Chapter Thirty-Three - Fundamental

The fundamental forces of the universe are only inviolable to a point.

To the layman, they were absolutes.

To Ivil, they were a suggestion.

So she suggested to time that it take a moment to slow down a little, and the world, with a great groan from creation itself, ground itself to a temporary halt.

Bullets slowed until they were crawling forwards, screams were caught in the air and she could make out minute twitches as the pirates in the command centre tried to lock eyes on her.

The first step was reducing the threats pointed her way, which meant targeting those pirates who had guns, as well as those three turrets.

The easiest way to do both at once was to simply rip the turrets from the ground and fling them telekinetically across the room.

Pirates started to scream as they were bowled over by flying machinery. Ivil split her attention for a fraction of a millisecond, ensuring that those who were struck received a disproportionate amount of damage from the blow.

Next was identifying smaller threats. Those that had the potential to be dangerous but weren't yet pointed her way.

She stretched her senses out, and when she found guns, they were shredded apart. She wasn't gentle about it. Pirates with holstered handguns suddenly had their sides ripped into as the weapons tucked away in their sheaths twisted apart. Guns exploded off of counters and from wall mounts, little parts flung across the room with violent force.

Ivil stepped forwards, the world still moving at a crawl around her. The motion was quick enough, in real-time, that it created a small shockwave that she had to work to negate.

The command room and the pirates within had well and truly been caught with their pants down. Ivil decided that all she needed to do now was add to the chaos a little. A hard wave of her arm sent a burst of wind pushing ahead, strong enough to toss people and loose objects across the room.

Ivil snapped a few more necks, for good measure, then she loosened her grip over time.

To her perception, the world suddenly leapt forwards, time restoring itself like a rubber band snapping. One moment things were caught in blossoming explosions, bodies were only starting to be launched across the room, and the pirates were on the cusp of great aggression.

In the next moment, chaos reigned and bodies were flung across the gravity-less space, crashing against walls even as several explosions sent rains of shrapnel across the room, embedding bits of metal into consoles and computers.

"Well, shit," Missy said as she took in the room from the partial cover provided by the door.

The only living pirates were in a shape where they were probably wishing they weren't. Though, there were a few that had hidden behind consoles and machines and who were still cowering. Ivil took note of them, but as long as they weren't reaching for weapons, they weren't worth much of her attention.

"It's safe," Ivil said.

"I bet," Missy muttered. She kicked into the room, floating across towards the upper tier. She seemed to be relaxing, until she snapped around and fired at someone hiding behind a console. "You missed one," she said.

"My bad," Ivil replied. She hadn't. That person was harmless. But she wasn't going to devolve into an argument about her skills here and now. "Aurora, Twenty-Six, do you want to come in?"

"It's likely safer within," Aurora agreed. She stumbled into the room, magnetic boots awkwardly clinging to the floor. Twenty-Six followed, looking around as though she was expecting to be jumped at any moment.

Ivil escorted them up a set of stairs in the centre of the room and to the main command terminals. These were large machines, with seats that had harnesses for cybernetically enhanced people to control the entire station with their mind-interfaces. Still, the station had plenty of controls that could be inputted manually, and Twenty-Six gravitated towards those.

"There's a list of ships here," Twenty-Six said as she tapped a few screens. "Uh, I'm not getting much more than names and berths."

"No cameras?" Aurora asked.

Missy glanced back, but then refocused on the entrances into the command room. Ivil, in the meantime, was slowly choking out any of the crew that threatened to distract anyone with their incessant living.

"Lemme... okay, here," Twenty-Six said. She tapped something, and the screens at the front of the room, above the windows overlooking the arms of the station, switched from diagnostics and timetables to a grid of cameras overlooking the individual berths. There were twenty-six in all, and over half were occupied.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"I suppose we have to make a choice," Ivil said as she scanned through the options. The moment reminded her of ordering food at a cheap chain restaurant, almost. She pointed to one of the ships. "What about that one?"

Twenty-Six followed her pointing finger to the screen, then she glanced down. "Uh, that's the Sappho. It's a guided missile destroyer." She tried to pull up more, but there was very little. That was not unexpected. The station hardly needed that much information about a ship parked in one of its berths, even if it was wearing their faction's colours.

"I like it," Ivil said. "Shall we take it out for a spin?"

"It's a destroyer," Twenty-Six said. "It probably needs a full crew. Or at least... more than four people."

"It looks relatively modern," Aurora said. "It might actually only need a couple of people to operate. The problem will be getting the clearance to be accepted by the ship's AI. If it has one."

Pirates didn't often use full artificial intelligence in their ships. Nor did most sane navies. Martian ships had some virtual intelligences operating secondary systems, but they never had much access beyond that.

"We can at least give her a tour," Ivil said. "If needs must, we can conscript a crew."

"How will we disconnect from the station?" Twenty-Six asked. "I can release some of the main clamps from here. But some of them need to be released after the airlocks to the ships are retracted."

"It's a warship. It must have some turreted weapons," Ivil said. "If those aren't enough, then I'll put a bit of effort into freeing her myself. Release her as much as you can, Twenty-Six."

The mechanic hesitated, but just for a moment. She tapped a few commands, and Ivil saw the larger clamps holding the ship letting go and retracting back into the station. So did the fueling hoses and a few other links.

Then Twenty-Six switched to the commands for other ships and started to enter more commands. Ivil found her eyebrows rising as warnings popped up on the screen and Twenty-Six overrode them with casual disregard. "What are you doing?"

"The controls for the air and fuel refilling are all here. I'm locking some clamps, pumping the ships with fuel past their limits, and I'm emptying the station's air tanks into the ships past their capacity."

"Will we have a dozen exploding ships to deal with?" Missy asked.

"No. The system's not that poorly built. Just a lot of ships with a lot of fuel and air, locked into place. I can't really do more to sabotage them than that. This might pop a few safety valves, and if they didn't do regular maintenance, it might cause a leak, but that's it."

Twenty-Six finished inputting the same commands for every ship currently berthed, then she moved on to another screen.

"This, on the other hand, this is just mean," she said as she pulled out a small keyboard from below the console and started to tap something into it.

"What are you doing now?" Aurora asked. "Is that... the IFF registration?"

"It's how the station reads the ship's IFF. It can be changed. You're not supposed to be able to change it so easily. Otherwise you could trick others out in space. But these are pirates, and that's exactly the kind of stuff they'd do."

Ivil grinned. The change was small, but it would mean that the pirate's automated gunnery systems wouldn't know who was a friend and who was a foe. The default in those cases would be to hold fire until a human operator confirmed things.

The fact that their new IFF tags were all insults ranging from The Dirty Pirate to the Gormless Asshole was only more amusing. It was petty, but it was what Twenty-Six could do, so she was doing it as well as she could.

"We can't stick around here forever," Missy said. "They'll want their command room back."

"You're right," Ivil said. She snapped her fingers, and then noticed all of her companions wince at once. There was now a fist-sized hole blown into one of the walls. The suction of air being pulled into the void was enough to drag some loose materials towards the hole and make ears pop. Some free-flowing blood started to pool on its way towards the hole. "Let's head out."

***