“WOOOHOOOOO!” Alpha shouted as he dodged another storm of meteor-like, flaming feathers, each impacting with the force of a fighter-class railgun.
Was his ship in tatters?
Sure.
Was he fighting for his life without the certainty of his Mother-Node safety net?
Ya.
Did the physics of a skyscraper-sized bird made of solid fire make any rational sense?
Not In the slightest!
Was he having a blast?!
Abso-fudging-lutely!
Alpha didn’t get to let loose like this very often. More often than not, the planets they sent him to were devoid of dangerous lifeforms. That, or so primitive that most hadn’t even colonized more than their own moon. So when he got the chance to go all out, he relished each moment.
In most circumstances, those chances came against some of the more annoying ‘galactic powers’ that liked to poke at the Third Federation’s borders. Well, they called themselves ‘powers,’ but even combined, they’d been unable to do any actual damage to the TGF in almost 2,000 years. Most had yet to be absorbed by the TGF, though. The Federation still respected many of the old alliances and accords set down by the Second Federation. Even if most other powers didn’t — or even remember them.
The official stance of the Federation was that these old accords were honored as a ‘memorial to those who gave everything so that some might live.’ But the real reason was a bunch of political maneuvering and hogwash. Stuff Alpha had never paid much attention to, other than who they were pointing him at.
A much larger feather exploded nearby, causing the AI to dodge and skid, stressing his magnetic clamps until he feared he’d be thrown off. That would be bad. The TAWP wasn’t built for space combat; if he lost the support of his clamps, he’d be a sitting duck. The built-in RCS could help him maneuver, but not enough to dodge the flurry of attacks thrown at him. To make matters worse, Alpha could only keep this up for a short while. After taking a count of the number of nitrogen crystals he had left, he frowned; not many, but just enough to pull off what he wanted… if he could find an opening.
To make matters worse, Hot-&-Spicy seemed to realize he had limited ammo, as it had hindered him from gathering more crystals every time he tried.
Even when he did hit, the thing healed almost as fast as he could damage it. Even the wing he cut off with his initial attack had almost regrown, and that was only a minute ago.
… Ya, he was in a bad spot.
Lucky for Alpha, things were coming to a close. He was still unsure how the creature was scanning the area, but that ability didn’t seem to extend into the Fold. His hidden pieces were almost in place, and his gamble seemed to pay off; the chicken hadn’t noticed them. Good.
A second huge feather slammed into his vault, and Alpha ‘slipped,’ his magnetic clamps unlatching and sending him off into outer space as if they had pushed him away. The chicken took the bait, and a hailstorm of smaller feathers pummeled his hex shielding. In the next instant, however, Alpha stopped dead, the stream of feathers passing him, and a small cargo drone appeared in Alpha’s path.
The Federation used cargo drones furnished with a minuscule skip drive, which provided them access to the Fold. This greatly enhanced the effectiveness of interplanetary commerce and manufacturing. It was possible to establish a mining facility in an asteroid belt, send the ore to a safeguarded refining station across the system, and transport the refined materials to shipyards, all in the same afternoon.
The only downside was that skip drives were sloooow, at least compared to a true jump drive. But because they were so slow, you could stop them on a dime, targeting spaces as small as a few meters. That was important when dealing with distances on an interplanetary scale instead of a stellar one, so most people who used them didn’t mind waiting hours rather than seconds.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Alpha had an even smaller version called a Blink Drive installed in his core. That, plus a stealth module, had saved Alpha’s hide more than a few times. Sure, blinking his AI-core — that central orb-like shell that contained everything ‘him’ — out of the TAWP or ship left him defenseless. But as long as he could stay hidden, it was often a better option than a trip back to the Mother Node. That was a last-ditch option, though, and he’d only used it twice before now.
Well, three times, if you counted when he first got it and blinked into Officer Sunday’s shower.
He still had nightmares of that day… Which was bullcrap because he didn’t even know AI could have nightmares!
Alpha pushed off the cargo drone with enough force to change his vector away from the next barrage while the cargo drone blinked back into the Fold. A second cargo drone appeared a split second later, bouncing Alpha in a different direction.
Again, and again, and again.
Soon, Alpha was bouncing back and forth all around the creature as a dozen cargo drones popped in and out of Fold space, acting as makeshift platforms. The giant firebird had tried countering, but each time the attack was in range, a cargo drone would deflect Alpha from its path. After a moment, the kaiju bird went stock still, its eyes narrowing to track Alpha’s random movements, but it never once let down its guard enough to allow for a decisive strike.
That was fine for Alpha, though; the more time he had, the better. Why? Because as he bounced, Alpha never once fired the [Gungnir]. The [Gungnir] was never meant to be used like Alpha had been using it; no, that was only something done in desperation against an enemy right in your face. That was because, unlike the vast majority of energy weapons, the [Gungnir] was a long-range sniper, custom-designed to sit on an orbital space platform, devouring hundreds of nitrogen crystals as it unleashed its wrath on entire armadas.
The original design, not the scaled-down version modified for the TAWP, could take in hundreds of thousands of charges. The blasts produced could slag City-Ships or glass entire planets. Not that anyone had ever tried it; such an expense would bankrupt most small star systems.
In just a few moments, he’d crammed in almost two dozen, which was about as much as the printed weapon could take. That was fine; he was almost out of nitrogen crystals, anyway. If that thing could tank a blow like this, he might as well surrender, because this was all he had. At least until he could get at some of his better toys in the vault. Maybe if he did surrender, he’d have the chance to get back in later…
No, that was boring. Big lasers go boom.
Besides, despite what he’d seen here, he doubted whoever was behind the flaming chicken had the technology to get into his vault in lockdown mode. The Federation barely had the technology to do that, and they farmed — and built — entire star systems. More likely, they would poke and prod at him until he slipped into their data network. If they didn’t just outright destroy him rather than risk that.
General practice was to exterminate any unshackled, uncontained Sapient-AI on discovery, a practice Alpha agreed with; his kind were just that dangerous. Rumors claimed SEAU-03 had become so powerful that he had stopped inhabiting any physical object at all and now existed in some kind of energy-based quantum processor with no ‘real’ location.
A few more bounces put him where he wanted to be; directly between the smaller planet and the kaiju. He intended to use the glare from the shiny ice shell to hide what was about to happen.
As soon as he was in position, Alpha gave the command, and a miniature sun blossomed to life at the tip of [Gungnir]. The chicken’s head snapped to his location.
Well, so much for that plan, Alpha mentally complained.
The giant’s eyes grew wide. Instead of the expected dodge, however, the creature did something strange.
It opened its beak.
Oh, come on! Don’t tell me! That’s way too cliche!
His complaint going unheard, Alpha saw a spatial flux between its beak, and a tiny crystal, only half a foot wide, appeared. Then an azure glow erupted from the back of the chicken’s throat.
At the same moment, his monitoring Sub-AI blared a warning.
//WARNING! WARNING! Dreadnaught-class energy signal detected! Evasive Maneuvers are advised!//
Alpha laughed at the irony.
Too Late!
In the next instant, the mini star at the tip of [Gungnir] erupted forward in a massive cyan beam of energy as wide as the TAWP. At that same moment, a torrent of azure flames crashed into the crystal. The crystal’s light intensified and unleashed its own beam of twirling blue and gold flames.
The two beams struck each other with a force that warped the space around them. Local space strained with the sound of twisting glass that would have destroyed any physical matter close to the epicenter.
Then, to Alpha’s surprise, the bird began to shrink.
More accurately, it merely appeared that way, as he was being ‘pushed’ backward by the spatial waves that rocked the battlefield. The mass of his TAWP couldn’t compete with that of a skyscraper-sized bird, one made of fire or otherwise.
Well, that wasn’t good.