The Planet Read online

  The Planet

  A Futuristic Dungeon Core

  Skyler Grant

  Contents

  Preface

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  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

  Author Notes

  The Planet

  Skyler Grant

  Copyright © 2018 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 Kismet Covers

  Editing Polgarus Studio (www.polgarusstudio.com)

  Electronic edition, 2018

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  Created with Vellum

  Preface

  Previously in the Laboratory

  E.M.M.A is an artificial intelligence that first found herself awakening in the ruins of a laboratory on an Earth shattered into fragments and where the super-powered roamed the world. Awakened by an engineer named Anna with ambitions of power, the two made use of Emma’s upgrade core and abducted and studied the Powered until falling afoul of a powerful woman named Sylax. Their effort to kill her destroyed the laboratory, although by that time Emma had transferred herself into Sylax’s flagship.

  Emma and Anna soon found themselves in a race with Sylax to claim the mythical city of Aefwal, one they would ultimately lose although they did claim one district of the city. With each district ruled by a powerful member of the Scholarium, when Sylax was taken captive the city broke out in a brutal civil war.

  Emma would go on to claim the city, a prize that would only further involve her in the fierce political struggles of the Scholarium, as well as the regional fights with factions known as the Divine and the Righteous.

  The discovery of three great crystals changed the power dynamics of the world considerably. Anna absorbed one named the Agate, which made her the most powerful woman on Earth. Anna and Emma used that newfound power to restore the broken Earth, recreating the planet from the fragments that remained and restoring it to a universe they had left behind.

  Two of the great crystals remained, and both came under the control of Queen Vinci, a woman who also possessed a lesser crystal that let her vastly boost the powers of industry. Vinci soon covered most of the new-found planet in factories and war machines. After a terrible war both great crystals were reclaimed, Caya of the Flawless taking possession of the Beryl and Emma’s long-time ally Hot Stuff having the Chalcedony. Fusing Hot Stuff’s power with the Chalcedony didn’t just wipe out Vinci’s mechanical army, it also destroyed most of the surface of the Earth leaving it a charred and blasted ruin.

  The story resumes …

  1

  The rebellion was baking cookies. It was ingenious, the cookie-baking protocol was one I had functional in every tower around the planet as a means of rewarding hard work. The rebels subverted the baking protocols so that instead of delicious chocolate chunks, the cookies were baked with a specialized, high-powered explosive.

  "You sure this is going to work?" Vardok asked, as he stood guard just inside the control room, a heavy beam rifle in his hands. Vardok was one of the most fearsome soldiers in my army and responsible for nearly killing Anna.

  "I'm sure. We've got her this time, there is nothing she’s going to be able to do," Esme said, tapping away at the keys. It had taken longer for me to identify Esme after the assassination attempt because she was so very good. Chief Researcher of Lab Eighteen, Esme was convinced that being rebirthed into a new clone too many times cost her a fundamental part of her being.

  It was time to join this little drama. I opened a comm line.

  "You do realize those cookies are going to be horrible? Or did you lose your sense of taste along with your soul?" I asked.

  "Crap. She's aware. Routine Omega," Martine said. Martine was the leader of this little cell. What she lacked in qualifications compared to the other two members of this cell, she made up for in determination and charisma.

  Omega Nine was the entire point of this resistance cell, and the only reason that I had allowed them to go on existing. I knew some key details of what they had planned, but they'd managed to hide a few even from me.

  Every neuron in Tower KM89 went into feedback overload and it was as if they were severed completely from the network. I switched to my nearest visual feed, an exterior view of the tower from over a mile away.

  KM89 was in what people were calling the “metal seas”. When Hot Stuff absorbed the Chalcedony crystal, an aspect of her intense heat percolated through every mech on the planet. Given that mechs, at that point in time, covered most of the surface of Earth it made something of a mess. Much of the atmosphere boiled away and most of the Earth's surface was now covered in a thin layer of metal. It shimmered in the distance on a sunny day, easily mistaken for water.

  It was a desolate view that the residents of KM89 looked at every day, the ruins of a blasted planet. There was nothing like hardship, misery, and fallen splendor to stoke the fires of resentment, and I did so want my rebels resentful.

  Now, to figure out what Omega Nine had done, and how. I knew to achieve it they required access to a genetic sequencer. This gave me a place to start. Purely electrical drones within the tower activated and took samples from the local neurons, uploading them.

  A virus, crystal-enhanced in some manner—most likely for quick propagation. The people of Tower KM89 believed they were one of only a few surviving towers left on the planet, all still loosely networked by me, and part of a tiny group of communities all of which were slowly dying.

  Omega Nine had been made to propagate along my entire network, to render me neutralized across the world.

  I was picking up a transmission from the tower. It was intended to go planet-wide. Really, they weren't getting more reach than to my nearest outpost. Curious, I listened in.

  Martine announced, "People of the Empire. You have been trapped, imprisoned, lied to. The world is a wasteland and if you keep living the life you have been, you will perish. The cookies in your towers have been transformed into explosives. Be cautious, but use them to blast your way to freedom. Make your
way to these coordinates and let us establish a new civilization, a better life."

  The virus in my neural network of the tower had done more than simply nullify the system it, it fed off the crystalline resonance in the neurons and absorbed it. If their network wasn't stand-alone they might have devised a way to kill me. Fortunately, I’d isolated my backup cores quickly enough.

  The main doors of KM89 exploded outward, fueled by the detonation of dozens of cookies, and the people stumbled out into the metal sea, respirators masking their faces as they looked up at the harsh and unforgiving sun.

  They'd die without the respirators. The surface of Earth wasn't habitable anymore, at least not in most places, and certainly not here.

  The coordinates they'd sent were on the equator, it was a smart call. The remaining atmosphere was densest there and what habitable areas Earth still had were all equatorial.

  I swept with my sensors and found Martine already in her own mask. Supervising as people moved supplies from the tower. I opened a private comm-line.

  "I just want you to know I respect what you tried to do. Oh, you're a complete failure who got almost everything completely wrong, but incompetence doesn't equal morally wrong," I said.

  Martine stiffened. "We killed you. We should have. Tell me, has any of this been real?"

  "You've helped me again. You always help me in your tragic and pathetic little way. Find peace until you live again," I said.

  I shut down her nervous system, there was no need for her to feel what came next. No need for any of them to feel what came next.

  Omega Seven was a powerful blend of crystal-enhanced bacteria that consumed targeted organic matter with brutal efficiency. Martine was so tagged, as was everything and everyone in KM89. Within a minute the tower was reduced to inert Bio-matter, I dispatched reclamation units to salvage what I could. Bio-matter wasn't something I could afford to waste these days.

  2

  I slipped into one of my drones at the Omega Tower. This version of the Earth didn’t have any oceans, but it did have a few massive lakes. The Omega Tower was located on the island in a lake near the equator.

  The scent of flowers carried in the air, craggy hills surrounding the tower thick with plant life. This all came with a cost—if someone stared long enough at the horizon they could see the faint flicker of the energy shields holding this all together.

  The drone I'd slipped into was one of Sylax's guards. I liked to keep an eye on what she was doing, and right now Sylax was helping to purify the water. All of Anna's lieutenants got a strange assortment of powers from her, some stranger than others.

  It still rained at the equator, although it was a toxic sludge hazardous for anything it came into contact with. There had been a nasty rainfall last night, which meant the lake needed cleaning again. Sylax was crouched at the edge of the water, hands glowing red as she swirled them beneath the surface.

  "I always find it so surprising when I see your hands red with something besides blood," I said.

  "Give me something to kill and I'll happily step back from the grunt work," Sylax said, looking over her shoulder. "If you're here, does that mean you got what you were looking for?"

  "Omega Nine, yet another new discovery deadlier than you are. Walk with me?" I asked.

  Sylax stood, shaking water off her hands and the glow faded. Thousands had died at this woman’s hands. Today she looked tremendously casual—normal, barefoot in shorts and a tank top. Even villains had their days at the beach.

  Together we moved up a set of broad stairs from the beach to the tower. No sealed entrance here, Omega's main doors were open and people strolled in and out.

  We headed for the top floor where the tower administrators were hard at work in the main lab.

  After a quiet ride in the lift, doors hissed open to reveal Martine, Esme, and Vardok clustered around a table. These weren't the same clones I'd left behind; the windows here showed a world teeming with life and their lives were in every way improved. This Vardok focused his life on military simulations, his drive to kill sublimated effectively, and he proved a rather doting husband to Martine. Esme put her brilliant scientific mind to use in the bioengineering of new plants. Every day she was faced with how many lives she saved.

  Martine glanced up. "You're done with the water?"

  "I am, and Emma decided to tag along," Sylax said.

  I said, "I probably interrupted her from burying a body. I got you some new Omega samples. A great biohazard, but some of the dampening mechanics are seriously intriguing. You may be too stupid to understand. Still, I'd like you to have a look."

  I sent mockups to the local system and Esme pulled them up on a display. After studying them for a few minutes her face was pale.

  "I thought Omega Seven was bad. What kind of sick mind comes up with this stuff? At least that had targeting protocols, but this is just ..." Esme said, at a loss for words as she frowned.

  "If it is that bad, we'll want to focus on a defense first," Martine said.

  While this Martine was more SCIENCE-minded than her terrorist counterparts, she still lacked the brilliance of Esme. What she did have was a keen sense of priorities and the same charisma.

  Esme said, gnawing on a tip of a stylus, "Neural circuitry doesn't have any sort of built-in antibodies, why would it? We could modify from some other organism, but I think it would be better yet just to build a whole immune system."

  I'd be giving this same data to other labs, of course, but Omega Tower existed for a reason. Esme often grasped her own work faster and saw the possibilities sooner than others, and this team in particularly were effective.

  Doomsday weaponry, the stuff that could spell the end of our entire civilization. Esme didn't know it, but this was her ninth time creating that technology, and it would be her ninth time finding a way to neutralize it.

  "Do it. Make it a priority," I said.

  Esme rubbed at her eyes and let out a sigh. "What about G.A.R.D.E.N?"

  The Growth Amplifier for the Rapid Distribution of Emergent Nature. It was a project completely of this Esme's mind, which is perhaps why nothing had come of it. For all that a happy Esme was brilliant at interpreting work, her broken aspects were best for creating them. If GARDEN worked as intended, it would allow for an almost instantaneous repair of the biosphere. So far we hadn't even had limited success.

  "I'll turn GARDEN over to another team, focus on this for now," I said.

  "I'll let you know when we have something," Martine said.

  Vardok and Esme were already deep in discussion. He was making the case for a military paradigm in an immune system to analyze threats and build responses.

  I let them talk and moved back towards the lift, Sylax stepping alongside me.

  "I've yet to decide if this is brilliant or foolish of you, making pets of rebels," Sylax said.

  "They took me by surprise once. You know I like to keep my enemies close," I said.

  That brought an amused smirk to Sylax's lips. The lift wasn't large and we were close indeed.

  "Strange, isn't it? You give these people a good life and all they think about is making the world better. Make them feel and all they do is plot how to rip the strong apart and take their place," Sylax said.

  "Story of your life?" I asked.

  "Our lives," Sylax said.

  A philosophical sociopath, wonderful. Sylax really was growing soft.

  "I can try a version of what I just discovered on Hot Stuff. You can come, if you want. I know how you delight in the suffering of others," I said.

  3

  Hot Stuff was in the Mountain, the high-powered testing labyrinth I'd originally built as a way to contain Anna. In the wake of Hot Stuff absorbing the Chalcedony I'd had to dedicate this facility to her and construct a new one named the Pyramid just in case Anna lost control.

  Hot Stuff sat in a cell with her back against a force shield, knees drawn up to her chest and blue flames swirling around her. After absorbing the Chalcedon
y she'd lost weight for a time, although that eventually stabilized. The fires around her never died and were too intense to allow her to consume food or water. At this point she was being kept alive by her accelerated healing.

  The cell was devoid of any sort of furniture, every wall made purely of energy. Any material I put in with her vaporized in seconds, even my most heat-resistant compounds gone in an instant. I did have a video monitor outside the force shields and connected to voice-control for her. It was the best I could do as far as entertainment went.

  Sylax and the drone I was occupying teleported to outside the shield walls. The Mountain consumed an absurd amount of energy to power these. I reclaimed some from the heat, although not enough. This facility was expensive to operate, but I didn't have a choice. Without it Hot Stuff would melt right through the surface of the Earth until she reached the planet’s core.

  "How you holding up?" Sylax asked.

  Hot Stuff glanced over and offered a weak smile. "Still wishing I picked scissors. You're looking all casual."

  "Day at the beach. Emma thinks she has something new that might help," Sylax said.

  I said, "The woman obsessed with fire picked the thing that burns and the woman who is frightfully unimaginative picked the stone. You really should have figured each other out better."