Fleet Battle (3)
The Cult and the Star Union. A race that built its civilization upon psychic power, and a machine race born from engineering refined to its absolute limit. The two could not have been more different, and yet in this single moment they looked almost identical — because both were pouring every ounce of their strength into killing each other.
Swarms of elongated, oval torpedoes resembling sharpened thermometers came hurtling in a dizzying storm. Piloted in flocks by the androids, their movements evoked a school of fish churning through the deep sea. The Cult warships counterattacked the torpedo swarms as they dove toward their prey. Ships that had shifted from a diamond formation into a hexagon spat out violet psychic power, and like fishermen casting their nets over a shoal, webs of psychic force draped over the torpedoes — a chain of violent detonations followed.
Amid a massive fireworks display unfolding in perfect silence, the machine fleets swung wide in flanking arcs, closing in on the Cult warships. The Cult were no fools either, rapidly intercepting the oncoming cyborg vessels. And I was right in the middle of the battlefield — threading the needle between remotely piloted torpedoes and near-miss beams of psychic heat.
'Right!'
My faithful secretary — my auxiliary organ — warned me of danger. Connected to the ship as I was, I wrenched the hull aside just in time to dodge a torpedo screaming in from starboard.
Four cyborg warships had marked me as their target.
'Psychic cannons, activate.'
While holding my speed, I brought online the frigate's main batteries — the same psychic cannons I'd used to launch the first strike against the Star Union fleet. All six of them opened fire on the enemy at once. The cyborg ship glued to my tail clearly hadn't expected me to be packing six gunports; it never even tried to evade before it was shot down. The remaining three, having watched it happen, each slipped my attack in their own way.
'Not bad. All but one of them, anyway.'
Two broke away on evasive maneuvers, but one chose to bleed off speed instead, sliding out of the trajectory of my fire. Had I been the only threat on the field, it would have been a sound choice. But this battlefield was thick with blind, unaimed attacks — and sure enough, a heat beam streaked in from somewhere and punched clean through the slowing cyborg ship. Fire geysered from the ragged hole in its hull, and it oxidized in a cascade of secondary explosions.
'Good. Everything's falling into place nicely.'
Provoking the two factions into open collision — that much had been my intention. I just hadn't expected the brawl to escalate this quickly. An unexpected windfall.
'If things stay this chaotic, I can move on to the next phase without much trouble.'
My ultimate goal was simple: sever their pursuit and escape this star system unscathed. I could slip away while the enemies slaughtered each other, but there was one problem. If they resumed the chase once the battle ended, things would get messy. The Star Union had taken catastrophic losses because of me, and they would never forgive me — not until they were certain I was dead.
So I intended to show them exactly that: the wreck of a ship that no longer held me and my children, burning in the void.
'Hold on a little longer. Wait for the right moment.'
I heaved the hull into a sharp upward vector. Any conventional aircraft would have groaned under the strain, but this ship was, for all practical purposes, an extension of my own body. At my unnatural maneuver, the torpedoes chasing me lost their target lock for an instant and slammed into other ships or drifted wreckage.
The cyborgs tried to follow my climb, but they were far too slow. I looped around behind them and fired. Compressed bolts of psychic power, looking for all the world like bullets, slammed into the machine warships — the vessel that took all six energy rounds simultaneously split cleanly into four pieces. Through the breach I could see countless androids and cyborgs spilling out into open space, thrashing helplessly.
True to the Star Union's wafer-thin sense of camaraderie, not a single ship moved to rescue them. The last remaining cyborg warship abandoned its dying comrades to the zero-gravity void and emptied its torpedo racks at me.
[Zzz zzz zzzz (Everyone, hold on tight)]
The range was too short to dodge them all. I wrenched my climbing hull into a hard bank and dove back down. The instant before impact, I tilted the hull at a shallow angle — the torpedoes hurling themselves at my destruction scraped past by the width of a sheet of paper.
The failed torpedoes scrambled to correct their orbits, but I had no intention of letting them. Five of my psychic cannon ports were already trained on their positions. With a bloom of violet flame, the torpedoes simply ceased to exist.
'One shot left — and it's for you.'
The final cannon was reserved for the warship that had fired on me. The violet energy round struck the vessel's flank; fire laced with purple and red blossomed from the impact point, and the cyborg warship lurched violently sideways. Another Cult ship finished the job for me — a heat beam from long range swept the crippled enemy away entirely.
"See? Your skills from the game haven't gone anywhere."
"Obviously. Do you have any idea how many of these I've fought?"
In the game alone, I'd traded blows with entire fleets dozens — hundreds — of times, and gone to war against rankers more than once. 'Come to think of it, I've got more experience fighting fleets than anything else.'
Beyond the mercenaries of Mega Corp and the Spacedogs, where ship combat was practically encouraged, races like the Star Union and the Outspacers tended to field massive fleets in the late game as well. The Cult was a slight exception — their unique quest system let individuals grow absurdly powerful on their own. And I, standing opposed to all of them, had inevitably been forced to fight fleets myself. I remembered the grind of collecting traits specifically for it. 'Space combat and ground combat are completely different beasts.'
A trait that was invaluable on the surface was often dead weight in open space. 'Even the current me is no exception.'
A substantial portion of my body-oriented traits were unusable out here, and the same went for my parasitic traits and my nest-related ones. Since I'd clearly be fighting in space more and more from here on, I needed to gather traits suited to void warfare beyond just Nightmare Horizon. 'Still so much left to do.'
The Dragon's Nest would hold the traits I needed for fighting in space. Planets where Galagons typically nested were home to all manner of beasts and predators, and plenty of creatures possessed traits like Spaceflight. Once we arrived, hunting them down first and stripping their traits wouldn't be a bad opening move.
I was mulling that over when Adhai called out to me.
[Big Adult] [Me] [Combat] [Join] [Want]
The little one was begging to come out. Watching ships detonate again and again out in the black had apparently put her in the mood to fight alongside us.
[Me] [Fly] [Fast] [Enemies] [Slow]
[Zzzzz zzzzz zzz (Sorry, but not this time)]
For a Gallagon, Adhai was small and nimble — she'd likely fight well out there — but this place was far too dangerous. One mistake, and there would be no taking it back. 'If she can't reach me after I switch ships, we're in serious trouble.'
She could sense the psychic power flowing from my body or No. 26's, so finding me aboard a different vessel would be easy enough. The problem was that the enemy absolutely could not learn I'd abandoned this ship. If they saw Adhai boarding another vessel, it would raise suspicion.
[Zzzz zzz zzzz (We'll play together next time)]
[Disappointed]
Soothing Adhai as her wings drooped, I kept the ship moving. The tide of battle shifted as the Star Union ships finally closed to knife-fighting range with the Cult — which meant the Imperial Carrier's Black Cannon, too risky to fire with friendlies in the blast zone, was sealed off.
The cyborg vessels loosed torpedoes at point-blank range, or simply rammed the Cult ships outright. Ramming tactics, in the space age — it looked laughably primitive, but against the Cult it was surprisingly effective. Provided you came prepared.
The Cult's formidable defenses owed everything to their shields of solidified psychic power. So what happens when you neutralize those shields? The bows of the cyborg ships pressing in on the Cult vessels were painted entirely white — APD drones, defensive equipment built to soak psychic force. Packed to bursting and slammed into a Cult warship, they could temporarily nullify the shields at the point of impact.
After that, it was easy. 'A Cult ship's raw durability is nothing next to the Star Union's.'
Every time a cyborg warship collided with a Cult vessel, violet light flared — and died. With their shields negated, the Cult ships had no choice but to be torn to ribbons by those bristling spines of turrets.
I could see the Cult warships panicking at the sight, yet not one of them fired rashly. Unlike the cyborgs, with their near-total absence of camaraderie, the Cult held their fire for fear of catching their own comrades in the barrage. Carrier-borne fighters moved out to harry the enemy while the rest of the Cult fleet rapidly opened the distance — and the ships that failed to do so were ground into the dust of space by the cyborgs.
Finally, unable to watch their kin die any longer, the Imperial Carrier advanced to the front line. I fell back amid the retreating Cult vessels. That beautiful, diamond-shaped doomsday weapon carried hundreds of psychic cannons, and an overwhelming torrent of violet energy rounds poured into the cyborg fleet. Their bows might be protected by APD screens, but their flanks and rears were not. Caught under dozens of energy rounds, cyborg warships burst apart one after another.
A few reckless cyborgs even attempted to ram the Imperial Carrier itself.
'Idiots.'
The Imperial Carrier's shields weren't just stronger — its armor plating was immensely tough in its own right. Tactics like these couldn't crack it. Just as I'd predicted, their attempts all came to nothing; a few more ships seemed poised to try before abruptly aborting.
'Their commander is reining them in.'
The cyborg fleet split in several directions at once and hurled themselves around the flanks at the trailing Cult warships — a plan to strip away the carrier's escorts before touching the diamond itself. Cyborgs charging like rabid dogs, refusing to give an inch, against a Cult falling back to drag them into a long-range attrition fight. To an observer, the two sides looked evenly matched. They weren't. The cyborgs hadn't yet played their trump card.
'Almost time to change ships.'
The moment a cyborg rams me — that's my window. I abandoned the evasive posture I'd held until now and went on the offensive, raining energy fire on everything in reach, Cult and cyborg alike. Once I'd destroyed a good number of ships, I felt the enemy's attention settle onto me, and with it came a pulse from No. 26.
"Big Baby, that big ugly one over there feels like it's about to do something."
[Zzz (Oh, yeah?)]
"Want me to stop it?"
[Zzz zzzz (No — leave it be)]
What No. 26 had sensed was almost certainly the enemy flagship attempting a deep scan aimed at me. By now, they had to know. That a cyborg carrying strange transmissions to their own kind was aboard this bioship — and that this ship was the architect of the entire catastrophe.
A faint ripple brushed lightly across my body. The deep scan, complete. From that moment, the enemy's attacks grew viciously fiercer — no fewer than ten ships had broken off to tail me.
'Come on, come on. I'm right here — ram me already.'
I deliberately squirmed about, dodging torpedoes by hair-thin margins, and the cyborg ships seemed to take the bait with real fury. They ignored the Cult fighters harassing them and chased me alone — that told me everything. And at last, the moment I'd been waiting for arrived. Far off in the distance, I felt a single cyborg vessel break formation and charge straight at me.
'Less than two minutes to go.'
I hurriedly shifted our position to a point far from the reactor — taking everyone with me. Everyone except the cyborg I'd been holding since earlier: Mackay.
"Wh— wait? Me too, take—"
His last cry was swallowed as the living wall closed over him.
The instant my relocation was complete, I released Nightmare Horizon. No sooner had my metal-fused body separated and dropped to the deck than I activated Organic Evolution. The special state I was transforming into this time was —
'Clever Underdog!'
The moment the trait engaged, my body began to shrink at a staggering rate.
And in the same heartbeat, the ship shuddered violently around me.