Josh, mostly reassured that they weren’t about to end up splattered like bugs on a windshield, looked around, and mentally prepared for the upcoming fight. He got a sense of how tremendously fast they were moving!

When Ishan had finished talking about their landing—touch-down... docking? Josh wasn’t sure what to call it. The Brigantine had looked like a ship about the size of a Star Trek shuttle. In the three seconds since then, it had gone from minibus sized to filling-his-entire field-of-vision-sized. The surface structures on the Brigantine below them started to blur so rapidly Josh couldn’t even tell their shapes. Then the hangar bay opening was upon them...

“Flair! Alight!” Ishan commanded in rapid succession.

Their velocity terminated with large retro-bursts firing from both Ishan and Lobo’s chests and hands. The magnetic current keeping Josh and Sen in place was cut, and they dropped down to the decking with zero acceleration. The Affins remained aloft via thrusters mounted on their heels and the snub-framework wing kits that had sprung from their back armor.

A shrill electric whirring shrieked from Ishan’s shoulder-mounted gatling gun as it swept side to side, tracking his vision. In its wake, lines of emplaced defenses, guard stations, and attack ships exploded, then quickly disintegrated into ash and dark mist. The endless hail of brilliant yellow-white, ever-burning, sunfire rounds made quick work of everything in the Gatling’s arc.

Lobo gunned a two-handed rifle that emitted a solid purple beam two inches wide. He swept it in wide arcs as well, cutting most targets in half with little resistance. Even leaving deep scours in the armor plates of the attack ships and bulkheads he brushed with it.

After his fall, Sen had barely kissed the deck in a perfect three-point stance as he touched down following several aerial flips with extended legs and arms to slow his descent from their alight. After the briefest pause, he burst into action with his sword on the right side of the hangar. Three attackers were eliminated with as many swipes of his blade, the charging Kaizukos’ battle cries dying on their lips. Sen was then given a wide berth as the remaining hangar crew retreated before him.

Sen cast a meaningful look at Josh. ~The hangar defenses are significant. I will assist Ishan and Lobo secure the area. Find and rescue Alysa. Alert me if you need me to free her.~

He then started with the mechanical defenses of the hangar bay.

With slightly less grace, Josh bent his knees and hit the floor’s plating full force wearing his still active earthen shield. Like a bowling ball crashing through a Styrofoam cooler, he left a pair of inch-deep divots in the deck’s steel. His impact sent a clanging echo more felt than heard over the increasing sounds of mechanized battle from Ishan and Lobo overhead.

Assessing the hangar, Josh started his search for Alysa. He estimated the hangar’s dimensions at 2000 yards deep by 1500 wide. He couldn’t help but note that Ishan and Lobo had cut it very close. A delay of one-third of a second and the space marines would have been splattered into a thin film against the far wall where they would have burst like an overtight water balloon filled with quinoa and red Kool Aid. Only the Kaizukos’ cleaning crew would have found what was left of them.

On the other hand, because of their increased density, Josh and Sen may have torn through the ship’s hull plates like two uranium boulders to tumble aimlessly through the void.

After those unpleasant thoughts, Josh told his internal science guy to hush up while he and Sen went to work and, gratefully, the science guy did.

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Now, with a proper sense of scale around him, Josh saw that the estimation of his mindscape’s size hadn’t been that bad. It seemed to fill a radius of 300 yards, or about one-third of the width of the hangar to either side of him.

Focusing on his mindscape, the hangar was thick with Aura from the numerous crew members’ energetic thoughts—at least 500 people in his sphere alone, had their conscious thoughts in high gear. Josh took a moment to pull Aura from the nearest handful of people he could sense to top off his depleted levels from the trip as he weeded through the minds to find Alysa. As his racing thoughts concentrated on Alysa’s characteristics, many of the 500-plus minds in range began to lose their luster. He could still sense the excluded ones, they were just easier to ignore. Like old brown leaves lying next to red and golden ones that had just fallen.

Ticking the qualities off, Alysa was a woman—just over 100 bright spots remained. She had black hair and brown eyes—over fifty remained— and was under five feet two inches tall—seven remained. She had a spiritual bond with Sophie—one last bright spot remained to his left.

Should have led with that one!

Alysa’s mind was one hundred meters up the bay along what was likely an internal wall. Focusing on that mind, Josh heard her thoughts—

He’ll kill me too quickly—

Josh moved before registering a conscious thought to do so.

She was behind the only currently guarded door. Active thinking kicked in and Josh chided himself for not trying to use standard wisdom as well as mystic mind-powers.

I might have saved a few beats if I had used my brain and my Cultivation skills.

It was becoming obvious Josh would need to do both. Just like the need to take deep breaths during heavy exercise to make the best of it. Josh would need to remember not to be a moron and supplement his growing cosmic power with common sense whenever he had the chance.

But that was for later. Right now, there were four men in standardized dark jumpers facing out from the door Sophie was behind.

Alysa, too, he corrected himself. Gods... it was true. Sophie and Alysa were linked in his mind, but for now, he couldn’t indulge his emotions and instead needed to focus on death and destruction. He would need to leave figuring out his metaphysical family for later.

Josh got himself back on track. Each guard was armed with a drawn saber. Likely readied in response to Ishan and Lobo’s carnage. They all also had indigo Essence swirling through their Core and Meridians, and... Josh didn’t care!

They were complicit in torturing Alysa, his bridge to Sophie, and they were all going down!

He raced in front of them and cut the right two in half with an enhanced horizontal sweep using his blade’s acceleration function. A sheet of blood followed his arcing blade’s passage, spraying over the last two before they even knew Josh was there.

The leftmost fighter was the fastest. He initiated a skill with surging indigo Essence, seeming to convert his whole body into the same color Aura. Glowing indigo particles in the shape of his body moved through Josh’s body to stand behind him—clearly some kind of teleportation, but slowly. So slowly!

Josh almost yawned at the difference in speeds between a singly-Attuned Cultivator and his current doubly-Attuned status. How had Sen fought off Nagal for so long with such a vast gap in their abilities? Josh wasn’t sure of anything in that fight except that his Karmic brother was a very dangerous man.

The guard’s slow-motion Essence flash completed as he reappeared behind Josh for a surprise back attack... Fortunately for Josh, not nearly as sneaky as anticipated. With plenty of time for assessment, Josh credited his ability to follow the Cultivator’s change into Aura as an effect of his expanded mindscape.

Right or wrong, Josh was ready for him and not in the mood for games. As soon as his opponent phased back from Essence to matter, Josh slashed the man diagonally from his left waist to above his right shoulder with a cut so fast the fighter couldn’t likely see it. The Cultivator’s left lung bulged through the gaping wound, and his heart was entirely bisected. The force of the blow spun his body 180 degrees before it came to rest five yards back—a thick streak of blood splashed against the walls the entire distance.

Josh had already turned back to the last guard before the third had hit the floor. This one had been holding back, waiting for an opening that would never come. Obviously, having realized this, the guard opted to silently charge in with the same sluggish movements the other guard had come at him with. Josh gave him credit for his courage.

But that was all.

In two quick movements, Josh amputated the guard’s weapon arm at the elbow and pierced his heart, quickly slashing the blade up and out through the middle of his opponent’s right trapezius. Which left no question about the possibility of him rising again. Josh pushed the attacker down with a kick as his weak struggles slackened to nothing. Turning on his heels, bloodied blade in hand, Josh finally moved to the closed door.

Mindscape still active, a quick check showed Josh that Alysa’s mind hadn’t moved from the left side of the room. She was still ten feet from the door. There was another mind in the room, much nearer to the door. Given the circumstances, Josh was comfortable assuming that this mind didn’t belong to a friend. Decision made, he enhanced his legs and slammed through the door with his complete earth shield and smashed the heavy metal door completely off its hinges. The thick, slightly bent rectangle was sent hurtling on a collision course with whoever was standing in the room with Alysa.