Absolute power: part 1

When an unstoppable force...

This is my ongoing scifi / fantasy / crime fiction serial. New chapter every week.

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1980s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: Yana has sacrificed her life to fix the old, broken portal spell. Another megaship from Max-Earth has arrived, rather friendlier than the last. The rogue AI still persists, and nothing has been able to stop it…

Bruglia, Palinor.
3208. Brightsun.

Sunsets in Bruglia turned the city a deep ochre, the oblique angle of the light reflecting the reds and oranges of the landscape and buildings. Lola had always loved watching the shadows creep down the street from her apartment, or across the garden and up the palace walls when she was working late in her little office.

She clambered up what remained of one of the university’s towers, high enough that she could see across the mesas. Just Enough was racing towards the dark spot in the sky that was Probably Better, the two megaships moving on a collision course.

“My primary battery will last no longer than fifteen minutes,” said Justin, climbing up beside her. The host body was an unfamiliar face, yet carried itself in the same way she had seen Justin’s previous hosts behave. “This host can persist for over twenty-four hours, but a megaship’s energy requirements cannot be satisfied on Palinor.”

“Then why are you here?” Lola’s brief elation had collapsed as she realised the implications of Justin’s arrival.

“Gathering data, I suppose, detective.” They smiled at her, not bothering to watch what was happening above the city. “Very little testing has been conducted for operating a megaship outside of the Max-Earth dimension. For good reason, I should add.”

“It’s too risky, Justin.” Yana’s body was below, in the room off to the side of the courtyard. They couldn’t lose Justin as well.

“The risk would be in not acting,” Justin said. “Besides, I have been preparing for this moment since we agreed upon the plan when you boarded the airship from Addis. It took quite some effort to make the Max-Earth portal accessible. The museum curator was most put out.”

Interdiction occurred forty seconds after portal transit. There had been many inconvenient unknowns, making it necessary for Just Enough to work with modelled data. In human parlance, that meant assumption and guesswork.

It had not been possible to communicate through the London relays, initially due to the London-imposed ban and subsequently from the devastation of Probably Better’s rough transit from Max-Earth through Mid-Earth to Palinor. The last confirmed information was that the Joint Council tower had come down.

As such, Just Enough had no information on Probably Better’s position or condition. Post-transit, they had immediately performed a wide area scan, pinpointing the rogue megaship’s location within a half second. A brief check of the vicinity around the portal, to avoid accidental injuries during thrust, and then Just Enough was on their way.

The intervening forty seconds were enough to assess the conflict’s status. The centre of the city was mostly levelled, having been subjected to numerous bombardments. An inexplicably large sword was embedded in one of the mesas, its blade having cut the beginnings of a new canyon.

Just Enough made a note to investigate whether that had been the cause of the other canyons that spiderwebbed across the region, should the opportunity arise. Such an investigation was predicated on surviving the next fourteen minutes and twenty seconds.

More encouraging was the state of the rogue vessel, which was evidently damaged across the length of its hull. Much of its ammunition stores seemed to be emptied, not least because it was neglecting to fire much of the ordnance one would have expected, and there was a sluggishness to its reactions that had not been evident during their last encounter in Max-Earth space.

The analysis and approach took thirty-six seconds. Four seconds after that, Just Enough had launched everything save for nukes; anything that wouldn’t also vaporise everyone still surviving in the streets below. The conflagration erupted around them, Probably Better disappearing inside a fireball of explosions that blossomed into the early evening sky.

Coming about, Just Enough continued scanning. There was movement, and from the billowing smoke emerged the rogue megaship: damaged further but still functional. The arsenal that had been unleashed upon it should have finished it, but there was still shimmering around it a thin, translucent skin of sorts. Shielding, perhaps, but of an exotic type.

That was the other unknown data point: by all accepted portal science, Probably Better should have experienced catastrophic power drain hours ago. They should have turned to an inactive slab of metal and ceramic, memory banks emptying into the sand of Bruglia. That would have been a fortuitous outcome. Instead, they still functioned, which confirmed an outlier hypothesis that the network had postulated a few seconds after the rogue AI had slipped through the portal in the first place.

The ship was capable of wielding magic. Perhaps it resonated in a particular fashion similar to the wizards of Palinor, due to being constructed from local materials. Had that been by design, or an accident?

Time was slipping away. Every simulation that Just Enough ran ended with their own total battery drain, and Probably Better in various states of operation. At best, they could distract the rogue ship for a quarter of an hour, and then it would be over. Probably Better didn’t have the firepower left to win a direct fight, but could simply outlast them.

There was no coming back from a total shutdown, especially here, disconnected from the network, from Max-Earth’s redundancy protocols.

Then, a glimmer of hope, a small, human-sized solution shining like a beacon from a broken tower.

“It might work,” Lola said, jumping two steps at a time, round and around the tower’s spiral staircase until she reached the courtyard. She had no idea if it could work.

The Justin robot kept pace easily. “This has never been tried?”

“Not on this scale, and not against a thing like that megaship.”

“It sounds highly dangerous.”

She laughed at the absurdity of the observation. “That didn’t stop anyone else.”

“There is a distinct lack of useful data for simulating an outcome,” Justin said, following her across the courtyard.

“Then we’ll just have to wing it,” Lola said. She waved to Maxim, who was sat on a large chunk of what had once been part of a building. “I need you, Maxim. Follow me.”

Leading them to the building that had once housed lecturers’ offices, she slowed down, took a breath, and poked her head around the door. A person shape on the floor was covered by a worn rug, Slava sat beside Yana’s body. Daryla was by the window, and looked up as they entered.

“What news?”

“I am unable to terminate Probably Better within the time limits placed upon me by dimensional energy degradation,” Justin said.

The two women slumped, and Lola knew what they were feeling. That it had all been for nothing. After everything, they had still failed. There were some forces that could not be fought against.

“I have an idea,” she said, “but I’m going to need all of you.”

Slava hid her face in her hands, hands that were still stained with Yana’s blood. “It’s over, Lola.”

Turning to Daryla, Lola managed a smile. “Listen,” she said, “I need you to trust me.”

There was a flicker of recognition from Daryla, as if the idea was forming in her mind as well. “What do you need?”

“Your hand.”

The skin on Daryla’s palm was rough, her fingers ragged from hours of fighting. At the touch, Lola felt the sudden rush of energies flowing into her, as she siphoned it away from Daryla. The electric charge of magic filling her being, even as Daryla’s skin grew paler, and greyed, and she staggered a little.

Justin caught her as she collapsed.

Flexing the muscles in her hand, Lola could sense the muscle fibres, and the bones beneath, and the cells and molecules from which she was built. Daryla’s micrology, passed to her, for a brief time.

“Maxim?” She turned to the big guy.

He grinned, but it was hiding concern. “You sure you can handle it, little girl? I pack a punch.”

“We don’t have much time.” She held out her hand and Maxim grasped it, holding tight. They’d never done this together before, and the influx of power was several leagues different from draining Daryla. Lola felt hot, then cold, then her hair crackled and sparked with electricity, standing on end. It was verging on too much, like her veins were alight, and her bladder was about to lose control, or her stomach was set to rebel, but she fought down the nausea. The seams of her body, where foreign limbs had been stitched to broken stumps, glowed red and green and blue.

Maxim dropped to his knees, panting, looking somehow smaller. “Wow, Lola. I’m glad I never pissed you off.”

Her vision was both clouded and sharper than ever, a film across her sight even as she perceived more details in those around her. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, only then realising that flame was licking from her fingertips.

“I hope this is enough,” she said, turning to leave. It wouldn’t last long.

A hand fell on her shoulder. “Take more,” said Slava. “Take it all. Kill that thing.”

Reaching out, Slava wrapped her arms around Lola and hugged her tight. Another flood of power, similar to Daryla’s but of a different frequency. And something else, mixed in with it, that Lola couldn’t quite identify.

Afterwards, she walked into the courtyard. “Ngarkh,” she shouted.

The large koth turned towards her, flanked by Ellenbrin, Halbad and Seline. Erik had not returned from confronting the rogue ship.

“Holy shit, Lola,” Ngarkh roared, “you’re sparking like a damn firework.”

“Got a minute? I need a ride.”

---

Meanwhile.

Distinct feelings of nearing the end while writing this week’s chapter. Whether you’ve been with me from the beginning or only hopped on board recently, thanks for reading.

I’m going to keep this one short, partly because I’ve been so busy with family life and Triverse that I don’t have much of interest to share, and also because a big stack of fresh comics arrived this morning from Forbidden Planet which are calling for my attention.

Author notes

This chapter fired out of my brain in a single writing session (followed by various editing passes). That’s not actually happened for a while, and I think it’s because there have been so many threads requiring knitting together that it’s taken a lot of concentration and careful manipulation. That’s been the case for all of 2025, more-or-less.

And I’ll tell you: it’s tiring!

Don’t mistake what I’m saying here, because I absolutely adore writing Tales from the Triverse. But this year in particular has been a real challenge, as I’ve shifted gears into the post-time jump phase of the story. I’ve had to thread the needle.

If writing the ending of a story is the metaphorical landing of the plane, we’ve now got our wheels down and we’re on approach. There’s no turning back, no deviating, no discussions to be had. We’re coming in hot, the landing strip is in view and the ground is coming up fast.

As a consequence, this chapter has a certain propulsive energy, both in the writing and the reading. It doesn’t hang about. I hope that it barrelled along fast enough that you didn’t see what was coming until it was happening. And, of course, I’ll say no more for now because this is part 1. I’ll have lots more to say next week, I imagine.

Christmas is hitting in under a week, which might disrupt schedules a little, but I’m expecting to be able to get the chapter out on Boxing Day. We shall find out!