Duke’s more than 11,000 points in Strength allowed him to apply phenomenal force to the floor. The floor, being the reinforced deck plating of a space hangar resisted the force better than most any other surface he had run on before. This translated to an acceleration that Duke had not anticipated. The Syndicate forces had no time to react. Duke hit them like a freight train, sending broken bodies flying around the space. There was no technique, no bracing, no grand flourish. Duke simply ran through the line of troops and slammed into the far wall of the hallway.
Despite his relatively high Agility, Duke did not have enough time to react and stop himself from hitting the wall. Surprisingly, the wall held up to the impact. It was severely dented, but it was still intact. Duke rebounded off the wall, flying back towards the scattered bodies of the Syndicate. He scrambled to his feet as the remaining foes closed in on him with their batons crackling with energy. He met them with a feral grin and the fight started in earnest.
The Syndicate troops did not let the initial shock of Duke’s charge deter them. They swarmed him without hesitation. He did not stand still and try to absorb their attacks. Duke lashed out with fists, knees, elbows, and feet. He even added the occasional headbutt when the positioning was right. Despite his COMBAT SENSE Ability firing on all cylinders, there were still too many attacking for him to counter. The first baton strike that hit Duke sent a wave of pain throughout his body and a disturbing system message.
*** You have been struck by a Variable-intensity Stun Rod Mk IV. All physical Characteristics have been temporarily reduced by 10% ***
Well, that’s not ideal. Note to self, minimize those hits. Duke immediately changed his tactics for the fight, dodging blows whenever possible, even if it gave up an opportunity to strike out at a target. He wove through the Syndicate troops, making sure that he kept out of reach of the batons. As he fought, he could hear the sounds of heavy weapons fire striking the mech’s shields and returning to strike the ship’s shields.
Slowly, but surely, Duke took down the remaining eight Syndicate men, striking whenever a true opening presented itself. The mech and ship fire had become a steady beat of weapons striking shields, helping Duke to keep his moves timed and on-pace.
Despite his dodging and evading, when he was down to the final two combatants, Duke had been hit close to a dozen times by the batons. He was thankful to discover that each hit was a 10% reduction of his current physical stats and not his original stats. Had it been the latter, he would be largely incapacitated now instead of having a bit under 30% of his physical stats left.
But even with his strength reduced by such a large percentage, he still hit harder than the regular troops could handle. Every strike that connected broke bones, taking the trooper out of the fight. Duke stood facing the final two combatants grinning in anticipation of finishing this fight. They stood opposite him with grim resolve. They had never seen a single combatant take this many stun strikes and keep fighting effectively. Still, they had called for even more backup and were hoping they would get there soon.
Duke advanced on the pair slowly, measuring their responses and reading their body language – he could see that they were stalling. He stepped up his pace and the pair started wheeling to the side to put their backs to their own mechs. Duke wasn’t sure what they were planning but he fired up his DUNGEON SENSE to get an idea of what was going on around him.
He quickly noted that there were more ground troops coming, but these seemed oddly larger than the ones he had been fighting. It only took a second, but Duke concluded that they were coming in powered armor. That will escalate things and the mechs and ship are exchanging blows but it looks like that’s a stalemate unless Mira opens up with something truly heavy. But what the hell is that?
Duke focused on three massive mechs charging across the hangar towards the fight. They were bipedal and each was slightly different as if they were built for different purposes. They each stood about two meters taller than the quadrupeds but seemed more heavily armed and armored. That’s too many reinforcements. I’m going to have to tell Mira to bolt. With that many mechs and the armored troopers they will crack the ship’s shields, or I’ll have to reveal Abilities. Dammit! Duke brought the jewel of whispers up to his mouth to tell her to leave but was interrupted.
He dodged a swing of a stun stick as the pair of troopers re-engaged thinking he was too distracted by the sound of the approaching mechs. Given the approaching armored troopers, Duke decided that he didn’t have time to play around with the remaining normal troopers. He used his FLIGHT to give himself the extra boost of speed needed since his Agility was currently sitting below 300. He slammed the pair of troopers into the mech’s shields knocking them unconscious with the impact.
Duke turned his attention to the trio of mechs approaching quickly. They opened fire before he could even let the bodies of the two troopers fall to the floor. Duke braced himself for the impacts against the ship’s shields. Instead, he was nearly knocked from his feet as the blasts made the shield he was leaning against shudder.
Duke looked more closely at the approaching mechs as they were now in his line of sight and quickly noticed they all had the same emblem emblazoned on their chests. It was a large shield with a pair of gleaming tusks – steel tusks! So, they didn’t bolt, they went to get their mechs and help out. That gets them a big +1 in my book. Even outnumbered, they are not hesitating to engage. Time to shift things in our favor before the powered armor troopers get here. We have a minute at most!
Duke activated his rarely used MANA DRAIN Ability, draining the collective shield’s power as shot after shot impacted on it. He hadn’t used the Ability in a long time and suddenly came to a realization that it was one of the few that used his Psyche modifier as a multiplier of its effect. His multiplier that was sitting over 7,000! It took less than a second to drain a million Mana from the shields. Duke was sure that the cores powering the mechs had more Mana than that at their disposal but the sudden drain caused the shields to flicker and briefly fail.
That brief failure was more than enough for the combined fire of the ship’s anti-personnel weapons and the three mech’s full weapons to tear deeply into the lead quadruped’s armor, causing runescripts to fail and shut the mech down. The shield snapped back into place, pushing Duke away from the remaining mechs. He immediately began draining the Mana from the shield again as impacts made it shudder. It collapsed again allowing fire to rain down on the other of the two original mechs, shutting it down quickly.
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The remaining mechs shifted their fire to the trio of Iron Tusk mechs but the quadrupeds’ overly defensive nature showed in their ineffective fire as Duke collapsed their shielding for a third time. It took no more than ten seconds to render the quadrupeds ineffective.
Decidedly not wanting to wait for the reinforcements to arrive, Duke started running towards the ship. He used the Jewel of Whispers to tell Mira to open the doors and let down the ramp. He definitely did not whisper as his DUNGEON SENSE picked up more mechs moving into the area.
“Steel Tusks, follow me!” Duke shouted as he leapt onto the lowering ramp. Halfway to the lip of the lowering ramp, Duke realized his jump was going to fall short and activated his FLIGHT to finish the leap making it look like a videogame “double jump”. He smiled at the thought and rode the ramp down. The Steel Tusks’ mechs were standing on the deck, waiting for the ramp to come down. Duke waved them on and pointed them towards the mech mounts on his left.
Duke dashed over to the communications panel and shouted to the bridge, “Close us up and get us the hell out of here. There are more mechs and armored suits on the way. This is no longer a friendly place for us.”
“What part of people shooting at us seemed friendly?”
“Funny, Mira. Just get us out of here before it gets any worse!” Duke watched as the ramp began closing and the trio of mechs locked into their brackets. He could see the approaching mechs and armored suits in his senses and saw that the numbers were growing. There were at least ten mechs and thirty armored suits swiftly heading for their hangar.
He opened up the comms panel again, “I don’t mean to rush you or anything, but we have a small army headed for the hangar.”
“I’m moving as fast as I can!” She apparently kept the channel open as she rapidly ran down the preflight checklist. “Ramp closing. Six seconds. Umbilicals detached. Engines warming from cold start. Twenty seconds. Mana capacity at 37%.” Duke didn’t hear any more as he charged to the Mana stones and poured his Mana in as fast as he dared. Distantly, he heard the sound of the ramp closing in place.
His senses told him that the Syndicate forces would be in their hangar in about ten seconds and his internal clock told him that the engines would not be warmed up until five seconds after that. He reached over to the comms panel and opened a channel to the bridge, “Looks like we will have a five second overlap between when the engines are warmed up and when they can open fire on us. Are the shields going to be able to hold?”
“Only if we have enough of a Mana charge. We are down to…62%? Are you charging the stones, Duke.”
“You bet your ass, I am.”
“Thank the gods. Keep that up and we might have a chance.”
“How long will it take to get somewhere we can jump out of this area?”
“The stardrive won’t engage until we are out of the gravity well of this planet. I mean, it’s good that we are leaving from orbit already, but it could take us a while to get clear.”
“OK, I’ll keep charging-“ Duke’s response was cut off as the ship was rocked by dozens of impacts on its shields. Duke could see the Mana capacity falling before his eyes despite the Mana he was pouring in, it was being used up faster than he could safely restore. The reading was down to 52% and still falling despite Duke’s efforts. He could feel that if he pushed his Mana in any faster, it would damage the cores.
The ship rocked again as the Mana level dropped to 31%. Duke kept his concentration, pouring Mana into the cores as the levels continued to drop. The ship lurched as the Mana level dropped to 19%. The sensation of motion became constant as the hum of the engines peaked. The ship was moving at last. A final salvo as they left the hangar brought the Mana levels down to 7%. Duke kept pouring his Mana into the cores, finally increasing the Mana level.
As Duke relaxed slightly, bringing the Mana level back to 23%, the comms announced all over the ship. “Attention everyone. We are going to have some unfriendly company real soon. If anyone has any ideas on how to hold off a trio of heavy cruisers and a dreadnaught, go ahead and tell me. Because that’s what waiting for us out here.”
Duke cursed even as he got the Mana stores up to 46%. He didn’t know enough about the capabilities of this ship or any of the other ships involved. He remained silent as he focused on filling the Mana cores.
A voice that he didn’t recognize at first spoke up, “Make a lens jump.” Duke realized that it was Gro’nok speaking right before the response came in over comms.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? We could wind up in the middle of a star!”
“We could also wind up on the other side of this solar system. But either way, how else are we going to survive all the guns pointed at us. The minute we are clear of the line of sight to the station, they are going to pound us to microdust.”
“Dammit! I just got this ship paid off and fully repaired!”
Duke suppressed a chuckle at Mira’s outburst as he watched the Mana level reach 61%. He chimed in, “Give me another full minute and I can have our Mana levels back to full.”
“Understood. Slowing down our outbound to give you time and to…fuck! Give me time to prepare for a lens jump.”
Duke cut back in, “While we are chatting for the next minute, can anyone explain what the hell is a lens jump?”
“I’ve got this, Captain. You continue your preparations.” Gro’nok joined Duke in the Mana core room and started his explanation, “OK, Duke, do you know how the stardrive works?”
“Not really, but I get the impression that it takes us through another dimension.”
“Yep, that’s pretty much it. It works through very specialized spatial magic that needs what is called flat space to work right.”
“Flat space. Got it. Is that space where there are no major gravity fields in play?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what it is. The gravity fields of large objects like planets can screw up the spatial magic of the stardrive, sending us way off course, even into unknown dimensions. That’s why it’s so dangerous to jump in a gravity field. The gravity lens distorts everything.”
“So, we’re going to do it anyway?”
“It’s our only chance to get out of this bullshit situation.”
“Why didn’t Captain Mira come up with this idea?”
“I have no doubt that she did but it’s one hell of a risk. No one takes this chance if they have any other option.”
“So, we’re probably fucked if we do it and definitely fucked if we don’t.”
“That’s pretty much it. And just how much Mana do you have? “ He was watching the Mana level of the cores steadily rise as Duke filled them.
Duke grinned. “I have a trick or two still up my sleeve but I have a lot of Mana to work with. And there we go. All topped off.” Duke called back to the bridge, “Mana’s topped off. I’m headed up to the bridge.”
“Thank you, Duke. Might as well bring everyone else along with you. We have enough chairs for all seven of us up here. And everyone’s going to want a front-seat view of this insane move.”
Shortly later, all were seated and ready. “They are repositioning so they can hit us without having the station in the line of effect. We’re about out of time. Anyone have any better ideas than this? Last chance to speak up before I throw the switch.” Mira looked around at the seven of them seeing nothing but apprehension.
“Alright. They will be moving into the earliest firing position in seven seconds. I’m going to wait until they fire before making the jump. If everything goes right, it will look like they vaporized the ship and will stop any attempt at pursuit.”
“Can the shields take that kind of hit?” Aurelia asked, completely out of her depth and trying her best to keep it together.
“We’ll find out, won’t we?” Lya joked.
Duke watched the countdown carefully, preparing his own move to coincide with the end of the countdown.
“Three…” Everyone gripped something to brace, not that any of them thought it would help – it was pure instinct.
“Two…” Duke concentrated and prepared himself.
“One…” Duke flexed his Ability and the captured shuttle appeared in front of the Iron Reaver an instant before the dreadnaught opened fire and Mira initiated the stardrive.