by Skyler Grant
"I thought she'd pick scissors because they can stab people," Hot Stuff said.
"Talking of which, I'm going to need some blood," I told her.
Hot Stuff couldn't cut her nails. They had an easy time digging into the flesh of her arm and a few drops of blood fell to the floor of the chamber.
The droplets were like glimmers of blue flame for a moment, then the fiery aura faded and they became just blood—albeit blood that could survive the intense temperatures of the cell.
I filtered the droplets through the force shielding. Hot Stuff's blood was already teeming with a virus. Her crystal-granted powers had bonded with one already in her bloodstream and given Hot Stuff her gifts. To that I was going to add some of the crystal-dampening resonance traits of the Omega Nine sample, disabling replication.
I'd been trying to fix Hot Stuff ever since breaking her—I'd been trying to fix a lot of things since breaking them. I'd thought it would be a simple solution. Anna had almost been killed when she was shot with a few power-dampening bullets. However, Hot Stuff was a problem of a different sort.
The fires surrounding her were an incredible defensive mechanism. Dampening waves had a minimal effect and any attempt to shoot dampening rounds into her resulted in the bullets evaporating before contact.
This was a new take though. By bonding with her existing blood, it was possible that I'd manage to get something power-dampening in Hot Stuff that would survive her presence.
"Incoming. Open up," I said.
This wasn't our first time doing tests with her blood. Hot Stuff again gouged bloody furrows in her arm and I dropped the blood in. The droplets almost reached her when their fire reignited, blazing blue beads dripping into the already sealing wound.
There was a notable fall in her temperature readings for several seconds, followed by a spike and then a return to normal levels.
"I felt something," Hot Stuff said.
"Stop flashing back to your long-extinct dating life. We did get some result there, but it was just for an instant. I think your body picked up what we were trying to do and somehow disposed of the altered blood by reaching a higher temperature," I said.
That was fascinating, if so. It suggested that Hot Stuff's heat tolerance wasn’t a constant, but something that instinctively adjusted as required. The blood she had originally shed retained the original values, then hadn't been able to survive the spike in temperature.
"That is just mean," Sylax said.
It was, Hot Stuff had always enjoyed physical companionship, and hadn't been able to since absorbing the Chalcedony. Her lieutenants, the only ones who may have survived being close to her, all died when she took the crystal, every one burned up from the inside out.
I still had pyrokinetics amongst my forces. The original version of her power I'd researched could still serve as an upgrade, but they too would evaporate in a room with her—I'd tried.
Ophelia, Caya, and Anna fared a little better. Still, being able to survive being thrown into the equivalent of a blast furnace didn't mean that you were capable of holding a conversation at the time. Hot Stuff always had one of the most powerful offensive power sets of anyone we'd encountered, and that had been amplified enormously.
"Let’s try it again. This time try spiking your temperature before shedding blood," I said.
We tried it a dozen more times. I tried it with more blood, and blood taken from a greater burn. I tried making less alterations to the original virus in the hopes it could better mask itself in her system. I tried lots of things.
Nothing worked, nothing was making a difference.
"I will figure this out," I said.
"I know you're trying. I just want out of here. I miss fresh air," Hot Stuff said.
I hadn't told her about the devastation she'd done to the planet, I didn't think she needed to know that.
It was another thing I had to fix.
4
It had been three months since we defeated Vinci, and three months since we'd found ourselves at war with the Venusians. The solar system was still filled with threats. But they'd become a secondary priority compared to the threat our own world posed.
For a time we'd considered the possibilities of a nuclear war and I'd been confident I could keep my people alive through it. As was sometimes my nature, I'd overestimated my ability at keeping people alive on a dying world. For me to build anything or clone new drones required Bio-matter, which was no problem on a thriving planet. Now, with the Earth as it was, I had a supply problem.
I called a meeting of my most intelligent advisers to try and work out some solution. It wasn't the first time. Caya was artfully poised in her chair, eyes glowing a dull green. Mechos and Minerva both stared at the same tablet. I'd added Ophelia to the mix of late. No great brilliant mind herself, she was playing host to Amy again and that poor copy of my own intelligence did sometimes have something interesting to say.
"Well, don't everyone talk at once. You are supposedly the best minds your feeble species can produce. You know the situation, Earth is dying. What are our solutions?" I asked.
"You know that isn't really the case. The Earth is hurt, not dying," Minerva said, pushing Mechos aside to tap a few keys and bringing up a display. "Long-term this is endurable. It’s going to take a little over three hundred years to terraform the planet and restore it back to what it was, but you have the freedom to play the long game."
She was quite right. Except that three centuries was an eternity when you measured your life in nanoseconds.
"Thank you for stating the obvious. That approach would require letting most of the population die and be reborn later, and even if it worked would leave this planet largely defenseless for a long time. Anyone have anything new to offer?" I asked.
"I've had an idea. It is a bit mad," Mechos said, taking over the tablet. A depiction of the Earth came up, the surface laced with what looked like complex circuitry. He said, "The surface of the planet is mostly metal now, we can use that. I think we could transform the entire structure into one massive supercomputer."
"I like him," Amy said, with a long look at Mechos.
"Hands off," Minerva said with a scowl. Then she argued, "But Emma is biological in nature, as is everyone else."
"We convert her back. And we convert ourselves into something new," Mechos said.
This was unusually forward-thinking for Mechos. I hated the idea, and the fact that Amy thought it was good only proved how terrible it was. Still, I couldn't say it wasn't bold. A dramatic reimagining of both myself and humanity.
"And we become what? Robots? Virtual intelligences?" Minerva asked, with a shake of her head. "Even if possible, it might take longer than to set the planet right."
There I agreed.
"We could invade another Earth," Amy said. The display shifted to show multiple slices of Earth. "We know that this Earth isn't the original, at least not entirely. Out there in different dimensions there are probably others with a biosphere intact. You're all so pretty and powerful, I bet you could just waltz in and be given everything you want."
That was intriguing. Conquering your first Earth was the hardest. After that ... If there was one thing the population of the empire had gotten very good at, it was war.
I said, "Unfortunately, we haven't been able to get a dimensional drive to function since reforming the Earth. Your tendency to play nice before moving in to take the place of your betters has been noted. It doesn't help us here."
"There is a simple solution. You do a mass die-off now rather than later," Caya said. "You fear leaving the Earth defenseless, you don't have to. Convert the current population into weapons, build the terraformers, and when the environment is suitable bring them back."
It was a good plan. Caya's schemes were always good. It was also cold-hearted and I was fairly certain at one time she'd never have suggested something like that. Caya had changed since bonding with the Beryl crystal.
Despite not supporting this plan I had to con
sider it as really the best option I had right now to save everybody on the planet. The population, or at least the vast majority of it, would lose three hundred years then pick back up where they had left of.
"You are all well-justified for thinking small. A lifetime of failures has defined you. But you are now a part of a winning team. What can we do that doesn't involve giving up three hundred years?" I asked.
Minerva let out a frustrated sigh. "What usually happens is you come up with something brilliant, or we steal technology from someone smarter than us."
"Actually ..." Mechos said, and he tapped away. Schematics came up. I recognized them, they were from some of Mechos' designs from when the Venusians were invading. A massive power projector cannon. We'd never built the thing, and I had since constructed several of my Space Juggernauts which were currently playing planetary defense in orbit—they were capable of going to any planet in the solar system, given time.
But at the time, Mechas had looked for a way of destroying ships in orbit from where they’d been bombarding us.
"Yes, yes, your failures are all very memorable," I said.
"I'd planned it as a weapon. What if we used it for teleportation?" Mechos said.
Well, well, once again I was reminded why, despite his many failures, Mechos was a part of this council. It was worth pursuing.
5
From the very beginning, transportation was always an issue. Ever since awakening in the Laboratory I'd constantly had to discover new means of transportation, and then update as technology or the rules of reality altered.
Travel over the Earth's surface or through space was possible with conventional engines. This was boring, inefficient, and slow. Enemies could intercept you and the journey took a lot of time. The benefits were it was reliable, predictable, and fairly low-energy. It worked in Reality Zero environments, in the fractured space Earth once inhabited, and here in our new dimension.
Jump Drives had been installed on almost every airship in fractured space allowing the vessel to shift dimensional attunement instantaneously, moving between the different shards of reality. They didn't work in Reality Zero and didn't work now on the new Earth.
There was also teleportation. Various crystals gave different variants of this ability, but in general it let someone instantaneously transition from one place to another. My own version required that I have a current or recent sensor scan of where I was trying to jump. This didn't work at all in Reality Zero environments, had worked phenomenally well in fractured space, and here in our new dimension still functioned but the range had been significantly limited. Teleportation could also work through gates—a teleportation gate allowed a sustained connection letting you teleport large amounts of material or personnel. If you had a gate on either end you could manage transits over far longer distances.
The idea of combining teleportation with a power projector cannon was an intriguing one. I'd used power projectors before for non-offensive purposes, utilizing electrokinesis to help reinforce shields or to dampen incoming strikes, and even to project a healing ability over a battlefield. Teleportation was something new, and I could test it on a small scale.
I spent a few hours performing tests with various power projector cannons and different teleporters, getting a sense of if they did improve range and if so, how much. The results were encouraging, although the energy requirements were daunting. With my strongest cannon and a standard teleporter I could reach about ninety percent of the Earth's surface.
With a strong teleporter and a massive cannon, interplanetary transit might be a real possibility. The question was, even if I could get someone to another planet, what then? It would be a one-way trip, although I should in theory be able to send the supplies to construct a teleportation gate on the other end.
The power requirements would be too steep for a Bio-reactor. They'd have to find their own power source capable of sustaining the gate.
It would let me get agents on other plants faster than the Space-Juggernauts, and perhaps make whoever the locals were feel less threatened in the process.
During the past three months I'd had a lot more time to access the records of this Earth. What they'd discovered about the other planets, including that several had some variety of life.
Mercury was supposedly filled with ruins, once home to a thriving civilization wiped out in a war with the Venusians. Much of Venus was destroyed as well, the war with Mars and Earth having decimated much of their environment.
Mars had been home to a vaguely humanoid species that had a mastery of computers. They were nearly extinct by the time humans arrived, their cities long-abandoned and forgotten as their world had grown cold.
It was thought there was life on one of Neptune's moons, based on discoveries found in Earth’s archaeological records that seemed to depict a war between aliens and the ancient Mayans. They'd never found convincing evidence.
Despite this seeming abundance of life in the solar system, none of it was talking to us. Not even Mars, where there was supposed to be a thriving human colony. I couldn't blame them, not really, Earth had waged war on most its own solar system and then been thrown into another dimension. The world’s reappearance must have shocked everybody, and I imagined they would have no idea what to make of the transmissions they'd picked up since.
I wasn't sure if I wanted to talk to Mars anyway. It could prompt hostilities and we couldn't afford a fresh war right now. However, they were one of the most promising sources of new technology.
Our other options were problematic.
Earth had two other sources of advance technology and neither was being helpful. A reproduction of my own original facility was guarded by a Vattier-designed force shield and puzzles. Minerva got some information out of a hologram of Vattier. The facility itself was still protected by an energy shield I couldn't penetrate.
Vattier on our Earth had taken possession of the Agate and used it to make the Sword of Light, an enormous airship. If he had taken possession of one or all of the dimensional crystals from this new Earth and used them to create something involving myself, I very much wanted to see the result.
In a different, abandoned facility were Warmonger and Flower, artificial intelligences of an alien species sent here to scout the Earth for a possible invasion. Warmonger had been driven mad after fusing with a power crystal, and Flower wasn't rushing to volunteer information until we could help Warmonger back to sanity. Months of research and we still didn't have an answer there.
The fact was nobody was helping us, and without new technology or ideas we were having a hard time helping ourselves. It hurt nothing to build Mechos' cannon design. At the very least it would be another defensive fortification in the case of an invasion, and if it did let me send expeditions to the other planets in the solar system we might be able to acquire technology or establish diplomatic relations. It was worth trying.
I set the problem aside as I got a notification I'd not seen for some time.
One of the Divine communities was under airship attack.
6
The village was Angorka, an agriculture community close to the borders of their lands. The Divine were doing better than most. The ancient gods of human mythology had after all been formed by people just trying to get by in a hostile environment. There were deities of bounty, the soil, air and sky. A good god of nature or goddess of the oceans was a valuable thing these days.
Sadly, their system couldn't scale world-wide. I'd have made legions of drone worshipers for them if it could. Unfortunately, the Divine defenses had also taken massive damage in the war with Vinci and most of their warrior deities had fallen.
This combination of prosperity and weakness wrought what it always did—they'd become a target of raiders. There were three airships firing on the beam turrets I had protecting the city, and they were sending down shuttles to raid the warehouses filled with food.
I recognized the markings on the ships, Takra traders. The Takra were a family within th
e Scholarium, their founder had the ability to tell if a trade was good or not. As powers went it was a weak one, but it let them profit off the endless wars that wracked the Scholarium without the Takra being considered enough of a threat for anyone to ever take them out.
Good deals were hard to come by these days.
I opened a comm line to the lead ship. It took less than a minute for them to respond. A well-dressed young man wearing an outfit in shades of purple and green answered. I had records on him, Homer Takra, the third in line to be head of the family.
"We've avoided firing on any people. I intend to keep it that way," Homer said.
That much was true, he'd focused his fire on my defenses and then sent a few shots wide to scare the populace into taking cover.
"You'd rather they starve instead of giving them a clean death? If you seek praise for your morality while playing bandit, you won't get it," I said.
I didn't have forces in place to hit these airships. I'd never had a strong presence in Divine lands even after they'd joined the empire. Juggernauts would be slow to arrive, and while I could teleport in a strike team there wasn't a lot they could do against three airships.
"They won't starve, look at all they have. They'll go hungry for a time and make more, but our people are starving. We'll clear out the warehouse below and go peacefully," Homer said.
That didn't work for me. Raids like this were becoming more commonplace and each successful one seemed to spawn a dozen more. The only thing that slowed their growing boldness was a harsh response.
"Do you think if you only steal a little I'll let it go? Do you think I can't plant spores in the food you've stolen? That I can't unleash horrors upon you and your crew? Do you think your families back home in the Scholarium are immune to my wrath?" I said.
