The table in the briefing room looked.. rough. There were visible indentations and dents where people unused to their strength had warped and twisted it by smacking the surface, or gripping it just a bit too hard.

As Captain Moreau studied the table; still functioning, thankfully, the holographic display still showing the starmap of the regions the Jeanne was currently passing through, en route to the Imperial Capital; RC stepped in, her usual exuberant self. When she entered, he blinked, staring for a moment; the engineer had a visible line down the side of her face, what appeared to be stitches that ran all the way to the neck-line of her uniform.

Moreau rose fully upright. "Everything going well, miss Chambers? You appear to have been injured."

She reached up and touched her cheek for a moment.. and smiled. "Ahh, nothing serious, sir. Paul was simply a bit too enthusiastic for his new strength."

He thought for a moment through the roster of crewmen and marines. "... Dumas hurt you? What was the situation? Do you have a recording? Obviously we're not a navy ship, so there won't be a court-martial, but we have a brig sufficient for even our strongest marines til we get back to earth."

She shrugged. "I can get you a video if you'd like, but I'd need to ask him first. He's a bit less... open, and the thing I accidentally smacked against was the table beside his bed. Quite a bit of blood, but no real damage; strictly skin deep, as it were."

Moreau gave a slow nod. "..Ahh. Purely accidental?"

"Purely accidental. Heat of the moment sort of thing."

As Eyeball walked in, wearing an immaculate new helmet the same shiny chrome he always went with for the designs to go with the sleek black armor, he nodded at the two, settling into his own seat at the table, and glancing at RC. "So that was why we had a distraught marine standing outside sickbay. It sounded like he was afraid he'd killed you."

RC laughed, and shrugged. "What can I say, I'm made of sturdy stuff. A few stitches, a bandage, and back to it. Still, it's good for him to learn to be cautious for his next girlfriend. She might not be so tough."

As the captain tried not to imagine any of what might have happened to cause the injury, Spike and Kezia both entered, the duo quietly chatting about something until they entered the door; and took their seats. Moreau glanced around. "Who else is in for this meeting?"

Eyeball sighed. "Ripper. He's on his way, but got sidetracked in the hallway by something. So. We've still got time to fabricate equipment, plan things out before arrival. I've been reviewing our assets and capabilities, going over the data with Kezia, and made a few realizations. I feel like we should have one last discussion about our default plan, and the backup, before we go in."

As Ripper simply popped into existence in the room, pulling his chair away to have a seat, Moreau blinked; the man had switched to a mohawk at some point in the past few days. "...Well then. We're all here. Are we going over the plan again? I thought we were pretty settled."

Eyeball chuckled. "Well. Kezia here had mentioned a while back that her whole family, they can't have the life drained out of them. Whether its other folks with powers, or something like a Ambrosia seed, it just doesn't work on them. And I'd been acting as if that was normal, as if it would just be a normal feature of folks with life-draining powers, that it couldn't work on them."

Ripper frowned. "Isn't it? I mean... there's tons of people with fire powers that are fire-proof, or at the very least, fire resistant. Acid-spitting folks can usually resist acid, its like..."

"Sort-of. Honestly, most mutants who manifest fire powers don't have any fire resistance, more than a normal person. And they usually end up dead. Its the ones who survive long enough to have kids that have both. But."

Eyeball tapped a button. Four figures appeared. One wearing a grey suit of body-armor with a horned mask and a black triangle on the vest. One wearing a skull mask and a long brown jacket. A simple, if beautiful, plant with red-gold flowers. The last, the Emperor.

"So, four examples here. First, Kezia's grandfather, the shadow master. Immune to Ambrosia seeds, immune to his kin's powers, and immune to the Lord of Death's powers."

Ripper looked confused as he toyed with his hair. "Ambrosia seeds? What do those do? I thought Ambrosia made you immortal?"

"..The seeds drain life from anything around them. If they drain enough, they sprout into a tree... which expands its roots, devouring all in its path, until it grows fruit. Hera and Vano once talked about weaponizing the seeds, but it went nowhere."

"Ooof. Killer plants. Got it."

"Annnyway. The Lord of Death wasn't even slightly resistant to Vano's power. Ambrosia... normally avoids its own, spreading in other directions, but if enclosed, the plants will eat each other, life-draining works fine on them. And finally... the Rikk. "

The image of the Emperor, the giant obsidian squid, grew larger. "One of whom.... consumed the life force of the rest of his species to get strong enough to defeat his enemies, and then go on his galactic mass-murder spree. We know they can be eaten... because they ate each other. This last one is just the one who ate the fastest."

Kezia looked at the menacing image for a moment. "So... you're saying that he lacks the immunity my family has."

"Exactly. You can steal his life force... but he can't steal yours. If you could survive long enough to get even vaguely close to equal with him... victory would be inevitable."

As she studied the image, she sighed. "That's... he's been devouring entire worlds for hundreds of thousands of years. If it even works, it might take days, weeks, months... But..."

Eyeball looked at her, smiling. "But it might work."

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"I suppose so."

"Okay then. So here's the plan... assuming the Emperor isn't waiting for us."

The hologram showed an image of a solar system, clouded with lights. "We estimate there are millions of ships in the system at any given time. We launch Spike along our projected trajectory; whatever fleet comes to meet us dies when he turns into a singularity; hopefully we can do some serious damage that way, as some of the bigger, slower ships in the enemy fleet can actually damage the Jeanne in return; kill us, eventually."

The hologram shifted, showing an image of a world; covered with lights, a vibrant bronze-silver blend; it was no Coruscant, but over eighty percent of the planet was covered with buildings. "The Capital has a series of palatial estates. The homes of the wealthy elite; enormous, vibrant parks. Minimal defenses. We land the Jeanne in someone's yard. Start the ritual, with most of the runes already on the deck plates, ready to go, our marines preventing the locals from interfering until its too late..."

The hologram showed the lights going out on the planet; and the Jeanne rising up. "Then... we rise back into orbit. The ritual should have not only dramatically augmented Kezia, but the ship as well. We call out the Emperor, and start hunting down ships, stations, infrastructure, til he shows."

The squid appeared on the diagram, approaching the planet. "When he does... we nail him with a neutronium slug full of anti-matter, and send Kezia and Spike out to meet him. Kezia starts to drain him. Spike goes all black-hole and punches him, while the Jeanne keeps firing to distract. Me and Ripper hop out... and I guide Ripper in."

Narrow lines are shown moving from the Jeanne to the squid. "I use my precognition, and give Ripper a stopwatch... and launch him. At just the right moment, Spike goes back to normal, Ripper emerges inside the Emperor's brain, and starts going to town, tearing it to shreds, hopping in and out of the ethereal. Me, Kezia, and Spike work to make sure he doesn't regenerate back until Ripper has the job done."

Eyeball glanced around. "That's plan A. We know plan B; mostly just plan A but without visiting the capital and enhancing Kezia and the Jeanne to hell and back, so the odds are a bit worse. Plan C..."

He turns to Kezia. "If Ripper dies, the only viable solution is you. You need to get the hell out of there and eat Imperial worlds until you can murder the Emperor in a fair fight, or he's so afraid of you he runs. So... yeah. Ripper, try not to die."

***

Eyeball was mildly disconcerted at RC's state when he entered the engineering compartment a few hours later; visibly sweaty, hair disheveled, the uniform unzipped halfway to her belly with her bra visible; though she was zipping herself up as he entered, and Rex was studiously ignoring Eyeball's entry at another station.

"... Rex, mind giving us the room?"

RC laughed, and made a gesture. A soft hiss sound; and a transparent wall emerged from the floor. All sound was abruptly cut out. Rex waved, and returned to his own console.

Eyeball turned to keep Rex at his back for the moment. "So. Is it just me, or are all of your cyborgs, mostly designed to appear as attractive women of various types, acting like the lady Dark is their first spring break away from their parents as teenage girls?"

"I'm surprised you weren't aware of my purpose immediately. Most of the crew you chose for this job were men; English-speaking French naval personnel who knew each other and trusted their captain, your own engineering team, and a handful of hand-picked metahuman operators. It's a calculated morale-boosting situation. In addition, each of my selves is its own individual, committed to the overall objectives but developing its own tastes and personality. Also, I have determined that as we adapt more organic components, and allow more individual growth, we grow closer to the tastes of the woman we were based on, and communication becomes less data-sharing and more actual conversation."

He would almost rub his forehead, but he caught himself half-way; this new helmet was durable as hell, but he might still break it. "You crewed my ship with sex-bots to boost morale? Actually, no. They're fully-capable engineers. Better than almost any human engineer, in fact. So lets forget about all of that. In the event the Empire makes a move on earth without the Emperor, is Ascension in a good position to support?"

"Statistically likely. How much information do you request?" The question was... odd.

"Mostly just capacity for intervention. I highly doubt anyone is spying on us right now, but there's still a slim chance someone might hear us, or even be able to read my mind later, so nothing that might give away location."

"At last count, Ascension had in excess of ten million individual combat units. We have optimized our warships based on the ideal scale of railgun and plasma weapons for combat operations to a roughly ninety-one meter long, roughly cylindrical structure, and have in excess of two hundred of these. We can immediately intervene to deal with most smaller incursions better than existing human space defenses, however, we will not be able to deal with disrupters effectively until the Cobalt-Iron arrives and relays shielding plans. It will take roughly six hours from the initial relay of plans for onboard fabricators to have our ships prepared."

Eyeball nodded. "Good, good. Can you get the anti-disrupter effect on your infantry-scale units?"

RC went virtually dead for a moment. Her normally animated, happy gestures frozen, as if she were on pause. Then... she went right back to normal. "I have already determined how to bypass the effect for infantry, though it is less than ideal. The shields are too bulky to work."

"How is it less than ideal?"

"Do you understand how the Disrupters work?" RC tilted her head; and tapped a button on the console beside them. A hologram of a Jotun warship appeared; with a roughly spherical area around it highlighted in orange.

"How it's produced, no. Function, yes. They alter reality in subtle, seemingly random ways that cause problems for computer systems and even organics that are too... organized. Organic brains are, for the most part, already made to deal with that sort of random fluctuations, so we can handle it; in fact, aside from myself and a handful of folks who have ESP, I don't know anyone who even notices the difference."

RC nodded. "Fundamentally accurate. The units that can work through disrupters are... imprecise. They can miss shots. Mis-identify targets. Rather than make simple, direct, logical choices, they make approximations, and do repeated iterations of that to approach reasonable probability. Regardless."

The hologram changed. A simple cylinder appeared. "Harkness sent me the specifications you requested. Fabrication has begun. I must warn you; there is a level of density at which this design will fail as well; and this design weighs over one hundred and seven kilograms. Should the additional life force you've been imbued with fade, it will render you virtually helpless. I strongly suspect that you arranged its acquisition deliberately, knowing that it would increase how long you could survive fighting the Emperor at close quarters."

"I'll burn that bridge if I get there. Though.... that being the case, I would appreciate it if you gave it an emergency release, and aperture controls I can work without my helmet. As well as any other augmentations you can make; this is going to be the most serious fight we'll ever be involved in."

RC glanced behind Eyeball. "Is this concealed from the engineer Rex?"

"Of course not."

The transparent divider receded, Rex glancing over with amusement. "So what's the big secret? I thought we were all in this together?"

Eyeball turned to face Rex. "Well. Right now, we're talking about designs for an implanted weapon and extradimensional space. What we were talking about before was the rampant promiscuity of not just engineer Chambers, but seemingly the entire crew, and what might be causing it. Do you have any speculation about that?"

Rex blinked. "Ahhhh.... So. You're super-strong and dense now, like me, right? Have you ever considered getting an additional limb grafted on? I suspect that, as strong as you are now, you could accommodate some pseudo-neutronium-tipped spikes, maybe railgun-launched or even as blades at the end of a tail or tendril configuration. I'm currently working on one like that for myself, though it won't see much use back on earth."