Tactically, the undead had weaknesses like all mortal beings did.
The qualities that gave them strengths also presented vulnerabilities if one applied the correct counterpressure. Alysa remembered her training on the Hegemon-4 and made it her business to use that counterpressure.
For the living, the undead were not favored beings to be employed by, either as part of a standing army or as mercenaries. The primary working force for all undead Commandants came from the strange few who believed that undead conversion was a boon.
The remainder were captured and controlled as slaves.
Manpower shortages presented vulnerabilities in areas where skilled operators were needed. Piloting and security were among the areas that undead forces most commonly experienced shortfalls in. To offset this, the undead occasionally used AI mechanical tech. However, this was expensive. So many times, as was the case today, the undead let the gaps stand.
The plunge-ships surrounding the Brigantine had been guarded only with roving patrols in lightly equipped craft using standard sensor equipment. Alysa couldn’t tell if they were poorly supplemented AI mechanical or poorly trained spirit beings. The difference was irrelevant. The plunge ships were essentially unguarded to her. Given the fleet-guards low numbers, they would be relying on EM band emissions for detection of infiltration and AI monitored video sensors for large group movements. A single figure moving close to the hulls of her targets with no EM emissions would be almost impossible to detect.
Another weakness the undead Commandants faced was their large numbers. Vast armies were required to cluster in large groups. Particularly when moving in a small battle space. This made them vulnerable to rather blunt, large area, and sweeping ballistic attack forms. Ishan’s sunfire Gatling adequately demonstrated this point.
Alysa hoped to be equally effective in applying her preferred method of attack on large forces—remotely detonated microfission devices. Paper-thin Oganesson 294 wafer dots, to be specific.
After applying the fingertip-sized dot to the desired object, the volatile element was kept in stasis, like the rest of its noble family in nature, via a nano-EM emitter. Halting the emitter resulted in instant fission and a return to its natural properties, a very large boom. Alysa’s kung fu was in amplifying even this. It was her task to find ways of placing the wafer dots on ammunition caches, overly large and exposed fuel tanks, or particularly volatile tech configurations on void ships to magnify the large booms. Which was what she was currently doing.
After placing ninety-five of the one hundred wafers she had on the fuel tanks of every twentieth plunge vessel, Alysa’s comp unit’s calculations confirmed her mental assessment. If she detonated them in their current configuration, she would only destroy ten percent of the nineteen to twenty thousand plunge ships she counted awaiting deployment. A nice haul, but she needed to do better. A bolder statement.
Looking back at this moment, later Alysa would realize her vanity had gotten the better of her. Sadly, hindsight was always clearer. So, at the time she had vectored under several more tightly scheduled patrols and affixed her last wafers in even distribution over Kyon Shi’s Dreadnaught, including an exposed section of the internal fuel conduit, and the primary nuclear fission reactor powering his hyperdrive.
Good luck to any living beings on his ship when I detonate them. Of course, the energy drainer himself might just survive. Vermin are like that. But he’ll need a new flagship to hang his vampire flag from. That much is sure—
“Excellent! Just the spirit being I need!”
Alysa’s thoughts were interrupted as a parched throat grated in her mind, just as she was about to remove her last wafer from its stasis cradle and put it atop the Dreadnaught’s command bridge.
The next instant, eight gray, bone-thin arms shot out of an oval portal that appeared directly below her. Each grabbed a limb and pulled her with undeniable strength into the darkness.
*****
Seconds after they started running, their enhanced hearing picked up heavy thuds throughout the ship, followed by small-arms fire. A black look scowled across Josh’s face. More of the conscientious undead’s promise-keeping. They ran faster.
Josh and Sen were both on the low side of free Essence after their encounter with the energy drainer.
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Physical Health Status:
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15000/15000
Spherical Cultivation units
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Free Essence:
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40500 → 12701
Spherical Cultivation units
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A quick status check confirmed how low. Sen and Josh stretched out their mindscape and began absorbing Mind Aura from crew members within their range.
They also checked the notification from the mental shield skill.
New Mind Attunement skill created.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Mentation shield: Condense your mindscape to shield your mind’s physical and spiritual interface. Protecting your perception from foreign Essence corruption and drainage. Increase your Cultivation to increase the potency of this mind-attuned skill.
Check your status for details.
Josh guessed it didn’t matter if one instigated a new skill or someone else did it for them. If their Meridians triggered it, they got the ability. Special bonus, Sen could perform it as well as Joshua could with no lag time.
Josh also checked for the command skill and the hybrid skill he had obtained. Whatever that was. He revisited the notification he’d received earlier.
Error: New Tetrahedral Hybrid Attunement skill created: Error
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Psyche
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100% probability of increasing your Core and free Essence capacity by 1000%.
100% probability of increasing the propagation of Essence utilization rate by 1000%.
Increased probability of being able to manipulate psychic Essence outside of your Meridians. Command: invest 500 units of Mind-Attuned Essence with the Intent to control the actions of another spirit being of equal or lower Cultivation strength. Attempting to command spirit beings of greater Cultivation strength and Attunement will have variable results and will depend on the mental strength of the spirit being commanded. Has very limited effect on the spiritual undead and no effect on the nonspiritual undead. Increase your Cultivation to increase this Mind-Attuned skill.
Hybrid instigation command: through physical contact invest 1,000 free Essence to instigate skills
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Psyche
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which coincide with the already achieved Attunements within the Meridians of another Cultivator at your level of Cultivation or lower.
Mentation shield. Solidify your mental area of influence around your mental and spiritual interface to shield your perception from foreign Essence corruption. Also eliminates mental signature from the mindscape from other Mind-Attuned Cultivators thereby preventing detection and remote siphoning of Meridians. May also be used to prevent direct Essence draining.
Expenditure of skill is dependent on the relative strength of the Cultivators involved in the drain and attempted block. Increase your Cultivation to increase the potency of this Mind-Attuned skill. Further increase your Essence capacity, propagation rate, and externalization of Attunement skills by increasing your level and Cultivation.
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Well, so much for wishful thoughts of controlling masses of undead that formed the Necrolon swarms.
Lovely name that, by the way.
But Josh wasn’t surprised he couldn’t command undead with his Mind Attunement. There were always advantages of playing undead during his days of gaming. The fact that there was some truth to it was par for the iterational course.
He had also stopped Kyon Shi’s remote drain on their Essence. How much would it cost them when they were up close and personal? Josh had no idea. But it was clear Kyon Shi was a far stronger Cultivator than they were. The skill said it was based on the relative strength of the attacking and blocking Cultivators, so it came down to an utterly analog determination based on their individual Attunements and how much the involved Cultivators could invest in the attack or defense.
The ‘hybrid skill’? Josh didn’t know exactly what to make of it. Nice to have. But what good would it do them in the coming battle? Again, no idea.
What’s the Error? Also, why is it considered a Tetrahedral skill? As far as Josh knew, he wasn’t even halfway to forming his Tetrahedral Core. There were seven Spherical Attunements and he only had two right now. Nothing about the notification made sense to him.
While these were all good questions, Josh would have to wait for a reunion with Gusti, hope for an improbably good moment to ask the clone, or wait for the iteration to put someone else in his path that could explain it.
Josh took a puffing breath. ~Do the space marines know about the Necrolon swarms?~
~They should.~ Sen agreed, easily. ~My family has never been lax in military training. Especially on events of historical significance my grandfather played a major role in.~
~Zenyak was part of taking the undead Commandants down?~ Josh exclaimed. ~Wow!~
~Yes.~ Sen confirmed. ~The Hegemon fleet and space marine program were explicitly built and formed to counteract the undead jihad in the involved iterations. The Hegemon-4 saw quite a bit of action. It was one of the last recorded actions of my grandfather before he began his preliminary work to Transcend.~
Josh nodded in appreciation. ~We’ll need to talk more about that later. For now, good that the space marines know! And Kyon Shi... as a vampire, he can absorb living essence to advance his Cultivation, like we do. But he can’t use it as an undead to heal? To heal, he has to absorb undead fire from other undead?~
~That is an oversimplification.~ Sen shook his head. ~Kyon Shi can formulate and use his own undead fire to heal himself and bind living spirit beings to him or convert them to spiritually risen undead. These are only a few of its purposes, but creating undead fire is a lengthy and Essence-intensive conversion process. Once Kyon Shi has used all the undead fire he has stored in his gray Core, he cannot quickly make more during combat. However, he can absorb some from nearby undead to heal himself. Sending the undead he borrows from to permanent death.~
~Interesting...~
Three-quarters of the way to the bridge, their Hegemon-4 commlink clicked on.
“Alysa?”
Kyon Shi’s croaking voice crackled over the channel. “As I promised. I have acquired your pet. She was attempting to break into my command bridge, of all things. Quite a... spicy one! I see why you like her—”
“If you’ve hurt her—”
“Spare me your useless heroic babble. She lives and I haven’t harmed her. Yet.” The bat-faced monster’s voice cackled with what might pass for jovial tones if you were from the seventh circle of hell. “...After all, the effort would be wasted if you are here to see it!
“You have three micro-gyras to get to the hangar on the command bridge of my Dreadnaught. After that, your fears will be justified as I intend to reanimate her and send her in the next wave of undead—or perhaps I’ll spiritually raise her and send her after you and your partner. I haven’t quite decided.”
The connection cut out.
They ran faster.
Arriving at the Brigantine bridge, they were greeted by four heavily armed and armored Kaizuko. Their heavy rifles on tripods were aimed directly down the passageway Josh and Sen were running up. With communications down, they were surprised the bridge hadn’t been overrun.
Josh had feared finding Kyon Shi reclining on a divan with a leash and collar around Alysa’s neck, ala Return of the Jedi.
They slowed down and held up their hands in a surrender motion. The lead guard, bearing a bronze sigil on his left armored shoulder, waved them through without taking his eyes off the passageway behind them.
The bridge itself was a kicked-over anthill of activity. Attendants ran back and forth, carrying messages written on paper and yelling over ongoing conversations when necessary. Comms were down, a lucky strike from one of the plunge-ship hits that had gotten through the Hegemon’s space marines. But this hadn’t slowed the Kaizuko’s defense of their home.
Jishin stood in the middle of the activity with a fist full of paper chits for his immediate review that he hadn’t had a chance to go through. He was surrounded by half a dozen attendants holding other chits they were trying to get his attention to read. He was overlooking the front half of the Brigantine and its ongoing Necrolon penetrations through the bridge’s front view port. Stationed near him were several assistants remotely following the remaining ship surfaces via camera installations set up remotely and moved as necessary by squads on the external skin of the city-sized ship.
The command bridge had been sealed off behind several slam-down pressure doors that Josh assumed would come down automatically in response to a decompression event. Looking through the view slot of the emergency doors, Josh could see the noses of two plunge-looking ships that had penetrated through the hull plates. Shadows of undead milled behind the sealed doors. Whoever else had been behind there was obviously gone.
Jishin was talking over his shoulder to a man wearing a stained apron and holding the business end of half a broken halberd when they got to him.
“I know the bleedin’ ship is under attack, you daft fool of a man! We still need t’feed our soldiers ta’ keep their strength up, and the undead outta our beds! You have an hour till dinner bells ring. Find something to feed ’em and be right quick about it! Set up in the internal quadrant where none of these blasted undead cages can penetrate.”
Josh caught Jishin’s eye and spoke through his mindscape. ~We’re taking a ship and going to the Dreadnaught.~
They sped past the beleaguered helmsmen and headed into Kyon Shi’s waiting grasp.