Chapter 97: Recuperation

“Shouldn’t you be in the infirmary?”

Hunt looked up at the door to her office, belatedly identifying the speaker as being Admiral Miyazaki.

“According to Dr. Severide, and I quote, ‘if that damn fool stunt didn’t kill you, then neither will the aftereffects.’ And I can’t sit around doing nothing right now.”

She gave him “the look.” There were many orders and admonishments people in her place eventually learned to convey at a glance. For example, this one was best summed up as “if you’re in a position to worry about me, you’re in a position to get back to work, right the hell now.”

The fleet had lost more people in an hour than over the entire course of its existence, and the debacle over Venus had lost them more than the rest of the solar system combined.

And, a small, traitorous part of her mind whispered, perhaps it was a good thing that the biggest idiots of the disaster there had gotten themselves killed, leaving a straightforward path to proceed, not bogging down the fleet in a swamp of court-martials at the worst possible time.

But the losses had been heavy. Thirty-three battleships, nineteen battlecruisers, sixty-one heavy cruisers, a hundred and seven light cruisers and almost two hundred destroyers, though the estimate on the last group heavily depended on how many would ultimately be declared write-offs.

And yet … as the consequences of someone ramming two hundred and fifty battleships into the teeth of the heaviest defenses in the known galaxy, that was barely anything.

The fact that the enemy had done it anyway, not retreating even when the futility of their attempts had been made abundantly clear … there was something fundamentally wrong with this picture. Not to mention that they had only found bodies so far. Not a single survivor, just a whole lot of corpses, some of which seemed to have succumbed not to human fire, but suicide. Which would already be frustrating enough if it weren’t for the fact that, seemingly, the very [System] was on the enemy’s side, judging by the complete lack of kill notifications and kill XP.

Mysteries upon mysteries, bullshit upon bullshit.

And that was something she’d been spending far too much time on right now, yet at the same time, she got the distinct impression that focusing on the immediate problem would have been the even bigger mistake.

In other words, the situation stank to high heaven, and the chances of her being able to chase down that mystery any time soon were basically nil…

***

Derek floated in circles around the Dragonfly, taking careful stock of the damage.

All missile tubes reduced to scrap, half the secondaries melted or torn off, armor breached in seventeen places, muzzle for the primaries hit so hard that firing either would probably cause the whole ship to blow like a cartoon shotgun that had had its barrel blocked, and there were maybe ten square meters of armor undamaged, total.

All in all, ambush or no ambush, not too bad for having tangled with several battleships.

Matter of fact, they’d gotten a yard slip almost immediately, since the Dragonfly was small enough to fit into one built for a light cruiser, and among those, she was the only ship that could boast having a battleship kill under her belt, sucker punch or no sucker punch. That had let them jump quite the queue quite handily, without even having had to ask.

They weren’t aboard Squidworks this time; that station was far too busy, frantically doing research and patching up battleships, so they’d wound up aboard one of Mars’ primary orbitals, in a section of civilian docks capable of repairing small military vessels partitioned off to do just that.

Of course, what they didn’t have were the highest-Level engineers, those were needed for the capital ships, but Derek had been assured they’d get someone for an hour, sometime next week, assuming they managed to fix everything else by now.

He had Mimi, “regular” support from the dock, and himself. It felt doable. In fact, it was almost too much time, but Derek refused to even try and speed things up. Things had been arranged that way for a reason.

And it gave him time to play around with his new Aspect. He’d gotten two, but he’d had the other one sent to the other navy in the hopes that they might use it to get information.

Aspect of the Cessid Battleship:

This is the concept of a defeated capital ship, condensed down into a form wieldable by an individual sapient.

Requirements for Activation:

1,000 XP

Open Aspect Slot

Grants:

+5 Perception (commensurate with position in stack (+5/+10/+15/+20))

One of the following Skills:

Macron Burst

Heavy Laser Pulse

Laser Intercept

Dampening Field

On one hand, this was amazing, especially when combined with [Chimera]. On the other … finding Aspects to stack with this one would be a titanic pain.

Still, the ability to throw around actual lasers was awesome and an instant pick.

[Dampening Field] was so short-ranged that it had mostly academic applications, namely, figuring out how the hell it worked so he could counter it; [Macron Pulse] was probably going to end with the tiny fusion warheads blowing in his face, and there weren’t really many “person-scale” threats that demanded point-defense capabilities. At least not enough for him to skip throwing around lasers. And switching it out would take a mere couple of seconds.

Heavy Laser Pulse (rare)

Unleash a variable-wavelength laser from the palm of your hand to melt your foe into slag.

Cost: 500 - 1,500 mana

The key takeaway there was “variable wavelength.” In other words, “if you use anything other than an infrared laser in an atmosphere, it’ll be on you if the air explodes in your face.” And using something shorter, high-frequency, like X-rays or even gamma, if he could push it that way, in a vacuum.

He’d also managed to push three of his [Stellar Captain] [Skills] over the threshold.

Vessel of Legend (legendary, Level 10)

This ship will gain enhancements to its mana regeneration as its crew forges its legend.

…

Furthermore, this ship will gain the ability to “store” a small number of enchantments and swap out the active ones at will (newly applied enchantments will not start out charged).

In other words, the Dragonfly had just gained partial immunity to the issue of even inative enchantments being a drain on the ambient mana. Which also meant … honestly, the application was pretty obvious.

They’d been devoting the extra ambient mana to shortening the cooldown on the Moebius Array, but if they could temporarily assign it elsewhere, what if they turned the missile tubes into pocket dimensions? Get some extra salvoes onboard, then shrink the pockets as they emptied and shift the regeneration over into the array.

Crud. Seemed like there were a few specialists he needed to ask for help.

Energy Screen (legendary, Level 11)

Create a screen of energy to protect your ship from harm.

Cost: 100 - 200 for a personal shield, minimum .1 mana per square meter to initialize starship shield, 20 -> 30 per square meter to fully energize

This one was far more basic, but also liable to save their lives more than any other upgrade he could have gotten. More mana pumped into a shield that used it more efficiently due to its Level made for one hell of an upgrade overall.

And the absolute MVP of the battle had jumped a whopping seven levels!

Danger Radar (legendary, 10)

Anyone holding this Skill will be warned with enough time to react when an enemy launches a surprise attack.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

…

This Skill will now also trigger when a new party enters an existing fight.

Aka, getting jumped while already in a fight would not bypass the [Skill] the way it previously would have.

In addition to [Skill] Levels, the [System] had also seen fit to grant him enough XP to bump him up to Level 73 for his performance, though it seemed to have eaten any kill-related XP for some ungodly reason. Not enough to buy another [Skill] just yet, but sixty Stat points were never going to go unwanted.

He threw those into Magic Regeneration to at least partially close the gap between it and his Magic Power, where he’d had to focus far too heavily lately in order to have enough mana to initialize the shield on the newly-expanded Dragonfly.

Not that that was liable to be an issue going forward; making the ship any bigger would cause all sorts of issues, ranging from maintenance needs becoming overwhelming to her winding up too large to easily line up the primaries. And she’d have to grow a lot bigger before they could have used spatial magic to fix the latter the way capital ships did.

And that was that, as far as getting the Dragonfly back into ship-shape went.

Preparations made, there was one more thing he needed to do before he could actually get on with making those plans a reality.

So he went off to do just that.

After two wrong starts, getting lost once, and one very uncomfortable conversation with a marine squad rightfully concerned with a civilian in the now-military section of the station later, Derek found himself in the navy’s recruiting office aboard the station.

Unsurprisingly, it was full to bursting, many of the people within bearing the marks of the battle that had only ended twelve hours ago. There were no serious injuries; those would have been healed before they’d be allowed in here, but scrapes, bruises, first-degree burns, damaged clothing …

A few people glanced over when he stepped in, though none seemed to really take notice beyond a couple who seemed to stare at his spacer’s outfit, toolbelt, and general demeanor.

He’d have been content to wait with the rest, but when the door to the office opened, the marine standing guard waved him forward, and moments later, he was inside.

The recruiter was a lieutenant, easily ten years Derek’s junior, who looked like he’d stepped straight out of a recruiting poster.

“Good afternoon, Captain Thoma. The computer claims you are already commanding your own ship. One with considerable firepower, no less, even if it is presently under repair. Joining the Navy feels … like an unusual step to take.”

Correct assessment, on all counts.

“I wrongly assumed this office would be less busy than anywhere else that could process this paperwork.”

Derek withdrew an entire sheath of paper, yes, actual, physical, paper, from his storage ring and placed it on the desk.

He’d had these since getting the Dragonfly, shoved somewhere to the back of the filing cabinet.

It was the standard paperwork for civilian ship owners to enter the Navy reserves, which in this case would translate to being sent to go scouting, aka the exact thing the Dragonfly had been designed to do.

Going off on a furious tear across the galaxy wasn’t going to achieve much if he did it on his own, but directed by the Navy’s scouting plan, with the ability to “paint targets” for humanity’s heavies, that might just do the trick.

“Assuming everything is in order, I’d like to get back to my ship, to get it fixed up for deployment.”

“Seems to be. You’ll get a reply in a couple of days. Dismissed.”

And with that, Derek was waved out of the office.

***

Orbit near Earth, wreck of an alien battleship

“This doesn’t make sense.”

“Seriously, how did this ever work?”

“In what universe was this a good idea?”

Sergeant Beauregard was starting to get the distinct feeling that the mixture of civilian scientists and naval tech personnel she and her squad were escorting wanted to discuss their findings, but for whatever reason, “each other” was not an option. No, they were fishing for one of the marines to jump in, to ask a question that would set off a one-sided dialog of technobabble.

She groaned internally. Bouncing ideas off one another was a good way to perfect ideas, or come up with new ones. This … would not be that. This would, in all likelihood, be her being talked at, potentially for the next several hours. Oh, the things she did for her people …

Stepping closer to the nearest techie, one Dr. Harrington, she finally asked, “What doesn’t make sense?”

“This is the bridge, right? The nerve center of the ship, where everything is coordinated? It shouldn’t work; there isn’t nearly enough data transfer capacity. A bridge should have ten times as many comms channels; this doesn’t make any sense, damnit!”

“By our standards.” Beauregard pointed out, only letting a little bit of “you should know that” leak in.

“The Koinians and the Assai have the same ones.”

“The Koinians copied us, and the Assai are one example.” She stated flatly.

“So you don’t think a bridge needs to have the ability to show the captain everything that’s going on, and be able to send orders? That there isn’t something extremely weird going on?”

Beauregard sighed. “All I’m saying is, this is an alien ship. Shit we think is weird might just be how they do things. Think horses, not zebras, and all that.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that a bridge needs a certain degree of information influx, which this setup can’t give it. The captain having a [Skill] for that might explain it, but they’re all like this. It’s like they just shout shit through the ship, but …”

Beauregard glanced around. Her knowledge of tech was mostly focused on weapons, overriding doors, and figuring out what to break and what to have her squad’s tech expert hack/override, but it did not take a degree to understand that starships, even one as strange as this one, did not have walls conducive to transmitting sound directly.

For all that many of the things the eggheads were saying had been deliberately worded to confuse anyone without at least three degrees, the picture they were painting was one that was clearly bizarre even to those who lacked said degrees.

***

Derek glanced up from his tablet.

“The navy’s putting together a scouting force of volunteers, but they have no idea when that’ll be done. They say ‘soon,’ but that can mean anything.”

Sure, the current situation would make them hurry; that was for sure, but that might still result in this taking a while.

“Meaning we’ve got time to get properly ready,” Ye-in pointed out. “By the time they send us somewhere, we can be five Levels higher. Or more.”

“Or we could make sure the ship is in its best possible shape,” Mimi suggested.

“Or, and I know this is crazy, we could all do our own thing,” Atticus threw in, giving Derek a pointed look. “So, what are we doing?”

“You do what you think is best,” Derek sighed, glancing back down at his tablet. “I’ve got simulations to run.”

Mostly, he was looking for a better way to maximize the amount of damage they could inflict right upon dropping out of FTL. [Cosmic Awareness], letting him get real-time sensor data irrespective of distance, made those kinds of ambushes far more feasible, but they still needed to kill the target they jumped, especially if it was another battleship.

And, apparently, the navy was still chasing their tails about the mysteries of the alien aggressors….

***

“A hivemind,” Hunt said flatly, staring into the gemlike eyes of the man sitting on the other side of her desk.

“A hivemind,” Dr. Isaac Thoma confirmed. “A very, very large one, judging by the fact that you were able to chew through that fleet without the remaining ships going dead at some point as its numbers fell below the minimum sustainable threshold.”

Aka, the minimum number of bodies a hivemind needed to have alive before it was destroyed. Smaller ones, up to five bodies, could remain alive as long as a single one remained, with the percentage increasing with the size, with the largest known hive mind consisting of sixty separate entities needing a full quarter of its constituents alive.

“And you confirmed this?” Hunt asked.

“The Provost sent the Augury to help; between them, they do have the capability to [Identify] corpses. Our enemy’s species [Cessid Civilization], with ‘Cessid’ no doubt referring to their species of birth, and their [Class] is [Ascendant Civilization of One]. Furthermore, everyone who was scanned was at the Level cap, but with all Stats set to 200, which is exactly what we’d have expected from a hivemind.

“Also, they haven’t pulled a single body out of the wreckage that isn’t identical, and psychometry confirmed that there was never anyone aboard save the ones we found,” Thoma explained.

“So, how many of them are there? Surely it is possible to get some ballpark number based on known percentages?”

Deriving a mathematical formula from known hive minds, plug in the number of dead that hadn’t killed the whole, and overall …

“Unfortunately, this is a ‘the math says bumblebees can’t fly’ kind of problem,” Thoma said, explaining absolutely nothing.

“Pardon?” Hunt asked, not entirely sure she’d heard that right.

“A situation where there is a severe mismatch between the order of magnitude that is being used to form a hypothesis and the order of magnitude to which it is being applied.

“For example: bumblebees are very small, and very light, and air is so much heavier relative to them than to the birds that the mathematical models for flight were built around. Hence, for a while, the math declared that they should not be able to fly despite them clearly having that capability.

“The largest known hive mind that can be created by [Skills] has sixty bodies, and will survive if as few as fifteen are still alive after the battle. And larger hive minds require an increasingly large portion of their number to remain. The enemy ships had a crew of five thousand each, for a total of roughly three hundred and seventy-five thousand individuals dead without the whole dying.

“Mathematical formulae based on known hive minds applied to that have produced results that are clearly artifacts of lacking information.”

Thoma explained. Interesting as that tidbit had been, it was also practically the definition of pointless. Also …

“I have to confess: I have a severe dislike for people whose response to unlikely scenarios is to slap the label of ‘impossible’ onto them and then pass that on without even letting me form my own opinion,” Hunt allowed a hint of an edge to creep into her tone. One of the biggest threats to any military commander’s ability to lead was being fed wrong information by “helpful” subordinates and advisors.

And while the man before her was an expert, what she’d just gotten was the epitome of that kind of nonsense. However high the number was, she needed to know so she could plan around it.

“Either the maths is fundamentally wrong, or our opponent has close to a nonillion bodies.”

“Ah.”

Well, that had been the most un-eloquent response to ever pass her lips since she’d become fleet admiral.

“I do have a hypothesis about the threshold,” Thoma finally admitted. “Our opponent is a civilization unto themselves. In fact, I strongly believe the rest of the Cessids are extinct. However, the key word is ‘civilization.’ The [System] likes modeling [Classes] off stories and real-world concepts, so I don’t doubt that, ultimately, our enemy’s limitations are based on a civilization’s.

“Barring shit like the Volkssturm, or the suicidal bullshit Imperial Japan expected of its citizens before Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war, a civilization is defeated when its military is beaten. And make no mistake, our opponent is a civilization. So, realistically speaking, what percentage of the population is typically found in the military? I strongly suspect that’s our magic number.”

“Fifteen percent without issues, twenty in case of an emergency, thirty for brief moments if we really push it,” Hunt rattled off, naming the limits of humanity according to the eggheads. “It might just be one individual, but in effect, we’re still looking at another highly advanced technological civilization, because tech is how they compensate for the weakness of each individual member of the hive. They have to be dealing with the same logistical rat’s tail as us.

“Furthermore … the enemy had the ability to grant additional [Skills] to individual members, right? Most likely linked to positions in civilization? Otherwise, every individual on those ships would have had that warp-[Skill], and they’d have run rings about us.”

“Huh,” Thoma replied, just as eloquent as she’d been earlier. “I guess I’m doing some more psychometry, then. If we can figure out the original social structure, we might find something we can use.”

Because they really did need “something” to use.

The loss of life had been horrifying.

The damage to both the navy and the solar system’s shipbuilding capacity was bad.

But the political consequences, the damage to even the idea of drawing down Sol’s defenses to go hunting the bastards down, those were far too likely to prove crippling …