The Province

by Skyler Grant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  For that, at least, I had an answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "What makes you think so?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  12

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

  Alert

  The leader of your Capital City, Ophelia has been overthrown

  District Lords have not sworn allegiance

  Provisional City Head appointed

  A.M.E.E.

  Aefwal has defected from the Province

  Again?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  That hurt because it was so true.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The video file ended.

  I was being taunted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Keeping her powered down was vital to stopping her.

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

  "Can you give me any support?"

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

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

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

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

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

  "Siding with the Righteous is all for me?"

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