by Tao Wong
“Got it.”
I leave Dornalor to the flying, focusing instead on the overall fight. In the time we’ve been jawing, our siege breakers have made their way a quarter of the distance, each of them lit up like a town square Christmas tree. Behind, the pirate ships that were conned into coming along are returning fire, targeting the battleships’ external gun mounts and engines. Their goal is to crack the shields then defang the battleships rather than destroy them. While beam weaponry plays the biggest part in the initial clash, hundreds of missiles are on their terminal flight, headed both ways.
Electronic counter measures come into play. Within the sensor suite, I feel the sudden increase in transmissions, the way the electromagnetic spectrum explodes in volume. My affinity hums within me, asking, begging me to use it, while my Mana Sense hums with the warping of Mana as numerous Skills come into play. Mana swirls and collects around each pirate ship as their occupants struggle for survival. The enemy fleet is too far away for me to sense, but I’m sure they’re doing much the same.
Countless missiles go astray, some exploding prematurely, others going so far as to target other friendly missiles. Some head away from their initial targets only to reacquire another pirate ship. As the fleets close, point-blank counter missile lasers fire under the guidance of AIs and some extremely highly attributed Intelligence and Skilled individuals. Seconds before the missiles can hit us, point defense thins out the attack further. Then they’re in our midst and my senses—all of them—go insane.
High energy bombs, concentrated into beams of energy and terror, tear into metal. Gravity bombs containing miniature black holes are released from their confines, yanking stray debris and even light into their cores. X-ray lasers. Photonic beams. In a few cases, just solid masses of metal. Those are all the kinds of missiles that go off around the pirates, technological mayhem bringing death to ships by the dozens.
If only we were targeted by something so simple.
Instead, the Thirteen Moon Sect goes for the esoteric forms of missile payloads. Half of the missiles contain elementals trapped within enchanted warheads that, on explosion, spread their freed forms across a wide range of space itself. Hundreds of kilometers their bodies expand, until they touch enough metal. And then they contract, glomping together at the contact point to form elemental invaders. Acid, fire, lightning, metal. Those are the easy to recognize elementals. There’s another one that’s made of candy canes, another a twisting mass of melted plastic, and even a pool of poo.
To deal with the ore miner we follow, the Thirteen Moon Sect went with something much simpler and larger. An ifrit, carried on a stealthed missile, appears in front of the ore miner. It grows and grows, fifty kilometers tall, topknot of blue hair and big grin present, just before it puts its hand out and stops the ore miner dead. Except physics still has a say in this System world, and the ore miner’s momentum continues forward. Immovable object meets entirely mortal structure and the ore miner crumples like a tin can, its own engines driving its demise.
In the midst of all this, Dornalor weaves us through the attacks. We’re not targeted directly by any of the missiles or beam weaponry, our superior stealth modules keeping us in the clear. But incidental death is still death. More than once, I see him activate the surface deterrents, throwing up temporary force shields to block a grasping tendril from an elemental or roll the ship around a sudden explosion of focused dimensional energy.
As much damage as the enemy fleet is doing to us, our own attacks are having an effect. At least one battleship is destroyed outright, while many others have their defenses worn down. As for the Dimensional Smoothers, the target of the majority of our attacks…
“Dimensional Smoother’s force shields are down. Entry plan is a go,” Bolo reports from below, in the secondary command deck where he’s overseeing damage control with Mikito.
We continue to fly, the first wave of the pirate fleet entirely wiped out. The second wave ahead of us has taken significant damage, especially as the battleships—now freed from firing upon the ore ship—turn their attention to them. Thankfully, the ifrit disappears after it’s done with the ore ship, its service complete.
As for us…
There is no sound in space—not outside. But within the ship, the creaks and groans of the Heartbreak, the sudden, painful exhalations as inertial dampers either can’t keep up—or worse, act against our actual acceleration. Damage notifications float up in the corner of my eye. Nothing significant, but a constant reminder that even my toughened body is taking a beating from our dodging.
We get lucky until a half minute out, when an elemental, hidden from our senses, manages to latch on. An elemental of Space itself bypasses all our mundane defenses, barely slows down on the enchantments woven into the ship, and appears within. Damage notifications appear as the newly formed Space Elemental wrecks things by changing the spatial dimensions of the Heartbreak itself.
“Mikito. Bolo. Damage control!” Dornalor barks. “You. Stay there.”
“Wasn’t going to move.” I know my job. Already the guns are online, my mind tapped directly into the weaponry. We don’t fire. Haven’t fired. But we’re closing in so fast now that there’s no way to hide our—
“Void. There goes the stealth covering,” Dornalor says. “Hold on!”
“Easy for you to say!” Mikito growls over the comms.
I pull up a camera and realize that Mikito’s already managed to make her way to the elemental. Lucky that she’s so close. The corridor itself is no longer a smooth, regular rectangle but a weird distortion of space, certain parts jutting out, others compressed to no more than four feet in size. In the center of the corridor is the space elemental, a distortion in space itself that shifts form from cube to sphere to decahedron to pyramid and more. As Mikito enters its range, her body compresses and twists, her lead leg shrinking and lengthening to her screams of pain. The Samurai doesn’t hesitate, throwing Hitoshi at the elemental rather than continue to approach it. The heavy blade floats through the air and the elemental turns to regard it.
I expect to see the polearm twist, change, maybe shift course. But Legacy weaponry have their own properties, including a solidity that even my own soulbound weapon does not. Whatever weird Skills the elemental is trying to use, it fails, and the blade sinks deep into the creature. The successful attack releases Mikito’s leg, the appendage springing back to its original shape, along with portions of the corridor. But both her leg and the corridor look twisted, mangled from the changes.
As the naginata falls out of the body of the elemental as it changes form once again, the elemental again exerts its influence on external space. Only to be interrupted as Bolo crashes through the bottom flooring, his hammer leading the way.
I turn away from the fight, focusing on the space battle around us. Fighters—dozens and dozens of space fighters—scramble out of the Dimensional Smoothers and some of the battleships. The fighters are as disparate as the fleet facing us. Some of the fighters are barely large enough to contain the individuals strapped within. Others are the size of an eighteen-wheeler. The range in fighters is often dependent on the Classes they carry—some just there to bring their occupants to the fight as quickly as possible. Others are more traditional, bearing external weaponry. None of it matters to me as I target the nearest fighter, letting loose on our beam weaponry to destroy their methods of locomotion.
“Protective mines are at a higher density than expected,” Dornalor snarls.
In my sensor suite, more data streams in as the stealthed mines are revealed. Hundreds of them, covering space. I watch as one of the spacesuit-fighters literally bounces off a mine, his IFF ensuring it doesn’t blow up. Not even when I shoot him and catch the mine in the backblast.
“Contained high-explosives.” I report the results of the attack to Dornalor. Nothing too unstable. Smart. And annoying.
“Afterburners in three.” Dornalor pauses then adds, “You too.”
“Got it.”
/> Afterburners and our Class Skills synchronize, increasing our forward momentum and adding to our initial velocity. That helps us dodge attacks and puts us within range of the mines and the fighters. Things get hectic after that, though I’m relieved to see that a number of damage reports decrease as the space elemental is banished. Fire and flame wrap the Heartbreak. Metal tears and melts, and the constant ping of damage reports and ricocheting mass-driven projectiles echo through my skull as our shields fail within seconds.
Breach in section 3, upper deck.
Intruder detected.
All around us, pirate ships duck and dive, opening fire at beam turrets and missile ports, destroying the Dimensional Smoother’s offensive and defensive options. Each attack reduces incoming fire, but casualties on our side mount too. Luminescent dots in the plot disappear innocuously, belying the truth of shrieking death and explosive decompression.
Port turret 2 damaged. Send damage control
Left wing missile pod destroyed. Closing autofeed slots.
Autofeed slots closed. Dump loaded missiles?
External loaded missiles dumped. Detonation in 3.47 seconds.
Seconds that feel like hours as our brains take in and process dozens of notifications at a time. We process and make decisions that dictate the life and death of fighters and ourselves, spinning through the void before the afterburners stop and the maneuvering thrusters kick in. We spin in place, still flying backward as our forward momentum keeps us moving, then our afterburners turn on again, braking us. Even as we do so, Dornalor is speaking.
“Kill your Skill. We hit the drop point in eight seconds.”
No get ready, no good luck. Not a very sentimental guy, Dornalor.
My chair retracts, dropping through the floor and being replaced by another flowing metal version of itself as I enter an escape chute below the cockpit. As I drop, the chair I’m in is enclosed by more of the liquid metal, crash foam forming from the edges to fill in empty spaces. My connection to the ship gets cut off abruptly, leaving me mentally staggering. I don’t get enough time to reorient myself before the thrusters and the electromagnetic rails around my pod trigger.
I leave our spaceship in fire and flame, to bring wreck and ruin to our enemies.
Chapter 14
Outside the ship, my stomach lurches and twists as the inertial compensators in the ship lose their efficacy. I spin through the void, headed for the Dimensional Smoother’s hull, passing through interlocking beams of fire by inches. A second later, my poor mortal form in the escape pod impacts the Dimensional Smoother’s hull. The escape pod’s outer shell breaks up under the absurd sheering forces it’s subjected to, leaving me bereft of material protection. Thankfully, not Skilled protection.
Sanctuary wraps me in its protective bubble, allowing me to bounce along the hull and tear it up. Dornalor angled our forward momentum and my own exit such that when I hit the ship, I’m at an angled collision course, allowing me to skip along the hull for a few bounces before the angles become too great. That’s when I turn off Sanctuary, an act that leaves me with a headache and a new notification.
Sanctuary Skill Forcibly Canceled Before Duration Expires
Mana feedback from forced cancellation affecting all Skills in Skill branch.
Effect: -16% effectiveness of Skills in Skill branch. Sanctuary Skill unable to be used for 1 hour 27 minutes and 31 seconds.
“Arse,” I snarl.
Not that I have that much time to be cursing as I trigger my suit’s external thrusters, doing the best I can to bleed off the momentum and put me back on a direct crash course with the Dimensional Smoother. Our initial hope was that the combined velocities and my Sanctuary Skill would allow me to burrow directly into the ship. After all, mundane metal isn’t meant to handle high speed impacts against an unyielding surface. Not when the force shields are down anyway. What we didn’t expect was the damn hull to be hardened to a ridiculous degree by a Skill.
My new suit is put through its paces as I dodge the occasional point defense system targeting me. The few shots I don’t manage to dodge are absorbed by my Soul Shield, which takes it all like the champ it is. Beneath that, I’ve got the suit’s own force shield, but I’d prefer to not use that till I have to. Like Sabre’s old force shield, it just isn’t up to spec.
On the other hand, I find a new use for the On the Edge Skill as it seems to interact with my suit’s maneuvering thrusters very well. Doesn’t let me escape the incoming fighters that have decided that the fat, slow—relatively speaking—suit is easy pickings. I dissuade them with a few well-placed Blade Strikes on their first pass, more from surprise than any actual threat. While they turn around, I trigger Mirror Shade to confuse the group while the Improved Invisibility spell takes me most of the way to the Smoother itself. Unfortunately, being right on top of the Dimensional Smoother has locked down even short-range teleportation like Blink Step.
Even as I glide toward the Smoother, I can see how the initial impetus from our attack is slowing down, the pirate ships forced back as the military grade vessels pound away at the vessels. We might have numbers and enthusiasm, but they’ve got professionalism and mass. Each battleship is about ten times the size of a destroyer and, unlike the pirate ships, is packed full of weaponry. They don’t waste space on silly things like cargo spaces or personal swimming pools.
“Stop playing around,” Bolo snarls, his voice ringing in my ears. He blows past me by standing on a flat, wing-shaped board, no longer bothering to use his boot thrusters. As he does so, he swings his hammer, letting the handle grow in length so that he smashes aside an unsuspecting humanoid suit that was in the way.
“What is that? And how come you didn’t use it before?” I say.
“Some of us plan for the future.”
“I do too!” I snap.
I lose sight of the world as a beam weapon targets me, driving away my ability to see. Realizing that my invisibility spell is no longer working, I throw Blade Strikes again. I also add a couple of nasty floating blades to the mix, leaving tiny, almost imperceptible slow-moving mines in our wake. Experience notifications let me know that my little surprises are working.
As we finally reach the Dimensional Smoother and land beside the melted slag of a point defense cannon, I trigger the suit’s gravitational boots, locking me to the hull. Bolo doesn’t even bother, instead inverting himself so that he’s flying upside down at an angle to the hull. Why he does that is explained when he starts swinging that hammer of his, attempting to punch a hole through the hull. Each impact is aided by the boosted acceleration of the space-board, giving each swing additional velocity and keeping him in roughly the same position.
“Where’s Mikito?” I ask, scanning my minimap for the woman. The sheer volume of dots on my map is distracting, so I drop everything but my party members and nearby threats, only to find nothing. Dread runs through me, though I note she’s still alive in the party screen. As is Harry, but that’s no surprise. He’s still on the station.
“In the ship,” Bolo grunts between swings. “She dropped her pod before hitting and used her weapon to punch through. Craziest thing I’ve seen since Sif day.”
Before I can ask, a trio of guests arrive. Two from a recessed access hatch that we missed and a third from space, literally dropping from the sky and splatting onto the hull. The third looks like nothing more than a giant space booger thrown by a Galactic giant. The blob-like creature reforms its body into a multi-tentacled, multi-legged creature, discarding the trio of thrusters it had subsumed within its body, allowing the thrusters to float off into space.
“Oh, that’s just disgusting.” While complaining, I’m casting a fireball spell at the creature before realizing that won’t work. No oxygen out here.
Cursing my ineptitude, I watch as attacks from the pair of attackers lash out at me. Annoyed, I overreact and call forth a Beacon of the Angels. I bathe Space Booger in the area effect attack while forcing the other two to wait out the attack or
move around it.
“Keep them occupied. I’m nearly through!” Bolo snaps at me.
“Yeah, yeah.” As if I needed an oversized muscle-bound idiot to tell me what to do. Conjuring my swords, I crouch and get ready to dance.
***
Two minutes later, the living metal that made it so hard to punch through the hull in the first place closes off the gaping hole we just tumbled through. Air rushes back in as the environmental system returns oxygen and heated air to the corridor. As I stand, shaking off the gunk clinging to me, Bolo is edging away from the flung particulates.
“Oh, stop being a baby.” I debate taking the few seconds to cast a Cleanse spell, but I’ve burned through a ton of Mana with Sanctum, the Beacon of the Angels, and my spells. My suit has an autoclean feature on it, so the remains of SB will be taken care of. Eventually.
“That’s Slokum fluid you’re tossing around. They’re known to carry really nasty diseases. Strong enough to overcome even our high constitutions,” Bolo says. “And unlike some people, I’m not in a fully sealed suit.”
“That’s your fault,” I say. “Who forgets to dodge a bleeding Chaos mine?”
“You were supposed to take care of things!”
“I was. It wasn’t exactly easy fighting three Advanced Classers,” I snap back.
“Children. Mikito’s dying here. Maybe put the egos away and get moving?” Ali chastises us, forcing me to focus on the updated minimap and the ever-so-helpful blinking yellow arrow down one corridor. In the corner of my vision, I spot how Mikito’s health keeps jumping up and down.
It doesn’t take us long to get to her. Unlike whatever they did to reinforce the outer hull of the Dimensional Smoother, the inner bulkheads are much more fragile. When Ali’s helpful directional light points downward, we tear through the bulkheads in our way. Along the way, Bolo acts like a video game character with the way he continually spins and swings his hammer, ripping holes through the surrounding walls and flooring. If we were concerned about being subtle, we’d be putting a giant, neon flashing damage report sign above our heads. But as we aren’t, extra damage is a good thing. I add to the confusion by liberally tossing grenades behind us like a hyperactive kitten in a box of packing peanuts. Every bit of damage we do makes it harder for the Smoother to function.
