Singularity

by Drew Cordell

  Brandon shrugged. “We can jump part of it to shorten the trip, but most scanning systems can detect the energy signatures from a jump from long distances. We’d risk exposing ourselves with any jump, honestly. Especially since we don’t have map data for this region of the galaxy. If there are enemies at the freighter site, we don’t want them to know we’re coming.”

  “I don’t want to burn five hours. I want to store power in the auxiliary capacitor for immediate use after we make the jump directly to the coordinates. I should be able to pump it directly to the engines while the reactor core stabilizes without obliterating them. With any luck, I’ll just dissipate the electrical current from the capacitor to Exowurm’s grounding and we can power the engines like normal.”

  Brandon grimaced. “If the engines blow, we aren’t going anywhere and that would likely be the least of our worries. It’s risky, to say the least. I hate to say it, but we might be better off just taking the loss and finding a new quest or contract to complete.”

  I wasn’t prepared to lose the freighter. In fact, I needed this to go in our favor—needed it to make me not feel like I wanted to be part of Stacy’s mission and see her again.

  “Screw it. We’re making the jump,” I said. “If there’s trouble, we’ll escape.” It was brash, but I was confident in our ability to get out of a dangerous situation if needed with my plan. It was as simple as getting creative and bending a couple rudimentary energy constraints that would have minimal consequences.

  “Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’ll be ready to gun down some squids while you get ready to caress some sorcery out of Exowurm, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” It was clear Brandon wasn’t going to fight me on the decision, but I could tell he wasn’t happy with it.

  “Ha, sounds good.” I pulled up the necessary controls on our holographic viewport display, brushing away the warnings from our ship’s AI that my plan was not only stupid but potentially lethal.

  Exowurm hummed to life as both the main and auxiliary capacitors began sucking juice from the reactor, charging up while Brandon keyed the coordinates of the marooned freighter into our navigation module.

  “Ready when you are, boss,” Brandon informed me several moments later, placing his hand on the lever that would initiate the instantaneous jump through space.

  I nodded. “Punch it.”

  8

  Time seemed to slow, and a soft layer of pressure and radiance washed over us, blanketing the flight cabin with a forced, magnificent silence. Blue energy encapsulated the outside of the interceptor, swirling in mesmerizing, geometric patterns. The pressure dissipated, and I was pushed back into my seat as we jumped. The backdrop of glimmering stars in the distance folded inward toward us, blurring my vision before dissolving into perfect, crystalline clarity.

  As the pressure dissipated, I knew we had arrived at our destination: three kilometers away from the freighter. Only we weren’t alone. Almost immediately after arriving, warning klaxons blared in our flight cabin as Exowurm’s AI node attempted to flag and isolate the threats.

  Brandon had set the reactor to reinitialize right after arrival, and a timer was now counting down to when we could safely activate our engines and run our shielding module at full strength. 27 seconds. We’d be dead before the timer ended.

  I counted five pirate frigates and one much larger ship—a battlecruiser. The battlecruiser was adjacent to the freighter, attached with several hardlines that might have been transporting power or fuel to the bigger transport ship. There were smaller shapes moving between the two ships, too small to be anything other than lifeforms in EVA suits or working drones. I flipped on the search & rescue systems, targeting the shapes and trying to get more information.

  The scanners identified the smaller shapes as Virodeshian aliens in EVA suits, highlighting their outlines in bright red light in our viewport’s HUD. The aliens were working on repairing the freighter, holding welding torches that sparked with small novas of brilliant blue light as they installed a new viewport on the nose of the freighter. A quick scan of the battlecruiser revealed it was almost 250 meters long, and from the massive turret pods lining the top of its jagged, uneven frame, I knew we were in trouble.

  The frigates patrolling the scene took an immediate interest in having sudden company, rolling in space and angling toward us while the powerful guns of the massive battlecruiser animated to life. It didn’t appear the battlecruiser had any intention of moving from its resting place, not yet at least. It would have to retract its hardline connections for immediate movement if it didn’t want to risk breaking something.

  I made a mistake by having us return here the way we did, and unless we could fix it, we were going to lose everything. “Dammit. Get the reactor online and push full power to the shields, I don’t care how long it takes to get normal power back to the engines. Override safety mechanisms and instantly reset the reactor. Do it now.”

  “But—” Brandon started, but I cut him off.

  “Just do it! Display active shielding, hull integrity, and active mods,” I amended, commanding the ship’s AI to comply with my instructions and display the desired stats on my dashboard directly above my joysticks.

  Brandon didn’t say anything else or try to protest, and I didn’t have time to look over at him to be sure he had heard my instructions. I had to act. Flipping the switches on my dashboard, I pumped the energy from the auxiliary capacitor directly into the cold engines I was already gunning. With zero mechanical resistance, the engines responded to the sudden surge in power with a roar that rattled the entire composition of the ship, vibrating as we rocketed forward toward the cluster of alien ships.

  The sudden acceleration pummeled me as if my entire body was being crushed by a wave of invisible mass, and in a way, that was exactly what was happening. More warnings flared as Exowurm surpassed 5 standard Gs of acceleration force in less than a second. Brandon’s colossus race gave him more protection against strong G-forces, but I was on the brink of passing out, and we had barely consumed 5% of the temporary power resource pool granted by the auxiliary capacitor. 7Gs.

  Black spots and stars danced in the corners, circling inward with brilliant, mesmerizing patterns. I sucked in a deep breath, struggling to fight against the crushing force and sudden weight of my eyelids. We needed to go faster if this was going to work. 9Gs. it was almost too much to bear. I was seeing through pinholes now as brilliant stars blotted out my vision like wet ink. Hitting 10Gs, I cut the acceleration, taking the moment of reprieve to recover from my physically taxing piloting. It would only be a moment.

  Blaster bolts and laser rays cut across the void as the frigates in front of us scrambled to react, illuminating the darkness of space with brilliant red and green light. Our enemies were separating into two different squads, one coming at us from the front while the other, larger squad swept around to our left in an attempt to flank us. The battlecruiser seemed to be having a hard time targeting us with our sudden acceleration, and that was an advantage I hoped to maintain.

  I pulled up on my joysticks, shouting a quick command to Brandon. My words were drowned out by a screech of impact as laser rays from one of the frigates sliced into our hull, colliding with the shielding in a spray of sparks and dissipation of stored energy. It was only a glancing blow, but those would add up if we got sloppy and couldn’t outperform these pirates. This wasn’t my first time putting the combat capabilities of Exowurm to the test, but it would be our first real trial, and I only hoped we could make it out alive. The stakes and potential payout were astronomically higher now that a battlecruiser was up for grabs.

  Exowurm has been hit by Virodeshian Pirate Frigate’s primary laser cannon. Active Shield Module has absorbed 100% of the damage (10 damage). 90/100 total shielding remaining. 100/100 hull integrity remaining.

  I swept Exowurm to the side, narrowly avoiding a barrage of blaster fire as the Virodeshian freighter, enemy frigates, and anchored battlecruiser grew closer
through the viewport. Thankfully, Brandon knew what I was going to say and pulled up the interfaces to take manual control of our forward-facing weapon systems.

  The turrets on the enemy battlecruiser were positioned and online now—though we were lucky they had taken as long as they had to ready. I dove again, using the top burner of our ship to launch us downward with sudden acceleration, keeping the angulation of our flight path intact. The maneuver pulled us out of the first barrage of blaster and rail gun fire as the enemy battlecruiser surged to life.

  “They’re retracting the hardline tethers, looks like the battlecruiser is about to come after us too,” Brandon reported in a level voice.

  “Pop the frigates first or they’ll overwhelm us. I’ll dance around that battlecruiser’s guns while you do it,” I said, my voice icy as I let the digital adrenaline fuel my focus. We were still pulling some major G-forces with my maneuvers, but they were keeping us alive. My EVA suit helped counteract a lot of the negative repercussions of piloting like I had a death wish, but it was abundantly clear that if I kept piloting like I wanted to die, then eventually I would.

  The squad of alien frigates sweeping to our left was approaching, but we were nearly on top of the two ships in front of us. All of them looked the same at this velocity and distance, and I struggled to pinpoint the pirate captain’s frigate among their numbers. It was likely the enemy ships were communicating with one another and taking orders from a lead. We only had the capability to jam the communications of one ship with our signal jamming array, and I had a feeling our electronic warfare module (EWM) tech wouldn’t cut it against the battlecruiser, which was the likely contender for the commanding ship among an otherwise rabble group of starcraft.

  Exowurm is being targeted with Virodeshian Battlecruiser’s System Disruption Array. This effect is being negated at the cost of 54 PHz reserved processing power. 89/110 PHz (54 PHz reserved) is currently in use.

  System Disruption II

  (Inactive)

  - -45% effectiveness of targeting systems.

  - 10% increased processing power cost of active modules (this effect compounds with other negative effects that increase processing power cost.)

  Spending reserved processing power will apply this debuff in full until the required processing power threshold can be reserved.

  Duration: Active while channeled by Virodeshian Battlecruiser.

  The notification that the EWM was hitting us pulled my intention, but I forced myself to ignore it. For the time being, it was the only debuff threatening us. If the jamming module the pirate captain had on his ship was the only electronic warfare capability of any of the enemy frigates, we’d be okay. Communication jamming would prevent us from communicating remotely with Exowurm if we were out of the ship, but it wouldn’t have any adverse effect while we were inside.

  The two frigates in front of us were closing in now, less than half a kilometer away. Brandon shouted as he fired the rail guns on all four turret nodes lining the sides, top, and bottom of our interceptor. One of the frigates in front of us crumpled like a tin can as a railgun round splintered through its front viewport, splattering what remained of the pilot all over the now vacuum-filled cabin. The frigate took two more brutal hits and spun out in a wild corkscrew, drifting away from the battle in a lifeless, drawn-out display of pure devastation. Four frigates left.

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” Brandon pivoted the guns with surprising dexterity, unleashing another thundering barrage at the second frigate. The surviving starship evaded the shots, swooping to the side and firing back as it zoomed past us, already beginning the maneuver required to loop back around and make another pass. Three hits from their blaster cannons struck our hull, reverberating as they ate at the shields. I did a quick check of my AIVO display: 78/100 points of shielding remaining with that number creeping back up with passive regeneration.

  Because the second frigate squad was coming at us from the left, we’d only be able to hit them with the top and bottom turret nodes of the ship without some fancy flying that could enable the forward-facing weapons. I had another problem on my hands now though, and that was in the form of power management if we wanted to maximize our offensive and defensive capabilities.

  The main engines were still consuming the charge I had pumped to them through the auxiliary capacitor—a charge that wouldn’t last much longer with the kind of flying I was doing. Once that power was gone and the engines had to go back on the main grid, we wouldn’t be able to use the weapon and defense systems of Exowurm at full capacity simultaneously. For now, we’d need to get the most out of this enhanced condition, even if my antics had damaged the durability of several modules and the ship’s core infrastructure.

  Brandon swore after missing his second target, twisting his joysticks and unleashing a barrage of railgun fire at the battlecruiser as we passed directly under it like the opportunity to test its defenses was some sort of consolation prize. I wasn’t surprised when the rounds exploded into clouds of shrapnel upon impact with its shields. A gray health bar wrapped in neon blue light to denote the shield HP hovered above the massive ship now, and what minimal damage we had done to its shields was ticking back up at an alarming rate.

  The Virodeshian battlecruiser was moving now that all its energy tethers had been retracted into the hull. It was slow to accelerate, which would buy us more time before the ship could be useful to the remaining frigates pursuing us.

  It wasn’t surprising that the battlecruiser was shielded. The heavy railguns we were using dealt heavy physical damage and were more tuned to dealing with armor and unshielded starcraft than shields, which were more susceptible to energy-based weapons. Against shields of this magnitude, we were going to have a hard time with only light blaster cannons. Thankfully, we had a couple last-ditch-effort tricks up our sleeves, even if they did come at great cost.

  “Can you get me a better angle on those frigates? I can’t do much with only half our weapon systems,” Brandon asked, sinking some shots from our rapid-fire blaster cannons into the frigate squad approaching from our left. It was a wild spray of weapon fire, and the frigates broke out of their ‘V’ formation, trying to avoid the chip damage from the attack that would stack up and put us at an advantage over time. The break of formation created an advantage in itself, and as long as Brandon could maintain the disruption, I could capitalize on it and keep us in a better relative position.

  “On it! Keep those frigates locked down. We’re going to have a power dilemma soon, and I may need to reduce power to your weapon systems to keep us alive. Everything else aside from the dogfighting essentials is disabled right now.”

  “Got it. Don’t let us get hit by that battlecruiser and we shouldn’t have a problem.”

  “Not planning on it.” It was time for some fancy flying.

  9

  The enemy battlecruiser was accelerating faster now, swinging around to get a better angle with its cannons while the three frigates to our left closed the distance. Grimacing, I flipped our ship using the front thrusters. With null G, it was possible to do a lot of crazy maneuvers that weren’t possible when flying in atmosphere—this was one of them. With the flip, we maintained our forward momentum but faced the opposite direction of that vector.

  I punched one of the side thrusters on the ship, rotating us horizontally with a violent jerk so we were facing the oncoming frigate squad. From this position, I cut the power to the engines, trying to conserve the energy from the auxiliary capacitor built up in the temporary resource pool while giving Brandon a better angle to work his magic with our weapons. The gambit worked, and Brandon was able to line up all four turrets on the cluster of enemy frigates rapidly approaching us, if only for a brief second.

  Blaster fire and lasers smashed into our shields, tearing them down another 30 points, but Brandon was able to do a lot more damage during that time. Two of the enemy frigates exploded in fiery balls of scrap before the conflagrations consumed all the available oxyg
en and were snuffed out. The final frigate tried to pull away and save itself but was already in too deep. Our railguns turned it into scrap metal. Without proper shielding modules, the enemy frigates hadn’t stood a chance against Exowurm. 64/100 total shielding remaining, and multiple enemies erased from the equation.

  “Whew!” Brandon shouted, pumping a fist into the air in a celebratory gesture as our situation improved.

  “Nice shooting!” I commended, feel a surge of excitement. I flipped switches on my dash, grabbing the joysticks and rolling our ship again to face forward with the vector of our motion before activating the thrusters and pulling us out of a barrage of cannon fire from the battlecruiser.

  Battlecruisers were meant to support larger capital-class ships in combat, and they also had better long-range travel capabilities than we did in our interceptor. The Virodeshian ship would be hard pressed to match our speed in any situation, but it also outgunned us by a steep magnitude. As a highly leveled NPC ship, the battlecruiser was a lot more powerful than the ships most players had access to for the time being—especially players like Brandon and I who weren’t aligned with Dalthaxia or Salgon in the major core worlds of Eternity Online’s main conflict.

  The last frigate—the one I suspected the pirate captain from our first visit to this area was piloting—completed its loop, heading straight for us. With fewer targets to display, our AI node was able to scan and process more in-depth information about our enemies. It confirmed that this was the frigate we had seen on our first visit to the Virodeshian freighter.

  I pulled up what extended stats were available from our scanners on both the frigate and battlecruiser. My heart sunk as I read them.