Authors Corner: The meaty parts have arrived! It will come in a few increments but it has come!
Enjoy!
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Coming from the planet almost 1 day after Noah and his crew a large number of ships were rising together.
The number of ships dwarfed Noah’s crew five to one.
In the front are two mining ships which had been customized for combat as well as mining. Its plates were stronger and a laser gun was placed below the pilot’s seat.
Behind them was a large mining container ship which had the large cargo sealed and converted into a cargo ship. This cargo was further enhanced as a workshop and single ship hammer which perfectly fit small flights.
Around the cargo ship were four small single seat fighters that look like small shuttles and it accompanied the other ships covering the sides.
Now it wasn’t the number of ships that was shocking about this crew but what was inside the cargo.
Standing tall and strong while under constant construction of a four dwarves were two newbie Dwarf Fighter Robot's. To the side were four pairs of wings.
“Finally done!” One of the older dwarves said. This was a mechanic that was commissioned to make wings for crews that possessed dwarf fighters.
Unlike Boris with Noah there were two Dwarf mechanics here to make the project run faster. Also unlike him, these two didn’t make four wings for one robot but instead just two wings, similar to Noah’s, but without the lower body wings.
“It took quite a bit more than we expected, you boys should have started earlier.” The other dwarf said.
“We didn’t exactly know we how to start.” One of the crews dwarf said.
“Nah don’t worry about it.” The first mechanic replied laughing.
“Now, we need one of the elf boys in here, we will soon be reaching the base.” One of the dwarves said.
The others nod and soon call one of the crew.
Soon a tall black haired elf walked into the cargo.
“You need me? What for?” He asked a bit arrogantly.
“We will be entering the new base soon and it has a gravity generator so we need you to help hold the wings while we install them.” One of the dwarfs said.
“You can use Psi yourselves. Not to mention you two have the robot's, just use that to hold it, stop wasting my time.” The elf said and sneered before leaves.
The four dwarves were snarling in rage. If it wasn’t for the fact that the elf was vice captain then they wouldn’t have taken it. The man was arrogant to no end because he choose the high powered elf race.
With the high powered control of combat branches of psi he is the main attacker even in space but he is too cocky.
“That brat is too conceited. Can’t wait until he falls into a ditch and gets stranded there without psi.” One of the dwarf mechanics said.
“Come on, we can put at least one wing before reaching the base. We will use the robot if we have to. It might be faster.” The other mechanic said.
The other mechanic sneered and stomped his foot but that casual stomp made the entire ship rock violently.
“Fucking cocky bastard will see how weak he is soon. He can’t even compare to a dwarf fighter after we get our wings.” He said and walked over to the wing and grabbed it physically and moved it around like holding a lightweight stick.
Normally mechanics like to be careful with the wings since they are sensitive with many delicate parts but being insulted made him ignore that and made him do the quick method by using his physical strength to attach it.
Before they reached the base it was done but because of the elf the two crew’s dwarfs had to check for damages themselves since the two dwarves had already prepared to get off and only give the basic instructions of how to fly and leave.
A dwarf knows how to value friendships but also who how to hold a grudge and insulting one isn’t a good idea.
The four go to the front of the ship and sit down with the crew that wasn’t piloting but the two dwarfs just pull out a bottle of beer and chug it and look out the window.
Suddenly something zips pass and the dwarves look out.
“Oh, looks like Boris already helped out a newbie.” One of them said.
The other looks and sees a dwarf Fighter Robot flying in space at around 180 km/h passing by the group before diving into the asteroid field.
“Aye, kid go lucky and seems to be the only one in his crew.” The first one said.
“Stupid newbie won’t ever surpass our crew.” The conceited elf said as he heard the two dwarves.
“A brat like you that still smells like the milk from your moms tit shouldn’t talk about someone being a novice. You aren’t even above level 12 in any psi skills besides telekinesis and even then you can’t make yourself useful.” The first dwarf said.
The elf turned red in anger.
Boom!
“Stop this!” A deep voice said.
Everyone looked at the hulking figure sitting across from everyone. This was the captain, an ex-marine that had chosen the ogre race and has developed his stats frighteningly through military training program for several weeks.
“We will get nowhere insulting another crew. A smaller number can still be more powerful, don’t forget that!” The captain says. He knows far too well how few people can take out a large number. Assassins are an easy example since one that can sneak in can completely compromise the entire structure of a military compound.
The elf sat down and let out a “hmph”.
The captain sighed and shook his head and looked out the window as the fighter robot broke out of the cover of the asteroids. It stopped completely still in space. At that time he got a good look at the robot. With two wings on his back and on the waist with three extended extensions on all he was perfectly still and not even spinning.
A moment later the bottom wings turned and spun it around before tilting the legs up before it rocketed off.
“Why did it have four wings?” The captain asked the two dwarves.
“Some mechanics prefer four wings to two. We both work with two better than four. The two owner wings can even be considered training wheels but it makes movement like spinning and canceling inertia a bit easier but its consumption is far higher.” The first dwarf said in a bored tone.
“So you gave us a shittier model wing.” the elf sneered.
“Shut it pretty brat or else I will make your face a shittier model!” The first dwarf shouted.
“SHUT UP!” The captain roared to the elf then looked back at the two mechanics. “You don’t use four wings?” He asked.
“You need to completely rearrange the psionic nerves to handle the psi consumption and try to reduce the cost. We simply don’t know how to so we can’t set it up, simple as that.” The second dwarf said.
The captain nodded and quickly glared at the elf who had opened his mouth. He shut it seeing the glare.
As the crew arrived at the previous bandit base the large number of ships needed to be split and go to different ports.
After that the dwarves took the robot's out of the ship and the mechanics gave a really crude rundown and watched over them until they were flying and in space before leaving without batting an eye.
From there the two dwarves starting doing like Noah and training.
Soon after, the base became like a training ground because over 10 other dwarf fighters began to train their flying skills around the base.
Noah PoV
I stare at the huge, over 35 meter in diameter, asteroid floating before me. Beside me was the shuttle.
In my view were clear scans coming directly from Xeno, Alex’s AI.
“Is this thing really 70% water?” I asked looking at the rock in front of me.
“It is, the scans show in this area this one is not only containing water but it has enough size to not fragment in what exists of the atmosphere.” Alex replies.
“Does that atmosphere even offer resistance?” I asked looking towards the trap who was floating nearby.
“It does, if something enters impromptly it can cause some damage to the ship and maybe starting heating up the surface of a ship. For a huge rock it offers enough resistance to fragment.” Alex says.
“So how should we do this?” I asked and looked around noticing the casually flowing elongated rocks.
“Well you got a bulky sword, go get yourself some experience points.” Alex said with a smile and waved.
I shake my head as I pull the sword out. The problem we had to face was very simple, like we were warned there is space life. It looked like an elongated rock, more like a long shit than anything, but hidden inside are a kind of eel like creature. It possess razor sharp teeth and and enough jaw strength to eat mineral rock. They live near asteroids with water inside to get a source of water.
We came a few hours ago and met them, or in this case I met them, and at that time we were caught by surprise but these aren’t overly hard to kill. The problem is their mobility. These thing are as slippery as real fish.
It was strange, when Lisa saw them she said “No wonder Sir Alphenor wanted them. In space for us Elves they would make really good mounts!”
After that she begged me to look for the small ones. She went as far as to do puppy dog eyes. It… was really effective with her youthful doll like face.
It wasn’t hard to find them after I got a reading off the big ones. We found that a huge number of small floating rocks were the really small ones hidden in space.
We went to the base and purchased a reinforced glass case and I caught about twenty and Lisa went and broke their shells and began unlocking their psi gates.
The things are interesting because they are really like shrimp just more curled up. When we break the shells their tail sticks out a bit more.
Lisa says there is one psi gate in the head, two on the tail, two on either side near the head and two half way. We could more or less guess what each was and she unblocked them all for all the gates.
Back to my current problem, the fish are a pain to reach unless you sneak up, the problem is that they have good senses for moving things and are especially sensitive to psi. Lisa says she can sense around 20 open gates on the big ones.
Since I saw nothing else to do while holding the sword I aim my shot gun and load a kinetic round. I did change the shotgun to a true psi weapon but I made sure to keep the option to use kinetic rounds.
Loading one I aimed for the area with around three and fired.
The small explosion from the self oxidizing powders blasted launching dozens of glowing pellets that spread out hitting the three and cracking open the shell.
The cracked areas and exposed body began to freeze and the eels were in pain. If I compared it to anything I would say that these they were like slugs in salt at the moment. They live in their most unfavorable environment since simply breaking the shell can injure them, though not kill.
Still they were heavily restricted in their movement so I moved forward and slashed them up. I kept that up until there wasn’t a single one left besides the remaining bodies.
After a scan we found only the small ones.
I look at the asteroid then fly myself to the lower side to push it outside of the asteroid field.
“Ready to be like Hercules and left a huge bolder?” Lia asked jokingly.
“Yeah sure, then maybe I can throw it at your empty head and see if something appears.” I replied.
I looked at the psi gauge and saw I had plenty since it hasn’t been long since I had last recharged.
Taking a breath I put away the sword and put both hands on the rock and like I had trained I spread all the wings in the way I do to accelerate and look up and release one opening at a time getting a stronger thrust with each opening.
After the third the rock began to move the fourth made it pick up speed and fifth was pushing it enough to already be a threat but I stopped as the rock was already going on it’s own.
We follow slowly behind it and after half an hour the asteroid had completely left the asteroid field.
I flew to the top and countered the moving force stopping it.
“Alright, now where are we throwing this thing?” I asked both to the crew aboard the ship and to Lia.
It took a moment before two maps appeared. One showed the rotating map with red dots with a flashing red dot in empty space rotating around the planet then a second map showing our position as if looking from above.
Then the first map stopped and several dots closest to the red dot turned yellow with those to the left being far more numerous.
“You are the red dot on the first map, the yellow dots are where you can aim and hit from your current position. I suggest these.” Lia says making a few of the further ones on the left turn blue.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Pull up information about each area?!" I said.
From each blue and yellow dot and image and geological report for each area appeared.
First I removed less priority areas which were marked in small dots half the size of the priority ones. Then looking at the remaining ones I was left with, fault line location, aquifer locations and volcano locations.
"Fault line can be removed, it would cause worldwide panic and damage and this world already has stable fault lines that should still be moving." I said.
This was probably only requested as a means to transfer the seismic shockwave further to a large number of volcanoes along the line. After all this location is marked as low rank second priority while aquifer were ranked as priority.
"What do you want?" Lia asked.
I looked through it then asked, "Are there any aquifer near volcanoes?" I asked.
After a moment two images appeared, both were on the borderline areas where I could barely reach at this time and one would be lost as a target by the time the asteroid reached the planet.
I got rid of that one and looked at the other which would be dead center by the time the asteroid hit. The trajectory calculation would obviously be much simpler to do.
"Mark this as our target and calculate speed and trajectory!" I said.
"Got it!" Lia said.
Suddenly a soft voice came from the communicator talking from the ship.
"Noah, the two spare psi batteries are fully charged for when you run out. When you get low on power come back in and we will siphon the psi into your robot." Lisa said.
"Got it, keep them hooked up to the cable for when I return." I said.
The spare batteries and cable were things Boris suggested we have. The cable is a 1 cm thick 20 meter long wire of psionic nerves with a power couplet at both ends. The batteries are the same I used for the robot with a capacity of 7,500 and there are two batteries that are connected by a kind their own cable and at the center is a connection for the power couplet. As for my side, we installed a receiving end for the power coplet beside where we fill the robot through physical contact.
This will remove a lot of waiting time since I can siphon it within minutes.
The ship was floating some distance behind me as we wait for the AI's to finish the calculation.
After ten minutes it was done.
"Alright we adapted the flight training into a program for you to follow the trajectory.
The line will show you the direction but it will light up in red if you don't push it fast enough." Lia said.
At this time on my view she made the target appear on the planet, obvious this was a digital representation.
"It will take around 6 hours to hit the ground after you push the asteroid to fly at 200 km/h but with your current energy levels it would take 3 hours of constant pushing with five openings to reach that velocity which results in touchdown in 8 hours in this angle." Lia said.
In my view long red line appeared crossing through the asteroid.
"If I can't achieve that how will we know?" I asked.
I placed two hand prints where you should push so that you don't go off course. If you can't accelerate fast enough I will warn you and change the location to change the trajectory." Lia said.
Seeing how it will work I nod.
"Alright let's get this moving." I said seeing everything was ready.
I move to the side and find the hand prints on both sides of the red line still present in my view.
Getting into position I push releasing six openings.
"Go with five openings since we know the acceleration and psi consumption." Lia said and I nod closing one pair.
From there it was a slow increase in speed for the next three hours.
I watch my limit and one hour ate up 12,000 psi even with my control.
After two hours I did a quick pit stop I before returning to the asteroid for the last hour until the asteroid reached the 200 km/h.
After that it was just let it go on the crash course.
"Is there any bases near there?" I asked after I finally returned for good to the ship.
"No but we have already registered the mark. And after the crash it will be marked off by the system." Jessica said.
"Good!" I said with a nod. From there I went and filled my empty stomach and we all watched as the large rock advanced through space.
About seven hours later I left again and did one final check of the trajectory and saw it was off by about 2 degrees but that offered a huge margin of error so I went on a 4 degree angle from where I originally pushed and pushed for ten minutes before the trajectory was fixed.
Soon after the asteroid became officially a meteor as it met the thin atmosphere and to our shock the front began to heat up and the outer rocks melted.
Passing through the atmosphere it released black smoke as the rock around it was burned off but quickly it became white smoke which was quickly identified as steam as the ice was quickly changed to steam from the heat.
That said, the atmosphere was still to think to offer enough friction to break the meteor completely and only wore it down to half its size before the now 15 meter wide ice meteor slammed full force into the ground and released enough energy to match a small scale nuclear eruption.
Watching from thirty thousand meters we saw it live as a huge crater was blow into the earth and a mushroom shaped dust cloud was lifted. The ground was completely cracked and broke apart before sinking greatly forming almost a canyon for over 20 km to both sides.
The dust soon covered the entire region but we had perfectly seen the Kelha worm tunnel collapse.
There was a possibility that the aquifer below would also from cracks and start burst out and release the water.
After a minute Alex called.
"Guys! We got a call from the base saying it was a successful hit with a 5 km off course margin." Alex said.
"Seems good." I said.
*BOOM*
The next moment the sound of an explosion reached us and we looked at the source and saw that a mountain 120 km away from the crash site had blown its top and was releasing magma and billowing black smoke and ash.
As the two clouds grow and rose into the atmosphere, the presence of several bolts of lightning appeared.
"Oh! Lightning!" Dad said as he looked at the lightning which formed a mesmerizing root like shape in the clouds.
"Our work is done, let's go back to the base and recharge and repair my robot." I said.
"Alright!" Dad replied. "Until then we can spend our times resting or chatting." Dad said looking at Jessica and winked.
She looked away and did a little "hmph" as she averted her eyes.
"Yeah, I'm sure you will love chatting as well." I said and looked at Lisa who understood the mean which made her head lower and her ears turn bright red.
The two girls look at each other with understanding glances.
"Gotta move quick girls, there is still on contestant without a pair, don't let her snatch 'em!" Havic whispered into their ears. The two solemnly glanced at Hilda who was like Roktar and was mesmerized by the show of lightning.
"Shouldn't you also be careful? After all with Alex's girly looks, he can be taken by both men and women." Jessica said.
"Oh that won't happen, of anyone ties they will definitely regret it." Havic said with the most gentle smile yet it ad the scariest feeling behind it.
The crew soon returns to the base to recuperate. At that time two other meteors crashes in priority zones from different points.
*One week later*
Within the Kelha II station the computer technicians and guards were all in the main control center which overlooked the entire stations security and where landing permission is asked. It also monitored all the movements of ships around Kelha II.
As they worked a beeping came from the screen.
"Someone is dropping out of FTL travel." Announced one of the personnel.
The trade ship had left three days ago so besides some passing ship, few came to a mining station unless its from other planets but then its registered.
After a moment the entire station was shocked. Appearing instantly from light speed three medium sized carrier ship, these were the smallest of the medium sized and one medium sized warship.
"Halt, identify yourselves!" One of the personnel shouted as he connected to the ships.
No reply came but the someone shouted.
"Sir, they are deploying fighters!" One man shouted to the leading man.
"Someone contact Major Snocon and Mr. Mores!" The man shouted.
In less than a minute the two men appeared.
"What is going on?" Major Snocon shouted.
"Three carrier class ships and a war ship appeared from FTL travel a minute ago and are deploying fighters. We have also registered bombers being deployed.
"But the station on Code 3 alert. Mobilize the guards and contact Colonel so he can ready the Dwarf fighters at any notice!" Major Snocon shouted.
The men in the room saluted and got to work.
All around the station alarms range and a voice called out.
"We Are under Code 3 Alert, all guardsmen report to the military hangar! Station security arm up and spread out! Guide everyone to the central hangar and lockdown the residential ring!" The voice called.
In moments everyone began to panic but at the same moment the station security took control. All the guards were made to go down first to let them quickly move to the military hangar. After they all descending the security controlled the flow into the hangar making everyone move quickly.
At the main control center the men were watching as a large number of ships were deployed.
Suddenly a voice came over the intercom.
"You fuckers, we will give you two options! Bring us every last fucker that took our things from our base or you will all die!" A deep arrogant voice called.
"That voice! Cleave Scratch!" Major Snocon said.
"Ho~! Major Snocon, how you been snowy! Still got that cold frozen face of yours! Ahahah!" The man named Cleave said.
The major's face turned bright red.
"Who is he?" Mr. Mores asked.
"He is the man that killed my battalion 7 years ago and stranded me and a few survivors on an ice planet!" Major spit out the words.
"Ahahaha, it was a fitting end for a snow cone like you!" He said and the sound of laughter came from the other side.
"What do you want! We won't hand over anyone!" Major Snocon said.
"Even if you don't hand us the bastards we can still find them. All the important items had trackers. We already know which ships have it. But the boss wants one specific tech, we won't kill everyone as long as you hand over the Xetra Blink Drive in one of the ships in our old base." Cleave said.
"Like hell!" Major said.
"To bad, the boss let me handle this nice fleet, did you know, a rank 5 fleet has a really nice type of unit." He said and laughed menacingly before the connection was cut.
"Sir! The ships are advancing....and they deployed something else... oh god!" The man said.
"What?!" Major said.
An image appeared above. On the view showed thirty humanoid figures, half were bulky and half were lean.
The major paled.
"They have Fighters! Dwarf and Drake Fighters!" The major said. "Quick! Dispatch the Dwarf Fighters to counter them!" He ordered.
Drake fighters is the same as dwarf fighters except for the race at the seat. Tosk being reptiles they are human sized making their bodie larger the dwarf making the robots they learned to build much larger and in the form of a humanoid dragon robot.
Their strength is similar to dwarf fighters but are slower due to the size.
"Mr. Mores, please leave on a ship, this is going to be a war zone from now on." Major Snocon said.
"Make sure to warn all the participants of that raid mission. Also call reinforcements from the planet." Mr. Mores said.
"Of course, now please go we have a ship with an FTL drive for you set up." The Major said.
He nodded and limped off.
The major turned and began ordering everyone.
"Contact all the participants of the raid, tell them to leave the station and planet as fast as possible." He shouted before the two sides collided and war began.