The Laboratory Omnibus 2 Read online

  The Laboratory Omnibus

  Volumes 5-8

  Skyler Grant

  The Laboratory Omnibus

  Volumes 5-8

  Skyler Grant

  Copyright © 2019 Skyler Grant

  All rights reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to [email protected]

  Cover designed by Kasmit Covers

  Edited by Polgarus Studio (www.polgarusstudio.com)

  Electronic edition, 2019

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  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  21. Author Notes

  22. The Nation

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  61. The Planet

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Author Notes

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Final Notes

  1

  The residents of Tower 418 had become cannibals. It had seemed a simple enough experiment, I introduced some of the more carnivorous and predatory plants I'd discovered into the tower's garden. I wanted to test how getting the thrill of the hunt from having a salad would affect the population. The results were a prolonged battle between humans and their gardens, and the eventual extermination of the latter. Then the humans made up for the ensuing nutritional deficiency by eating each other. Never mind, the new growth vats would quickly replace the bodies of any citizen killed.

  With growth vats and proper atmospheric systems I could essentially make every tower in a city a self-contained environment perfect for experimentation. I had hundreds running at any given point in time. I wasn't thrilled at even polite and consensual cannibalism, and this population had gotten really good at killing murderous plants—a skill worth preserving. It was worth keeping this tower population intact. It would give me a new testing ground for particularly murderous plants. I had some razor roses in development that could fire off toxic thorns capable of penetrating light armor. This is why I loved SCIENCE, ultimately all the pieces fit together properly.

  I'd tried playing diplomat for a time with our newfound alliances but was ill-suited for it. I'd much rather be running an experiment than trying to explain to others exactly why their approach to everything was wrong. It was fortunate that Anna was better at negotiations. Lately she'd really been stepping it up as Queen and while she mostly seemed to be into it for the wine and the parties, it appeared to be working out. It had been three months since the crash of the Sword of Light and we hadn't come under any further attacks.

  "And to do something more meaningful," said a resident of Tower 704. It was a prayer, one of the more unexpected results of forming alliances with the Divine. The Church of Emma was a growing thing within the cities, and not just amongst my drones. Divine, Flawless, the Dust, and drones all had church members amongst their populations who prayed. It probably didn't help that I listened.

  This prayer in particular was from Citizen 171914 and I pulled up her information.

  Sylvia

  Drone

  Age: 192 days

  Duties: Wastewater Reclamation

  Hobbies: Reading, Sketching

  The age was notable. At six months she was actually one of my older drones. Reviewing her record proved that, and she'd seen a lot of combat as had most of my early drones. It didn't much suit her and when she'd eventually requested a non-combat assignment a place had been found for her doing something useful. Wastewater reclamation definitely was meaningful, but obviously she didn't see that. There was still a large-scale data-gathering effort underway from Divine and Scholar texts. It was a lot more intellectual assignment than her current one, which might be exactly what she was looking for.

  By the time she finished her prayer the transfer order was in and her console was beeping to notify her. I turned my attention elsewhere.

  While things had been peaceful I'd learned I couldn't neglect defenses and been hard at work designing the next generation of my combat gear. I'd kept refining my existing units as well as creating some new ones. My primary arsenal currently looked functional.

 
Aegis

  Armored Exoskeleton

  Weapons: One razor dagger, one energy rapier

  Defenses: Heavy Armor with shield pack

  Role: Heavy forward line troop capable of dealing both kinetic and energy damage and of absorbing anything thrown at it. Vulnerable to sufficiently advanced ranged assault or sustained damage at range.

  Gunslinger

  Armored Exoskeleton

  Weapons: One kinetic sniper rifle, one projector cannon

  Defenses: Light armor

  Role: Wields a miniaturized version of the power-projecting beam cannon. This allows a wide variety of powered strikes at range as well as being equipped with a standard sniper rifle.

  Whisper

  Armored Exoskeleton

  Weapons: Stunner, explosive charges

  Defenses: Experimental cloaking system

  Role: Infiltration for silent neutralizing of targets or disabling of defenses.

  Mosquito

  Aerial Drone

  Weapons: Energy Sapper, Bio-Bomb

  Defenses: Energy Shielding

  Role: Aerial assault.

  In the past my specialized offensive units fared far worse than my generalized ones with multiple offensive options, so I'd retooled my entire line to have more options. I'd also made the decision to stick with combat suits instead of purely automated defenses. While I'd created a few airships, I wasn't focusing on them for aerial combat—not like many armies I'd seen.

  By and large my upgrades were focused on individuals and I couldn't effectively leverage those improvements in an airship during an aerial battle. The Mosquitos were a part of my answer to that, flyers designed to get in close and leech an enemy’s shields so that I could dock shuttles and send aboard landing parties. If needed, the Mosquitoes could detonate themselves to destroy an enemy’s key systems. In testing this was working well, although I hadn’t yet had a chance to deploy them in actual combat.

  "Want smarts."

  It was another prayer. This one came from Tower 118 and the source was an unusual one. It was one of the Gobbles. Since I'd first decided to allow them to live, the fat fluffy cat-like creatures had been doing a very effective job at expanding their own population even without the use of my growth vats. Crystal had modified a few for greater intelligence before she'd grown bored of the project.

  Intelligence was a lot like cookies. Once you had a little bit, you tended to crave even more.

  This was a difficult request. I tried to grant the prayers of my citizens when I could. Usually it cost me little and made them happy, but I wasn't sure it was really in everyone’s best interest to have another intelligence species living beside them. Then again, it was very interesting and if making a race of hyper-intelligent cat monsters wasn't SCIENCE then I didn't know what was.

  Tower 754 was sitting idle after my failed attempt to make a super-immune system in the residents who I’d previously infected with a super flu. I was reasonably sure the incineration had even gotten rid of the last traces of the disease and even if not, humans and Gobbles had very different immune systems.

  I put in the order to establish a purely Gobble tower. Once I had a population settled in I could begin the intelligence upgrades. Perhaps I'd put them to work on string theory? It seemed they might have some natural affinity.

  I was interrupted by a priority communication. I casually monitored all of my citizen’s lives, but a few did merit more attention when they called. Outside of Anna and myself the two most important people in our Province were Crystal, the ruler of the city of Aefwal, and Caya who ruled the city of Diamate.

  "Emma, I am bored out of my mind," Caya said, appearing on a video comm.

  The two cities that made up the Province could hardly be more different. Under Crystal, Aefwal had become a city of shadows, massive crystal towers projecting into the heavens with dark mists cloaking the streets where various monsters roamed. Crystal was fond of her beasts and her monsters, and her powers embodied both.

  Caya's power was centered around being flawless. The perfect human, as if there ever could be any such thing.

  "Perhaps if you set yourself to something more challenging than lounging mostly naked around a pool?" I replied.

  It wasn't just an insult—she really was poolside most of the time. But then it was hard not to lounge naked around a pool in Diamate. There were an absurd number of both pools and lounges, and unless the people were going into battle the population wasn't big on fashion and wearing clothes.

  "I did this only after solving those last equations. Don't you have anything else?" Caya asked.

  The equations were dimensional field mechanics, and challenging ones. I'd consulted her to check my work. Mechos and Minerva had departed in search of Vattier, and in their absence Caya was the greatest mind I could find outside of Amy, the duplicate version of myself that dwelled within Ophelia.

  There was a lot more that I could use Caya's help with, but the issue was I simply couldn't trust her with some things. Caya was a Scholar. The Agate, an enormous source of energy I'd secretly stolen from the Sword of Light, was in a secure section of Aefwal powering the city. If the Scholars knew we possessed it, life would be far less peaceful. So I hadn’t told Caya about the Agate. Hopefully, it would never occur to Caya to ask where all the power was coming from.

  I'd been studying it for months and was struggling to understand its secrets. I was certain that Caya would be able to help, but I was less certain that I could trust her.

  "I'm making a race of hyper-intelligent cat monsters, if you'd care to learn genetic sequencing? They might prove better company than those humorless minions of yours."

  "My people are perfect and you know it," Caya said with a sniff. It was true, and it was irritating. "You waste time on the most foolish things and besides, that won't even be the tiniest bit of a challenge for you. I want something difficult."

  I couldn't let her know about the Agate, I just couldn't. However, there was one other major research project that had been abandoned for too long.

  I keyed the research files I had on the Tongue of Iska and sent it over.

  Caya flipped through the pages on a tablet, sitting up after a few minutes. "Now this really is interesting. Every time you attempt to run a sample analysis you get a different result?"

  "They do repeat, but to date I've charted over three thousand different compositions. The object seems to be in some severe state of dimensional flux. It is almost like your love life," I said.

  "Or it is actively immune to analysis, much like my love life? The very fact that you're attempting to observe it might be causing a constant shift in properties. Where did you acquire it?"

  "It was after a dimensional jump that went seriously awry. I won a game of sorts and this was the prize that was given."

  "You are insulting, paranoid, and voyeuristic, but you do have a sense of adventure," Caya said, pursing her lips. "I'll look into it and let you know what I find out."

  "You really should coordinate with me. While you have an admirable enough scientific mind for a human ..." I said.

  "A bit like saying a dress looks good being on Queen Anna. I know, I know, needless insult attached and recognized. There are less than fifty pages of notes here after you, who I confess is the far superior scientific mind, have had a long time to study it. For whatever reason, every approach you’ve tried doesn't work and that means you are the last person I should be listening to," Caya said.

  The insult she made was better than the one I'd had planned, and even more frustrating, she was correct. I'd gotten nowhere.

  "Has Queen Vinci landed yet?" Caya asked.

  I wish she hadn't reminded me. Politics. I was trying so very hard to forget anything to do with politics, not that it was really possible to put the visit by Queen Vinci out of my mind.

  Anna hadn't exactly bent a knee and Queen Vinci hadn't exactly asked her to—for all that the implication was there that we should. I expected that encouragement on this su
bject was exactly what we'd see during Vinci’s upcoming visit, probably delivered by way of some highly theatrical threat, if I'd learned anything about the Scholars.

  Queen Vinci was one of five Royals currently in the Scholarium. King Boreas, King Carnage, Queen Astrid, and Queen Witchgaze were the others. King Boreas was the only other Royal we had any first-hand experience with—having gone to war with him for a time.