by Skyler Grant
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 [email protected]
Cover designed by Kasmit Covers
Edited by Polgarus Studio (www.polgarusstudio.com)
Electronic edition, 2018
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Created with Vellum
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.
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."
