Chapter 46: Wilds |
They were in the boonies now. At the ass-end of human space now. The middle of bum fuck nowhere.
And that put a massive grin on Derek’s face.
They’d left behind the core the very instant they’d left Sol, jumping out of it with their very first catapult jump, then spent quite a bit of time faffing around in “The Rim,” aka the semi-industrialized scattering of systems around humanity’s home, nominally extending around a hundred light years from that point, though there were several places that qualified in terms of population and tech, that lay outside of it.
But now, they were beyond even that, a place home to only those wielding magic, who’d given up on bringing along the vast tech base required for “modern” life and were instead forging something entirely new.
Enclaves of magic and the unknown.
What could be better?
Actually using their newly acquired freedom and testing their goddamn weapons!
So right here, in this random star system, nameless, save for an astrological catalog number, the Dragonfly’s guns fired under Derek’s command for the very first time.
The first time ever outside of testing, to be precise, though you wouldn’t know that from watching the way small asteroids exploded under the hammerblows of the lasers and particle beams that made up the Dragonfly’s secondary armament, the lighter lasers that normally served as point defense vaporized the resultant debris.
“Awesome.”
“Just wait till you see the primaries,” Derek replied with a grin, highlighting a larger asteroid ahead of the ship.
Unlike their previous targets, which had been nickel-iron asteroids slightly smaller than the ship, and obviously lacking any of the defenses, reinforcements, and other enhancements that made starships capable of surviving even the lightest of weapons, their contemporaries carried.
The one the ship was now aligning on was a rough ovoid, nearly one kilometer across even at the thinnest point and outmassing even the grandest battleship humanity had ever put into space.
In fact, it was just under the “please don’t blow up asteroids like this, we might need them for habitat building at some point” threshold that the navy had set. Considering there were at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, according to the lowest of estimations, each with doubtlessly multiple planets, some of them terraformable, and asteroid belts were just as numerous, the rule felt excessive. But bureaucracy was gonna bureaucracy, he supposed.
“So, which gun should we try first, electron beam or railgun?” Atticus asked.
“Electron Beam,” Derek decided after a moment of thought. It was an excellent weapon against starships, but a solid slab of rock was not the intended target and likely wouldn’t make for a good lightshow. They could then finish strong with the railgun.
He tapped the comms and called engineering.
“How are things looking down there, Mimi? Is the reactor ready for a test firing of the main guns?”
“Everything’s ready. You could even take it to a hundred and ten percent if you had to.”
“Perfect.”
Now, Mimi might be perfectly happy in engineering, and had told him so when he’d tried to brainstorm a way for her to both be present on the bridge and still be able to stay on top of things, but he still felt bad about having her separate like that, doubly so because that was probably for the best for now.
Eventually, she’d be able to stay on top of things from anywhere on the ship, but for now, she’d have to be close to any emergencies to be able to fix them.
It was not that being able to slap a piece of duct tape on a fusion reactor losing containment and thereby fixing things wasn’t a fantastic power that flew in the face of all things logical, but it did require her physical presence.
“Are we aligned with the target?” Derek asked the next question in a checklist that was more a matter of wanting this to feel formal than anything else.
“Yep, all someone has to do is hit the big red button,” Atticus replied with a grin that mirrored Derek’s own expression.
“Ye-in, would you like to do the honors?” he then asked.
“Absolutely,” she replied, her own grin visible even though she was looking away, facing the wall, one hand raised and formed into a fist before she stopped and opened it again, instead stabbing the button with her index finger with deliberate yet unnecessary force and the entire ship began to hum, even the well-shielded and reinforced Dragonfly carrying the sound of the vast capacitors fueled not only by the ships two fusion reactors but also the far more powerful reactor running on the blood of Demon Lord Raid Bosses began to discharge, reaching a fever pitch in a matter of seconds, at such a volume that Derek would have had to yell to make himself heard if it had just been a little bit louder …
And then the sound cut off, Derek’s ears still slightly ringing, leaving him to only realize the weapon had fired a second or so later, watching the white line the ship’s computer painted on the viewscreen to show the otherwise invisible particle beam cut across space, smash into the asteroid … and do absolutely nothing save cause the point of impact to glow cherry red.
“Uh …”
Before he could say anything, the asteroid came apart, cracks radiating outwards from the site where they’d hit it, revealing a massive channel of molten rock running down the center of the mass of stone as it slowly separated.
“Was it supposed to do that?” Atticus asked. “I was expecting something a little more … flashy.”
“I should have expected that,” Derek shrugged. “Electron beams penetrate deeply into anything they hit because electrons are so tiny, and spew radiation the instant they hit anything. If we’d hit an enemy, we’d have melted computers and fried power conduits all throughout the ship. On a solid hunk of rock … I guess it took a while for the expansion of the molten bit in the middle to break it.”
“So I’m guessing anytime we just want to hit the surface of something, we use the secondaries because they fire iron ions?” Atticus suggested.
“We probably should,” Derek agreed. Most particle beams used heavier particles and acted more like lasers in terms of their damage patterns, without being vulnerable to the same kinds of defenses.
Of course, the electromagnetic deflectors all human ships carried were their own separate issue, playing merry havoc with the particle beams without impeding lasers in the least, so they weren’t wonder weapons … but his ship did have something that could bypass both the magically cooled mirror armor and deflectors of the warships of all known species.
In fact, it was one of the oldest weapons known to man. A big fucking rock. Or chunk of metal, as it was.
“So, how about we hit that rock with the railgun before it comes apart completely?” Derek asked.
“Yep,” Atticus replied and the Dragonfly twitched for a brief moment, aligning the ship onto the densest remaining portion of the asteroid, then Ye-in stabbed her finger down onto the button, now mapped to the ship’s other spinally mounted primary, and the Dragonfly bucked, the vessel’s entire superstructure noticeably jerking back from recoil … and then the asteroid ahead detonated under the impact of the artificial meteor that was the ship’s railgun round, shattering the chunk they’d been aiming for in an instant, the impact of its fragments sending the rest of the asteroid tumbling away, breaking apart into ever smaller chunks.
“Just one more thing left to try …” Ye-in pointed out. “Find us a target, would you, Derek?”
He highlighted a similar asteroid, the first one, albeit one that was almost three times as far away, and the Dragonfly spun to face it.
“We’re trying the spatial magic array, right?” Atticus asked.
“Yep,” Derek and Ye-in said almost simultaneously, and the ship twitched slightly, aim adjusting to take into account the effect the magic would have on the weapon’s trajectory.
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And a moment later, a very different kind of hum spread throughout the ship, the twisting vortex of warped spacetime practically blinding to Derek despite it being decidedly on the outside of the vessel, the distance between the Dragonfly and its target collapsing down to practically nothing, an entire light second of space reduced to a bare kilometer in an instant, the ship bucked once more as the railgun fired, and the astroid vanished into a cloud of fragments in a flash of light as the projectile tore it apart, everything that had come from the site of impact glowing cherry red and flying away as droplets of molten metal.
With the ship’s magic shortening the distance, the railgun round actually moved slightly above light speed relative to the universe at large, and as such, that put the effective range against an aware opponent on the same level as the ship’s energy weapons, without any of the typical counters those were subject to. After all, the only real defense against kinetic weapons was dodging, and that was a hell of a lot harder when the thing you were trying to avoid was at or around light speed.
“So, I don’t think we should keep wasting railgun ammo, but we got plenty of spare reaction mass,” Derek offered. “How about we use the beams some more?”
***
An hour later, the Dragonfly was back in Alcubierre, and Derek was back in the infirmary, once again attempting to abuse the hell out of [Aspect Integration].
All told, his current “plan” was both brilliant and brilliantly stupid, the kind of moronitude that, if discovered, would have earned me a Darwin award in an instant, and internet infamy for at least an hour.
Though the real “issue” was the way he was dealing with the consequences of failure.
You see, the issue with trying to replicate [Internal Grimoire] physiologically was that it belonged to a spectral monster, who had absolutely no compunctions about using up all the space that a human needed their organs to occupy to instead store magic.
Which meant he needed to form something that actually fit within him without costing him any organ capacity he’d otherwise need.
At first, Derek had assumed that that would require him to replace his organs with more space-efficient monster ones, then use the freed-up space to add the spells.
But that would be both tricky and dangerous, not when he had another idea, that required a wholly different approach that involved absolutely no organ removal.
Namely, fill the “empty” portions of his body with ghoststuff, which would technically occupy the space but not practically impede him due to its lack of interplay with his physical form, unless it replaced something important, for example.
As such, Derek had filled his lungs with the smoky “flesh” of the Ki-Lun, and then began to infuse it with magic, casting a spell within the single most fragile organ in his body.
And if that shit exploded inside his chest, that would be very, very bad, especially if it completely tore him apart. As such … well, he’d hardened everything around his lungs save his diaphragm, reinforcing it to the nines, shaping the potential blast towards the front of his ribcage, which he’d temporarily weakened in a way that would have been decidedly dangerous if he’d been doing anything but lying on a cot in the infirmary.
As a result, if something did blow up, he might end up looking like he’d been the victim of a Chestburster from one of the old Alien movies, but giving the force of the explosion a way to vent that minimized the internal damage, hopefully in a way that [Lifesurge] could replace.
But this was his fifth attempt at this, and he’d never had anything more serious happen than some internal bleeding and the beginnings of a pulmonary embolism, neither of which had been much of an obstacle to [Lifesurge].
So right now, it was mostly a matter of retreading the paths he’d already laid out during the last few attempts, until eventually, he was done, left lying there with his lungs full of fog that was not actually present, ready to receive any magic he wanted to add.
Oh, there was still one small problem: there was stuff between the fog and the outside. Stuff like skin. And ribs. And lungs.
Which was why he couldn’t just use any old spell. He had to use one he could teleport out when he triggered it, and he happened to have something just like that.
[Blink Bolt] was effectively a variant of [Magic Missile] that cost twice as much and lacked the homing function, but could be manifested away from your hand/casting medium, by up to a meter, making it possible to shoot “through” your own cover, rather than being forced to expose yourself, and also target enemies on the other side of walls … at least as long as those walls weren’t to thick.
It was also a tricky spell, but between [Cosmos Soul], [True Spatial Magic Affinity], and Derek’s general capacity for learning, it had taken perhaps six hours to acquire it.
So he began to cast it. Once, twice, and a few dozen more times before he could feel he was “full.”
And he wasn’t exploding, bleeding, or losing more mana to maintain the effect, leaving him free and clear to unsleash a barrage of magic projectiles at the drop of a hat.
Though testing that would have to wait until he wasn’t aboard the ship, as even with it having been designed for combat, there were far too many fragile things aboard that could easily spiral into catastrophe if destroyed. So, instead, he headed over to main engineering to see if he could help Mimi with something.
***
Their next stop was in a system that had been noted to have several asteroids rich in certain heavy metals that Mimi wanted to use for experiments without having to dip into the existing on-board supplies, not when there was a ready source right there.
It also gave Derek a good chance to try out his newest trick, so he made sure the others knew what he was going to do, took the Dragonfly to where it needed to be in order for Mimi to get her rocks in a reasonable time, and double checked he had both his radio and emergency beacon.
He could get home without the ship, especially with him having filled an entire spatial ring with supplies just in case, but it’d be quite the odyssey, one he’d very much like to avoid.
And with that done, Derek stepped out into space, the sensation of gravity vanishing in an instant as he kicked himself out into the black, a single grab at the fabric of spacetime letting him first haul himself further out before a second stopped his motion relative to the Dragonfly.
The ship was only a hundred or so meters away, drifting along next to the asteroid Mimi was currently standing atop, well within his sight, but it did little to change the fact that he was surrounded on darkness on all sides, while he stared down into the void, nothingness as far as the eye could see, distant stars speckling the darkness, some likely not stars but other galaxies, so unfathomably far away that they looked like a single pinprick of light.
Derek could feel his head start to swim, and tore his gaze free … only to find himself staring into the same abyss ahead. And above. And everywhere else he looked.
For all that he’d spent plenty of time aboard starships and even spent some time out in the vacuum, this was his first proper spacewalk. And it terrified him.
He wasn’t above a void. He wasn’t flying over it. There was no bottom to this abyss, there was nothing above him either, no end in sight, no end in concept, no end at all.
And certainly nothing else big enough to serve as an anchor
The local star? Small enough to cover with his thumb.
The nearest planet? Even smaller.
Every other planet in the system? Without [Infinite Mind] helping with navigation, he’d never even have found them in the first place.
Holy …
Derek took in a deep breath, then let it go. Inhale. Exhale. In. Out. Over and over, even though there was absolutely no air present, the combination of his Aspect [Skill] and pure [System] bullshit allowing him to substitute phantomining breathing for oxygen.
He could still tell there was nothing coming in and out of his lungs, yet somehow, it still worked perfectly, and his heart stopped trying to hammer his ribcage to pieces.
And now, time to try this out …
Derek triggered one of the spells anchored within himself, the [Blink Bolt] manifesting in front of his chest and shooting off into the distance in an instant. In a completely different direction than intended, granted, but it had still worked.
So tried a few more times until he’d eventually burned through half his stockpile and wound up acquiring the barest hint of accuracy.
That was certainly something he could and would work on later, but there were other applications too. For starters, unleashing the projectiles ten at a time, as a shotgun blast of energy.
The first couple of attempts at that wound up too spread out to be useful for hitting anything other than the side of a barn, but by the fifth try, he’d managed a comparatively tight grouping and completely run out of pre-cast spells.
Mimi was also done by then, and the ship soon resumed its flight towards the unknown.
***
Things were crazy out here. For starters, they’d found a nudist colony, and Ye-in had wound up dumping a bucket of ice water over Atticus when he’d suggested they take the scenic route through the star system, rather than jumping straight out again.
They also wound up stumbling across a colony trying to build something out of a bunch of asteroids purely for the hell of it, unremarkable save for the fact that they’d somehow broken their FTL comm and wound up paying a genuinely absurd amount for the crew of the Dragonfly to buy and download movies, then send them onto the colony. And it wasn’t even a matter of price-gouging on their part; in fact, Derek had tried to talk them down to something more reasonable.
But they’d insisted, apparently quite desperate for entertainment, and wanting to pay a price commensurate with that scarcity.
Though, on the other hand, they also likely had a shitton of rare metals stockpiled, so the value of the “payment” was likely far greater for Derek and co. than the miners.
So, six hours later, they left, downloads complete and a purchase order for replacement comms done.
The next few systems were varying degrees of interesting, for a variety of reasons, the strangest of which was a giant dick burned into the side of a planetoid, which they eventually decided had to have been done on a lark by some human who’d come out here but never bothered to publish a survey report.
As such, with the crew of the Dragonfly being the ones to hand in the first official one, they got a crack at offering names.
Most of the suggestions had been too unprintable to even consider sending in, even if the temptation had been strong.
But eventually, Atticus had come up with something creative and funny in equal measure, and someone in the UN astrography office had clearly agreed, as the suggestion had gone through even before they’d jumped to FTL to leave behind the newly christened star system of Graffiti.
All told, there were only a few people out here in the grand scheme of things; ninety percent of humanity was in the Sol system, ninety-eight if you included the rest of the Sol system, leaving just a fraction of the total population scattered across hundreds of stars out here.
As such, anyone they did meet tended not to be the sort of person who enjoyed a safe and normal life, and the groups tended to be small enough that any … creativity tended to be front and center. Or, at the very least, highly obvious.
But for the most part, things were pretty safe out here; there simply wasn’t enough out here to attract pirates, and the area had been sufficiently scouted that there wasn’t much space for nasty surprises to hide within.
***
Derek was sitting on the bridge, e-reader in one hand, cup of coffee in the other, when the alarm went off.