by Skyler Grant
"And you see that as your doing?" Caya asked.
The energy readings from the volcano were still weak and she made some adjustments to the field strength.
"Is that what you think? No, that is Anna's doing and it was her agreement with me that set the tone. I could have been humanity’s greatest enemy and, left to my own devices, probably would have been. It is a fight humanity always knew was coming. Instead, an engineer with a love of cookies and delusions of grandeur befriended me."
"I want to show you something. I know most wouldn't approve, but you might understand," Caya said, tapping at her tablet again.
Caya was sending me information, a lot of information.
Genetic data, design specifications. Right now the Flawless were perfectly functioning human beings, their systems primed to peak efficiency that made them faster, stronger, smarter than anyone else around them.
These were plans to become something else. On the surface they'd still appear to be human. Beneath they'd be far different. I'd built the Flawless a Juggernaut once that operated well outside specifications of my other ships and had error tolerances both I and human crews would be unable to meet.
These designs had elements of that on a biological level. I couldn't make drones like this, none that would survive. The error tolerances simply to remain alive were outside of anything I could manage. With a Flawless matrix in control of the body it was possible.
"They'd be fragile. A Righteous power-dampening field, or one of the Venusian dampeners might cause rapid cellular degeneration," I said.
"I know. The by-product of human evolution is a certain resiliency which is useless. I'm not thinking of this for my whole population. A few, all on your network, so if the worst happens they can survive," Caya said.
This would terrify the humans. Something different always scared them and this would be a whole new sub-species.
If the Flawless chose it, I thought I could keep the peace.
I said, "You must be confident to have done all this work. The designs are serviceable, despite having been made by a sunbathing layabout. I'll be interested to see if you are right. I can do up test samples, if you like, once the current crisis is over."
91
With the Triton facility now drawing energy from the volcano, the mysterious stone providing power was unnecessary. I brought it back to Earth through the Triton teleportation gateway, then used the power projector cannon to send it to Mars. It was more than up to the task of powering a gateway—I soon had three up and running.
Now I could prepare in earnest for the war to come.
The Sinalara were not of much help. They truly were pacifists, unwilling to fight even for their own liberation although they were prepared to provide us with information so we could fight on their behalf. It was disappointing. Planet-wide I began to upgrade them with accelerated healing. They didn't get combat enhancements since they weren't going to use them, but I could at least keep them alive.
Bio-matter and growth vats were the key to building an army and ultimately making Mars even more habitable. The Sinalara explained which areas of the Martian surface weren’t in use and I got to work.
Atmospheric gasses were key. If I was going to vastly increase the population of Mars I needed to make sure they had something to breathe and the Bio-matter needed to grow things. Fortunately, the Martian soil had much of what I needed although sometimes trapped in inconvenient chemical forms.
Still, I had plans to deal with that. Omega Four had been an attempt to solve the issue of the metal sea as well as take out airships in a single blow. It hadn't quite panned out as intended, the bacteria created eating its creators, but a modified form was just what was needed.
Soon bluish-green growths were stretching across Martian sands as my bacteria settled. In addition to spreading quickly on its own and releasing necessary atmospheric gasses, it was usable for direct Bio-matter conversion to fuel my initial growth vats.
It wasn't hard to determine where the Martian Arks were, there was massive activity surrounding them. The ships were mammoth, oblong blocks of silver and gold. By the time I had established a decent presence on Mars, five had already launched into Martian orbit and loaded with warriors and supplies.
That left fifteen still on the ground that I had some hope of being able to attack. The only question was how.
The Sedara proved to have power-dampening abilities of some nature that weakened Sylax and kept me from being able to teleport close. Power crystals in general were our greatest asset, but it wasn't the first time we were limited in their use. Still, what couldn't be taken down by abilities tended to die, if you just shot it enough.
Fighting the Righteous, I'd made up for it with Reality Zero equipment. Gauss guns replaced energy cannons, armor replaced energy shields.
This was something different. This new universe we found ourselves in allowed energy shielding and most of the things our powers gave us. This was something other than just a Reality Zero environment being opposed. It had to be an active countering of crystal abilities.
I had to wonder if it had something to do with the disappearance of this universe’s Earth. They had some warning the crystals were coming, they had a spacecraft and the ability to intercept. Had humans developed some sort of dampening ability? Or, if the Sedara were something even the Martians had only encountered after some time had they met those who had sent the crystals at some point in the past and waged a war against them?
While interesting to ponder it didn't really matter, how to fight them did.
I could try to hit the ships with ground forces. That seemed the least likely plan to succeed. The Sedara were strong one-and-one and they'd taken down Sylax in a fight. My Aegis or Gunslingers were going to struggle to have an impact.
That meant hitting them in other ways. With five Arks already in orbit I couldn't assemble any space craft. I could teleport supplies from Earth into orbit—and they'd simply open fire before I could build a weapons platform.
My bombing of the colony after Sylax fought her arena duel actually failed. They locals had anti-air defenses and deployed them. The bombs detonated above the city and without a supply of Bio-matter to amplify them inflicted only minimal damage.
That didn't mean bombs wouldn't work. If I was going to use them they'd need more armor or energy shielding so that they could reach their destination. There were also the Omega projects. I now had ten super-weapons that my homegrown little bands of rebels had created to bring me down.
They were some of the most formidable weapons in my arsenal, all so deadly it gave me pause to deploy them. If they got out of control they could do harm to the Martian biosphere too.
I could build in safeguards for that. The safest option was going to be a variant of the bacteria I had already released on the Martian surface. I could key it to specifically the metals that composed the Martian Arks and it was relatively easy to install a generational timer in them. The bacteria would only manage so many replications before becoming sterile.
I didn't need to completely destroy the Arks, I didn’t much want to. If they could be captured and studied, their technology would be of use and the ships themselves might be repurposed. I just needed to keep them grounded, or if I could weaken the hull integrity enough I might be able to keep them from leaving the atmosphere. I got to work designing a bacteria variant to do just that.
92
I put together the plans. I'd install the bacteria into Bio-bombs and drop them on the ships. It was a technique the enemy had seen me use before and I expected they would counter the same way—with anti-air fire. However, unknown to the Sedara the Bio-bombs would detonate with a wide dispersal of the bacterial agent.
I'd time this to coincide with assaults from ground forces. Enough to make it seem a genuine attack. It would keep them distracted while the bacteria had time to get established and do its work. That was important—if the Sedara realized what I was doing anti-bacterial agents could neutralize my atta
ck, so I needed to keep the enemy busy.
I couldn't let the Arks be my only concern. Anna didn't want to tip our hand too much and I appreciated that, but the Sinalara were citizens now and a great many were being held enslaved by the enemy.
The military targets would draw most of the enemy’s defenses and when it did would present an opportunity to play rescuer. Teleportation gates weren't a derivation of any crystal power but a technology in their own right, although one that had never functioned in Reality Zero. I needed to put that to a test.
Even a local gate required high energy. I sent the material for a shuttle from Earth and assembled it on Mars. Normally a shuttle was designed for a good cargo capacity or lots of passengers. In this case I converted all that room to house Bio-reactors with a teleportation gate in the rear. When the ramp lowered someone could run right through the gate to the other side.
The other end I established in one of the Martian caverns. That done, I sent the shuttle on an expedition into enemy territory. I knew that my ability to teleport drones could be affected, what I needed to see was if a teleportation gate could be maintained.
The shuttle passed the perimeter of the power-dampening zone and the gate maintained with no change in energy consumption. Not only could it operate within their suppressive zone, it wasn't burning more power to do so, which was an important consideration.
I landed the shuttle further in and made several tests sending drones back and forth through. It looked good. Rescue was a possibility. Given their limited capacity, standard shuttles alone wouldn't have been an option to get prisoners out in any number. With teleportation portals installed then the number of people I could get out made it worth trying.
I explained the plan to Julasa, who assured me that with the psychic link her people had they could be ready to make a quick and orderly use of the teleportation gates.
Unfortunately, I'd never been as quick producing things as the recently defeated Vinci. My growth vats were versatile, but they took time. It was three days until I had assembled what I needed for my assault. It was time enough for another five of the Arks to launch leaving only ten still on the surface.
I started the attack with twenty Bio-bombs dropping from orbit. They looked like falling stars as they came down, glowing brightly in the Martian sky. As expected it wasn't long until they drew fire, the detonation sending the cargo of bacteria scattering along with debris down to the surface.
That was the time for my ground forces to move in. Because of the Sedara’s regenerative properties I'd gone with Aegis heavy assault units armed with acid sprayers. The acid sprayer was a classic weapon of mine. I'd largely phased it out awhile back due to its complete uselessness against energy shielding, but I'd yet to see a Sedara using any shields. Acid seemed like just what was needed.
The defenders responded quickly to my attack and I got to see the effects firsthand. A bearded man with a scar across his face was the first to get in range of one of my attackers. The massive energy pistol he held had already done a lot to deplete the shields of an Aegis unit.
When the acid-sprayer hit him with a burst of deadly mist he began to scream, the sound more a gurgle as his lungs quickly dissolved. A spray of my weaponized acid could reduce a standard human to a pool of goo within thirty seconds. It wasn't having quite the same effect here. Oh, the victim partially melted, flesh dripping away to reveal the silvery strands that ran through his body. However the strands weren't exposed for long before quickly starting to grow layers of new flesh.
The drone was relentless, stepping forward to spray him from head to toe. It was enough to expose more of the network of wires within and their core. There was a thick bundle in the chest cavity that resembled a ball of yarn. I ordered the drone to deliver repeated kicks to it, attempting to dislodge it from the body.
He'd almost succeeded in getting it free when a series of shots drove the drone backward, the last of his shields flickering away and the final round penetrating his helmet to blow his head apart.
Similar scenes were playing themselves out across the battle lines. The acid guns were quite effective against the enemy’s regenerative abilities, but in turn their weapons were potent enough to penetrate even an Aegis' heavy shielding and armor. The numbers were in the Sedara’s favor and the battle was a quick, brutal, and largely one-sided affair.
At least my drones were being a good distraction. In the holding compounds my shuttles were landing, opening their ramps to reveal the teleportation gates, and I already had people coming through.
I couldn't be as certain the bacteria was doing its work. There I'd have to wait and see, only time would prove the effectiveness of the attack.
93
I kept up the pressure of the assault for as long as I could. After the initial wave of Aegis units I sent in some Gunslingers to add support. Acid rounds weren't nearly as effective as a sprayer, but they still had some effect. They were designed to penetrate and release a small amount of acid into the bloodstream dissolving someone from the inside out. With the limited quantities of acid released the effect was short-lived, which was a negative when your enemies had regeneration.
Still, it quickly became clear that not everyone we faced had that capability. The front-line combatants did, but as my Gunslingers targeted those further behind only about twenty percent of the Sedara seemed to have implants.
With a few well-placed snipers and the occasional squad of ground units I managed to draw the battle out for three hours. Time enough that my bacteria should have been able to establish itself, time enough to rescue over seventy thousand Sinalara from captivity.
It was too many for me to provide adequate housing. At least it was easy enough to tool my growth vats to produce food for them.
Then it was just a matter of waiting to see if my attempt to disable the Arks had succeeded. I had no shortage of other things to occupy my attention.
It took roughly three minutes for beam weapon energy, moving at the speed of light, to travel from Earth to Mars. When the enemy Arks reached the halfway point that was ninety seconds. With some precise targeting I could start firing on the enemy ships from a considerable distance. Forcing them to take constant evasive action would slow their approach considerably and give me more time to prepare.
A standard beam cannon would have issues with beam fragmentation over that distance. Power projector cannons could form a more coherent blast, the crystalline power helping to maintain integrity and while it might lose that eventually, by the time they were in range a little diffusion would actually be useful in assuring the enemy took some kind of hit.
On Earth there was a large-scale relocation effort underway. Many Scholarium cities were mobile and relocating them to the equatorial safe zone was straightforward. Others required more work.
It wasn't long before the planet had a vast, built-up ring of cities at the equator with the rest of the surface largely vacant. A stripe of civilization running around the middle of the planet. Once it was in place I began construction of large-scale shield emitters and projector cannons. I was even assembling orbital weapon platforms.
Of course, despite being a massive engineering challenge this was also a societal challenge. The Righteous and the Scholarium had been at war for generations, and even after both had joined the Empire and the Righteous had become the Fallen, a good part of the peace being kept was thanks to the distance that separated them.
That was more challenging now. I could keep the worst of enemies on opposite sides of Earth, but there were only so many arch enemies I could separate that way. Given the number of Scholars who had gone to war with each other over the years, and the number of similarly themed Divine whose natural inclination was to kill each other and enhance their power, and the natural enmity between various factions—well, it was a constant juggling act.
I could send some to orbit. With the weapon platforms and the Space Juggernauts I had a large presence there. Others could go to Mars—Mercury and Triton weren't a
s accepting of new visitors.
To date we'd found no other ruins or signs of past civilization on Mercury. There were some fossil records and remains of biological matter that suggested the world has once teemed with life. Life that was long gone.
Triton was quite the opposite. After the discovery of that first city the Flawless had gone on to discover five more and all were now protected by force domes and had research teams. Attempts to contact the native-like locals had been less successful, although Caya had been able to make some friendly overtures—and dig up a few of their graves to get me research samples. We were still a long way from figuring out just what had befallen their world.
Comparisons of the skeleton remains found in buildings with those of the savages confirmed they were the same people with some slight genetic drift. If they had any unique abilities, I hadn't been able to discover it, although given the structure of their skulls and the development of their musculature they were an intelligent and physically capable species.
Two days after I staged my attack the final ten Arks began their ascent, lifting off the planet. Two didn't make it, they shouldn't have even tried. Even from a distance my sensors could detected the holes in the hulls and the crude patchwork.
The stress of leaving orbit caused them to implode and crash back to the Martian surface. I was already assembling research and salvage teams. To be safe, I had to wait for the other ships to leave.
If I could capture an entire Ark, so much the better, but even samples and up-close scans of wreckage of their technology might be invaluable in the battles ahead.
Julasa claimed her people would be able to offer me more knowledge on the Arks, and they had, somewhat. The Sinalara had no written language at all and didn't keep physical archives. They had a telepathic and spoken records, which wasn't of much help. They were all networked and so I had access to their minds, except I had no other telepathic species. That knowledge had to be accessible, and I'd reach it eventually, but time wasn't a luxury we had.
