"You didn't wake us up so we could bask in your personality. You don't have one. What do you want?" Batavius said.
"We have Powered threats down below. You're the only lackluster Powered I have left. Get me a prisoner or a core," I said, before teleporting them away.
I doused Mechos with Righteous goop before teleporting him to where I suspected was the Command core. Batavius, I teleported to the manufacturing center.
"You have Powered threats and you aren't sending your best fighter, you daft machine," said Baron Wolfson. He'd come up in the most recent teleport. Medical diagnostics showed multiple broken bones and he was missing his right arm.
"I see you're one of those dogs that barks loudly, but comes out the loser in any real fight it finds," I said, and shot him full of tranquilizers—he was of no use to me.
The Graven had made it to the other ships. Ophelia was fighting a brilliant battle, for every two shots she landed they were only landing one. Sadly there were three of them. That math wouldn't work out in the end.
This battle had so many moving parts it was hard to keep track of them all.
Registering a flicker in one of the Power cores below I did a fresh scan. The whip woman was down, by Hot Stuff's hand it looked like. Her crystal didn't linger, Hot Stuff's matrix soaked it up almost at once. That wasn't ideal—I wanted any crystal for myself.
Still, it could work out. I teleported Hot Stuff up to the research cell. The woman looked as bad as I'd ever seen her, her body covered in whip marks. She was a bruised and bleeding mess.
"I can't teleport you to Medbay with the others. Do try not to gobble up the power crystal in the meantime," I said.
"Couldn't help it. When you're the hottest woman alive things want to be inside you," Hot Stuff said and paused. "That came out weird, but on second thought I'm sticking with it. Did you see me? I burned."
That she did.
Research Project
"Hot Stuff"
Hot Stuff is the subject of previous research and burns with intense heat granted to her by a fire core. More recently she has absorbed a Metal core. The manifestations of this are still unknown. Testing can reveal both the nature of her new abilities as well as acquiring a lesser variant.
Research will take two weeks
IT WAS GOING to take her some time to heal anyways. I began the project and manifested her several heaping plates of cookies. You had to properly reward your test subjects for providing excellent service.
I didn't have any access to camera feeds from the facility, but sensors told me Doctor Batavius' life signs were fading. I teleported her to Medbay. Her internal organs were trashed, almost nothing was where it was supposed to be. People may not be a fan of my vivisections, but at least I put people back together again properly. I moved her into surgery.
A massive electromagnetic pulse from below caused my electrical systems to flicker. Massive spikes of electricity were radiating off the dome below.
I didn't know what had happened, but that wasn't a fit environment for anyone to survive.
22
I brought Mechos and Anna back to the ship. They both looked to have had two completely different experiences. Mechos was naked, unconscious, and appeared to have recently had intercourse. Just what did people see in the man? I found him a serviceable repairman and little else. The Command core must have overpowered the Righteous dampening effect in close proximity. That was valuable knowledge.
Anna was having a heart attack. Her non-power enhanced system had been sent into convulsions by the electricity. I brought her straight into the Medbay. In the facility she wouldn't die, but she would remain in a great deal of pain.
Most of her body had abrasions of some sort and her clothes were stained dark with blood—hers, according to scans. The satchel she'd taken was over one shoulder. It was empty of seeds and instead contained a power crystal glowing with a faint green light.
Anna was in no state to answer questions, but given the missing seeds I could speculate that what happened to the complex below involved the sparkseeds. Anna must have found a way to force Lotus to accelerate their growth.
I could apply the core and get more information later. For now, we still had ships closing in.
The Graven managed to destroy one of the enemy ships but had taken heavy damage in the process. Those ships moved fast, too fast to make fleeing a possibility. In terms of Powered personnel I had only Ratticus left. That would have to do. I dosed him and the other Rats with stimulants and soon they were stirring from their slumber.
"Don't kill us most courteous and polite mechanical overlord! We did not mean to damage your glorious hull!" Ratticus said, sitting up in a panic.
"I admire how many hours must have been spent fine-tuning your squeaking to be the most irritating sound audio sensors could endure. We have two vessels incoming. The rest of the crew are down. We either need our own guns working or those on the dome repaired. The dome will be difficult, the facility is currently under an electrical overload," I said.
"Oh shining digital champion of all that is merciful and decent! We are not bothered by electricity," Ratticus said.
Really? I suppose that made a certain amount of sense given all of the components that they had to scurry about. Still, I felt foolish for not realizing sooner—and I would have thrown Ratticus into a testing chamber too. Well, it could wait until this was done, provided he survived.
I teleported the Rats down to the guns of the complex. The electrical overload should have neutralized the owner of that Command core.
"Graven? Your inability to evade shots has damaged you quite enough. Return to the ship, you're in no shape to continue this fight," I said over the comm.
"We acknowledge options are limited. You have a plan?" Ophelia said, in that disinterested tone of hers.
"Somebody has to," I said.
The Graven focused on evasion as it returned to the Powerhungry, letting loose a burst of fire only when one of the other ships had a good firing solution on it.
I was steering the Powerhungry to make sure it and the airships following would have to pass over the dome. They wouldn't be expecting fire from a friendly target. If the Rats actually were good for something, this would catch them unawares.
When the Graven made it to the Powerhungry and docked, it was suddenly more vulnerable. I engaged the docking clamps and kicked in the thrusters to present the attackers with our least damaged stretch of hull. Beam weapons sliced the armor.
No fire was coming from below. Only seconds were left before I'd have to consider other options. I knew I could survive without my Biocore providing power, although most of the ship’s systems including engines would go down.
I was saved further thought along those lines when the cannons finally opened up. A massive spark of electricity discharged from the complex to strike one of the attacking ships and send it tumbling from the sky to crash into the jungle.
The other vessel broke off at once—this was suddenly a fight it wanted no part of. The dome guns fired again with another spark that this time struck the engine of the ship resulting in a massive fireball that filled the air with debris.
Whereas moments before survival had seemed questionable, abruptly we were the only thing left moving on the battlefield.
"We are ready to return to your sparkly and glowingly benevolent, if overly organic, presence," Ratticus called.
I wasn't detecting any more ships incoming. I didn't doubt that eventually more would be sent, but with everything including their response force having gone silent I didn't think they'd be rushing here. They would be playing it cautious.