Ok,” Caeden stretched. “Now we can get to the fun part.”
The revolution flagship had been cleared of all its residents. They’d been shifted at a frankly absurd speed over to the Forge and held until further notice. Caeden had no idea what exactly he was going to do with them, but that wasn’t the current issue. Right now, he was moving a ship.
From his position atop the flagship, Caeden had a good overview of the aerial battlefield unfolding. It had been over a day since he and his friends had last seen the outside, and the Bladeborne hadn’t been idle. Their efforts had been stymied briefly, but Caeden’s team charging up to the flagship and breaking through disrupted everything the Revolution was doing to stop them.
That disruption was exacerbated by the fact that the flagship was meant to stabilize and support the armada as a whole. Something it struggled to do once they started dismantling it from the inside. When the lights went out, everything fell apart. The flagship wasn’t just a repair station and carrier laden with support vessels, it was also the communications hub for the Revolution fleet. When its lights went out, the etherships stopped being able to communicate.
Anarchy overtook the air as ships independently did their best to avoid being dragged out of the sky by Bladeborne weapons. Those efforts led to many collisions now that their communication was cut. It didn’t take long for the Bladeborne to capitalize on the gaps rapidly forming in the armada’s defenses.
Caeden couldn’t help but feel proud looking out over the significantly emptier sky. The number of etherships in the air had been reduced by at least two thirds, and those that remained were a mess. Even now, more and more were pulled down as coordinated harpoons from the Bladeborne chased ships into inescapable positions.
The most important part for him was that the area around the flagship was basically empty. They’d taken great efforts to prevent a wholesale slaughter on either side of this battle. While the unshrouded on the island had been killed in appalling numbers during the initial bombardment, the shrouded and revolutionaries had managed to retain most of their numbers despite the desolation the island and armada had suffered.
Unfortunately, Caeden’s understanding of historical accounts lined up with that. Noncombatants in combat zones died at much higher rates than the actual fighters. Most of that was down to the fact that civilians weren’t equipped for battle.
Every shrouded was protected from all but the most lethal damage by their shroud. Some dealt with damage better than others, but it was a fact that any shrouded could survive the kinds of damage that would instantly kill an unshrouded. More than that, all shrouded were fighters on some level. Every nation on the Starry Sea required all shrouded to serve military time. That meant that every last shrouded on the island had received some kind of combat training, no matter how limited.
On the other side, the revolutionaries were the attackers, ambushing the island and attacking from a position of almost insurmountable advantage. Added to that, Caeden’s team had been essentially the only people to mount an appreciable counteroffensive. And they were doing their best to avoid casualties.
The revolutionaries were all equipped with advanced ethertech and infused armor of one kind of another. That meant any rough treatment they suffered when their ships were taken down, first by Lily and Asherta and then by the Bladeborne, was far less likely to kill or even injure them.
On some level, Caeden was overwhelmingly glad that he’d learned about the Founder from Erik’s brother. If he hadn’t he wasn’t sure exactly how he’d deal with the anger and disgust he felt every time he thought about how many people had died here. At least with the Founder, he had a callous monster of a person to pin all those feelings to.
Of course, that didn’t entirely excuse the revolutionaries. They might have been lied to, but Caeden rejected any idea that they didn’t know what the consequences of their actions would be. Not entirely. There would be a reckoning. And one for the shrouded too. After this assault, Caeden was starting to get some ideas.
This would not happen again. And Caeden was finally in a position to actually back up that thought.
But in the meantime, he needed to deal with a warmongering sociopath and stop said sociopath from messing with things that could end up getting their universe obliterated to make a nigh-omnipotent scientist’s experiment less complicated.
The first step to that was moving this flagship out from over the island below.
Lifting both hands, Caeden allowed the motion to guide his control over Blade Forge, pulling two massive, oversized Entrance Blades from the Forge itself. Father had been working on these ever since they decided to drop the engine room into the Forge at the first opportunity. That would require an Entrance Blade larger than they’d ever used before, and that came with complications.
Despite the difficulty with upscaling a complicated piece of ethertech so massively, Father and a team of Bladeborne had managed it. Now, it would serve another purpose.
Surging from the swirling molten energy that filled the circular blade, the tips of swords the size of buildings emerged. These were, in fact, actual buildings in the forge. Forged from the sacrifice of an aged Bladeborne, they were somewhere between living and sleeping, semi-conscious superstructures that had given themselves over to act as shelter for their brethren.
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Despite what they lost in the process, they gained immortal, nigh-indestructible bodies and immense power in exchange. Father had found that a surge of power supplied to one of these half-living Ancestor Blades could revive their sleeping spirits for a time, allowing them to both leave the Forge and act outside its bounds.
They trailed thick bands of plasmic energy as they crossed the space between the Entrance Blade and the flagship. Every moment their speed and power grew. Caeden could feel, through his bond with all his Forge creations, their spirits surging back to wakefulness, filled with purpose and intent. Even after eons of sleep, they had not lost anything of themselves, only growing more powerful and resolute with time.
Back when the very first of his children had offered to undergo this transformation to house himself and the forge he used to birth Bladeborne, Caeden had feared that they might come to regret it. That their sleeping spirit would have rather passed on instead of being bound to a form they could barely control.
He could not begin to explain the relief he felt when he sensed not an ounce of regret within these two. At the very least, they had felt that every sleeping moment was worth it. Their spirits blazed with power, so potent that they were practically a physical presence. Their pride and certainty in what they had done humbled him.
“Callum, Zxavis, you honor me and yourselves in rising to my call. Your slumber has housed over ten thousand of your brethren in peace in security. Know that we remember your names.” Caeden felt the words, as if compelled from him, surge through his connection to the two Ancestor Blades.
“Father, we yet serve. No time shall confine us. Call our names, and we come.” Both responded in unison. There was a depth to them that surpassed anything Caeden had ever felt.
“Damn,” Cat, standing off to the side, spoke up. “What did you do, Cae? Those are hands down the strongest souls I’ve ever seen. I can’t even look at them, they shine so bright.”
“I’ve got good kids.” Caeden shrugged, smiling widely.
The Ancestor Blades slammed into the empty husk of the flagship. Everyone standing on top of it didn’t need to brace as black chains held them in place. Instead, they rode the ship as it was inexorably shoved back. The edges of the Ancestor Blades shimmered, coated in a material that repelled the polymer of the flagship’s hull. Instead of slicing through the ship, they pushed.
Perhaps, if it had been powered and fully staffed, the flagship could have resisted the Ancestor Blades. Caeden doubted it. If the energy shield was active, or their weapons operational, they could have fought back. Maybe. Caeden wouldn’t have risked two of his children that had sacrificed so much already, but he didn’t think the flagship could have stopped them regardless.
In its current state, the only thing holding the Ancestor Blades back was inertia. As they overcame the weight of the truly ginormous ethership, the vessel began to pick up speed. At first slowly, then faster and faster, it was pushed out over the Starry Sea proper.
And not a moment too soon. Even now, Caeden could feel the strength within the Ancestor Blades fading. They weren’t meant to hold the power Father had given them, and their time awake had passed. With the last of their remaining wakefulness, they slipped into the Entrance Blades Caeden placed behind them.
And now, the flagship was fully over the Starry Sea.
“That worked even better than I’d hoped.”
Erik shook his head. “I feel like I should be more surprised by you pulling two building sized swords that are alive and having them move a ship the size of an island, but I’m not.”
Lily, Cat, Dave, and Asherta nodded along.
“Oh, you guys are no fun.” Caeden waved them off. Clapping his hands, he refocused on the ship beneath them. After all, they weren’t done. The flight connector was scheduled to be cut in under an hour, and Caeden had a bunch of ship in between him and the engine room he was supposed to be dropping into the Forge.
With a flex of will, Caeden dismissed his Incarnation. A moment later, hundred-foot-long saws began to form all around him. These were made of a metallic crystal that was resistant to energy absorption and nearly invulnerable to explosive shock. Caeden and Father worked together to design them specifically for use in cutting apart large sections of the flagship.
He went to work, with his friends helping. Asherta mostly watched, only lending a hand on occasion. Mainly it was Erik, pulling up sections of hull that Caeden cut out, and Lily, flying them out over the Starry Sea and dropping them, that sped up his work.
The saws cut rapidly, and Erik peeled back sections of hull hundreds of feet long at a time. It didn’t take long to strip away large portions of the exterior. And this was where the actions of the Bladeborne helped even more. They hadn’t just been collecting the revolutionaries, they’d also been disconnecting everything they could within the flagship. Entire segments were uncoupled from each other. Really, the only thing holding the ship together at that point was the hull.
With said hull being peeled off in chunks, the untethered segments within had nothing holding them in place. They fell into the Starry Sea one after another. In less than an hour, half the flagship had been stripped and pulled apart, leaving a large portion of the engine room exposed.
Several more key points were cut, and now the team was simply waiting for the flight connector to sever. At that point, the chains tying the engine room to a metallic cloud and several giant swords would pull the impenetrable vault away from the remaining half of the vessel that had contained it.
Everything was in place and ready to go.
{}
“Oh, well this is just unfortunate. I’m nearly there, but they’ve managed to stop the process entirely by accident. What to do, what to do?” The Etherman flew about, checking the few active CVs remaining. “What’s this now? It seems I’ve been spared from any further complications. How convenient.”
Both the machine-man and his captive watched the view from one of the CVs. It showed shrouded from all over the city, now freed from the influence of the suppression field, mopping up the last few remaining Revolution ships. But they didn’t stop there. They charged for their own etherships, boarding in great numbers.
And flying toward the barely flying husk of the flagship.
“This is most convenient indeed.”