With the Righteous ready we began our plan and I had my drones start ferrying the teams to their targets. Despite it requiring multiple trips it happened in seconds, their presence a mere flicker as they phased in and out from one place to another.
The brief glimpses inside the Scholar ships were dizzying. In just moments, everything my drones observed brought up fascinating statistical values. If, already, many aspects of Powers had seemed almost game-like, the interiors of those ships were even more so.
"What am I looking at in there?" I asked Anna.
"The new reality," Anna said. "You only got just a dose of it. There it is fully realized. The teams are in place?"
They were. I'd already withdrawn my drones, so I was blind. I wasn't ignorant of events for long, however. Airships were starting to fall from the sky.
45
Two airships were crashing to Earth, but the third remained aloft. I got a visual and it showed no sign of any damage. Two Righteous airships were closing on its position at high speeds and they were starting to exchange fire.
I caught a glimpse of a glider of some kind escaping from the Scholars vessel. I had a guess what was happening here—the Righteous bombers had a different taregt. Anna was right in expecting some sort of betrayal from the Righteous, and this was it. They'd bombed two of the airships, but the third survived because those bombs hadn't been used. The Righteous were saving them—and I was the target they were most likely saving them for.
What they didn't consider is that I could communicate at any range with components of myself, and for all that they were individual, those spawn of my reactor core did qualify. I focused to see if I was correct. I was getting a strong sense of them from that glider—I was right. I could try to remote-detonate those cores now, although I wasn't sure if that would in turn trigger Mechos' added explosive or not.
Instead, I killed the cores. There was more advantage to letting the Righteous mistakenly believe they had a powerful weapon. The explosives would still detonate, but not with anything near the same force.
Suddenly, the sky above and behind the Scholars airship tore itself apart, jagged rents of flickering blue energy looking like tears in the fabric of space itself, and through the maelstrom came a new airship. It looked like some sort of floating island, a majestic castle perched on top.
I brought the images up to Anna. This didn't fit anything the Righteous had.
"That's big," Anna said.
That wasn't quite the valuable insight I'd hoped for.
"I know it will be a new experience, but try saying something not stupid and obvious," I said.
"That's probably Lady Sylax arriving to kick the ass of everyone that just fucked with two of her cruisers," Anna said.
"Are those Righteous ships going to be able to take her?"
"Not a chance. A Lady of the Rim is going to be way too much for them."
The air around the castle shimmered as the Righteous shifted their fire to it. I didn't even see what the castle fired back, but one of the Righteous airships split down the middle as if a pair of giant hands had snapped it into two.
"How do we handle it?" I asked.
"You can't handle it. The Righteous are dead. We're dead. Everybody but that bitch is dead. This is why I told you not to fuck with the Scholars," Anna said.
Anna's panic wasn't helpful either.
"Just because you are weak and pathetic doesn't mean we are all the same. You'd planned for us to challenge the Scholars eventually. What did you have in mind?" I asked.
"The Lords and Ladies all have an upgrade core working for them in some ways. The stupid ones, the crazy and violent ones, bonded with it themselves," Anna said.
This story was going nowhere fast. The glider had reached the remaining Righteous airship and it was trying to pull back, rather than land aboard just to be destroyed by Sylax. Really? They were facing a full-on invasion from the Rim and killing me was still their priority. I felt almost flattered.
"I hope you're going somewhere with this," I said.
Anna said, "There are places of power out there in the Rim. Spots where reality is really broken and a core like yours can do so much more. This mountain was supposed to just be the start. Eventually I'd have moved your core to one of the citadels where we could really fuck some shit up."
I didn't have to remain in this mountain. A lot of my functions had seem strangely limited here—like the endless references to plants when I'd found none, and the narrow scope of my facilities.
"Can we still do that?" I asked.
"Almost all the citadels are claimed," Anna said. "But I'd have found you one. You would have more agents and scouts, and we'd relocate you to a new home."
Plainly, Anna had a lot of plans that weren't coming into being. Right at that moment, I was already rather disappointed with her—Anna was proud of calling herself a thief and yet the obvious had passed her by.
"Can we steal hers?" I asked.
Anna started to reply and then paused, looking confused. "Uh, let me think."
This could be awhile, Anna was terribly slow-witted.
"All right, I'm giving us a really lousy chance of success here, but..." Anna said.
"If it is your plan, then that seems about right," I said.
"That bitch is stronger than you can imagine, but you're right. We don't have to beat her, we just have to steal her house, like you said," Anna said.
"This isn't sounding like a plan yet," I said.
"In the core room of that castle somewhere is going to be an upgrade crystal. A literal crystal, just like yours. We shatter it and we break her controller, and you can take its place."
"I assume there will be traps?"
"Traps. Guards. The whole thing you're really kind of bad at," Anna said.
One of these days Anna would stop insulting me. I let it go for now, because I was the better person.
"I should get the drones ready. We likely also have Righteous on the way to blow us up," I said.
"Jerks. I warned you there, too. It isn't going to be quite as easy as all that, but right now I need to head downstairs. We aren't going to do this without help," Anna said.
Downstairs there was only one kind of help she could mean. Anna wanted to recruit my test subjects.
46
"You mean to recruit those I have for testing. You realize they probably hate us even more than I hate you," I said to Anna. The woman was already heading for the stairs, which really was presumptuous.
"Our odds go up enormously with some help, and if we do nothing, we die. This is in their best interest too. Just shut up when I'm making the pitch, you can be abrasive," Anna said.
That was rich coming from her.
It seemed we had little in the way of choice though. In the environment of that ship, all of our prisoners should be even stronger, which could make them potent allies.
I herded each of them towards each other and turned one wall of their prisons transparent so that they could all be seen.
Anna flashed them a smile. "So who wants out of prison?"
"I'm getting pretty used to it," Hot Stuff said.
"Why don't you tell us what you want?" Sylph said.
"First. Introductions. I'm Anna, badass Queen of the World, and you know Emma, who has been keeping you captive, and in some cases torturing you horribly," Anna said.
"Hi," I said. It seemed best to keep things brief.
Sylph, Runner, Frost, Hot Stuff, and Mechos all introduced themselves in turn.
"Here is the deal. Scholars have invaded big time and they just love killing people with a core. Righteous can't fight them. Individually none of you are a match. Go team us," Anna said.