The ensign took a minute to reply. "It looks like they have a repair system comparable to the Raven, sir."
"Shit. How are our repairs coming?" he asked, staring down at the slowly spinning holo image of the Vitas ship.
"Unknown, sir. With Cora down, we can only estimate, but I would say we’re more than an hour from being up," Mezner said, then leaned in to her console. "Sir! The enemy is sending out a signal. It looks like a communication, but it's not any coding I recognize."
"It's broadcasting? Give me a scan of the system, use whatever power you need. We need to see if there is another one of these ships close enough to get that communication," Grimms said, his stomach dropping at the thought of another of these ships coming after them.
"Aye, sir. Scanning now," she said, getting to work.
"Sir, I'm getting an anomaly several thousand kilometers behind the Vitas ship. It looks like a gravity well is forming," Hon reported, slightly panicked.
"A gravity well? Like another ship?" Grimms asked for clarification.
"No, sir. More like a large asteroid, but it's growing in intensity," Hon said, his eyes wide. "Oh, shit."
The ship lurched to the side slightly as it began to pull toward the anomaly.
"It's growing exponentially, sir. We're being sucked in," Hon shouted.
"Connors, do we have anything in the drives?" Grimms asked, already knowing the answer.
"No, sir. Gravitic drives are still offline," Connors said, trying them anyway and getting no response.
"Sir, the gravity field is collapsing in on itself," Hon said in disbelief. "It's forming a black hole."
"Shit! I need options people, anything," Grimms barked out, gripping the holo table.
Before anyone could respond, the ship leveled out.
"It's gone, sir. It just collapsed and disappeared," Hon said, looking up from his console, wide-eyed.
"The transmission has stopped, sir. I... I think they just sent a message through a wormhole," Mezner said with wonder.
"They used a wormhole to send a message? How did they form it?" Grimms asked.
Connors spoke up. "It would be an effective form of FTL communication, sir."
"I understand that, but I want to know how they formed it at all," Grimms said with frustration.
"I don't know, sir. The Vitas ship showed a spike in power, but I don't see how it was enough to do that," Mezner said.
Grimms growled and nearly spat in frustration. "So we should assume that they have contacted their fleet, and there are reinforcements coming. If anything, they will know the Raven can stand against them and what our capabilities are."
"Sir, the Vitas ship’s weapons are showing power fluctuations. I think they are attempting to repair them," Mezner said.
"How many shots do we have left, Hon?"
Hon double-checked. "Nine, sir."
"Find a firing solution, but hold,” Grimms ordered. “Let’s hope our engines come online before their guns do."
"It's going to be close, sir," Mezner said.
"It always is."
Chapter 28
Sara fed the spellform with Aether, then she disappeared from the universe.
She had been a controller before she was a commander, and knew the spells used in a warp maneuver like the back of her hand. The jump spell was similar, but changed one major factor of travel.
In a warp, the ship never left the universe it was currently in; it merely traveled through an impossibly thin thread of Aether while encircled in another bubble of Aether. That bubble still traversed the same distance as traditional drives would take, but it did so in a compressed format that allowed the ship to sort of trick reality into thinking it was well within its physical rights.
Jumping, on the other hand, was another animal altogether.
The ship—or in this case, the person—is still wrapped in a bubble of Aether, but instead of traveling through a thread, the bubble is sucked directly into the Aether, that place below space-time, and then shoved out another tiny hole in space-time and back into reality.
Because the Aether has no dimensions that humans can understand, the distance traveled is very slight. It happens so fast that it seems instantaneous, but it still takes a few picoseconds to get from one place to the next. That distinction is important, because it means that the jumping object is not disappearing and reappearing, but is actually being moved. And when it reappears, it is actually expanding extremely quickly from a pinprick of reality.
Normally this wouldn't matter, because any sane person would only jump to an unoccupied spot. However, Sara's sanity was questionable at best, so when she decided to jump into battle with a gang of angry robots who were boarding her ship, she jumped into their midst.
Actually, she decided to jump into one robot, just to see what would happen.
A tiny hole formed in the torso of a robot that was powering up one of its arm cannons. That hole was quickly filled with a bubble of pure Aether that expanded rapidly; the bubble itself was being fed by the Aether it was coming from, and did not lack the power a shield would have under the same circumstances. The bubble expanded so rapidly that the robot’s components didn't even have time to melt from the pressure, instead converting directly into plasma, which then burned away more of the bot as it came apart at the molecular level.
In less time than light took to travel a millimeter, the bot had disintegrated into a cloud of loose atoms, and Sara stood in its place. Half the bodies of the bots to either side of her received the same treatment, while the other half of their metallic frames slammed into the bulkhead so hard they shattered like glass.
She turned to see the airlock, filled with the crawling bots, blown clear from the ship as the shockwave traveled through the bulkhead and flooring. If there had still been atmosphere, Sara was sure the accompanying ripping sounds would have driven her to her knees. The entire small room was ripped free of the Raven, sent barreling into the stream of incoming bots, knocking them to the side and damaging several.
She now stood on the torn edge of her ship, thankful that the internal gravity was still working, and found herself on the opposite side of a twenty-strong group of two-and-a-half-meter-tall robots, as her Marines all stared in shock at her entrance.
"Keep firing, I have my shields," Sara shouted at them over the open comm. Then she powered the tight shield Alister had shown her on their way to the cargo bay.
The corridor lit up with high velocity metal slugs, and she ducked low to keep from taking too much fire from her own men.
The bots seemed confused at her sudden appearance, but quickly shifted their attack to accommodate her. The five in the back of the group turned with incredible speed and lunged for her, while the remaining machines pressed their attack on Baxter and the Marines.
Sara noted that each of the bots' forearms had small cannons on them, and they were beginning to glow with energy. In addition to the cannons, each arm ended in a hand with three long, stiletto-pointed fingers in a triangular formation.
These digits on the five bots closest to her glinted in the dim light as they came for her face.
She didn't hesitate, lashing out with a force blast, which she focused into a horizontal blade to slash all five enemies across the connector at the bottom of their torsos; it looked like a weak point.
The force blade sank into the first two, cutting a few centimeters, but then winked out, as if it had run out of power.
"Shit, I forgot," Sara growled to herself as she poured more power into her shield.
The shield glowed brightly for an instant before bright flashes came from the barrels of two of the bots, and the claws of the other three raked across her shield right above her face.
The blasts were smaller versions of the particle beam the main ship used, and they burned her shield down to an orange glow. The claws, however, raked across the shield with considerable force, and as soon as they hit, Sara felt the power leaving her shield, and she had to struggle to keep it goi
ng.
One of the bots in front of her slumped to the side, half of its head missing from concentrated rifle fire from behind. She took the opening to roll to the side and get out of the bot’s reach.
She had to be careful not to roll off the edge of the deck and into open space.
She came up on one knee and looked for anything she might use as a weapon. She spotted a panel on the wall hanging by a single bolt, the other three having broken loose amidst her arrival. She sent a mental command to Alister, who was still clinging to her shoulder, and he complied, offering her the desired form.
She powered the spell, and a hand-like appendage formed out of golden shields. She used it to grab the panel and rip it from the wall, bringing it down like an axe blade on the closest bot. She gritted her teeth with effort as the panel hit the bot in the shoulder and sliced completely through its torso in a diagonal line of sparks and shaved metal.
The top half of the bot fell to the deck, followed by the legs, both dark and unmoving. Now that she had a weapon, she finally felt like she might have a chance in this fight.
She turned the panel so the flat edge was facing the remaining three bots, and shoved it toward them with all the strength she could muster.
The bots leapt at her, claws extended, but they never touched her. The panel slammed into the first, who was pushed into the second and then the third. The whole jumble of writhing bots was flung out into the black.
Sara lost the panel, as it moved its targets away with incredible speed, but she quickly found another to rip loose from the corridor wall.
Then she turned to face the remaining horde. Letting out a growling scream of rage and battle lust, she sent the panel into the group like she was cutting weeds with a machete. Bots began to fall to her unrelenting assault, arms and legs cleaved from their bodies, and torsos split in half.
The Marines were making progress, but the arm cannons were doing a number on them. Through the bots, Sara could make out Baxter in his armor, throwing up shields to protect his men as they pounded the enemy with rifle slugs. He seemed to be holding out better than Deej, who was so focused on shielding that he was not even attempting to use his rifle.
Sara also picked out the prone bodies of several Marines and a few crewmen. The sight of her people dead in the corridor fueled her need to drive these soulless machines from her ship.
There were only a dozen robots left, but they were concentrating fire on Deej's shields and burning through them at an incredible rate. She wanted to put up her own shield to protect her men, but every time she cut one of the attackers down, another turned to engage her.
She gave Deej another glance and saw that his current shield was a burnt orange, quickly turning red, but before she could act, another bot turned and lunged for her. Its claws raked her shield, and she felt her Aether well drain just a little bit more. She jumped back to get out of its grasp while she maneuvered the panel into position to cut it down.
The panel dislodged from the back of another bot and streaked across the vacuum toward her attacker, but the bot sidestepped the projectile at the last second, and the panel shot through the gap between them and out into space. Sara had put a lot of energy into the move, so it took her a second to realize she had missed. She registered that she didn't have time to bring the panel back before she would be attacked again, and abandoned her weapon to forever spin off through the galaxy.
A second bot had turned to her to lunge with the first.
She mentally requested a new spellform, and Alister instantly complied. She quickly fed the new form with Aether, and felt a pull on her mind that was different from the shield spell. The spellform was a constructive spell, in the molding family. Her Aether gathered in a pool under the airborne bots, and quickly began to change the structure of the deck, coaxing it into a new shape.
She fed the spell with more power, trying to speed up the process. She had almost decided to try a new tactic, when the deck plates thinned at the edges of the Aether pool, and a spike of steel shot up to the ceiling, impaling the two incoming bots through the torso.
Sara grinned as they struggled and attempted to free themselves. Then she ripped another panel from the wall and decapitated them both in one sweeping blow.
She stepped around the newly formed pillars and saw that Deej was down on his knees, his shield about to burn out. Five of the remaining bots were focusing their fire, and Sara knew he would not be able to stop the blasts.
She began to cast a shield, when a particle beam tore through the open space and slammed into a golden shield that had been erected in front of Deej's failing one.
Boon pushed her way to the front of the Marines and gave Sara a nod. "Sorry I'm late, Captain. We had to wait for the decompression procedure," she said, eyeing the remaining bots. Then she looked past Sara, and her eyes grew large. Since she was wearing only a battlesuit—like Sara, not having had the time to retrieve her armor—her expression was plainly visible.
Turning around to see what had caught Boon’s attention, Sara gasped in shock. It looked like her batting away of the few bots on her way in had not bought her much time at all; a large group had bunched up to fly in and attack in force.
The Marines were still cutting away at the bots, and Baxter was holding steady with his shields, but Sara would soon be trapped between two enemy forces, and her Aether well was nearly three quarters empty.
"Don't use direct spells on them, Boon. They have some ability that lets them absorb the Aether away from you," she said, preparing to fight the oncoming horde.
Sara felt the deck vibrate and jump beneath her feet, making her look over her shoulder. Boon had used the same morphing spell she had used, spearing eight of the bots on one thick column. Instead of using the deck plates however, Boon had used the corridor wall, and her spike crossed the corridor at chest-height. The remaining two bots were cut down by rifle fire, but not before another Marine was hit in the chest by a particle beam.
"Baxter, get your men back and heal up who you can. Boon and I need some space to move; we don't want to hit any of you on accident," Sara ordered, as the small, blonde woman ducked under the spike she had made and came to stand next to her captain.
Silva was in her battlesuit, and gave Sara and Alister a nod from her place beside Alicia.
"I’ve been using panels as axe blades, but anything will work if you put enough power behind it," Sara advised as she faced the oncoming bots.
"I feel like we should have that printed on shoulder patches," Boon joked.
Sara smiled. "It's my personal credo."
Chapter 29
Grimms shifted his attention between the massing robots outside the ship and the power readings on the Vitas ship. The building attack worried him, but he figured there were two War Mages to handle that.
The major problem was Cora being out.
He was worried that she had been damaged in some way, and he wouldn’t see her ever again. There was also the problem that if she was out for good, "ever again" was going to be less than five minutes.
"Sir, the attackers are moving in. I'm getting reports that the Marines are pulling back at the captain’s request, and that they are taking the wounded to the medical bay. We are in the process of restoring pressure there," Mezner relayed.
"Good. Hon, is there any way we can send a gauss round into that cluster of robots?" Grimms asked, worried that the attack would overwhelm Sara and Boon.
"I can't get an angle, sir. They're too close to the ship," Hon said with a frown.
"Sir, the Vitas are powering up their weapons. It looks like they finished their repairs," Mezner panicked.
"Shit," Grimms growled. "Hon, lock on. We need to do whatever damage we—"
"Grimms?" Cora said from the speakers. She seemed a little dazed to his ears.
"Cora! We need to jump now!" he shouted, relief and dread flooding him from both sides.
"Wha—oh, shit! Jumping," Cora said, coming to rather quickly.
"
They're firing," Mezner said, her hand white-knuckled on the console’s edge.
The ship rocked slightly from an impact, then their position was adjusted on the holo table, and Grimms could see that they had jumped, but not very far.
"We're only a few kilometers away, what happened?" Grimms asked.
"The amplifiers are still damaged. I can only run so much power through them, or they’ll blow out again," Cora reported, sounding much more put-together than when she had first woken up. "I can maybe get one more jump out of them at this distance, but then they'll be toast."
"The Vitas are still not able to activate their engines, but their rotation will bring us in range in a few minutes," Hon said, looking up from his console.
Grimms checked on the gathered attackers and saw that only a portion of them were still floating in space where they had been just a moment before. Which meant that some of them were on the ship.
"How are those engine repairs going, Cora?"
"It's going to be another ten to twenty minutes," she estimated.
"Prepare to jump again in three minutes. We will need to get as close as possible to minimize the robots’ chances of blocking our shots. Hon, as soon as we complete the jump, I want you to hit them with everything you have left," Grimms said, doing the risk analysis in his head.
"If we take out the ship, there are still the robots to deal with," Mezner reminded him.
"One thing at a time, Mezner. One thing at a time."
The loose cloud of bots rushed in, closing the gap between them and the Raven at astonishing speed. Sara and Boon both grabbed hold of some floating debris and hurled it at the grouped enemy with force spells.
The chunks from the Raven hurtled through the gap, and most of the bots changed direction to avoid a collision, but they were too close, and the War Mages had flung the pieces with ferocity.
Several of the bots exploded in showers of sparks and pulverized metal scraps, but the horde kept coming.
Then the ship jumped, changing the view of space and only taking the closest bots with them in the bubble. There were still thirty or more enemies, but that number was better than the hundred that had been there a second before.
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