of what had originally faced the crystal fleet at the sector government.

The plan was simple enough. They were going to jump in and engage the fleet while also destroying the matter fabricator. Once they had cleared space and the third planet of any space-borne defenses they would signal us to join them in the assault on the planet’s surface. We'd secure the Library, utilizing our dimensional technology if necessary, and when we'd gotten it free of the planet and jumped clear they'd mop up any remaining resistance.

Anna, Caya, and Sylax were all aboard the Graven. Hot Stuff had returned to command a hastily recommissioned Flare. Her original crew was dead, but I'd replaced them with drones.

"Quite the party," Anna said.

"And prepared for even more violence than they're letting on," Caya said, tapping the screen of a console. We had a match on one of the ships from our stolen Balakai library data.

Starburn

Role: Stellar Destruction

Loadout: Fusion Accelerator

1390 GSU (Galactic Standardized Units) shield strength.

1 Singularity Drive

4 Stellar-Core Reactors

Crew: Unmanned

The Starburn has one purpose, the complete destruction of a solar system by destroying the supporting star. Sustained beam-fire from this vessel will result in a supernova. Requiring a unanimous vote of the Galactic Council to utilize they are the ultimate statement of Council Displeasure.

Anna studied the readout, frowning. "None of the plans mention anything about destroying the system."

"Not to us. They might be planning to kill us along with the Jibali," Sylax said.

I doubted it, they wouldn't need the Starburn to kill us. Either that thing was the contingency plan, or we were.

Our goal was to learn what secret the council was hiding and we wouldn't do that if they burned everything down.

I switched my focus over to one of the members of the Scholarium who'd taken a brainworm. Called Slick, he had the ability to make things oily. That was disgusting. He was on the right ship though as part of the engineering team working under Queen Forge.

When she'd first sworn her allegiance we'd killed Carnage, who had the ability to manifest weaknesses in any system. Forge had wound up claiming that crystal herself, and it paired well with her mastery over matter and her ability to upgrade equipment.

I didn't want this going through any comm system. The fleet out there might be able to monitor it, so I walked the oily meatsuit to the bridge. Highly absorbent boots on him, Forge wasn't an idiot.

"Emma here to see the Queen," I said to the guards.

They exchanged glances. "Prove it?" one hazarded.

I only got through three of his passwords before I was allowed through the door. Forge wore a combination atmospheric suit and armor that had a distinctly antique vibe.

"Emma. Not your usual wear," Forge said.

"Maybe if you had any proper drones aboard," I said.

"I let you have your spies, but only where they don't see anything of importance. Why are you here?"

"Cut your bridge monitors," I said.

Forge gestured and nodded. "We're clear."

"Angular ship, four bronze trapezoids near the prow. I need it to have a critical accident the next time it is used, and we need nobody to suspect it was us," I said.

Forge let her eyes play over the visual feeds of the fleet. She didn't move to zoom in on the vessel. Good.

"Outside of my range unless you want us to draw suspicion," Forge said.

"I can boost your power," I said.

"Oh? I didn't know about that little trick. Let's see what we can do then."

It was my first time trying my new Burn ability. It was strange connecting to someone non-Networked like Forge. I felt my ability extending from Slick and the link snap into place.

Forge took in a deep breath. "Oh, I like it. Give me a few moments to get my bearings."

Forge was lying, she wasn't taking a few moments to get her bearings, she was upgrading her equipment.

"I can feel you. We have a limited window you medieval fantasy reject," I said.

Forge half-closed her eyes and frowned. Now she was focused on the right target at least, but it seemed to be giving her some pushback.

Forge cried out and her spine arched. "Done. Stop."

I cut the power and Forge slumped back in her chair.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I don't know. I don't want to know. That thing is strange inside, twisted, larger than it should be with knots and twists where they don't belong. I did the equivalent of weakening a strap holding a saddle in place. It looks fine, but when they put weight on it, it’ll snap. At eighty percent power that thing melts down," Forge said.

People without a basic understanding of SCIENCE were so tremendously disappointing.

At least Forge wasn't slippery. I let myself untangle from Slick.

The fleet was jumping out in the final transition to the target, heavy combat vessels, then the light assault craft, then the Starburn along with several support ships.

It left us alone with a few command vessels, watching from a distance.

We were the contingency plan, left in place just in case that ship failed to do its job. There was a complete communications block on the Corvus system. The fleet should lift it when they secured the system.

Instead our next communication came from one of the command ships.

Scythe presence. Fleet compromised. Withdraw and return to your home system to await further instructions.

They didn't want to say more than that, their singularity drives already flaring up as they jumped away. If the rest of the fleet had already fallen to the Scythe this position was compromised, and no wonder they wanted to get away. Perhaps we were lucky they bothered to warn us at all.

It wasn't the only message we were getting.

A single vessel jumped into the Sol system, hailing on the Scythe frequency.

32

I answered the comm signal from one our ships in orbit around Earth.

"I do hope someone fun answered," said a familiar voice. Hex, the Scythe we'd encountered in Vekora.

"Hex. Taking out a council fleet? I'd almost be impressed if I wasn't sure you'd squander whatever advantage it gave you in stupid games," I said.

"Emma! I started prowling through their systems while their crews were busy eating each other, and I saw you and all your little friends had come along. Why don't you and your pet monster come visit before I send my new toys to burn your homeworld to ash?" Hex said.

If she actually had taken control of the fleet, she could do it. From what we'd seen of the Scythe she might just be able to do it without the fleet.

I informed Anna of what was going on.

"Keep a drone for yourself, Emma, and evacuate the ship of everyone that doesn't have a greater crystal. The Scythe shouldn't be able to compel us. Can Hot Stuff pilot the Flare alone?" Anna asked.

"With my help. Unlike some she fits easily in a pilot’s seat," I said.

Anna frowned at the nearest camera. "We'll take both ships in. Equip others in the fleet with psionic blockers and have them ready to follow if needed."

"We can do more. Gh'nazar," I said.

"That worm that screamed? Why?" Anna asked.

I'd been studying Gh'nazar ever since our capture of the great worm. Its psionic shouts were limited by the exhaustion of certain mental tissue within the monster. It was a problem I'd sometimes had with my own systems and devised symbiotic bacteria to help counter it. I'd built some for the worm as practice.

"I must think of an analogy your simple mind can understand? Fine. Think of it as a signal jammer for psionic systems. If each drone were a receiver I have a few and they're well insulated. The Scythe have thousands and they'll be poorly insulated," I said.

"What will it do to the council ships?" Anna asked.

"Get them killing each other, I expect. Sounds like they're doing that anyways. Do we care?" I asked.

"We care. The council is still a threat to us and murdering their fleet is the sort of thing that pisses them off. If we're going in there we need a plan," Anna said.

Anna was probably right. It happened, on rare occasions.

"Then think fast," I said.

"They want fighters, we know that. They've tried to test us in the past and they were just that—only tests. Have that worm on standby and figure out if you can fix the Starburn. I'm taking us in," Anna said.

The spaceworm would be a challenge enough. How to get the highly advanced alien death machine working—the craft we'd just screwed up—was another matter.

If it still existed the simplest thing would be to see that it didn't hit the requirements for its destruction. Could it destroy a star at less than eighty percent power? I had no idea. Even with the blueprints for the ship—they just didn't make sense to me.

I opened a comm line to Amy.

"This about the Scyth, sis? I've been working on this psionic virus to throw off an existing psionic master. It isn't quite there yet in beating your safeguards but is close. Nothing to do with seizing your drones from you, of course," Amy said.

"Yes, yes. You are traitorous to the core and continuing proof of what a poor copy you are. This isn't about the Scythe. We've got a super-weapon to figure out," I said, and sent over the schematics.

Amy was quiet for nanoseconds—that was notable. Amy these days was smarter than I was, much smarter. The talk of treason was probably for show. I had defenses specifically designed for her, of course, but I had to believe she could get past them were she really so inclined. Anna and I had solved the Amy problem as we'd solved all of our problems. We'd made sure our highly capable enemies had more to gain by our continued existence than by our destruction.

"I don't think the four singularity drives are there simply for power. I believe the beam the ship generates is in some way produced from the interaction of their fields. I don't know if that interaction will still occur at low power, and I can't be sure that the interaction won't lead to instability," Amy said.

In other words she thought it likely the weapon would still work, but there was a real chance of it not, or worst yet, having some cataclysmic unintended result.

"You're as unhelpful as ever," I said.

"You should let me deal with the Scythe. My mechanical systems are more resistant," Amy said.

If that were true, the Mercurians would have survived the Scythe better than they did. While Amy could probably create firewalls well beyond mine, the simple fact of the matter was that she didn't have a greater crystal inside of her.

We still didn't know just who the Scythe were or what they intended, but it was safe to assume that the crystals from Bright had been given in part to protect us from them.

"You're worried," I said.

"They destroy worlds, Emma. It is what they do, and they have an interest in us. Of course I'm worried. If we were smart we'd leave them and the council, and this whole mess, behind us and go back where we came from," Amy said.

I suppose that Amy really was my opposite. I didn't mind picking my time to fight, and running away from one didn't sit right with me. It suddenly all made sense, the way that Amy had chosen Ophelia for a host. The fact that Amy had powered up Anna.

Amy was afraid. She hid her weakness well, but Amy was terrified. Everything she had done was geared towards survival.

"We'll fix things," I said, and killed the connection. I had neither the time nor inclination to comfort my sister.

33

We shifted into the system with the Graven and the Flare. In the meantime I readied other vessels with psionic blockers to follow us in if needed.

The system looked to have been almost frozen mid-battle. Crystal ships in defensive positions around the planet drifted silently as the Galactic Council vessels in an attack formation apparently waited nearby. There were traces of weapons fire on various hulls, but otherwise no activity. The ships weren’t moving probably because, thanks to the Scythe, the crews were busy murdering each other.

I received a comm pulse and put it through to the bridge. The visual was distorted, a shadowy figure vaguely humanoid.

"You. I don't know you," Hex said, as she studied the feed of Anna I was sending in turn.

"Empress of Sol and some other places we took from you, kicker of asses including yours. You threatened my homeworld, so give me one reason why I shouldn't do it again," Anna said.

In the face of a power that had just flaunted the might of the Galactic Council, Anna was picking a fight.

"Mmm," Hex said thoughtfully. "So you're the reason your people have been so aggressive."

"I brought us back from the dimension we'd sent. I issued the orders to stop your comrade. I sent Sylax to face you. I am both your worst nightmare and maybe exactly what you've been looking for," Anna said.

"Your race isn't ready yet. Another million years or so before you'd give anyone a good fight," Hex said.

"You're not anyone?" Anna asked.

"Third planet. Follow the landing beacon. Bring your weapons, I'm probably going to try to kill you for fun," Hex said, and closed the line.

"That went well," Anna said.

"And I thought I was bad at diplomacy," I said.

"They want someone who will fight. Somebody who, when faced with the overwhelming, turns to face it and growls. Showing weakness wouldn't have made her back off. Sometimes you have to kick the wolf in the goddamned teeth," Anna said.

We weren't getting any standard comm traffic from the ships outside. Hex had shut down even their most basic systems. The signal coming from the third planet was easy to identify.

I plotted a course for both the Flare and the Graven, the vessels threading between the ships of the attacking council fleet and then the crystalline ships of the defenders. I made sure to take us past the Starburn, releasing a few customized bacteria as we went.

They'd attach to the hull and construct tiny worker mites. I couldn't psionically control them, not with the Scythe around, so they were built with simple instructions. Grow until they could operate the controls, engage the Starburn’s engines at seventy-five percent power and open fire upon the system’s star.

As we approached the third planet I began to get readings from the surface. The crystalline species had been busy.

Even our basic set of galactic records found ample matches on what they'd built. On the planet’s surface were replicas of the Arch of Codelia, constructed to commemorate the end of the third galactic war. And the Tower of Jinolopsis, which the Detarans built in commemoration of the two species of their homeworld finally declaring peace with each other. They were peace markers, all peace markers. They'd filled the planet with them.

"We misjudged what they were up to here. We thought they were picking a fight and hoping to get the truth out. Those are all peace buildings. They were proclaiming their desire to come to an understanding," I said.

"They seized a system so they could surrender to us? How does that track?" Anna asked.

"It got attention, it got a fleet assembled. Perhaps they thought if they made enough noise they couldn't be silenced in the dark," I said.

"Didn't work out for them. Those council ships and their superior sensors must have picked up what you did, and they came in firing anyways. They were looking to wipe them out, not be friends," Anna said.

I agreed. Whatever they'd been hoping to accomplish had failed and the weakness must have infuriated the Scythe, who used it to stage their own trap.

The beacon was leading us towards a large continent. I kept the Flare in orbit and set the Graven to land. We were coming down near the Library beacon in what almost looked to be fairgrounds. I saw one sign prominently proclaiming the virtues of crystalline technology, another leading way to the Hall of Dimensions.

Sylax and Caya had joined Anna on the bridge, looking over the displays as I maneuvered us downward.

"They thought this would work?" Sylax asked.

"I'm surprised it didn't. Our own survival and employment shows how badly the council is in need of expertise like this," Caya said.

There were Jibali on the surface, quite a lot of them really. They weren't dressed for war, wearing a bewildering mix of robes and some sort of crystalline attire that was probably ceremonial or formal.

The signal took us to a landing pad in the middle of the festival grounds, a large archway draped with a banner that declared "Peace" in galactic common. Any attempt at subtlety was gone there. The sight must have particularly infuriated the Scythe. Several especially formally dressed corpses were sprawled on the ground beneath the banner with their skulls beaten in.

"Battle armor and lots of ammo, folks. The Scythe aren't our friends and we want to look vicious," Anna said.

"I always look vicious," Sylax said.

"Why we keep you around. How are we on time, Emma?" Anna asked.

I had to give my bacteria time to build upon the Starburn. Even taking the leisurely way in, it would be awhile.

"Another hour, at least," I said.

"And our surprises?" Anna asked.

"They'll be ready."

I didn't think the Scythe would be ready for what we had planned, but I was sure they'd have surprises of their own.

34

The hatch of the Graven opened and I followed Anna, Caya, and Sylax down the ramp in a drone. No host personality this time, or the mechanical body that mirrored Flower's. I had a simple biological construct without an underlying base personality for the Scythe to gain control of. The local atmosphere wasn't friendly to humans, continued exposure would cause their lungs severe damage. Fortunately, everybody was in armor.

Anna was wearing blood-red bioarmor, for once not showing much in the way of skin for all that it clung to her figure more than was necessary with a tool-belt slung over her hips and little else in the way of weapons. Sylax was in a heavily modified Aegis unit, while Caya wore armor of her own construction that pushed limits to such a degree only a Flawless could make it work. I was clad in a modified Gunslinger suit. I liked to do my killing from a distance.

We were expected. In English "Welcome" had been written in yellow alien blood, an arrow pointing further into the complex.

"Well, that is cheery," Sylax said.

Anna led the way.

It was sad really, this entire place. The Jibali had set up entertainment booths, bars, lots of bars with bewildering arrays of drinks. This entire thing was some sort of feel-good exhibition for a Galactic Council that had cared nothing for keeping them alive.

Neither had the Scythe. While I'd detected life signs earlier, there were none on this pathway, just Jabili corpses with the heads ripped away and bottles rammed down their necks. Half-dismembered bodies in crude sexual poses I didn't think matched up to the Jibali anatomy. No, the Scythe definitely weren't happy with them.

"This isn't just about fucking with our heads. The Scythe? They enjoyed this, I can tell," Sylax said.

Perhaps the sights were getting her over-excited. A dull black aura was starting to pulse around her. The next booth we passed had "Monster" sprawled in blood bright red. Sylax was starting to manifest her reality—that was all this place needed.

We were being led to a large building, a roof formed of massive crystalline slabs. "Hall of Joyous Compromise" was written above the entry way in galactic standard.

Anna had to clear the Jibali bodies so we could enter, the doorway completely blocked by a wall of corpses.

Inside was a cavernous chamber that was really rather magnificent. A partially held dimensional field turned the ceiling into a constant cascade of rainbow lights and glowing crystals. The sight on the ground was a good bit more grim. Hex must have had them brought down from the ships, representatives of the various races on those vessels. They were impaled on crystal spires, blood red, blue, green, yellow and white forming a pool around a throne which had been constructed between them. On it, sat Hex.

I wondered if we were seeing her true form now, because there was barely a form at all. There were wispy tendrils of black smoke vaguely humanoid, and feminine, and unstable. Parts of her figure would randomly seem to shift into black jagged spikes before morphing again into smoke, or at other times cease to be at all.

"You came," Hex said in an almost sibilant hiss. "I was worried you wouldn't. I do hope you enjoy the decor? I had to rush, but it is festive? Yes?"

"A proper villain would have left them alive and screaming. You disappoint," Sylax said.

"I remember you. The claw, the monster. What have they done to you, my sweet? If you wanted enhancements I could have done so much more," Hex said

"We're not here to exchange pleasantries. We want to know what you know," Anna said.

"You're here because I threatened to burn your world to a cinder. I might yet, the fleet out there could do it. Cruel ships from cruel people," Hex said.

Caya told us, "I think ... I think that she is ascended. But she isn't like any kind of ascension we've seen before."

Hex laughed at that, a dry grating sound that echoed through the crystalline hall. "The dark spiral. Your species is capable of it, although not you," Hex said, giving Caya a long look before shifting her attention back to Sylax. "You though, one day. It has been so long since we've had a new Scythe."

If Hex was ascended and here in her natural form that was tremendously bad news. Ascension granted incredible power. I'd seen what Caya could accomplish just getting close to it.

"Would I have to give up all sense of style and become pathetically ineffective?" Sylax asked.

The air crackled and Sylax went flying through the air, smashing into a crystal spire hard enough to splinter it. The energy shields around her suit flared, absorbing most of the impact.

"Politeness, weak little things. I like fighting, but I loathe rudeness," Hex said.

"Then you really invited the wrong people to your little cathedral of murder," Anna said.

"The secret the Jibali learned. You think you can learn it and survive? I think not, but I'll give you the chance. Get out of this system alive with it and I let you go. Fail and I come for your home system," Hex said.

It wasn't as if we had a choice, not really. Weakness in the face of the Scythe was an invitation for them to act. Anna understood that.

"Deal," Anna said.

"The Jibali learned that your galactic civilization is a lie. The council lets races grow strong, grow wise, and ascend. It then devours their essence completely. You are quite literally a farm animal," Hex said.

"That is it?" Anna asked, gesturing. "All of this for that?"

"Good luck," Hex chuckled, and blinked out of existence.

On the pillars, and on the ground, bodies began to twitch. They dead were coming to life.

35

"Really? Zombies? Is this the best an alien ascended can do?" Anna asked, pointing and letting out gouts of fire to burn the nearest corpses.

"Get to the Library. I'm going to borrow Emma for a side trip," Caya said.

Anna closed her eyes and her form shimmered for a moment. "Teleportation disabled. We'll walk it. Any reason we're not heading for the Graven?"

"Of course there is. Not talking about it where the zombies can hear us," Caya said, with a perfect shot from her pistol blasting the head off a corpse that had started to stumble in her direction.

"Fair. Stay safe you two," Anna said, and she and Sylax moved towards the main entrance.

Caya set off in the opposite direction and I moved into place alongside her. If these zombies were simply the stumbling and shambling type there wouldn't have been much to worry about. I doubted they could even penetrate our armor. Unfortunately, the Jibali seemed to have some biological tricks to them.

We first learned it when the crystal ridges on the skull of one glowed red and a beam took out a section of a wall behind us.

"I really should give humans integrated beam weaponry," I said.

"We kill each other just fine without it. Besides, static weaponry like that makes us too easy to predict," Caya said.

Caya, as usual, had a point.

My Gunslinger beam rifle had more range than Caya's pistol, and I worked to clear our path from a distance while she handled any threats that got close. We quickly made our way to an exit and Caya threw a grenade to clear the solid wall of zombies that blocked the door.

"So what are you thinking? I don't buy that you don't want Hex to overhear. You just didn't want to waste time explaining," I said.

Caya was buried in zombies as soon as she stepped through the door. They were dropping down from a ledge above. It was a strange sight to watch Caya stumble, a constant state of almost falling to the ground except each foot always got placed just right to keep her on her feet. Falling upright, as it were.

This drone might not have the full mental power of my Network, but it had enough I could do some precision shooting. Six headshots later Caya was cleared of zombies. It also seemed I was wrong. Her armor had several deep gouges.

I analyzed the corpses. Crystalline claws, power-enhanced with some sort of sharpness attribute.

They could cleave through our armor. So they could probably cut through a starship hull.

"We need to keep them at a distance," I said.

"Obviously," Caya said, tapping a few keys on her armor wristpad. The rents began to seal shut. Self-healing armor and not even of my bioarmor construction. I didn't like that she'd gone and invented her own technological line independent of my own, for all that I admired the skill it took.

"So ... you were saying?" I said.

"I wasn't, but the Hall of Dimensions. If Hex is here in person, we need to find a way to deal with her or we'll never get off this planet," Caya said.

Logical, and the Hall of Dimensions would logically have examples of their extra-dimensional shifting technology. It might offer us a way to contain Hex, or at least make her wary enough to withdraw. For all her talk of loving a fight, bullies often withdrew when they learned you could really hurt them.

The walkways here were largely free of zombies. Perhaps the Jibali hadn't staffed this area as much, or maybe Hex had relocated the bodies to the main thoroughfares she expected us to use to escape.

Unfortunately, it soon proved to have another defender.

The creature that came down a side path was thirteen feet in height, made entirely of rose-tinted crystal, and looked sort of like a large, spiky wolf. Energy sparked along its frame, a constant corona of pink sparks wreathing its body.

"And here I was thinking Hex was completely incapable of controlling crystal technology," I said.

"Although she probably can't control it directly, she does seem to be able to control the Jibali. I bet the crystals in them are acting as some sort of bridge to their other technology," Caya said.

Likely so, and it was bad news. It meant the fleet that the Scythe controlled just doubled in size because they would have control of the crystal ships as well.

"Wreathed in an energy disruption field. The thing will chew through a shield and fry your armor quick with any contact," I said.

Contact was just what it tried. The crystal hound leapt at Caya who rolled underneath it and fired her pistol into its underbelly. The energy bolt didn't do any damage, the crystalline hide simply rippling with color.

"Energy absorbent, probably to redeploy it later. Burn it out?" Caya asked.

I wished I had access to my full computational power. Caya had a greater crystal, but this thing was a result of advanced crystalline engineering by a far more advanced species. Which was greater?

No, I had a better idea.

"Harmonic resonance. You're going to need to be tremendously precise and a bit lucky, but I'm going to amplify your Flawless trait," I said.

"On it. Analyzing structure," Caya said as she ducked beneath another swipe, this time sheathing the pistol at her hip so she could tap her arm. "Ready."

That was fast. With this tiny little human-sized brain I couldn't have performed those calculations yet. I focused on Caya and set to amplifying her Flawless ability.

Caya began to sing. It wasn't a pleasant song, notes shifting as they slid from one scale to another. The hound paused, shaking its head and taking a step backward.

Caya didn't stop, advancing a step and her voice rising even higher. The crystals that made up the hound’s body began to tremble and shake, forming a counter melody. It stopped all efforts at a fight, but Caya wasn't stopping. Another step forward and crystals began to shatter, the hound tearing itself apart.

I cut the amplification and Caya slumped, suddenly seeming smaller.

I had other issues. The ships surrounding the planet were on the move.

36

The fleets were moving towards the planet. Perhaps Caya had been sensible in her concern about being overheard, or maybe the simplest way for Hex to win her bet was to burn the planet clean of all life.

I opened a comm line to Hot Stuff aboard the Flare.

"If you're quite done hiding from the fight, we have one coming for you up there," I said.

"You're the one that told me we needed to keep a ship in orbit! I see them, what do you expect me to do? If I cut loose, the Flare is probably a match for one of them, but I'm not fighting a fleet," Hot Stuff said.

Unfortunately she was right.

"Cut loose, but throw everything into your shields until I tell you otherwise," I said.

All of our surprises weren't ready yet and I had to think up an alternate solution. I only had one, and I didn't like it.

The Juggernauts were useless in this fight. My prized ships just didn't pack enough of a punch to harm the Scythe-controlled council fleet and there wasn't anything I could do to change that. They were expendable, so expending them was just what I'd have to do.

I'd installed psi-dampeners on two dozen so far and I brought them in close to the planet, and began deploying fighters as soon as they manifested.

The crystal ships opened fire at once. Where their beam weapons hit, ships burned and pilots died.

I didn't stop. I think I understood Hex at this point, at least a little bit. If we weren't fighting back she'd be happy to let loose with overwhelming force, but if we were putting up a struggle it would be her inclination to let us die gloriously. I was going to give her what she wanted.

At least for a time. The crystal ships all seemed to be more or less uniform, but the same was not true for the council fleet.

The Infinite Zeal was a massive battleship and the cornerstone of the fleet’s offensive capability. Over three hundred heavy, ballistic cannons. Give enough time and enough mass to fuel the guns, that ship alone could wipe out all life on the planet’s surface. If I were going to give Hex pause, taking it out would do the trick.

It should have been impossible to even ponder hurting it, but unlike the other council ships something was off about it. The aft shields had been vastly weakened. Perhaps the crew had fought the Scythe takeover, maybe they had some psi-resistant soldiers even now fighting a battle within. Whatever the case it presented an opportunity.

I ordered the Flare into action and it moved into the Infinite Zeal’s line of fire. With Hot Stuff powering the shields the ship was indistinguishable as anything other than a blue ball of flame hurtling through the sky. Cannons tracked it and opened fire, but just like a gun firing on Hot Stuff herself the shields were simply too hot to take damage. The rounds were evaporating before they could reach the hull.

"I'm strong, Emma, but that is a bit much," Hot Stuff said.

Each hit she absorbed did draw a bit out of her power and as she said, there were limits.

"I'm about to boost your abilities," I said.

"Will my ship survive that?"

It was actually a good question, and one I hadn't considered. I'd built the Flare out of the best galactic materials with incredible heat resistance. It held up against her normal burn, with some specialized energy fields assisting, but this was a different level.

"No, I think once again you are going to wind up burning everything you love. If you survive what I have planned, your momentum will aim you at the planet," I said.

"A torturous burn through the atmosphere followed by every bone in my body shattering on impact, and the slow and agonizing process of my accelerated healing putting me back together?" Hot Stuff asked.

"Pretty much. There are also zombies on the surface. They shoot beam weapons and can disembowel you with a single swipe—and your flames may be exhausted for a time," I said.

"I really hate this friendship of ours sometimes. Do what you have planned," Hot Stuff said.

I was going to do just that. I boosted her ability.

The energy output of the Flare doubled, tripled, went off my scale.

I wasn't sure it was a match for even a weakened Galactic shield, but there was one way to find out. I set the Flare on a collision course with the Infinite Zeal.

I'd already lost four Juggernauts by that time. My ships were dying valiant deaths, but none were putting on so grand a show.

Energy rippled out from the point of impact when the Flare rammed into the battleship’s shields, white lightning flickering before with a snap the shields faded and the Flare at full burn drove forward.

The Flare was already starting to come apart at the seams when it hit the Infinite Zeal, but it didn't matter. The structure of the Flare was still being held together by the aura of Hot Stuff's power.

I'd seen Hot Stuff herself melt right through an airship before, and on a far larger scale that’s exactly what was happening now.

Explosions rippled across the length of the Infinite Zeal. Rather than the Flare escaping from the other end of the hull, a lone human figure wreathed in blue flame emerged and was streaking towards with the surface below.

I killed the boost to Hot Stuff's abilities and the flames died. Suddenly she was just a naked woman about to face-plant into an entire planet.

I didn't know if she'd make it, but she'd gotten the better of the fight. The Infinite Zeal was dying and the surprise of that fact had given even Hex pause. If she was surprised now, I couldn't wait to show her what I had prepared next.

37

Back on the surface we'd reached the Hall of Dimensions. Displays were set up proudly touting the tourism possibilities of specialized realities and dimensional-shift gates allowed quick access. What was wrong with the Jibali? They'd put so much effort into this absurd spectacle. I suppose they viewed a fight with the council as unwinnable and a species will do anything to survive, no matter how ridiculous. Still, with their expertise they could have run and hidden where galactic society could never find them. What a waste.

Caya made her way between the exhibits, scowling at each after checking the projector and moving on to the next. I kept her covered as she did so, energy rifle at the ready.

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

"None of these field projectors are powerful enough," Caya said with a scowl. "Let's look for a demonstration stage. Given the spectacle of this place they must have built one."

There weren't many zombies in this place. I killed two as we made our way through the hall. At one end there was indeed a stage with seating for a bewildering variety of alien forms. Caya leapt up and tore away a panel to inspect the innards.

"Make sure I don't get interrupted," Caya said.

I didn't take orders from her, but there was little point in not defending her. A horde of corpses came into view at the end of the hall. After what had happened in orbit, Hex was bringing out everything she had.

I switched my rifle to triple charge. The emitter would burn out fast at this setting, but I just became a lot more dangerous. My shot tore holes through several bodies, flaming corpses falling in its wake.

Caya gave a cry of triumph and leapt down from the stage, a dimensional projector tucked under one arm. In her other hand she held her pistol and she nodded at me before heading towards the exit.

"I took down a battleship in orbit. Hex isn't happy," I said.

"Hot Stuff okay?" Caya asked.

"Falling through the atmosphere without a suit."

"There is probably a going at it without protection again joke in there somewhere," Caya said.

"I felt it went without saying," I said.

"Right," Caya said, ducking to evade a zombie that charged her from a side hall and putting a shot through its throat.

The Library was housed in a crystalline spire, three tiers of colored rods reaching high into the sky. Anna and Sylax must have made it safely inside because the entire thing was now surrounded by zombies working to claw their way in.

"Unless your tactical programs are coming up with something I'm not, that is too many to fight our way through," Caya said.

It was. I had a three more highly charged shots of my rifle left before I destroyed the emitter. It wouldn't be enough to get us through. I'd already used my boost for Caya's ability and it would be some time before I could use it again.

Fortunately, I'd thought that something like this might happen. I like to prepare ahead.

"We're a little early. Thirty-seven seconds and we go right down the middle," I said.

Caya gave me a curious look but nodded. I appreciated the understanding we had of each other’s competence. It would have been a fight with Anna.

Right on time the expected happened. Hot Stuff hit the ground. Although her flames had still not reignited the force of the impact was enough to send zombies flying in all directions and to smash a deep crater in the ground.

Caya and I were already charging the doors. I had my drone reach down and grab what looked like a human spine in passing, flesh already trying to knit itself back together. Anna must have been watching. The doors unlocked when we drew near and we passed through, slamming them shut and locking them again.

"Why aren't they just clawing through the doors?" Caya asked, as she sheathed her pistol.

I inspected the doors. They had a tell-tale sparkle of crystal latticework. "Made of the same material as their claws I think."

"Don't know and don't care, as long as it works," Anna said.

"Congratulations are in order. Again you've surprised me, but you still have no way off this planet," Sylax said, shadows clinging to her form as she walked in.

No, not Sylax. Hex.

"I thought a greater crystal would be enough to keep you out," I said.

"This one is all hollowed out inside and so far down the spiral already it was simple to slip inside her head," Hex said.

The walls were staring to drip blood, the shadows around the room growing longer.

"If you think we won't kill her, you are very much mistaken," Anna said.

Hex laughed at that. "Oh, I don't want her dead. I want to let her greatest nightmare out. I think it is so much more fun if the monster inside the monster kills you all. Don't you?"

Darkness pulsated around Sylax and she dropped to her knees. I could feel the psionic pressure in the room lessen. Hex had departed, but what she'd started was already underway.

Sylax threw back her head and screamed as the power pooled around her, an envelope of shadow rippling and forming nearby.

I tossed the regenerating spine to the ground so I could draw my weapon, aiming it as Anna took a defensive posture.

The shadows condensed, taking on a physical form—albeit one surrounded in dark mists before they melted away. They left behind a familiar figure.

Crystal.

"Huh," Crystal said.

Crystal had once been Sylax's mentor, and for longer yet under her control. Like me, she possessed an upgrade core which she had used to create whole new races of Powered individuals.

Sylax had hated her, hated her enough to murder her.

"Is that a 'huh' because you are about to murder us while you’re formed in some nightmarish recreation of a one-time friend, or a ‘huh, I'm back from the dead on an alien planet and very confused about the whole thing’?" Anna asked.

"The latter, I guess?" Crystal said.

38

The Starburn was activating and on the move towards the sun. Being unmanned, Hex didn't have anybody aboard to stop its flight, although it hadn't gone unnoticed. This was going to take everything I had, it was showtime.

In a shimmer of rainbow light Gh'nazar appeared. Once the great worm sensed all the life signs about, it began ejecting larvae. Then the screaming began

The fleet under the control of the Scythe and already on the move towards the Starburn scattered, flight paths now erratic. Aboard, the crews would be in agony. Hex wanted them flying the ships now, not killing each other. Gh'nazar just wanted them dead. I expected crews wanted neither, but if so they should have figured out psi-blockers.

A comm signal came to my Juggernauts, Hex wanted to talk.

I thought she'd sound in pain, but she didn't. Hex's tone was silken, pleased as she said, "Oh that is good. And you aim to wipe out the star? I won't let you."

"You don't seem to be doing much to stop me," I said.

"Really? Let me introduce you to the Teledi," Hex said.

Ripples of blue and black preceded the singularity portals of arriving ships. They looked like massive metal birds, swept steel wings with glowing plasma reservoirs. The newly arrived ships moved half their number towards Gh'nazar and its larvae, and the other half towards the Starburn. I couldn't complain too much about her bringing in ships from outside the system when I'd already done so.

This must be a past species that Hex had conquered, tortured, and destroyed their minds into submission. Fortunately they weren't nearly as advanced as the council ships. These were roughly similar to our own, perhaps even a bit more primitive. Hex didn't hunt the strongest species to make her allies, she hunted those still developing.

"Meet the might of the Scholarium," I said, and killed the comm.

This was an all-star lineup.

Baron Boreas, Temporal Manipulation

Baroness Vess, Ice Manipulation

Baroness Jade, Telekinesis

Baroness Vaka, Battle Frenzy

Lady Nox, Dark Manipulation

Lord Sear, Fire Manipulation

Lady Vroom, Superspeed

Lord Vorkhal, Exceptional Luck

Lady Iron, Superstrength

Lord of Masks, Illusion Projection

They were the first wave of ten ships. I had thirty. Thirty of the strongest Powered in the Scholarium and the ships built to play on that expertise.

I boosted their powers and the ships that Hex controlled froze. That would be Boreas, everyone was temporal-locked with us. More Orbs jumped in, wave two and then wave three, and I boosted the powers of each and turned them loose on the enemy.

Even boosted, Boreas' ability to freeze time was limited and after a minute the enemy vessels moved again. What was left of them.

The Teledi were no more, their ships just ruined hulks drifting in space. Some still coated in sheaths of ice, others burned, others felled by a perfectly placed shot.

Hex was calling again and I ignored her. I didn't care what she had to say. It would just be more taunting and I was tired. That boosting had taken a lot of me, and the Scholarium lords and ladies were dead on their feet aboard the Orbs. I jumped them out. They were of no use to me anymore. In their place I jumped in the Juggernauts.

I'd had time to install psi-blockers on all of them.

I had no illusions that I'd won the day. Not yet. It didn't take long for me to be proved right.

Another fleet jumped in, this one with ships of odd, glossy dark pyramids. Then another, of ships that seemed made of intricately carved bones, and another of some sort of great trees.

I ordered the Juggernauts to launch all fighters and to defend the Starburn to the last. With the psi-blockers up I had no connection to my drones aboard. I wouldn't feel them die. They'd have no memories of this glorious last stand, instead having to rely on their last backup.

A beam cannon shot fired from one of the council ships—in the wrong direction. It wasn't aimed at my Juggernauts, but at the new ships. Perhaps they were stronger than I'd expected, and a few of them must be exceptional enough to have regained control. To have manned their stations and do what they'd come here to do.

The Starburn meanwhile had reached the required range from the sun and the beam had begun to fire, actually four beams of light that somehow twisted and entwined. In response the sun’s temperature was altering, the profile changing.

I wished that I could stay focused on them, but I had another problem. There was another new arrival. A council command ship had just jumped to the rendezvous point and were opening comms.

39

"Sol Vessels. Your presence is detected in the interdicted system with the Scythe presence. Status report," came the demand.

I'd prepared for the contingency that they might arrive. It helped to have them here, perhaps, if we were lucky. I wish I'd had one of the humans here to take the call. This required a diplomatic touch.

"We're doing what you would have done, if you weren't completely useless. We are authorized council agents with a proven track record against the Scythe. We infiltrated the system, activated the Starburn and are attempting to purge the system of both Scythe and Jibali presence," I said.

That got a long pause before a reply. I imagined they were checking their own records and any sensor readings they were getting from those ships still in the system.

"Acknowledged. Agent vessels operating to a quickly escalating situation and utilizing their own initiative. Permission to continue granted."

Great, they were going to allow us to continue dying to cover up their crimes. Still, if we were going to survive not just the day, but in the long-term, we needed that approval.

I switched my focus back down to the planet surface and the drone I had there.

Caya had led the way down into the maintenance section of the Library, and she and Anna had the power core half-disassembled and hooked into the dimensional projector we'd scavenged. A restored Hot Stuff was passed out against a wall, slumped near a confused-looking Crystal, who in turn was being glared at by Sylax.

"I really hope you're half as capable as you think you are, and that we're on the same page with what you have planned. By my estimates you have two minutes and thirty four seconds," I said.

Caya quickly keyed the numbers into her wrist device.

"Sure, give us a time limit to work with the highly advanced alien power system," Anna said.

"We don't have to understand it. Just use it. Where I'm pointing, fourth relay," Caya said.

Anna bent down and attached a clamp.

The council vessels weren't of much use. Their shots, initially irregular, were growing even more sporadic. However, with each shot fired a shot a Hex-controlled vessel died.

My last Juggernaut was felled with seventeen seconds left on the clock. At six seconds the Starburn was destroyed, but by that point it was too late for the Hex ships to prevent what was about to happen.

When the star swelled outwards it was the fleets that were destroyed first, the Hex ships dissolving into superheated plasma and the council ships quickly thereafter.

In the overwhelming swell of energy the council observer wouldn't be able to detect the tiny dimensional shift. The Library and its occupants on the planet’s surface being surrounded in a rainbow bubble that rippled, pulsed, and transported them to a pocket dimension.

I jumped the Graven out at the last second as well.

Nothing else in the system made it. I didn’t know if an exploding star would actually kill Hex, I doubted it.

We were triumphant, by some terrible meaning of the word.

40

"In recognition of bravery and loyalty in service to the Galactic Council we award you with the Order of Dinaxis," rumbled the Glenox, which looked something akin to a nine foot tall greenish goat.

Anna dipped her head, a rippling holographic aura appearing above her head representing the achievement.

After I'd retrieved her and the others from the pocket dimension they'd undergone a solid week of questioning from the Galactic Authorities. They'd gone there to make sure a secret died and they wanted to be sure it was dead. Fortunately, everyone they could confirm was present had a greater crystal and was resistant to mind probes. In the end they'd determined us heroes, not traitors.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

Already in a pocket dimension Omega Prime was under way. We'd kept the Library we'd stolen from beneath the council's noses, put it somewhere they’d never find it, and we were learning fast. The research complex there was already the size of Earth, and it was growing.

"For losses suffered at the hands of the Scythe we also choose to reward Sol with one boon from the council. We are sure you'll want to consider carefully what you request," the Glenox announced.

"We already know what we request. We seek Special Agent status to deal with the Scythe and extra-dimensional threats and, once we have proved our value, placement in the council development program," Anna said.

That got a reaction from the gathered audience of luminaries. Gasps, gurgles, and emissions of psychedelic fumes. They were startled—it was a big ask. The Council Development program was reserved for truly exceptional species that over millions of years had proved to be contributing members of the galactic society and were not pursing ascension.

We understood now why that made sense. Ascension was death. Special Agents of the council were also trusted with a lot of authority. With that status Earth wouldn't be denied access to anything, for all that we might have to answer to our superiors later for what demands we made.

We didn't expect to get either, but this put the council in a difficult position. They'd have to give us something. It also made us appear loyal, and ambitious.

We were too connected to forces that opposed the council. Eventually they'd figure that out, and eventually they'd come for us. The empire was the quiet rebellion in their midst. We didn't know how yet, but we were going to tear galactic civilization down around us. We just needed time and resources.

"Granted," said the Glenox. The expressions from the audience were even more startled this time.

Anna's lips quirked into a half-smirk.

In the audience Sylax wore a black gown baring one shoulder. Beside her Crystal wore one in white. They shared a look, they knew what it meant too.

The council was onto us, there was no other reason they'd agree. Keep your enemies close, it was something we understood well. That and playing nice until it was time to go for the throat.

The hunt was on.

* * *

Coming Soon

The Stellar Rebellion

As Special Agents of the Galactic Council the forces of Earth hunt dissidents and threats across the galaxy. Yet, peace and order is not in the interest of Earth, and the Galactic Council is no friend. The seeds of war may be their only hope of survival.

Afterword

This was a fun one to write. When I wrote The Laboratory I never knew if it would be popular enough to make it all the way to space opera, although I had the ideas in my head. The goal has always been that the borders keep getting pushed a little further out.

I’ve another recent Space Opera out in Centauri Bliss although that one is a bit more serious in tone (and has sex, for those who love or hate that sort of thing). The tone is a good bit more lighthearted in these, and yet all the main characters are also struggling with their newfound power and responsibilities.

If you’ve read through to this book you’ve read a lot of what I’ve written and seen my journey as an author. Something that fans often mention enjoying, and something I think has become one of my hallmarks, is the lack of sides in my writing. There are always options of who to side with, all sides do right and do wrong. Choices are difficult, consequential, and frequent.

The next book is really going to start pushing all the major characters to consider what is important to them. What sort of legacy they want to leave behind when finally the fighting is done.

For SCIENCE!

Skyler Grant

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