Butch was... well. He was in a panic. Frightened? Worried? He'd spent the first hour or so hunting through the ship, destroying things, killing Jotun.. and when he ran out of targets, and the whole ship seemed to be empty... Well. He'd broken back out to the hull and seen the earth. Briefly. The whole bloody wreck was spinning like a top!
What was he supposed to do. Come on, Butch. Think. Eyeball would tell him to calm down, look over the situation, find the best approach. But...
Eyeball isn't who he needed right now. It was mom. Butch smiled. Perfect. Mom had told him exactly what to do, years ago! This exact situation is something she was deeply afraid of, and had long ago figured out... and told him when she realized he might be a Titan someday. He glanced at the display in his helmet. "Stopwatch. Start!" He watched the earth spin by and vanish. He waited, patiently... there we go. "Stop!" Okay. The ship was spinning... once every... minute and eight seconds. So...
He looked around for something heavy... and shrugged, simply grabbing a chunk of hull plating, and kicking the joint; dislodging it from the ship. The vessel's artificial gravity gave a sort of twinge; he might have pulled some conduits. Best be careful; the edge he was holding was already twisting and warping in his grip.
He looked back out at the stars... saw the earth again. "Stopwatch, start!"
He pulled the chunk of hull back, staring at space... and just before the timer hit 34 seconds, hurled it outward, as hard as he could.
The force slammed him into the inner hull... massively denting the metal; as the metal vanished from view in the distance. He took a deep breath. Okay. Keep doing it. Every few tosses, check your timing again. Maybe stand directly on an inner wall so the throw doesn't toss -you- as well.
She'd actually told him how to slow down and stop the spinning, but... that was years ago, and he couldn't remember anymore.
He looked around at the ship. It wasn't about the size, it was about the mass, and how fast he could throw it. So... Maybe next start with those broken hovertanks he'd destroyed? Hell, he could just pile up all the power-armored corpses and just toss out one every minute, that might help some.
The panic long since forgotten, Butch started going through the ship, grabbing anything heavy that wasn't nailed down, and pushing his steadily-growing pile towards the hole he'd made in the hull.
***
Eyeball stared at the console for a moment, thoughtfully. The Dragonslayer was fueled and ready for a truly ridiculous amount of flight time. But... every time it entered and left the atmosphere there would be heating and shrinking, warping, twisting. La Famiglia was currently still in operation; apparently the US navy had done most of the job of keeping the whole region clear and the island was extremely well-defended; but if they ran out of maintenance gear he'd have maybe two or three more trips to orbit before it all fell apart. And global supply chains were now garbage. He wasn't sure his fabricator had the sort of precise tolerances this equipment needed; he should ask Engineer.
On the plus side, he'd see it fall apart before it happened, and could bail out. Which... would leave him god knew where when it happened.
He tracked the spinning tumble of the Jotun warship's wreckage; there were still dozens of power sources onboard, but no active thrust; and dropped his acceleration; he would catch up to the ship in a few minutes now. His passive sensors weren't showing anything nearby; no big heat or power signals other than the ship itself; but like most of the other high-end gear aboard, they were based on Jotun tech; so if anyone could fool them, it would be the people most likely to be hiding.
He tried to imagine how Butcher would be feeling onboard... as the numbers fluctuated. It had just gone from 5 minutes to intercept to 4 minutes 33, in a single second.
Then 4 minutes 1. Something was taking solid chunks off of the time. He grimaced. Was Spike already out there, messing with gravity? He altered course, shifting a bit to the left, deccelerating; and saw... something. Something tiny, hurtling out into space. He was now down to 2 minutes to intercept... and he saw what he'd been waiting for.
"Initiate local call, Butcher. Hey, Butcher! Engineer asked me to pick you up, but apparently he underestimated you. You want a ride, or you want to bring the whole thing back to earth with you as a prize?"
Butch had been about to hurl another Jotun corpse out the gaping wound in the side of the ship; and stopped, letting it float there. "Oh. Hell yes!"
"One problem. I've got room for one passenger, but it'd be one normal-sized passenger, not some giant alien-crushing monster like you. Apparently you're a Titan now; you good with a tow?"
Butch glanced out the hole at the momentary flash of earth. "Oh. Sure, thats fine. How do you want to handle pickup?"
"If you've got the timing down, just jump out a second or two before you see earth, and I'll come pick you up." Eyeball frowned. His passive sensors were starting to act up. The... early warning sensors. Someone was activating an FTL drive in the system.
After a moment, he suddenly lost communication with Butch; and saw an object flying towards earth at a fairly good pace. Well, mostly towards earth. If it were about ten times as fast, it would skim the atmosphere and head for deep space; but at this speed, gravity would pull it in and he'd crash somewhere random. Probably the ocean. Some ocean.
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He accelerated to catch up; and fired off a grapple; the grapple smacking into... Butcher's shirt? Was the kid seriously not wearing armor? Just... some armored pants, at least. Butcher seemed to have a hold of the grapple, and was giving a thumbs-up gesture to Eyeball as he shook his head, laughing. "Initiate local call, Butcher. Seriously man? You took off into space wearing a tank top, helmet, and pants? Whats the deal?"
"I thought I was gonna be swimming after, wanted to minimize the weight. Didn't realize they'd panic and run for space the moment I was inside."
He adjusted course; time to get back home. His system was automatically adjusting thrust, sensing the weight it was pulling on the grapple. Fortunately, he'd built this thing with far more fuel than it needed, and the ability to haul some loot if he managed to shoot someone down in space. Butcher was... over nine hundred tons? The hell? "What are you carrying, kid? We're gonna make it, but you're gonna hit like a bomb."
"Oh. I've been trying to make Neutronium, like mom. Haven't quite made it, but figured what I had would help if I needed it."
Eyeball shook his head "Well. Keep it on, just in case. You might need it."... and stared at his sensors for a moment; and started to look around. "I think we're about to miss the show, kid. Someone's popping out of hyper any second now."
***
Spike stared at the countdown timer. He was wearing an armored space-suit; complete with thrusters and everything he'd need for a long vacuum jaunt; but incredibly compact so that none of the bits would be outside of the extremely narrow field his power created. For all the vast, incredibly power he had at his fingertips, it also came with limitations.
He couldn't vary it; all of his body increased by the same amount. No ultra-dense fists. It would only effect things extremely close to himself; a few inches, max. His suit was custom-built to maximize what would fit in those 2.893 inches; and as a result had a very... bulky look to it; especially the mittens.
He stared at the numbers. Three. Two. One. And... He reappeared outside Lunar orbit, supposedly in just the right position to assume orbit himself with the existing speed from the ship...
There. Hundreds of Jotun ships. One of them far too close, already opening fire. Not that it mattered. Spike closed his eyes and focused. Not maximum density. Didn't want to clench that invisible muscle as tight as possible. Just... most of the way. Just enough.
Light started to twist. The colors changed, became warped. The metal supports of the starship began to quiver. He could feel the ship shaking, as the first enemy attacks started to hit. The light became impossibly bright, for just a moment.
On hundreds of Jotun vessels, they felt the same thing. A strange twisting of light and gravity, pressure shifts, the ship creaking with strain, artificial gravity fighting for just a moment... then it all went black.
When the light returned... Spike was inside a dense, tightly packed shell; incredibly hot, far too dense; as soon as he started to press his way through, it began to warp and twist. He discovered a surprising amount of rock and semi-organic matter in the numerous layers as he pushed his way through; as he reached the surface, realizing that this thing was... massive. Kilometers thick. This... It was a smaller, more distant moon, now. Granted, one that was made of a sandwich of rock, hull metal, and Jotun corpses. He sighed as he looked it over; the surface was a rough, superheated sphere, and... the outer surface appeared to be all of that rock at this point. If not for his ridiculous durability, he and his suit would both be melting with the heat of this thing.
He glanced around... and turned to look at the moon; he was too close to see earth. He'd need to go around it, to get home. Ugh.
He dropped down to his knees; and leapt; hurtling off of the rock with just enough force to send it flying further away; dropping his density down to just a few grams, and turning the thrusters on; launching himself forward like a rocket. He hoped he could get comms with earth before landing. He'd probably pulled the moon slightly out of orbit; if they could run the numbers for him, he could fix things before dropping in to land. Or even better, they could tell him it was fine.
***
Aziz was... troubled. Much of his network had survived the Jotun well enough, so far. But... Clone had done terrible damage. A trusted ally, turned against him by alien technology as fast as a snap of the fingers. It was... an unusual experience. He was used to being on the other side of this sort of problem.
It was... insane. His power seemed... rational. He studied a person from a distance. A close relative up close, if he could, would make for an excellent primer beforehand. Determined how their mind worked. Sent electrical signals to the right parts of the brain to render someone docile... and with a steady conversation, rewired them. Learned what they knew. Made the right things seem good, the wrong ones bad. He was the best there was at it... he could make someone calm and ... except for whoever had done this.
He was stricken by an urge to talk to Clone. To see what could be learned from the creature inhabiting his body.
The walk down into the basement was brief. His guards; loyal followers of the Jihad; had been with him for years, and nodded as he passed.
He approached the room where Clone was restrained, and quietly opened it, stepping inside. A brief buzz of an alarm sounded as he opened it; Clone was a dangerous man. Should he somehow recover and get out of that bed, it was best the guards outside be ready. As he approached the bed and settled in to have a seat... he realized... something was different.
The alien... was gone. Clone, looking at him was... genuinely hurt. Confused. Weak, in a way that Aziz had never seen from the stoic, jovial russian. The normally vast, impenetrable mind that he'd always encountered was... simple. Limited. There were... Maybe a few dozen of him. Less.
Clone sighed. "Hey. Its me, again. Not going to be as big an asset as usual for a while. Most of my bodies are gone. And... I think the alien hijacked some of them. We need to track them down before they all go to ground. This... she knows most of what I do. I know most of what she does. But.... I think there's hundreds of her, and only dozens of me."
Aziz leaned back in the chair, studying him thoughtfully. "You..... get to start over. Only this time, you have allies to help you get things kicked off. Myself. The Titanslayer." He focused. This.... he could work with it. Clone's mind was still powerful, even as it was. But it might just be weak enough for Aziz to influence, now. "But if this alien cockroach has somehow kept permanent control of a few of them, even after her death... well. I'm going to need locations. And... I'll need to know what she knows."
***
Chain frowned down at the blood-soaked floor, and the uniformed body lying with dozens of stab-wounds in the center of the... nursery. Chain had wanted to clear out Clone. Use his memories to assume his identity with his allies. But... that wouldn't work. Too many had survived. Even worse...
Chain took in the dozens of nearly identical corpses. Clone was just.... better at this than Chain was. Without the artifact for support, all the power to back it up, Chain was second-class. Control of these bodies was... difficult. It had lost far too many of its new bodies taking out just a few of the old guard. It needed... to run. To hide. Steal as much as it could, and build its own stronghold, somewhere.
Perhaps it could assemble its own starship from old Jotun remnants when this war was over. Flee somewhere outside of the reach of the Emperor, the Jotun, and all of Chain's enemies... and allies. Finally be well and truly free.