John sat down cross legged on the floor between Doris’ feet. Zeeg came over and lay down next to him, resting her back against his left thigh, and he rested a hand on her shoulder. He scanned out through the ship as his friends rushed to their assigned positions. He felt a little guilty he wouldn’t be helping them but they wouldn’t need him.
It was a good opportunity for them to come to grips with how their powers had changed. Pretty soon they’d figure out they could do most of what any System ability was capable of. The first few waves of attackers shouldn’t be much of a challenge for them anyway. The real challenge would happen as they got closer to home.
Looking through the structure of the ship with his eyeless gaze he could see the changes in them already. They looked firmer, harder to see through, more real than they had before. This shift was ironic seeing as they had become a blend of unreality and the material world.
“So you’re just going to sit this one out?” asked Prime from nearby. John straightened his back and closed his eyes.
“Yep. You’ll all do fine this time and I need to grow the bridge,” he replied softly.
“What is the bridge?” asked Prime curiously.
“It’s… a copy of the System. Kind of. Bridge is the right word for it but it doesn’t cover exactly what it is. It’s a blend of Outside and Inside that joins me to Them and each to the other.”
“Them?” Prime scuttled closer on six legs and squatted down across from his meditating friend.
“The Concepts. The powers that exist unfettered by the laws of time and space. It’s hard to explain but you’ll understand better than the rest when you get an interface.”
“What are the interfaces?” Bob wondered.
“They do exactly as the name implies. Bob, you need to get Prime in the stash, just in case, and I need to work on the bridge. I’m going to spend a lot of time sitting here over the next few weeks.”
Prime mentally checked the layout of his combat drones. He had hundreds spread out around them now and three dozen lined the walls of their hold, another down occupied hasty barricades. The firepower he had in the room could level a town in seconds.
“I reckon I’ll be ok?” the drone muttered.
“You can’t lose Prime. You need it for the interface.” John opened his eyelids and the purple sparks flared brightly. “Please mate, nothing works out exactly as expected and I’m confident this attack can be wiped out fairly quickly but I need you. We all need you so play this one safe, ok?”
“Huh. Didn’t know you cared,” muttered Bob but he moved Prime into the stash as requested. A B-3000 strode over and took Primes place. John grinned up at the taller machine as it propped the long barrel of its plasma rifle over a shoulder..
“I wasn’t just worried about your main body, Bob. I need to concentrate,” John closed his eyes as a snort escaped the drone but Bob left him in silence.
John stretched out with his mind, stepping back onto the bridge and beginning to work with the Concepts floating around on the Outside end of it to strengthen and widen the structure. He lost himself in timelessness and his body became rigid and unearthly while he worked.
***
Evie and Vic were stationed outside the bridge of the Kipragtsek. Vic was conjuring flames from her hands and passing them back and forth from hand to hand while Evie leaned against the wall looking bored.
“Shouldn’t we have suited up?” Evie wondered. Vic chuckled and flicked one of her flames at Evie who jumped as it splashed against her face.
“What the-” she snapped but Vic began giggling.
“You don’t need armour anymore. I’m beginning to wonder if we ever did. Watch!” Vic vanished and appeared a few feet away from where she’d been in an instant.
“Did you just teleport? Did Dad give you his ability?” Evie asked.
“No. But if you see something done regularly, even if you don’t understand the mechanics you get an idea of the… method that underpins it? I don’t have the right words but that’s how it makes sense in my head,” Vic finished in a frustrated voice.
“So we can all teleport now? What about changing size?” Evie focussed on her passenger. She wouldn’t think of it as a companion, it wasn’t friendly and when she brushed against its thoughts she was repelled by its alien perspective. She reached inwards deliberately and sent the idea of changing sizes to whatever it was. Some kind of etheric shrug came back through the link and she bent her will a little. She grew a good foot in height then snapped back to her normal size.
“Now you’re getting it!” said Vic happily as she continued to experiment. She was making the metal of the walls flow into strange fluted shapes when a face appeared on the ceiling above the pair.
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“Please don’t mess up my matter. No wonder you beings are so possessive and ambitious. Actually being something is so addictive. We’ll have company in the next few minutes. The interceptor is almost in range to cross the Outside with its teleporters,” said Colin.
“Then you kill the ship?”
“I kill their ship. I don’t have real weapons but I can distort the medium they’re travelling through and tear the tin can apart. Prepare yourselves.” The projection vanished.
“It’s weird seeing John’s old face,” muttered Vic. “I feel like it’s him for a second and then it gets confusing.”
“If you leave Dad for an interdimensional being that’s stolen his face you and me are going to fall out,” smiled Evie.
“It would be an interesting precedent to set in the divorce courts wouldn’t it?” Vic laughed. The projection reappeared above them.
“You’re not my type,” Colin deadpanned then cut off again.
“It’s like having Bob in our implants isn’t it?” Evie whispered as she began flexing and stretching. “No bloody privacy!” Vic nodded and made to smooth out the weird sculptures she’d made grow from the walls.
“I’m not that bad!” called the nearest B-3000 from where it waited a few metres along the corridor. Evie snorted in response and gave the bot a one fingered salute.
“Let’s settle down shall we children?” said Vic, loudly enough to carry to the bot.
“Yeah sure. How much-” Evie began only to be drowned out by a siren echoing throughout the ship.
“Assault team translating into ship-space now,” blared Colin in a bored tone.
“Where are they?” Vic asked over the comm links. “All clear here- hang on!” At the far end of the corridor flashes of light and heat bloomed as the drones began firing on something rushing round a corner from an adjoining passage. It was big but not intimidatingly so to Vic after the various creatures the team had put down over the years. Its round body was surrounded by seven legs and seven arms spread equidistantly around its centre of mass. A shield of some sort flashed into being ahead of it and the blasts of fire from bob’s weapons either detonated ineffectually or glanced off and left molten streaks on the walls.
“I can’t cut it off, seal it’s powers or whatever the hell Dad did when he knocked out the twins,” muttered Evie. “Might as well do this the old fashioned way!” she said with a grin as her body transformed into purple lightning and shot down the corridor in an eye blink.
She smashed through the shield and held out a hand as she passed whatever this thing was. Not having access to identify was annoying. Maybe her dad could add it back in sometime soon? Just for convenience if for no other reason.
As Evie appeared behind whatever it was two of the creature's legs fell to the ground and it teetered over, slamming its head into the corridor wall. A pitiable wail escaped its mouth, a broad flat-toothed gap in the lower half of its head, and it flailed blindly with three arms as it fell. A forcefield appeared and pressed Evie against the wall. She grunted as the pressure swiftly increased then vanished and appeared to one side of the poor bastard. Her hand, still made of purple lightning, flicked out and took the things head off just below its jaws. She stepped back and returned to her normal form just as the nearest leg flashed out and launched her down the corridor with a surprised yelp.
Drones hurled themselves forwards but were ineffective in close combat. Forcefields flickered in and out around it. Most of them were wasted but there were so many shields that the bot’s wrist-blades skittered away and couldn’t land a meaningful hit. Vic ran faster than she’d ever thought possible, somehow boosting her strength and speed like she was a bruiser and as she got a clean line of sight around the tangle of metal bodies trying to swarm the thing she imitated John’s power. Slice of the thing began to vanish, limbs falling useless to the ground as connective tissue blipped to the side. Once the arms were gone the shields began to fail and the drones fell on the beast with their blades, reducing it to diced meat in short order.
“They don’t seem to keep their brains in their heads. Taking off the limbs seems to fuck with their powers though. Bridge corridor is clear,” said Vic as she hurried towards where Evie had landed in a pile. As she got near she breathed a sigh of relief. The girl was picking herself up slowly and swearing like a drunken sailor.
“Fuckers kick like a mule,” she muttered.
“Bridge clear.” “Engineering clear.” “Engineering access clear.” Reports came in thick and fast from the rest of the team.
“We’ve got two guests who appeared in the hold with some of our other passengers. They are cutting through my airlocks as we speak. One more appeared in your hold, the rest didn’t translate correctly,” Colin said from the walls.
“Dad!” yelled Evie as she began to rush back to him.
“I have this covered, little sister. The rest of you might wish to go and deal with the ones currently leading a rebellion of our former colleagues,” said Zeeg confidently.
“You’ve got this?” asked Vic worriedly.
“No worries, as John-Dad would say,” said Zeeg happily.
***
The weird looking creature had begun by attacking the drones who opened fire as soon as it appeared in the centre of the room. Zeeg had slipped into invisibility and intangibility and crept forward, body low to the ground. Never interrupt an enemy while they are making a mistake.
This specimen was fighting with illusory arms that appeared and vanished in an orbit around its body. Most of them were used to absorb the initial barrage of fire from the drones as it rushed to the nearest clump of Bob’s. When it got there the arms proved brutally effective, reducing half a dozen drones to scrap in a couple of seconds. The floating arms switched to its right hand side as more drones opened fire and it shot across the hold to intercept them.
The thing looked ungainly, far too many legs and far too much mass to match the perfection of the canine form. Zeeg grinned as she slunk closer. As long as it wasn’t heading for John she was happy to take her time with this new toy. The alien reached the next set of drones and quickly demolished them as well.
“Zeeg, stop fucking around please. I don’t have infinite drones,” complained Bob over the comms.
Zeeg shot forward and stuck her head into the things chest. Headshots were ineffective so the fat barrel-like bodies must house its brains as well as its other major organs. She opened her eyes wide as her head sank in and then began making her jaws tangible for split seconds as she thrashed her head from side to side, aiming to rake them through anything that looked juicy and vital. The arms, real and summoned, spasmed and thrashed at her body but the only part of her that existed physically were razor sharp teeth and those were inside its chest.
She stepped back as it slumped to the ground, all seven legs splaying out around it like petals on a flower.
“We’re good here,” the dog said in a bloodthirsty voice over the comms as she began to lick the strange but not entirely unpleasant blood from her jaws.