Chapter 68: What. The. Fuck. |
Derek was woken up quite rudely when he faceplanted against the ceiling. And, for some unfathomable reason, he stayed up there.
Biting back a string of curses, he rolled off the blanket his body was pinning against the cool metal, yet for some reason, the offending piece of fabric fell back onto his bed. And when he “stood”, his shirt fell over his face, likewise affected by “normal” gravity while his own was reversed, so he shoved it back up and into the waistband of pajama bottoms.
And then he realized the [Alcubierre Bubble] was down, despite the fact that they shouldn’t have stopped for months, and were nowhere near anything worth stopping for.
Something was really wrong …
Derek took a couple of seconds to adapt to the upside-down layout of the door panel, then slapped the “open” button and started running towards the bridge as best he could.
Though all the things up on the ceiling that were normally neatly tucked away there, from the lights to easy access to cables and pipes for repairs, proved to be quite the tripping hazards when you actually had to run up there.
That was the moment his pajama top once more succumbed to gravity and flipped down over his face.
Swearing, Derek tried to compensate with his [Aura], and was able to avoid the first ceiling light … but not the second, the power he really, really, really should have been practicing more with, failing him the very first time he’d truly needed it.
He stumbled, triggering [Phantom Armor] to do something he really should have done at the start, and replaced his floppy pajamas with his tight-fitting shipsuit. Which was mostly just a more tightly tailored set of clothing that wouldn’t catch on anything, with pockets that would contain things he’d need even more immediately present than the contents of his storage ring. It also provided a degree of protection, though it had absolutely nothing on actual armor.
Huh.
It made sense to a degree; his room was the closest to the bridge out of them all (captain’s prerogative), but it felt disconcerting. Especially since that meant he had no idea where the person who’d been sustaining the warp bubble was, which, according to the schedule, should be Atticus. Hopefully nothing had happened to him …
Also, if they weren’t fully protected while under the effect of [Alcubierre Bubble], and they survived this, someone would have to be on the bridge permanently.
Cursing internally, Derek hauled himself down into his chair and, for once, strapped himself in, floating a couple of centimeters above the seat as he stared at the main viewscreen, already inputting the orders for evasive maneuvers.
Because while it was too far from them to be the cause of them dropping out of FTL, there was a planet ahead of them.
Rogue planets weren’t unusual; there were plenty around, though the chances of randomly encountering one in a random point in interstellar space were, well, astronomical.
That alone would have been enough to put Derek on edge, to make him want to stay as far from it as possible, but the planet’s presence wasn’t what had caused his heart to start trying to hammer its way out of his ribcage.
The planet was looking … “sick” and “diseased” were words that sprang to mind, but they were also wholly insufficient.
Two things were clear, obvious at a glance: this place had been habitable. Once. And something truly unnatural had happened to it.
Vast swaths of land were mottled and discolored, as though the very world had been bruised, an area the size of Europe looked like … honestly, Derek thought it looked like the “stiff peaks” you were supposed to whip egg whites to when making meringue, swirled, risen to follow the eggbeater as you withdrew it, then partially fallen in on itself.
Except this “swirl” had ground down a continent’s worth of land into a strange melange, then raised it to the point where it all but reached the stars, the peaks well above anywhere any even remotely resonable organism should have been able to survive.
A vast expanse of purple and neon-yellow plants seemed to be … was that dancing? Well, it was certainly doing something that plant life wasn’t supposed to be doing.
And, all in all … it was a mess. A terrifying, chaotic, dare he say eldritch clusterfuck.
Was this the missing planet from the system they’d just left? It just had to be, didn’t it? Eldritch clusterfuck to be found in close proximity, by space standards, at least, and despite the fact that all their scans had been taken from well beyond their sensors’ optimal range, the computer matched the two.
Not to mention that the sensors were peppering threat markers across the nearby area, each denoting the location of something, though, most likely, they were monsters, just like the ones they’d just left behind.
Ergo …
The sudden reappearance of “normal” gravity jolted Derek out of his fog of disbelief; a loud thump from outside followed by Gaelic cursing made it clear that at least Mimi was on his way here. Hopefully the others were also okay …
As for Mimi, if she could swear, she couldn’t be that badly hurt, could he?
That was the moment the computer chose to blare a new alert, about the fact that they seemed to be moving. As in, the planet was flying across the galaxy at speeds that should be causing the mother of relativistic distortions, if it wasn’t already moving at speeds that exceeded that of light relative to the rest of the universe. And what would you know, the Dragonfly seemed to be getting dragged along for the ride.
Of course they we- … “SON OF A BITCH!” Derek yelled as the penny dropped.
A planet. In FTL. On a straight-line path from its eldritch-infested system of origin to Earth. This place was going to Earth.
Derek flipped open a cover located on a place on the outside of his armrest that he’d never naturally hit by accident, twisted the button found beneath to make it lock in, then smashed his fist into it with enough force that he might not have broken it, had it not been made of metal to survive even a panicked activation.
The only button on the ship more secure against accidental or improper activation was the self-destruct, but this one wasn’t without consequences either.
It was tied directly into both the sensors and communications systems and would send a message straight to the Navy HQ on Mercury, containing a complete set of sensory records as the ship’s computers had, along with the computer’s analysis of just what had forced the use of such a drastic measure, and whatever additional information seemed like it’d be helpful.
It would also almost certainly set off the mother of all alerts, with how many boxes of the “apocalypse imminent” list it checked.
Then he finally tried to re-activate [Alcubierre Bubble] despite the fact that he was almost certain it would fail, considering how they’d wound up here. Predictably, it failed. Were they too close to the planet, the source of this fuckery, or …
Something hurled itself towards the Dragonfly, turning from a threat marker into a crystal-clear image of something that really, really shouldn’t exist, all impossible angles and nauseatingly stretched flesh twisted in directions that made absolutely no anatomical sense … but honestly, that shit was just par for the course at this point.
Derek dismissed the weirdness of the creature almost as quickly as he registered it, ignoring it in favor of three things: its speed, its vector, and what [Eye of the Predator] was telling him about its strength.
It was coming from the port side like a bat out of hell, and it wasn’t nearly as powerful as the creatures back in that star system had been. Level 60-ish, specializing in tearing apart armored targets, using a combination of touch-based spatial warping that could go through things, and a rather nasty poison.
A couple of taps of the controls built into his seat and console transferred command of both weapons and maneuvering systems to himself, then promptly set both the secondaries and point defense turrets to fully automated targetting. If it wasn’t human, a known alien species, or a ship, it was getting lit up.
Mimi finally stumbled in through the door at that point, cobwebs in her hair, scratches along one forearm, and hauled herself into her own seat.
Derek cast [Lifesurge] on her, practically forgetting about her presence immediately afterwards as he maintained his focus on the creature.
Lasers were already tearing it open, its flesh flashing into plasma with every impact, exploding like the world’s most disgusting firecrackers. However fucked up that thing’s physiology might be, it had neither the durability of its higher-level compatriots, nor a brand of physics-bending fuckery that made it immune to weaponized light.
A soft “ding” sounded in his ears, the notification for a confirmed kill he’d set for combat. Didn’t block his vision like a pop-up, didn’t distract him like the “notification present” alert, but it did tell him his opponent was dead. And that information could be valuable. Life-saving, even.
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Another creature flashed past, seemingly coming out of nowhere, claws scraping across the hull, an entire armor plate going flying, unnaturally neatly separated from the superstructure ... and then it was already gone, ignoring the point defense lasers peppering its hide as the heavier turrets that were the Dragonfly’s secondaries turned to track it, initially having been pointed in the entirely wrong direction.
Derek activated [Flash Forward] a split second after issuing maneuvering orders, half his mana pool vanishing to turn them in an instant, lining up the bow with the monster’s retreating rear … and then an absolutely massive railgun slug hammered into it, tearing the beast into a shower of offal spreading across space.
But there was no “ding.”
“How the hell did it survive that?” he sighed and made to retarget the secondaries onto it, then stopped. He wanted that thing dead … but they also needed to live through this. Using the Dragonfly’s heaviest weapons that did not require the entire ship to turn to be aimed on cleanup was something that would almost certainly backfire …
The ship banked to the side, diving to avoid a lesser eldritch monster that came apart under two particle beams, then rolled to bring more turrets to bear, tearing a third monster that nevertheless proved insufficiently resilient to weather the barrage and attack.
A new Level 100-ish monster crossed the Dragonfly’s bow, both distant and not paying attention, but Derek nevertheless triggered the electron beam, the entire ship echoing with the sound of their primary weapon discharging, tearing the creature in half in an eruption of plasma and psychedelic light.
Somehow, it too seemed to have survived, but it wouldn’t be coming after them anytime soon, hopefully leaving them enough time to get clear of the swarm.
Derek was really starting to miss having Atticus in the pilot’s seat. Not only because splitting his attention between flying, fighting, and planning was giving him a headache even with [Stellar Processing] and [Scholar of War] to lean on, but also because the ship was literally worse off for not having an actual pilot at the controls.
And, as if summoned by the thought, that worthy stumbled in through the door, dried blood streaking from a path of scalp that had clearly healed closed mere minutes ago.
Derek cast [Lifesurge] once more, just in case there was something that the other man’s own healing abilities had failed to fix.
Besides, with his newest eldritch Aspect, the [Skill] had gained the ability to cure mental afflictions, up to and including literal brain damage … well, it felt necessary, considering everything.
“Get us out of here, I’ll control the guns!”
Barking the order before anything else felt bad … but emergency.
Derek could also see that Mimi had taken control of the secondaries he’d handed off to the computer, her inexpert handling of them still well beyond what the machine would be able to do on its own.
“The ship’s not damaged other than missing the plate, right?” Derek asked her, finally. [Starship Upkeep] wasn’t alerting him to anything that needed doing beyond the obvious, but that meant just that: he couldn’t see anything, no more, no less. And he was distracted to boot.
“If you can handle the guns again, I can reinforce that place from the inside,” she replied, already rising back on her feet, ready to run back out.
“Wait, have either of you seen Ye-in?” Derek asked. He really should have asked that first … but he also couldn’t have known that delaying the life-or-death questions wouldn’t have gotten them all killed anyway … though even the best rationalization wouldn’t stop him from feeling utterly rotten later.
But right now, they’d have to finish fighting their way out of this trap, laser and particle beam turrets granting their ship a blazing halo, the muzzle on the bow flashing like an erupting volcano as it spat death out into space. Every time it could end a monster, it did.
Yet he was all too aware of the fact that they were in a very shitty situation.
Derek’s phone rang, the “connect” icon barely having time to appear on his console before he smacked it, causing Ye-in’s voice to come out of the console.
“I’m stuck!” she snapped. “My entire cabin got turned upside down!”
So …
“We’re surrounded and fighting our way out!” Derek shot back. “Are you going to be okay for a few minutes?!”
“I …
And then,things went to shit in the most thorough way imaginable as something tore its way into reality behind them.
The universe crackled, reality splintering and coming undone beneath the sheer power of the monster that tore its way into the star system from … well, from wherever it had been slumbering.
A star-spotted torso the size of a small town, something that was either a head or a black hole floating in the general vincinity of one end, limbs stretching off into directions that should not exist, reaching into entirely new dimensions he only knew existed because he could see something go into them, and even trying to understand just what he was looking at made [Stellar Mental Maths] throw up the [System]-equivalent of the blue screen of death.
A lot of old movies and TV-shows had liked to throw around phrases like “not on the periodic table” and “violates the laws of physics.”
Both of those were bullshit. According to science, there was only “not on the periodic table yet,” and “violates our current understanding of physics, we’ll need to throw a lot of those laws out.”
Yet somehow, Derek got the feeling this thing, whatever it may be, might just manage to turn those old tropes into reality.
And as for its colors, they hurt, the lightshow accompanying its emergence, which he felt distantly similar to the northern lights, seemed to tear into him as he watched, none of them even remotely similar to anything he had a name for, yet somehow, even as they set his nerves alight with pain, there was a faint ache of familiarity …
Reds that, even through the viewscreen, burned like fire, icy blues that left the skin they fell upon feeling like it had been sprayed by liquid nitrogen, yellows that left skin feeling sunburnt, or perhaps acid-scorched. They were normal colors, yet they clearly weren’t …
Or, perhaps, the colors were his brain’s way of interpreting what that shit was, based on just how it hurt him.
Suddenly, the image sharpened, transforming into something slightly more solid and far less painful to look at.
“Infohazard filter,” Mimi explained before he could ask. “It’ll cut down on the information we get, but …”
Derek knew he should be listening, he should be trying to understand what was going on, what she’d done, but he could manage to tear neither his eyes nor his attention away from the monster still on the main viewscreen, his fascination hopefully entirely mundane.
But perhaps the worst part was that the creature did, in fact, have a nameplate and an associated [System] window he instinctively knew he could pull up the moment he laid eyes upon it, yet was having trouble bringing himself to do so, as there was just a single kind of creature that could have one.
Yet he had to look at it …
The Divine Error, Creation’s Great Mistake, Cosmic Anomaly, The Other, World Boss
This was a monster meant to challenge an entire world. It won. Now you get to deal with it.
Good Luck, and may you prove that you are not as weak and/or idiotic as the people who summoned it.
Well.
Shit.
That was going to be an issue … though at least Derek’s heart rate was “only” through the roof, rather than having stopped completely. Reading the word “Error” in a [System] message had damn near given him a heart attack.
Because, for all that it was a very recent development in the grand scheme of things, the [System] had become so essential to everything that any hint of it malfunctioning was beyond terrifying.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Derek ordered as if they hadn’t been well on their way to doing that anyway.
The Dragonfly slewed around immediately, building velocity away from the local star at its best possible acceleration while Derek focused on [Alcubierre Bubble], waiting for the [Skill] to finally let him know it could be activated.
Yet that moment did not come. He glanced down at his personal console, quickly checking on their current location. They’d flown nearly thirty light seconds away from the planet, were well clear of the swarm, and the World Boss seemed to be ignoring them.
They should be able to flee. Operative word being should.
“Our communicators unpaired.”
… And there was that.
Derek’s head snapped around to stare at Mimi. “When?”
“The moment we appeared here … I think.”
The fundamental issue with their FTL communicators was that it was an inherently point-to-point system, the magical equivalent of quantum entanglement, allowing information fed to one half of the paired communicators to be received on the other end, regardless of distance, interference, or objects set in between both halves.
As such, they’d been able to directly contact both Squidworks research station and Olympus Mons with less transmission lag than calling someone in the next town over.
But were that connection to break … well, then it stayed broken until you brought both communicators back together and re-cast the enchantment. And the other end was well over a thousand light-years and eighty days’ travel away, if they could even go FTL.
Also, his emergency message hadn’t gone out either.
It was at that moment, without any warning, every screen flipped, painting them as going in the opposite direction, back towards the planet. And the World Boss, which simply seemed to be following a lazy, circular orbit around the planet it was dragging along on its way to Earth. And honestly, he didn’t even want to think about the possibility that there was something else here, responsible for that mess …
“That did not just happen,” Derek said flatly.
Atticus just shrugged. “If at first you don’t succeed …”
So they tried again, and wound up turned around once more, bouncing off some invisible screen like a rubber ball.
“That’s … that’s it!” Derek growled. “I’m watching the next one from the airlock.”
If the sensors were screwed up to the point of showing something this chaotic, they were already screwed, but having royally borked systems aboard the ship was still infinitely preferable to the clusterfuck that was being stuck here with a World Boss. And its minions. But mostly the boss.
Also, someone needed to get Ye-in.
Running at full tilt, Derek reached her room and the door opened to reveal … a mess. The bed had somehow gotten launched up despite the fact that it shouldn’t have been affected by the gravity field, then fallen back down in such a way that it was wedged between the floor and ceiling, with Ye-in awkwardly caught by it in a way that would likely have required her to start activating combat [Skills] to get free.
It was so awkward, in fact, that Derek would likely have had to resort to the same despite not being stuck, had it not been for his spatial manipulation. But since he did have it, letting her slip out was easy.
And then he was off again.
By the time Derek was sitting in the airlock, the outer door closed for safety, and they were already on the verge of “bouncing” once again.
They reached the invisible boundary, the stars outside were replaced with entirely different ones, likely the ones on the exact opposite side of what he’d been staring at, and they were heading towards the planet.
Mother. Fucker. They were stuck, well and truly.
So Derek decided to do something he’d really hoped to be able to go without. He called for help the only way he still could, the way he’d always been able to, the way that had been an inseparable part of him since the day he’d been born.
On that day, Derek Ambrosius Thoma triggered the emergency beacon that was a part of his very Bloodline.
“So, I don’t think we can activate [Alcubierre Bubble],” he sighed. “I called for help with my Bloodline. If we can get away from that thing, we’ll get help. Eventually.”
He’d felt the need to stress the means by which he’d sent the message, as both Atticus and Ye-in had the same ability, but since it had a one-year cooldown, it wouldn’t do to burn all three instances over a single issue.
Also, it wouldn’t take his family much time to establish that the Dragonfly’s two comm nodes had unpaired. Combine that fact with the beacon, and they could hurry to help … seventy-odd days from now. Granted, Isaac, Tanja, and Viktoria might have some way of cutting that time down, but that’d still be a hellishly long time to play keep-away with that thing.
Though the real threat was the minions that were, even now, streaming towards them, including several that were far stronger than something they could rely on the ship’s weapons to deal with …