Frozen Soul, and other works: June 2018

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Chapter 116 - Variant Hunt

(BSN Shinokage, Nuevo Edo System)

“RED ALERT! RED ALERT! ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS! MULTIPLE X’THARI ANCHOR TRACES DETECTED! ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS!”

It was fifty-four hours exactly after the Hunt used as scouts had issued their final communication. Fifty-four hours was not a lot of time for rest and recuperation, and certainly not enough to replace the dead pilots we’d lost. The fighters had been replaced, and Giant Leader was fresh out of medical (thankfully, his injuries weren’t as serious as the blood implied, head wounds are like that sometimes), but we didn’t have much choice except to use the best of the Nuevo Edoans who had signed on with Black Star as pilots to fill in. At least they’d had SOME stick time before this launch. This would be their trial by fire, it seemed.

Running onto the ‘flag bridge’, I called out, “Report!”

Raven looked up at me, “Commodore, X’thari anchor drive signatures detected in four areas around the system. Estimated time to transit, ten minutes. Unknown number of ships, but estimates are at one hundred ships and climbing!”

It was going to be a True Hunt, then. But why four locations? That wasn’t in line with normal X’thari doctrine. Could we really have been so unlucky as to find ourselves the target of a Variant True Hunt? No time to think about this. I had to cut down the advantage, and fast. “Show me where the staging points are.”

The four staging points for the X’thari were at the Gateway, the location of their former Sentinel probe, and… yeah, the Lagrange points to put them at L1 and L2 for Nuevo Edo and her moon. Close enough that those two could support eachother but not get caught in crossfire. Sneaky bastards.

I hit the command console. “All Assassins, All cruisers, this is Commodore Mollen. Target the X’thari Anchor Points and fire so that your projectiles hit just after the projected emergence. Remember, their drives disintegrate any matter in the space they occupy when they appear, so it is better to be a couple seconds late than early to this party. Fire as your computers dictate. Black Star Group One will take the group at L2. Group Two will defend the Gateway. Group Three and all NEN forces will attack the group at L1 and defend the planet. All fighters, all bombers, scramble!”

Raven looked at me, and said, “That still leaves the group at the Probe site.”

I nodded. “You know what to do. Send the message. Area will be free of friendlies, weapons free.” Raven nodded to me, and turned back to her work.

I touched another command, and began broadcasting to the fleet, and the planet below. “Attention, attention. This is Commodore Mirikon Mollen of the Black Star Navy. X’thari Anchor signatures have been detected in the Nuevo Edo system. At least one hundred and seventy confirmed signatures incoming. All civilian ships are ordered to land immediately or clear the system. Gate travel is now suspended. All civilians to designated shelters.” I closed the channel.

The strength of the X’thari drives was also its great weakness. They could go insane distances (no one really knew how far) so long as one endpoint was within thirty light-seconds of a Gateway, but they were about as subtle on exit and entry as throwing a piano down the stairs. If you had any sensor abilities at all, you could easily pick up a X’thari ship entering your system with their Anchor drives. Worse, the energy their system threw off meant you could tell they were leaving for half an hour as the drive charged up, and you knew where and approximately where they were entering for almost fifteen minutes if you were scanning their target system. That was the reason X’thari scouts coasted into systems, despite the fact that they could literally drop directly in on someone’s orbit. The disturbance was identifiable up to several light hours out. The only currently used drive that was less subtle was the Terran ‘transition’ drive, which gave off a tachyon pulse that was like a signal flare telling people they’d arrived, which you could see for LIGHT YEARS! The best part? The technorganic systems the X’thari used seemed to have ‘issues’ with their jump technology, meaning they were incapable of jumping in with shields raised and weapons primed, and their relative velocity was zero coming out of the jump. That meant that if you could hit a X’thari the moment it came out of jump, you could kill it easily.

“Sir, Premier Fukuya is calling, General Akagi is with her.”

“On screen.” The main screen changed from a tactical plot of the system to showing the Premier and General in a bunker, probably the same one they contacted us when we made first contact. I nodded to them. “Premier, General, good to see you’re already under cover.”

Premier Fukuya nodded. “Commodore, what is the situation?”

“We have 230 confirmed drive signatures of X’thari Anchor Drives, penetrating in… 3 minutes. Almost a hundred of them are concentrated at the entrance point at the planet’s L1 Lagrange point with the moon. Friendlies have been moved out of the area, so any defense platforms should engage immediately when ships enter realspace.”

The General nodded. “Already set up. Do you think you can hold?”

I paused, and then said, “I don’t know, General. The majority of the combined fleet is now centered around the planet, and will be in position to defend against the first group. With the planetary defenses, they should make a good fight of it, if nothing else. We have ambush groups set to take on two of the other three attack groups as they exit, hopefully giving us an advantage in the short term.”

“And the third group?”

“I’ve made a call. We may be able to keep that one from reinforcing the other groups, but I’m not sure right now. Ambush groups are going to try and bait their targets into playing cat and mouse, preventing them from joining up with the planetary assault group. That is as best we can do at the moment.”

Fukuya nodded. “Should we initiate the evacuation plans?”

I considered, and then shook my head. “Negative. The numbers are wrong for standard X’thari attacks, which means we are dealing with a Variant Hunt, which makes them entirely unpredictable. Civilian craft will get in the way. And I need every ship and fighter capable of fighting defending against this group. Keep them in the shelters, and make sure the ground forces are prepared for possible invasion.”

“Commodore! They’re coming through!”

“I have to go. We’ll talk more when this is over. Mollen, out.” I cut off the transmission. It was rude, I know, but I didn’t have time to deal with the niceties. Going back to the tactical display, I looked over the data as it came in. Two hundred and thirty was a strange number for a X’thari group. “Raven, what is the breakdown of ships by class and jump point?” A list came up on my HUD.

Point Alpha (Gateway):

9 Aeh-class Hunter-Scouts

18 Photh-class Frigates

9 Mothak-class Light Cruisers

1 Purryg-class Dreadnought

Point Beta (Probe Site):

9 Aeh-class Hunter-Scouts

18 Photh-class Frigates

9 Mothak-class Light Cruisers

1 Purryg-class Dreadnought

Point Gamma (L2 Lagrange Point):

9 Aeh-class Hunter-Scouts

18 Photh-class Frigates

9 Mothak-class Light Cruisers

1 Purryg-class Dreadnought

Point Delta (L1 Lagrange Point):

18 Aeh-class Hunter-Scouts

36 Photh-class Frigates

18 Mothak-class Light Cruisers

1 Purryg-class Dreadnought

1 New ship class, probable designate Carrier

“FUCK! Raven, make sure all squadrons know about the probable carrier. Send to all flight commands, Black Stars to take the lead in engaging enemy fighters, where present. Planetary fighters and bombers are to focus on enemy ships. Send to all groups, as soon as you finish pacifying your area of responsibility, move to reinforce Point Delta.”

“Enemy has deployed system-wide tarpit.”

“Deploy our own.”

“Done.”

“Time to kinetic strike impacts?”

“Three… two… one… Impact!”

Fifteen seconds after the X’thari ships reentered realspace, kinetic strikes began going off across their formations. Lights began going out, signifying dying ships, but not enough. There were only twelve Assassins and two cruisers in the system, after all. The Alpha and Gamma points lost four frigates and a cruiser each, while Beta was completely untouched. Delta… flooding the entry point with kinetics from the Assassins and the planetary defenses had worked a minor miracle. All Hunter-Scouts and twelve Frigates destroyed, with four more badly damaged and leaking atmosphere. Proof positive that the shotgun approach was still bloody effective in space combat.

Moments after the kinetic strikes, the Dragon bombers announced their presence. The Demons of Second Group struck a brutal blow, twelve anti-ship kinetic missiles striking their dreadnought simultaneously, ripping it to shreds. The Inferno Squadron, however, spread the love, striking with the NEN’s Akunoshi Squadron. Eight cruisers fell to the new pilots’ missiles, while the Infernos scored several hits on the dreadnought and carrier, leaving both dead in space, at least temporarily.

Those would be our last easy kills, however. Their shields came online, weapons began warming up, and ships began moving. But 230 ships were now down to 181, and three of their most powerful vessels were either dead or temporarily disabled. The ‘overwhelming first strike’ approach worked wonders, but now we had to fight it out, and the X’thari were all kinds of pissed.

(BSN Breath of Hades, Point Alpha, Nuevo Edo System)

Captain Enlen whistled softly as she saw the X’thari Dreadnought go up. “All power to shields and engines! Recharge the primary weapons! Have the gunboats focus on the remaining frigates. Hammer Squadron, start in on those Scouts, don’t let them cloak and shoot us in the ass! Demons to focus fire on the cruisers! Take them out, and we can overpower the rest!”

The X’thari were moving now. “All gunboats, all Assassins, stay with your cohort, don’t let these hunters drive you into a trap. We have to hurry and kill this group so we can try and reinforce Gamma and Delta points!”

(BSN Thunderfury, Point Delta, Nuevo Edo System)

Captain Am’rica stood stoically on her bridge as she watched the enemy forces enter the system. By the gods, there were so many of them! Certainly, the initial strikes had been devastating to the X’thari, but they would not be able to pull off such a strike a second time. Even now, the enemy was beginning to react, and she could see the first fighters appearing on her screens. Those were a problem for the Thunderbirds.

“Priority message from Shinokage!”

“To me.” Captain Am’rica read the message on her tablet, and nodded slowly. Moving over to her command chair, she sat, and pressed a button. “Major Khan, are the Marines ready?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Marines are suited and ready for combat. Do we have a target?”

“The Master requests that the Black Star Marines be the first to capture a completely unknown class of X’thari warship, the carrier on your screens. We have zero intelligence on this ship, its schematics, or its capabilities. Full recording is permitted and encouraged. Priorities as follows: 1. Disable self-destruct system; 2. Prevent erasure of technorganic computer core; 3. Gather any and all intelligence possible on the X’thary vessel; 4. Capture the ship; 5. Do not die, except in direct pursuit of objectives 1-4. He wants intel, not a ‘Marines dying blooper reel’, as he put it.”

“Understood. Marines ready to deploy. Get us to the carrier, and we’ll make their lives hell.”

“We launch as soon as Fleet removes the Carrier’s shields.”

(NEN Santiago, Point Delta, Nuevo Edo System)

Captain Ana Gonzalez was proud to be the first captain of a warship in the brand new Nuevo Edo Navy. The Black Star officers had put her through grueling tactical simulations ever since she’d first joined the officer track in training, and now she was seeing why. Space combat was all about planning your moves three steps ahead, and the weapons you were fighting could sometimes have been launched ten minutes before they got to you.

As Captain of the temporary flagship of the NEN, she was the leader of the four Assassin-class vessels and twelve gunboats that they were able to field. The weapon platforms were a great force multiplier, but only until the X’thari vessels got too close to the ‘friendlies’ for the attacks to be safely delivered, not unless the battle got far closer to the planet than they wanted it to.

“Time until primary weapon recharge?”

“Five minutes, twenty-six seconds!”

“Get us within secondary weapon range. Prepare to fire according to the Black Star target data. Watch out for the big ships. Our shields are supposed to better than average for our type of ship, but that dreadnought can smash us like a grape if we aren’t careful. It looks disabled, but I don’t want to find out that it is only playing dead the hard way!”

“Fighters incoming!”

“Point defense, target the fighters! Helm, keep us moving, keep us evasive. I want us in our target zone by the time the Primary is recharged, so we can shove it down some X’thari’s throat!”

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Be sure to read my published works!

Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):
Frozen Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT
Tales of the Void Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ52G37

Rules-Free VRMMO Life (Dark Fantasy GameLit):
Volume 1 - Tutorial https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VPRNDB
Omnibus 1 - Volumes 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0774T354X

Into the Black (Sci-Fi GameLit):
Book I - Game Start https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071LT5WGL
Omnibus I - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077X2KR7Y

City of Champions Online (Superhero GameLit):
Issue I - Origin Stories https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075SHXQS1

Lewd Dungeon (Dungeon Core GameLit):
Book 1 - Welcome to the Apocalypse https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BB34DHF

The Kalipshae Affair (A First Contact Short Story): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0739V6R6T

Monday, June 25, 2018

Chapter 115 - Contact

(BSN Shinokage, Nuevo Edo System)

Standing on the Flag Bridge of the Shinokage, I was very happy to see the ships that just appeared through the Gateway from Confederate space. I was even happier when Raven piped through the communications we were receiving.

“BSN Breath of Hades calling Shinokage, Hades-Actual online.”

Well, since the captain of the Hades was on, I figured I might as well answer. “Hades-Actual, this is Black Star Prime on Shinokage. Glad to see you all. We were hoping you would be here in time to join the party. How are the folks back home?”

“Black Star Prime, we’re happy to get the chance to party. Since we kicked pirate ass, the whole sector’s been pretty quiet lately at home, and there are some gunners who were starting to get bored. We have all mobile elements of Second Group in play, though as per your instructions, Providence has switched Shinobi Squadron’s Raptors for Demon Squadron’s Dragons.”

“I know Shinobi Leader will be upset with me, but it will be good to have another squadron of Dragons here. Have your pilots gone over the data from the Amazon battle?”

“Yes, sir, there were a few strongly worded communiques from Shinobi Leader about not getting to go out and play, but that was mostly fighter pilots being fighter pilots. All Second Group officers and flight personnel have gone over the data from the engagements in Nuevo Edo and Amazon space, and we’ve been adjusting tactics accordingly.”

“Well done. What is the status of home defense?”

“Two squadrons of Thunderbolts and one of Raptors on station providing CAP and defense. We’ve shifted into military contracts for most of the yards, but reserved one slip for our use. The first gunboats of Fourth Group are providing coverage, but because we’ve played stealth games for so long, no one will really believe that there are only six of the gunboats there right now.”

“Between the Confed Navy and us having wiped out a majority of the pirates in the sector, that’ll have to be enough. Be aware, we have confirmation from sources in the Empire that the Empress will be making a state visit to Nuevo Edo, so we may get some backup if this turns into a worst-case scenario.”

“Do you really think we’ll see a True Hunt, sir?”

I nodded, proud that the Hades’s captain had kept the fear out of her voice, mostly. “Raven says there’s a one in five chance of it, so we’re going to prepare like that is absolutely what will be happening. Though to be honest I’m more worried about a Variant Hunt showing up.”

“Variant hunt, sir? I didn’t think the X’thari did variants?”

“Normally, no. But you know how every species has a few oddballs that just don’t fit the norm? Well, from what we can tell, in X’thari culture, those that survive and prove their skills as oddballs either become lone Hunter-Scouts, or they form Variant Hunts. Like the ones Confederate Naval Intelligence codenamed ‘Thrush Squadron’. Eight light cruisers, completely ignoring the normal organization of a Hunt or their base-nine numbering, but they scored several key wins against larger ships in the war. They sank several times their tonnage during the war, despite the fact that the old Mothak-class had the same issue our Shinokage-class and Assassin-class ships have with needing to face the enemy head-on to use our most powerful weapons.”

“So a Variant Hunt is whenever the X’thari start doing things outside their normal playbook? Understood, sir. We’ll keep an eye out for crazy.”

“Glad to hear it. Raven is sending you navigation data as we speak. Second Group is to go full stealth, and move to cover Strike Point Beta. First Group will cover Alpha, while Third Group will cover the planet. Do you want your carriers with you, or do you want to deploy them with Third Group?”

“Are we expecting Tarpits?”

“We will certainly be deploying them, but we don’t have any intel on whether the X’thari will be using them. It will likely depend on the level of threat they bring. These are predators. They know the danger of driving prey into a corner. Analysis suggests that the X’thari using tarpits breaks down to 5.2% for a Hunt, 36.8% for a Full Hunt, and 89.2% for a True Hunt. The larger the hunt, the less they worry about the prey being driven into a corner, and the more they worry about keeping any of the prey from escaping the trap.”

“Then, with respect, I would like to keep the carriers with me. It will mean trouble protecting them, but the fighters won’t be any good to us if they have to travel at sublight across the system.”

“Very well. There will be an all captain’s meeting at 09:30 tomorrow morning to finalize our plans for defending against the attack when it comes. Welcome to Nuevo Edo, Captain.”

“Thank you, Sir. Glad to be here. Hades, out.”

With that done, I let out a sigh of relief. Now that we had the reinforcements from Dimiya, with just Black Star’s forces we had two Cruisers, nine corvettes (eight of them Assassins), thirty-two gunboats, and eight squadrons of fighters (two of them bombers). The fledgling Nuedo Evo Navy had three assassins and ten gunboats to add to that.

Now, if the Hunt would just get here already so they could be done with this waiting.

(One week later)

Alarms woke me from my sleep. Shearah looked up bleary-eyed from beside me, and reached out to check her bracer on the nightstand by the bed even as we started getting up. “Master, it would seem that the outer pickets have detected energy spikes from X’thari drives. They look to be a day out of the system on sublight.”

“Hmm. That’s not like them. They usually either come in completely silently, or they drop in right in the middle of a system. Any further readings?”

“Uh, wait one. Okay, it seems that the initial detection was by one of those probes we fired off along the scout’s probable line. Raven is refining the data… looks like we have two days, actually, due to relativistic effects. The probe was still in motion.”

“So they came out far enough to avoid detection, but not so far that they’d dull themselves waiting to enter the system. All right, so far that’s standard X’thari. What are their numbers?”

“The probe indicates eighteen ships… no, now there are nine. Probably scouts going to full stealth… probe is still transmitting in stealth mode. One of the ships got close enough to do a passive scan. Unclear, but it is tentatively identified as a X’thari frigate.”

I blew out a breath I hadn’t noticed I’d been holding. “Sounds like a normal Hunt. I really can’t believe we are that lucky.” Now dressed in my normal outfit for ship duty, I checked the terminal in my quarters, bringing up sensor data and a channel to Raven. “All right. Raven, I don’t want to let these assholes play around unsupervised. Scramble fighters. Dragons are to target enemy ships while Thunderbolts cover them and help them take out the trash. Ghost Squadron is to stay quiet and find those stealth ships. Tell all ships that we believe this is a feint to draw us out of position and slip stealth ships in close so they can cripple our support structures.”

“Fighters launching, Commodore. No tarpits active yet.”

“Keep me apprised of the situation. I’m going to loop in our allies so they know what’s going on.”

“Understood.”

(Outside Nuevo Edo System)

One moment, the Hunt was alone in space, silently stalking towards the world that had proven it was a worthy challenge. Unlike the worlds of the arm where these creatures had come from, this world had apparently gained a spine, and relied on hunting tactics rather than a simple wall of missiles and beam weapons, as the defenders used there. It was effective, but it offended the Hunters’ pride to trade blows with those who simply blotted out the local primary with missiles to ensure the destruction of their foes. There was no skill in that, no pride. It was simple destruction. That was why the Hunters had not returned to that region in some span of years.

Suddenly, nine nines and a triad of little craft appeared from warpspace practically on top of the Hunters. Almost one third of the little ships suddenly unleashed weapons at the Hunter frigates from the very edge of lance range. The little missiles moved with a speed that the Hunters had not seen from the Prey species before, and they were too slow in targeting their lances to intercept the missiles. Soon, the nine frigates of the Hunt were gone.

One of the Hunter-Scouts now became the Hunt Leader, and ordered two triads to engage the little ships while in stealth, to cut down their numbers, while his triad penetrated the system so that, when the real attack came, they would have the information they needed to properly cull this group. They were a worthy challenge indeed, to pull off an ambush in interstellar space.

The Hunt Leader bowed his head in respect to the fallen as his scans showed the six Hunter-Scouts become swarmed with the little ships. The scouts, designed to attack from stealth and disable foes before boarding, were ill suited to defending against many times their number in fighters, but the Hunt Leader was proud to see that several of the little ships were destroyed before the end.

And then from nowhere, alarms cried out as weapons impacted against his triad’s engines, crippling their maneuverability and ruining their stealth capabilities! How had they been detected while running silently? And then the Hunt Leader saw the truth on his scanners, four triads’ worth of missiles launching at his already crippled triad. The enemy had knowledge of Hunters, and their tactics. In the moments before his ship was destroyed, the Hunt Leader sent an emergency message to the fleet. They would need either a True Hunt or a Variant to properly hunt this species.

A worthy challenge indeed.

(Ghost 1, Ghost Squadron, Outside Nuevo Edo System)

Parca nodded silently as the last of the three scout ships died. The ships were impressive, but they were like the Assassins in that they were lightly armored to make up for their speed and stealth abilities. Even though the Raptors weren’t designed to target enemy ships for more than disabling strikes, against a scout vessel they were still deadly. Four Raptors to each Scout made the outcome a certainty, especially after the first missiles hit, crippling the ships and throwing them into confusion.

“This is Ghost Leader to all fighters. All bandits accounted for. Call out damage reports and status.”

“Phantom Leader here. No casualties. All fighters down two missiles.”

“Eagle Leader here. One fighter lost to gravitic lance. Good ejection.”

“Sentinel Leader reporting in. All fighters accounted for, two with heavy damage from enemy secondary weapons, but still flying.”

“Giant Two reporting in. Giant Leader is down from gravitic lance. Two other Giants also down. We have ejections from two, but Giant Leader failed to eject. Back half of his fighter is just gone.”

“Do you have eyes on the cockpit, Giant Two?”

“Wait one, Ghost Leader. Coming around now. All right, I can see the cockpit now. I can see blood on the cockpit glass, but Giant Leader looks like he’s moving. Request emergency S&R, sir!”

“Already on the way, Giant Two. First shuttle will go to Giant Leader. Just need to know how many we’re picking up. Continue reports. Inferno Leader?”

“Inferno Leader here. All bombers accounted for.”

“Hammer Leader reporting in. Four fighters down, two good ejections. We’ve lost Guru and Aspect. They got hit when the stealth ships turned back to open fire.”

“Demon Leader here. All bombers accounted for. Thanks to Grey Phantoms for getting us the target data so quickly, we were able to kill off the Scouts before they got more than a couple shots off.”

“Good work, everyone. I see that shuttles from the fleet are already exiting hyperspace at your position. As soon as all survivors are loaded, we’ll head back to base.”

“Black Star Prime to all fighters, all bombers. Excellent work. Analysis of the last ships taken out indicates they sent a transmission before being destroyed, so don’t expect it to be this easy next time. Your deck bosses have been informed that all fighters are due for twelve hours of down time, and there is a keg in each of your ready rooms when you’re back at base. I’m ordering all of you to return those kegs, properly emptied, before you step on a flight deck again, is this understood?”

Parca laughed, despite the losses. “Ghost Leader here. Speaking for everyone out here, orders received and understood, Commodore.”

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Chapter 114 - Preparation

(BSN Shinokage, Nuevo Edo System)

The most frustrating part of knowing that you might have a Hunt of X’thari coming for you is that you didn’t know when or where they’d be coming from. As near as we could tell, the scout that had been destroyed had probably used their Anchor Drive to arrive well outside the system, and then took a stealth approach in. That wasn’t too hard to figure out, honestly, since it is about the same thing my ships had done several times during the war.

Figuring that out did nothing to improve our odds of detecting a Scout ship in stealth mode before they did something like attack a freighter. The only reason we knew the freighter was being attacked, and were able to get there in time to stop the X’thari before everyone was killed was because a Nomad was able to circumvent the damaged communications array. The attack had been swift, brutal, and ruthlessly efficient. I did not like our odds of catching a stealth ship in the act again.

Oh sure, there were active sensors that could be used to detect stealthed ships, but those were a double-edged sword. They either had limited range, or they got a return on everything in the system, and I do mean EVERYTHING. Worse, they worked on friend and foe alike, lighting up your own stealth ships. And the icing on the cake? If your enemy had the right sensors, they’d get the return, too, so you were basically screaming where you and all your ships were. That was, as some would say, a Bad Thing™.

Fortunately, a Hunt or larger group of X’thari acted differently from their scouts. Sure, they could be stealthy when they wanted to, but they were more like a pack of brawlers. Experienced warriors, and working extremely well together, with nasty pack tactics, but brawlers all the same. The Hunter-Scout’s role was to be an unseen shadow, finding prey and reporting back. The Hunt’s role was to trap their prey and drive them to ground for the kill. That was why the Hunt usually appeared by the Gateway, allowing them to cut off ships from escaping the system that way.

That gave us an edge, since we knew where to expect them, and could prepare defenses. However, that didn’t make this a slam dunk. We didn’t know what size Hunt we’d be facing, and there was a 1 in 4 chance that they’d come in from some other area, especially if they believed a Prey group was waiting for them to show up. So we couldn’t neglect defenses for the rest of the system.

More importantly, though, was time. We didn’t know if the Hunt would be here in days, weeks, or even months. No one knew how far away their nearest group was, or how quickly they’d pull together a Hunt to attack us. We just knew that an attack was coming. There was no way to keep our forces on high alert for weeks on end. That would push crews to the breaking point before the battle even started.

Fortunately, if there was one thing the Navy was good for, it was teaching a sailor the value of ‘hurry up and wait’, and how to deal with it. Oh, I’m sure the other branches had it just as bad, in different ways, but there was usually something else out there to distract them. Air Force had their comfy bases. Army and Marines would at least have animals and the like when they were out deployed away from a base, and enemy action as a more regular thing (so much easier for terrorists to get to you in a land convoy than on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean). Navy? You had whatever diversions you could find on the ship, or there was a whole lot of blue water between you and civilization.

We quickly worked to have additional defense platforms put in place around the gate, and also shoved a couple on the most likely lines towards the system, including the way the scout ship had come in. I personally made sure there was a platform at the site of the old surveillance satellite, just to make sure anyone coming to check on it would get a face full of missile.

Other than that, we just had to keep rotating crews around so no one got too comfortable or too stressed. Plenty of shore leave helped with that, as there was no shortage of eager people on the planet below hoping to help people ‘destress’. The only other thing we really did was make sure to step up production of ships.

The ship production is something we went back and forth on a bit. The Nuevo Edoans wanted big ships like the Smerti or a superdreadnought like the Nightforge was before refit. I convinced them that, in the short term, they were better off with the gunboats, assassins, and the various fighters that we were building for them. They were cheaper, took fewer crewmembers to train up, and they were more useful for a single-world defense. There was a reason why I used them as the backbone of my fleet.

Of course, that wasn’t the only problems we had to deal with. No, it would be far too simple if the world just gave me one damn problem at a time. The integration of the new settlers to Nuevo Edo was… troubled, at best. The men were not used to living in a female-dominated society, and the women were unfamiliar with men who didn’t treat them as automatic superiors. That caused more than a few problems as men started buying homes, starting businesses, and in general trying to make a life for themselves on this new world.

What did that have to do with me? Since I was a guy (most of the time, the Nuevo Edoans didn’t know about my shapeshifting, so I was able to go incognito a few times), and the owner of the largest new business on the planet, the newcomers looked to me for help in dealing with the locals, especially since it was my people who blasted the ‘Demons’ from the sky, which gave me some credit with the local population. But every week or so saw the arrival of another couple freighters with colonists and trade goods for the planet, and when freighters left, they often had women from Nuevo Edo who were going off to see the stars.

Now, if only the damn X’thari would get here so we could get past the waiting part.

(INS Triumphant, Alpha Centauri System)

Empress Merida was less than pleased with the amount of time it took to prepare to go and see what that intriguing Nomad had done in this ‘Nuevo Edo’ system, but for some reason there were a lot of people who were none too eager for the Empress of the Terran Empire to be going off to another arm of the galaxy. Even though the Alpha Centauri gate meant that it would only take her a few days to return if something happened back home, there were worries. Well, the worries were more about what would happen to her in the middle of nowhere, so the Empress agreed to take a superdreadnought and its escorts.

Naturally, the ship she chose was her beloved Triumphant. As she walked the halls of the ship she still had to fight to keep from thinking of as hers, she considered what had been said about the Nuevo Edoans. They’d apparently been dropped off in the middle of nowhere after getting caught in the wake of some ship that was far superior to anything they had, even now. Could they have accidentally run into the civilization that created the Gateways? And what would that mean for the rest of the universe?

Lucio appeared at her side as they headed for the docking bay. She had to put in an appearance at Fleet Base Bagthara on her way through the system, even if she didn’t care for the ridiculous pomp and ceremony that always accompanied such things. It was a necessary part of being Empress, however. One had to keep the morale of the people in mind, or discontent would spread, and then all kinds of trouble started popping up, trouble that they couldn’t afford with the Fleet still reeling from the war.

The logistics network that had existed before the civil war had been shattered. Building the new transfer stations to handle transshipping and making everything more efficient than individual ships running a circuit of stops was not challenging, but it was inconvenient. Few of the transfer stations were in places with true shipyards, so there was some expense and trouble getting the new stations out to their homes and setting them up. Once they had gone live, however, the economy picked up by 48% from immediate postwar levels, though it was still not to the point where things had been before the war. Still, with the civilians happy because the Empire’s trade was flowing again, she needed to think of the Navy’s morale. And while everyone hated state visits, she knew that the enlisted DID appreciate when they got to show off.

Lucio whispered softly to her side, so that his words could be for her ears alone. Oh, the guards who were with her no doubt heard, since they had enhanced hearing with their helmets, but they could be trusted for discretion. “Empress, it would seem that your second favorite Nomad has landed in a bit of trouble over in Nuevo Edo.”

Merida raised an eye brow at Lucio, and smiled. “Second favorite, Lucio? And prey tell me, who is my favorite?”

Lucio played at being hurt, but everyone could see it was an act. “Oh, my Empress, how you wound me! How could it be that your favorite Nomad is any other than me, Lucio?”

Merida permitted herself to giggle at her friend’s antics. She needed people like Lucio around her, people who weren’t wrapped up in the pageantry of her being the Empress of the Terran Empire. The Nomads, she thought, had a way of keeping her grounded, at least the few she’d met personally. She knew that there were many officials who did not care for the self-important attitudes many showed, nor the lack of respect that most showed people who had ‘earned’ it.

Smiling, she shook her head to clear those thoughts away. “So, what is it that our Nomad friend has done now?”

Lucio nodded, returning to ‘business’, now that the Empress was no longer in the mood he’d sensed earlier. “Well, it appears that the defense forces he’s placed in Nuevo Edo have uncovered a X’thari Hunter-Scout and one of their Sentinel probes. Both were destroyed, though it seems the Hunter-Scout was actually destroyed while it was attempting to capture a freighter in the Nuevo Edo system.”

Empress Merida frowned, as she called upon her training and knowledge from being a superdreadnought captain. “If a Sentinel was there, then we must assume that they already have some idea of the forces already in the system. So a Hunter-Scout was dispatched to see what was going on, and if the system had worthy prey… and then they destroyed the Hunter-Scout. They are expecting at least a Hunt to show up, aren’t they?”

Lucio nodded, and said, “According to our friend, the chances of a Hunt showing are almost 100%. There is a significant chance of a Full Hunt showing up, instead. Given what our spies have told us of the strength he took to Nuevo Edo, he should be able to handle a Full Hunt. There was even something like a 20% chance that they may see a True Hunt.”

Merida nodded her head thoughtfully. “With the number of ships he has, he could still savage a True Hunt, if he managed to get the drop on them, but there is no way that they’d be able to survive it unless they were able to inflict enough casualties fast enough that they could make the Hunt fracture into groups.”

Making her decision, she said, in her ‘Empress’ voice, “Then let Us get this visit over with quickly, so We can pay off some of Our debts to that man in battle with the X’thari.”

Monday, June 18, 2018

Chapter 113 - Concern

(BNS Nightforge, Nuevo Edo orbit)

Several hours after the distress call went out over the game chat, I walked into the conference room on the Nightforge, and sat at the table, Raven moving to sit at my side while I looked at the others who were there, either in person or via the screens lining the walls. “All right, everyone, we’ve got a few things to discuss, but there are new faces at this meeting, so we’ll go around the table, so to speak, to get everyone on the same page. The information we’ll be talking about is important, but it isn’t time-sensitive enough that we can’t make introductions.” I took a breath, and said, “As you all know, I am Mirikon Mollen, owner of the Black Star Company, and the one in command of our forcers here. No matter what anyone else says, at the end of the day any discussion involving Black Star eventually becomes my responsibility.”

“Next to me is Raven. She is a type of artificial intelligence called an e-ghost, meaning that she was ‘born’ when a human’s consciousness was uploaded to a computer. She’s been around for decades, and is without a doubt the smartest person here. She’s also my right hand, and second in command of Black Star.”

I pointed at a human mana and the elf male next to him. “Captain Henri Genest is in charge of the Nightforge during combat operations, and Elduin Fatoris is in charge of shipyard operations.” Moving down the table, I pointed out a trio of human females. “I’m sure you’re all familiar with Prime Minister Fukuya Talia, and General Akagi Hikari. Next to them is Admiral Gabriela Saez of the Nuevo Edo Navy.”

I paused, and then said, “I’m only going to t say this once, so listen up. Admiral Saez and her Navy are going to be seconded to Black Star while we work the situation at hand, because while we’ve given them the best we can in terms of training regimens, their navy is still too new and too inexperienced to take the lead on this. That does not mean you get to order them about like servants, or that you can use them as cannon fodder. They are here to learn from us, and you will treat them with respect.” He turned to look at the Admiral, and said, “And I’ll have your people remember that while we are a mercenary group, they are blooded veterans of actual combat, while your crews are barely out of training, and are to be treated with the respect they are due.”

“With that said, I see on the screens that we have all ship captains and squadron leaders with us, as well as Major Khan. General, after this meeting I believe you and the major should get together and work out a training regimen for Nuevo Edo’s Marine Corps.”

“Now, on to business. By now you have all been informed that a distress call went out over the Nomad communication network at 23:52, Nuevo Edo Standard Time. The Independent Trader Precious Harlot, from the Gauz Consortium, came under attack suddenly from forces unknown. The initial attack disabled the communications array and engines, leaving the Precious Harlot stranded and unable to communicate via normal means.”

“Slave-Pilot Samantha Michaels immediately locked down the bridge, and began scanning for the source of the attack. The attacker was only discovered through the use of visual scanners, as the ship blocked the view of several stars. By that time, the attacking ship had closed in to perform boarding maneuvers. Video of the firefight that occurred between the Harlot’s crew and the attackers has been sent to you all.”

“As you can see in the video recovered from the Precious Harlot, the attackers are X’thari raiders. Evidence recovered from the attack indicates that this was an Aeh-class Hunter-Scout vessel. Raven, what do the files tell us about the Aeh-class?”

Raven stood as I took a seat, and said, “The Aeh-class Hunter-Scout Vessel is the primary reconnaissance unit of the X’thari hunter clans. While the Aeh-class cannot stand up to even an Assassin in a head-to-head fight, they are known more for speed and stealth than their ability to win naval engagements. The two primary uses of the Aeh-class, according to what most governments have been able to ascertain is to scout out potential targets for the stronger Hunter Packs or the Great Hunt, and to insert the X’thari version of special forces or recon marines behind ‘prey’ lines to disrupt prey forces.”

General Akagi raised her hand. When Raven acknowledged her, the general said, “What is the profile for these X’thari? They sound like a nomadic hunter group at first, but the way you are talking about them is more like a standard military.”

Raven smiled, and said, “Let me preface this by saying that this is all hearsay. No X’thari has ever been captured alive or held in captivity to allow for a full interrogation. They have an annoying tendency to suicide rather than allow themselves to be captured, and they enjoy using what is the equivalent of a small tactical nuke for their suicide bombs. Before you ask, no we have not managed to reverse-engineer those, as tampering with them tends to set them off. The majority of our information comes from either observation or autopsies on dead X’thari, or by reconstructing information from their techno-organic computers on wrecked ships.”

“It is believed that the X’thari are a descendant species from either the species that built the Gateways, or a species that has been around similarly long. There must have been some sort of devolution in their species to get to the point where they are now, but we have no information on what could have happened. However, we can confirm that the X’thari are, for the most part, a semi-nomadic warrior culture, roughly organized in the manner of tribal warlords. Different leaders have different strengths, tactically, but typically the more ships following a warlord, the better they are at fleet tactics.”

“Small ship captains can be anywhere from fresh commanders to veterans who do not have the fleet skills to advance, but they are all generally proficient with fighting their ships. The exception to this would be the Hunter-Scouts. The Hunter-Scouts act either individually, or in packs, similar to the ‘wolfpack’ tactics most stealth-capable navies use. The primary difference between a X’thari Hunter-Scout and a Black Star Assassin is that the Assassin has a devastating attack which can allow them to do massive damage against even armored foes without closing to ‘knife range’ or giving away their position. X’thari Hunter-Scouts have powerful gravitic lances, but those are only useful within a few thousand kilometers. It is the difference between an assassin who uses a sniper rifle, versus one who uses a dagger. To the X’thari it appears to be a point of pride to close as near to a target as they can and cripple or destroy their target in the initial salvo. All their weapons currently focus on gravitic lances or beam weapons capable of reaching almost 18 million kilometers.”

“As an additional note, their numbers appear to be in a base 9, instead of a base 10 like ours. This is important because most engagements with the X’thari take place at distance and time intervals of 3, 6, or 9, and their ships, if not alone, will usually travel in those types of numbers. If, say, you are in a system and detect seven X’thari ships, then you should be very, very worried, as there are probably two you haven’t noticed, likely sneaking up on you.”

I stood up again, and said, “As you can see in the video, the X’thari cut a hole in the hull of the Harlot, and a standard Hunter-Scout five-member boarding party attacked the ship. The lack of gravity in the ship allowed the defenders to hold out longer than they should have, and they inflicted two casualties on the X’thari before the aliens adjusted. After that, the crew was quickly slaughtered. Thanks to the quick call from Slave-Pilot Michaels, we were able to scramble fighters, and their attack occurred shortly after the X’thari began attempts to make their way through the blast door sealing off the bridge from the rest of the ship.”

“The Hunter-Scout was not prepared for space combat, having thought that it eliminated all communications on the ship, and was easily disabled when the BSN Jubilee, along with the gunboats BSN Zenith and BSN Zachariah, arrived moments later to attack it with ion cannons. The Hunter-Scout self-destructed shortly afterward, further damaging the Precious Harlot. With no free sentients aboard the Harlot, the Black Star Navy assumed control of the freighter and its property and cargo under interstellar salvage laws.”

I continued on, not allowing them time to unpack that statement. “With the immediate threat eliminated, I ordered a tachyon sweep of the system, to ensure we were dealing with a lone scout, and not a Triad. The results of the scan, which are on your screens now, showed a X’thari Sentinel-class probe, which has been destroyed. It is likely that the recent activity here and in the Amazon system attracted the notice of those who monitored the Sentinels, and a ship was sent to investigate. The spies we left in the Amazon system have confirmed that a X’thari Anchor Drive was used there approximately two weeks ago.”

Admiral Saez raised her hand, and I nodded to her. “Commodore, what is the likely response the X’thari will have to the loss of one of these Sentinel probes?”

“Given past responses? If it was just the probe, then they would simply slip a Scout into the system to determine whether the probe was destroyed naturally, or whether there was enemy action that required a Hunt. Given that a Scout was already in the system and had self-destructed prior to the Sentinel being eliminated, we must assume that the Sentinel passed along all information it could about our non-stealthed vessels, and enough to suggest we had stealth capabilities as well.”

I paused, and said, “I will not lie, the chances that we are going to have at least a Hunt sent out after us approach 100%. There’s at least a 70% chance it will be a Full Hunt. The typical Hunt is a squadron of nine frigates, with three triads of Scouts to hunt and harry the prey, much like you would use hunting dogs on old earth to chase foxes. A Full Hunt, however, will have three Triads of cruisers, each with nine frigates, with three triads of Scouts to support the Full Hunt. If we are really unlucky, we may even find a True Hunt, where three Full Hunts will cooperate to take us down with a triad of dreadnoughts commanding. The chances of this becoming a True Hunt are only about 20%, however, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that.”

Premier Fukuya’s face was ashen. “Can Nuevo Edo and Black Star’s combined forces protect the planet?”

“Against a Hunt? Certainly. Against a Full Hunt? It could get pretty bloody, and we would certainly take casualties, but yes, we could do it. If a True Hunt shows up? Trickery and guile go a long way, but these X’thari are predators. Hunting a pack of wolves that is hunting you is no simple task. We would do everything we can, of course, but with our current forces, that would be a tall order.”

Admiral Saez nodded slowly, “And what comes after a True Hunt?”

I looked at her, and said, “Admiral, if a Grand Hunt shows up, the best we can do, any of us, with our current forces would be to flee immediately with any civilian ships that can be launched, and run like hell, abandoning anyone left on the surface to their fate. That way, at least someone would be left alive.”

The Admiral slumped back in her chair, “I see.” Yeah, she was probably regretting asking that question.

I paused, and said, “In unrelated news, I have received confirmation through Nomad channels that the Empress of the Terran Empire wishes to see what the ‘long lost children of Terra’ have built here, and is leading a trade legation personally. By pure ‘coincidence’, the Confederacy will have some high-level diplomats on a legation of their own here at about the same time. Both governments may seek to get Embassy space on Nuevo Edo.”

Fukuya frowned. “And why would the Terran Empress come here, now?”

I smiled, and said, “I may have recommended that Nuevo Edo be confirmed by the major powers as a Free Port. You remember Switzerland on Earth, back before the world became unified? Having ‘neutral ground’, with neutral banks and neutral traders who happen to also be defended by capable ships and crews would allow for diplomacy to happen while not being on either group’s ‘home turf’. Empress Merida is keen on lessening tensions with the Empire’s neighbors so she can make needed reforms and rebuild the Empire’s Navy and logistics, which were brutalized in the Civil War.”

“And since we’re so far away from everyone, and haven’t had contact with anyone in so long, our neutrality will be easier to establish and maintain, provided we do so from the beginning.”

“Exactly.”

Friday, June 15, 2018

Chapter 158 - The Steel Dwarf

It was the fourth anniversary of AAO launching to the public. Four years I’d been running around through this world, causing havock and having all kinds of fun. OK, so I’d stayed close to ‘home’ for a while after the Human-Elf War, because my pets were popping out kids all over the place. But after some of the kids were born, I’d had to go out into the world some on diplomatic missions. OK, it was mainly going to the Underdark and trying to hammer out some peace treaties with the Drow. Since I was one of the few people serving the Wyrmwood that could walk into drow lands and not get shot on sight, that made me an excellent choice to help out with such things.

Unfortunately, being a diplomat meant I didn’t get to have much in the way of epic fights like my first year or so in the game had been full of. However, that was somewhat mitigated by the fact that I was learning a LOT about this world, and knowledge was just as powerful as magic (anyone who said otherwise was lying).

For instance, one of the things I learned was that the reason I hadn’t been able to complete my quest from way WAY back to return a hammer to Clan Goldshaper was that Clan Goldshaper was based in the dwarven kingdom of Throal, which was actually across the sea from the continent I was on. Well, it might have been like going from Europe to Africa, but I wasn’t exactly sure on the distances. The only time Goldshapers came to these lands was as trade envoys, and that didn’t happen often.

The reason I learned that little tidbit is because a typical greedy dwarf showed up at Lithaes, trying to convince me to give him the hammer and he would, of course, pass it on to the Goldshapers. Not being an idiot, I had that dwarf fed to the wolves. Still, it had seemed that the feelers I had put out were at least getting some attention, so I wasn’t too upset about the idiot dwarf.

The idiot dwarf’s clan, however, was slightly peeved with me, it seemed, since the idiot was their clan leader’s son and presumed heir, or whatever. When I told them that they should be thanking me for removing such an idiot from their genetic line, they were not exactly receptive. When they demanded the hammer as recompense, I enslaved them and sold them off at the slave market in Mylenoris. They promised retribution or something like that, but I didn’t get the details since I ordered them to remain silent until told to speak.

But I guess that is what led to the situation I was now faced with. It had started off as a nice, normal day of guild management and enjoying the bodies of my lovely harem girls. And then a metal clanging that I swear was loud enough to be heard all the way to Bruca started coming closer. With a sigh, I had gathered my arms and armor, and gone to the courtyard to see just what this commotion was about.

Magnus Battleforge

Warforged Dwarf Male

Level 120 Master Ritualist (Wizard) / Eldritch Knight (Fighter)

Titles: Ritualist, Elf Bane, Troll Slayer, Orc Bane, Demon Bane

A Warforged Dwarf was essentially a sentient construct. Or, more accurately, the result of some damn fool taking a perfectly good soul and throwing it into a mechanical body, instead of doing a resurrection or turning them into undead. Sure, there were some advantages to the ‘living construct’ thting, but you weren’t able to regen HP naturally, and healing magic not designed for constructs was only half as effective. You had to get yourself repaired, rather than a cleric simply dropping a heal on you.

That might not sound so bad at first glance. After all, dwarves loved building and repairing things. But in a battle not being able to get healing was a big problem. And if there wasn’t the right materials or facilities to repair you the normal way? Well, there were dwarven ruins from before the Scourge that had lots of Warforged Dwarves that were still very alive, but weren’t much of a threat without a couple key limbs. And since they couldn’t repair themselves… well, eternity as a moving statue helpless to prevent people from doing what they liked to you just didn’t sound like my idea of fun, honestly.

The warforged coming my way was all kinds of pissed, if I was any judge of people stomping as loudly as they could while they crossed the drawbridge to get into the keep. Or it could have been because he probably weighed four or five hundred pounds, at least. Either way, he was making enough of a racket clacking and clanging as he walked that I was curious enough to come out to the courtyard to see what was going on.

When the warforged spotted me, he yelled in a voice that sounded just a bit fake, like when you hear someone’s voice played over an old tape recorder, and the speakers give it that bit of distortion that makes the whole thing sound wrong. “OY! YOU BASTARD! WHERE YOU SEND ME KIN?”

I sighed, and muttered under my breath, “New phone, who dis?” Yukiko, who was close enough to hear me, started giggling at the words, but I didn’t have time to play just now. Angry wizard and all that shit.

“Sorry, I don’t recall seeing any metal dwarves come through Lithaes before. Have you tried Amyaththalas? They tend to get a lot more of the exotics there, so you could probably find one or two of your kind there.”

“LISTEN HERE, YOU---”

“If you keep yelling, I’m going to get a dragon to melt you into scrap. I happen to have a couple that I can call on who would be happy to do this for me.”

The warforged growled, and apparently had lost all patience with me, because I saw him beginning a spell. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. Springing across the courtyard with a speed that was only possible by having an effective DEX of over a thousand, I held my twin swords in hand, and lined them with hellfire, something I had not done in a very long time (hadn’t had the need, to be honest). Steel met steel, and while Taiyo no Tsubasa did little damage to the mechanical creature, Munsuraisa’s ability to ignore armor activated, and did a good deal of damage to the Warforged’s internals. More importantly, it interrupted the dwarf’s casting as the warforged stumbled back to lean against the wall.

“Idiot! Do you think I’ve not faced a wizard in so long that I don’t know how to defeat them? Or perhaps you believed your precious metal form protected you from the bite of my blades?”

With a growl like grinding gears, the Warforged said, “Ye’ll not be getting away with this insult, dark one! The whole of the Battleforge clan will come for ye when they hear of how ye treated their emissaries!”

Lexichan: Zayn, move to the side, now!

Operating on instinct, I obeyed the command Lexichan sent to me through the chat interface, stepping to the side just in time for a ballista bolt to strike the dwarf with a dull metal clang. The impact hit with enough force that the warforged was completely impaled through the gut (or where the gut would be in a living dwarf), pinned to the wall like a butterfly in a bug collector’s display.

The warforged dwarf was NOT in good shape, but it had only taken about 30% damage or so. Ignoring the dwarf’s bluster for the moment, I looked at the ballista on the wall overlooking the keep, where one of the soldiers trained by the Disavowed was standing. I nodded to him, and motioned for another bolt.

That second shot hit center mass on the living construct, and clearly hit something vital, as the dwarf’s hit points fell to just under 25% of their maximum. A truly living creature, however, would probably be dead, or at least bleeding horribly, watching their HP continue to fall from the massive wounds, but there seemed to be another benefit to the whole living construct idea, in that it didn’t bleed.

I snapped my fingers to get the dwarf’s attention, and said, “Now, I know you come from the Battleforge clan. I also know that the Battleforge clan has some rather extensive dealings in the black market, and every source I’ve asked has told me that you lot make the Drow look trustworthy and honest in comparison. Well, to be honest, those sources had never really worked with the Drow, so I’m sure they’re overestimating you quite a bit. For one thing, you don’t appear to have the intelligence to pull off that kind of treachery.”

The construct’s voice was more like grinding gears this time than the speaker distortion from before. “Ye fuckin’ bastard. Ye’re already dead, the lot of ye! The ritual is already complete, just waiting on me to send the signal to set it off. And if I don’t send the signal to turn it off, it’ll go boom the moment I stop working.” He coughed, or whatever the mechanical version of it was, “And don’t be thinking you can use your mental magics on me, boy. Constructs are immune to that kind of thing.”

“Well, yes and no. Normal constructs are immune to such things, of course, but your kind, these ‘living constructs’? Ah, you are susceptible, even if you have some innate resistance.” At the shocked look on the warforged’s face, I chuckled. “Ah, no one ever told you that? Did you not research your own condition when you got shoved into that metal body? I guess even dwarf wizards aren’t too bright at times. Now, lets see about reducing your resistance.”

I’d extinguished the hellfire on my blades, but now they both glowed white as I activated an ability that was far more effective for this kind of negotiation. I lashed out with both blades, Soulbreaker Strike active. The weapons did not do any HP damage, but they steadily carved away at the dwarf’s INT, and with it his MP and mental defenses. Oh, the damage would regen in time (I think it was at a rate of 1 point of INT every 2 seconds), but I didn’t need to wait.

Once I’d reduced his intellect a good deal, I tried one of the charm spells I’d learned. It was a simple command-type spell. The victim would follow one command that could be done instantly, and then the spell was done. So something like ordering an enemy cleric to heal me was possible but ordering a warrior to take off all their armor would take too long. For this, however, I only needed a simple command. “Deactivate the ritual.”

The dwarf, glassy-eyed, complied, and uttered a command word. I felt the magic flow, and since no magical onslaught descended upon us, I had a good feeling about it. That feeling got even better when the dwarf regained his (diminished) wits, and growled, “Ye arsehole! I’ll kill ye for this!”

I activated Soulbreaker Strike again, and quite calmly slashed away at the dwarf’s intellect until it had been brought to 0. Reduced to a mindless husk, the dwarf would serve me, zombie-like, until his INT returned to normal. I motioned for two of my guards, and they helped to pull the ballista bolts out of the wall and dwarf.

Darkmore: Lexichan, tell the shooter that I will be sending a present to his bunk tonight to entertain him until dawn.

Lexichan: Shall I say who will be servicing him?

Darkmore: The former Princess will be happy to service him all night long.

Lexichan: She will, will she?

Darkmore: Or she’ll get to entertain her son and her babydaddy. And that will happen anyway if I get a report that our friend isn’t satisfied with the service.

Lexichan: I’ll let him know.

Closing the chat window, I turned to look at the warforged dwarf that was lying motionless on the ground. “Well, let’s get going. There are preparations I have to make. Stand up, Dwarf, and follow me.”

Mechanically, the dwarf stood, and began clattering after me as I walked towards the magical research labs.

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Chapter 112 - The Scout

(Independent Trader Precious Harlot, Nuevo Edo Gateway)

It will be good to get somewhere civilized, so I can get this damn plug out of my ass.

In the privacy of her own mind, Samantha Michaels, slave-pilot of the Precious Harlot, cursed her Master for making her wear the large plug inside her ship suit for the duration of their trip to Nuevo Edo from Consortium space. Fortunately, the Gateway took off most of the distance or she’d have been REALLY fucking sore by the time they got to Nuevo Edo.

Her Master was a Gauz male, the Owner/Operator of the Precious Harlot. Why would a Gauz have a human slave as his pilot? Basically it boiled down to their different strengths. When it came to designing, building, and upgrading machines, the Gauz were still considered the best there were, even with the Nomads coming in and throwing off the averages. Their mercenaries were so well renowned that there were full-on armored units that would take one look at a position held and fortified by Gauz units, and either find a way to go around, or call in an orbital bombardment. Anything else was basically begging to lose upwards of seventy percent of your force, especially if they’d had time to really dig in.

However, they couldn’t pilot for shit. Oh sure, they had a few (mostly females, for whatever reason) that had the ‘knack’ for flying, but most were simply too methodical for their own good. Which was perfectly fine if you were running a shipping company in nice, safe areas with either military escorts or military not far off so you could deal with raiders. Not so great if you needed anything remotely requiring fancy flying.

So the Gauz, pretty much as soon as they’d made first contact with other species, and found that some of them were damn fine pilots, began acquiring their services. Sometimes that involved hiring them on. Sometimes it didn’t. It was the poorest kept secret in the galaxy that the largest importer of slaves in Known Space was the Consortium, and humans were their favorites, since they were adaptable, and prolific breeders, meaning there was always a ready supply if a slave got uppity or broken and needed to be replaced.

Unfortunately for Samantha, she had not understood the full situation when she had decided to start the game in Consortium space, not wanting to deal with the Civil War or the possibility of the Confederacy invading. Since local laws were fairly devious in how they supported ‘traditional’ Gauz culture, she had quickly found herself judicially enslaved thanks to some violation she still didn’t understand, and had been sold to her bastard of a Master, Aldreac Coppercoat.

She’d been going for a DEX-based build, since she’d wanted to be a gadgeteer (hence why she’d gone with the Gauz Consortium to begin with), but she hadn’t so much as touched tools in months, not since they’d given her skill downloads to make her a Pilot and a Courtesan. So now she was the primary pilot for the Harlot, and the primary bedwarmer for her master, with a Defiance collar to make sure she behaved. The only good thing about any of this was that the bastard didn’t like to share. As long as he was happy with her, she wasn’t at risk of being passed around to the crew.

Oh, she also had the role of ‘emergency medic’, since she’d been taught a Psy Power called ‘Pain Transfer’. Basically, she took damage from one person and gave it to another, healing target A to damage target B. The basic version was touch range, but her Master had paid to get her taught an upgraded version, which gave her a range of about ten meters. Not exactly ideal, but she could transfer damage from one person within ten meters of her to another person within ten meters. So far, she had been able to get away with just acting as a conduit, for the most part, instead of taking damage herself, but whether she took the damage or not, she felt everything. And it sucked.

She had considered having an ‘accident’ that killed everyone on the ship, but she’d put that aside so far. Not only did she not have any resources to pull off an escape like that Black Star guy did, but she’d been reading up on the forums, and if an enslaved Nomad went splat with their non-Nomad owners, then when they respawned it was as an ‘escaped slave’, and were subject to capture until they got their collar or chip removed. And she (quite rightly) wasn’t trusted with anything more critical than navigation and the piloting controls, so she couldn’t ‘accidentally’ space the fucker and fly on with her new ship.

She sighed to herself, and followed the instructions from Nuevo Edo control. They had four ‘gunboats’ by the gate, though it took her a while to see the second set. The first two were clearly local government, nice and visible so everyone knew the locals were armed. The second set shadowing them were Black Star craft. Even as a slave, she’d heard about what the Black Stars had done in that recent war in the Empire. She did not want to mess with those ships. Fortunately, the Harlot was a legitimate trader, even if they sometimes went questionable places, so they shouldn’t have trouble.

Of course, as a legitimate trader, they had commercial hyperlight engines, and that meant in-system FTL wasn’t really an option, since it took the engines too long to warm up. They were extremely efficient, about twenty to thirty times less fuel intensive than military models, but they did not react well to sudden transitions into or out of FTL speeds. That meant they were in for a nine hour cruise to Nuevo Edo. Not seeing anything on the screens to give her pause, she followed her standard orders for in-system flight, and set things on automatic before leaning back in her chair to rest. She wasn’t allowed to leave her station until she was relieved, or her Master called her to his bed. However, the asshole at least didn’t expect her to be constantly awake, so long as she was at her post and ready to take over if the alarms went off.

(Hunter-Scout Ship, Nuevo Edo system)

It had taken the Scout a long time to slip into the system unnoticed. These prey were not so soft and helpless as they were the last time the Hunters had been this way. They had ships that were of a design they had not seen, and they were armed, that much the Scout could tell easily from the scans of the white ships. This did not worry the Scout.

No, what worried (worried? Perhaps not. Concerned? Yes, that was better) – concerned the Scout was that they were detecting ripples in the Great Fabric where they could not sense the presence of ships. If the prey had developed, or gained access to, technology that allowed them to hide their ships from the Scout’s scans, then that meant the Prey might be worthy of the attention of the Hunters. But the Scout needed to know more before the rest of the Hunters were informed. Ripples across the Great Fabric were too indistinct to be used to target the Hunting ships, after all.

The Scout needed to find a suitable Prey to capture so they could get the information needed. Fortunately, one of the Prey ships were floating close to the Scout now, unaware that a Hunter was hidden in the blackness nearby. For a zithad, the Hunter considered the different ways to take the Prey ship without ruining the Prey inside, preferably without alerting the entire system that the Hunter was here. This Prey promised to be challenging enough to hunt. There was no need to put the whole system on alert because their drives were discovered.

The Prey ship was an old design, unlike the new ones that could be seen and felt across the system. The Hunters had records of this kind of ship from the fighting in another arm of the galaxy. These Prey ships were used to carry goods from place to place, and rarely ran with more than minimal shields unless they were warned of trouble. But they did not see the Scout. A lance to two specific parts of the ship would leave the Prey ship dead in the water, and unable to communicate with the rest of the system. It would take the skill of a trained Hunter to make the shots. For a Hunter Scout, the skill required was like accompanying a youngling on the First Hunt.

(Independent Trader Precious Harlot, Nuevo Edo)

Samantha awoke to the sound of alarms going off across the bridge, coupled with the feeling of weightlessness as the ship’s artificial gravity stuttered, and then failed altogether as main power failed. Emergency power kicked in, but the Master had long ago decided not to use the emergency batteries to power something like gravity, when they could get more time on life support so they could try and fix the problem with the mains. Immediately, she sent out the distress signal, only to find that whatever had happened to them had destroyed their communication array.

That was not good. She brought up damage reports, and cursed. They hadn’t been hit by asteroids. Those were Grav Lance weapons! Who the hell still used grav lances? They were the ultimate in short-range weapons, sure, but the maximum range for those things had to be only a few thousand kilometers…

Oh shit. Looking back to the sensor readings, she tried to find where the ship that hit them was, but nothing was on her screens. Just a little trace heat a thousand meters off their bow. Wait, switching to visual scanners, she was able to see that something was damn close to the Harlot, thanks to how the blackness blocked the stars. They had a ship closing in on them! Ramming? No. They were going to dock!

CLUNK!

The sound carried through the weightless innards of the ship, as the alien ship locked on to their hull. Quickly, Samantha hit the controls that locked the bridge down, and watched on the internal cameras to see what happened. She could see the Gauz crew, including her Master, trying to set up a position in the cargo bay, but the lack of gravity made that difficult, but they managed to get to the door of the main corridor and lock in with their mag boots, ready to kill anything that came through the glowing outline that said someone was cutting through their hull.

Samantha saw the glowing outine shine, and sparks flew as the cutter penetrated the hull cleanly enough. Then the metal section of hull was pushed, slowly floating into the cargo bay. She cursed as the hull section moved in front of the camera she’d had trained on the cargo hold, and she heard shouts of anger and alarm from the crew. Whatever they saw was not what they’d been expecting. She could see blasts coming the other way on the corridor camera.

Right, she had to do something. But what? She had sealed the bridge, but she had no power and no communications. She didn’t even have a weapon in here, other than the plug in her ass, and she didn’t think that would impress anyone who got past the crew. If only anyone on her friends list was in system… Wait, the in-system chat!

(Nomad OOC Chat – Nuevo Edo System)

Parca: Seriously, Boss, when we going to go and get some action again? The boys are getting restless.

GunKitty: Poor flyboys. Go on down to the surface and impress those ladies with your war stories. The Marines have seen so much ‘action’ that I think even they are starting to ask for a break.

MajorTom: Never thought I’d see the day, but yeah, I’m hearing a couple are getting tired out.

SammyBaby has entered the chat.

SammyBaby: HELP! Independent trader Precious Harlot en route to Nuevo Edo from the Gateway is under attack! We’ve lost engines, lost communications, and are being borded!

M.Mollen: Parca, scramble the alert fighters. Raven will send you coordinates.

Parca: On it!

Parca has left the chat.

M.Mollen: Sammy, any details you can give us? Ship type, species, what the borders look like?

SammyBaby: Ship is black, only saw it because it blocked stars as it docked with us. Camera in the cargo hold is blocked by debris as we are null-grav. I’m currently locked down on the bridge. Rest of the crew is down. Unknown if dead or stunned. I see them… Oh god!

M.Mollen: What are they, Sammy?

SammyBaby: X’thari! We are under attack by X’thari raiders!