Absolute power: part 2

...meets an unmovable object

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: Megaship AI ‘Just Enough’ has arrived to help take down rogue AI ‘Probably Better’, but is rapidly running out of power. Former detective Lola Styles has one final make…

Bruglia, Palinor.
3208. Brightsun.

Moments after climbing onto Ngarkh’s back and taking to the skies with a downward thrust of their huge wings, Lola realised she hadn’t said goodbye. She’d taken from Daryla, from Maxim, from Slava, had drained the three of them of their powers, but she’d not given even a pause to acknowledge them. In that moment she had been vaen’ka: voracious, consuming energies and spell patterns in an uncontrolled metaphysical gulp.

Time was not with them. Justin was up there already, fighting toe-to-toe with the rogue ship, but was losing battery power with every passing minute. The window for doing anything was vanishingly small and closing fast. But, still, she wished she’d taken a second to touch Daryla’s face, to shake Maxim’s hand, to hold on to Slava for a little longer and whisper an apology for everything that had happened.

So many were dead. Those she knew, those she didn’t. Jyna hadn’t said much, but it had been evident on her face that the battle in the city had been bloody and grim. There would be a headcount when it was over, and the number would be high.

No more. The time for watching, and observing, and letting others do the hard things was over. Lola’s turn.

She held on, knuckles white, as Ngarkh lifted them high above the university and across the canyon to the main city’s mesa. It was the first time she’d seen the devastation clearly, and the ruin of the university was only the sideshow.

“What’s the plan, Lola?” Ngarkh’s skin was hard, rock-like in texture with a dull shine like the carapace of a beetle. Their horns served as a reticule, the two megaships framed in the distance. She could feel the subtle, passive flow of natural wielding energies within them.

“Get me in close,” she said. “Really close - I want to be on top of that thing.”

“It’s got some formidable firepower, little human.” Ngarkh made a growling noise somewhere deep in their chest, sounding much like chains dragged over stone. “You’re not going to last long. Hell, I won’t last long.”

“While I have their powers I can look after myself,” Lola replied, trying to convince herself as much as them. “Get me onto its hull, then get clear.”

“All the wizards of Bruglia couldn’t take it down. What can you do?”

“Just get me close.”

Wind buffeted her hair, and her eyes would have been streaming if they weren’t already aflame. Parts of her were in a cycle of igniting and cooling, her skin shifting between fire and ice, soft and hardened. She couldn’t tell if it was an illusion of sorts or physical reality; there was no pain, and it didn’t seem to be bothering Ngarkh. Then again, koths were tough. Lola had never absorbed the wielding potential of three people at once, especially with the combined abilities of Daryla, Slava and Maxim. It was overwhelming, and Lola’s chief concern was that it could break her body before they even reached the megaship.

She thought of Clarke. He’d said something once, ages ago, back when they were still on the force, back before it had all fallen apart. The words slipped away from her, and she couldn’t recall them, such were her many distractions.

The two ships were ahead, circling each other, streams of light and plasma arcing between them: explosions rippling along Probably Better’s hull, jagged lines of burning orange drawn across Justin’s skin. Probably Better was damaged, but would not go down, and Justin’s battery would expire before they had a chance to finish the job.

As a distraction, it was perfect. Ngarkh flew them in, the two of them tiny and inconsequential against the huge Max-Earth vessels. Swooping in close to Probably Better’s hull, it became apparent just how large it was - bigger than any airship she’d ever seen, or ocean-going ship. Both of the megaships were native to space, and were alien to the atmosphere of a planet; they did not belong, either of them.

The upper hull stretched out in all directions, undulating and with strange, inexplicable protrusions. The ship was moving, changing its direction and position above the city as it countered and dodged Justin’s attacks. There were evident signs of damage across the surface, which was battle-scarred and dented, though still seemed to be in a single, unbroken piece. The obsidian-black material rushed by below.

“It’s going to know we’re here if I keep buzzing around,” Ngarkh snarled.

Then, she saw it. “This will do,” she said, and Ngarkh dropped onto the ship’s upper hull. Keeping her balance as she jumped from Ngarkh was a challenge, the ship tilting unpredictably in all directions. It could throw them both off if it rolled significantly.

On the surface of the ship was a crater of sorts, as if something had collided with it, and within that crater was a crack. It was small, easy to miss, but undeniable nonetheless. Still too small to reach inside, her hand slightly too large to fit. She couldn’t tell if the ship’s outer hull was made of metal, ceramic, plastic, rock or something else entirely, but it was tough and unyielding when she pulled at it. In the black surface she could see the reflection of her own glowing body.

“Allow me,” Ngarkh said, gently nudging her aside. They reached in with a single claw, grimaced, and began straining against it. Bracing their legs, they kept pulling, and the material warped a little. With a roar, they belched fire and plasma onto the hole, then continued to pull, using their wingtips against the hull to give them more leverage.

The opening was about the diameter of her fist. Ngarkh took a step back, and inside the hole was a distant blue glow, pulsing to a regular rhythm. Lola hoped it was enough.

“I think this might work,” she said, and reached out with one hand.

The ship tilted beneath them, the floor disappearing as it rotated. She felt herself tumbling through the air, wishing she had a better understanding of elementalism that might give her the ability to levitate on superheated air.

“Got you,” Ngarkh said clutching at her waist and holding tight as they flew them back up towards the ship. “I think it’s on to us.”

They landed back on the hull at the same spot, hanging like bats from the upturned vessel, Ngarkh gripping onto tiny seams in the hull with their claws. Lola nestled on their chest, wedged between the koth and the ship. For a brief moment it felt like being in a hammock, and she almost laughed.

She reached into the open hole and grabbed at the ship, finding a cluster of wires and pipes. It felt ridiculous, like trying to connect with a refrigerator or a tram. The leeching ability she’d inherited from the vaen’ka affected people, and she could pull energies from a wielding person from the touch of skin. The megaship didn’t seem to fit that definition but, given that she was hanging off the side of it and the fate of three worlds hung in the balance, she might as well give it a go.

Probably Better was using magic to sustain itself, and to cast spells. That was their best theory. If that were true, it suggested an organic component. Lola knew nothing about the physiology or construction of a megaship, but Justin had seemed to think there was a possibility of success. She adjusted her grip, leaning in, reaching deeper, and then she sensed it: a flicker of power, and the electric charge of magic. It tried to hide, to move away from where she was braced against the hull, but she gave chase.

The connection, when it came, was intensely painful, an influx of energies unlike anything she’d experienced when siphoning from a human. Even Maxim’s strength was as nothing to the scale of the megaship, its power drawn directly from the sun. Her body burned and she almost let go, could tell she was light-headed and about to pass out: she refocused her efforts.

“We’ve got company,” Ngarkh shouted, and she felt them being buffeted by something she couldn’t see beyond the arc of their wings. The ship rolled, and the hull was below them again. Straightening to their full height, Ngarkh stepped away from where she lay against the hull, her arm deep within the fractured hole. They were grappling with an ill-defined mechanical shape, like the leftovers of whatever process had built the drone robots that had attacked the city. It was a glob of warped metal and plastic, with what may have been arms or legs but not enough to form an identifiable shape.

The huge koth roared as they tore the robot apart, but another came, emerging from somewhere below the hull, then another. A blade flashed, and Ngarkh’s wing was partially severed from their back. They spun, plasma venting from their mouth and nostrils.

“Get clear,” she said. “I’ll take it from here.”

“I’m sorry, Lola,” the proud koth said, dropping away from the hull and spiralling down towards the city.

There had to be some purpose to taking Maxim’s powers, and it seemed as good at time as any to break out his toolbox. As more of the distorted drones closed in, she allowed the energies inside her to flare up, a wall of superheated fire encircling her. The first robot that tried to cross the boundary was melted before it reached her.

With her other hand, she continued gripping at the innards of the ship, tracing the circuits like the nervous system of a creature. The legacy of the vaen’ka’s hunger salivated at the opportunity to feed on such prey, and she was glad that Ngarkh was not there to see her ravenous expression. Daryla had helped her to suppress her inclinations, the constant desire for satisfaction, the urge to leap upon anyone who could wield and drain them dry. It had taken months, years, but she’d found a way back to society, had put up barriers and learned to conform.

Lying prone against the side of the rogue megaship, her hour had come round at last. She could be unleashed without fear of harming those she loved. There was a naked violence to it, one which had shamed her in the past, shocked the girl she had once been. Lola had mourned the passing of the person she thought she’d known. None of that mattered in the moment.

She found it: the ship’s power core, to where all of its magical energies were directed. She began to suck it away, drawing it within herself, her veins and arteries swelling, electric patterns blooming across her skin.

The ship recoiled and spun in a barrel roll, trying to shake her loose. Lola asked Daryla and Slava for aid, and their powers burst from beneath her fingertips. She felt her fingers loosening, becoming unravelled, entwining with the wires and pipes. Her body came apart, cell-by-cell, molecule-by-molecule, fusing with the hull of the ship, becoming a physical part of it such that there was no possibility of being shaken loose. Lola marvelled at the sight of her free arm blending into the obsidian of the hull, infusing it with the inherited colours of her borrowed limbs.

She was draining the ship of its magic, strangling the life from it, and when she was done it would be dead.

There was a shifting of inertia as Probably Better came about and began to accelerate, heading back towards the university campus and the portals. That was a risk - if it passed back to Max-Earth it would be able to restart its fusion reactor and would not need to rely on magical power. Even while she continued to drain the ship of life, Lola had no influence over its actions.

The portals were visible below, the megaship aiming directly for the newly-opened route to Max-Earth. It would have made it, had the second megaship, Justin, Just Enough, not dropped from the sky and impacted upon the rogue AI, their hulls crunching together violently, the collision sending wracking pains through Lola’s body where she lay still bonded to the hull. A scraping, screaming rending of metals as the ships bashed against one another, and then Just Enough was forcing Probably Better’s trajectory towards the other portal. There was no getting clear entirely, of keeping the ship trapped on Palinor, and Lola gritted her teeth as the two ships crashed into the ground, digging a deep furrow as the Mid-Earth void loomed huge and oblique before them. The impact rattled through her bones, shook her teeth to breaking point, and still she held on.

They passed through, the three of them: megaships and tiny human, and a part of her was dimly aware of being back in London at last, which she had once thought of as home.

As the rogue megaship juddered to a halt and died beneath her grasp, coming to rest amidst the rubble of the underground portal station and the Joint Council tower, as Just Enough crashed to rest beside it, as Lola felt the stolen magic surging within her but already starting to dissipate, as she slipped into darkness, she remembered what Clarke had said that time.

Every time you do anything, it might be the last time you do it. When you’re young, you think you’ve got all the time in the world. Always time for another chance. Later on, it’s the other way around. Everything you do has a pretty good chance of being the last time you’ll do it.

---

Meanwhile.

Thanks for reading. Crazy to think that we’ve finally got to this point in the story, after all these years. More on all of that in the author notes below.

Hope all of you who do Christmas things had a lovely day yesterday. I’m quite surprised that I got this week’s newsletter out — consider it a small extra present from me, I guess?

Things I’ve been enjoying in the last week:

• Watched Die Hard for the first time with the boy on Christmas Eve. Such a tight film, and the way they establish the geography of the building is perfection. We always know exactly where everyone is in relation to everyone else, and there’s such tactility to the whole thing. Unusually for an 80s movie, it hasn’t dated visually at all (unless you look really hard at Rickman’s final shot).

• I’ve been on a bit of a comics binge this week. New issues of DIE: Loaded (fascinating, experimental, mischievous), The Power Fantasy (annoyingly consistently brilliant), Transformers (Dan Mora is nailing it) and GI Joe (growing on me, and a frequently hilarious 80s throwback).

• Delayed Gratification’s latest magazine has a great feature on Fauja Singh, a marathon runner who kept running well into his 100s. Wow. I’m quite pleased with my weekly 5k!

Was sad to hear about the passing of Vince Zampella:

RIP, Vince Zampella - pioneering game developer and co-creator of Call of Duty

I played all of the early Call of Duty (and Medal of Honour) games in the 2000s. My interest waned with the Modern Warfare era, but those early WW2 games were hugely impactful, taking their cues from Saving Private Ryan rather than Michael Bay. That he then went on to make the Titanfall games, the second of which has probably the best single player FPS story since Half Life 2, and the great fun Jedi games, makes for a ridiculously impressive list of titles.

I will have to replay as many of them as possible.

Author notes

The weird leftovers drone robot put me in the mind of ‘Megaratchet’ from the 1980s Transformers comics:

Nightmare fuel for 10 year olds.

As for the events of this chapter: this was always the play. This was the plan for defeating Probably Better that I had more-or-less locked in for the last year. I can’t remember if this came together after I’d planned out the vaenk’a storyline for Lola, or before. Did I create the vaen’ka storyline so that Lola would have these powers for the finale, or did her changed situation open up ideas for the finale?

I can’t remember! And that’s the magic of the process of coming up with this stuff. It’s less about the final product or the original idea, but the wiggly, awkward, confusing, contradictory stuff that happens in-between those two moments. In the case of PB, the challenge was in creating an unstoppable AI thing from the future, and then having to figure out how to stop it.

Hopefully the early seeding of the vaen’ka story, and the lengthy amount of story time dedicated to it and its fallout, means that this all feels ‘earned’. There’s a risk with fantasy stories (or any story, really) that the evolving abilities of the characters happen just in time for the ending. It can feel horribly contrived. With luck, that’s not the case here.

For a start, the idea of Lola being underestimated, of being put down and dismissed, of being seen as the kid, the rookie, the annoying younger sister — that’s core to her personality. In that way, what happens here is less about the big plot of ‘megaship attacks the city’ and much more about ‘Lola shows everyone what she is made of’. Except, of course, that showing others isn’t especially important to her: if nobody ever knows about what she’s done here, she’d be OK with that. Lola Styles was never in it for the glory.

What else? The crack that Lola uses here to connect with Probably Better is indeed the result of damage created by Erik’s final move a couple of chapters back. Similar to Lykasra’s end, it’s only after the incident that we realise their full heroism.

The title of this story is ‘Absolute Power’, and the idea there was for the reader to initially assume that it refers to Probably Better, or perhaps to Just Enough. The minor twist then being that it’s really Lola that holds absolute power, and uses it to bring down the megaship.

Which is why there’s also a line from ‘The Second Coming’ nestled in this chapter. By invoking a moment of Yeats, I wanted to hint that this level of power is rarely a good thing, even when wielded by someone s morally upright as Lola Styles. There are always implications and unforeseen consequences.

By which I mean: this story isn’t quite done. What has happened to Lola, to Justin, to PB? Where is everyone else? What’s been happening in London with Clarke and the others?

Tune in same bat-time, same bat-channel to find out.