by Lee Bond
“No matter.” Mayin had made up her mind. If she failed to survive, if she failed to cause comprehensive damage to the Erudite Bastard, if she even failed to see the hacked buoy uploaded to the Network, there was still the Emperor, waiting for her next report.
If she failed to give one, he would simply direct another operative to the area, whereupon he or she would immediately begin piecing to together the pieces of the puzzle. Hopefully there would be enough left behind to make the chore easy.
“Let us begin.” Mayin commanded the heavy lifter to remove itself from the area and started the tricky effort of climbing into her barricaded stasis chamber.
“By your command.”
***
Ergatz targeted the ‘rear’ portion of Whispering Pines smoothly and waited a long second for the ejected core to get clear of the ship before firing; even though it was only partially charged, his monitors showed that there was enough gravnetic energy boiling out of the small thing –really, it was no bigger than a large suitcase- to possibly deflect his cripple missiles. Or worse, send them flipping backwards towards Erudite Bastard. And that would be fucking embarrassing.
“In three … two … one. Payload away.” Ergatz watched the cluster of cripple missiles –a combination high-yield electromagnetic depth charge capable of short-circuiting nearly every kind of electrical systems known to Man and Offworldkind and a nasty neural stormkit that’d do the same to anything capable of thought- spiral outwards from the forward tubes, the velocity of their flight path disturbing the remnants of debris left behind by the escape pod.
“Gonna hit the core.” Rikka said from his locked down position; unlike Devlish and Ergatz, he was a wee tiny thing and didn’t like the thought of being bounced around the cabin if something awful happened. They called him pessimist. He called himself realist. There were too many things happening all the time these days and it was best to be prepared for anything. All the time.
“Not gonna hit the core.” Ergatz replied smugly as he lazily clipped himself in to the gunner’s harness. Didn’t really need to, not with the chameleon clothes he wore, but if he didn’t, Devlish might have some choice words to say about following battle protocols. The guy was doing that more and more these days.
“Not the first core.” Rikka blipped the image that’d filtered through his screens to the rest of the room. “The second one. She cut it loose as well. Weirdest thing.”
And then the missiles struck the engine core that was bending space ever so slightly.
Then everything started getting pretty fucking intense.
Devlish opened his mouth to scream then realized that if he even wasted the time to do that they might not have any time left to do anything else. Operating solely on animal instinct and a sincere desire to remain living, he reached out with both grimy hands and grabbed hold of the manual flight controls. Long unused, they were resistant at first, but as with everything aboard his ship, Devlish had paid them a preventative maintenance visit not more than three months ago, so after that initial spate of gluiness they broke loose and the Erudite Bastard ripped from it’s holding pattern and started diving.
Ergatz suddenly found himself hanging from his harness, absurdly pleased he’d bothered to follow those stupid protocols. Somewhere down in front of him, Rikka was shrieking high-pitched complaints in his native tongue and Devlish … Devlish was cursing up a storm, bulky frame seeming to steam from the effort.
“What in the fuck, Captain?” Ergatz shouted to be heard over Rikka and the ship itself, which was making it’s dislike of this sudden abuse very plainly heard through any number of emergency sirens popping off like rounds from one of those old handguns.
“Fucking internal reactive fucking gravnetically generated shield is what the fuck!” Devlish howled into the maelstrom approaching them, wrenching so hard on the controls to give their ship a spiralling yaw that might, just might, get them spinning on an axis that’d let the deathly fucking payload coming their way swing past to collide –uselessly- with the unbreakable Shield Wall. "I don't know how the fucking cunt managed to con those fucking AI minds into repurposing the goddamn output, but that there ship is covered in a fucking reversed-out gravny-shield!"
Ergatz, comfortable now that he knew what was going on and confident that their level VI gravny-shields would protect them from whatever was coming their way and curious about just what the Captain had meant, turned his monitors back on and replayed the last few seconds of footage automatically recorded by their BattleSystems. What he saw was … discouraging.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ergatz demanded, wishing he’d not only buckled himself in more firmly but that he was also wearing one of their personal shield harnesses because who the fuck did stuff like this?
“D-d-d-dual p-p-p-payload incoming!” Rikka shrieked, pulling into himself as much as he possibly could, terrified enough of what was on the way that he wound up pissing himself. “Brace for impact!”
***
Cripple Missiles operate on a cluster-consciousness basis. Everyone knows that; each of the six missiles possessed a tiny kernel of processing power equivalent to a sixth of a very stupid, very slow level 1 artificial intellect. The cluster lacked the processing power to do anything other than it’s job, which was to ensure that the entire payload made it to the designated target on time and in proper form. The closer it got to the target, the more efficient the delivery of it’s payload would become thanks to the overwhelmingly powerful and typically impossible to detect or defeat electronic intrusion measures that started burrowing through the outer layers of any vessel’s skein from about three hundred meters out.
So, not smart, but capable of doing it’s job, and doing it well. Much like Army, really. Success rate for properly deployed cripple missiles –which were illegal to use this side of The Cordon because the intrusion measures aboard each cluster had been designed by a certain Tech Expert infected with an alien AI virus- was usually in the high nineties: craft protected by level 10 AI minds or those with no AI minds whatsoever- typically managed to survive the blackout measures long enough to fire off either warning shots or warning messages, but everyone else in the middle went bye-bye pretty damn quickly.
The sextet of cripple missiles detected the presence of the dangerously unstable secondary black hole core and deviated from their projected path with as bare a minimum of course correction as possible; as they’d been deployed against a ‘friendly’ vessel that could not be permitted to remain intact, programming for this particular venture insisted that the majority of fuel be left to provide a small but important tertiary explosion.
Three went one way, three went the other, and when they passed the warbling gravitic disturbance, they met up on the other side, ran through the check-me lists to see if they were all operating along the same wavelength at lightning speed, reoriented on their target and ran smack dab into the center of the primary black hole engine.
The first explosion was anticlimactic. Unprepared for this unexpected addition to their flight path, the quasi-sentient missiles had absolutely no time to prime then deploy their individual payloads. Instead, they found themselves caught up in the gravity distortions set up by the heart and locked into place, their individual consciousness clusters rapidly crushed into nothingness by the powerful waves.
Thusly be-thrustered, the primary gravnetic core from Whispering Pines –which always maintained a slightly higher level remnant-charge in order to keep from destabilizing completely- was launched backwards towards engine room from which it’d just been let loose, spiralling madly.
It struck the mostly invisible, hastily reprogrammed reactive gravnetic shield at an impressive clip and completely released it’s payload in one tremendously furious eruption. The cripple missiles added their comparatively small explosions to the mix.
Shit happened. A lot of it. All at once.
None of it good.
Firstly, the ‘exterior’ areas of Whispering Pines no longer connected to any
thing else thanks to the micro-fine shearing effect caused by the repurposed gravnetic shield went batshit insane; all those thousands of tons of metal and dead Navy officers and everything else that made up a listening post wanted to explode outwards in your pretty standard spherical eruption of deadly shrapnel but couldn’t because of the second thing that happened, which was the Billiard Ball Effect.
The Billiard Ball Effect was a term that would eventually be coined by the men aboard Erudite Bastard, but they wouldn’t have time to come up with the concept until long after everything else that happened as a result of their boredom, their intent to scavenge things that should’ve been better left alone, and the arrival of a very intense Shriven by the name of Mayin Chisolm.
Under normal circumstances, the circular collection of gently floating debris still holding the shape of a space vessel would have indeed just gone poof and spread itself all over everywhere in a very easy to track and understand pattern.
But The Billiard Ball Effect worked … differently: the very second the gravnetic core struck that spherical bundle of rewired energy, it lurched outwards from it’s protective wreckage-cocoon exactly like a billiard ball, only at roughly the speed of light and twice as angry as anything being treated so poorly. Everything left behind was pulled along backwards towards the Erudite Bastard because the primary black hole engine core hadn’t managed to deplete the entirety of it’s payload before Mayin Chisolm’s impromptu –and eventually heavily studied- murder-escape-pod took off for the stars.
In fact, the engine core responded to it’s rough treatment exactly as a billiard ball would, though in this case, it lurched towards where the Erudite Bastard was while pulling roughly three hundred thousand tons of space debris along with it, so quite possibly more like a vengeful fist lugging along a three hundred thousand ton kinetic bomb acting like a billiard ball.
Guided by Grandmaster Devil Captain Devlish’s expert skills –not to mention incredibly quick reflexes and astonishing foresight- Erudite Bastard managed to skate free of nearly all the wreckage as it screamed at them out of the void.
Nearly all.
Gravity is a weird thing. Everyone knew that. Gravity didn’t make a lot of sense to people who’d been studying it for thousands of years. Most of the time, especially in Trinityspace, scientists were actively encouraged to waste their years of study looking at anything but gravity because for the most part, you usually wound up with three hundred year old scientists still living with their parents because they’d wasted their entire lives or an awkward crater where their labs used to be.
Gravity that’s been fucked with by Garth Nickels’ particular brand of fuckery and further canoodled with by bored and far too creative Tech Experts working for Specter was as weird as an Unreal Universe infested with extra-dimensional space locusts looking to eat everything before moving on to the next feast.
When the expelled primary core got close enough to Erudite Bastard to feel the massive ship’s level III gravnetic shielding push and bristle against it’s own waning gravnetic power, it … got grabbed.
At least that’s how Rikka would later describe it to Devlish Cormack several hours from a few minutes from now, when they were all trying to decide if what they’d done was worth the price of admission, and how they were going to get back to Tarterus without looking like complete assholes.
The engine core suddenly lurched towards Erudite Bastard at an extremely elevated rate of speed, tearing itself loose from the huge debris-cluster spiralling behind it, but not entirely; rather than carrying with it a three hundred thousand pound kinetic bomb waiting to turn the Bastard into a respectable pile of radioactive waste, it was more like a thirty thousand pound bomb coupled with a nasty gravity grenade.
The core struck Erudite Bastard mid-ship and literally shoved her sideways towards the unbreakable Shield Wall, ringing the huge vessel like a very large bell. The impact sent shattered shivers of gravnetic shield energy rippling across the entire exterior, ultimately gouging a fifty meter tear in the typically impervious shielding.
Then the thirty thousand tons of debris smacked into Erudite Bastard like an angry fist from God, carrying along with it the second gravny-core, which -having 'discovered' a second, heavier focal point- narrowly missed scouring one side of the Erudite Bastard, bouncing instead across the skin of the Shield Wall, ultimately disappearing.
The explosions that followed were neither life-threatening nor ship-destroying, as Erudite Bastard was –like all Heavy Elite ships- a battle-hardened Specter vessel outfitted with the very latest and greatest in illegal cross-Cordon hardware.
But they were enough to slow the ship down. They were enough to fuck the engines up enough that the entire black hole engine rigging had to be taken offline in order to prevent turning themselves into, well, a really nasty event horizon.
As it was, there were holes in Erudite Bastard's hull, and out through one of those holes, floated Mayin's Prize, forever out of Devlish Cormack’s thieving hands.
***
“Fuck my life.” Devlish pulled a long shard of glass from the side of his head and stared at the smears of grayish blood clotting the edge. He could already feel the wound healing, which was nice.
Well, the physical wound was healing nicely. The blow to his honor … that’d take some doing.
“That was … not cool.” Ergatz untangled himself from his rigging and lowered himself gently to the floor.
“That was no ordinary Naval officer.” Rikka pulled himself upright and checked his body for injuries. Being smaller meant he was less prone to life-threatening injuries, but it also meant that any wounds he did pick up would almost always be of that type. “No regular person would even attempt something like that. Not in a million years.”
Devlish tossed the shard of glass against a bulkhead. It broke into pieces and joined the rest of the shit that’d once been expensive navigational equipment. “She ain’t a fucking Specter, but that was some Specter-level bullshit right there. She alive?”
Rikka shrugged his diminutive shoulders. “No way to tell. She was probably hoping to come out alive, and probably took efforts inside the ship to make sure that could happen.”
“Well.” Devlish turned his head upwards, to where he imagined Mayin Chisolm’s on-the-fly escape pod was headed. “She fucking better hope she’s dead, because if she’s not, we’re going to go hunting.”
“Amen to that.” Ergatz massaged his shoulders. The thunderous impact of all that Pines wreckage had had him bouncing around like a toddler in one of those ceiling mounted jumper things.
“Once we find out what’s inside the sphere, right?” Rikka tried finding a monitor operational enough to get a look into the hangar bay, but they were all down at the moment. “I’ve got a trace on where it went flying after that cunt’s ship went nova. We get fixed, we get it, right?”
“Oh yeah. We ain’t gonna skip that part. We ain’t go through this bullshit for no reason.” Devlish poked at the hole in the side of his head. Gone. A memory of a wound. “First thing, though. Fucking call someone to fucking fix our shit. Someone who owes us a favor and who can keep their mouths shut.”
“Varigon. Varigon Ex.” Ergatz ignored the sour look on Devlish’s … devilish face. “Since Tarterus picked up speed and went full offroad, he’s been running scav ships to all corners of the Universe. Gotta love black hole engines, am I right? Well, he owes you for not killing and eating him, and I think he knows that. We’ll call him.”
“How that fucking guy is still Specter is beyond me.” Devlish waved a taloned hand in Ergatz’s general direction. “Fine. Whatever. If he wants payment, offer him three cripple missile clusters. That way he can get his reclamation points into the stratosphere. I’m gonna go have a think, no one fucking bother me.”
Rikka looked at Ergatz, who was already making the call. “Start with one. Those are a pain in the ass to program and I hate doing them. They get lippy.”
***
Ergatz pulled at h
is lip, then looked at Rikka, who looked … like he was going throw up. “You tell him.”
“No fucking way.” Rikka shook his head. “No. Fucking. Way. I’m too little. He’d just eat me whole. You tell him.”
“He’s really not going to like it.” Ergatz knew their boss better than most. The man was already in a dark fucking mood because of the damage their ship had sustained, and even fouler because they’d already had to let him know that Varigon was demanding substantially more than three sets of cripple missiles to haul their broken-ass ship back to Tarterus.
Telling him that the escape pod had just been snatched up by some other group of bored-as-fuck Specters hauling ass around the Shield would have him in the bitterest, darkest mood any of them had ever seen in their lives.
Rikka shook his head. “I’m not telling him, but someone had goddamn well better. I’ve got to fucking figure out how to give Varigon what he wants without Devlish getting upset again.”
Ergatz slumped in his chair.
Fucking hell. Devlish was going to lose his shit in a spectacular way.
***
“We find her.” Devlish said from the corner of the room. “We find her, we kill her. We bring her back to life and we do it all over again. Understand? No sector of space is gonna be left unexplored. We go rogue if we have to, we use TCB if we need. Innit’ll understand. And if he doesn’t, fuck him. We find this Chisolm cunt and we make her suffer. We lost the golden egg, we sure as shit ain't gonna lose the goose. Follow?”
Ergatz didn’t know what else to do, so he saluted.
Oh yes. Devlish Cormack was in the foulest of moods.
Black Altar
“How are you feeling?”
Jordan looked around the tiny room that was supposed to be a ‘living room’. It was less than an eighth the size of his old bathroom, and had this kind of lingering … stink that left him certain someone had either died in this room, or wished they had. The rest of the ‘apartment’ –an officially owned apartment in a ‘complex’ belonging directly to the Church- was little better.
