World Seed_Endgame

by Justin Miller

  “I already did, John. They should be waiting for you by the time you get there.” She commented in a gentler tone before going silent, likely making her own final preparations. I couldn’t help but smile at the forethought she put into this. Then again, I had likely annoyed her beyond enough to make her want to get this over with as soon as possible.

  Huh? What? Are we going now? Great, finally!

  Yes, yes. I vaguely responded to Malthan, once again amazed at how he could spend so much time paying attention to me. From what I had heard from Celeste, Sharon, and the others, this was definitely not the norm. Maybe it was just because it was Malthan, and he had too much free time. However, none of the others ever had hardly any communication with their patron unless they were at a temple or in the process of a quest from their patron.

  I guess I can just think of him as special. Then again, if I thought about the domains Malthan governed, that could also explain how he was able to just spend all his time communicating with mortals. I mean, he doesn’t really have to do any work for chaos to remain chaotic, or for insane people to stay insane.

  I do plenty of work! I just can’t tell you about it. Rules are rules. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

  I silently nodded, doing my best not to mentally comment on that. Instead, I made my way towards the bridge quickly. Along the way, I saw various people walking along the hallways, inspecting every corner of the ship. Some even carried with them handheld scanning devices. Since the repairs were just completed, no doubt this was so that they could check the integrity of the ship, and make sure everything was ready for launch.

  “Are there any repairs that weren’t able to be fit in within the timeframe?” I asked curiously as I continued making my way forward, trusting that Celeste was paying enough attention that she would notice if I asked her something. And sure enough, a response came only a few moments later.

  “Aside from the human propulsion system, we managed to get everything in. Of course, we haven’t had any time to field-test the upgrades, but the individual systems had already been tested by their various designers. Unless there is some unpredictable clash with specific systems, there shouldn’t be anything unexpected.” She assured me, causing me to nod my head slightly.

  “Good. I wouldn’t want to find out at the last minute that our shields won’t come online.” I groaned at the thought, shaking my head rapidly. “Are the other ships all equipped with what they can use, too?”

  This time, the answer that came was a tired sigh. “Everyone’s got the warp core. And the Deus Ex ships borrowed the shield designs to upgrade themselves. However, there wasn’t enough time and resources to upgrade all of their weapons. They did pitch in to create a second cannon for the Executioner, so it doesn’t have to rely on its positron cannon to do damage.”

  I nodded my head again at that, before turning the corner and opening the door to the bridge. Immediately, I saw a group of beastmen stand up, along with one mischievously grinning Deus Ex and an eager elf. Before they could say anything, I immediately opened my mouth. “First person to say ‘Captain on the bridge’ or to salute gets to stay home.”

  Ackbar was, naturally, not that happy to have his usual antics interrupted, but he was used to it at this point. As for Celeste, she just clicked her tongue in annoyance, as if I had ruined her prank. Moving forward, I went to my very own, comfy captain’s chair. However, I noticed a slight change compared to before. There were now two additional seats, one on either side of my chair.

  Glancing to their occupants, I waited for an explanation. The first to speak up was naturally Sharon, who was seated to my right. “What? You didn’t expect us to just always be standing next to you, did you?” She asked playfully. “It kept bugging us that we couldn’t always be here on the bridge with you, since the ship shakes too much in a fight. So we had Celeste install a couple of chairs for us.”

  Next up, was Yin’s wonderfully eloquent answer. “No controls…” She said with a slight pout, poking at the arm of her chair positioned directly to my right. Like she said, neither chair had even a single button. Though, they did have a lever down at the bottom, but going by the design of the chairs, that was just to recline it.

  That’s right, there are now recliners on the bridge. Holographic television screen, recliners, easy food down the hall. I am starting to feel like this is history’s best mobile home living room. I gave a small sigh as I sat down in my chair, reaching my arms out to either side to pat the arms of their chairs. “Well, let’s do this then.” I said with a smile.

  “Celeste, begin calculations. Pull up the spatial coordinates for the nearest known New Human Empire base, and place us three parsecs from the destination.” That should be plenty of empty space for us to land in, but still be close enough that we could quickly arrive via normal subspace travel. My biggest concern was stray asteroids, or space monsters. The last thing we needed was to appear in a nest of abstracts by mistake.

  Celeste nodded, closing her eyes and interfacing with the ship’s computers. “I already did the preliminary calculations. There is a 90% chance that the target location contains an enemy base. However, due to differences in gravitational fields, it is recommended that all ships jump at the same time. Otherwise, the destinations might vary slightly, and accidental collisions would be a serious risk.”

  “Alright. Have everyone prepare their jumps, and set a countdown.” As I spoke, I felt a delicate finger poking my left hand. Looking over, I saw Yin looking at me with a serious expression.

  “Speech.” She said, nodding her head as if that summed up everything. But I don’t wanna! I retorted inwardly, but nodded my head after a slight groan. Speeches were important. Need the dramatic build-up for morale and whatnot. Though, our fleet consisted of mostly unfeeling robots, completely loyal evolved animal companions, and midgets that act like they never graduated high school.

  “Fine, fine.” I turned my head back to the front, ignoring the small thumbs up exchanged between my two wives. “Patch me through to the fleet.” I ordered, bringing my hands to my sides as I stood up.

  It took a moment for the connection to be set, but after the communications officer… I think her name was Skyla? It’s hard to remember names when most of the crew changes out on a regular basis! Anyways, this one was evidently an evolved turtle, judging by the shell covering her back like a backpack. When Skyla gave me the thumbs up, I began my speech.

  “Ahem. Attention everyone. I hope that you all enjoyed the vacation. Hopefully, it is the last one that we will have before this is all over.” Both because I hoped that this wouldn’t take too long, and I doubted my sanity could survive weeks of doing nothing again. “We are once again going to be heading into enemy territory. However, this time we are prepared. Before, we suffered some losses when we first engaged their ships, due to not being able to understand and predict the level of technology that they were going to be using.”

  “This time, everyone has been outfitted with new systems specifically designed to fight against the New Human Empire. From what I understand, each ship should now be more powerful than it was before by a large margin.” Except for the Qu’Lopti, but let’s just let them power up through the power of imagination. “Now, we can fight them, and we can win.”

  “For each base we hit, our primary goal will be to discern their main base of operations. For that matter, myself and the primary landing party will be descending to whatever base we come to. Our objective will be to access their systems, your objective will be making sure we don’t get nuked from orbit. Honestly… That’s probably the harder of the two jobs.”

  I gave a quick glimpse at Celeste, who gave me a thumbs up, before once again addressing the fleet. “Now, with that out of the way… Sons of Chaos, launch.” Not wanting to be hit by sudden shifting or anything like that, I abruptly sat down as I gave the order. Who cares if it ruined the image of a professional captain, I’d rather have that happen this way than if I stumbled back by accident.

  Seeing that, Ce
leste had a slight grin on her face, but nonetheless hit the final command to launch the ship. The experience was… strange. Not only was the ship surrounded by an array of multicolored lights, but even the interior of the ship was. I could barely see Sharon and Yin next to me beyond the bright lights that blocked my vision. And then, in the next instant, those lights were gone just as quickly as they had arrived.

  “Report, Celeste!” I called out, reaching a hand up to my head, feeling a mild headache coming on. Not likely from any side effect of the transfer, but just from the blinding lights flashing in my eyes.

  “Uhm… Destination reached.” Celeste spoke up after a moment. “Distance to target, three and a half parsecs. Though, and this is just a suggestion, but it is ill-advised to use that when we are going to be closer to the target zone.”

  Looking around, I could see what she meant. I wasn’t the only one that had suffered from the sudden blast of the powerful lights. Almost everyone in the bridge was showing at least minor signs of pain in their eyes. “Duly noted. Proceed forward at sublight speeds until everyone recovers from the jump. Status on the fleet?”

  “Everyone arrived successfully.” A dog-eared man called out. “The Executioner was a few seconds behind, and appeared a couple dozen kilometers behind us. But, nobody is reporting any damage.” He said as he rubbed his eyes, looking at the screen.

  “Understood. Okay, let’s get moving, then.”

  Chapter 47: Impossible Plans

  The journey to the outpost we had located wasn’t long. After giving roughly a half hour for everyone to recover from the rather unusual phenomena I had a conversation with the Deus Ex, wondering why they did not mention that little side-effect. The answer I got back was… something I should have expected.

  “It was not within our predictions that organics would have difficulty after experiencing the warp.” The commander of one of the vessels joining us spoke in a calm tone. “Apologies, but we were not aware that such displays of light would hinder your people.”

  “It’s… okay.” I said with a sigh, shaking my head. It was still believable that they had yet to learn everything about us. No matter what, they have only been dealing with organic lifeforms for a few years, and most of that they have still been focusing on themselves.

  “Very well. Now, perhaps we should discuss a battle strategy for when we arrive?” The commander suggested.

  “I would like to do that. However, we aren’t quite sure what the full power of any of our vessels are. The best that I can offer is to attempt to use the new weapons to take out the assault ships, and then move on to the shield ships. Aside from that, we will need to assess the situation as it occurs.”

  The Deus Ex commander pondered that for a moment, before nodding his head. “Very well. Judging by your ship’s previous capabilities, we should be entering scanning range of our destination within minutes.”

  I gave a silent nod at that as the call abruptly ended. Our scanning systems were already top of the line, something that Celeste had pulled from future schematics, so they weren’t among the systems that had been upgraded while we were at Gerin. Of course, that also meant that they had not been improved, but they were still all that we would need.

  And sure enough, it was only a few minutes later when the dog-eared beastman spoke up. “We are within range of long distance scans now.” After that, he hit a few buttons, waiting for a moment before delivering the report. “I’m detecting numerous large energy signatures in the vicinity of the planet. It is impossible to give an exact estimate at this time, but judging by the previous readings, there should be between three and seven enemy ships.”

  “How long until you can get a detailed reading?” I asked, looking towards him.

  “Fifteen more minutes, sir. But, by that time they will likely be able to detect us as well.” I nodded when I heard his report, turning and pressing a button to transmit my voice to the fleet.

  We were still roughly a half hour away from our destination, so there was plenty of time for a warning. “We are approaching our target zone. In an estimated thirty minutes, we will begin the attack. It is advised for all non-combat personnel to seek a safe area.”

  Well… safe area was fairly relative at this point. I mused to myself. If the ship explodes, there really won’t be anywhere safe but the escape pods, and those would be shot down before there was any hope of actually getting away. The safest place would simply be somewhere away from the exterior of the ship, where they wouldn’t have to worry about getting injured if the ship shook in the battle.

  Leaning back in my chair, I took a deep breath to calm myself. This was going to be an important battle, but not the biggest that we would have to face. Judging from the preliminary scans, there was almost no way that this was their primary base of operations. Otherwise, there would be far more energy readings.

  Instead, this was important for a different reason. This would be the first battle that we had using our new ship systems. No matter how many simulations or theories we made, however many strategies, it all meant nothing in the face of an actual combat test. Though… just to be safe. “Celeste, how long does it take to charge the warp cores and input the necessary coordinates?”

  She looked at me curiously for a moment, before making a sound of understanding. “Ahh.. Well, to sum it up, no. You wouldn’t be able to use them for a hasty retreat if things turn bad. It takes at least thirty seconds to power the warp cores, after which they need to be used within one minute. Longer than that in the Deus Ex simulations, and the cores begin to degrade. As for the calculations needed, that depends on the distance, but they would generally take longer than the charging process, and would need to begin first so that there was time to enter the coordinates.”

  I nodded my head a bit reluctantly at that news. I had been hoping that we could simply designate a safe point and warp away if things got bad. However, if it would take almost a full minute just to charge the core, that meant it would be impossible to use in the middle of a battle. After all, just a few seconds can be enough for a bad situation to spiral out of control.

  With that out of the way, I simply waited patiently, tapping my foot impatiently while we approached the site. Think that’s a contradiction? Well, it’s the best you’re going to get! I was already started to feel annoyed by the long wait, but at least it wasn’t as long as it seemed.

  “Sir, we have a more detailed image of the situation now. Shall I display it on the screen?” The dog-eared beastman spoke up suddenly, and I nodded quickly in response. Moments later, a holographic image appeared at the front of the bridge.

  On the image, we could distinctly make out the form of a planet, though the details were a bit blurred. Likewise, around the planet, there were five vague white shapes. Judging by their characteristics, I assumed two to be shield ships, with the other three being assault ships. This configuration made the most sense, as well, since it allowed the two shield ships to accurately defend the assault ships in a fight. Finally, off behind the planet, I could vaguely make out a metallic ring hovering in space, likely the warp gate that the New Human Empire set up here.

  “Are there any unusual energy readings, such as from the moon or the planet? Anything that would suggest a hidden surprise?” Although this base was a bit better defended than the first one we hit, I wasn’t sure if that was because it was an important location or if they had simply had more time to reinforce their bases.

  If it was the former, than they might have set up a situation like the last place we hit, where they installed a station nearby to destroy the planet. Or, they might have simply placed a bomb within the core of the planet, or something like that. However, that all depended on how important this base was to them. If it was just a normal research center, than that would be best for us. Of course, the first research station we found had been hidden by a holographic field literally the size of a planet, so I wasn’t prepared to dismiss anything.

  “I’m not picking up any unusual energy sig
nals. Aside from the orbiting ships, there are simply negligible readings from the surface, likely to be whatever base they have set up at this location. Wait, hold on, there is something.” He said with a slightly surprised voice, hitting a few more keys before the image on the screen shifted.

  This time, the image excluded the planet, and focused on the ring of metal around the planet. I thought that he was about to point out the obvious warp gate, but then the image zoomed in further, to the top of the gate. Just above it, there was another metallic shape, far smaller than a ship. “I am picking up energy readings and intermittent transmissions from this structure. From its design, my best guess is that it is a communications relay.”

  That was… surprising. Typically, I would expect them to use the system communication for long distances. For there to be a structure relay, it could only mean one of two things. Either they had already perfected warp travel to the point of having transmissions capable of traveling such distances, or they had other bases within a short distance from this one.

  “Okay, guys. We have a new secondary objective.” I said with a small grin on my face. “After we take out the assault ships, I want someone to secure the communications relay. With any luck, it will have either a black box, or even just coordinates for the areas it transmits to. Either way, it will help us narrow down more bases.”

  After saying that, I got in touch with the Deus Ex. After the commander’s face appeared on the screen, I immediately asked. “Do your people have any way to interrupt the transmissions from that structure during the fight?” If they could jam the transmissions, they could prevent the relay from requesting aid or warning whatever other settlements were nearby.

  However, the Deus Ex simply shook his head. “I am afraid that is not within our capabilities. After analyzing the available samples of technology that the enemy employs, it is highly likely that they utilize advanced forms of magic in this relay. We still do not fully grasp the possibilities behind such applications, so it is impossible for us to create a means of fully disabling the relay unless we have a deep scan to show us the required information. However, even for your ship, such a scan could only be achieved when in close proximity to the device.”