Chapter 289 – Prophetic Payoff

Emily’s small squadron has no trouble slipping away in the chaos that follows Silvia’s assault on the mechanoid warpship. They move away from the battlefield and the nearby resource-rich planets, heading towards another set of coordinates within the sector of space marked as the conflict’s frontlines.

They skirt around a few sparse FAF patrols on the way to Yorn’s location, detecting them before being spotted thanks to Emily and Harriet’s vigilance and cutting machina-boosted wakes around them. Unlike with the wall of oversight they had to breach to approach the frontlines, there are plenty of gaps between the scattered fleets that allow them to avoid conflict completely with their small ship count, though they do run into a few squadrons of mechanoid ships that attempt to pull them from lightspeed. Emily makes quick work of them and gladly scraps their corpses to restock her quickly diminishing material stores.

As they approach Yorn’s location, the number of mechanoid patrols noticeably increases, marking their entry into mechanoid-controlled space. Once again, Emily has her squadron drop from lightspeed before creeping up to the active battle site, her caution dialled up to eleven with Yorn so close. Instead of an asteroid field, plane, or planet like all the other conflict zones they’ve visited, the main fight seems to be orbiting a star, with ships cutting closer to the glowing orange orb than Emily would have thought safe: close enough to visibly warm the outer layers of their shields. The most notable feature, however, and likely the cause of their confidence in getting so close, isn’t the burning mass of gas itself, but the super-massive metal construct wrapping around it in several interlocking rings: a Dyson Sphere.

Emily’s hands twitch at her sides, the mounting desire to scan the colossal power-gathering machine nearly unbearable, but she crushes it quickly, knowing she won’t be able to gain anything from it when she senses the energy signatures of two powerful mechanics layered into it and clashing against each other in a battle for control. Their signatures are noticeable even with the nearby star overwhelming her senses, but they don’t quite match it, putting them likely somewhere in the eighth stage.

She turns her focus to the figures darting around the construct’s rings, some using them for footing and others floating in the empty space between. There are dozens of them, and every single one is sixth or seventh level, with a near-perfect split between those aligned with the FAF and those with the mechanoid army. Emily waits on the bridge of her squadron’s lead ship for several minutes as her gaze scans over them, but she eventually spots Yorn clashing with two mechanical beasts over twice his size, swinging his massive sword to fend off an onslaught of tentacles and fire.

“Stay here. Yorn isn’t aboard The Mothership, but he’s close enough to it to detect these ships if you approach,” Emily commands Slippy and McCloud, her eyes flitting to the crew’s largest ship docked to the outside of one of the Sphere’s rings, surrounded by the rest of the fleet with The Blade hanging over it intimidatingly. “I’m going to check who’s with us, then I’ll make some noise, and we’ll retreat. Be prepared to jump to lightspeed the moment I return: we don’t want Yorn catching us, but we’ll need to be seen heading deeper into mechanoid territory to make sure he believes we’re fleeing for good.”

“Aye aye captain,” Slippy responds with a mock salute, relaying her command to the rest of the squadron.

“Happy hunting,” McCloud adds without looking back at her, their focus on their controls as they start pre-heating the ship’s thrusters for their escape.

Emily returns to her room to establish a Temporal Shield, just in case, before throwing on a cloak modelled after Mensacus’ to conceal her identity and Blinking out of the ship, propelling herself forward through the vacuum with a burst of wind. Taking no chances, she has Harriet aid in suppressing her machina, leaving only her mana signature outwardly detectable, before downing a Brew of Imperception to dampen that as well.

She feels tongues of solar radiation lapping at her innate barrier as she approaches the Sphere’s outer ring but ignores it, the heat barely a distraction and the sheer quantity of energy a perfect cover. It takes a few minutes to close the distance with the docked Heavy-blade fleet, and Emily can feel the moment she gets close enough for The Blade’s more sophisticated sensor arrays to differentiate her presence from the sea of energy around her. Nothing happens though, not a single one of the figures darting between the docked ships giving any signs of being alerted, and Emily offers a grateful nod, knowing Lethia is watching her already, before slipping through the distorted energy barrier that should be protecting the Sphere from enemy encroachment.

“I’ve already locked all crew Terminals,” Lethia’s voice whispers into her ear on a wave of machina the moment she passes through the barrier and feels the heat around her tick up a notch. “You should have free rein without gaining Yorn’s attention as long as you keep anyone from using their energy to contact him.”

“Thanks,” Emily responds, closing the final gap between them and floating down to settle on top of The Blade’s hull, keeping her distance from the clashing flow of eighth stage machina running through the metal beneath the fleet’s other ships.

She pulls out her mental focus and slowly pours mana into it, not letting her mana signature flare back into existence too quickly so as to ensure it blends in with the rest of the crew to any outside observers. Her threads of mental mana stretch down to meet the minds of her crewmates, starting with those on board The Blade and confirming all of them already have Mental Locks in place. Next, she reaches out to the small fighter crafts present, ensnaring their limited crews without any resistance and telling them to await further explanation as she moves on to the medium-sized cargo carriers.

She meets her first problem on one of the larger armoured ships when she tries to latch onto one of the third circle minds within and feels them lash out violently, burning away her reaching thread with a cluster of their own mental mana.

“Tsk,” Emily clicks her tongue and tries again, reinforcing a weak thread with several times as much mana as before to pierce the mage’s active defence and whisper a warning into their mind: ‘This is Emily, a member of the crew. Cease your resistance and wait so I can explain in due time.’

Instead of responding or simply waiting to hear her out, with Emily’s connection tethered to the very outskirts of their mind and blocked from delving deeper, the mage on the other end of the thread tries to flood the connection with their own will, attempting to reach back along it into the depths of Emily’s mind. She scoffs at the attempt, taking their attack as answer enough, and floods the connection with a stream of lightning, scorching the mage on the other end into oblivion.

She moves on and continues linking herself to the present crew, meeting four more second and third circle mental mages who lash out in similar manners the moment she tries to reach them. She meets their attacks head-on with wrathful force, blowing their minds to pieces before she even has a chance to properly identify them.

Finally, she reaches into The Mothership to grab all of the minds aboard, and she brushes up against yet another mental mage, this one stronger than the rest at fourth circle. Unlike the others, they allow her to connect instead of meeting her with violence, taking an opposite approach and attempting to draw her in deeper to create a two-way flow of intent. Emily reassigns one of her cores, allowing it to form the unique connection requested as the others manage the many untrained minds still linked to her own. An image forms within the core dedicated to the other mental mage: a blank space with faint figures that loosely resemble Emily and a humanoid mass of worms. She recognises the other presence as a mensvermis, the hivemind beings that she’s seen in passing within the crew.

Their mental forms stare each other down for several seconds as a stream of intent passes between them faster and clearer than words ever could.

‘What a surprise,’ the mensvermis finally whispers in a hissing cacophony of sound. Disdain, judgement, revulsion, and a hint of morbid amusement flow into the mindscape in time with their words. ‘The curse-mother cannot be trusted.’

Emily doesn’t bother with a response, icing over in answer to their venom.

‘My brethren held out hope for your son, you know, that we creatures of The Pit would align in our goals.’

Emily gathers a dense bundle of charge, preparing to strike them down but hesitating as their cryptic goading catches her attention.

‘But I heard their screams.’ The vile creature’s amusement spikes, washing away all traces of their other emotions. ‘It’s what they deserve for playing along with a filthy defiler.’

Emily feels a sudden heat rushing in through the connection, and her eyes widen in shock as the mensvermis detonates its own mind. She severs the link immediately, minimising the damage to her cortex as best she can and flooding the area with cooling machina to begin repairs.

However, instead of their distant mana signature blinking out like their brethren before it, Emily feels the creature’s energy spiking. She throws stealth to the wind and sends out a flood of mana to get a better picture of what’s happening and senses as the mass of worms loses coherence, crumbling and losing its humanoid guise. However, she also detects a previously unnoticeable, pulsing mental connection reaching out from their body to somewhere else on the Dyson Sphere’s rings.

Shit! They partitioned their mind like a mechanic to avoid my suppressed senses.

She doesn’t have to extend her senses further to feel Yorn’s distant energy signature flare with anger and quickly turn back towards his fleet. Emily activates The Clock.

I’ll kill the vermin first this time.

The memory of a distant dream comes to mind as time around her slows to a halt, the image of a mensvermis head on a spike beside Yorn’s clearer now than ever.

***

Emily scorches all mensvermis on contact the second time around, paying special attention to their strongest and thoroughly vaporising their entire being, just in case. She finally establishes a connection to the remaining crew and gives them the usual reveal and request for loyalty, but the answers she receives are far less promising than those that came before them.

While the entire crew of The Blade took Silvia’s side months ago, only a little over half of those currently aboard The Mothership follow in their footsteps. Those among the crews of the other ships present can be counted on two hands.

“What a shame,” Emily mutters aloud, idly wondering if any of them would show less loyalty to Yorn if he weren’t present. “Looks like most of this fleet has to go.”

“It’s not a surprise,” Lethia responds with a buzz of machina that travels up from the ship below Emily’s feet. “Silvia was in charge of splitting the fleet.”

“Fair enough. Prepare to call Yorn back and chase me off: this is going to be a little noisy.”

Emily leaves a small mark on all her targets before severing and recalling the mental threads connected to them, regaining as much of her expended mana as possible before weaving together Mental Locks to apply to her new allies. The moment they’ve been welcomed into the fold, she tucks her mental focus into her belt and calls upon her lightning and metal connections.

Her skin turns metallic, and her eyes light up in contrasting blazes of light as she floods her body with charge, building up enough lightning mana to heat her reinforced flesh and push her away from The Blade beneath her with the ambient magnetic field alone. The small marks of mana left on the crewmembers unwilling to join her turn to humming sparks that spread numbness through the flesh of her victims, and several of them attempt to purge the burning mana with their own energies with little success.

Emily’s limbs start to quake against her control, clashing currents rippling beneath the surface in a maelstrom of power, but she continues to build and hold in her attack until the pressure inside her is near unbearable.

The moment she releases it, hundreds of sparking lances erupt from her, branching out and leaping towards her marks in a dazzling display, melting holes in ship hulls and skulls alike with chilling ease. Their shields reactivate a fraction of a second later, protecting the survivors from the vacuum, but the damage is already done.

Lethia begins turning The Blade’s main cannon up towards her the moment the blinding light from her attack fades, but Emily drops her metal connection and calls on Harriet’s aid to turn herself to plasma before a single attack can be returned. She rockets off, blazing a visible trail away from the Dyson Sphere and towards her distant squadron lying in wait, easily dodging a beam of plasma that attempts to follow.

Emily senses Yorn bursting with energy and kicking off to give chase only a few seconds after her initial attack, but the small lead is enough for her to drop her lightning connection as well and weave together a teleportation spell before he can reach her. She latches onto one of her few remaining spatial anchor birds, which she left in her room with her Temporal Shield, and vanishes into the void before Yorn’s eyes.

“Get us out of here!” she barks the moment she arrives on board Slippy and McCloud’s ship, ignoring the slight exhaustion, from the massive instant energy expenditure of her show, pulling at the edge of her awareness and flooding the entire squadron with her machina, targeting their humming thrusters with a burst of power.

They shoot off into space faster than Yorn could ever hope to follow alone, and Emily returns to the ship’s bridge with bated breath. Less than a minute later, they receive a crew-wide alert from The Mothership, Yorn’s furious voice coming through clear as day.

“This is a crew emergency. I’m calling a regroup, now! I don’t care what your current FAF assignment is: it appears that the attack on Perinith wasn’t a one-off, and we are under targeted attack. I just lost most of my fleet to one cowardly mage who’s running for the hills. We’re giving chase, but the slippery bastards are fast and resisting our interdiction, so we’re unlikely to catch them. Lethia will send the coordinates for our meeting shortly through secured channels: I expect you all to haul ass and get there as quickly as possible if you don’t want to be targeted next.”