"Having trouble?"
She freezes up, not daring to respond. The Negotiator looks around, eyes wide, and then returns his attention to his communicator.
Definitely a moment of 'Fornication, not this Excrement too? Fornicate. My. Life...
Sideways.'
"And you didn't even manage to kill him!" … "Oh, and how is it better if he's a fake!? That just means they can all survive it!"
"Negotiator?"
Boy, the Reach are going to have
quite the list of responses to OL, now. Mostly consisting of 'retreat on sight' or 'deploy largest possible weapons and pray to the great ledgers of the beyond that he is vulnerable to them.'
"…that even-? No, my orders are clear. Die, and let your stupidity die with you." He deactivates his communicator, breathes in, straightens his robes, and then turns to me with a relaxed smile on his face. "It is my sad duty to inform you that the commanding officer of the gunboat that just entered your system is doing so in an ex-communial manner."
"Meaning?"
Meaning they just got their asses thrown under the bus. With
prejudice.
"Meaning that they have gone beyond their authority and do not represent the Reach. You may-." He cranes his neck slightly to look at Miss Arfat. "Your government is fully empowered to dispose of them as you see fit."
"What's this actually about? I thought you'd at least wait-."
"Can you at least credit us with being cunning enough not to shoot through four buildings on an unaligned world?"
...The being has a
point. From the looks of it, someone higher up
panicked.
…
"I suppose that I can."
Not a thought he ever expected to have about the Reach, I'll bet.
"Yes, yes." Miss Arfat looks at me. "Given the known capacities of-."
The roof evaporates, the second shot being blocked from hitting us by my construct barrier. As the light dies the damage-. There were six floors above us and its gone right through, a crater about eight metres across having been blasted down until it hit my shield.
Well, they're going for the
big Darwin Award, aren't they? Evidently they're believers in the rule of 'Shoot until it's dead!'
"CAPACITIES of Reach warships, the Yuna government authorises the forces of N.E.M.O. to undertake hostile action under an Extraordinary Contract."
"Thank you."
Both government's arses covered, then. Time for OL to engage in some
judicious self-defence.
I add a crosshairs to my visual field, centred on the cruiser that's taking the shots.
"Back soon."
I fly upwards and then warp, my passage jerking and then stabilising as the still active interdiction systems shut down. Space snaps back as I reach high orbit, the ships around me making best speed away from where they are.
Not wanting to be in the splash zone, I bet. Hope he's at least clear of the planet as a backstop at least.
"Illustres to Lantern K'ryssma, in your own time."
Can't really risk flying at faster than light speed right up to a Reach ship, but a low warp will take me to them at-
Yeah, not when they're throwing about their own FTL firepower. Not without some
very strong shielding up...
My construct shield lights up with turquoise fury, which dies a few moments later.
-a reasonable pace. Okay, they put an FTL gun on a cruiser. It's not that big and it's not that powerful, which is why they don't usually do this sort of thing. Why are they still shooting at me? Possibility one:-
I
am impressed that they're tracking him so easily. Must have some top-of-the-line sensors rigged up to allow them to follow a man-sized object moving at his speeds.
I fire a series of lightspeed energy pulses at them. If they've got FTL sensors -and they should- then I might get a lucky hit. But for the most part I want to keep their attention on me and off the unshielded planet and lightly protected ships.
-they're trying to take my shield down with sustained fire. Not a terrible idea in the ordinary run of things, but their ship is undergunned and I'm me. Possibility two, the ship's on autopilot to shoot me. Or the people on board have stupid orders they're not willing to ignore.
Possibility four: They're not smart enough to be
able to ignore those orders, whether through conditioning or simple idiocy.
"Drusa?"
"We're not all as fast as you, Illustres. I was needed to shield our ships against their escorts."
So, no more escorts, then.
"Fair enough. Are they dead?"
"Three are. I've lost track of the fourth."
...Shit. Likelihood that they've gone for the
other high-value item in-system?
"Notify the Yuna Defence Force and keep your eyes open. I've got the cruiser."
"As you wish."
And she's probably breathing a sigh of relief right now, knowing that she
doesn't have to try and go after that cruiser.
Standard Reach communication protocols.
Compliance.
"You in the cruiser. Surrender and live on as organic beings. Resist and I will assimilate you. You have five seconds now."
Oof, pulling no punches at all there. They've definitely got his dander up, what with all the collateral damage. Still, the moral obligation to offer a way to not die is done...
Okay, scans of the cruiser… I did get a couple of hits. Looks like I breached their hull. That… Shouldn't have happened. Standard shields would-. They didn't have standard shields. FTL weapons take a lot of power, but… That doesn't sound right. I mean, if this is their first cruiser with an FTL weapon they might not have finalised the design. I might be such a juicy target that they thought that the chance to off me was worth a few ships. Lucky me.
Unlucky them.
Boy, sending an untested prototype with less-than-ideal defences? This smells
fishier and
fishier with every moment. There's no way the Reach would be that cocky or arrogant. They don't act openly unless they know that their chance of success is as high as it can be.
Empathic vision-. Oh. There are minds on board, but they've had their thought processes messed around with in a fairly brute force sort of way. I doubt that they're Reachians, but it should only take me-
I block another shot.
-a few moments to find out for certain.
Probably functionally lobotomised to minimise the effectiveness of any weapons OL is presumed to carry.
A volley of crumbler rounds punches through their weak… Environmental barrier, not even a weak military force field. Chunks of their fore gun vanish, and ring scans show it lose power. Right, interdiction field generators are usually there in that hull type… I'm close enough that I can fire orange beams and reliably pierce the hull and puncture them.
A literal
Glass Cannon boss, eh? Hopefully there's enough of their FTL beam weapon to analyse back on Maltus.
I increase the degree to which I'm warping space, and then the ship is there just in front of me. In a pretty sorry state, but the hull is largely in one piece. I draw back my shield so that it just protects me… Looks like they gave up on point defences as well, but that's no reason to take stupid risks. Locate the crew, send out the filaments-.
Two go out as they kill themselves, but I connect to the other seven just in time. Undermanned for a ship-
Slow response time, from the looks of it. No automatic defence against Assimilation either...
"Identity theft in progress."
-of this class. I'm convinced that the Negotiator on Yuna genuinely didn't know, but someone put work into this.
"Identity theft complete."
Apparently they had so little resistance, assimilation was near-instant. Well, that's indicative of
something. Throwaway clones, maybe?
I pull my thralls into my ring… Ugh. Simplified thought processes. I can't even see who gave them their orders. I'll check the computer-.
"K'ryssma to Illustres. I need help!"
Good thing OL can multitask.
I turn in space, looking for the emerald glow-.
There are two of them. And they're fighting near the location of the Free Lancers' ship. Marvellous.
Well, shit. Either one of the Free Lancers decided to blow their payday, or...
I warp, the intervening space vanishing into nothing as I pull my barrier around me as construct armour. If we've eliminated ships as a threat, that leaves either a Lantern -and if one of the Free Lancers has put the ring on I'm not helping- or a Scarab. Or-.
A green blast destabilises my warp and knocks me back into normal space, the ring-wielding Scarab Warrior pointing her new ring at me.
...The Reach flotilla's
real objective has just been advanced a step.
