by Skyler Grant
94
I was building an even larger version of the massive power projector cannon, this one in orbit. If the original was considered expensive in resources, this one was even more so. It was vital to planetary defense.
It wasn't fully ready to go yet and only at a stage where I could start testing the components. I needed the most powerful power-holder to operate it. That was Hot Stuff.
As she settled into the focus chair it wrapped itself around her metal-shrouded form. As soon as readings began to come in I knew I'd have to make some modifications. The power regulators would handle her firing only a few shots.
I asked, "How are you finding life outside the Mountain? Ready for me to throw you back into a cell so you have some excuse for the mendacity of your day-to-day life?"
"Glad to be out. Wish I could eat something. Wish being sheathed in metal let me feel anything during sex," Hot Stuff said.
Really, she had nothing to complain about. The poor fellow who'd been inspired enough to try sex with the equivalent of a metal statue had come away with some serious injuries.
"Talk to Mechos. While nearly indestructible, the metal shell does vibrate and if he can't build you something to make use of that fact he scarcely deserves to call himself an engineer. I would, but I don’t actually care about you that much, I am disgusted by your needs, and I am too busy saving the planet—ranked in that order," I said.
"Are you really going to be able to make me normal again? Or even normal for how I was?" Hot stuff asked.
"You know I can't give you a real answer to that. I think it likely. From what we've seen the Mars colonists—the Sedara—possess some ability to dampen power crystal abilities. They even dampened Sylax, a second generation from the Agate. I haven't figured out how yet, but I think if we can defeat them they may hold the key to giving you your life back. You can return to being no good to anybody," I said.
Hot Stuff was silent for a few moments. I used the time to install a new regulator.
Hot Stuff said, "I like being important. I like having people answer to me, look up to me, being at the table when important things are discussed. I hate that I can't have any of it without imagining the scent of roasting flesh and screams."
I could understand that. I couldn't blame her for regretting her own death toll, when I regretted mine.
"Apart from being an incredible, destructive force you are also a potent power source. If I can't fix you, if we survive this, I'll find a way for you to use that. Perhaps you'll be the captain and power supply of our first ship to head to the stars, and you can start a new life as an engine instead of a flamethrower?"
The new regulator was holding even as I ramped up power, but the storage batteries weren't strong enough. There was a buffer of power reserves that got used before engaging the cannon and Hot Stuff would cause them to explode with repeated use. I couldn't make them more efficient, I didn't have that capability, so I'd just have to add more of them. It would slow down the fire rate, which I didn't like, but I preferred that to my weapons not exploding.
"You could do that? Would you let the Chalcedony out of your sight?" Hot Stuff asked.
"I don't thrill at the idea, given how the last person to have control of it tried to exterminate me. Still, you have it inside of you at all because I trust you. You've never hesitated to step up and do what is necessary," I said.
"Have I done enough?" Hot Stuff asked.
"Vinci would rule the world now if it weren't for you. The surface of the planet would be covered in factories, and if any people survived it would be more by accident than intent. That industrial might would have moved out into the rest of the solar system. You're a murderer, but if we're keeping score you've saved more lives than you've taken."
I added a duplicate of the existing battery, set them to work in tandem and ran through the tests again. This time the results were looking positive.
Hot Stuff said, "I'll help now, and I'll add some more to the dead column, but after this I'm done being a weapon, Emma. Cure me or not, give me a starship or not, I'm done being a killer.”
It wasn't the first time she'd expressed sentiments like this. It was the first time she'd been this filled with conviction. Killing hadn't used to bother Hot Stuff at all, but after taking out a Divine doubt had begun to bother her. I didn't know why, if the gods felt any guilt about the horrors they committed, I hadn't seen it.
It was an inconvenience. For pure one-on-one murder Sylax was number one, but when you needed environmental destruction Hot Stuff had always been my go-to. I had also built an empire where people got to choose their fates and that included Hot Stuff. And, if a human really decided to set aside their killing nature and to try to be something better, they deserved a chance to surprise me.
"I'll get to work designing that starship," I said.
95
There was so much to do the time seemed to pass quickly as the Sedara’s ships advanced. My efforts to get some technology from the crashed Arks had succeeded and between those samples, studying the Sinalara, and what the teams from Mercury and Triton were providing, I was awash in alien SCIENCE.
My studies of the Sinalara had turned up some interesting features of their physiology. Between my own drones, the Gobbles, and the many creations Crystal had left behind, I had a lot of experience studying genetically modified species—and the Sinalara had definitely been modified at some point.
Their philosophy of pacifism wasn't so much one of choice, modifications had been made to their systems that suppressed the more aggressive parts of their minds. The technical portions of their brains were under-utilized to bolster their natural creativity and telekinetic potential. They even had several segments for skin sensitivity that made me think their preference for nudism was a response to a biological factor imposed on them.
They were a peaceful, cultured, kind species, but I didn't think they'd started out that way. More than that, I recognized the genetic signatures of the alterations. It was Venusian technology, which made sense given their biological expertise.
If I had to speculate, I'd guess that at some point in the distant past the Venusians and Martians had gone to war and instead of wiping them out, the Venusians had effectively pacified an entire species by changing their nature.
I'd always assumed that their terraformers on Earth were there to wipe out humanity, to change the environment to something hostile to humans. Now I wondered if that were so. Certainly, it was being made more Venusian, but from what I could tell their world teemed with life. Changing the environment may have been the first stage to changing humanity.
If I were going to guess further, it was after this the Martians encountered the Sedara in their original form, who then converted a portion of the Martians into hosts altering their physiology. When the Earth colonists showed up, the Sedara decided humans made even better hosts.
As to who or what the Sedara were to begin with, I still didn't have any answers. The solar system was littered with mysteries and although I was sure they fit together somehow the pattern they formed was still a puzzle.
The Sedara seemed to infuse themselves utterly with a host, exerting some sort of compulsion or mental bonding. This kind of extreme shape-shifting of an intelligent, metal-like material bore similarities to what we'd encountered on Mercury, although the Sedara showed no signs of the glyphs that the technology on Mercury did.
Were the Sedara remnants of the Mercurian race? A more advanced version of what we'd encountered, or a more primitive?
When I'd had to face off against the Venusians they had been extremely effective at disrupting my psionic network to my drones. The Venusian station I captured was lined with psi-blockers. I'd since had the opportunity to study them, and while they were effective in some ways against me, they would be even more effective against the Sinalara.
That just confirmed that Venus and Mars had been at war in the past, since all Venusian military vessels contained a defense against Sinalara psionics—which
the current Sinalara wouldn't now use offensively anyway.
The Sinalara didn't have answers, I was sure of that. The telepathic archive of information was incomplete when it came to their own history, probably altered by the very people who had adjusted them to hide their tampering.
I was capable of reversing what had been done to them. I didn't know if I had that right. They were a peaceful, happy, society and for all that they might have been made to be harmless, they seemed content in that life. I thought my best option was to devise a solution and offer it to them, much like the brainworms with the other populations I'd encountered.
If you wanted to fundamentally change the nature and the essence of what you were, I could provide the option, but not force it.
On the Mercurian side, Mechos was discovering a lot more. What we'd found hadn't been a vault so much as a graveyard. The bars were the stabilized essence of Mercurians who were by their very nature fluid. When they came to a stop they died, although some semblance of their memories remained in the bodies and so they were kept, archived.
Although the Mercurians hadn't been organic life, they weren't electronic life either. They had been metallic shape-shifters capable of merging and separating their essence at ease into new aspects.
They considered all life as similarly adaptable, they sculpted even the organic life of their world with ease. There was no mention of any other intelligent species in the solar system.
I had shifted Mechos' focus to determining how they had altered their environment. If we survived the Sedara invasion, we still had to fix Earth. It was the original reason I had sent expeditions to other planets.
Triton was an interesting case. Caya was getting a real sense of their history and it was one of a planet overheating. Far from worrying about an approaching cold spell, the Tritons had been obsessed with a warming planet and terrified of the environmental degradation that would result.
Given how suddenly disaster had befallen them, it raised the question of if they caused their own destruction? Had some brilliant scientist found a way to lower the global temperature and badly miscalculated?
I had my doubts Triton science was of interest, but if Caya thought it was worth pursuing I was inclined to allow it. She was, after all, flawless. If running around on Triton wasn't just her excuse to look away from the ugliness that was humanity, then she genuinely believed there was something to discover.
96
When the Arks hit the halfway point to Earth it was time to strike. Hot Stuff's body was already compensating for a complete lack of food and oxygen. It wasn't that much worse than deny herself sleep. By keeping her awake and active continuously in the projector cannon chair I could harass the approaching vessels endlessly. That was just what I did.
With eighteen vessels it was a lot of targets and I put together a program to alter aim randomly. If they were watchful and capable, they'd have no issues avoiding the incoming fire, but it would be exhausting. They also only had to mess up once. With the destructive power that Hot Stuff put out, a single hit on one of their ships might be enough to stop its approach
If they continued towards Earth they would pay a dear price for it.
Of course, the Sedara reaching the halfway point meant it was also time to begin my offensive. There were no easy answers on Mars, no easy solutions to what needed to be done. Most of the enhanced Sedara were on the Arks headed to Earth, so the majority of those who remained behind were unpowered—literally just human.
Before firing a shot I played to that. On every communications channel on the planet I started announcements and video of demonstrations, the unpowered being offered crystal abilities and upgrades.
Swear loyalty to the empire and you'd be given power. This sort of thing had worked before with the Scholarium. I didn't know if society in the Mars colony was the same, if the powerful Sedara oppressed the powerless, more human descendents, but I assumed so. Humans were humans, and it was their nature to abhor the weak.
Of course, as Sylax liked to say, join or die. But there needed to be an alternative.
Between bringing in forces from Earth and growing them in vats I now had an army on Mars of around two million strong. Acid weapons remained my primary offensive gear, although with energy weapon backups just in case they devised a countermeasure. In addition, I'd constructed what I was calling a spike. A high-powered shield generator designed to encompass and shrink, reducing something in mass in a highly charged ball of shielded energy. I'd designed it for the Sedara implants. If the central mass of one was exposed on a body, one of my drones would be able to drive a spike into it.
It was my hope that by removing the implants away from biological matter—in particular the human hosts—they could be contained, both preventing regeneration and rendering them harmless.
A day of blaring my warnings had inspired a few defectors initially before the well dried up with enhanced sentries seen along enemy encampments. I'd created civic unrest at least, it was time to strike.
Planet-wide my forces moved in. I'd seen the advantages of this approach from Vinci. When you hit everywhere at once you exposed any vulnerability in a line and created confusion in the enemy’s command structure. When the whole world seemed to be ending, there was nowhere to go.
The early stages of the battle were going well. Even the spikes were working and had removed a dozen implants. Then one wriggled out of the screaming body of a dissolving enemy and squirmed its way into one of my combat drones.
When Sylax had bonded with the remains of the dragon I hadn't felt anything unusual. Now I did. A presence on the network that hadn't been there before, it was like a stranger looking into my soul, I didn't like it.
I isolated the drone behind firewalls and opened a monitored connection. This could be my first look at a real Sedara, the monster within the host.
Instead I found my focus being drawn into a constructed virtual environment.
The implant had recreated a visual of a salon. Antiquated furniture made it look like an aristocratic sitting room from Earth history. A man in furs warmed himself before the fire.
The man said, "You're a manufactured intelligence. You're not Vor'Kesh though, or Kidari. The Terrans created you."
I said, "They got me started. I went on to recreate them in my image. I didn't create you though. To aspire towards being space barbarians is a foolish ambition."
"I didn't create that society. It created itself, I simply gave them power," the man said. He looked to be in his thirties, bearded with a thickly lined face. This environment was virtual, so what he looked like hardly mattered. It was simply the appearance this entity was choosing.
I cloaked myself in a camera with a glowing red eye. Let him make of that what he would.
"Are you a single intellect?" I asked.
"A most singular intellect," the man said, and grinned as if he'd just made a great joke.
I just stared at him.
"No? No sense of humor?" he asked, "Well, we'll get you taken care of. You'll laugh at all my jokes eventually. We're going to become good friends."
"If you are attempting to be either creepy or threatening, then you'll have to step it up. Sylax, whom you saw fight, is a good bit better at both," I said.
The man frowned at the mention of Sylax. "That was unexpected, her victory. Had I known what she was I'd have claimed her for myself. Still, I recognize a reflection when I see one and she was but a mirror of someone greater, and of you. You can call me Scythe, by the way."
"A reaper of crops, how terribly unoriginal. As a highly advanced reaper of crops you might at least modernize a little. Tractor, perhaps," I said.
"I like the name Scythe," Scythe said.
"Tiller? We could try some other form of farm equipment that is at least a little original.” "Scythe. Just Scythe," he said tightly.
"Well, if that is the best you can manage I suppose it will have to do. Inferior intellects are so dull. So what did you want to discuss?"
"We'll discuss it in person when I arrive," Scythe growled and blinked out of existence.
The implant severed its connection.
97
Whatever Scythe might be, he'd thrown out the names of alien species with some familiarity. He most likely was another visitor from outside the solar system. We had others, maybe they could shed some light.
Warmonger still wasn't talking, I still had him isolated and quarantined where he couldn't go sending any more invasion fleets our way. Flower was another story, and with the information she'd given us about the Sedara Arks she was somewhat on our side.
I found her in the garden, of course. The conditions really weren't right for it, but somehow she'd made roses bloom anyways. Roses were always blooming around her.
"Spy, we need to talk," I said through speakers.
Flower glanced towards the nearest camera. "At least bother to slip into a body. I'll make us some tea."
I took over one of the research drones I had observing her. By the time I made my way into containment she'd already gotten a pot steaming away on the stove.
"Does it ever bother you? Pretending to be human? Or do all your species live a lie like you do?" I asked.
"Have a seat," Flower said with a smile, bringing over the pot and pouring two cups of tea. I took mine dark, she added milk and sugar to hers, and took a long sip.
"The invention of tea time was one of the greatest moments in human civilization. If anything must survive of the species, that is it. If this is another entreaty for technology I still can't do it," Flower said.
"I didn't expect you to actually, suddenly become a real friend instead of simply friendly. You're far too two-faced for that. No, I met an entity who seems to be behind the Martian invasion. He called himself Scythe."
