"Since we're on the topic of giving me hope, how are you planning to beat her?" Even if his life weren't on the line, the match-up between his XO and Steeger would've intrigued him. It wasn't quite the equal match-up he enjoyed from the cosmic arenas, but both were highly skilled pilots, both were veterans, both would be wielding powerful mechas. He was anticipating that Juliard's motivation would even out the advantages Steeger brought with her. Because she hadn't just learned that her own daughter had died so she could live. She had been reminded of a horrible betrayal by a man she'd once loved.
"I saw some holes in Steeger's combat style during the Wraith battle. And there's been a lot more analysis written over the decades about her combat methods than me. She only has archival data on my fighting. Plus she's probably slacked off lately thanks to combat scripts. But there won't be any of those in this battle."
Felik wilted. It had all sounded inspiring until that last part. "But the Nassatar's got the best."
"And Steeger knows all about them."
She'd thought this through more than him. He cleared his throat. "Is there anything you need from me?"
"Some time to run another sim," she said. She'd been running practices off and on the last few hours as a warm-up.
He nodded. "Go for it."
That gave him just enough time for one final good-bye. He went to see Dr. Ostek. In a fancy palace room construct, he treated her to a meal of some of the most expensive AR tastes he could find on the Hub. Fresh Xemagna "trout," doused in Buejentoe truffle oil, spiced Onmirz larvae stuffed with Gliese beef soaked in million solar cycle old manna, and honeyed Elder One cephalopod steak topped with sparkling locini eggs.
During that, he explained that he was undergoing serious treatment for his virus and he might die. It acted like a stimulant for the woman. By the time he was finished explaining, she was on top of him, giving him one last good-bye.
Back on his ship's command sphere, he watched the counter-timer drop to zero. Yet among the field of asteroids and damaged scatterings of old Terran space colonies, he saw no new ships. His feed offered no updates from Blemu, Steeger, Xerix, or Hayland.
"We're in the right spot, aren't we?" he asked Minerva, trying to keep his voice even.
"Yes. All that's left for us is to wait," she said calmly. He'd already asked her that same question twice. He appreciated her willingness to tolerate his angst.
Everything felt outdated. Its array of antimatter thrusters allowed extremely fast movements, but it lacked reactor cells. There would be no godwebs or advanced weaponry. The breaker Minerva negotiated stipulated that the Green Devil would accept the same limitations. Tech-wise they would be at the same level.
Felik thrummed his fingers against his elbows for a few seconds then propped his hands behind his head. He strolled over the command sphere's grass to the pond and dashed his hand across the surface.
Why the hell would they delay? It had to be a trick. He half-expected to see a fleet appear and start blasting them.
A minute later, two hundred fifty-six destroyer-class battleships warped in and began forming a godweb perimeter. It would give Juliard and Steeger a battlefield diameter of tens of thousands of kilometers.
Hayland announced as much, largely reminding everyone of the rules in the breaker. The pilot who disabled or destroyed the other's mecha frame won. If Juliard won, Felik was free of his breaker to Oberon. If she lost, Oberon placed him in stasis as a criminal. His uncle didn't say what would happen in the event of an unclear winner, but he didn't feel hopeful enough to get clarification.
Felik said nothing, and she asked again.
He watched the neon blue mecha burst from the Nassatar, its thrusters leaving a mystic streak in the cosmos. Then Ilder cruised the Nassatar into the perimeter of godwebs.
Felik inhaled deeply as a green mecha materialized on the holodisplay. It came to a full stop a few thousand feet from the Crystal Cat. Compared to Steeger's mecha, the Crystal Cat prioritized a slender and agile-looking design. Its limbs stretched like fins slicing through the sea, its torso and joints as compact as nuggets of gold.
Steeger opened up a comm channel. In other words, she had no backups and would truly die if her mecha got destroyed. Oddly, there was no sense of taunting or even respect, only a cold hard resolve. Did Steeger want to offer her the goal of exacting vengeance? Felik was aware of her creed to always risk her life in battle.
The Crystal Cat charged. A second later, Juliard's mecha rammed hard against the Green Devil's chest, pushing it back. Earlier, ships had cleared the space of tiny dust particles, so there was little threat of death by high-velocity collision. But mangled space platforms and jagged asteroids hung around them. And Juliard was shoving Steeger's mecha in the direction of one.
Both mechas were constructed of an advanced and extremely durable form of adamantine. Depending on their speed, the impact could be a decisive blow.
The Green Devil's own thrusters blinked with wisps of green. In a single fluid motion, it flung its blue counterpart downward, spun upside-down and thrust its arm out. With a flash, Steeger's ion beam struck against a bubble shield. Felik grinned at his XO's reaction speed. In the second it took for Steeger to throw Juliard off, she'd deployed her utility fog nodes and formed the defense. The smart dust was generating a magnetic energy shield to repulse the ion beam.
Steeger's mecha deployed its own shield, sprang forward and knocked Juliard through space. A split-second later, the Green Devil looped around behind and ping-ponged her. As she flew back, Juliard lowered her shield and launched two warheads on either side of Steeger.
From the ship, the blasts looked like one giant white mass in the distance, the edges emanating a blue glow against the black of space.
On the holodisplay, Juliard zoomed free of the approaching blast as the intense pressure of the glowing white blasts kept Steeger trapped.
Felik nodded to himself. She'd bought herself a few seconds, and neither mecha was showing any critical damage. Both still had nearly full energy, but they ticked a little lower every second on the Nassatar's holodisplay. Unfortunately, Juliard couldn't see Steeger's gauge, and she couldn't receive any support messages from him.
Steeger posed a riddle in the pause.
Juliard answered swiftly.
The white glow of the nuclear blasts diminished, their fiery waves dulling, and Juliard launched another salvo. A second later, two monstrous blinding spheres devoured Steeger's mecha. She raised her shields in time to survive, but keeping them up was quickly consuming energy.
Felik clenched his hands together. "Does she have enough ammo to drain Steeger's energy?"
"Not likely," Ilder said.
"It'll at least help, though," Felik said. "Right?"
"Maybe not. She only has so many warheads."
Felik frowned. Juliard had to know the cost. "Has Steeger been through something like this before?"
"She wouldn't be the best if she hadn't."
When Juliard ran out of nukes two minutes late
r, she peppered her with high-velocity metal slugs through her utility fog. For a second, Felik thought she might have her pinned down. Instead, Steeger formed a series of metal chunks with her own utility fog nodes and launched them. They canceled out in eruptions of countless fragments.
The rush of shards flooded the battlefield for a minute and neither mecha moved very far. As soon as the fragments cleared out, Steeger plowed forward.
In a whir, she crashed into Juliard's mecha. The Crystal Cat's head unit whipped around, and blue ion surged against the Green Devil's chest armor as they met. Steeger swerved to avoid it and countered with her own. The blast burned away at the Cat's shoulder for a split-second before it skipped off.
While neither pilot used combat scripts, the mechas' control systems synced up with their cores to amplify their reaction times and sensor alerts offered directional warnings. Thanks to this neural bridge, they could almost control the mechas with their minds alone. Otherwise, managing machines that could move so fast would've been impossible.
The Crystal Cat disappeared behind an asteroid four times its size. A nuke burst from the Green Devil's shoulders and closed in. The asteroid shattered, and hundreds of pieces of debris rushed to meet them, a streak of blue wisps all Felik saw of the Nassatar's mecha before it vanished behind another, larger, asteroid. Suddenly, the asteroid exploded into chunks of debris all headed in Steeger's direction.
In seconds, four point-defense drones formed from her utility fog and began blasting out energy beams. One by one, they incinerated each oncoming piece or heated them enough to shift their vector.
Felik bit his lip. The Green Devil remained motionless as the drone's energy beams sapped the danger out of Juliard's assault.
"What's with her lack of urgency?" he growled.
"Steeger knows she's won," Ilder said.
"She might know it in her head. But is it a fact?"
"I don't have her insights."
In a wide arc, the Crystal Cat barreled in. Steeger retreated, keeping thousands of feet between them. She wasn't even trying to retaliate as Juliard gave chase.
"Don't toy with her," Felik muttered.
"She isn't toying with her," Ilder said. "She's letting Juliard get reckless. And then she'll strike."
He wished his XO could receive his messages. It was his life on the line, and all he could do was hope.
A metal slug flew from the Green Devil and bombarded a smaller asteroid. The rush of pieces raced at Juliard, but none came close to hitting her as the Cat twisted and swerved in mid-flight. Something metallic glinted from within a crack on one piece. The ensuing explosion of heat and radiation made Felik flinch. His chin fell. He couldn't bring himself to check the holodisplay.
At Steeger's words, he crushed a few of the command sphere garden's yellow flowers under his foot. There was no hint of cockiness in her tone, only a collected confidence. He hated it all the same.
Juliard shifted the mecha side to side in a seemingly random pattern along a vertical plane. Ion blasts streaked out from the Cat's head and chest units multiple times a second.
In an amazing display of Steeger's precision and restraint, the Green Devil cartwheeled, bounced, and ducked the energy beams.
Juliard had closed the gap between them with each blast. The Cat reached an arm over its shoulder and retrieved a ceramic rod. Both tranquil and chaotic, a bright, translucent blue ignited the rod. Wisps of the plasma seemed to rip at space itself as the Cat glided for its target.
The next thing Felik knew, the Green Devil unsheathed a ceramic blade that flowed with an oozing green fire. Steam and gas billowed off as a magnetic field contained the plasma's form.
Fifteen hundred feet away.
Nine hundred feet away.
Three hundred feet away.
In one graceful maneuver, green and blue energy beams crashed together, white lightning streaking out so violently Felik cringed, fearing both mechas might be destroyed.
Juliard said, pulling back for space to leverage another swing. The clash created a second explosion of sparks as the mechas pressed together.
Steeger veered sideways then vaulted forward. The impact of her blade knocked the Cat back a couple hundred feet before its thrusters stabilized its position.
The Cat arced back. The Green Devil shot behind it, but the Nassatar's mecha twisted around to meet it.
Plasma against plasma, the two mechas careened together through space, kissing and detaching. Every time their blades met, the universe seemed to tremble.
Felik made a fist. This wasn't a combat script battle, but it would only take a small mistake. A single misstep, a single variable that offered a slight advantage to one side. That would create a cascading effect just like in a script race and determine the winner.
They smashed into an old space platform. It might as well have been a gas cloud for how easily it crumbled.
Suddenly, Juliard lashed out with a second blue blade. Somehow the motion felt desperate. Maybe because her target was just out of range, making the attack a wasted effort.
The Green Devil pivoted back and dove in. Time slowed as blue flashed from the Cat's chest and high-velocity metal shards spit out from all over its frame. In a blur of motion, Steeger's own utility fog formed a dozen tiny bubble shield frames that absorbed the flurry.
Then the formation of shields rippled outward, and green plasma seared through the Cat's shoulder and directly through to its waist.
Felik's stomach plummeted at the path of molten metal running down the Crystal Cat.
The battle was over.
He checked the Crystal Cat's status as if he might discover some miracle. The data only confirmed the obvious.
The Crystal Cat glowed again. This time white. Felik's mind raced to grasp the situation. She'd fired all of her nukes.
"What's she doing?" he cried.
"Her antimatter rockets," Ilder said.
The explosion flung surges of white for thousands of kilometers. Heat and radiation waves and death. Juliard would live, of course, as her core existed in the Nassatar, not the mecha.
If both mechas were destroyed did that mean he'd be allowed to go free?
He shuddered. A feed notification said that the br
eaker in his core had begun its activation process.
He took that as a good sign. His uncle's reassurance acted like a drug, and he felt a shot of elation. All his hopes and dreams would come to pass. His insecurities and fears warped away. He would be free now.
The joy of it was almost overwhelming. Smothering and inescapable like laughter from tickling.
Randomly, he remembered something he'd heard about psi.hacking. If done innocuously, it produced an almost orgasmic effect in the victim.
Amazingly, Steeger's mecha frame emerged completely intact from the explosion. Felik's brain registered it, but his euphoria muted his disbelief and sensation of defeat.
Then an accretion disk began to tug at the edges of the Green Devil, bending and distorting it visually. His nexus tagged it as a black hole unleashed from his uncle's ship. Yet, even as a glorious calm flooded his head, he knew that the sight of a black hole destroying the Green Devil was a hallucination caused by psionic hacking.
This was fake. And so was his victory.
Chapter 44
KAI
* * *
Voke-lanaris's combat frame design choices revealed more about his inner character than any superficial traits. The smooth shiny surface of the Starbleeder proto's pure white helmet was a stark contrast to his black business suit. A suit in both fashion and combat terms.
It maintained the traditional style of the business suit that occasionally dominated fashion trends, but crafted of a black adamantine, every ripple and fold artificial. Instead of a tie, a series of neon orange alien runes divided his chest.
The more things change, the less things change, Kai thought, remembering the suit from ages past when she had clashed with the Starbleeder's proto.
Nothing about it looked practical for combat, but it didn't need to look. It was practical thanks to its ability to bend and flex to any of his body's movements. While it weighed less than it physically should've, Voke-lanaris's frame possessed strength well beyond an organic New Terran body. That made moving easy. His godweb's atomic aura—a fiery aura with sparks and bursts of electricity if she checked with her nexus—provided the finishing touches and the primary means of protection for the Starbleeder network's proto.
The StarMaster’s Son: (Formerly The Master War) Page 33