John Ringo - There Will Be Dragons

Ishtar had touched a control on her hover seat and fled the room at the first sign of trouble, some of the wasps following her out. Sheida was relatively sure that she was going to survive but she found herself and Aikawa the only ones left in a room full of enemies.

“Time to leave,” she said, backing rapidly towards the door and flicking another of the wasps away with her shield as her flyer guardian snapped another out of the air and landed on her head, tongue flickering in and out.

“Hmmm,” Aikawa said snatching one of the wasps out of the air and crushing it in a move that looked like some sort of magic. “I suppose,” he murmured, catching up another and considering the insect as it struggled before crushing it between his fingers. He was careful to keep away from the business end at the rear. He dropped both of the crushed bodies into a pouch and then waved at his former colleagues. “I’m going to kill you all for this.” With that he flipped out of the room in a series of seemingly impossible back-flips.

Sheida was now surrounded by a cloud and felt the first sting as she kept backing towards the door. “Goodbye, Paul. And I’ll see you in hell.” With that she took one more swat and fled. The last thing she saw on the way out the door was Cantor’s body beginning to spasm. But he still had a death grip on the Demon.

The four surviving Council members had fled by prearrangement to a home that Sheida maintained in the Teron mountains. From its main room there was a spectacular view down to a tarn similar to that at the Council Center. But it was across the world from that embattled chamber.

“Paul will follow us,” Aikawa said, looking around.

“Not easily,” Sheida said, striding across the room and yanking open a cupboard. She tossed an archaic can to Ishtar and a long, curved sword to Aikawa. “The house has its own power supply, divorced from the Net. And a teleport block. And weapons. Let him come.”

“There is a dip in power in the Net,” Ishtar said, looking at something that was invisible to the rest. “He is preparing something…”

As she spoke, a bolt flew out of the clear sky and crashed into an invisible barrier over the house, sending a tremor through the floor as something in the basement began to screech.

“Oh, and a protection field,” Sheida said as her lizard took off in fright from the impact. “That was from the Council Chambers themselves. We can’t reply directly but…” She opened her mind to the Net and delved in, looking for weaknesses. “They’re drawing power directly from the Net, but they’re not hooked into a particular plant.” She considered the protocols and twisted. “I need a vote, all in favor of disconnecting all power distribution say ‘aye.’ ”

“But if we do that…” Ishtar temporized just as another bolt crashed into the screen.

“That barrier won’t hold forever,” Sheida said. “And if they get smart they’ll just burn the rocks out from under us.”

“People will die,” Aikawa said.

“We’re about to have a war,” Sheida replied. “And we don’t have enough time to debate. We can’t take all the power plants to our own control, they already tried that and the protocols are against it. But if we send people to take physical control we can control the power distribution.” Her forehead creased and then she nodded. “I just dropped a half a dozen satellites on them. That should make things interesting. And I’m diverting as much power out of the Net as I can to melt the ground under them. Of course, we’re more vulnerable to that than they are.”

“I just increased the power over this place,” Ishtar said as the next bolt stopped well in the sky. “And I sent a similar bolt against them. There is an upper limit to power available from our personal queue. I’d never realized that. It’s… rather high, though,” she added as another blast caused the mountain to shudder. “I suggest that we reinforce the foundations of this place. Soon.”

“Mother won’t give any of us unlimited power, that’s a holdover protocol from the AI wars,” Aikawa said. He thought for a moment. “Okay, we disconnect all generators from the Net. What does that do?”

“We’ll have to draw from them individually,” Sheida said. There were fourteen terawatt generators that supplied power for the Net along with some relatively small secondary sources such as geothermal areas where the nannites bled off power to prevent eruptions and other disturbances. There had been a time in history, shortly after the AI wars, when the power had peaked at over thirty terawatts. But use of that much power on the surface of the planet had led to severe secondary problems and as the population had peaked the power allotment had stayed the same but usage dropped. There had been occasional calls for increases in generation, but when output got over twenty terawatts, much of it had to be diverted to climate control.

“That means that whoever has the generators, has the power,” Ishtar said. “I’m tracing the flows that they’re using right now and they’re drawing on spare power from two of the reactors in Ropasa. If we can prevent them from gathering power from the others…”

“Then we start calling in people that we know we can trust to go and take physical possession of the generators,” Sheida said with a nod. “At that point we will control their output and Paul can’t have it.” Her face creased and she smiled. “Okay, I’ve joined Ishtar in hammering the Council Chamber. I also put a teleport block over them.”

“That takes power, too,” Ishtar said with a frown. “And two can play at that game; one just went on here.”

“Yes, but I have a decent road out,” Sheida laughed. “Let them try walking out of the Council Center.”

“Then we end up having fights for the generators,” Ungphakorn said, ruffling his feathers furiously. “We’ll have to shield each of them.”

“But I’d bet money I have better friends at that sort of thing than they do,” Sheida replied, nodding. “Okay, avatars on the way.”

“We’re taking power from general usage already,” Ishtar noted in wonder. She looked up at the hills around the house. Where once had been trees towering into the sky was now a blackened heath; the secondary effects of an irresistible force hitting an inanimate object. “There’s enough to sustain the Net currently, but if we keep this up…”

“If we don’t keep it up, Paul and his ‘five year plan’ wins,” Sheida replied. “We can’t let that happen.”

“And we have two additional Keys,” Aikawa noted, holding one up. “That puts us at near parity with them.”

“But we don’t have anyone to vote or use them,” Ishtar said. “We need two. Two that we can trust .”

“I know one,” Sheida said.

“The power grid…” Ishtar gasped, her eyes staring into the infinity of the Net. “The power grid is… going down.”

The two fighters circled each other warily each searching for an opening. They were armed and armored alike, mail, helmet, a cuirass and shield, wielding long swords easily in their right hands.

After a moment’s fruitless circling, the larger sprang forward with a yell and jammed his shield against the smaller man’s shield, searching over it for a strike.

Harry Chambers laughed and fell back at the shield charge, swinging his sword to the side to skitter over the larger fighter’s shield edge.

“You’re getting slow in your old age, Edmund,” he chuckled, dancing out of range.

“So are you,” Edmund replied, but he had to admit to the reality of the statement; he and Harry had been sparring for years and never had the lighter fighter taken the shield rush that easily. “That just means I have to be craftier.”