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  Massive robot colossi swiveled to track them, palms extending as they released dozens of plasma bursts in the Juggernauts’ direction.

  I wanted until the last moment before ordering the Mercy to supercharge its shields. Already the strongest shields in the fleet, the enhanced version took even the massive pounding that the colossi were giving it, at least for a time.

  Time to let the other ships get in range to unleash their full power.

  The Intimidater with its power projection cannons was especially impressive, elemental beams cutting off the arms of colossi still charging for their next blasts. The Claw lacked quite that degree of fire power. Even so their traditional beam weapons sent other colossi staggering back under the furious onslaught.

  It wasn't enough, twelve seconds of sustained fire and even the Mercy's supercharged shields fell. Five more seconds for the armor to be penetrated and I lost my second Juggernaut as it crashed into the ground erupting in a huge gout of fire.

  The Intimidater moved to the fore, pyrokinetics taking their place in the power projection seats to send plasma blasts arcing back towards the sources, causing several colossi to detonate.

  It wouldn't last, there were too many and soon a second ship was angling towards the ground. The Claw didn't last much longer, not with the pathetic nature of the shields.

  Amy drove the Pinnacle at full speed towards the Chalcedony, overloading the engines in an effort to take out the crystal. Without shields she never got the chance, a fusillade of plasma bolts finishing off the last of my Juggernauts.

  I had people alive aboard all the ships. Most of the crews had survived the impacts and Vinci didn't even seem to be trying to finish them off. What was the point? My most potent offensive tools had just proved themselves incapable of stopping her, and her push was going far more successfully without bothering to pick off survivors.

  I started the Annas teleporting back to friendly territory. With their exhausted powers it would take them a lot of small hops to return.

  The direct approach had failed. The final play was even more desperate.

  I'd almost missed this, the desperation, the last minute plans. I wasn't at my best in wars of attrition, I was at my best when everything was on the line and the risks were high.

  37

  If I couldn't get through the Chalcedony's defensive perimeter on the ground, and it appeared that I couldn't, that left me only one real option. The teleportation gate that led from it to space. It would go both ways. If only I could get my forces through the orbital gate they'd materialize almost right on top of the Chalcedony.

  The question was how to get them there. I'd used a Juggernaut as a springboard before, but my Juggernauts were busy being smoldering wreckage.

  It would have to be shuttles. Those I had in large numbers and while they weren't quite as spacious inside they had cargo compartments.

  The Annas were exhausted, but I did have a lot of shuttles and what they couldn't do in a single leap they should be able to do in dozens.

  I gave the orders and got the ships airborne.

  My focus couldn't just be the teleportation portal, I still had a strike team out of action on the Venusian vessel. Whatever was aboard seemed to interfere with my networked personnel, and Sylax hadn’t been able to figure out their technology.

  I didn't keep Sylax around for her brilliant intellect.

  It was a good initial test of the system before using it to stage a full assault anyways. The chain of shuttles wound up being thirty-seven craft. I sent them up with an electronic communications rig.

  Mechos and Minerva blinked out, but it wasn't long before I heard back from them.

  "We're aboard. The strike team is in bad shape but doing better than the aliens. This place is even more biological-based than you are without any electronic interfaces. We're going to find a neuron cluster and hack in," Minerva reported.

  Brilliant intellect was why I kept Mechos and Minerva about.

  It looked good. I positioned a new fleet of shuttles to allow the leapfrog up to orbit. It didn't go unnoticed. An energy round was fired from orbit taking out one of the shuttles and I scrambled more to confuse Vinci as to which to actually target.

  I didn't require Annas for this operation, a great many of my drones had teleport and anyone in a combat suit modified for oribital use would be useful. I started filling space with Gunslingers.

  The first wave was no more through than large gates slid shut over the teleportation portal. These physical barriers didn’t surprise me. Operating energy shields in close proximity to a portal was tricky and Vinci must not have quite figured that out yet. Good.

  In the next wave I sent Sylax and Hot Stuff. I didn't much want to include Sylax in this, but relatively speaking I trusted her more than any of the remaining Scholarium nobles pledged to us.

  I hoped for Hot Stuff to take the Chalcedony, but I wasn't sure that her matrix would be able to handle that level of power.

  With a blast of thrusters both Hot Stuff and Sylax started drifting towards the portal. Hot Stuff activated her flames just before reaching it, her suit rupturing in an explosion of fire as the combat armor melted off of her.

  I'd once neutralized Hot Stuff by cutting off her supply of oxygen, but she was stronger now. Her flames dampened but didn't die, for all she started to asphyxiate as she slammed into the armor plating surrounding the portal and melted through it a moment later. Sylax followed her in, the two vanishing.

  Meanwhile, the majority of my gunslingers were dying in plasma bursts before they could ever get a shot. Bodies tumbling through space, a great many would wind up burning up in the atmosphere. There would be shooting stars in the skies tonight over the empire.

  Vinci wasn't the only one that could swarm. Without the portal active she didn't have a way to bring up reinforcements and I did. That was the theory, it wasn't quite working out that way. Factory limbs were grabbing a hold of the bodies of my drones, ripping the armor off them and feeding it into recyclers. Birthing new weapons from my fallen.

  I couldn't make any progress without taking out that factory, and the more forces I brought up to try the more I would wind up feeding those engines of destruction. Everything depended on Hot Stuff and Sylax now.

  38

  Hot Stuff crashed through the other end of the portal, wrenching in desperate breaths. She no longer wore the armor that let me monitor events. Sylax at least had the virtue of staying dressed in combat.

  They materialized within the energy shield surrounding the Chalcedony. In the distance beyond it the colossi could still be seen, and the smoldering wrecks of my Juggernauts that tried so valiantly to reach where they now stood.

  Sylax slammed her fist into an access panel and tore out circuitry. The result was a spray of sparks and with a flicker the portal died.

  "Not a big fan of space," Hot Stuff said, getting to her feet and turning her attention. The Chalcedony wasn’t behind any shielded layers this time. Instead the crystal was in a cylinder with blue sparks leaping off it.

  "You got to do a burn dive though. It is always badass when you fall through armor," Sylax said, raising her gun and putting a round through a mechanical appendage swiveling in her direction.

  Here within the final layer of security there were no mechs, no final defenses. They were all outside the shield—although if Hot Stuff and Sylax didn't hurry Vinci would disable the shield, turn those colossi around and hit the two with plasma fire I wasn't sure even they would survive.

  They stared at each other expectantly for several long moments.

  "Going to do it?" Sylax asked.

  "Pretty sure that’s your job," Hot Stuff said.

  "Huh. Emma? Which of us is absorbing this damned thing and gaining nearly infinite power with a good chance of horrific death?" Sylax said.

  Fine, I hadn't actually broken this part of the plan down or discussed it with either of them. But really, I thought it obvious.

  "I'll take the exhibitionist over
the sociopath and lament the sad state of humanity that makes these my best options," I said.

  "Err," Hot Stuff said awkwardly, "Here’s the thing. I'm so grateful for all you've done for me, but I'm not really into it, you know. I'm able to wear clothes again, I mean usually, and I can switch my powers off and on at will. I'm doing things that don't involve terrified screams and the scent of roasting people."

  "Well, I'm turned on," Sylax said. I had access to her bio-readings, she wasn't lying.

  "And thereby the sociopath makes the case why it shouldn't be her. Whatever happens, I have worked hard to get you where you are now, I'll work with you again," I said.

  "Like you're working with Anna? Right now you can help me because you're more powerful than I am. I absorb that thing and I'm going backwards, not forward," Hot Stuff said.

  Sylax was my backup plan in case Hot Stuff exploded, not in case she suddenly developed a set of long-term goals that didn't involve being a human incinerator. Still, backup plans were versatile things.

  "Sociopath it is. Infinite power and the ability to inflict suffering on millions will soon be yours," I said.

  Sylax let out a low breath. "See, here’s the thing ..."

  This had to be some sort of cosmic joke. I wasn't laughing.

  I said, "You've always craved power. You've always delighted in being the biggest and deadliest woman alive. It was terribly shallow, but at least predictable. What is the problem?"

  "I did all that for revenge I wound up getting. Crystal is dead and I'm happier than I've ever been being a second-in-command. I don't know what happens if I take that thing, but I can't see my life being the better for it," Sylax said.

  What was the world coming to when you could no longer depend on the power-hungry nature of humans? I delighted in surprising results, but I did wish these had come at a better time.

  "One of you is going to take that crystal or Vinci is going to have it back. With it she'll take over Earth's orbit and destroy everything you both claim to have embraced as your lives. I don't care which of you absorbs it. Decide," I said.

  "Fuck," Sylax said, and shared a look with Hot Stuff.

  "Rock paper scissors?" Hot Stuff asked.

  I could detect the most detailed twitches in musculature before gestures formed. I knew the results before they did.

  Hot Stuff ended with her hand showing paper, Sylax rock.

  "Sorry," Sylax said.

  "I actually believe that," Hot Stuff said. The flames around her body flickered and died, and she moved in to draw Sylax into a tight hug. "In case I can't do this later."

  Sylax actually hugged back.

  Hot Stuff released her.

  I triggered a suppressor in Sylax's armor, dampening the power of Chalcedony hopefully enough for Sylax to survive what was to come. Hot Stuff advanced, flames rising on her body. With the decision made she wasn't one to hesitate. A flaming hand absorbed multiple blue sparks as she plunged it through the cylinder and wrapped her fingers around the crystal.

  Blue lightning crackled around Hot Stuff, a scream erupting from her throat as she began to twitch as if being electrocuted. The flames around her body flared brighter and brighter, turning the same brilliant blue of the crystal.

  Then I lost all local sensor readings, the heat growing so much it destroyed Sylax's armor. Flames began erupting all over the planet. Vinci had been using the Chalcedony to fuel her entire nation and now her nation burned—and most of the Earth burned with it.

  39

  By the end Vinci had controlled seventy percent of the Earth's surface. Seventy percent of the world burned, and what her factories hadn't poisoned the fires purged. They took most of the planet’s atmosphere with it. Earth became a charred and inhospitable husk.

  Earth

  Sol System

  3rd Planet

  Ruler: Empress Anna Besari

  "The Empire"

  Administrator: E.M.M.A

  Biosphere: 19%

  Classification: Inhospitable

  To the rest of the solar system, the rest of the universe, we probably looked a foe nearly finished off—and they'd be coming for us. The strong always came for those they believed weak.

  It took Caya a week to wake up, her eyes a brilliant glowing green, a trait all the Flawless now shared. They had moved beyond being the perfect humans now. They had transcended into something different although I hadn't quite figured out what. They saw things nobody else did, patterns even I couldn't discern. Whatever they were, they stood ready and were key in designing the defenses and the new biosphere of the planet.

  Hot Stuff was in the Mountain, I wasn't sure what else to do with her. Unless fully surrounded in laboratory fields she'd fall into the Earth's core. Her fires never died now, and as she'd feared I had yet to develop a way to control them.

  With all three crystals housed in human hosts, Anna's pain had lessened, although it hadn't been eliminated.

  Of Vinci there was no trace, most likely she'd been incinerated along with her forces, but she'd surprised me too often for me to fully discount her.

  In empty storerooms and abandoned corridors my rebels plotted, little knowing they were my greatest experiment yet.

  Coming Soon

  The Planet

  Earth is not alone, and in this universe never has been. Having conquered the world, Anna and Emma must now find their place in a larger universe.