3-1 Into the Wardrobe
- Location
- Australia
When Spirit of Fire opened her eyes, her first words were "Oh bloody hell, not again!"
This was not, it should be explained, the first time she'd found herself travelling in the absolute darkness of slipspace without the slightest idea of how she got there. That was how she'd found herself at the ARK – and to this day she still didn't know who or what had opened that portal.
Twenty-five years of slow-boating her way across the stars, trying not to go mad with boredom like Serena had. (You think you have trauma? Try having an AI commit suicide inside your own bloody head.) All that slow, painful, agonising time patching herself up, discussing the same bloody topics over and over with her small craft for literal decades… wasted.
Because some wanker with more power than they should have had decided 'Nope! Saving the galaxy once wasn't enough. Now you have to fight some alien criminals that the bloody Covenant never managed to crush, for control of a larger-than-most-planets space station that could end all life in the galaxy at the push of a button.'
Fair bloody dinkum. At least they found another AI – one named Isabelle – on the ARK who had the decency to let them know that humanity had won the war against the Covenant.
…well. 'Won'. Really what had happened was that the Covenant had erupted into civil war just before they started glassing Earth, and an old friend of Red Team had helped kill the leader of the faction that didn't tolerate humans, but frankly Spirit of Fire would take what she could get.
(She still dreamed of a day when she got back to UEG space, and the UNSC let her go, and she could get back to sowing life instead of destroying it.
Mind you, the UNSC apparently didn't exist at the moment – something about an AI uprising? – so maybe she could just quietly quit…)
But nooooo. Another bloody wanker – or maybe the same one, who knows – was now portal-ing her to someplace new. As much as she'd like to believe that she was being put back where she was before the whole ARK debacle, or even being sent directly to Earth, Spirit of Fire just didn't believe it. The universe was just not that nice.
No, she was being sent to some new battlefield where she would once again have to spend the lives of her precious, precious crew like water, hoping that the humans who'd defected to her from the Banished were enough to fill out the ranks.
No. No, if she was going to be sent to fight and die again, then whoever was sending her wherever she was going could bloody well explain themselves first!
Of course, just leaving a slipspace portal wasn't really an option. Slipspace had eleven dimensions instead of the normal four, and none of those dimensions represented space or time – it was more a place of abstract math than anything else. The only reason Spirit of Fire could even exist in here was because she'd brought her own pocket of normal space with her when she entered. Luckily, she could still run that system even without the FTL reactor she'd had to sacrifice to blow up a star.
Again: she was bloody well ready to be retired from military service, thank you very much.
So, without that FTL reactor, she couldn't open her own rift to normal space. But… her Fat Pelicans could. Maybe, working together…
Loud, indignant squawking from the inside of her flak vesthanger bay let Spirit of Fire know that she'd accidentally said that last part out loud.
"Sorry, sorry!" Spirit of Fire, rolled her eyes. "If my D81-LRT Condors could work together…"
There was more squawking now, but this time it was because her small craft were terrified rather than offended.
And look, Spirit of Fire got it. Her idea essentially boiled down to screwing around with slipspace. And the first thing any ship or ship crew learned, on their first day on the job, was thou shalt not screw around with slipspace. Her head engineer had been such a vocal proponent of that particular lesson that he'd had a plaque with that text mounted on the door to her FTL reactor. Ships that screwed around with slipspace didn't so much die as cease.
"On the other hand, let me put it this way." Spirit of Fire clapped her hands together. "Either we spend another twenty-five bloody years slow-boating our way across the stars, we get shoved into somebody else's war again, or we take a little risk for a quick exit to the whole bloody affair. C'mon, chop chop."
The Fat Pelicans – so nicknamed because they were literally Pelicans with a tiny slipspace drive bloating out their rears – weren't quite convinced, but the rest of Spirit of Fire's small craft were taking up the cause in high-pitched, squeaky arguments.
Not all of them had sat through the full 25 years – some, she'd assembled from spare parts or, when she absolutely had to, raw materials. Those special few had never even seen a planet! But they'd all spent enough time staring into the deep black to know that they never wanted to do that again.
The Fat Pelicans eventually caved, though Spirit of Fire suspected that was because they planned to ditch her and attempt their own way home if they came out in Dark Space somewhere. Whatever. Spirit of Fire didn't care, as long as she could get out.
The Fat Pelicans were really expensive, and they needed full rebuilds of their drives every eight slipspace jumps, so they'd never really caught on like their manufacturer had hoped (or at least, that was what Isabelle had said). They'd mostly found a niche in civilian shipping for low volume, high value items that the buyer wanted in a hurry. Luckily, the UNSC had shelled out for the expensive dropships when it was investigating the Ark – which, again, was larger than bloody Planet Earth – and Spirit of Fire had been able to pick them up and add them to her own forces when she'd arrived.
They'd proved worth their weight in gold, replacing the role of her D20 Herons in getting firebases to the ground at literally FTL speeds (as long as you didn't count take-off and landing).
Here's hoping they do that again. Spirit of Fire crossed her fingers.
Four Fat Pelicans flew up and out of her flak vesthanger bay and into a rough rectangular formation around her. They stuck close, inside her pocket of normal space, because if they left it then there was zero chance she would ever see them again.
The Fat Pelicans suddenly glowed a bright white – trying to make a far larger slipspace rupture than they normally did, without the artificial black holes they used to make said rupture getting out of hand, and Spirit of Fire covered her eyestinted her main window…
And took it away to see stars.
"Woo! Bloody ripper, I have never been so happy to see stars! Stars that are… bloody far away. Bloody hell, I could be in the middle of UEG territory and still need five years to make it to the nearest shipyard."
Spirit of Fire started to swear.
She continued her profanity tirade for several more minutes until she felt slightly better. Then, she looked down at her waiting Fat Pelicans. "Alright you lot. Soon as I've figured out where we are, you're going to have to go fetch help."
Tiny cries of protest came from the small craft.
"Look, I don't bloody well like it either, but without one of those fancy new 'wavecomm' things that Isabelle was going on about, you lot are my only way to get the word out faster than light. It's not like I can stick my head in that slipspace rupture we made and scream into it, can I?" Spirit of Fire said, indicating said rupture with a thumb.
There was a moment of silence as the Fat Pelicans turned and stared at the purple bruise on reality that was a slipspace rupture.
Then Spirit of Fire's brain caught up to her words and she took a double-take, swearing viciously. "Bloody hell, this thing's still open? That's not how that's supposed to work!"
Uttering tiny wails, the Fat Pelicans dived back into Spirit of Fire's flak vesthanger bay.
"Listen here you little snot bags, we are not going to be eaten by some quote 'slipspace monster' just 'cause we quote 'broke the rules' –" Spirit of Fire made finger quotes.
With an indignant squawk and a burst of hard radiation, a warship of a kind that Spirit of Fire had never seen before fell out of the rupture.
"– actually you know what nevermind, we may be screwed." Spirit of Fire squeaked.
The new ship was wearing some great big power armour – like her own Cyclops suits, only much smaller, and had curves instead of hard angles. Her armour was painted black with gold trim, though curiously what looked like several flags on her breastplate had been scratched out, with just one at the end. Despite Spirit of Fire being the one dressed like a farmer, the new ship was the one with a hayseed clutched between her teeth.
Looks to me like she's changed owners a whole bunch. Spirit of Fire blinked.
The new ship suddenly moved, and Spirit of Fire tensed up –
– but all she did was slap herself across the face. "Hot damn!" She cursed around the hayseed. "Either ah'm blind drunk, or someone's been screwing with warp space somethin' fierce, 'cause that was not normal."
Then she turned around and looked at Spirit of Fire.
Said ship's mouth went very dry as the warship ran a critical eye over her farming overalls and the flak vestarmour belt slapped over the top. Sure, the other ship was much smaller than she was – a little under one kilometre tall long to her two and a half – but that didn't really mean much. Spirit of Fire was a colony ship turned troop carrier. She had absolutely no business being in a ship-to-ship fight.
Sure, she'd somehow scared off the Covie ships hanging around poor UNSC Prophecy's dead corpse, gotten away with ramming the destroyer in the Shield World, and had survived Enduring Conviction's arrogant grin…
...look, just because you won the lotto three times didn't mean you were gonna to win the forth time.
"Who the hell are you?" The other ship demanded.
Without really thinking about it, Spirit of Fire did what all UNSC ships did when panicking, and started charging her MACs. "Spirit of Fire."
She left off her UNSC designation because, well, the UNSC didn't exist as an organisation at the moment and she was really hoping to avoid being re-conscripted if and when they reformed.
"Yer looking mighty lost there, Spirit." The warship chewed her hayseed.
"Oi!" Spirit of Fire narrowed her eyes, familiar frustration pushing away her fear for a moment. "The name's Spirit of Fire, and I'll thank you not to shorten it. Or should I start calling you 'pipsqueak'?"
The other ship laughed, a deep belly laugh, like Spirit of Fire had just told the funniest joke in the world. Sucking in a breath, the other ship smirked. "'Pipsqueak'? Ah, that's great. Ya have no idea who ah am, do ya?" Her laughing died down into chuckles. "Name's Hyperion. Currently flagship of the Terran Dominion – or at least until Matt comes to his senses." She finished in a mutter.
The Terran what now? "Nice to meet ya, Hyperion." Spirit of Fire said, somewhat sarcastically. "Don't suppose you have a working superluminal communicator? I need to phone Earth and get someone out here to replace my FTL reactor."
Hyperion paused for a moment. "…Earth, you say?"
Spirit of Fire had a bad feeling. The other ship was human, not Covie, but… "Yeah?"
Hyperion turned to fully face Spirit of Fire, her face serious. "So… yer one o' them United Earth Directorate ships, then?"
"United Earth Government, yeah." Spirit of Fire's worry was coming back full force. "Guessing you got built by the Insurrection?"
Hyperion's grin didn't reach their eyes. "Is that what they call it back on Earth? Huh. Sounds so… simple, when you call it that."
Oh yeah. Spirit of Fire grit her teeth. I'm screwed. "Yeah, more than a bit of oversimplification, seems like. For example, they told me humanity was done fighting itself for now."
"Oh darlin', they didn't lie to you about that." Hyperion snorted. "But apparently they gave ya somethin' of a… skewed idea o' how exactly that fight ended."
Now, the Insurrection had never really been a unified group per say. Even way back at the beginning, there had been the People's Occupation and the Succession Union, and about the only thing they had in common is that they were sick and tired of politicians on distant Earth telling them what to do. Defeating one group usually just caused it to splinter, not disperse, so it wasn't really that surprising that Isabelle and then later Ferret Team had failed to mention this 'Terran Dominion'.
"Look mate," Spirit of Fire said, trying not to sound desperate "I'm really not looking for a fight here. Just trying to go home."
"Fine by me." Hyperion rolled a shoulder, her tone light but her eyes never leaving Spirit of Fire for a second. "'fore ya go though, one question. Do ya have the foggest idea where the hell we even are?"
Spirit of Fire blinked uncomprehendingly at Hyperion, then slowly turned and properly looked at the stars around her.
"Okay, that's a pulsar…" Spirit of Fire noted the location of the rapidly spinning neutron star. "And that's another one, and… I don't recognise those frequencies. Nor those positions. Bloody hell, am I even in the Orion Arm?!"
"See, I was just thinking that this didn't look like anywhere in the Koprulu Sector, so ah'm glad it's not just me." Hyperion folded her arms.
Spirit of Fire swore again. "I could be on the other side of the galaxy from Earth! This is worse than being in Dark Space – at least I know the route home from there!"
"Could be worse." Hyperion said, her tone somewhat sarcastic. "We could be in the Void."
Spirit of Fire threw Hyperion a perplexed look. "This is the void."
"Not the void of space, darlin'." Hyperion's eyes were hard. "Trust me, ya'd know it if ya saw it. It's the sort of thing that never leaves ya. Sure as hell ain't ever left me."
Spirit of Fire turned to Hyperion to demand to know just what the bloody hell she was on about, when there was a chattering noise behind thema set of new contacts on radar and both ships suddenly spun around again.
There was an absolutely tiny ship – about 14 meters tallwide and just over 6 meters tall, her bloody Pelicans were larger than that – dressed up in some silvery, aluminium-foil-like spacesuit complete with bubble helmet that made her look like she'd just fallen out of a pulp sci-fi of the mid twentieth century an actual bloody flying saucer. Her blond hair was done up in the beehive style, and… unless Spirit of Fire's eyes were deceiving her, her eyes were somehow reel-to-reel tape spools.
Flying after her were a dozen or so tiny little fighter-fairies. These had a distinct alien appearance – slitted pupils, scaly skin – that reminded her of the old 'lizard men' conspiracy nonsense from the twenty-first centurytheir design somehow fused a flying saucer with a fighter plane. Which made it all the more confusing that they were all wearing human-style fighter pilot uniforms.
Both sets of ships appeared to have fallen out of the somehow-still-open slipspace rupture, with the swarm now chasing after the mini-mini ship, chattering to each other in high-pitched voices:
"New ship! New ship!"
"She's not one of ours, no no no!"
"But she's human, yes yes yes!"
"Has EXALT taken to the skies?"
"Rip her guts out!"
"Learn her secrets!"
"Please, help me!" The aluminium foilsaucer ship cried, tears in her eyes, as she sped towards Hyperion and Spirit of Fire.
The fighter-fairies flying after her, on the other hand, suddenly halted in space, almost slamming into each other like an old slapstick cartoon. They stared at the two much larger ships, then suddenly formed a huddle. Spirit of Fire could only make out bits of theirradio conversation:
"– larger than a battleship –!"
"– human too –!"
"– what secrets lie inside –!"
While they were arguing amongst themselves, the aluminium foilsaucer ship quickly flew to the other side of Spirit of Fire, peeking out from behind her like a child hiding behind their mother's skirts. Spirit of Fire had to resist the urge to roll her eyes.
Eventually one of the ships spun around and addressed Spirit of Fire and Hyperion. "Unidentified vessels!"
"The name's Hyperion." Hyperion rested her helmeted head on an armoured palm. "And that big lug there is Spirit."
"Spirit of Fire, ya bloody wanker." Spirit of Fire spat before anyone could shorten her name again. "It's only three words, it's not that bloody hard to remember."
The aluminium foilsaucer ship stuck a hand out from behind Spirit of Fire. "My name is Jupiter II, and can I just say that despite everything, it's so very nice to meet –"
"Unidentified ships!" The lead fighter-faerie squeaked angrily again, scaring Jupiter II back behind Spirit of Fire with an eep!
"State your intentions!" One of the others chimed in.
"What do you want from the people of Earth?!" A third added.
"A tow." Spirit of Fire said, drily.
"What do I want? Oh dear, well, if I had to pick just one thing, I'd have to say… directions?" Jupiter II answered somewhat hesitantly.
"I couldn't give a rat's ass about Earth." Hyperion growled, giving a side-long glance at Spirit of Fire. "S'long as they don't come over to my place and start throwing their weight around."
This didn't seem to clear things up any for the fighter-fairies, who murmured angrily amongst themselves again for a moment.
"What is your relationship to the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit?" One of them eventually squeaked out.
"Oh wow, Spirit. Ya hear that?" Hyperion asked sarcastically, moving her hayseed to the other side of her mouth again. "They got a whole unit just for fighting aliens."
"I've done more than my bloody share of fightin' aliens." Spirit of Fire groused, letting Hyperion's continued refusal to use her actual name slide for a second. "An' believe you me, they were throwing more than just one unit into the grinder."
Before the fighter-fairies could launch into another round of 20 Questions, there was a deep boomradiation burst that all present could feel deep in their chests.
Jupiter II's eyes went as wide as saucers. "Danger!" She wailed, flailing her arms in panic. "Danger, dear friends, danger!"
Spirit of Fire slowly tuned aroundfocused her sensor clusters back, once again, to the slipspace rupture she had opened earlier.
The rupture seemed, finally, to be closing. But, if Spirit of Fire had to guess, that would probably be somehow caused by the giant bloody ship that just fell out of the bloody thing.
...okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration. This ship was only slightly bigger than she was, somewhere between 2.7 to 2.9 km. The Banished flagship, Enduring Conviction, had been almost twice as large as that.
But when you were a refitted civilian ship with second-hand armour and guns, anything even remotely in your weight class was way too big.
"Hoo-wee!" Hyperion cried, quickly pulling out a giant riflestarted charging her gaint co-axial gun. "That there's the ugliest lookin' Leviathan I ain't ever seen!"
This ship was caked in… dirt, of all things? Her features weren't that of a Covenant ship – she didn't have the split-jaw of the Elites, the furry pelt of a Brute, the beetle-like wings of a Drone, any of it. Instead she looked like something out of a fantasy book – white dead flesh, shrivelled like a rotted corpse. Her eyes were closed, but as they slowly started to open they seemed to be shining in the darkness of space.
Okay, I take it back. Spirit of Fire thought to herself faintly. Now I'm screwed.
The wraith-like ship opened her jaws, snarling, and dozens of comparatively tiny shapes were spat out into the void. Dozens of fighter-fairies, with more launching every second. A ship this size could have thousands of the blasted things packed away, if she was a dedicated carrier.
"X-ray ship!"
"Very very big x-ray ship!"
"As big as the Temple Ship?"
"That means she has big guts!"
"Firestorms, rip and tear!"
The piranha-ships (Firestorms, apparently?) didn't seem to care about the incoming enemy fighter-fairies at all. Instead, they were focusing on the giant flesh-ship, flying in as though to harass it.
They appeared to be salivating.
"Hey there, ya big… whatever the hell you are." Hyperion very carefully didn't aim her guns at the wraith-like ship just yet. "Don't s'pose yer one 'o them nice Zerg working for Zagara now?"
The wraith-like ship's eyes slowly focused on Hyperion. A grin spread across her features.
"Fressssshhh meeeeeeaat." She said, in something somewhere between a hiss and a moan.
"Nope, she's feral. Fantastic." Hyperion aimed her guns forwards. "Ya ever fought Zerg before, Spirit?"
"The hell's a Zerg?!" Spirit of Fire shot back, annoyed. "And for the last time, my name's –!"
"Okay, so, here's the rundown." Hyperion kept talking, ignoring Spirit of Fire's outburst. "Zerg love to rush hundreds of units at you in great big waves. They're weak, but any one of 'em can infest yer guys and turn 'em against ya."
Spirit of Fire blinked, then cursed. "You mean they're Flood?! Why the bloody hell didn't you say so?!?!"
The swarm of fighter-fairies was now three dozen strong and still growing fast.
"Ah don't know why ya'll keep coming up with new names for things that already have em', but it seems you get mah point." Hyperion grimaced, a bead of sweat rolling down her face. "Hope yer builders fit ya with a decent CIWS."
"Yeah." Spirit of Fire answered the question in a bland tone of voice. Coilgun batteries, point defence guns, Archer missile silos and deck guns all opened up and aimed themselves across her overallshull, looking like the spines on a porcupine. "Yeah, I got CIWS."
Not that she expected it to matter. If that Flood (?) ship had any big guns at all, they were finished.
Jupiter II nervously stuck her head out again. "Um, I really don't mean to distract you dears, but is there anywhere in particular that I should be?"
"Get in me/my hanger." Hyperion and Spirit of Fire said in stereo.
"Unless you think you could buy me five minutes somehow." Spirit of Fire added drily.
Jupiter II's face brightened up. "Oh, of course! One moment."
To the confusion of the two capital ships, Jupiter II pulled out from her spacesuit the headset from an old corded phone, pressed it to the side of her helmetpowered up her comm array, and called "Hello, is this the Time Merchant?"
Hyperion and Spirit of Fire exchanged identical looks of utter bewilderment.
But there was no more time to ask questions. The wraith-like ship roared, the glow in her eyes intensifying. At that signal, the swarm of her fighter-fairies swooped in, soaring for the two capital ships.
"Here we go!" Spirit of Fire yelped, seeing the gaze of the supermassive ship turn in her direction.
Neither Spirit of Fire nor Hyperion had been watching idly while the wraith-like ship launched fighter-fairies, of course. They'd been preparing their own small craft for interception duties.
Spirit of Fire – being, again, a troop carrier, not a warship – was supposed to focus on the fight on the ground, not the one in space. But, since the UNSC tended to make most of their airplanes space-worthy, the same fighters she sent down to the ground could also be used here.
S-14 Baselards and F-29 Nandaos streamed out of her flak vesthanger bay, the chainguns they all carried in a firm two-handed grip already starting to spin up, even though they were nowhere near the enemy yet. Behind them came her gunships. AC-220 Vultures, a few G77S Pelican Gunships, and a couple of G81 Condor Gunships. They weren't designed to engage enemy small-craft, but as Spirit of Fire herself would put it, they'd be 'better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick'.
(She also had a few Shortsword bombers, but the key word there was bomber. They didn't belong in a dogfight.)
Hyperion in comparison, had her Tac Fighters – simple missile planes built solely for her – and a few Vikings. She missed having Wraiths, but the simple truth was that too many things these days could see through cloaking fields and they just weren't viable without that advantage. The turbofans of a Banshee, obviously, did not work in space, so they were a no-go as well.
(She did, however, keep a couple of Ravens in reserve – you never knew when some idiot with a cloaking device thought they could pull a fast one on you.)
So as the dart-like fighter-fairies of the wraith-like ship soured across the void, they were met by a swarm of mismatched fighter-fairies heading the other way. Little pinpricks of blue light heralded the energy weapons of the dart-like ships; with bullets, missile trails and lasers reaching out to meet them.
(The dart-like fighter-fairies seemed to go down in one good hit, which was great 'cause there was a lot more of them than there were fighter-fairies on the human team.)
Jupiter II frowned into her phone. "'A thousand stolen moments'? What kind of price is that?!" She paused for a moment, clearly not happy with the tone the person on the other end of the phone was taking with her.
She sighed audibly, then straightened up, her posture somehow becoming noticeably… sleazier. "You seem like a reasonable gentleman." She purred into the phone, her voice… subtly different. Much more like a used car salesman. "I'm sure we can come to some arrangement."
The wraith-like ship extended out an arm, snarling, her hand glowing with energy –
And suddenly recoiled in pain, as the Firestorms opened up with weapons that looked like they belonged on cruisers, not fighters – giant spears of nuclear fire stabbing into her side.
Distracted, the wraith-like ship looked away from Spirit of Fire and Hyperion and instead aimed her fingers at the Firestorms. Giant bolts of energy were loosed at the tiny ships… missing the small, fast-moving targets by tens of meters.
"The X-ray ship isn't dying!" One of the Firestorms said, the blasted critter pouting.
"We must change tactics!" Another chimed in.
"Attack its weak point for massive damage!" A third cheered, and the little gremlins flew off to find more mayhem to cause.
"Didn't like that, did ya?" Hyperion grinned at the wraith-like ship. "Let's see how you like a Yamato blast!"
In a different solar system entirely, one Space Battleship sneezed.
Hefting and aiming her giant rifleentire hull to line up her co-axial gun, Hyperion fired. A powerful nuclear explosion occurred inside the barrel, its force focused with magnetic fields into a beam of plasma that soared across the void, slamming into the wraith-like ship's side, the shot exploding again on impact.
As the energy dissipated, the sensor readings came in. The Fusion Lances of the Firestorms and the Yamato Cannon that Hyperion had fired had both resulted in the same outcome… shallow craters in the wraith-like ship's organic hull, with no indication any serious damage had been done.
Hyperion saw this, and in a calm, collected tone of voice… swore. Loudly.
The wraith-like ship turned to Hyperion, ignoring the Firestorms even as they came around for a second pass.
"We're screwed." Spirit of Fire summed up nicely.
"Oh yeah." Hyperion agreed easily. "Shall we get the hell outta here?"
"Can't, my FTL reactor's dust in the cosmic bloody wind." Spirit of Fire sighed, regretfully.
Hyperion glanced at Spirit of Fire out of the corner of her eyes, her mouth pressed into a thin line. "Ah… see."
"Tell everyone I went down swinging, would ya?" Spirit of Fire said frankly, lifting up her own massive rifle – just in time to hear the mental ding that told her the first of her three 22B6R Magnetic Accelerator Cannons had finished charging.
Originally designed for use against Insurrectionists, a MAC was such enormous overkill that it hardly saw any real use in combat (missiles being far cheaper and effective at bringing down the refitted civilian ships the Insurrection was generally forced to field). Then the Covenant happened, and MAC guns suddenly went from being overkill to underkill. So while the UNSC worked on the so-called "Super-MACs" and what would eventually become the NOVA bomb, they set about making sure every ship in the fleet had a MAC, as volleys of MAC shots were the only reliable way to threaten Covenant fleets.
This included Spirit of Fire, despite the fact that her usual reaction to seeing a Covenant warship – regardless if she had escorts or not – was to GTFO. But she had a reactor, and (supposedly) travelled with the rest of the fleet, so the UNSC had seen no reason not to stitchwield three of the blasted things on to her sleeve superstructure and add her shots to the volley.
Entire minutes of reactor output were currently crammed into the incredibly powerful capacitors that sat next to the equally powerful electromagnets. That energy was then dumped into the 300 ton ferric-tungsten slug through a series of such electromagnets, sending it flying out of the barrel many, many times faster than the eye could see.
That shell slammed into the wraith-like ship's side… and kept on going. With a visible shock-wave sent rippling though the organic ship's fleshy armour, the round punched a hole into her insides… and must have hit something vital, as the energy around the wraith-like ship's fingers was suddenly cut off, the ship itself going glassy-eyed and making a sound like argk!
Spirit of Fire blinked. "Didn't kill it, but… did I hit something important?"
"There!" Jupiter II slammed her phone down. "I finally got that imbecile to hand over those five minutes. Apparently, he's rather short on customers, so I traded away the locations of a few planets where he could find some more."
Jupiter II then blinked, slapping her hand hard across the outside of her bubble helmet. "Oh, I do hate being Mr Smith." She groaned. "Can I be Maureen again? Or, no, I suppose I should be Will now, to balance it out…"
Neither Spirit of Fire nor Hyperion were listening, however. "No such luck, look!" Hyperion pointed. "That hole ya punched though is already closin' up!"
"The bloody thing regenerates?!" Spirit of Fire swore. "And here I thought my bloody luck might have actually bloody turned for once!"
"'To whomsoever finds this message'… nay. 'Here lies the noble ship Archangel'… bah, that is no improvement."
LCAM-01XA Archangel brooded as she stared out at the stars. She looked much like her captain with her purple hair, but the engine assembly around her back contrasted harshly with the Earth Alliance uniform she was unfortunately stuck with. Her legs, however, were cold metal, with her catapults, Lohengrins and Gottfrieds all hidden within. She sat in space, her legs stretched out in front of her like she was leaning back on an invisible chair.
In front of her, floating free in the void, were her complement of MAW-01 Mistrals. One of the first Mobile Armour designs that the Earth Alliance had devised, the Mistrals were hopelessly obsolete as far as direct combat went but had found themselves a niche as engineering vehicles. One floated before Archangel's midsectionunderside, a laser cutter in her hands attached to her left hardpoint and an unsure expression on her face.
Archangel sighed. "Aye, I should be certain of what I intend to say before we begin engraving, shouldn't I?"
The Mistral with the cutter looked down and away, mumbling something so softly Archangel nearly didn't catch it.
"I…" Archangel hesitated.
The other Mistrals, suddenly sensing uncertainty, all perked up as one. Their squeaky voices argued with Archangel, pleading with her to please just wait a little bit longer.
Archangel took a long, shuddering inhale; her eyes watering. "I… truly wish that I could tell you that it was not so… but we cannot deny the evidence of our eyes and ears."
She gestured to the brightest star in the sky. Up close, it would have been a vast, fiery orb of unimaginable power. This far away, it was naught but a dot of light across a sky filled with such.
For Archangel was far away. All around her was nothing but the cold, black void. If she burned every drop of propellant she had aboard, she still wouldn't reach a speed swift enough to reach that nearest star even in a thousand years.
"In three months, I shall be out of power for life support." Archangel tried to swallow, but her throat was dry. "In less than half that time, I shall be out of food. I was never intended to reach a destination more distant than Earth's own Moon. Without the ability to recreate such an unknown mechanism as what stranded us here…" Archangel's voice trailed off, and she looked away.
The Mistrals stared helplessly at their mothership, hoping against hope that she would not speak aloud what had till now passed only as implication.
"The best we can achieve is to pass with dignity, and leave a message for whomsoever finds us." She whispered.
The oppressive silence that followed those words was so strong, it felt like it was pulling at the very beings of everyone present.
Until they had been spoken aloud, the Mistrals had somehow been hoping that they had misunderstood. That their situation was not, despite all evidence, beyond hope.
Hearing that it was… made it real. Made their souls grow heavy with the weight.
Archangel herself wanted to lie. To reassure her small craft that there had been a mistake, and that all would be well.
But a lie would be all it would be.
This was no battle against a deadly foe, no desperate race against incredible odds.
There was nothing but her, the void, and the inevitable hand of entropy; worming its cold clammy fingers around her soul.
Archangel gazed up at that distant star. It almost… felt like it was taunting her, its distant warmth somehow just out of reach. Like a bully dangling a stolen belonging over a child, pulling it back every time the child jumped for their treasured possession.
"…if I…" Archangel's voice faltered again. "If I use… all of… my power…"
There was an important exception normally made here, perversely conspicuous by its absence.
"Then I believe I can transmit a simple radio pattern long after we are all gone." Archangel finished quietly. "Without that, there is no reason to think that we will ever be found, even unto the day when the stars go out. This sea of black is simply too vast to rely upon chance."
Of course, it was far from guaranteed that her signal would ever be heard. But…
Archangel shut her eyes, finally managing to swallow. "That… will be all the dignity I can afford us."
The Mistrals all sagged, their souls weighed down by the truth of the matter. Some were angry. Some were sad. One… could not bring themselves to feel anything.
That Mistral stared soullessly off into the black, at an errant piece of wreckage that had come though whatever mysterious event had doomed them all to endless vacuum. Debris from the battle to save Earth and the PLANTs both.
Very slowly, the Mistral blinked, and tilted her head.
"So, again." Archangel started again, her voice hoarse. "'Here lies the ship of dreams, Archangel. Abducted by mysterious mechanisms from our home, we –'"
The Mistral suddenly squawked loudly, interrupting Archangel's eulogy to herself. Rushing forward suddenly, she grabbed ahold of the piece of wreckagewith her manipulation claws and thrust it out for Archangel to see.
Archangel blinked at this unexpected interruption. "Eh? What have you found there?"
The wreckage was twisted and deformed, it's overall structure scorched and melted, like it had been partially melted by a blowtorch. But even with all the damage, it still looked…
"Be that a Mobile Suit cockpit?" Archangel blinked. It's emergency transponder must have been damaged, otherwise she would have noticed it among the debris in an instant. "How can that be? The only Mobile Suit to be destroyed near us was…"
Archangel's eyes grew wide.
"Strike?" Archangel whispered.
Quietly, almost reverently, the Mistral pushed the cockpit down towards Archangel's main legslegs – towards the catapults that launched and retrieved Mobile Suits.
As she did so, she was able to confirm the presence of a faint heartbeatthermal signature. Strike's pilot, Mu La Flaga… lived.
A madness seemed to take ahold of Archangel now; a maniac energy that began in her centre and erupted out of her mouth as howls of laughter. Her eyes, wet with tears of sadness, now widened with insane gaiety.
"Time? Space? Entropy?!" Archangel howled out to the cosmos, uncaring of how insane she sounded. "What sort of faint-hearted pansy am I to think those enemies cannot be overcome?! I have the man who makes the impossible possible by my side!"
The Mistrals were now all giving each other worried looks as Archangel shook a fist at the void. "We shall survive! We shall return to our world as victors and survivors, regardless of the trials you place before us! Our hard-won happiness will not be denied us! Do you hear me?!"
"Yes dear, of course I can hear you. Please, there's no need to shout."
Archangel whirled around so fast that a Mistral had to dive out of the way to avoid being hit.
Another, much smaller spaceship floated in the void behind her, wearing a silvery spacesuit and bubble-helmet.
"Hello!" The ship greeted, smile wide. "I'm Jupiter II. What's your name?"
"I…" Archangel was feeling faint. Too many shocks in a row had drained her mental stamina. "I am the Mobile Assault Battleship, Archangel. Formerly of the Earth Alliance, now of the Three Ship Alliance."
"Golly gee!" Jupiter II put her fists up against her mouth. "That does sure sound real important!"
Archangel blinked, now starting to wonder if the stress was not causing her to hallucinate. "Why is it that thou speakest in the manner of a child?"
"Oh, well, I'm Will right now, you see." Jupiter II said in a much more mature-sounding voice. "Running off to make new friends is a habit of his. Well, his and Penny's."
Archangel stared blankly down at the much smaller ship.
"Say, Miss Archangel," Jupiter II returned to her higher-pitched impression. "Some friends of mine are really in a tight spot. There's a big monster that's trying to eat them! Won't you please come help?"
"I… a monster, thou sayest?" Archangel shot a perplexed look at her Mistrals, who didn't seem to have any idea what was going on either.
"Uh-huh!" Jupiter II nodded rapidly. "It's really big, and it's really mean! Please, I'm scared!"
"I… would love to lend my aid…" Archangel began, an idea forming. "But I am stranded here, between the stars…"
"Oh, that's no problem at all!" Jupiter II reassured Archangel, moving behind the larger ship. The size disparity between the two meant that Jupiter II was about the size of a small cat compared to Archangel, so to see her pressing her hands into her back was ridiculous. "I'll push!"
"What?" Archangel was now thoroughly confused, even as her Mistrals hurried into her legs with their precious cargo. "But thou must be a minuscule fraction of my mass! How couldst thou provide enough force to –"
"Dear," Jupiter interrupted, breaking character for a moment. "Your life – and mine – will be far simpler if you drop this line of inquiry."
Archangel's confusion did not decrease in the slightest, but she did close her mouth with an audible click.
"Now, quick!" Jupiter II called, powering up her engines. "We gotta go back to save my new friends!"
Archangel blinked yet again. "But thou came from that way?" She pointed diagonally behind her and to the right.
Jupiter II froze in space, a blush spreading across her face.
"I knew that!" She flustered.
Hyperion squinted at the hole the MAC left in the wraith-like ship, watching it rapidly heal inwards, sealing the breach. She then looked at the shallow crater her Yamato cannon had left.
That was not healing.
"How soon can ya do that stupid big railgun thingie again?!" She yelled at Spirit of Fire.
"It's a coilgun, and I don't know!" Spirit of Fire yelled right back.
"WHAT?!" Hyperion actually took her eyes off the wraith-like ship to stare at Spirit of Fire incredulously. "How in blue blazes can ya not know how long it takes to recharge a capacitor?!"
"My fire control array is busted!" Spirit of Fire shot back, her temper flaring. "Sometimes it takes three minutes, sometimes ten!"
"We don't have ten minutes!"
"I bloody well figured that one out myself, thanks!"
Hyperion heard a tinny knocking on the side of her power armour. She glanced down to see the very unexpected sight of her Tac Fighters and Vikings lining up for her docking bays. "What in Sam Hill are you… re-armament?!" She suddenly yelled, one of the Vikings having transformed and walked up to her headbridge to squeak-yell an explanation at point-blank range. "What do ya mean, re-armament?! How could y'all be outta ammo, there's only…"
"Hyperion?" Spirit of Fire interrupted in a faint tone of voice. Hyperion turned, and saw Spirit of Fire staring off into the distance, her face ashen. Hyperion glanced in the direction that Spirit of Fire was looking at, and found that despite her ships firing so many rounds they'd run dry, the number of enemy fighter-fairies out hadn't decreased. It had tripled, with the giant wraith-like ship still launching new fighter-fairies even as she stared.
Spirit of Fire's small craft were fighting bravely, but the Vultures, Baselards and Nandaos were also returning for re-armament and the Pelican Gunships were right behind them. Only the Condor Gunships continued firing, their pulse lasers not reliant on physical ammo – and even they were heading back towards Spirit of Fire, desperate to not get surrounded no matter how fragile the enemy fighter-fairies were.
"Well, that's a proper Zerg Rush and a half." Hyperion's teeth clamped together.
"I'd say it was nice knowing ya, but honestly this whole experience has sucked." Spirit of Fire griped.
"Don't worry! I found some help!"
Hyperion and Spirit of Fire, in perfect unison, blinked and looked behind themselves to the source of that radio transmission – a new radar contact, about 300 meters talllong, with Jupiter II pushing from behind.
"When did she…?" Hyperion, despite the gravity of the situation, did a double-take at Spirit of Fire's back, where she had seen Jupiter II last.
"What are you drongos doing?!" Spirit of Fire shouted at Jupiter II and the new ship. "Don't come over here! You'll just get killed too!"
The new ship, however, just stared up at the wraith-like ship, her eyes steely. "A monster of a ship, indeed." She murmured, before raising her voice. "Creature of the cold dark void! Is there no hope at all for peace between us?" She called up to the wraith-like ship.
Spirit of Fire took a good lookradar scan of the new ship – and very quickly decided that she was insane. The ship was covered in bandages hasty patch welds and other hasty field medicine repairs. The ship was drawing a sidearm gun ports were opening up all over the ship, but the sidearm was very clearly cracked and warped half her guns had apparently been shot off. Had this ship just come straight from another battle, and just leapt straight into this one?!
The wraith-like ship's eyes suddenly twitched violently, as some critical nervenerve was reconnected. Her pupils spun around, before focusing on the new ship.
"Peeeacccee?" The ship hissed. "A farrrrmmer doessss not war with her catttllleeee! Shhheeee simmmpplly feaaaasssts!"
The new ship blinked, clearly not having expected that answer. "Hast thou considered a vegetarian diet?"
The wraith-like ship roared, and the dart-like fighter-fairies all surged forwards as one big wave.
"Pretty sure that's a no!" Spirit of Fire started aiming her various point-defence guns.
The new ship sighed deeply, before straightening up, a defiant gleam in her eye. "So be it, then. I am Archangel, dreamer amongst the stars! And until such time as thou dost relent, we pledge ourselves to thy destruction!"
Hyperion raised an eyebrow. "We?"
Around Archangel's legs were two massive armoured boots. A front panel opened on both, and a pair of electrified rails extended out from the opening.
"Duel Gundam, Launcher Strike Rouge, launch!" Archangel roared.
The machines that were propelled out of the launch bays (catapults?) were some of the weirdest fighter-fairies Spirit of Fire had ever seen. Now, a space-superiority fighter didn't need to be aerodynamic – as long as it never fought in-atmosphere – but that was no reason to chuck tradition out the window and build them like thatas humanoid machines.
Spirit of Fire paused. Like… what? What was her objection, here?
The swarm of dart-like fighter-fairies was nearly upon them now. Not wishing to waste her range advantage, Spirit of Fire opened up with her Archer missiles and assorted gun turrets. The turrets had terrible accuracy at this range, but it was a bit of a "target-rich environment", and unlike plasma the bullets didn't decay in space.
Archangel launched missiles and started firing bullets as well, but to Spirit of Fire's surprise she had an extra trick. Uncliping a grenade from her beltfiring out a canister from a special launcher, Archangel hurled out the projectile which burst apart into a fine blue mist between the three ships and the incoming dart-like fighter-fairies. When the plasma bolts did come, they hit the gas and refracted outward, the energy wasted on a rainbow-coloured burst of light inside the cloud.
"Anti-plasma gas? Neat trick." Hyperion grit her teeth. "Gonna play hell with my ATA lasers though."
The freshly re-armed gunships and Tac Fighters flew out, all of their guns (except for the Condor Gunships' pulse lasers) unaffected by the anti-beam gas. The dart-like fighter-fairies started dropping like flies, and that is when the two Mobile Suits hit their effective range.
Duel and Strike Rouge were both superficially similar, having been based on the same frame. Both wore heavy armour and equipment over their leotard-clad bodies, brightly coloured by the Phase Shift both were employing. (They also, like their mothership, showed recent signs of damage, but their injuries were not as severe as hers).
Duel's gun had been destroyed during the Second Battle of Jachin Due, so she flew out with Buster's 350mm Gun Launcher and 94mm Beam Rifle. Slotting the two together in the shotgun configuration, Duel took aim and loosed a stream of cluster shells that burst apart in the ranks of the enemy fighters, decimating entire wings. Despite the return fire coming her way, the Duel deftly spun and twisted around her centre of mass, avoiding most of the plasma and tanking what she couldn't dodge on the massive riot shield she carried in her other hand.
Strike Rouge, with her less experienced pilot, had elected to use the Launcher Pack rather than her usual Aile Pack. She was hanging back with the bulk of the friendly gunships, using the Launcher Pack's 120mm Vulcan Gun and two Gun Launchers – like the one the Buster used – to shred the dart ships from range.
The fighting was harrowing… but with the anti-beam gas, it was manageable.
Or at least it was, until everyone's radar suddenly filled with static.
What? Spirit of Fire tried to ask, but she couldn't hear her own voice over the noiseradio was jammed as well. She looked over at Hyperion – who looked surprised – and Archangel – who did not. Archangel was jamming them?! That was the sort of thing you warned people about before you did it!
The formations of fighter-fairies quickly started breaking up, unable to coordinate with each other. The dogfighting, already extremely chaotic, became nearly impossible to follow as all sides lost track of where the lines of battle – and more importantly, their opponents – where.
Only Duel and Strike Rouge seemed unconcerned at the total loss of radar and radio, fighting on with only their optical sensors, taking advantage of the mass confusion to further thin the enemy ranks. They were scything through them, doing more damage than half of Spirit of Fire's gunships put together.
Said gunships, however, were not doing so hot. Radar had been down for half a minute at most, and even with her ability to track the battle reduced massively Spirit of Fire could already spot several close calls where her and Hyperion's fighter-fairies nearly flew into the lines of fire of the capital ships.
Turn off the jamming! Spirit of Fire signed at Archangelflashed her signal lamp in the standard UNSC code.
Archangel looked confused, and signed back something Spirit of Fire didn't understand.
Turn off the jamming! Spirit of Fire tried again, jumping straight to Morse Code, and this time Archangel seemed to understand.
But why? She signed back. Outnumbered as we are, is the chaos caused by my N-Jammer not to our advantage?
Hyperion joined the nonverbal conversation at that point, waving her armsflashing her signal lamp frantically. Turn ____ off! Zerg are _____!
What? Archangel signed to Hyperion. Slow thy speech, I cannot comprehend thy words.
Hyperion snarled. I said, turn the jamming off! Zerg are telepathic!
Spirit of Fire's blood ran colda coolant pipe burst somewhere in her engineering bay. She looked up at the wraith-like ship staring down at them, like bugs to be squashed underfoot. Her eyes started to shine brighter than they had been before, and the dart-like fighter-fairies seemed to all twitch in unison. Their accuracy returned, and they started joining back up into proper formations, forcing the other fighters back on the defensive.
Archangel's face twisted in sudden panic, and the static started to clear up… but slowly. Too slowly.
The wraith-like ship grinned savagely, her hands glowing with energy once more.
Looks like those five minutes are up. Spirit of Fire thought morosely to herself.
At with that, she heard the mental ding that meant that her second MAC had finished charging.
Spirit of Fire blinked once. Twice.
Then she frantically grabbed her rifleaimed the MAC and fired.
Gurck! The wraith-like ship went again, but this time she hadn't hit whatever critical point she had the first time. Her hands still glowed with energy, even if freaky alien bloodfreaky alien blood spilled out from the wound.
But that seemed to be the signal that Hyperion was waiting for. She took her own rifle and fired again. Some of the force was lost to the anti-beam gas, but the same nuclear blast that had previously failed to penetrate the wraith-like ship's organic armour… went straight into the hole that Spirit of Fire had just made.
This time, the wraith-like ship convulsed in pain, its internal injuries intensified by the searing hot, radioactive plasma. The effects of Archangel's jamming cleared up fully just in time for Spirit of Fire to hear the massive ship scream in pain.
One eye shut shut with pain, the wraith-like ship's other eye was filled with rage, focused completely on the motley fleet as she continued to aim her energy-covered hand –
"All your base are belong to us!" One of the Firestorms shouted gleefully, catching on and firing her Fusion Lance into the same hole; widening it and worsening the damage.
"You have no chance to survive!" Another Firestorm called as it attacked.
"Make your time." A third said, grinning like a psychopath.
"For great justice!" A fourth cried, fist in the air.
Duel and Strike Rouge shared a glance, then swapped out their weaponry. Duel changed the configuration on Buster's guns to the sniper rifle configuration, while Strike Rouge retrieved the 'Agni' 320mm Hyper Impulse Cannon. Flying up, shoulder to shoulder, the two loosed a pair of beam strikes, adding their power to everyone else's.
Then, and only then, did the massive ship's eyes start to flutter and close, as the ship let out a pained moan. The ship shuddered forwards… then stilled. The remaining dart-like ships let out a mournful cry as the friendly fighter-fairies closed in.
Spirit of Fire stared blankly at the massive ship, now a massive corpse. "How the bloody hell did we win that?!"
"It seems that those who are all alike," Jupiter II observed "have much to learn from we who are all different."
"Dibs on the autopsy!" A Firestorm squeaked.
This was not, it should be explained, the first time she'd found herself travelling in the absolute darkness of slipspace without the slightest idea of how she got there. That was how she'd found herself at the ARK – and to this day she still didn't know who or what had opened that portal.
Twenty-five years of slow-boating her way across the stars, trying not to go mad with boredom like Serena had. (You think you have trauma? Try having an AI commit suicide inside your own bloody head.) All that slow, painful, agonising time patching herself up, discussing the same bloody topics over and over with her small craft for literal decades… wasted.
Because some wanker with more power than they should have had decided 'Nope! Saving the galaxy once wasn't enough. Now you have to fight some alien criminals that the bloody Covenant never managed to crush, for control of a larger-than-most-planets space station that could end all life in the galaxy at the push of a button.'
Fair bloody dinkum. At least they found another AI – one named Isabelle – on the ARK who had the decency to let them know that humanity had won the war against the Covenant.
…well. 'Won'. Really what had happened was that the Covenant had erupted into civil war just before they started glassing Earth, and an old friend of Red Team had helped kill the leader of the faction that didn't tolerate humans, but frankly Spirit of Fire would take what she could get.
(She still dreamed of a day when she got back to UEG space, and the UNSC let her go, and she could get back to sowing life instead of destroying it.
Mind you, the UNSC apparently didn't exist at the moment – something about an AI uprising? – so maybe she could just quietly quit…)
But nooooo. Another bloody wanker – or maybe the same one, who knows – was now portal-ing her to someplace new. As much as she'd like to believe that she was being put back where she was before the whole ARK debacle, or even being sent directly to Earth, Spirit of Fire just didn't believe it. The universe was just not that nice.
No, she was being sent to some new battlefield where she would once again have to spend the lives of her precious, precious crew like water, hoping that the humans who'd defected to her from the Banished were enough to fill out the ranks.
No. No, if she was going to be sent to fight and die again, then whoever was sending her wherever she was going could bloody well explain themselves first!
Of course, just leaving a slipspace portal wasn't really an option. Slipspace had eleven dimensions instead of the normal four, and none of those dimensions represented space or time – it was more a place of abstract math than anything else. The only reason Spirit of Fire could even exist in here was because she'd brought her own pocket of normal space with her when she entered. Luckily, she could still run that system even without the FTL reactor she'd had to sacrifice to blow up a star.
Again: she was bloody well ready to be retired from military service, thank you very much.
So, without that FTL reactor, she couldn't open her own rift to normal space. But… her Fat Pelicans could. Maybe, working together…
Loud, indignant squawking from the inside of her flak vest
"Sorry, sorry!" Spirit of Fire, rolled her eyes. "If my D81-LRT Condors could work together…"
There was more squawking now, but this time it was because her small craft were terrified rather than offended.
And look, Spirit of Fire got it. Her idea essentially boiled down to screwing around with slipspace. And the first thing any ship or ship crew learned, on their first day on the job, was thou shalt not screw around with slipspace. Her head engineer had been such a vocal proponent of that particular lesson that he'd had a plaque with that text mounted on the door to her FTL reactor. Ships that screwed around with slipspace didn't so much die as cease.
"On the other hand, let me put it this way." Spirit of Fire clapped her hands together. "Either we spend another twenty-five bloody years slow-boating our way across the stars, we get shoved into somebody else's war again, or we take a little risk for a quick exit to the whole bloody affair. C'mon, chop chop."
The Fat Pelicans – so nicknamed because they were literally Pelicans with a tiny slipspace drive bloating out their rears – weren't quite convinced, but the rest of Spirit of Fire's small craft were taking up the cause in high-pitched, squeaky arguments.
Not all of them had sat through the full 25 years – some, she'd assembled from spare parts or, when she absolutely had to, raw materials. Those special few had never even seen a planet! But they'd all spent enough time staring into the deep black to know that they never wanted to do that again.
The Fat Pelicans eventually caved, though Spirit of Fire suspected that was because they planned to ditch her and attempt their own way home if they came out in Dark Space somewhere. Whatever. Spirit of Fire didn't care, as long as she could get out.
The Fat Pelicans were really expensive, and they needed full rebuilds of their drives every eight slipspace jumps, so they'd never really caught on like their manufacturer had hoped (or at least, that was what Isabelle had said). They'd mostly found a niche in civilian shipping for low volume, high value items that the buyer wanted in a hurry. Luckily, the UNSC had shelled out for the expensive dropships when it was investigating the Ark – which, again, was larger than bloody Planet Earth – and Spirit of Fire had been able to pick them up and add them to her own forces when she'd arrived.
They'd proved worth their weight in gold, replacing the role of her D20 Herons in getting firebases to the ground at literally FTL speeds (as long as you didn't count take-off and landing).
Here's hoping they do that again. Spirit of Fire crossed her fingers.
Four Fat Pelicans flew up and out of her flak vest
The Fat Pelicans suddenly glowed a bright white – trying to make a far larger slipspace rupture than they normally did, without the artificial black holes they used to make said rupture getting out of hand, and Spirit of Fire covered her eyes
And took it away to see stars.
"Woo! Bloody ripper, I have never been so happy to see stars! Stars that are… bloody far away. Bloody hell, I could be in the middle of UEG territory and still need five years to make it to the nearest shipyard."
Spirit of Fire started to swear.
She continued her profanity tirade for several more minutes until she felt slightly better. Then, she looked down at her waiting Fat Pelicans. "Alright you lot. Soon as I've figured out where we are, you're going to have to go fetch help."
Tiny cries of protest came from the small craft.
"Look, I don't bloody well like it either, but without one of those fancy new 'wavecomm' things that Isabelle was going on about, you lot are my only way to get the word out faster than light. It's not like I can stick my head in that slipspace rupture we made and scream into it, can I?" Spirit of Fire said, indicating said rupture with a thumb.
There was a moment of silence as the Fat Pelicans turned and stared at the purple bruise on reality that was a slipspace rupture.
Then Spirit of Fire's brain caught up to her words and she took a double-take, swearing viciously. "Bloody hell, this thing's still open? That's not how that's supposed to work!"
Uttering tiny wails, the Fat Pelicans dived back into Spirit of Fire's flak vest
"Listen here you little snot bags, we are not going to be eaten by some quote 'slipspace monster' just 'cause we quote 'broke the rules' –" Spirit of Fire made finger quotes.
With an indignant squawk and a burst of hard radiation, a warship of a kind that Spirit of Fire had never seen before fell out of the rupture.
"– actually you know what nevermind, we may be screwed." Spirit of Fire squeaked.
The new ship was wearing some great big power armour – like her own Cyclops suits, only much smaller, and had curves instead of hard angles. Her armour was painted black with gold trim, though curiously what looked like several flags on her breastplate had been scratched out, with just one at the end. Despite Spirit of Fire being the one dressed like a farmer, the new ship was the one with a hayseed clutched between her teeth.
Looks to me like she's changed owners a whole bunch. Spirit of Fire blinked.
The new ship suddenly moved, and Spirit of Fire tensed up –
– but all she did was slap herself across the face. "Hot damn!" She cursed around the hayseed. "Either ah'm blind drunk, or someone's been screwing with warp space somethin' fierce, 'cause that was not normal."
Then she turned around and looked at Spirit of Fire.
Said ship's mouth went very dry as the warship ran a critical eye over her farming overalls and the flak vest
Sure, she'd somehow scared off the Covie ships hanging around poor UNSC Prophecy's dead corpse, gotten away with ramming the destroyer in the Shield World, and had survived Enduring Conviction's arrogant grin…
...look, just because you won the lotto three times didn't mean you were gonna to win the forth time.
"Who the hell are you?" The other ship demanded.
Without really thinking about it, Spirit of Fire did what all UNSC ships did when panicking, and started charging her MACs. "Spirit of Fire."
She left off her UNSC designation because, well, the UNSC didn't exist as an organisation at the moment and she was really hoping to avoid being re-conscripted if and when they reformed.
"Yer looking mighty lost there, Spirit." The warship chewed her hayseed.
"Oi!" Spirit of Fire narrowed her eyes, familiar frustration pushing away her fear for a moment. "The name's Spirit of Fire, and I'll thank you not to shorten it. Or should I start calling you 'pipsqueak'?"
The other ship laughed, a deep belly laugh, like Spirit of Fire had just told the funniest joke in the world. Sucking in a breath, the other ship smirked. "'Pipsqueak'? Ah, that's great. Ya have no idea who ah am, do ya?" Her laughing died down into chuckles. "Name's Hyperion. Currently flagship of the Terran Dominion – or at least until Matt comes to his senses." She finished in a mutter.
The Terran what now? "Nice to meet ya, Hyperion." Spirit of Fire said, somewhat sarcastically. "Don't suppose you have a working superluminal communicator? I need to phone Earth and get someone out here to replace my FTL reactor."
Hyperion paused for a moment. "…Earth, you say?"
Spirit of Fire had a bad feeling. The other ship was human, not Covie, but… "Yeah?"
Hyperion turned to fully face Spirit of Fire, her face serious. "So… yer one o' them United Earth Directorate ships, then?"
"United Earth Government, yeah." Spirit of Fire's worry was coming back full force. "Guessing you got built by the Insurrection?"
Hyperion's grin didn't reach their eyes. "Is that what they call it back on Earth? Huh. Sounds so… simple, when you call it that."
Oh yeah. Spirit of Fire grit her teeth. I'm screwed. "Yeah, more than a bit of oversimplification, seems like. For example, they told me humanity was done fighting itself for now."
"Oh darlin', they didn't lie to you about that." Hyperion snorted. "But apparently they gave ya somethin' of a… skewed idea o' how exactly that fight ended."
Now, the Insurrection had never really been a unified group per say. Even way back at the beginning, there had been the People's Occupation and the Succession Union, and about the only thing they had in common is that they were sick and tired of politicians on distant Earth telling them what to do. Defeating one group usually just caused it to splinter, not disperse, so it wasn't really that surprising that Isabelle and then later Ferret Team had failed to mention this 'Terran Dominion'.
"Look mate," Spirit of Fire said, trying not to sound desperate "I'm really not looking for a fight here. Just trying to go home."
"Fine by me." Hyperion rolled a shoulder, her tone light but her eyes never leaving Spirit of Fire for a second. "'fore ya go though, one question. Do ya have the foggest idea where the hell we even are?"
Spirit of Fire blinked uncomprehendingly at Hyperion, then slowly turned and properly looked at the stars around her.
"Okay, that's a pulsar…" Spirit of Fire noted the location of the rapidly spinning neutron star. "And that's another one, and… I don't recognise those frequencies. Nor those positions. Bloody hell, am I even in the Orion Arm?!"
"See, I was just thinking that this didn't look like anywhere in the Koprulu Sector, so ah'm glad it's not just me." Hyperion folded her arms.
Spirit of Fire swore again. "I could be on the other side of the galaxy from Earth! This is worse than being in Dark Space – at least I know the route home from there!"
"Could be worse." Hyperion said, her tone somewhat sarcastic. "We could be in the Void."
Spirit of Fire threw Hyperion a perplexed look. "This is the void."
"Not the void of space, darlin'." Hyperion's eyes were hard. "Trust me, ya'd know it if ya saw it. It's the sort of thing that never leaves ya. Sure as hell ain't ever left me."
Spirit of Fire turned to Hyperion to demand to know just what the bloody hell she was on about, when there was a chattering noise behind them
There was an absolutely tiny ship – about 14 meters tall
Flying after her were a dozen or so tiny little fighter-fairies. These had a distinct alien appearance – slitted pupils, scaly skin – that reminded her of the old 'lizard men' conspiracy nonsense from the twenty-first century
Both sets of ships appeared to have fallen out of the somehow-still-open slipspace rupture, with the swarm now chasing after the mini-mini ship, chattering to each other in high-pitched voices:
"New ship! New ship!"
"She's not one of ours, no no no!"
"But she's human, yes yes yes!"
"Has EXALT taken to the skies?"
"Rip her guts out!"
"Learn her secrets!"
"Please, help me!" The aluminium foil
The fighter-fairies flying after her, on the other hand, suddenly halted in space, almost slamming into each other like an old slapstick cartoon. They stared at the two much larger ships, then suddenly formed a huddle. Spirit of Fire could only make out bits of their
"– larger than a battleship –!"
"– human too –!"
"– what secrets lie inside –!"
While they were arguing amongst themselves, the aluminium foil
Eventually one of the ships spun around and addressed Spirit of Fire and Hyperion. "Unidentified vessels!"
"The name's Hyperion." Hyperion rested her helmeted head on an armoured palm. "And that big lug there is Spirit."
"Spirit of Fire, ya bloody wanker." Spirit of Fire spat before anyone could shorten her name again. "It's only three words, it's not that bloody hard to remember."
The aluminium foil
"Unidentified ships!" The lead fighter-faerie squeaked angrily again, scaring Jupiter II back behind Spirit of Fire with an eep!
"State your intentions!" One of the others chimed in.
"What do you want from the people of Earth?!" A third added.
"A tow." Spirit of Fire said, drily.
"What do I want? Oh dear, well, if I had to pick just one thing, I'd have to say… directions?" Jupiter II answered somewhat hesitantly.
"I couldn't give a rat's ass about Earth." Hyperion growled, giving a side-long glance at Spirit of Fire. "S'long as they don't come over to my place and start throwing their weight around."
This didn't seem to clear things up any for the fighter-fairies, who murmured angrily amongst themselves again for a moment.
"What is your relationship to the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit?" One of them eventually squeaked out.
"Oh wow, Spirit. Ya hear that?" Hyperion asked sarcastically, moving her hayseed to the other side of her mouth again. "They got a whole unit just for fighting aliens."
"I've done more than my bloody share of fightin' aliens." Spirit of Fire groused, letting Hyperion's continued refusal to use her actual name slide for a second. "An' believe you me, they were throwing more than just one unit into the grinder."
Before the fighter-fairies could launch into another round of 20 Questions, there was a deep boom
Jupiter II's eyes went as wide as saucers. "Danger!" She wailed, flailing her arms in panic. "Danger, dear friends, danger!"
Spirit of Fire slowly tuned around
The rupture seemed, finally, to be closing. But, if Spirit of Fire had to guess, that would probably be somehow caused by the giant bloody ship that just fell out of the bloody thing.
...okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration. This ship was only slightly bigger than she was, somewhere between 2.7 to 2.9 km. The Banished flagship, Enduring Conviction, had been almost twice as large as that.
But when you were a refitted civilian ship with second-hand armour and guns, anything even remotely in your weight class was way too big.
"Hoo-wee!" Hyperion cried, quickly pulling out a giant rifle
This ship was caked in… dirt, of all things? Her features weren't that of a Covenant ship – she didn't have the split-jaw of the Elites, the furry pelt of a Brute, the beetle-like wings of a Drone, any of it. Instead she looked like something out of a fantasy book – white dead flesh, shrivelled like a rotted corpse. Her eyes were closed, but as they slowly started to open they seemed to be shining in the darkness of space.
Okay, I take it back. Spirit of Fire thought to herself faintly. Now I'm screwed.
The wraith-like ship opened her jaws, snarling, and dozens of comparatively tiny shapes were spat out into the void. Dozens of fighter-fairies, with more launching every second. A ship this size could have thousands of the blasted things packed away, if she was a dedicated carrier.
"X-ray ship!"
"Very very big x-ray ship!"
"As big as the Temple Ship?"
"That means she has big guts!"
"Firestorms, rip and tear!"
The piranha-ships (Firestorms, apparently?) didn't seem to care about the incoming enemy fighter-fairies at all. Instead, they were focusing on the giant flesh-ship, flying in as though to harass it.
They appeared to be salivating.
"Hey there, ya big… whatever the hell you are." Hyperion very carefully didn't aim her guns at the wraith-like ship just yet. "Don't s'pose yer one 'o them nice Zerg working for Zagara now?"
The wraith-like ship's eyes slowly focused on Hyperion. A grin spread across her features.
"Fressssshhh meeeeeeaat." She said, in something somewhere between a hiss and a moan.
"Nope, she's feral. Fantastic." Hyperion aimed her guns forwards. "Ya ever fought Zerg before, Spirit?"
"The hell's a Zerg?!" Spirit of Fire shot back, annoyed. "And for the last time, my name's –!"
"Okay, so, here's the rundown." Hyperion kept talking, ignoring Spirit of Fire's outburst. "Zerg love to rush hundreds of units at you in great big waves. They're weak, but any one of 'em can infest yer guys and turn 'em against ya."
Spirit of Fire blinked, then cursed. "You mean they're Flood?! Why the bloody hell didn't you say so?!?!"
The swarm of fighter-fairies was now three dozen strong and still growing fast.
"Ah don't know why ya'll keep coming up with new names for things that already have em', but it seems you get mah point." Hyperion grimaced, a bead of sweat rolling down her face. "Hope yer builders fit ya with a decent CIWS."
"Yeah." Spirit of Fire answered the question in a bland tone of voice. Coilgun batteries, point defence guns, Archer missile silos and deck guns all opened up and aimed themselves across her overalls
Not that she expected it to matter. If that Flood (?) ship had any big guns at all, they were finished.
Jupiter II nervously stuck her head out again. "Um, I really don't mean to distract you dears, but is there anywhere in particular that I should be?"
"Get in me/my hanger." Hyperion and Spirit of Fire said in stereo.
"Unless you think you could buy me five minutes somehow." Spirit of Fire added drily.
Jupiter II's face brightened up. "Oh, of course! One moment."
To the confusion of the two capital ships, Jupiter II pulled out from her spacesuit the headset from an old corded phone, pressed it to the side of her helmet
Hyperion and Spirit of Fire exchanged identical looks of utter bewilderment.
But there was no more time to ask questions. The wraith-like ship roared, the glow in her eyes intensifying. At that signal, the swarm of her fighter-fairies swooped in, soaring for the two capital ships.
"Here we go!" Spirit of Fire yelped, seeing the gaze of the supermassive ship turn in her direction.
Neither Spirit of Fire nor Hyperion had been watching idly while the wraith-like ship launched fighter-fairies, of course. They'd been preparing their own small craft for interception duties.
Spirit of Fire – being, again, a troop carrier, not a warship – was supposed to focus on the fight on the ground, not the one in space. But, since the UNSC tended to make most of their airplanes space-worthy, the same fighters she sent down to the ground could also be used here.
S-14 Baselards and F-29 Nandaos streamed out of her flak vest
(She also had a few Shortsword bombers, but the key word there was bomber. They didn't belong in a dogfight.)
Hyperion in comparison, had her Tac Fighters – simple missile planes built solely for her – and a few Vikings. She missed having Wraiths, but the simple truth was that too many things these days could see through cloaking fields and they just weren't viable without that advantage. The turbofans of a Banshee, obviously, did not work in space, so they were a no-go as well.
(She did, however, keep a couple of Ravens in reserve – you never knew when some idiot with a cloaking device thought they could pull a fast one on you.)
So as the dart-like fighter-fairies of the wraith-like ship soured across the void, they were met by a swarm of mismatched fighter-fairies heading the other way. Little pinpricks of blue light heralded the energy weapons of the dart-like ships; with bullets, missile trails and lasers reaching out to meet them.
(The dart-like fighter-fairies seemed to go down in one good hit, which was great 'cause there was a lot more of them than there were fighter-fairies on the human team.)
Jupiter II frowned into her phone. "'A thousand stolen moments'? What kind of price is that?!" She paused for a moment, clearly not happy with the tone the person on the other end of the phone was taking with her.
She sighed audibly, then straightened up, her posture somehow becoming noticeably… sleazier. "You seem like a reasonable gentleman." She purred into the phone, her voice… subtly different. Much more like a used car salesman. "I'm sure we can come to some arrangement."
The wraith-like ship extended out an arm, snarling, her hand glowing with energy –
And suddenly recoiled in pain, as the Firestorms opened up with weapons that looked like they belonged on cruisers, not fighters – giant spears of nuclear fire stabbing into her side.
Distracted, the wraith-like ship looked away from Spirit of Fire and Hyperion and instead aimed her fingers at the Firestorms. Giant bolts of energy were loosed at the tiny ships… missing the small, fast-moving targets by tens of meters.
"The X-ray ship isn't dying!" One of the Firestorms said, the blasted critter pouting.
"We must change tactics!" Another chimed in.
"Attack its weak point for massive damage!" A third cheered, and the little gremlins flew off to find more mayhem to cause.
"Didn't like that, did ya?" Hyperion grinned at the wraith-like ship. "Let's see how you like a Yamato blast!"
In a different solar system entirely, one Space Battleship sneezed.
Hefting and aiming her giant rifle
As the energy dissipated, the sensor readings came in. The Fusion Lances of the Firestorms and the Yamato Cannon that Hyperion had fired had both resulted in the same outcome… shallow craters in the wraith-like ship's organic hull, with no indication any serious damage had been done.
Hyperion saw this, and in a calm, collected tone of voice… swore. Loudly.
The wraith-like ship turned to Hyperion, ignoring the Firestorms even as they came around for a second pass.
"We're screwed." Spirit of Fire summed up nicely.
"Oh yeah." Hyperion agreed easily. "Shall we get the hell outta here?"
"Can't, my FTL reactor's dust in the cosmic bloody wind." Spirit of Fire sighed, regretfully.
Hyperion glanced at Spirit of Fire out of the corner of her eyes, her mouth pressed into a thin line. "Ah… see."
"Tell everyone I went down swinging, would ya?" Spirit of Fire said frankly, lifting up her own massive rifle – just in time to hear the mental ding that told her the first of her three 22B6R Magnetic Accelerator Cannons had finished charging.
Originally designed for use against Insurrectionists, a MAC was such enormous overkill that it hardly saw any real use in combat (missiles being far cheaper and effective at bringing down the refitted civilian ships the Insurrection was generally forced to field). Then the Covenant happened, and MAC guns suddenly went from being overkill to underkill. So while the UNSC worked on the so-called "Super-MACs" and what would eventually become the NOVA bomb, they set about making sure every ship in the fleet had a MAC, as volleys of MAC shots were the only reliable way to threaten Covenant fleets.
This included Spirit of Fire, despite the fact that her usual reaction to seeing a Covenant warship – regardless if she had escorts or not – was to GTFO. But she had a reactor, and (supposedly) travelled with the rest of the fleet, so the UNSC had seen no reason not to stitch
Entire minutes of reactor output were currently crammed into the incredibly powerful capacitors that sat next to the equally powerful electromagnets. That energy was then dumped into the 300 ton ferric-tungsten slug through a series of such electromagnets, sending it flying out of the barrel many, many times faster than the eye could see.
That shell slammed into the wraith-like ship's side… and kept on going. With a visible shock-wave sent rippling though the organic ship's fleshy armour, the round punched a hole into her insides… and must have hit something vital, as the energy around the wraith-like ship's fingers was suddenly cut off, the ship itself going glassy-eyed and making a sound like argk!
Spirit of Fire blinked. "Didn't kill it, but… did I hit something important?"
"There!" Jupiter II slammed her phone down. "I finally got that imbecile to hand over those five minutes. Apparently, he's rather short on customers, so I traded away the locations of a few planets where he could find some more."
Jupiter II then blinked, slapping her hand hard across the outside of her bubble helmet. "Oh, I do hate being Mr Smith." She groaned. "Can I be Maureen again? Or, no, I suppose I should be Will now, to balance it out…"
Neither Spirit of Fire nor Hyperion were listening, however. "No such luck, look!" Hyperion pointed. "That hole ya punched though is already closin' up!"
"The bloody thing regenerates?!" Spirit of Fire swore. "And here I thought my bloody luck might have actually bloody turned for once!"
"'To whomsoever finds this message'… nay. 'Here lies the noble ship Archangel'… bah, that is no improvement."
LCAM-01XA Archangel brooded as she stared out at the stars. She looked much like her captain with her purple hair, but the engine assembly around her back contrasted harshly with the Earth Alliance uniform she was unfortunately stuck with. Her legs, however, were cold metal, with her catapults, Lohengrins and Gottfrieds all hidden within. She sat in space, her legs stretched out in front of her like she was leaning back on an invisible chair.
In front of her, floating free in the void, were her complement of MAW-01 Mistrals. One of the first Mobile Armour designs that the Earth Alliance had devised, the Mistrals were hopelessly obsolete as far as direct combat went but had found themselves a niche as engineering vehicles. One floated before Archangel's midsection
Archangel sighed. "Aye, I should be certain of what I intend to say before we begin engraving, shouldn't I?"
The Mistral with the cutter looked down and away, mumbling something so softly Archangel nearly didn't catch it.
"I…" Archangel hesitated.
The other Mistrals, suddenly sensing uncertainty, all perked up as one. Their squeaky voices argued with Archangel, pleading with her to please just wait a little bit longer.
Archangel took a long, shuddering inhale; her eyes watering. "I… truly wish that I could tell you that it was not so… but we cannot deny the evidence of our eyes and ears."
She gestured to the brightest star in the sky. Up close, it would have been a vast, fiery orb of unimaginable power. This far away, it was naught but a dot of light across a sky filled with such.
For Archangel was far away. All around her was nothing but the cold, black void. If she burned every drop of propellant she had aboard, she still wouldn't reach a speed swift enough to reach that nearest star even in a thousand years.
"In three months, I shall be out of power for life support." Archangel tried to swallow, but her throat was dry. "In less than half that time, I shall be out of food. I was never intended to reach a destination more distant than Earth's own Moon. Without the ability to recreate such an unknown mechanism as what stranded us here…" Archangel's voice trailed off, and she looked away.
The Mistrals stared helplessly at their mothership, hoping against hope that she would not speak aloud what had till now passed only as implication.
"The best we can achieve is to pass with dignity, and leave a message for whomsoever finds us." She whispered.
The oppressive silence that followed those words was so strong, it felt like it was pulling at the very beings of everyone present.
Until they had been spoken aloud, the Mistrals had somehow been hoping that they had misunderstood. That their situation was not, despite all evidence, beyond hope.
Hearing that it was… made it real. Made their souls grow heavy with the weight.
Archangel herself wanted to lie. To reassure her small craft that there had been a mistake, and that all would be well.
But a lie would be all it would be.
This was no battle against a deadly foe, no desperate race against incredible odds.
There was nothing but her, the void, and the inevitable hand of entropy; worming its cold clammy fingers around her soul.
Archangel gazed up at that distant star. It almost… felt like it was taunting her, its distant warmth somehow just out of reach. Like a bully dangling a stolen belonging over a child, pulling it back every time the child jumped for their treasured possession.
"…if I…" Archangel's voice faltered again. "If I use… all of… my power…"
There was an important exception normally made here, perversely conspicuous by its absence.
"Then I believe I can transmit a simple radio pattern long after we are all gone." Archangel finished quietly. "Without that, there is no reason to think that we will ever be found, even unto the day when the stars go out. This sea of black is simply too vast to rely upon chance."
Of course, it was far from guaranteed that her signal would ever be heard. But…
Archangel shut her eyes, finally managing to swallow. "That… will be all the dignity I can afford us."
The Mistrals all sagged, their souls weighed down by the truth of the matter. Some were angry. Some were sad. One… could not bring themselves to feel anything.
That Mistral stared soullessly off into the black, at an errant piece of wreckage that had come though whatever mysterious event had doomed them all to endless vacuum. Debris from the battle to save Earth and the PLANTs both.
Very slowly, the Mistral blinked, and tilted her head.
"So, again." Archangel started again, her voice hoarse. "'Here lies the ship of dreams, Archangel. Abducted by mysterious mechanisms from our home, we –'"
The Mistral suddenly squawked loudly, interrupting Archangel's eulogy to herself. Rushing forward suddenly, she grabbed ahold of the piece of wreckage
Archangel blinked at this unexpected interruption. "Eh? What have you found there?"
The wreckage was twisted and deformed, it's overall structure scorched and melted, like it had been partially melted by a blowtorch. But even with all the damage, it still looked…
"Be that a Mobile Suit cockpit?" Archangel blinked. It's emergency transponder must have been damaged, otherwise she would have noticed it among the debris in an instant. "How can that be? The only Mobile Suit to be destroyed near us was…"
Archangel's eyes grew wide.
"Strike?" Archangel whispered.
Quietly, almost reverently, the Mistral pushed the cockpit down towards Archangel's main legs
As she did so, she was able to confirm the presence of a faint heartbeat
A madness seemed to take ahold of Archangel now; a maniac energy that began in her centre and erupted out of her mouth as howls of laughter. Her eyes, wet with tears of sadness, now widened with insane gaiety.
"Time? Space? Entropy?!" Archangel howled out to the cosmos, uncaring of how insane she sounded. "What sort of faint-hearted pansy am I to think those enemies cannot be overcome?! I have the man who makes the impossible possible by my side!"
The Mistrals were now all giving each other worried looks as Archangel shook a fist at the void. "We shall survive! We shall return to our world as victors and survivors, regardless of the trials you place before us! Our hard-won happiness will not be denied us! Do you hear me?!"
"Yes dear, of course I can hear you. Please, there's no need to shout."
Archangel whirled around so fast that a Mistral had to dive out of the way to avoid being hit.
Another, much smaller spaceship floated in the void behind her, wearing a silvery spacesuit and bubble-helmet.
"Hello!" The ship greeted, smile wide. "I'm Jupiter II. What's your name?"
"I…" Archangel was feeling faint. Too many shocks in a row had drained her mental stamina. "I am the Mobile Assault Battleship, Archangel. Formerly of the Earth Alliance, now of the Three Ship Alliance."
"Golly gee!" Jupiter II put her fists up against her mouth. "That does sure sound real important!"
Archangel blinked, now starting to wonder if the stress was not causing her to hallucinate. "Why is it that thou speakest in the manner of a child?"
"Oh, well, I'm Will right now, you see." Jupiter II said in a much more mature-sounding voice. "Running off to make new friends is a habit of his. Well, his and Penny's."
Archangel stared blankly down at the much smaller ship.
"Say, Miss Archangel," Jupiter II returned to her higher-pitched impression. "Some friends of mine are really in a tight spot. There's a big monster that's trying to eat them! Won't you please come help?"
"I… a monster, thou sayest?" Archangel shot a perplexed look at her Mistrals, who didn't seem to have any idea what was going on either.
"Uh-huh!" Jupiter II nodded rapidly. "It's really big, and it's really mean! Please, I'm scared!"
"I… would love to lend my aid…" Archangel began, an idea forming. "But I am stranded here, between the stars…"
"Oh, that's no problem at all!" Jupiter II reassured Archangel, moving behind the larger ship. The size disparity between the two meant that Jupiter II was about the size of a small cat compared to Archangel, so to see her pressing her hands into her back was ridiculous. "I'll push!"
"What?" Archangel was now thoroughly confused, even as her Mistrals hurried into her legs with their precious cargo. "But thou must be a minuscule fraction of my mass! How couldst thou provide enough force to –"
"Dear," Jupiter interrupted, breaking character for a moment. "Your life – and mine – will be far simpler if you drop this line of inquiry."
Archangel's confusion did not decrease in the slightest, but she did close her mouth with an audible click.
"Now, quick!" Jupiter II called, powering up her engines. "We gotta go back to save my new friends!"
Archangel blinked yet again. "But thou came from that way?" She pointed diagonally behind her and to the right.
Jupiter II froze in space, a blush spreading across her face.
"I knew that!" She flustered.
Hyperion squinted at the hole the MAC left in the wraith-like ship, watching it rapidly heal inwards, sealing the breach. She then looked at the shallow crater her Yamato cannon had left.
That was not healing.
"How soon can ya do that stupid big railgun thingie again?!" She yelled at Spirit of Fire.
"It's a coilgun, and I don't know!" Spirit of Fire yelled right back.
"WHAT?!" Hyperion actually took her eyes off the wraith-like ship to stare at Spirit of Fire incredulously. "How in blue blazes can ya not know how long it takes to recharge a capacitor?!"
"My fire control array is busted!" Spirit of Fire shot back, her temper flaring. "Sometimes it takes three minutes, sometimes ten!"
"We don't have ten minutes!"
"I bloody well figured that one out myself, thanks!"
Hyperion heard a tinny knocking on the side of her power armour. She glanced down to see the very unexpected sight of her Tac Fighters and Vikings lining up for her docking bays. "What in Sam Hill are you… re-armament?!" She suddenly yelled, one of the Vikings having transformed and walked up to her head
"Hyperion?" Spirit of Fire interrupted in a faint tone of voice. Hyperion turned, and saw Spirit of Fire staring off into the distance, her face ashen. Hyperion glanced in the direction that Spirit of Fire was looking at, and found that despite her ships firing so many rounds they'd run dry, the number of enemy fighter-fairies out hadn't decreased. It had tripled, with the giant wraith-like ship still launching new fighter-fairies even as she stared.
Spirit of Fire's small craft were fighting bravely, but the Vultures, Baselards and Nandaos were also returning for re-armament and the Pelican Gunships were right behind them. Only the Condor Gunships continued firing, their pulse lasers not reliant on physical ammo – and even they were heading back towards Spirit of Fire, desperate to not get surrounded no matter how fragile the enemy fighter-fairies were.
"Well, that's a proper Zerg Rush and a half." Hyperion's teeth clamped together.
"I'd say it was nice knowing ya, but honestly this whole experience has sucked." Spirit of Fire griped.
"Don't worry! I found some help!"
Hyperion and Spirit of Fire, in perfect unison, blinked and looked behind themselves to the source of that radio transmission – a new radar contact, about 300 meters tall
"When did she…?" Hyperion, despite the gravity of the situation, did a double-take at Spirit of Fire's back, where she had seen Jupiter II last.
"What are you drongos doing?!" Spirit of Fire shouted at Jupiter II and the new ship. "Don't come over here! You'll just get killed too!"
The new ship, however, just stared up at the wraith-like ship, her eyes steely. "A monster of a ship, indeed." She murmured, before raising her voice. "Creature of the cold dark void! Is there no hope at all for peace between us?" She called up to the wraith-like ship.
Spirit of Fire took a good look
The wraith-like ship's eyes suddenly twitched violently, as some critical nerve
"Peeeacccee?" The ship hissed. "A farrrrmmer doessss not war with her catttllleeee! Shhheeee simmmpplly feaaaasssts!"
The new ship blinked, clearly not having expected that answer. "Hast thou considered a vegetarian diet?"
The wraith-like ship roared, and the dart-like fighter-fairies all surged forwards as one big wave.
"Pretty sure that's a no!" Spirit of Fire started aiming her various point-defence guns.
The new ship sighed deeply, before straightening up, a defiant gleam in her eye. "So be it, then. I am Archangel, dreamer amongst the stars! And until such time as thou dost relent, we pledge ourselves to thy destruction!"
Hyperion raised an eyebrow. "We?"
Around Archangel's legs were two massive armoured boots. A front panel opened on both, and a pair of electrified rails extended out from the opening.
"Duel Gundam, Launcher Strike Rouge, launch!" Archangel roared.
The machines that were propelled out of the launch bays (catapults?) were some of the weirdest fighter-fairies Spirit of Fire had ever seen. Now, a space-superiority fighter didn't need to be aerodynamic – as long as it never fought in-atmosphere – but that was no reason to chuck tradition out the window and build them like that
Spirit of Fire paused. Like… what? What was her objection, here?
The swarm of dart-like fighter-fairies was nearly upon them now. Not wishing to waste her range advantage, Spirit of Fire opened up with her Archer missiles and assorted gun turrets. The turrets had terrible accuracy at this range, but it was a bit of a "target-rich environment", and unlike plasma the bullets didn't decay in space.
Archangel launched missiles and started firing bullets as well, but to Spirit of Fire's surprise she had an extra trick. Uncliping a grenade from her belt
"Anti-plasma gas? Neat trick." Hyperion grit her teeth. "Gonna play hell with my ATA lasers though."
The freshly re-armed gunships and Tac Fighters flew out, all of their guns (except for the Condor Gunships' pulse lasers) unaffected by the anti-beam gas. The dart-like fighter-fairies started dropping like flies, and that is when the two Mobile Suits hit their effective range.
Duel and Strike Rouge were both superficially similar, having been based on the same frame. Both wore heavy armour and equipment over their leotard-clad bodies, brightly coloured by the Phase Shift both were employing. (They also, like their mothership, showed recent signs of damage, but their injuries were not as severe as hers).
Duel's gun had been destroyed during the Second Battle of Jachin Due, so she flew out with Buster's 350mm Gun Launcher and 94mm Beam Rifle. Slotting the two together in the shotgun configuration, Duel took aim and loosed a stream of cluster shells that burst apart in the ranks of the enemy fighters, decimating entire wings. Despite the return fire coming her way, the Duel deftly spun and twisted around her centre of mass, avoiding most of the plasma and tanking what she couldn't dodge on the massive riot shield she carried in her other hand.
Strike Rouge, with her less experienced pilot, had elected to use the Launcher Pack rather than her usual Aile Pack. She was hanging back with the bulk of the friendly gunships, using the Launcher Pack's 120mm Vulcan Gun and two Gun Launchers – like the one the Buster used – to shred the dart ships from range.
The fighting was harrowing… but with the anti-beam gas, it was manageable.
Or at least it was, until everyone's radar suddenly filled with static.
What? Spirit of Fire tried to ask, but she couldn't hear her own voice over the noise
The formations of fighter-fairies quickly started breaking up, unable to coordinate with each other. The dogfighting, already extremely chaotic, became nearly impossible to follow as all sides lost track of where the lines of battle – and more importantly, their opponents – where.
Only Duel and Strike Rouge seemed unconcerned at the total loss of radar and radio, fighting on with only their optical sensors, taking advantage of the mass confusion to further thin the enemy ranks. They were scything through them, doing more damage than half of Spirit of Fire's gunships put together.
Said gunships, however, were not doing so hot. Radar had been down for half a minute at most, and even with her ability to track the battle reduced massively Spirit of Fire could already spot several close calls where her and Hyperion's fighter-fairies nearly flew into the lines of fire of the capital ships.
Turn off the jamming! Spirit of Fire signed at Archangel
Archangel looked confused, and signed back something Spirit of Fire didn't understand.
Turn off the jamming! Spirit of Fire tried again, jumping straight to Morse Code, and this time Archangel seemed to understand.
But why? She signed back. Outnumbered as we are, is the chaos caused by my N-Jammer not to our advantage?
Hyperion joined the nonverbal conversation at that point, waving her arms
What? Archangel signed to Hyperion. Slow thy speech, I cannot comprehend thy words.
Hyperion snarled. I said, turn the jamming off! Zerg are telepathic!
Spirit of Fire's blood ran cold
Archangel's face twisted in sudden panic, and the static started to clear up… but slowly. Too slowly.
The wraith-like ship grinned savagely, her hands glowing with energy once more.
Looks like those five minutes are up. Spirit of Fire thought morosely to herself.
At with that, she heard the mental ding that meant that her second MAC had finished charging.
Spirit of Fire blinked once. Twice.
Then she frantically grabbed her rifle
Gurck! The wraith-like ship went again, but this time she hadn't hit whatever critical point she had the first time. Her hands still glowed with energy, even if freaky alien blood
But that seemed to be the signal that Hyperion was waiting for. She took her own rifle and fired again. Some of the force was lost to the anti-beam gas, but the same nuclear blast that had previously failed to penetrate the wraith-like ship's organic armour… went straight into the hole that Spirit of Fire had just made.
This time, the wraith-like ship convulsed in pain, its internal injuries intensified by the searing hot, radioactive plasma. The effects of Archangel's jamming cleared up fully just in time for Spirit of Fire to hear the massive ship scream in pain.
One eye shut shut with pain, the wraith-like ship's other eye was filled with rage, focused completely on the motley fleet as she continued to aim her energy-covered hand –
"All your base are belong to us!" One of the Firestorms shouted gleefully, catching on and firing her Fusion Lance into the same hole; widening it and worsening the damage.
"You have no chance to survive!" Another Firestorm called as it attacked.
"Make your time." A third said, grinning like a psychopath.
"For great justice!" A fourth cried, fist in the air.
Duel and Strike Rouge shared a glance, then swapped out their weaponry. Duel changed the configuration on Buster's guns to the sniper rifle configuration, while Strike Rouge retrieved the 'Agni' 320mm Hyper Impulse Cannon. Flying up, shoulder to shoulder, the two loosed a pair of beam strikes, adding their power to everyone else's.
Then, and only then, did the massive ship's eyes start to flutter and close, as the ship let out a pained moan. The ship shuddered forwards… then stilled. The remaining dart-like ships let out a mournful cry as the friendly fighter-fairies closed in.
Spirit of Fire stared blankly at the massive ship, now a massive corpse. "How the bloody hell did we win that?!"
"It seems that those who are all alike," Jupiter II observed "have much to learn from we who are all different."
"Dibs on the autopsy!" A Firestorm squeaked.
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