Chapter 65: Interlude Mercury |
Sometimes, it felt like all the second great wave of exploration had achieved was poke every hornet’s nest in the galaxy. Granted, many of those had only been discovered before they revealed themselves on their own terms, yet the fact that they were all being discovered at once was … stressful. To say the least.
First the swarm of autonomous genocidal warships, then the cosmic anomaly, and now a missing planet with some kind of eldritch fuckery in play …
Fleet Admiral Ciara Hunt had gone almost entirely grey in the first decade of holding her position, and she was fairly certain that by the time this was done, it’d have cost her the last few hairs in her natural color she had remaining.
Her computer beeped with a new alert, making her bite back a curse. This was the fifth goddamn time! In fact, she was close to believing one of the code monkeys had decided that screwing with their ultimate superior’s mail was funny, but after the utterly seismic eruption of her predecessor, firing nearly half the IT staff over the same exact issue, she doubted it.
No, this seemed to be some kind of computer problem, the damn machine having decided to keep sending alerts about “time in service” promotions being needed, and then endlessly complaining when said promotions weren’t forthcoming. Because they couldn’t be given.
Especially when it came to flag rank.
Becoming an admiral was no longer merely a question of skill, experience, and leadership potential.
It was also a question of one’s [Class]. The person in charge needed one that could handle formations, not just individual vessels.
A [Captain] commanding a battleship was stronger than an [Admiral] commanding a battleship. But an [Admiral] with a division of battleships would smoke a [Captain] trying to lead an equivalent flotilla.
Which left them, well, left her with a massive problem: someone who was at the final Evolution and still at a captain [Class] could not become an admiral as they would not be able to meet the requirements of the rank.
And, chances were, eventually, the damn computer would not be the only one pitching a fit at the lack of promotion.
Knowing that the chances of the problem actually being fixed were low, Hunt still decided to write up a support ticket, actually considering putting up an absurd bounty on the tech side of the problem.
Then, hoping she’d at least temporarily squished the irritant, she checked her calendar.
When she’d gone home yesterday evening, she’d had two meetings for the entire day, leaving the rest of the time to not only get caught up with but also get ahead on the paperwork. The chances of that status having survived the night were … well, in her experience, she’d have had more luck winning the lottery without ever even having entered than keeping an empty calendar for more than a couple of hours.
For example, one of the UN delegates would be dropping by at 2 pm, to talk about “budget allocation,” which would have been ominously mysterious if she hadn’t already talked this topic over to death with what felt like half her civilian superiors.
A large chunk of the budget was sitting there unused, awaiting the newest designs to be finished.
Because, for all that more ships were needed, the ships sent out by the Dyson sphere civilization were a treasure trove of advanced, or at least interesting, technology that needed to be integrated into the next generation of starships. If she spent all the spare funds from her newly expanded budget on fresh construction, she’d likely wind up going back to the UN to beg for money to retrofit the new ships within a year on the outside.
It was simply not a conducive way to dole out the money, which should have been obvious to anyone who cared to think about it for more than a minute or so … so why was she surprised she had to repeatedly explain this to her political overlords?
Speaking off … the design team for the Triumphant-class battleships was either in desperate need of a raise and budget increase, or required a serious kick in the pants.
Although, perhaps they should stop picking such lofty class-titles for their ships, given how quickly the two previous generations of battlehips had become obsolete, first the Titans and their lack of spinal weaponry suddenly glaringly weak compared to the Ascendants that had followed them, incorporating all the lessons learned from the Assai … and not even five years after the first trance of those had finished, this had happened.
On the other hand, the first proper battleships they’d ever built, the Harringtons, had been named after some ancient Sci-Fi series and sat on the cutting edge of technology for decades.
The situation certainly had every appearance of a jinx …
Then again, considering the chaos was related to advancements, perhaps it wasn’t a bad thing?
Hunt shook her head. That was a thought she couldn’t share. Everyone knew that sailors were superstitious, and that had followed them into space and her, specifically, into this office, but there was no need to prove it to all and sundry.
Soon, she found herself sucked into a different topic, namely, begging the UN for more ambassadors to send to the more distant naval bases, just in case a new alien species was discovered nearby. Also, the committee meant to pick the locations for additional bases which would largely exist to serve as duty stations for said ambassadors, seemed to have gridlocked on several topics, all of which would almost certainly wind up requiring her to put her foot down to resolve.
That was when yet another message popped up in her inbox at that point, or rather was forwarded to her by one of her subordinates. This one was a report about a missing planet, an dfree-roaming eldritch creatures.
That was … well, for starters, it was proof that none of the Thoma siblings could stay out of trouble. But the salient detail was the fact that this was something that could be dealt with.
Did she have time to write up orders sending Rear Admiral Naiser to sweep the system with a division of battlecruisers? The ships were designed to annihilate anything smaller than them, and fast enough to escape anything capable of meaningfully threatening them, making them perfect for this.
Besides, if they couldn’t, then the Marine detachments aboard should be able to deal with it … preferably without the monsters managing to board first, but sadly, history said that might happen no matter what preparations were made.
And Naiser had several [Skills] that were the closest thing to area of effect attacks that did not simply boil down to “fold space in such a way that fucks over the other guy.”
The only thing left to do was choose which battlecruisers would be going. There were the ready divisions, of course, but that was for emergencies, which this didn’t quite qualify as, and shaking loose more than that would take a few minutes of work …
Hunt’s calendar chimed then, interrupting her train of thought. It seemed she would not have that time after all. Because if Dr. Isaac Thoma’s track record was to be believed, this meeting was going to be nothing less than earth-shattering.
***
Mercury was … certainly something. Isaac had probably been one of the very first people to set foot on the planet closest to the sun, over a century ago, simply to affix it as a potential teleport location for his [Continent Strider].
Back then, it had been an airless rock, tidally locked by its proximity to the sun, one side perpetually boiling hot, the other, facing away from the impossibly close star, surprisingly cold despite the proximity to the nuclear furnace that was Sol.
Beyond that, he hadn’t really done much. Taken a few pictures, grabbed a few rocks because he knew that if he didn’t, the university’s astronomy department would throw a hissy fit that he didn’t want to deal with.
Nowadays, though … well, for one, simply teleporting onto the planet’s surface would get him shot. Granted, all the weapons present were capable of either tracking him or hurting him, not both, but it was a matter of principle.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
As such, he instead teleported himself ahead of the planet’s orbit and waited there, trusting that his short-term precognition would let him avoid even light-speed weaponry, just in case someone panicked, for whatever reason. Which was sadly not quite as impossible as it should be.
When no one decided to take a potshot at him for thirty seconds, and the communicator at his belt didn’t throw out any warnings, he took that as permission to fly closer. He lowered his mass to about as close to zero as it would go, then sent a stream of fire blasting backwards, hurling himself toward the planet at an acceleration no starship would ever be able to reach.
And, purely on reflex, Isaac began to analyze the base’s, the planet’s, defenses.
Because the entirety of Mercury had been taken over by the fleet.
No fewer than five World Items had gone into improving the planet, and that was on the low end.
Though admittedly, the most obvious of those tricks had only worked because this planet was only about the size of Earth’s moon, trying to affect something bigger would have likely failed miserably.
For example, the Reality Coil, World Item of the Midgard Serpent, could twist space in a way that it stayed twisted, then anchor the twist to a given location or object. Within reason. So the navy had just used multiple of them, at least half a century’s worth, and the results spoke for themselves.
Space around Mercury was permanently twisted to limit the paths of ingress and egress to eight major paths, evenly distributed around the world, each more than large enough to for the entire fleet to pass through at once if the ships flew in a sufficiently tight formation. But even so, that still locked down ninety percent of possible approaches, funneling anyone stupid enough to attack this place straight into the firing arcs of the massive guns on the surface.
And, unlike starships, these things were shielded. When all the ambient mana wasn’t spent on making the engines provide a reasonable level of acceleration and preventing said acceleration from squishing the weaker members of the crew, a lot could be achieved.
Though perhaps, Isaac should point out that individuals could still go through the warped space. Well, he could, but if one person could do it, others likely could too, rare as it might be.
There was also an immense burning crater in the star-facing side of Mercury, a titanic forge created by the Chaos Prison’s Fury, gained by slaying the World Boss Typhon. Several of the items, actually. As big a pain in the ass as it had to have been to pry those loose from the UN, the end result was the greatest shipbuilding complex in human space. Hell, in all of the explored galaxy, most likely.
And finally, there were catapults surrounding the planet, immense segmented rings of enchanted metal capable of deploying the fleets that surrounded the innermost planet of the solar system anywhere within almost fifty light-years.
Anyone who tried to attack this place, on the other hand? They’d either have to appear outside the sun’s zone of interference that blocked the more “traditional” FTL travel methods, or use their own version of the catapult to appear right next to Mercury. Poor bastards.
Because, according to certain plans, Isaac decidedly should not have had access to, the “counter” to that was the Fleet Admiral, and her [Class]. The [Grand Admiral of The Shattered Void] could and would redirect any vessels trying to teleport into her domain into the corona of the nearby sun.
Almost any conceivable fleet would break against this fortress. But it was uncomfortably weak against individual infiltrators … or maybe it was just weak to him and his peers. He’d bring it up in a way that didn’t sound threatening.
It was at this point that he passed the halfway point in his travels and ceased accelerating, instead blasting the fire in the direction of his travel to shed all the speed he’d built up.
His communicator chimed at that, resulting in a brief flurry of conversation with local traffic control, directing him to land near the receiving dock for those who flew around without the help of a spacecraft. The path took him through one of the holes in the spatial defense, then under the curtain of warped space to a location as far from the entrances as physically possible, preventing any kind of direct and most kinds of indirect fire.
And then he finally reached the entrance, which turned out to be a simple wall of steel that could have been made at any time in the past century, put there specifically because it contained no mana, and conspicuously absent any enchantment so that anyone with a phasing [Skill] could walk right through it. No muss, no fuss, no need to wait for the airlock to repressurize.
There, he was met by a squad of marines, who quickly but politely led him the way to the fleet admiral’s office.
Overall, the base was military and utilitarian, aside from the rec facilities that his [Aura] washed through as they passed. Oh, sure, the entire building was technically shielded against that, but the defense was so weak that the only reason he even noticed was that he knew it had to exist, and decided to go looking for it.
In other words, it was exactly what he’d expected this place to look like. Even the admiral’s office, which entered his range after a couple of minutes.
And that was all he was able to see; it actually had a degree of protection that he’d have had to actively breach, which felt like a step too far, especially for something he’d see shortly.
Getting in proved quite simple, though the sheer number of technological sensors and people who presumably had unique variations of [Inspect] scanning him as he passed left him feeling both flattered and irritated. Invasive scanning, even if largely futile against his defenses, was hardly fun.
But it was either that or what was almost an interrogation, and he preferred the current setup, which saw him simply getting waved into the room.
It looked … well, it looked like some bizarre cross between a tabletop wargamer’s man cave and the flag officer’s office it was in actuality.
One wall was utterly covered in small models of various warships, ranging from ones as old as the triremes of the Roman Empire, to a half-finished spaceship Isaac strongly suspected depicted a UNE battleship so new it hadn’t even entered production.
In the meantime, the one behind her was the classic “I love me” wall, comprised of official qualifications, a few medals, and several drawings that had clearly been made by very young children, “to Auntie Ciara,” positioned in a position where they wouldn’t show in official transmissions, but still quite visible to anyone actually in the room.
And on the left, a large screen had replaced the entirety, presently displaying the planet outside but likely serving as a tactical display in times of crisis.
It was certainly more presentable than Isaac’s own office, whose walls were covered in various weapons he’d outgrown, monster pieces, and his own set of commendations and civilian service medals. Aside from the walls themselves, it would have made for a believable barbarian’s trophy room.
But it was the inhabitant of the office that truly drew the eye. The woman before Isaac was exactly as old as him. She looked twice his age.
Fleet Admiral Ciara Hunt had reached the point where her aging slowed to a crawl at her early thirties or so, but that just meant that her pure silver hair and lines carved into her face were the result of stress alone.
And here I was thinking that coming back from a doomed future to save all of humanity was bad, he thought. But things calmed down after ten years. She looks like she’s been doing this for five times that long.
She was wearing the deep blue and black uniform of the Navy, with the stylized supernova indicating her rank pinned to her collar, along with a shocking number of combat-related ribbons on the left breast of her uniform for what was supposed to be a peacetime military. Mostly pirate-hunting, though, if he read them right.
“Dr. Thoma, it’s good to finally meet you,” Hunt greeted him, gesturing at the chair in front of her desk. “But I have to ask: the ‘preparations’ you want to make are not for a specific or immediate disaster?”
“Believe me, if they were, I would not have asked for a meeting ‘at your earliest convenience,’” Isaac admitted. “My current plans are over half a century old and in desperate need of updating, but thankfully, I can now coordinate that with one person, rather than having to convince half the planet.”
“I believe there was a speech about ‘I don’t need world peace, but unless everyone gets their shit together for the next two weeks, we’re all dead’?” Hunt asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I have to admit, I wasn’t that much more diplomatic at the time,” Isaac shrugged. “But it was the level of emergency I’m trying to get ahead of right now.”
“How many apocalypses are you being shown right now?” Hunt asked.
“Four, but they’re all very much of the ‘potential’ sort,” Isaac admitted. “Too foggy to act on, too present to sleep soundly. So I’d like to talk and make some up-to-date preparations.”
“Like a retrofit of the secret fleet under Olympus Mons?” Hunt suggested.
“And I’d prefer we call it the ‘emergency fleet,’ especially on meetings that will have official transcripts.” Isaac corrected, causing her to raise an eyebrow.
“Phrasing matters. ‘When I was young, I knew where the owner of my favorite pizzeria lived and watched him leave for work on many mornings’ sounds a hell of a lot worse than ’the owner was my neighbor, and I could see his front door from my desk when I was studying.’” Isaac pointed out. “It’s not so much ‘secret’ as it is something I don’t shout from the rooftops. And I made sure your predecessor knew about it.”
“I suppose so,” Hunt agreed. “Now, I can’t directly give you the navy’s latest tech without both of us jumping through a whole lot of hoops, but your company does enough RnD that you should have access to everything relevant.”
Though the subtle wink told Isaac that she wouldn’t really care if he wound up with the “irrelevant” things that he shouldn’t be able to lay his hands on. The ones that no one outside the military should have, even if that kind of information security was largely a pipe dream nowadays.
The government might still have a near-monopoly on military force, but there were so many other kinds of power out there that said monopoly had lost most of its effectiveness.
“You know, I was wondering whether you were going to ask me to help your brother. I just saw a report about how he found an entirely new beehive to upset.”
“It seems my generation of the family is good at that sort of thing,” Isaac replied.
“Wasn’t there an ancient Chinese curse to that effect?” Hunt offered.
Isaac shrugged, then laughed. “‘May you live in interesting times’ isn’t nearly as big of a curse when you can level up.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But I think I preferred it when the only armageddon we had to worry about was nuclear war,” Hunt told him. “Nowadays, we have aliens, World Bosses rising from dead civilizations, people figuring out how to detonate stars in ever more inventive ways …”
And in the end, the only thing that makes us likely to survive that is the fact that we’re too spread out to exterminate, Isaac thought.
Out loud, however, he decided to move this conversation onto the slightly more cheerful topic of averting armageddon.
“At any rate, we do have counters for the known threats. For example, there are certain people with exploitable [Skills] who could stop even a World Boss short with the right support …”