83 – Yo Ho
I didn't have a Gorgon, mind you. The most advanced ships that the Confederacy had, many of which lay in ruins across the surface of Tarsonis after the Fall, were just the best of the best of the Behemoths. I'm not precisely sure on when the Gorgons and Minotaurs and whatever showed up, but the Dominion certainly didn't have them at the moment. Besides, it's not like I couldn't do what I needed to with the Behemoth chassis, the general design of it. And I'll be honest, I
did like the hammerhead shape and all that. Don't care if it's the ultimate best design or not, when you deal with the materials and technologies I have access to at some point aesthetic is an okay thing to have come to the forefront.
Anyway, yeah. My new ship. The old stealth orb dagger thing had served me well, but it was time to move on and refresh. Hence, the new one. I was actually quite proud of it. From the best of the graves of the slain Confederacy, I had drawn up and checked over their designs. Shattered and ruined remains of star ports, factories, barracks, and various labs and such. The Old Families had spared no expense in the fortification of their world, and it had amounted to nothing against the sheer numbers the zerg had possessed. For god's sake there still
were zerg on Tarsonis, if only left feral now that Kerrigan had bummed off to Char.
First, a simple Behemoth chassis, then scaled up a rather tremendous amount. Nowhere near the size of, say, the
Spear of Adun, but that thing was an arkship built for carrying or at least preserving a viable chunk of protoss civilization. My ship jumped from, if I had kept everything the same except the size, being able to carry 4,000 to 7,000 crew to 35,000. At least, it could probably have carried that much before I got rid of a
lot of the excess space. I only needed life support for a few areas, while massive chunks of its innards were dedicated to generators, and the various bits and bobs dedicated for multiple overlapping bubbles of shielding and various cannons.
Because yes, while the regular laser cannons that the battlecruisers here possessed were nice, I still have a strong soft spot for turbolasers, ion cannons, and plasma beam swivel-ball turrets. Without the need to care for a massive living crew, meant that my ship was almost porcupine-like with its overlapping firing lanes and point defense weaponry. My favorite part, for this ship, at least, was the yamato cannon.
Because who
doesn't like the yamato cannon?
Or, in the case of my ship, with the size and energy draw allowing it,
five? That can cycle through almost like a revolver?
Anyway, Dude got her own personalized bay which would have once been a massive section on its own. As did Yuriko, who I'd just transferred everything else into
her place with actual walls between areas now. We of course also had onboard production facilities too, from whence would come my endless armies of robotic soldiers. Did I feel a little bit like I was stealing the idea of that from someone else? Perhaps. On the other hand, pirate. I didn't call them a Legion or anything like that. They were just…Mannco Mercenaries, from marines to siege tanks to wraiths and so on and so forth.
The other eleven ships I possessed were actually just straight Behemoth-class vessels.
As to how I got all of these things, I'd quite honestly just…reverted to type like I did a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. I went
outside the Korprulu Sector and away from other people to the far edges of the dead zones – because the Asgard and Ancient's level of FTL is simply
gross regardless of the universe – and set up shop over a few solar systems. Energy and metal, so on and so on, yeah?
Regardless, I'd left those eleven ships behind to guard what I'm going to call the Gravel Sector – I found it, the suns are all red and slowly dying, no one's there,
I get to name it I got there first – while setting up my droid admiral programs to produce a sufficient defensive force to protect my resources. Not like I expected Amon himself to somehow show up out of nowhere but I wasn't going to take any chances, not right now at least.
So it was just me! Me, Yuriko, Dude, and…my ship. And it's many, many shields, guns, cannons, and missiles. And internal army and navy.
…heh.
===========================================
"YARRRRRRRRR, there be our first target! A fine target she
be as well!"
Yuriko snorted as Mann danced around the bridge, which was technically redundant since he was apparently in total control of the ship
anyway, and floated over to a waiting throne. Not a chair, but a throne. The difference was very important, both to her and to him, and considering that it was a massive…
thing of pure gold and titanium with a bed's worth of cushions, she let it go. It's not like there was anyone else on the ship to criticize the tremendous lack of caution when it came to Mann's tendency towards flashy displays of wealth.
Besides, the cushions were comfy.
Splayed out sideways along the throne which could probably have held three of her on the 'bridge' such as it was – as in a dozen or so chairs in a half circle facing out towards the projected 'window' – she lolled her head slightly to glance at Mann as he swung the honest to goodness wooden wheel back on its post back and forth despite it having no real bearing on the ships direction. Not to mention –
"Oh lord, you upgraded the hat."
Mann whirled back on her, his captain's coat swishing, and smiled.
"I did indeed, me lass! Whaddya think o' this one?" he finished by flicking the thing, a metallic 'ding' sounding out as he did so.
"I think…that you replaced the fabric of the hat…with gold and brass. You are wearing a golden hat. A literally golden hat, with jewels and more gold and those three feathers on it."
"
And?" Mann bounced his bushy eyebrows at her, even as on the massive screen behind him showed the menacing red and black Tal'darim patrol fleet.
"And it looks ridiculous?" she offered, before pointing behind him. "When are you going to deal with the fleet over there?"
Mann drooped at his words, but, as she was secretly thankful for, he always bounced back and whirled back to face forward.
"Right about when they detect us...which I'm actually a little surprised about. Man, protoss observers do
not fuck around!"
Yuriko found herself utterly pitiless for the aliens before her, as Mann rocked himself back and forth slightly, hands tightly held on the ridiculous wooden wheel. He'd quite well described them, their innate tendency towards treachery, butchery, and the fact that they were willing to produce a 'Death Fleet' dedicated to cleansing all life of the Sector. That alone would have made her accepting of tearing them apart. But really? If she was honest with herself? The part that made a very angry and cold part of her actively desire to kill them, a part that quite well remembered being a psychic commando of another polity, was the fact that it was all for some self-proclaimed God.
She very, very much hated them for that the most. And it wasn't a case where Amon's divinity could be proven completely false. Even if he
was a god, any being that demanded what he did, did not deserve worship or recognition! Apparently one of their number, somewhere, was willing to push them to rebel, but only out of anger and 'treachery' on the part of the Xel'Naga. Yuriko found that not to be quite worth it at all.
Better to kill them.
Better to die than let a God – or anything
calling itself a God – control any aspect of one's life.
"Wahay, they've turned about! Now they'll feel the awesome power of…
THE BOOT!"
She still couldn't believe he'd named the ship that.
"Behold, even th' mightiest o' their void rays cannot pierce our shielding!"
"A good thing too," Yuriko drawled as she watched the red light dance across the suddenly visible blooms of
The Boot's shields, "Otherwise you they'd be melting through all the gold you plated the outside of the ship with."
Mann waved a hand dismissively at her before she felt the ship tremble slightly as one of the Yamato cannons fired and obliterated a Tal'darim…carrier? Yes, that was what they were.
"It's a solid two meters of gold, it would take even their ships a
little bit of time to melt through that, I think."
"Are you
sure of that?" Yuriko asked without looking at him, in favor glancing around at the shag carpet on the floor. "I'm sorry – is this entire bridge just these viewing thrones, your little wheel, and the screen there?"
Outside, in the void, Yuriko could actually
feel the seething dark rage that had befallen the protoss, bouncing out across the void, and she smiled privately at that as
The Boot steamrolled forward.
"Uh…yeah," Mann rubbed the back of his head, "Pretty much. Didn't have much in mind for a 'viewing area' at the time. If you want, you can head out, get to Park Bay 01 and hang out there?"
Yuriko shrugged in her throne before sliding even further into the cushions.
"I'm all right. Though…you
do know that part of being a pirate is actually boarding, right?"
Mann barked a laugh before pointing at the floating mothership which was directly in the center of the fleet which was by now down to a third of it' original size.
"Way ahead of you."
===================================
Executor Nuraji screamed a might war cry as he leapt into the charging fools who had
dared to assault a ship of the Tal'darim, a war cry that was echoed by his many followers. A simple patrol, that was all it had been, but between the dark spaces, the
void where he should have been strongest, he was being overwhelmed! As another two dozen of the creatures and their primitive guns fired and managed to still somehow cut down another of his warriors, he reflected upon this furiously.
His ships were being utterly blown apart by the massive incoming monstrosity, it's golden head heralding it as it simply appeared out of the darkness. His probes had detected something approaching but even as he angled his ships forward and ordered them to fire the moment it had been revealed, they had failed
utterly to breach it's shields! While the design was almost reminiscent of those of the terrans whom he'd read reports of, he
also knew that they were supposed to have
nothing like this! And yet came the primitive warriors now, their 'marines' known to the Tal'darim in preparation for the coming time of ascension, in seemingly endless waves!
With a roar, he lifted up and bisected a heavily armored creature down the middle before his shield went down to another set of burst fire from another duo. Their rounds struck deep, and even as he forced himself to turn to them and unleashed a glorious blast of blazing red energies to vaporize them, he felt a great many new holes being opened up throughout his torso as if his armor was
nothing. Yet still his forces fought on, alarms blaring from all over the mothership as his troops struggled to beat back the boarding parties that had begun warping in the moment the shields had fallen.
"Status report!?" he roared as one of the charging foe shoulder checked him, just in time for him to disembowel it and throw it behind him, slicing it's gun in half at the same time.
"We have lost communications with the rest of the fleet, their psionic signatures are
weakening!" replied one of the few remaining Tal'darim on the bridge.
A death scream heralded their collapse over the same console they had operated from, a series of booms from seven of the terrans.
"Weak minded creatures…have you no thoughts of your own?!"
In truth, he had figured it out early on when he tore apart the first boarding team. These were terran in design, he knew, but they were not
terrans within the armors. They were machines, robots like a probe or wrathwalker that were ravaging his forces. The insult was tremendous in and of itself, the shame that they, the Chosen, were losing to such mindless things of metal was all encompassing. At the
least he could actually feel a reasonably powerful presence, the equivalent of a middle ranking Ascendant. It did little to salve his pride and the rage against his impending death, but if he fell to nothing but machines he was sure that Amon himself would rend him to pieces once he joined with the Void!
Face me! He roared across into the mind of the terran – for he knew what their primitive minds felt like – only to be rebuffed by a great wave of contempt and fury.
Before he could muster another attempt to get a worthy foe, something that would
bleed for him before he fell, another of the terran machines approached and unceremoniously unloaded the rest of its ammo into his skull killing him instantly.
=======================================
"Pretty good haul, right?" Mann said to her as he walked around the bridge, lightly nudging various protoss corpses with his foot.
Yuriko let him ramble, instead she sought out the still cooling corpse of the one who had rather surprisingly and violently collapsed her own mental shielding to yell loud enough to make her bleed from the ears. Psychosomatic reaction to the sheer violence and power of an alien psychic – or should she say psionic as was the parlance for this universe as Mann had let her know. Either way, she wasn't particularly happy about it. The last time she had even
fought against another psychic had been against her progenitor…and she had certainly lost.
It was one thing to rend tanks and flesh apart, to create shields of psychic energies to block bullets and explosions. But clearly her own actual mental defenses against her own kind were…lacking. Significantly so. Worse, she was very aware of the fact that, according to Mann, the protoss as a
race were incredibly powerful psionically, with Kerrigan and Nova being some of the most powerful human psychics as well. For all that the Empire of the Rising Sun had called her their perfect psychic commando…she was
lacking!
This would not do. Her pride as a Japanese, her pride as a person, as a psychic, would not accept this!
"I'm thinking we take all of the ships we took, and just peel them apart and examine them. I'm thinking…we actually
won't get that far as with pure mechanical stuff. A lot of their tech is psionic, Khala-based, that sort of thing. But we can probably hit Cybros up and just look around that. I mean, they're built around being an equivalent army to modern protoss and they are
full machines. Which I think could work out for us? And -…Yuriko?"
Mann stopped in front of her, waving a hand before her eyes. Yuriko blinked for a moment before leaning back and looking at him with a scowl on her face.
"I need to learn about psychics in this universe. More. Like these ghosts, these zerg, and these protoss. All I can do is big…flashy things. I need to be able to defend myself better."
He blinked and then rubbed the back of his head as he took a step back.
"Uh. Okay? I guess we can…okay, I'll set up some droid fleets to harry them while we take a sooner stop than I thought by Umoja."
"What about those spectres - with the 'terrazine' and 'jorium'?"
The idea of these super-psychic commandos intrigued her, if she was honest with herself. She was a soldier, and her arsenal clearly needed improvement.
"Uh, haven't heard anything about them on the news but I'll look closer," Mann shrugged at her. "But yeah, Umoja first, and then we'll get back to pillaging their tech and such, packing all the booty off to Gravel."
Yuriko waved her ascent before crouching down and grabbing the 'Executor' by the throat and moving his head back and forth, a frown on her face.
"You almost tore my mind apart. It will not happen again," she promised the corpse.
