Science and Sorcery Box Set

by Ryan Tang

  What would the other Governors think?

  What would they do?

  The muscular woman's question spread through the crowd until Matthew stood up and clapped his hands for attention.

  Alex turned, surprised to even see him at the meeting. The thin and balding man typically kept to himself. He'd attended the party last night, but only because his son wanted to. Matthew himself had stood in the corner, waving off everyone who tried to talk to him.

  "The first thing I wanted to say is that it's definitely not a problem to invite people. I would have done the same thing too. Family first."

  He nodded his head firmly and repeated himself.

  "Family first."

  Matthew had worked for two decades as Waters's private pilot. The incompetent Governor was always crashing his Paragons and forcing Matthew to retrieve them. The night of the quakes, Matthew had sparked a riot outside the Governor's mansion and flown a severely damaged false Paragon across the entire colony to make sure his son was alright.

  "But we have to be cautious."

  Alex nodded reluctantly, and she noticed others nodding with her.

  She could tell at a glance that Mrs. T and Emile had come to the same conclusion. The grandmother and granddaughter team had spent their careers studying the corruption of the Waters administration and Southern Robotics.

  "We must invite our family members, but we need to be careful about how we announce what happened on the colony."

  His face twisted with disdain.

  "I think we all agree that trusting Stock and Waters was a bad idea. I'm worried other colonies have similar leaders. To people on the outside, I'm sure Waters seemed like an inoffensive governor, and Stock seemed like a brilliant inventor. Hell, many of us were tricked too! What if the leaders from other colonies are the same? We need to be careful."

  As a Southern Robotics employee and one of Waters's private servants, Matthew knew exactly what Stock and Waters were like, and his distrust extended to the leaders of the other colonies just as Emile and Mrs. T's did.

  The murmuring grew louder and far more anxious.

  They all knew what Stock would do if he heard that a colony had no leaders. He'd tried to sacrifice Plenty. Attacking another colony and mining its Eternium core would be nothing to him.

  The thought of similar leaders was frightening. Alex thought back to the Governor of Diligence. Governor Macob had ruled the colony since before she was born. He was different from Waters. Waters had been an absentee Governor. Alex's only relationship with him was cursing him when she saw the Spire's funding decrease each year.

  Macob was always in everyone's face. He was a balding and handsome older man who always looked awfully pleased with himself even though he never got anything done. For the life of her, Alex couldn't name a single thing Macob had accomplished. She only remembered announcements followed by disappointments. He'd once proposed a library on Diligence, back when Alex was graduating from high school. Alex had applied for a position right away and even gotten hired. But the construction was repeatedly delayed, and eventually, the project was canceled. She'd moved to Plenty shortly after that.

  The librarian couldn't see Macob doing something like mining Diligence's core, but he still had a thick air of sleaziness about him. Every time he promised big and accomplished little, it was always someone else's fault. In the past, Alex had taken him at his word when he made excuses, but after what had happened on Plenty, she wasn't so sure. She had a hard time trusting Governors these days, and everyone else on the colony felt the same.

  "Oh shit! Oh shit! I already told my family!"

  "It's not my fault. This place could be a paradise!"

  "They are struggling! I had to do it!"

  "Should I tell them to go back?"

  "No! Don't do that! We can't leave your family behind!"

  "Who cares if they come? We beat Stock, and we'll beat them again!"

  Even Margaret made a tense face.

  "Ah, I'm so sorry. I hadn't thought about the dangers."

  Jared stood up. To everyone's surprise, he was grinning widely.

  "Guys! Guys! Listen up. This was for the best. We can't be careful about this. The only right thing to do is to tell everyone we can!"

  ____

  "We can't be careful?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Shouldn't we be careful?"

  "What if the other colonies attack us?"

  Jared shook his head and repeated himself.

  "We can't be careful. We have a responsibility to tell everyone about the quakes. I'm worried about what could happen here too. But we already have a Paragon. We already beat Stock and Waters. We're working on a defense force. What if a similar crisis happens on another colony? They'll be blindsided!"

  Alex hadn't thought about that. Her heart had briefly turned to ice when her dad mentioned the protests. Just the mere possibility of the quakes happening on Diligence was enough to terrify her.

  "I deeply respect everyone's fear. I agree with it."

  Jared's expression was deathly serious.

  "But it isn't fair to the people on other colonies to ignore them and pretend nothing has happened. We need to warn them. The people from the higher Blocks saw what happened when you only look at yourselves."

  The higher Blocks only had a few survivors, but Alex could see them nodding grimly. Duncan shook his head. He looked a little sick.

  "How did we not realize our neighbors were imprisoned? How didn't we notice all the broken hands? How didn't we notice the staring eyes? A lot of us were true believers until the end."

  Everyone who'd believed in Stock had died, sacrificed by Stock's profane ritual to Ignorance.

  "If we ignore the other colonies, we're just making the same mistake. We need to tell them what happened here, so they know what to look out for. It's not fair to look away or leave people behind."

  More and more people agreed with him.

  "If they come, let them come! We have Alex! Soon, we'll have our defense force!"

  A cheer like the one that happened last night slowly began to spread.

  "Don't you wish someone would have done that for us? Look at how great things are. Wouldn't it be great if we could all enjoy it together? Stock and Waters killed more than half of us. I'm not going to let something like that ever happen again - on Plenty or anywhere else."

  The cheer swelled.

  People stood and applauded.

  Alex stumbled to her feet to join them.

  "To be honest, I've already been telling people, but it's dismissed as a conspiracy theory. People say my photos are doctored, and the stuff about Paragons and gods seems too outlandish."

  That must have been what her parents were talking about earlier.

  Emile sprang to her feet.

  "We should become a colonial police force! We should go to the other colonies first before anyone attacks us! We should make sure everyone can live as we can! I don't want to hear lies about overpopulation ever again!"

  Emile was always quick to act.

  "Think about how evil Stock was. He was a dictator. He starved and killed us. I don't want something like that to ever happen to anyone!"

  Alex's breath caught in her throat, but she forced out the words. She loved Emile more than almost anyone else. Her relentless enthusiasm was why Alex felt comfortable even after she moved into another colony.

  But this was a bad idea. The Paragons had the strength of a thousand people, and their pilot's mistakes were also amplified by a thousand times.

  "We can't do that. Just think about how unprepared we are in training. Hell, if we were in a fight, I would almost definitely hit someone on accident, even if I didn't mean to."

  Supernatural calm flooded through Alex whenever she sat in the cockpit of a Paragon. She called it her battle-mind. But even if she was fighting perfectly, she could hit someone. What if she fired a shot at an enemy machine that dodged the attack? She could kill an innocent person standing behin
d them.

  When she'd battled a rampaging Paragon during the missing Eternium scare, she'd been terrified of drawing her rifle.

  Paragon combat was always a risk, no matter how skilled the pilot. They were 50-foot tall war machines. There was always collateral damage. Conquering other colonies would be a bloody and horrific affair.

  Matthew was quick to agree.

  "No way. No. Don't bother making a Paragon for me if we're going to attack people. It sounds like an enormous waste of time. What if they don't want us there? How fucking scary would it be if your home got busted down by a Paragon?"

  He shook his head again.

  "Count me out."

  Leanne stood as soon as Matthew sat down.

  "Look. I've been training very hard on the simulators, but I know I'm not ready to fight on even here on Plenty. Going to another colony would be a totally different beast. There are just far too many outside factors to consider. Things could quickly get dangerous."

  An offensive war just sounded utterly unfeasible. Alex thought about how many people died in our battle with Stock.

  The victims he threw at the Spire.

  The victims he accidentally stepped on.

  The victims caught in his gunfire.

  The murderous oligarch had sacrificed everyone loyal to him. If he hadn't, they might still be fighting some sort of pro-Stock splinter regime.

  Alex shuddered.

  By the end, even Emile acquiesced.

  "You guys are right. But still. Just look at how much we have. Look at how much better things are."

  She pointed all around her.

  "It seems like a sin not to share it. Look at what the Waters administration told us. That we had to live in those cramped cubes. That we had no choice but to spend the entire day working. That there was overpopulation on the colonies, and there were too many of us for everyone to survive. They were just hoarding everything!"

  When they broke open Stock's homes and vaults, Alex found enough food and money for everyone on Plenty three times over.

  Emile furiously shook her head.

  "That's not okay! We have enough even for people outside our families. We should share this with anyone who wants to be here!"

  The muscular woman at the front frowned thoughtfully.

  "That's not a bad idea. We'd probably have more time to relax. We'll be able to split more time manning the greenhouses, for example. Maybe I could take just take one shift a day instead of two."

  "But wait – what if they aren't good at work?"

  "Won't we need more people to support them?"

  To Alex's surprise, Matthew was the one who answered. Speaking three times in a meeting was very uncommon for him. His usually blank face was lit up by an excited smile. He loved the thought of bringing other people over.

  "We can teach them. It's not that hard once you get used to it. I've been working at the meat generators, and I've figured it out with no experience. Everyone should get what we have. Think about how shitty things were before the quakes."

  Duncan made an excellent point that brought a smile to everyone's face.

  "The more people we invite over, the better chance we have of rediscovering Eternium. We need as many people's creativity as we can get."

  Alex smiled. Her parents wouldn't know a lot about Eternium, but they did know a lot about working hard and being great people. They'd fit right in on Plenty.

  And so it was all decided.

  The first shuttle was arriving soon. After tonight's discussion, others wanted to invite their friends and family too.

  Without enough time to train, it fell on Alex to defend the colony as the first and second shuttles arrived. The people who'd already called their family members over would warn them to remain discrete. There were already rumors flying around, but thus far, they'd all been dismissed as conspiracies.

  In the meantime, Alex and Emile would continue researching ways to train pilots. They'd scour the Spire for old manuals and other information about the Paragons.

  Once they were ready, the people of Plenty would announce what had happened and open its doors for anyone who wanted to come.

  ____

  "Any luck?"

  Alex climbed up to the very last shelf then shook her head.

  "Nothing."

  Although they'd vanquished the goddess of Ignorance, the Spire's books were still scarred by her curse. It was yet another crime Stock had to answer for. By dramatically increasing the goddess's power, he'd accelerated the damage to humanity's last remaining tie to the miraculous technology of Old Earth. The books on this shelf all retained the clear cut marks of the goddess's sabotage. They were drenched in thick black ink and some of the covers had been chewed through.

  Alex shuddered as she remembered the goddess's countless mouths. The creature must have had hundreds of them - all distributed among a mass of flesh, wispy smoke, and gushing black ink.

  Emile sighed.

  "Well, I just read through the pamphlet you handed down, and there's nothing there. It was just a catalog of equipment. Let's head to the next floor."

  The sheer size of the Spire was arguably just as much of a barrier as the goddess's sabotage. The Spire pointed miles into the air, and there were texts on both sides of the walls. Her students had already helped remove stacks and stacks of books that Mrs. T and Margaret were examining them outside. But there was still so much more left.

  Alex touched the roof then closed her eyes, concentrating her thoughts into a single mental sphere. She thought entirely of getting to the next floor, of exploring and discovering more wonders of Old Earth.

  Warmth gushed from her mind to her fingers, and the Eternium flashed the blue of a sunny lake.

  It was ready to obey her command. Beneath her, Emile made a frustrated noise. On every floor, her friend tried the same thing, but the Spire refused to obey her. Alex still didn't understand. Emile had a will like fire.

  There were places inside the Spire where the Eternium was strangely soft. There were certain entrances to the book-corridors that all the librarians could use. Mrs. T always said the ability to use the soft entrances was a sign the Spire loved you. If that was the case, Alex's ability to command any part of the Spire must mean the tower loved her even further.

  But why didn't it love Emile? She was born and raised to be a librarian. Emile was the smartest person Alex knew, and she oftentimes seemed like a hero in a way Alex didn't. But only Alex could command the Eternium, and only Alex could summon a machine from the tower.

  The librarian sighed. Who was she to understand the Spire's laws?

  On each floor, she attempted her own experiment. She placed her hand on the cold walls and tried to purify the texts of the goddess's desecrations, but the ink remained firmly in place. The Spire's Eternium had undone the goddess's damage only once before, the night of the final battle in the Spire's courtyard. Neither she nor Emile could understand the caprice of the holy metal.

  The two friends climbed through the hole in the wall and onto the next floor.

  "Oooh, how about this!"

  Alex illuminated the dark shelf with her tablet. The thin pamphlet was undamaged, and it looked particularly promising. The cover showed a sketch of two Paragons crossing swords.

  She handed it over, then began climbing up the shelf. Having lived in the book-corridors for about three months, Alex was far more comfortable moving around than Emile.

  "Here. Take a look at this as I go grab some more books."

  "Wait! Wait! Come back down! I think this is exactly what we're looking for."

  Alex hopped down off the shelf. The Eternium floor sang when she landed. The cry of struck Eternium was the most beautiful sound known to man.

  The image on the page was so strange it took Alex a moment to understand what was happening in the pictures.

  It was a joust.

  The two Paragons faced each other just like knights on horseback, but the great machines weren't riding horses. Instead, t
hey flew toward each other while carefully maintaining a strict standing posture. They balanced the long lances couched in their arms. The diagram precisely indicated the stance the clashing machines were required to maintain. Even the slightest shift of the arm or leg would result in an instant disqualification.

  The two machines that clashed with each other were gorgeous in the way that all Eternium-forged Paragons were. The Paragons weren't just robots. They were fully realized images of their pilot's soul. The weapons on Alex's machine were modeled after the creatures of Old Earth's sea, the creatures she'd been fascinated by ever since she was a girl. Her machine's newly forged shield was painted with scenes of Plenty, from the uneven apartment buildings to the Paragon carts flying high through the air.

  These machines were the same.

  The one on the left was green and gold, with a three-headed snake on the shield. The serpentine theme continued throughout the Paragon's armor. The head was hooded like a cobra, and a pair of snake-head pauldrons graced the shoulders. The sword was thin and painted pink to resemble a snake's tongue. Alex instantly recognized the heraldic style of the Mad Nobles.

  The other machine was completely black, the color of raw Eternium. The pilot's sigil was a lionfish painted in white, but otherwise, the Paragon was completely plain. The faceless head was just a rounded sphere. It reminded Alex of the unit Matthew used in the simulator. Like this ancient pilot, her friend also used a simple unpainted Eternium design. But despite its simplicity, the black Paragon on the page gleamed with plainspoken menace.

  Alex read on, completely fascinated. Emile shifted to give a better view from over her shoulder.

  Instead of knocking each other off of a horse, the aim was to skewer a specific circle on the shield that was just the size of the lance's point. Even a marginal miss would result in another run of attacks.

  The arms were allowed a moderate amount of side to side movement, and the hand guiding the lance was given full movement. You could sweep your opponent's lance aside or splinter it against your own. As long as you kept your arm within the required parameters, you could move your shield to dodge.