Chapter 98

98 Chaos Theory, Pt The remaining pirate frigates hurriedly positioned themselves all around the asteroid and covered literally every angle all around. Once they were in position, each and every one of them extended a large metallic sphere from underneath their bellies.

The spheres glowed a dull orange as streams of luminous energy shot out towards all the other spheres on the frigates. This resulted in a barely-glowing lattice that surrounded the asteroid on all sides.

But as the seconds ticked by, the energy lattice glowed brighter, and the signal they produced strengthened bit by bit.

The Admiral watched as a slew of data scrolled through the screens on her bridge. Though she didn’t have any visual confirmation, she could easily tell what the pirates were up to just outside.

Well, at least, she could tell what they were doing. Not so much why.

“Why are they putting down an energy lattice?” she mused aloud.

“Whatever it is, it can’t be good,” replied Eva. “Since they seem to be holding that position, maybe we can go out there and take ’em out one by one?”

The Admiral hesitated. What Eva had suggested was a solid choice. If they broke their formation up, or if they directly attacked Valos’ ship, it could break the siege.

But it would also open up the base – they still had over a thousand fighters out there. The last thing she wanted was for all of them to swarm their way into the city center and endanger the noncombatants.

.....

Of course, she still had her drones, and now that her comms array had power again...

“Compelling,” the Admiral replied. “But risky. Too risky. Us opening the hangar might be exactly what they want. They could be waiting out there in ambush...”

“What about your drones? And your outer turrets? We’ve got some power back, yeah?”

The Admiral shook her head.

“Drones, yeah, we’ve already reactivated them, but are keeping them still for now. The turrets though are another matter altogether. We’ve got power, just not enough for them. They consume quite a great deal of it, to be honest... Though I do have a couple that can be ship mounted.”

Eva’s eyes went wide as desire filled her.

“Tell me they’re fighter-equippable,” she said.

“Mm, yes, I’ve designed a few sizes – fighters, frigates, and destroyers primarily. Why do you as... Waitaminute! No! You aren’t going out there with one of my prototypes, much less two of them!”

“Come onnnn, Admiral. What better time to test them out than now, hm? Don’t you wanna see how they perform in a real combat situation? Think of the data you’ll get! And aren’t you burning to get your core back from Merlin? Maybe take him out at the same time, too?”

Admiral Chase exhaled deeply. Eva’s arguments echoed her wishes exactly.

What she proposed was too much of a risk, yes. But it was also too great of an opportunity to let it go. Break up their formation, kill Merlin and Valos, and potentially stop the pirate attack.

“Admiral!” cried one of her officers. “We’ve detected activity on the frigates. They’re prepping to jump.”

“Hmph. So they’re turning tail and running? Maybe we don’t have to fight after all.”

“I disagree,” said Miko. “They mentioned earlier that they overran our signals with their own, yes? I do not believe they plan to retreat. I believe they intend to steal the entire base.”

“That’s impossible! They’d need...”

The realization dawned on the Admiral that perhaps what they weren’t attempting wasn’t as impossible as it seemed. Although she couldn’t find the words to finish her sentence, Miko finished them for her.

“They would need to be synced with the Tartarus Base transport signature, or us with them. However, if they have taken over our signals, then our signature is whatever they wish it to be. We are technically part of their fleet, whether we wish it or not.

“I do not wish to speculate where they are porting us to, but it cannot be good.”

The Admiral cursed loudly. Now her only option was to go out there and destroy their formation. Waiting for reinforcements and outlasting their siege was impossible now.

“What’s the ETA on the port? And what’s the destination?”

“Unable to tell the endpoint, ma’am,” replied an officer. “However, ETA to port is five minutes.”

The Admiral nodded. Then sighed. She desperately hoped that she was making the right decision.

“No time to lose,” she said. “Freya! Everyone! Gear up and get ready. Let’s kick these fuckers out of here.”

Miko came on Eva and Redstar’s comms display as the Admiral issued her orders to all of her officers.

“Nee-san,” she said. “Can you fight without me? I have something else I need to look into here.”

Eva nodded without hesitation.

“‘Course. Need me to back you up instead?”

“No, but I will need Redstar’s help.”

“What? Why me? I already said – I’m not a fighter. I’m definitely not some supergenius, so I dunno how I can help you.”

“You are the fastest pilot here, yes?.”

“Yeah, I’m a champion racer, sure. So what?”

“I need to return to my hab very quickly. I cannot drive a hopper.”

Redstar’s eye twitched in consternation.

“What am I, your chauffeur?!”

~

The swarm of drones that were previously fighting the pirates suddenly came back online. Or, rather, their connection to Tartarus came back online. Once again, they raced towards the pirate fighters at breakneck speed. Their weapons were quickly power cycled, rebalanced, and primed to fire.

At the same time, the huge hangar bay doors on Tartarus base slid open, and even more drones came flying out by the dozen. Unlike the original ones, these drones were slightly better armed and armored.

“Templar! We’ve got a situation! They reactivated the drones and re-engaged the fighters. On top of that, hangar bays are also opening, sir. We’re seeing a couple hundred more drones spill out.”

“So what? We still outnumber ’em by a few hundred. Let ’em fuck around for a bit. Just keep the frigates from moving a single millimeter! Once we get this rock back to the main fleet, there won’t be a damn thing to worry about.”

“Hey, what’s that?” asked Merlin.

He pointed to some blips on their sensor readings. Valos spun around to take a look, and his eyes narrowed in realization.

“They’ve brought out their fighters, too. What’re the numbers on the field now?”

A nearby officer tapped on his screen as he compiled the data.

“We’re down to 1,959 fighters, some damaged. Their drones number 1,513, and the incoming fighters currently number 300, but are still rising. Operational intelligence predicts that the numbers will be close, sir. They might even break 2k combatants.”

“Tell the fighters to come closer and spread out all ’round. If we can’t go to them, then they gotta come to us for fire support.”

“Yes, Templar.”

A vein on the Templar’s forehead throbbed. The numbers weren’t in their favor any longer. Worse, he knew how risky it was to bring the fight closer.

But he had no choice.

Drones nipped at the fleeing fighters with their cannons and chipped away at their armor piece by piece. A few exploded as they were perforated by the drones.

One careened towards the asteroid uncontrollably and crashed against its surface at great speed. Parts flew as an explosion tore it open.

But the pirates were undeterred and sped back to their frigates as fast as they dared. Once they reached a thousand meters of them, they broke out in multiple directions and spread out of the way.

At the same time, the frigates fired volleys of anti aircraft flak at the incoming drones, and caught them before they could continue pursuing the fighters. White clouds filled with depleted uranium shards burst in the space around the drones, and shredded them with ease.

A great amount exploded as shrapnel perforated their thinly-armored structures and turned them into junk.

Although the first wave was turned into wreckage, the other drones quickly recovered. They spread out to evade any further fire, circumvented the flak clouds, then dove into combat against the pirates with little hesitation.

Fighters and drones intermingled and gunned each other down while the frigates switched to their smaller-caliber chainguns to lend support. There was no way they would fire flak into their own pilots.

Well, unless maybe there was more profit in doing so.

A wing of five pirate fighters wove through the battle and wrecked drone after drone after drone. One of them yawned as he tore through one with well-placed cannon shots. It exploded just as he buzzed by its wreckage, but he was rather nonplussed about it all.

“These things’re kinda easy,” he said. “Don’tcha think?”

“Yeah, they are,” replied a wingmate. “Makes me wonder how Snagfoot got exxed out, y’know?”

“Poor old Snaggy,” said a third. “Gonna miss him and his slow ass.”

“Yeah, yeah. Poor Snagfoot. Also, to hell with Snagfoot. If he was too shit to live through some drones, that’s on him. ‘Sides, more for us!”

They all laughed at their former friend’s misfortune, and reveled in their own increased fortune.

“Hey look,” said the first. “Up on sensors – an actual Feddy fighter!”

“By himself? No wing? What kinda moron gets in a bigass fight with no fuckin’ wing?”

“Who gives a shit? Let’s perforate ‘im! First blood, bitches!”

The five of them sped towards the lone pilot, their first real prey of the fight. Drones were one thing, but real people? Real prey? They couldn’t help but boost up into position around it.

And as per usual, they used the swarm tactic of outflanking their opponents to maximize their firing arcs as best as possible. It was simple, but effective.

They boosted themselves into position around the lone Federation fighter, and bore their guns at it from multiple directions.

Having realized that it was being outflanked, the Federation fighter preemptively engaged in evasive maneuvers. But it wasn’t much use – the pirates gunned the fighter down with cannon fire from multiple angles, multiple directions.

They laughed heartily as they did so, confident that they had fully perforated their solo prey.

But their laughs died down as they watched the fighter nimbly evade each of their shots with absolute precision and perfect timing. It hadn’t taken so much as a scratch.

They couldn’t believe their eyes in the slightest. As far as they were concerned, whatever that pilot did was impossible. One hundred and ten percent impossible.

.....

“I’m gettin’ some bad deja vu, ya’ll,” uttered a pirate. “Like, real fuckin’ bad.”

Inside her core, Eva was deep in a Promethean Merge. As blood flowed through her veins, so too did power course through her ship’s systems. After she would inhale, the ship’s cooling systems exhaled for her.

With her mind fully synchronized with her core operating intelligence, she was able to see the trajectories of everything that was all around her with ease. Every fighter, every bullet, every drone, everything.

And with the help of Tiamat’s Transcendence, she barely needed to do any complex calculations. All she needed to do was intuit where she needed to be and let the rest take care of itself.

So she flowed between the streams of fire, as though she was simply floating down a river, without a goddamned care in the universe. Eva had reached some new zen, some new mental, physiological, metaphysical zen.

She and her core were one, and together they were unstoppable.

When the awed, hapless pirates paused firing for just one moment, she slid into the perfect position, and fired just one of her Particle Disintegrators. The supercharged electron cluster shot out of the gun at the speed of light, impacted a fighter, and ripped two thirds of it out of existence.

One of the pirates fired on her in an absolute panic, but there wasn’t any use. He struggled to keep his nose pointed at her ship, but she was always just out of reach. She zipped around him with absolute speed and control, and he simply couldn’t keep up.

He felt absolutely toyed with, like a mouse being batted around by a vindictive cat.

The pirates barely had time to react as she sped around their flank. She fired on a pirate who was attempting to perform evasive maneuvers. But it was pointless with a weapon that shot at the speed of light – it was impossible to dodge. The strength of the impact was so immense that there was little left of it but scraps floating around a hole.

As she circled a pirate that was trying its best to fire on her, she lined up her counter shot and fired decisively. It tore through the pirate fighter in front of her, rendered most of it to atoms, then struck another one that was behind it. It too was flattened in the flash of a moment.

Eva quickly turned towards the last pirate, but he had long since fled from the fight. Which was relatively pointless, as he was well within her sensor range. She could have demolished him without any problems.

But decided she had better things to do than fuck around with easy prey.

With a smile etched deeply on her face, she sped off towards the nearest pirate frigate with her guns primed and ready to fire.