Adam walked to the control center for this first facility. Unlike the facility he’d destroyed with him in it, this one was in a full-size Universe tucked away near the center of a spiral galaxy. Even if he had decided to target the eradication and converter device at the Universe he was in now, it wouldn’t have destroyed the facility quickly enough before someone could get in and stop it. That was fine, he had a plan B.
As he walked through the corridors he allowed the nanites to leak from his Shadow Vault and enter the base. He also reached out with Technomancy to make sure there were no nanites in the area and put a few sleeper programs into the computer systems.
Adam gave commands to the nanites which began spreading through the facility. He spent about an hour walking around, made it back to the teleporter, and went back to the moon. He found a bathroom, swapped facemasks, and left the bathroom looking like Tom Hiddleston with dark hair and his Loki look in a security uniform. He had to admit he liked the Loki look.
Again, Adam made his way to the teleporter and walked around the second facility. Again he couldn’t just destroy the base because it was in a Universe much larger than the first one. This time he was questioned by a security officer and had to drop Commander Johannsson’s name to smooth things over. He had no doubt that word of his spontaneous inspection would get back to her. Now it was a race against the clock.
He made it back to the moon base and immediately noticed that bio scanners had been activated. He used Technomancy to bypass any issues. It was child’s play to spoof the biofilter results and make sure they did show the real scanner results. He made his way to a bathroom and changed into a Matt Damon facemask. Might as well go with Jason Bourne for the third facility. These masks he’d created and the ability to put them on instantly with Shadow Vault made changing his identity way too easy. Another thing he did while he walked around the facilities was to make sure to take a good look at anyone that was relatively close to his size. The masks of the individuals in the Pelza Empire would not be recognized back on Earth. He could create identities with a very low chance of looking like someone already on file using identities associated with people from the Pelza Empire.
Adam made it to the teleporter and onto the third facility. As he walked around he noticed this base seemed to be quite busy as people ran around. It was very easy for him to get lost in all the activity and an hour later he appeared on the teleporter. He made his way back onto the moon and into a bathroom where he swapped to his last disguise for today. He had decided to go with Neo. He even created clothing that more closely resembled the way Neo was dressed in the second Matrix movie.
To get to the fourth facility which was under construction, Adam made his way to a secondary teleporting pad that was in an airlock. He cycled into the airlock when a technician called out, “Sir you can’t go to site delta with a suit on. There’s no environment there.”
“I’ll be fine,” Adam said.
“No, you won’t Sir, it’s near vacuum if you go there you’ll die!”
“I said I’ll be fine,” Adam said as he used Technomancy to override the lock, close the airlock, and activated the teleporter. Adam heard an alarm go off as he disappeared. As he materialized he looked around and found himself in an airlock. Adam cycled out of the airlock, a simple box structure that was connected to a huge gridwork that would eventually become the facility. Adam could see various people in space suits using sleds and tugs as they scurried around moving various pieces of the structure into place. He noticed an area where materials from outside this universe were transported in. Adam knew this because he watched a load of materials appear, and then get moved by a tug to another area that looked to be a holding area for tons of construction materials.
Everything outside of the Airlock was in zero-G which made moving everything a little easier. Adam launched from the airlock door and used Flight to get to the outskirts of the gridwork of the base where he started flying around as he created Nanites with Mold Chaos as used Technomancy to see what frequencies everyone else was talking on. Adam continued to fly around as he listened in on their conversations.
“Does that guy have a suit on?” someone asked.
“That guy flying around the outside? Nope, I didn’t see one when he came by here,” another said.
“There’s no air here, how does he not have a suit on?” a third person asked.
“You know how some of those elites are, they might have powers that let them survive in a vacuum.”
“Must be nice, I’m sweating my balls off in here,”
“Ronny, stop being a dick, your suit is climate controlled just like everyone else’s,” the first female to speak up said.
“Well it feels like I’m sweating my balls off,” Ronny said.
Adam listened for a few more minutes as he made a complete circuit and his nanites spread throughout the construction area then he sent a message through their Comm’s channel.
“Hey everyone, this is the guy flying around. You all need to head back to the airlock now, while you can. If your suits aren’t equipped with thrusters you’ll be stranded where you are until someone comes out to get you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Adam sent a command for the nanites to start converting the facility to more nanites first and then said, “Watch the facility, what’s happening to the facility will start to affect everything else here in about five minutes. You might want to start heading toward the airlock now.”
“What’s he talking about?”
“Hey Look!” someone called out, “the grid that was attached to the airlock just melted off.”
“It what? Holy shit the airlock is free of the grid. Damn the grid is melting fast. It’s just evaporating.”
“What the hell can do that?” someone asked.
“Who cares, everyone to the airlock, now!” Someone called out.
Adam watched as people started moving toward the airlock. Not before everything around them, except their suits, started to evaporate though. There were a few stragglers that would have been stranded but Adam flew over and pushed them toward the Airlock and made sure they were able to hang on and go inside when it was their turn to leave.
While he kept an eye on the personnel, Adam watched as the whole facility, all the stored materials, and everything except for the airlock were turned into nanites. Even the materials that appeared were turned into nanites.
Adam flew away from the airlock and realized that he was in a finite universe that wasn’t that big. That was fine, they were never going to use this area again and he might be able to use it as a storage area. Adam flew off until he was quite a bit away and near the edge of this universe then activate Mold Chaos and created another chamber like he had in the Pelza star system and teleported inside it. He created a Target Location with Planar Travel mode 1 then made sure the portals on this one were active to prevent anyone from looking in this direction from seeing it. He put six portal generators in the base but only needed one pointed toward the airlock to prevent anyone from seeing his little satellite.
If they kept funning materials into this area he was going to have a lot of nanites he could recover at some point. Also, this would be a good place to retreat to and recover if he needed to. He made sure to set his minor satellite and the airlock with the teleporter in it as off-limits to the nanites, as well as biologicals.
Adam took a break and waited. He watched through his nanites as everyone evacuated the area which took a little bit. There were 32 personnel trying to use the teleporter. Also, only four could fit inside the airlock at one time. With pressure suits and everyone hanging on for dear life while metal just disappeared and the airlock had to cycle it took a little while for everyone to exit through the teleporter.
After everyone left it was perhaps 30 minutes before someone came back inside to see what was going on. Adam watched as a few individuals came through and tested what was happening. Finally, someone nodded and they all went back through the teleporter. Five minutes later an emp device was teleported into the material loading area and detonated. It was powerful and spread out a good 1,000 feet before the nanites absorbed the blast. Immediately the nanites that had been unaffectedly reactivated all of the deactivated nanites.
Someone came through the teleporter, threw a piece of metal out of the airlock which immediately dissolved then teleported back out. This process was repeated three more times before they tried a nuclear device. It was relatively small. Yes, it vaporized the nanites right next to it when it detonated. The energy of the blast wave outside of that initial vaporization zone was instantly converted to more nanites providing a net gain to the number of nanites in the area. Even so, Adam decided to make an addition to his little satellite and provided force projection technology to his little retreat that would activate in the event of a very large nuclear device going off.
He also increased the size of the base and added a larger fusion reactor that could handle the power usage the shield might require. Adam checked his clock, he still have a day before the other three facilities were ready so he just sat around and waited. Three more nukes were detonated, each one bigger than the last. The nanites that weren’t vaporized absorbed the rest of the energy wave and created even more nanites. Also, the third detonation was large enough to destroy the airlock but his satellite handled it just fine.
For the next 6 hours, Adam watched as sensors were teleported into the universe and immediately converted to more nanites. Finally, his alarm went off. While he’d been walking through the first three facilities he’d dropped nanites. Unlike the nanites in this micro-universe, Adam had tasked the nanites in each of the other three facilities with placing 100-megaton nuclear devices in the walls of each of the active Universe Eradicator and Converter device chambers. He made sure the real devices would be created in areas that shouldn’t show radiation spikes, that was what the decoys were for. The commands had been for the devices to be placed inside the wall of the chamber less than a 1/8 of an inch thick so it would not be detectable with a visual inspection and not to add the Plutonium to the devices until the last hour.
In addition, Adam had left time-locked coding on the base evacuation circuit which should have started going off when his Alarm did. The sensors he’d detected should be picking up the plutonium as it formed inside the decoy devices because they weren’t well shielded by design. Adam was sure they’d detect and either disarm or teleport the devices away within the hour before they went off. He was also sure that someone would think themselves smug for stopping the insane person that was trying to activate a nuclear device next to an energy storage device that held the equivalent energy of a Universe. For the most part, though, the facilities should be evacuated so his conscious was clear. Anyone else that stayed probably deserved the fate they received.
With his plan in motion, Adam activated Planar Travel and appeared in his little base between the two Stars in the Pelza Home system. He activated Obscure, teleported outside the facility, and shot toward the Pelza home world with Flight, Freedom of Flight, and Adaptable active. He’d thought he’d need to spend some time looking for the location of the Emperor. That wasn’t the case. The exact location of the tower was easy to find in the data his CC went through. Also, it was the largest structure on the planet and visible from orbit. It was a giant metallic pyramid that reached an altitude of 25,000 feet.
***
Nabih’lar Pelza, Emperor of the Pelza Empire walked around his Crisis Control chamber trying to understand what was going on. A day ago, the newest facility to meet the empire’s power requirements had gone offline and various actions had been taken to try to stabilize the space and reclaim it. Just over an hour ago, he’d sent one of their largest weapons in his arsenal to the facility’s location which should have destroyed everything within only to find the same problem still there as the sensor that had been sent in transmitted for about three seconds before the signal was lost.
Ten minutes ago, all three evacuation alarms had sounded in the other three facilities and evacuation procedures had begun. No one knew why they’d started they just had and there was a timer that was counting down on every terminal. Currently, that timer was at 49 minutes. Now, something very weird started happening. Every data store in his capital building started failing. Workstations were falling offline, and everyone was wondering what was going on. Terminals that were going offline all dealt with the technology and theories that surround the devices and facilities currently being evacuated. Everything going wrong today seemed to be tied to how the Empire made batteries.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Interestingly enough, each scientist in the area fainted around the same time. Medical personnel were called and examined each of the scientists. Nothing was found to be wrong with them, at least until someone asked them what they were working on. Then their memories all failed them, and they couldn’t answer a single question about what they’d been doing for the empire. They remembered their families, friends, and fellow scientists but any knowledge they had about the Battery Facilities was gone.
As the Emperor was pondering that issue a new alarm sounded.
“Sir! Radiological alarms are going off in all three facility control centers!” a technician called out.
“All, three, that has to be an error!” A supervisor called.
“No sir, as per procedure the readings were double-checked and the background radiation in the control rooms has increased quite a bit.
The emperor watched as the orders were given to evacuate the control room while three teams were put together and teleported to the facility. 10 minutes later all three teams reported that the devices had been neutralized. The Emperor checked and there was just over three minutes left on the timer that was still counting down at each facility. At the three-minute mark exactly a voice rang out from every speaking in the crisis center and each of the three Facilities.
“There is a device, identical to the devices you found in the Control Room in each of the chamber walls of activate Universal Eradicators. You now have less than three minutes to evacuate the facilities.”
“It’s a hoax, it has to be!” The Emperor said.
“Sir, if it is, we’ll send everyone back in one minute after the countdown is over. My suggestion is to evacuate everyone just in case and shut down the teleporters.”
“Do it!” The Emperor said.
Emperor Nabih’lar Pelza watched as the last personnel were evacuated from the facilities with ten seconds to spare. Unfortunately for everyone that had evacuated to the moon one of the technicians did not shut down one of the teleporters and part of the explosion from one of the facilities translated into the teleportation chamber on the moon, destroying it and a one-hundred-foot radius around it. The explosion opened that part of the facility to the vacuum of space. The initial explosion killed one technician but forcefields popped into place in time and protected the other 25 personnel that would have been killed.
That wasn’t what was worrying the Emperor. If those three facilities had been destroyed he would have visitors shortly. Without a word, the Emperor left the Crisis Center and made his way to the Throne Room. Except for the two guards beside the main door the room was empty as he entered and made his way to his throne. If he was correct any moment he would have up to three visitors.
Of course, he was right. A twelve-foot-tall blue insectoid alien that looked somewhat like a giant Praying Mantis appeared in the center of the Throne room as another smaller humanoid alien with grey skin large black eyes and a slightly oval head appeared beside him. A moment later a normal-looking male human with purple-tinted skin appeared.
“Emperor Pelza I bring greetings from the Xzexti and wish an audience,” The giant insectoid said.
“As does the Tellini Federation Emperor Pelza,” the grey humanoid said.
“We do not seek an audience; we would like to know why there is a nebula where your facility used to be in our Universe?” The purple humanoid asked.
***
Adam had infiltrated the Empire’s Capital with no issues. He’d flown around the capital and allowed his Technomancy to take in as much data as he could and released his nanites. His CC group was having a field day collecting and sorting data. He couldn’t believe the Pelza didn’t have nanites. While Adam waited for the radiological components to be added to the nukes that were being created in each of the facilities he made his way to the Throne Room and watched the emperor through his nanites.
He was a little surprised to see the emperor come to the Throne room after the detonation without even verifying that the facilities had been destroyed. He was even more surprised by the appearance of the three aliens. He decided to land a little off to the side of the Emperor so he could keep an eye on things when the creature that looked like a Praying Mantis looked in his direction and directed a query toward the Emperor.
“Emperor Pelza, why do you have a hidden human near you?”
“A what? There is no one aligned with my empire in this room save the two guards at the door behind you,” Emperor Pelza declared.
Adam considered what to do then changed his wardrobe and adopted his black flight suit and normal appearance as he dropped Obscure
“You!” The Emperor declared.
“What is the meaning of this?” The little grey alien asked?”
The purple human made a dismissive sound and then said,” You really need to invest in some abilities that can detect cloaked individuals, “The purple alien said to the grey alien. Wait, did something happen to the power plant in your universe also?
“Yes,” The Praying Mantis said as the grey alien nodded.
Adam moved closer to the three aliens and then said, “Let me guess, the three of you have some sort of trade deal with the Emperor? He was supplying each of your empires with batteries or some other such nonsense?” Adam asked as he reached out with Technomancy and infiltrated each of the alien’s devices, specifically looking for anything that would help him find the Universes or planes they were from.
“Emperor Pelza, who is this creature that dares to ask a Prince of the Xzexti question? Never mind, it must die!” The insect creature said as it moved to attack Adam.
Adam wasn’t even surprised. Adam activated Stutter Step and then used Identify on the creature.
Xzexti Male, Level 481, ???
Adam did some quick math in his head and realized that this creature’s Quintessence level would be level 48 which meant that its abilities would be superior to his but not his attributes. Adam was proved right as the mantis creature struck him three times. Twice across the neck, once in the groin in an upward direction. Adam was sure they would have been killing blows as he checked his combat log.
Xzexti Warrior strikes you for 144 points of damage.
Xzexti Warrior strikes you for 144 points of damage.
Xzexti Warrior strikes you for 144 points of damage.
Adam returned one blow for exactly the damage he’d taken as a slap across the creature’s head, He was trying to pull the punch but he didn’t know insectoid anatomy all that much. He was hoping for a disabling blow.
Adam strikes Xzexti Warrior for 432 points of damage.
What the Emperor and the two other Aliens saw was a human male take two strikes from the Xzexti’s giant claws to his neck in a scissoring move that should have decapitated him with a third swing that should have treated his frontside like a zipper and split him open. Instead of the human’s head flying off and viscera flying everywhere only minor scratches appeared on his neck which closed as rapidly as they’d appeared. The only visible damage had been to his clothing which seemed to be repairing itself. The human then casually jumped up and slapped the alien so hard that its mandible snapped and the alien slumped to the floor as the human landed where he’d jumped up from.
“What have you done!” The Emperor roared!
“He’s alive, I think,” Adam said thoughtfully, “So each of you had one of the facilities in your universe?” Adam said as he used Identify on the two Aliens. As he focused on the grey alien his Identify worked even better than he’d thought it would.
Tellini, Level 241. Tellini males come from a race of traders and scientists. They are extremely friendly and will try to make a deal whenever they can. They are extremely well-educated and very good at reverse engineering anything they can find. Think gnome engineer on crack. Current Abilities Telepathy, Mind Blast, Puppeteer, Evaluate, and Teleport.
It looked like his Identify ability far surpassed this alien’s abilities. His level put him at about quintessence level 24 so that made sense. Adam focused on the purple human and was disappointed with the prompt he received.
??? – Creature is more than twice the level of your Identify ability.
So, the grey alien was from what used to be close to a Step 4 Universe and this purple human was from at least a Step 13 Universe or Quintessence level 85 or higher. That was Interesting.
“If I were to say, ‘The Strong Take’ would that have any significant meaning to either of you?” Adam asked the two aliens still standing in front of him.
The Grey alien just shook his head.
“It is the way of things,” The Purple human said while the Emperor just stood there dumbfounded while he looked at the barely conscious Xzexti.
“Very well. I took the facilities offline. I will continue to take any facilities offline that function as those did.
“You can try,” the purple human said.
Adam moved, faster than either the Tellini or the purple human could. As he did so he ripped the Emperor’s head off his body and used Treasure Renderer on the corpse before he turned back to the two Aliens. Adam hadn’t used that ability after the Update and was a little surprised when both the head in his hands and the body that fell to the ground disappeared. He stood in front of the Throne looking down at the two aliens.
“I am done here,” The Tellini said as it teleported away.
The Xzexti, picked up its head, looked at Adam, then teleported away.
The Purple human looked at Adam and then said, “Killing something that was no challenge is not a display of power, it is pathetic”
“That was not a display of power, that was vengeance for the quintillions of souls he’s destroyed.”
“Then your action seems warranted, The Strong take after all,” the purple man said with a nod.
“We shall see won’t we,” Adam said with a grin.
The purple human teleported away as the two guards rushed toward the throne. Adam reached out through his nanites looking for the Emperor’s son. Adam found Nef’lar Pelza in his office. Surprisingly that office was in this building. Adam Teleported to Nef’lar’s office as the guards reached the throne.
Unsurprisingly he found Erika in the office as well. She even reached out and touched him with an ability from her Death Quintessence as he appeared. It was pretty nasty, He lost 840 hit points in a moment which would have killed any Step 4 creature in this Universe twice over.
“How nice to see you too Erika,” Adam said as his health regeneration replaced the missing hit points instantly.
Erika stepped back quickly drawing a weapon and firing. This weapon was similar to the weapon Sarah had used on the Rebel base except it was set to vaporize. Like Sarah’s gun, it did nothing to him, well, except vaporize his clothes.
“Really!” Adam said as he used Mold Chaos to create nanites and threw them in her direction with the command to keep her naked for 10 minutes, no matter what she put on. “Two can play at that game dear,” Adam said as shadows covered him and he was once again reclothed in another Jumpsuit. Finally, he deactivated all weapons in the room with Technomancy
Erika looked down at her body as her clothes started to disintegrate then tried to pull the trigger on her weapon again.
“Erika, you cannot put clothes on or cover yourself except with your hands for the next 10 minutes. Keep it up and I’ll make it last longer,” Adam said.
Nef’lar looked at Erika then looked at the weapon that was in his hand and pointed at Adam before he set it down on the desk, “What can I do for you, Adam?”
“As far as I can determine you have always been in the security division of this empire and not a part of its energy acquisition or facility startup, though I acknowledge that you were responsible for the facility’s security,” Adam said.
“And your point,” Nef’lar said.
“The three facilities are destroyed. Thermonuclear devices detonated in every active chamber in all three facilities and as you know the fourth facility has met with difficulty. This led to a visit by three alien species to your father in the Throne Room moments ago. The Xzexti Prince attacked me, and I bitch slapped him. He retreated. The Tellini don’t want anything to do with this and that Purple human fucker...”
“They are the Cordite,” Nef’lar said.
“The Cordite fucker wasn’t impressed when I killed your dad.”
“You what!”
“Your empire killed my Universe, and I killed the Emperor, I think that’s far from fair, but I’m satisfied,” Adam said.
“I will kill you!” Nef’lar said as he tried to lunge for his weapon and bring it to bear. Adam had his base near the binary stars open a portal to the moon’s surface which sucked the three of them out onto the surface of their moon. He’d picked a place at least 5 miles away from any settlement or help and deactivated all devices embedded in both Erika’s and Nef’lar’s bodies so technology wasn’t going to get them out of this predicament. With Flight active, he easily controlled his flight through the portal and stayed near Nef’lar.
Adam watched as Erika teleported away, though he was able to keep track of her with the nanites that were all over her. She’d appeared in her apartment. Through the nanites that were on her body, Adam said, “I wouldn’t touch any clothes you like until the 10 minutes are up. Then get dressed and report back to your boss, he and I are going to have a little talk.”
While the nanites relaying his message to Erika, Adam flew over grabbed Nef’lar who was already starting to choke and flew back through the portal into his office and closed the portal. Nef’lar sucked in the air, trying to catch his breath.
While Nef’lar tried to catch his breath Adam said, “Now Nef’lar I can understand your anger, and if someday you think you can take me out, feel free to, but that day is not today. Your Empire has used an Eradicator three times on me, if we count the machine destroying the universe I was in with it. I have also been ‘killed’ by an undead vampire, who I will be having words with eventually and I just destroyed four of your facilities,” Adam said then paused for a moment, “My point is you cannot kill me right now. Let’s table that desire and focus on what you need to do to keep me happy. Why do you need to keep me happy? Because Nef’lar, the Pelza Empire, and all of her allies that were destroying universes for power deserve anything and everything I could do to them but I’m not that kind of guy. The individual that gave the order or agreed to it, he’s dead. The scientists that knew how to make the devices are having a really hard time remembering the math that made it possible and the devices you have in storage are breaking down into goo as we speak.”
“Why?”
“Because as your Cordite friend said, the strong take, or in this case the strong stop assholes from taking from the helpless. So, conditions. “
“Conditions?” Nef’lar asked, slightly confused with how this conversation was going.
Adam raised one finger, “First, no more trips to Earth. I’ll get your people back to you and then no more trips. I see one person from your empire in that Universe unless you’re coming to get me, I’m going to send this empire back into the stone age. One person, to ‘ask nicely’ for a meeting is permissible. More than one, Stone age.”
Adam raised two fingers, “Two, the trade agreement your empire had with the Xzexti, Tellini, and Cordite races, empires, whatever, concerning batteries is done. Do not even try to restart those factories. I would suggest you use what energy you have to rebuild your energy reserves. I might even be persuaded to help the People of the Pelza empire but honestly, you should be able to survive without killing off other Universes.
Adam held up three fingers, “Three, anyone that comes after me, or mine, dies. No mercy, no second chances, they die. “
Now you have a father and Emperor to mourn, I’m going to head over to the teleporter and go see me a Cordite and the Xzexti. Oh yeah, the teleporters were destroyed. Don’t you worry about that, I can fix that. However, I can’t do anything about the technician that died, but the moon base will be back to the way it was in about 30 seconds. I don’t think I’m going to have much of a problem with the Tellini,” Adam said as he used the wardrobe function of his Shadow Vault to change his clothes and teleported to moon’s security terminal showing all the proper badges and setting the teleporter to the previous location of the facility. Might as well see what the nebula thing the cordite guy was talking about is.