Vivid Stars Online

“Make sure you're strapped in,” Linnea said in a terse voice. “This is going to get hairy.”

Another rending screech sounded from the hull as the loaders and I scrambled to check. Linnea weaved the ship back and forth as we did so but held off on any sharp maneuvers until we all sounded off.

“Get ready,” she shouted once the last of us had confirmed our status.

Just as I was bracing myself against the seat, she violently twisted something on the holographic controls. The world suddenly tilted worryingly as we spun into a turn.

Then everything righted itself as a massive, winged shape came into view. It was almost as large as the wyvern I’d just killed, with a wingspan wider than our entire ship.

“Damn,” Linnea muttered from beside me, “The big ones aren’t supposed to be this far down.”

A thought hit me that I probably should have considered earlier. “We are dragging a bloody corpse along below us. Perhaps that drew it in?”

“Right,” she responded, her eyes fixed on the controls. “That might have done it, though they're so poorly studied that we’ll never know for sure. Even if that’s why, it’s too late now. One of the few things we do know is they don’t give up after an attack.”

“So even if we drop the corpse now, it will keep coming?” I asked while reaching out with my senses. The gunboat hadn’t slowed at all after its reversal and yet the bird was still clearly gaining on us.

That didn’t feel natural to me, and the energy I could feel covering most of the Beast confirmed it. Its wings were heavily empowered, seeming to drag it forward faster than was physically possible.

Worse, it had sheathed its claws in dense, razor-sharp energy that reminded me of my Psi blade after I empowered it.

“Yep,” Linnea responded, before cursing under her breath. “The auto-targeting system can’t lock on and the scanners don’t even pick it up. See if you can figure out how to manually fire them.”

Just like that time one came at us on the ground, I thought with a wince as I was attuned to the ship. My scanner never picked it up then either.

A normal person might have trouble figuring out the controls for an unfamiliar system under pressure, luckily I had other options. I was almost a part of the ship as I connected to its weapons system and began focusing on the enemy.

As Linnea had said, the targeting software refused to acknowledge the creature’s existence, forcing me to enter manual mode. The beast was only half a dozen feet in front of us by this point, so I aligned the guns and fired.

Plasma fire burst forth and skimmed the bird’s side, barely winging it. Fuck, I thought as I tried to re-align them, this is so much harder than just aiming my pistol.

My miss cost us as the bird lunged the last few feet, scouring deep rents in the hull even as Linnea swerved to take it on the side.

“We should be OK for a while,” she said as we spun into another dizzying turn. “Though it’s going to hit something important eventually, so it’s really just a matter of luck.”

“Right,” I responded. “So kill it as soon as possible, then.” I didn’t like the idea of a lucky hit taking us out. Nor did I like the no doubt expensive damage it was racking up with every strike.

As soon as the ship stabilized, I focused the guns again, taking my earlier failure into account. I fired another set of shots, only to curse as the bird dived out of the way.

Damn thing’s smart enough to adapt after seeing me fire once, I’ll have to try to anticipate its moves.

I’d had a fair amount of experience leading my shots against charging Beasts, hopefully, that would help here.

It took three more passes before I’d finally dialed in enough to hit consistently. My heart jumped in my chest each time we were struck, yet each time we wavered and then stabilized again.

After I finally had the aim right it was over quickly. While the bird’s feathers seemed to have a limited ability to shed plasma, it didn’t hold up against accurate fire from mounted weapons.

“Safe,” I sighed in relief as the creature’s corpse plummeted from the sky and smashed into the mountainside. “How are we looking?”

“We didn’t take any critical damage,” Linnea replied with her own sigh. “A few systems got destroyed, but we have enough backups to keep going for now.” She shook her head as she finished with a laugh. “But I’m definitely not taking this back in there unless Elana gets the shields working.”

“What’s wrong with them?” I asked as I sank back into the seat. That fight had been the most nerve-racking I’d been in for some time. While part of that was not being able to fight the creature directly, most of it was because of our passengers.

Linnea and I would come back if we were dead, but the four people in the passenger seats would not. That was the true weight of the responsibility I now had, and I’d never felt it more clearly.

“She didn’t have all the materials required, something about Psionically active metal,” Linnea responded with a shrug. “Apparently it was wrecked by whatever battle this thing went through, so we need an almost complete replacement. The frigate’s fabricator can do it, but we need the right materials.”

“Ah,” I said with a wince. “I didn’t see anything like that for sale in the civilian markets, so it’s probably government only, if it even exists. We might be able to buy some, but I bet it will cost us.”

Then an idea hit me and I perked up. “The caves might have some though, there’s an awful lot of psionic energy pumping through them.”

Linnea responded with a grin and a thumbs up, looking far more relaxed now her first dogfight was over. “Do you want us to drop down to get its core?”

“Hmm,” I muttered as I weighed up the benefits and the risks. On the one hand, the money would be nice, but on the other, we had civilians here that I’d already put at risk once today.

When I thought about it that way, there wasn’t really a choice. “No, just get out of here. If we aren’t close to the edge drop the wyvern too, let’s not risk that again.”

“We're only a minute or two out,” Linnea responded with a shake of her head. “May as well keep it after going to all that effort.”

“OK, Full speed back to town, then," I ordered with a wave in the vague direction of my settlement.

Linnea nodded as she spun us in a more sedate circle before speeding off.

We made good time with no further incidents and were soon settling down by the frigate. Once we’d landed, I thanked each of the clearly shaken workers and paid them a bonus for the trouble.

The money perked them up, and I sent them off looking much happier. That left us alone with the massive corpse.

“So what are you planning on doing with this, anyway?” Linnea asked as she jerked a thumb at the beast. “I’m pretty sure we can’t eat it or anything.”

“Get it butchered, I guess,” I responded with a shrug. “Much like that bird, its scales were almost immune to plasma fire, they might make some decent armor or something like that. We might be able to reduce the rest down to the psionic fuel we need as well, it certainly got a powerful signature.”

“Do we need to take it back to Elendes, then?” She asked, turning back to the gunboat. “I doubt there will be a specialist butcher here in town.”

“Or you could throw it in the fabricator,” Elana interjected from behind us, causing me to jump. “It's rated for organics and should be able to render the corpse for parts.”

I turned to see her walking over from the edge of the frigate, dressed in a set of dirty overalls. “It’s that versatile?” I asked quizzically.

“Yeah,” she responded with a shrug. “I mean, we’ll need to figure out a deconstruction blueprint for it, but that shouldn’t be too hard. I bet Mira can help with that.”

“Mira?” I said, wracking my brain for who that might be.

“Yes, Mira,” she said flatly. “You know, the AI that lives in your ship. The one you didn’t warn me about.”

I winced at that, awkwardly brushing the back of my head. Yeah, that’s probably something I should have brought up even though she was busy when I left. I guess that means it picked a name though, hopefully, that’s a good sign.

“Sorry about that,” I said as I pulled my attention back. “In my defense, I didn’t know that Mira was ready to talk to anyone else. Still, I should have told you about her before I left.”

Her face remained stern for a moment, before cracking into one of her normal carefree smiles. “Hah, don’t worry about it,” she said with a laugh. “I’m just messing with you.”

“I mean, sure, it was a shock to hear her speak the first time, but I was there when you grabbed the core, so it wasn’t a complete surprise. She’s actually really nice and helpful, I wouldn’t be making nearly as much progress without her.”

“That's great to hear, I’m glad she’s settling in,” I responded, relaxing as one of my worries was assuaged. “But back to the corpse here. Will it fit into engineering and the fabricator?”

She glanced at it again for a moment before nodding. “Should do. It’s rated for some pretty big builds and as impressive as that beast is, it’s still smaller than one of the hull plates.”

“Give me a minute and I’ll lower the loading ramp,” she finished, before racing off.

Only a couple of minutes later, the side of the frigate dropped open and lowered to the ground. A long crane arm extended down with it, gripping the side of the corpse and dragging it up onto the extended ramp.

Then the ramp started sliding up, revealing itself to be a massive conveyer belt. “Nice,” I said as my eyebrows rose. “I didn’t realize we had such a good loading system."

Linnea nodded alongside me, also looking impressed. “That’s going to make supplying it a lot easier. The size of the hold had me a bit worried that we’d need a whole gang of people to make it work.”

“I guess the Arkthians weren’t much for manual labor,” I mused as I thought back to all the robots we’d seen at the various facilities. Most of them had been some form of converted worker robot rather than true battle versions.

Only the last facility run by Mira had proper warriors, and I was pretty sure that she had fabricated those herself.

With the corpse rapidly receding into the bowels of the ship, I turned toward the entrance and strode over with Linnea a step behind. The insides were still unfamiliar to me, but we managed to find our way to engineering after a few minutes of wandering.

We arrived just as the lift was raising up with the corpse on it. To my further surprise, the floor panel that made up the lift raised higher than the surrounding floor before sliding across it toward the fabricator.

Elana jumped off the back halfway across, before it continued into the fabricator.

“Pretty neat, right?” She said with a laugh when she saw my face. “They made it as easy as possible to get stuff into the ship and up into the fabricator. Now,” she continued as she walked over to the controls.

“I’ll just have to figure out the right blueprint to give it and the beast should be rendered down for parts. That might take a while, though, so you may as well head off.”

Nodding, I thanked her before turning back toward the exit. Both of my requests to the palace had come back indicating that they would be happy to serve me at my leisure. It still felt odd to be given such priority treatment, but I wasn’t going to complain.

“Ready for some shopping?” I asked Linnea as we walked out. “I think we could both do with an upgrade.”