Chapter 282 – Mutinous Manoeuvres

A few weeks later, Emily’s small squadron receives a warning alert and drops from lightspeed at the edge of a raging conflict zone. There are hundreds of ships with varying markings, some of them she recognises from the Heavy-Blade fleet, weaving through the gaps in a large asteroid field that fills the horizon. There’s no clear division between sides from afar, but there are several noticeable groups moving together, including several mining ships trying to extract resources from the drifting rocks.

From her place behind the pilots on the ship’s bridge, Emily drinks in every flash of weapon fire. She traces beams of plasma as they slice through small floating rocks and sputter out against energy barriers. She watches streams of kinetic rounds punch holes through exposed hulls and tear away chunks of rock. She admires a variety of spells being flung from unseen positions inside the ships, hacking away at opponents or throwing up extra barriers to reinforce fallen energy shields. She basks in the glorious lights of distant explosions blooming like flowers as ships burst and guided rockets find their targets.

It’s chaos, but every seemingly unpredictable small skirmish reads to Emily like notes on a page, and despite the calm quiet on the bridge as the pilots await their instructions, Emily can hear the siren’s call begging her to take control of the symphony.

She cycles cold machina in her cortex, washing away her faint emotional influence and forcing down the desire to experience the elegant dance of inter-ship combat firsthand.

“Kill the engines,” she commands coldly, flooding the ship’s communication relay with machina as the craft and those following it come to a halt, floating in an empty space just far enough from the asteroid field not to be flagged as a threat to anyone within. “I’m establishing a connection with our present crewmates now.”

Emily sends out a signal insulated with her machina on the crew’s usual comms frequency, reaching out through the vacuum with a barbed imprint designed to fend off any who tries to grasp it but the intended recipient. She feels several foreign ship relays try to match the frequency and meet her handshake, the mechanics within reaching out with their own machina to try and strip hers away, but the signal slips past without sticking until it reaches the Heavy-Blade ships with the matching recipient signature.

She latches onto the communication relays that accept her signal, counting twenty-three in total, and converts some of the machina she sent out into spatial mana to solidify the connection regardless of the distance separating them, locking herself in as the main controller and icing out the crew’s mechanics. She sends out another signal, bouncing it across all of the newly linked relays and isolating the connected Terminals aboard the ships before temporarily disabling their data transmission chips. Some of the crew’s mechanics notice her meddling and try to protect their Terminals with their own machina, but all of those present are below her in stage, none of them strong enough to overpower and burn out the connection once she’s made it.

“Hey Rotwin,” Emily says, forcibly opening a call with the command ship leading the Heavy-Blade fleet in this conflict zone. “I’m about to completely isolate all outgoing messages and start my verification of your present subordinates. I’ll leave your ship alone, since we’ve already checked everyone on board, but please make sure the communication blackout goes unnoticed for now.”

“Of course,” the chimaeric hound agrees without hesitation. “Take as long as you need.”

“Thanks. I’ll let you know how many I have to purge when I’m finished: hopefully it’s not so many that we have to scrap any ships to make their loss believable.”

She disconnects from the call and sends out the final signal to deactivate the fleet’s outgoing comms.

“Wait here and try to remain unnoticed,” she instructs the pilots while weaving together a teleportation spell. “I may be gone for a while, but I will return when I have further instructions. Send me an alert before engaging if anyone tries to make contact or attack while you wait.”

“Understood,” both of them respond, relaying her instructions to the rest of the squadron.

She anchors her spell to the spatial mark she applied to one of the distant ship’s relays, draining a significant degree more mana than if she’d placed one of her spatial anchor birds in advance, and pulls herself through the void in an instant. She appears in the bowels of the medium-sized fighter and comes face-to-face with two of the crew’s mechanics. Only one of them, the third phase humanoid synth, opens his eyes wide in surprise. The second phase chimaeric hound beside him simply lowers her head in acknowledgement and steps back.

“What the-” the synth starts to question, cutting off and nodding in frantic understanding when Emily raises a single finger to her lips and lets the full weight of her circles and stage weigh down on his shoulders.

“Hello, Elioth,” Emily says, identifying the man by the ID of the Terminal sitting at his hip. “I’m sure you’re already aware of who I am.”

He nods, wide-eyed and silent.

“Well, I’m here representing our Vice to inform you, and everyone in this fleet, about a coming change in leadership. As you can see, I’m no simple mechanic, and to be completely honest, I will never put my weight behind a man that would’ve gladly collared me and mine for his own profit.” She doesn’t let a hint of emotion bleed into her flat tone, as if simply stating facts utterly unrelated to her, but the sharp light in her eyes speaks volumes. “Luckily, Silvia, Rotwin, and I are in agreement that this crew needs new operating guidelines, and we’ve come to a decision on what must be done. We believe Elwaine will be receptive to our cause, too, but what I would like to know from you now is where you’ll stand. Can we count on your support?”

A shiver runs down Elioth’s spine as he hears the unspoken threat behind her question, but he ignores it and nods firmly.

“O- of course,” he declares, his artificial voice box quivering slightly as he gathers his courage and squares his shoulders. “The Vice treats us mechanics better than Yorn ever has. He still calls us time-bombs like the rest of the idiotic brutes.”

“Perfect,” Emily says, easing the pressure she’s applying to him and reaching a hand into her belt. “You wouldn’t be against me confirming this, right?”

“Not at all.” The mechanic shakes his head, nervously glancing down as she pulls out an artefact that emanates an unsettling chill.

It’s a strange thing of twisted metal that looks somewhat like a tornado frozen in time. It’s made from several spiralling shards of different metals wound together and fused at two pointed tips, wrapping around a pulsing greater mental crystal in the centre that just about glows through the thin gaps in the structure. The metal shards themselves are covered in black and white runes imbued with Mensacus’ potent mana, but the visible array is incomplete, and the crystal’s surface is bare, linked to the overarching enchantment by its vessel instead.

“Do not resist.” Emily tints her mana with the sparking bioelectricity of her mental affinity and channels it into the unique focus.

The mental crystal drinks the energy in before pulsing and releasing a thin, nearly solid thread of milky-white mana. It reaches out to the mechanic watching with bated breath and makes contact with his forehead, sinking into his skin without meeting resistance.

Elioth flinches at the touch before letting out his breath when nothing happens.

“Am I mea-“

‘Wait,’ Emily whispers directly into his mind, cutting him off.

Sparks of her mental mana flow from the arm clasping the focus, forming a shifting spell matrix in the blink of an eye. The moment the finished casting structure locks into place, the runes covering the focus pulse with light, and a thick bead of mana shoots along the thread connected to her target.

This time, the mechanic feels her trying to take hold, but as agreed, he relaxes and lets her in.

Immediately, Emily’s hit by a foreign wave of emotion so strong it nearly interrupts her casting. She hasn’t felt anything that comes close in pure depth since she first dosed herself with salvianross. She feels fear, awe, anticipation, and dread all falling over themselves, each one a distinct sensation in itself, yet all of them entwined too closely to tell where one ends and the next starts. To add to the disorientation, she can hear the internal monologues from both of Elioth’s cores running at a hundred miles a minute, analysing her mental link and feeding back his poor attempts at understanding, almost as if he were actively trying to meddle with her spell.

Emily hisses at the sudden influx of information and immediately starts refining the spell. She adds in several layers of filters, carefully balancing them to catch the raw emotional and direct thought outputs the moment they reach her casting focus before combining and comparing them to read only the base intent and truth behind them.

Elioth grows increasingly uncomfortable throughout the process, the feeling of someone scraping his surface thoughts and feelings grating on his nerves, but he cycles his own machina to keep calm.

Finally, after nearly half an hour of adjustments, Emily asks the important question again.

“Will you support us and remain loyal to the crew when we turn on Yorn?”

“Yes.”

He means it without even a sliver of doubt.

“Perfect. Welcome to the mutiny,” Emily says, curling the corner of her lips into a small smile and patting him on the shoulder to reassure him as she continues. “Now, I’m going to place a spell on your mind to protect your memories of this conversation and my nature so no one outside of our crew can find out. You’ll be able to feel it in place, but it won’t harm you or influence your actions in any way.”

The mechanic nods in understanding, though a flicker of concern does colour his expression for a moment before he schools it and braces himself.

Emily casts Mental Lock, quickly isolating the memories of the last half hour and binding them, anchoring the spell specifically to the moment she silenced him with her dual energies.

“There, all done.” She releases the thread of mana connecting them and gestures to the relay behind her. “Don’t worry about that, it was me. I’ll return it to normal functions once I’ve verified everyone aboard.”

The mechanics both nod in understanding and step out, leaving her alone.

Emily immediately settles down on the floor cross-legged, holding her casting focus between two interlinked hands and shutting her eyes. She floods the crystal with mana, causing it to erupt with dozens of threads which stretch out to pass through the surrounding walls. The threads seek out every member of the crew on board, brushing past the few with a Mental Lock already in place and latching onto everyone else.

‘Hello, crew of Ship MA77F, this is Emily speaking,’ she transmits to all of them at once. ‘Please do not try to resist or sever this connection…’

She repeats the same explanation she gave Elioth, receiving a blend of shock, outrage, and acceptance from the various minds connected to hers, with only a few forcefully severing themselves and earning an immediate spot on her blacklist for their troubles.

‘…Now, I need a simple yes or no answer from all of you on this, and I will know if you’re telling the truth. Will you support us and remain loyal to the crew when we turn on Yorn?’

A flood of responses hits her at once. Most agree truthfully, far more concerned with their own development and profits than who’s giving them orders, and some try to lie their way through. Only one person on the ship outright denies her, siding with Yorn and meaning it, which earns them a hint of Emily’s respect along with a face-to-face execution after she’s done applying Mental Lock to her new allies and delivering bullets through portals into the skulls of the lying loyalists.

It takes a considerable chunk of her mana reserves to clear the ship, thanks to layering such large-scale mental spells, but she ignores the drain and keeps going, teleporting to the next largest ship.

It takes a while to clear the fleet, and by the end, she’s removed enough members of their crew to man one of their medium-sized ships. Emily returns to her squadron and waits for her drained energy reserves to refill before reconnecting to Rotwin’s ship and ordering her squad to approach the asteroid field.

“I’m done, but too many were loyal to cover up without sacrificing some ships,” she explains. ℴ

“Damn, that’s a shame,” Rotwin responds. “How many do you need?”

“I’m going to clear everyone from MA12G, along with SL07F through 9, for believability, then take them out of combat. I’ll leave them recoverable for when you’re done here, though.”

“Got it. I’ll make sure no one from our fleet hits you back hard enough to break your shields.”

“Thanks. Oh, and before I go, I should have your elixir ready by the time we next meet up. It’s not quite there yet, but I have the time now.”

“That’s far faster than I was expecting anyway,” the hound replies with pleasant surprise in his tone. “Thank you.”

The call ends, and Emily directs her squadron into place before vanishing from the ship again, teleporting herself into Ship MA12G. She locates everyone inside in the blink of an eye, before opening portals beneath them and sending them straight to one of the common areas in Rotwin’s command ship. The moment the craft is empty, she signals her squadron, and they open fire, sending a volley of shots into the now-vacant vessel. The ship quakes, but her shields hold firm under the initial volley, right up until Emily deactivates them. Several projectiles tear through the now-exposed hull, sending most of the artificial atmosphere within out into the vacuum.

Emily Teleports back to the bridge of her squadron’s lead ship, quickly taking control from the pilots and flooding the craft’s weapons with her rich machina. Two Overcharged plasma beams shoot out from cannons on either side of the vessel, cutting through MA12G and accurately crippling its life support systems in one blow.

The Heavy-Blade ships nearby turn their weapons on the small attack squad, but most of their shots fly wide without any extra manoeuvring from Emily’s side.

Emily repeats the same process with three small fighters, removing their already limited crews before disabling the vessels and leaving them dead in the water, before recording an image of the aftermath and a scan of the lack of life on board. Satisfied, she leads her squad on a twisting path back to the edge of the asteroid field, avoiding a few FAF allied ships that notice the fight and come to the Heavy-Blade fleet’s aid, before making for open space to jump back to lightspeed.

A few ships try to pursue them, but Rotwin holds his forces within the conflict zone, and the stragglers are quick to give up the chase.

“Set course for Elwaine’s fleet next,” she commands the ship’s original pilots as she relinquishes control and turns to return to her quarters. “You know where to find me.”