<u>19</u>


    The Titan could shape-change, but not very quickly.  Much larger than the other, Red Flight, battle-mechs, that behemoth was a natural rallying point.  Its shielding was planetary in scale and its weaponry second only to the station itself or Cerulean Dream.


    (Had he done damage to the vent blasting out?  Yes.  Yes, he had.  Would they get over it…?  Probably not.  Demotion was coming.  He knew it.)


    OVR-Lord had shut down, scammed by the Entertainment Division’s halting conundrum (an infinite, prime number apple calculation in non-veridean manifold space).  On the bright side, this meant that defense of the planet, station and ship were up to the individual assets.  On the dark side, <u>same</u>.


    V47 Pilot drew manna like a newly collapsed black hole.  Erected a planet-wide shield with the help of Glimmr’s high altitude force generators.  He stepped in for OVR-Lord, then, sending half of the Reds down to protect those vulnerable shield generators and mining platforms.


    Meanwhile, the Draugr advanced at near light speed; extremely dangerous for them, so close to a massive gravity well.  Millions of forward units simply erupted, torn apart by the clash between luminal speed and dense matter.  That hurtling advance sent ripples through spacetime that smeared the battle-mechs back and forth across fifteen inches and .32 ticks.  Disorienting, but also useful, because the defenders could lay down more fire that way.  As Ravn would put it, ‘Plowing the field’.


    …But there were so many enemy fighters, flying as nearly a solid block, straight through the glittering ash of their dead.  The spacecraft were linked by a web-work of crackling force.


    “Knock <u>that</u> out, and they can’t coordinate,” the pilot murmured aloud, half to himself, half to V47.  With less than three ticks till they came into firing range, he said, “Scan for a main power source or projector, V.  There’s got to be <u>something</u> in there we can target.”


    -Initiating scan, Pilot.  Attempted scan-block evaded.  Scanning.  Result: There is a 127% larger structure located .051 Astronomical Units within the formation.  Polar coordinates: 71.6X, -.93Y, 578.99Z… 578.98Z… 578.97Z… and closing at .84 Light.  This structure generates sunlike power and Meta-bytes of continual data. This seems ‘important’. -


    V47 produced a glowing holographic image of the object, which was the size of Glimmr’s far moon, and which altered its shape without ceasing.  In fact, it seemed almost to boil. Pilot absorbed all the specs that V47 could feed him.  Nodded, next, causing the Titan to do so, as well.


    “Right,” he decided.  “We can argue whether ten-billion jacked-up loose Draugr are better than one big formation later, in court-martial.  Get a target lock, then send that nightmare to nether-space.”


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    V47’s assent was a kaon-pulse, fired along the link that combined them.  The Titan’s main gun irised open.  Cams thundered.  Linear actuators growled.  Servos whined, as the main cannon took aim and charged up.


    Pilot anchored them to Glimmr’s tremendous gravity field, then fired that rumbling planet-buster.  So… in a cyborg body, he’d have had responsive optics that shielded themselves.  This soggy meat-pile had mostly regular eyes, only now being shored up by V47.


    The Titan’s canopy darkened to save his vision as hell-in-a-laser-blast shot from the battle-mech’s chest.  Combining violet, Xray and gamma radiation in alternate pulses, the weapon lanced its beam across space, obliterating debris and 235 cubic miles of Draug fighter craft.  A million more searing explosions, as hurtling matter converted directly to light.


    Very impressive to look at, but only a scratch, in a formation the size of a planet.  The Draug fired back, concentrating their particle beams onto a forward amplification lens.  What went into that glowing prism of force was a blizzard of rock. What emerged was a massive, tumbling asteroid, aimed straight at Glimmr and V47.


    “Shoot for that lens!” ordered the pilot, as wave after wave of giant missiles rained down.  “Disrupt their fire!”


    V listened and acted at once.  So did S434 and S220 of Red Flight, who’d come awake enough to broadcast the cyborg version of ‘Huh?!’


    “Explain later!” (From a witness stand, most likely.) “OVR-Lord’s down.  Attempting to defend the planet and station!”


    Which was enough for the only two Reds whose brains came alight.


    “Copy, V47.  Maintain fire.  We’ll cover you.”


    Because he couldn’t shield and blast the main cannon, as well.


    “Aye that and thank you.  Owe you a round of drinks at the club.”


    If there was one.  If he wasn’t in prison or dead.  By this time, that asteroid storm was nearly on top of them, but the Draugr had slowed.  Had to, or else overtake and be struck by their own projectiles.


    Cerulean Dream yawed away from the station to hang slanted and broadside, launching a cyclone of drones and bringing its own guns to bear on the incoming asteroid swarm. Laser and missile fire turned the space around V47 into a blinding-white cauldron of flame.  Home, sweet home.


    V47 pilot shifted his own aim from the Draug CPU to their matter-amplification lens.  It was a quantum device, according to scan; using zero-point energy to boost and accelerate matter.  Shielded, but not effectively.  Not against a Titan’s main cannon.


    The first .03 tick burst took out its forcefield.  The next .01 tick blasted that lens into sparkling ionic dust, then shattered its atoms to quarks.  Stopped that one, hard. But there were many more lenses; an entire compound array, materializing almost as fast as V47 could blast them to vapor.


    S434 and S220 ran block, firing bank shots to alter the impactors’ trajectory.  There were only two of them, though.  The rest of Red Flight were still in their text-file rhomboid attack formation, being chewed to pieces by enemy fire.  Just assets… not even awake to know they’d been killed… decanted again in a week, but…


    “Reduce fire, V.  Give them some shielding,” he ordered.  Had his partner been linked to OVR-Lord, that command would not have been followed, but V was its own AI, now.  Free to decide for itself.


    -Command received and acknowledged, Pilot.  Command accepted. – responded V47.  Dropped fire by thirty percent, shifting power to shield the remainder of Red Flight.


    That’s when the boulder arrived, ported through null-space to appear directly in front of V47, less than a mile away and accelerated by all the Draugr’s combined momenta, shifted onto one mountain-sized rock.  So close that it filled the whole viewscreen and blocked out the stars.