Chapter 290 – Premeditated Strike

Emily continues Overdriving her squadron’s thrusters until they give Yorn the slip. Not long after, Lethia sends through a communication request, and Emily accepts while flooding her ship’s quantum relay with machina to reinforce the connection.

“You’re secure,” the head pilot says the moment the call connects. “Only The Blade managed to get a half-decent scan of your squadron, and I wiped it immediately. Sending through the meeting point’s coordinates now. I suggest you meet up with one of the other fleets before arriving, but I doubt you need the advice.”

“Thanks, Lethia,” Emily replies as a destination marker pops up on McCloud’s data readout, pointing them away from the conflict’s frontlines and towards an empty patch of space deep in fiscushia territory. “Coordinates received, and I’ll do just that. I was planning on discussing the finer details of the coming confrontation with Silvia anyway.”

“Good luck.”

“Oh, I imagine you’ll need luck more than me: I wouldn’t have thought Yorn’s in a particularly good mood right now.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” Lethia responds dryly. “He’d still be yelling in my ear right now if I hadn’t told him that I needed comms clear to coordinate our regroup.”

“Ha, stay safe.”

Emily cuts the call and sends Silvia a message to decide on a rendezvous point before leaving Slippy and McCloud alone and returning to her room to check on her kids’ progress in the dungeon. She connects to the video feed to find the same endless rocky expanse as usual, but instead of being lit by an even glow, the entire space is blanketed in a thin layer of darkness that seems to leech all colour from the dimension. Also, unlike her previous check-ins, she doesn’t see any sign of the usual endless horde of dungeon golems as her son gazes out towards the horizon.

“Looks quiet,” Emily muses, alerting Mensacus to her presence.

“Mother!” he purrs in a pleased tone, alerting Silica and drawing her over to peer up from the corner of the feed with a happy grin. “Yes, we appear to have been given respite from the dungeon’s assault. Approximately thirteen hours ago light faded, and the beasts attacking us vanished.”

He turns to let her view scan over a makeshift camp set-up, with the FAF’s vehicles near the centre of several resting groups of soldiers and pirates, with countless others on watch around them.

“And you didn’t feel the need to inform me?”

“I didn’t want to bother you while you may be dealing with Yorn’s fleet. I was going to send an alert if any creatures unique to this… night phase arose.”

“I see. That’s acceptable. What about that odd darkness? Have you been able to gain anything from it?”

“Not really. There’s a low-potency darkness mana spread throughout the dungeon’s atmosphere now, but other than a slight leaning towards decay and hopelessness, there’s not too much to analyse,” Mensacus explains, a hint of disappointment clear in his tone. “What about your encounter with Yorn? Has he been dealt with?”

“Not yet. I had to remove a large portion of the crew aboard his fleet, and we’re heading to spring our final trap now, but it will be a little while still before this business is dealt with. Tell me, how has your sister been handling prolonged combat…”

***

A few weeks later, Emily’s squadron drops from lightspeed into an open patch of space a few lightyears from the main frontline blockade to find Silvia’s fleet already waiting. Her five ships blend into the larger fleet, and Emily waves goodbye to Slippy and McCloud before Blinking into an occupied training room on Silvia’s command ship as they pick up speed again.

“I have to say, your attack on Yorn’s fleet was beautifully done,” Silvia beams the moment Emily arrives before her, her voice coloured by unmissable glee. “I’ve had several very upset conversations with him already. I would have loved to have been there to see his face when he realised what you’d done.”

“You’ll have to ask Lethia if she took a recording,” Emily responds, rolling her eyes at the vampire’s palpable excitement. “So, do you have a plan as to how we’re going to play this?”

“I have the bones of one, but the flesh we’ll have to work out between us: my idea’s heavily dependent on how much of a role you can play.”

“Okay, hit me.”

“Well, to start with, the one aspect I’m fully confident I can outdo Yorn in is raw endurance. If our qi levels were balanced and we were to trade equal blow for blow, his body would give before mine. To the same end, I’m far better at recovering damage in the heat of battle: it’s something of a speciality of mine, as you know. Unfortunately, he both has more qi than me, and the sheer brutality of his style is liable to overwhelm me and keep me unable to fight back if I’m not careful. That’s where you come in.”

“You want me to break his focus?”

“Exactly. While I don’t expect you’ll be able to defend against his attacks efficiently, I believe the variety of methods you have to deal damage will keep him on his toes. He has little to no finesse, but his combat intuition is strong, and if we fall into a repeatable pattern, he’s likely to find his stride and push us back with force alone.”

“I can do that.” Emily nods confidently. “Even with my magic alone, I have a wide catalogue of spells and elements.”

“I know, I’ve felt first-hand how slippery you can be.” Silvia grins, flashing her fangs and dropping into a combat stance. “I also want to ask if you can fire the starting shot to catch him off guard. He’s unaware of your true nature, so you should have a single chance to deal a heavy blow and help cut down his qi reserves.”

“He’ll reach the meeting point before us, so I’ll struggle to set-up like I did with Perinith.” Emily drops into her own stance, raising her arms and ejecting machina-charged blades from her palm and wrist. “But… I can burn one of my time crystals to ensure an unavoidable opening if you’re willing to owe me for the expenditure.”

“Oh, I’ll make it worth your while,” the vampire purrs, blurring forwards in a hail of clawed slashes. “I want the entire crew to be present to watch Yorn’s downfall, but it would be counterproductive if we suffered damage in the process of building morale, so I’ve asked Elwaine to help contain the effects of our battle…”

***

A few days before they arrive at the planned meeting point, Silvia halts her fleet in a sector of dead space for Emily to prepare. She leaves the ship and flies out into the void, putting some distance between herself and the fleet before freezing in place.

Emily pulls a greater time crystal from her belt, taking it in both hands and matching the frequency of her mana to it. She pulls upon its vessel, momentarily separating it to carve a complex array into place. The crystal drinks up nearly a quarter of her mana and, at the moment of completion, she pauses, using several cores and dozens of threads to forcefully hold the half-formed array in place.

She pours the rest of her mana into Harriet, using her familiar in place of her lightning connection to form a concentrated orb of charge. The ball of lightning grows until it's several times the size of Emily, and she begins compressing it once her mana has run dry and her machina has started flowing out and converting to replace it. She floods the shrinking orb with invasive intent, whispering the desire to latch onto anything around it and linger for as long as possible.

The orb screams, rattling the bones of all the crewmembers watching, and sparks leap from it without control as it's filled with more mana than any fifth circle mage should reasonably attempt to contain. The trails of wild plasma tear through the vacuum with no real target, leaving burned trails in the crew’s retinas.

Right before Emily’s reserves run completely dry, when the orb has reached the same size as her head and turned to a deep azure with a nearly glassy texture that strongly resembles a refined lightning crystal, Emily releases her hold on it and finally allows the array carved into the time crystal in her grip to settle into place. The compressed orb instantly destabilises, erupting outwards with an ear-splitting cry, but it vanishes like a lie in almost the same instant, leaving an unsettling quiet in its wake and a warm crystal in Emily’s hands.

She gasps for mana, unable to propel herself back towards the ship just yet, and looks down at her newly-made weapon of mass destruction. The crystal looks almost the same as before, but it radiates a faint, constant heat, and as she gazes intently, Emily can see flickering runes dancing with sparks of charge in unpredictable fractal patterns.

“You trapped that entire attack in there?” Silvia whispers into her ear, looking over her shoulder at the crystal and snaking an arm around Emily’s waist to pull her back towards the fleet. “How terrifying.”

***

When they finally reach the meeting point, they find every other ship of the Heavy-blade fleet already waiting for them. Emily can sense the presence of all surviving fifth level and above awakened aboard The Mothership, but she and Silvia make no move to join them, instead choosing to leave their ship and drift out into the vacuum.

They stand together in charged silence, Silvia’s anticipation filling the space between them and Emily’s magic circles concealed once again.

It takes several minutes for anyone to answer them, but eventually Yorn steps from The Mothership with the rest of the crew’s high-level awakened hot on his heels. His scarred face is set in a stern frown, and he either doesn’t seem to notice, or more likely doesn’t care, when the rest of his crewmates hang back by the fleet as he flies over to meet his Vice.

“The fuck are you doing?” the man growls as he comes to a halt a few metres from them, glancing between the vampire and the newest addition to their crew with uncertainty swirling in his gaze, the cogs turning in his mind. “You’re meant to be joining us for a debriefing, not standing here like idiots.”

Emily can see the tension in his shoulders and feel his qi circulating a beat faster than usual, and silently wonders if he already suspects the source of the recent foul play. She once again reconsiders establishing a Temporal Shield but dismisses the idea as pointless considering they expect the battle to be dragged out. She slowly floats back a few centimetres, calculating the distance between herself and Yorn and positioning carefully.

“Well, it would be a shame to ruin a perfectly good ship just to kill a single weak-willed bastard,” Silvia spits back at him, her face splitting in a familiar bloodthirsty grin but her eyes far colder than Emily’s used to seeing.

“What, finally done tucking your tail and now willing to show your fangs, leech?” Yorn bites back without hesitation. Silvia bristles at the insult, gritting her teeth as tongues of crimson qi seep from her body and curl around her muscles. “I thought you would’ve gotten over Enna by now, especially when you held your tongue after your recent ascension, but it looks like you’re still stuck in the past. I gotta know though, before I rip you limb from limb for daring to think you can go against me, what’s giving you the confidence to try now? The weak little time-bomb at your side?”

“Ha,” Silvia barks out humourlessly. “You know, it’s funny you should call her that.”

Emily crushes the crystal held in the small of her back, and her vanished attack reappears where Yorn is standing in the void. He reacts instantly, shifting his head more on instinct than thought, but he’s unable to move his torso fast enough, and his shoulder bursts with the explosion of charge. The attack tears through his flesh, crippling the joint and scorching his left arm black. The lightning doesn’t fade quickly, latching on and digging in before he can move qi to force it out, keeping a steady flow of charge flowing through his limb.

“Fuck!” the man screams, qi bursting from him in a wave of killing intent that sends shivers down Emily’s spine despite her fearless nature. “How dare you! Everyone fire on these two until there’s nothing left!”

None of the ships floating a short distance away reacts, and a flicker of concern passes through Yorn’s rage-distorted glare.

“That’s an order!” he shouts again, flooding his voice with qi to ensure it's heard by all.

“Oh, none of them will be helping you,” Silvia purrs, growing out her bloody claws and grinning with glee as Elwaine and the mages following their command begin chanting and move to surround the three of them with a massive film of mana and shifting runes. “Emily here made sure of that.”

Emily releases the hold on her mana and quickly moves back to the boundary of the barrier holding them in to open several gates into her Factory, watching a myriad of emotions cross Yorn’s face before he settles into grim determination and hate as his undamaged right hand moves back to grip the handle of his colossal sword.

“A dual awakened… so it was you. Fine, those traitors can be dealt with later. I’ll just have to kill you both myself!”