The Enlightened did nothing further as the jumpdrive charged. The Gate effect wrapped itself around the Dream of the Lady. Captain Yvian felt herself relax just a little.
"Well that was freaky," quipped Lissa. "Maybe we shouldn't have stayed to watch after all."
"It's better to know what we're dealing with," argued Mims.
"Is it?" Lissa shook her head. "Cause I'm not sure I wanted to know."
The next sector was a warzone. Millions of ships, fighting millions of Enlightened. The sector didn't have any habitable planets, but it was filled with space stations. Mines and manufacturing, mostly. Yvian guessed she was on the far edge of the nation's territory.
The biomechanical invaders took a variety of shapes and sizes. Some were in the shape of two meter tall pixenoids. Some were great ships over four kilometers long. The ships were mostly engine, and moved at ten times the acceleration the Dream of the Lady could manage. Other shapes Yvian could only guess at, but all bore the distinctive pixelated construction and winding circuitry of the Enlightened.
The defenders were not fairing well. Their weapons had little to no effect on the Enlightened, and their ships were being disabled by single shots from the invader cannons. Disabled, but not destroyed. The Enlightened were going from ship to ship and from station to station, infecting everything they touched.
The nearest fight was happening six hundred thousand kilometers away. Thirty Enlightened were in the process of infecting a thousand disabled battlecruisers. All but one of the monsters morphed into their ship forms the moment the Dream entered the sector. They embarked on an intercept course with a quickness that made Yvian's butt clench.
"Jumpdrive, now!" Yvian ordered.
"Aye Captain." Lissa started to type into her Nav console. She paused. "Maybe we should go back," she suggested. "We could take the West Gate from that Space Fish sector."
"It probably leads to Enlightened space," said Yvian. "Our best bet is to get through while they're busy." Lissa nodded. The Jumpdrive hummed. Yvian shook her head. An entire sector was being destroyed before her eyes. Probably an entire species with it. "I wish there was something we could do."
"The void is a dangerous place," said Mims. "Not everyone can be saved." He let out a slow breath through his nose. The human's body shifted and... relaxed? The sight sent a jolt of adrenaline up Yvian's legs. Mims was forcing the tension out of his muscles. Centering himself with perfect focus. She'd seen him do that a few times. Only when he was on the verge of immediate, terrible violence. Or when he expected things to go very, very wrong. "Sometimes surviving is the best we can do."
The next sector was the same. Ships and stations being disabled and absorbed by unstoppable techno-organic monsters. This time there were already Enlightened in ship form hurtling towards the Gate. Towards all the Gates.
"Shit, jumpdrive!" Yvian ordered. Lissa didn't waste time acknowledging the order. The ship hummed once more.
"They are hunting us," Scarrend growled. "Arrogant fools. Permission to arm the Cascade Annihilator, Captain? I would show these Enlightened who stands at the Apex."
"Do it," said Yvian. Eighty three Enlightened were closing, but they were still three hundred thousand kilometers away. The Dream would be gone before they entered weapon range. The ones in the next sector might be closer.
"Whatever we do," said Mims, "we can't let them take the ship."
"Crunch." Mims was right. The Enlightened weren't killing. They were converting. What had the one said? Their technology would fuel the Great Change? If the motherless sons took the Dream they'd get jumpdrives of their own, along with the Nav data for everywhere Yvian had been. The Technocracy could be overrun with biomechanical giants within hours.
The Gate Effect took hold. Yvian had thirty seconds. Thirty seconds to make a plan. She didn't know how many sectors they'd have to go through to get past the Enlightened, but she'd be very surprised if they made it out without a fight. Crunch. If she screwed this up everyone was going to die. Not just Yvian and her crew. Everyone.
Yvian closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. She let it out slowly, forcing her muscles to relax. Face, then neck, then shoulders, all the way down until their was barely enough tension in her body to keep herself upright. Another breath, lots of air. She focused on her heartbeat. It was hammering in her chest. She focused harder, breathing again, slowing it down. The human had gone to great lengths to teach her how to use her breath to control her body, to exert emotional control. Yvian had thought it a neat trick, but mostly she'd just used it when she had trouble sleeping. Only now did she understand its true purpose. To make her ready. A harmony of mind and body that would let her act and think with perfect focus, no matter what.
Yvian's eyes snapped open. They would be out of the Gate in sixteen seconds. Yvian didn't have a real plan. Plans were for people that knew what the Crunch they were dealing with. What Yvian did have was a crew. A crew with strengths she could play into. She rattled off orders. She didn't rush, aiming for efficiency. Slow was smooth. Smooth was fast.
"Kilroy, you're on flight control." The Peacekeeper unit's reaction time was by far the fastest, even outstripping the Vrrl. "Don't let them hit us."
"Mims, jumpdrive." Activating the drive at the wrong time would kill them. The human had the best judgment for that sort of thing.
"Scarrend, weapons." The Vrrl growled with approval.
"Lissa, you're on the Dead Man's Switch."
"Crunch," Yvian's sister swore. The Dead Man's Switch was a failsafe. A final contingency in case they encountered the Vore. A mix of high yield plasma, ion, and nuclear explosives had been strategically placed throughout the ship. The detonators were hardwired to the consoles on the bridge. Lissa flipped a switch on her console. A big red button revealed itself. Lissa pressed it, and kept it depressed.
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If Lissa removed her hand, the Dream would detonate. If the ship lost power, the Dream would detonate. If any of the wires leading to the explosives were severed, the Dream would detonate. The explosions would turn the jumpdrive, Nexus Nodes, and computers to ionized plasma. They would also set off the Dream's missile complement. There wouldn't be enough left of the ship to be considered debris. Just an irradiated cloud of rapidly expanding metal vapors.
The next two sectors passed quickly. The Enlightened were still moving for the Gates, but they weren't close enough to be a threat. Yvian allowed herself a small hope that they might push through.
The third sector had a single Enlightened near the Gate. A big one. It was in ship form, three kilometers in length. It was thirty thousand kilometers away, and coming in fast.
"Jumpdrive!" Yvian ordered.
"They're too close," Mims told her. "We need cover."
Cover? Where the Crunch would they find cover in the... Oh. "Kilroy, get us behind the Gate!"
"Affirmative." Yvian noticed the Dream was already heading for the edge of the Gate. Kilroy had either anticipated the order or decided not to wait for instruction. Yvian wasn't going to complain. Mims hadn't been exaggerating when he said she had the best crew.
The Enlightened morphed. It was still in ship form, but a two and half kilometer long cannon assembled itself at the top of the thing. The cannon fired. A line of pink blinding light streaked towards the Dream. Kilroy maneuvered them out of its way, but it was close. Ronin battlecruisers were nimble compared to other ships of their class, but the Dream was still a capital ship. It was a big target, and nowhere near as maneuverable as a fighter.
The enemy fired again. And again. A six kilometer long bar of energy lashed towards Yvian's ship every second. Kilroy's ridiculous reflexes let him keep evading the fire, but it wouldn't last. The Enlightened was getting closer, and soon its weapon would be too close to dodge.
"Scarrend, hit them." The guns of the poor souls the Enlightened attacked hadn't done much. Yvian hoped the Dream could do better. "Anything you can do to slow them down."
"With pleasure," growled the Vrrl. Four beam cannons lashed out from the Dream. Beam cannons weren't light speed weapons, but they were the next best thing. The beams struck the Enlightened's engines. Photon Pulse Cannons unleashed a torrent of glowing death as well, angled for an intercept course. They would take over a minute to reach the enemy, and would only hit that fast because the Enlightened was barreling towards them at prodigious speed.
The beam cannons did nothing. A closer look at the sensors told Yvian two things. The Enlightened weren't using shields, and the Enlightened didn't need fucking shields. The motherless son was absorbing the energy of the cannons. "MAC Driver?"
"MAC Cannons," Scarrend corrected. "And they're out of range." Yvian cursed to herself. MAC Drivers were mounted on fighter class ships. The Dream had Cannons. She kept forgetting that. Both weapons used the same ammunition, but MAC Cannons launched the rounds at thirty kilometers a second instead of ten.
Thirty kilometers a second was devastatingly fast for a chunk of metal, but it was uselessly slow at the distances Yvian was dealing with. MAC weapons weren't designed for combat at tens of thousands of kilometers against a moving target. Why would they be? Ship combat usually happened at a range of less than a hundred kilometers. Any further and conventional weapons were trivial to evade.
The Enlightened was still accelerating. How could something so big move so fast? They were fourteen thousand kilometers away, now. The Dream was coming up on the edge of the Gate. Yvian wasn't sure they were going to make it.
Twelve thousand kilometers. The Dream changed vectors, looping around the thirteen kilometer thick band of unknown material that formed the ring of the Jumpgate. The Enlightened's cannon grazed Yvian's shields. Alarms blared. The shields shattered. The bar of pink death hadn't touched the ship itself. The next one did. Kilroy's evasives raised the ship just enough that the cannon only sliced across the bottom. Armor and a piece of the lowest deck vaporized in the enormous energy of the attack.
Yvian swore. A third shot sheared through the ship's engines. The Dream buckled. Then they were past the Gate. Line of sight with the Enlightened was broken. Mims didn't wait for the order, spooling up the jumpdrive.
"Can we make it?" Yvian asked. Two of the Dream's rear engines had been destroyed completely, and the remaining four were damaged. The ship was still mobile. Sort of. Or it would be if engine power wasn't being used for the jump. But she wouldn't be dodging weapon fire anytime soon.
"No," said the human.
"Yes," said Scarrend. "I smell a way."
"The Annihilator?" Yvian asked.
The Vrrl shook his head. "They'll be too close to the Gate. The effect would spread and kill us, too."
Yvian wanted an explanation, but decided there wasn't time. "I trust you," she told him. "Do what you gotta do."
The jumpdrive had been charging for nineteen seconds when the Enlightened swung around the Gate. Its cannon swiveled to target the Dream of the Lady. Yvian braced herself. The cannon exploded. The Enlightened's body ruptured as MAC rounds tore through it.
"Ha!" Scarrend gloated. "That is what happens when you challenge the Apex!"
The Enlightened was still moving, but it had shifted off course. The ship rippled. The holes forty MAC rounds had drilled through the ship closed. The cannon reformed itself.
"Oh-" Yvian started.
The blue light of the Gate Effect wrapped around the Dream of the Lady.
"-shit," "Yvian finished. That had been close. Too close. "We can't keep this up." The next close encounter would be their last. "Any ideas?"
"We should jump back to the starting point," said Mims. "Repair the ship and find a different way to go."
"Agreed," said Yvian. "We'll do that the second we're out of the Gate. Anything else?"
"The Cascade Annihilator is primed and ready," Scarrend reported.
"We may need it," said the Captain. "But don't use it until I say. We've only got nine of the things."
"We can try talking to them," Lissa didn't sound hopeful, "but I'm not sure how much good it'll do."
"The Enlightened are not a true fusion of organic and machine," Kilroy stated.
"What?" Yvian turned to look at the machine.
"They are meatbags," the Peacekeeper explained. "There was no sign of Synthetic Intelligence when they hacked the comms. Nor did any respond to this unit's ping. This unit suspects the Enlightened are a cybernetically assisted hivemind and nothing more."
Yvian blinked, then asked the real question. "So?"
"Meatbags are stupid," the machine elaborated. "They can be tricked."
"I'll keep that in mind," said Yvian.
The Dream entered a new sector. Yvian saw the worst scenario. Nine hundred ninety nine Enlightened were waiting for them. They were in pixenoid form, each with an arm cannon raised. They floated in orderly rows just under a thousand kilometers from the Gate. The largest formed the top rows, with each row below it getting progressively smaller. The bottom row was comprised of pixenoids barely two meters in height.
Yvian didn't let herself curse, or freeze, or slump. She glared at the sensor display, furiously trying to think. Even if the Dream had all her engines, she'd never be able to dodge at that range. The Cascade Annihilator might take out the majority of the enemy, but she doubted the effect would spread to the smallest ones. Too much space between them. Crunch. How could she get them out of this? Think Yvian, think.
Seconds passed. Confusion replaced panic. Why hadn't they fired? The Enlightened could easily have disabled the ship by now. Or more accurately, damaged it enough to trigger the Dead Man's Switch.
Was that why they weren't firing? Did they know about the Dead Man's Switch? A chill prickled its way down Yvian's spine. It brought with it a shudder she couldn't suppress. The Enlightened hadn't destroyed a single ship so far. They didn't want corpses. They wanted converts. In the middle of an invasion, the motherless sons had dropped everything to converge on the Gates. A single Enlightened had been more than the Dream could handle, but they'd taken no chances. Sent an entire fleet. The Enlightened wanted Yvian. Wanted her bad.
And they wanted her alive.