Descend- Seeing Stars

by Sean Oswald

  “You know you can just take it out of my mind,” she replied.

  “Yes, but that is a line I won’t cross. Besides, maybe I like hearing your voice.”

  “Oh, I’m sure there are all kinds of sounds that you like hearing me make, but here is the status report. We have four thousand and twelve Tamoori fighters. They are all version 2.0 or later. Only Eesa’s starfighter is made entirely of nanium but the others all have some of it to repair breaches. They all have enhanced weapons and should be a match for a Forlorn battleship at least in firepower. They just won’t be able to take as much damage, but make up for that with greater speed, mobility, and of course their subspace drives that allow them to act out of phase.”

  “What about the PSI crystal bombs?” He asked.

  “As requested we stopped trying to make complex bombs and instead just made ones that you can deposit inside of an enemy ship. The fusions kept interrupting us as we were forced to sync but with the increased power most all of the fuses have been able to produce very dense PSI crystals. Ava also prepared an extra pocket dimension for you and it is now holding three thousand eight hundred and fifty-one of the bombs,” Huong reported.

  Then she continued, “Before you ask, we also have managed to create nanium armor for all of Team Jay and Team Miguel. You will need to tell everyone where you want them, but we are all ready to fight or do our part as we are able. And yes, Ava is still working with Trudi to produce as much nanium as they can to meet your request. I believe they have cannibalized several cubic miles worth of the leviathan for raw materials.”

  Jay smiled and said, “Excellent work again running this lab. I need a bit of time to focus my thoughts and then we will meet in two hours for a strategy meeting. Everyone is welcome and please let the Tamoori pilots know too. We will be meeting on the savannah so I can address everyone.”

  He then winked out into a private corner of the ship and while keeping his eyes closed, he focused his senses on scanning the enemy ships and personnel. He was looking for any surprises and scan in every way he could think. It seemed too easy and that scared him. Still, he sat back and took it all in. The million-dollar question was where the others were.

  Two hours later, Jay floated in the air high enough for everyone to see him and then used his sonic kinesis to project his voice for all to hear. He spoke in the Tamoori language while simultaneously broadcasting to the minds of Team Jay and Team Miguel so that they could all understand. At first, he had intended to just erect a temporary platform from which to address the gathered allies, but then he decided that it was time to make an impression. Flying would certainly do that, and he needed there to be no doubt about following his orders.

  “Thank you for coming. I will keep this short and sweet. We have trained. We have built up the Tamoori ships, we have prepared for battle. Now we are done with practice. Today we take the fight to our enemy.

  Al-na-mar, the elder of the Tygar clan has been named huntmaster and will be in charge of all Tamoori warriors except for the starfighters. Ninety percent of the starfighters will be on offensive operations with the remaining contingent to stay behind under Al-na’mar’s command to defend the leviathan and both our peoples.

  Miguel, will be in command of the modified A’snkarnt ship that brought us here. That ship will disengage from the leviathan and provide additional fire support, as necessary. Although I should say that if the plan goes as we hope, none of the enemy will ever get within weapons range of either the Ark 2.0 or the leviathan.

  I will have final tactical command of all forces that are offensively engaging the enemy and will be supreme commander of the allied forces if there is ever a question.

  Because I will have to engage in fighting though, my wife Eesa shall be the commander of all offensive starfighters with the squadron leaders she has already named. The starfighters will be responsible for providing supporting fire and distracting the enemy main ships so that we can plant bombs or otherwise destroy as many of the battleships as possible.

  My wife, Trina shall have tactical command of the contingent of humans capable of battle in space without a ship. Their mission shall be to teleport onto the various ships and plant bombs to destroy them from the inside.

  If everyone works together, we will have no trouble winning this. The enemy has a huge fleet, but this is only the tip of the spear. Sadly, they have many more out there. We can only hope that today will be a warning that they should not come after us. War with the Forlorn is inevitable, but we want to fight them on our own terms in our own space.”

  There wasn’t much in the way of cheering, but Jay felt like he had said what he needed to say. His real focus was on the battle that was about to begin. He raced down to the science lab and got the final upgrades. He saw the various girls being fitted with nanium armor suits and watched as Niamh activated her suit then it seemed to be absorbed into her body. Her skin turned the same dull gray color and rippled like shifting nanium does.

  “What did you just do?” Jay asked her.

  She smiled, and he couldn’t help but notice that she was now completely naked. Her suit had been absorbed into her body. She giggled at his response and then shifted her skin so that it looked like she had at least some spandex shorts and a sports bra on even if it was still the exact same color as her skin.

  “This is my power. We didn’t have enough time to discuss it earlier, but I passed it on to you. You can augment your body by absorbing things into it. Up till now I had been carrying a little piece of the ship's decking to absorb its properties and toughen up. The problem with that was that it greatly reduced my flexibility. Nanium on the other hand not only makes my skin much tougher and my muscles stronger, but it also increases my flexibility. My body can now literally be tied into a pretzel but only if I allow it,” she replied.

  Jay shook his head and wondered how many other nuances of his new powers he was gonna miss out on. This was a big one though but now that he knew he could adapt. Maybe knowing truly was half the battle.

  He set his mind to the task and activated the ability it has merged in with his other durability traits and was maxed out. He felt strange as the nanium was not so much absorbed into his body as much as his body took on the traits of the unique metal. He could not move and shape himself however he liked.

  Another realization dawned upon him. He had been waiting for the girls to finish their technology integration plans. He was nervous about the idea but now he was able to adapt his body to the crown absorbing its properties to permanently modify his body. This was definitely a useful skill.

  He watched as pilots and crews boarded their starfighters. The upgraded ships had extra gun stations, so a three-man crew was becoming normal. Jay was all in favor of anything that gave them a better chance of surviving out there.

  Next, he saw Trina walk up with a group of girls. All of them had Uremi’s flight power now, so movement in space was possible. While none of them were as fast as him, many of them were still capable of speeds in the range of several hundred miles per second.

  He was a bit surprised by how many of the girls were there. He had expected maybe five to want to take part but instead there were three women teams led by Trina, Amelia, Meikiyo, Jessie, Charlotte, Maddy, Bong-Cha, Cee-Cee, and Trudi.

  Twenty-seven of his fuses out there fighting. That was going to make keeping track of each of them during a battle tricky, but he set up a partition in his mind to keep one part busy knowing where they were at all times. He wanted to be able to jump into the rescue if needed. Despite his worry, he kept his mouth shut and didn’t say anything.

  Once the signal was given that everyone was ready, he started to hover, waiting for the shields to come down so that he could soar out into space. Four thousand fighter along with twenty-eight little humans all made it outside the ship and then on his mark they teleported or made a spatial jump.

  Then they were upon the enemy and attacking. The fighter flew strafing missions which ripped up the smaller ships
and made the battleships have to focus on destroying many smaller targets. Meanwhile Jay and his team started teleporting inside ship after ship. For Jay it was easy. He could scan where there were vital locations on a ship. He dropped in, killed any Forlorn present and then dropped off the bomb with a ten second fuse.

  Of the remaining ships only about three thousand were battleships, but that was still a ton of bombs to plant. Jay was managing about one ever fifteen seconds, but most of the girls were taking a full thirty seconds per bomb. Some quick math told him that at this rate it was going to take fifty-two minutes to down all of these ships.

  That was too long to ask the fighters to keep running as distractions. He needed the Forlorn thinking that the threat was coming from the fighters so that they wouldn’t start trying to intercept him, or worse one of the girls. Jay sent out a mental message to all the human fighters stressing the importance of hurrying up.

  As part of the fusion, Eesa felt the meaning of what he said and communicated through their comlink that the fighters were doing very well. So far less than 5% casualties but they had already downed ten times that number of enemy vessels. This was going fast, and Jay wanted to be happy but even a 10:1 ratio would allow the enemy to grind them into dust based upon sheer numbers.

  So, Jay had to step it up. It always came to that. He pushed himself faster and faster. Soon he was doing twelve ships per minute. He teleported directly from one ship to the next, and appreciated his new Long Range View ability, because it made sure he knew exactly what he was teleporting to in each ship.

  So far none of them had prepared any type of organized resistance against him. He teleported in, burst out with kinetic energy to kill everything in the room and then drop off a bomb before teleporting to the next one. He left a string of explosions behind him but was soon focusing on his team. They were all getting faster now and averaging three ships per minute.

  That had the time down to thirty-two minutes. It was still too long but the best that he could do. Jay didn’t want to push the girls any faster because moving too fast leads to mistakes. He on the other hand was willing to be pushed. He hadn’t taken so much as a scratch yet, but that was to be expected with his nanium body now. So, he pushed himself faster. What was the point of moving 16% of the speed of light if he could only hit twelve ships per minute.

  He found that there were two limiting factors. At first it was his perception and reaction time but as he learned to push his senses up the sixth boost, he found that the world slowed down around him. Even at this speed he was beginning to be able to react. Jay laughed for sheer joy. Once he had a chance to really train his reactions at this speed, he would become unstoppable.

  The other limit was his lack of belief in himself. His self-confidence had taken great strides forward and he trusted himself to defeat many monsters. But he was also a prisoner of his only feeling that he couldn't do something. Some of it just seemed so beyond him that he would hold back. Even with his limitations though he reached a point of one ship per second. The remaining time was down to seventeen minutes.

  They were doing it. Only a few battleships remained. All the smaller enemy vessels had been destroyed and he still had thirty-seven hundred starfighters in action. But then the other shoe dropped. He staggered as he felt his precognitive warning go off with a vengeance.

  He shouted over both comlink and telepathy, “They’re here.”

  Chapter 31- It Comes Down to Jay

  Wave after wave of enemy ships just kept washing over them. The fighters dodged and weaved between them but there was simply no way to avoid all of the incoming weapon’s fire.

  Jay ordered a retreat, but Eesa kept fighting and with her many of the squadrons. One of them argued, “We either win here or die back home.”

  Jay put more force behind his command as he tried to impress his will upon them. “All starfighters withdraw. Provide support for the leviathan. We will be falling back there as soon as you have all made it out safely.”

  The force of his pushed most of them away but Eesa kept her onslaught going. Her ship had more firepower than any ship out there and she took advantage of the fact that battleships didn’t expect her to be able to blast through their shields. She activated her subspace drive repeatedly as she shifted from normal space to subspace again and again, dodging around the enemy and then opening fire from point blank range.

  He shouted telepathically at his other wives to retreat back to their ship, but once again they were ignoring him. He felt life signs from him team start disappearing. At first, he thought they were teleporting out but a second later, his senses told him that they weren’t reappearing back at the ship.

  Within seconds the twenty-seven girls with him were down to nine. But then as they flew out, he understood. They had all performed perfect fusions in teams of three. They might now have five to seven minutes of greatly enhanced power depending on how much practice that particular trio had done.

  Battleship after battleship started blowing up from the inside. They only had another thousand bombs, but they were working on disbursing them all. Each of the fused girls must have been pushing themselves to their max because in the first minute alone he saw some five hundred ships blow up.

  Two minutes after the fusions had been formed, they were out of bombs and there were still thousands of new ships arriving every minute. That didn’t stop him. He was angry that they wouldn’t retreat but awed by the ferocity and tenacity of his wives. As that thought went through his head, he heard voices echoing in his head, “How could we be worthy of you if we were anything less.”

  Combo powers galore were going off all around him. Phased blasts of fire, concussive blasts, necrotic beams that dissolved even metal. They weren’t holding back at all but going all out and spending more than twenty-million PSI per minute. Their time was limited so there was nothing to hold back.

  Jay was caught up in it too, but most of his energy was being spent shielding the girls with PSI constructs. In their fused forms they could withstand even direct blasts but not many, certainly not from the big guns that were designed to shred planets. Even with their increases none of them had Jay’s evolved durability or his skills in the hundreds of thousands.

  A stray blast finally clipped Eesa’s ship and ripped away more of than the nanium could repair. Its engines were taken, and it was a sitting duck. Jay time skipped to the damaged starfighter and placed his hand against it before teleporting with an entire ship across the distance to the hangar bay of the leviathan. He had expected such a massive teleportation to suck him dry of power, but it had cost less than a million PSI and he regenerated more than that every second.

  So, a second later he was back in the fray. His girls had worked hell on the enemy. More than twenty-thousand ships had been destroyed in five minutes but now their fusions were starting to come to an end. He shouted again, “Back to the leviathan, we can use its guns for support. I will be right behind you.”

  He was pleasantly surprised as they all blinked out in teleports back to the ship or the leviathan. He sent a message, “I have one last surprise for them and then I will be right there.”

  Then he was zipping around the ships like he was superman. He maintained a PSI shield around himself as he flew, through the enemy armada’s taking stock of just what he faced. Every second he released devastating blasts of kinetic force that pierced the shields and were followed by molecular separating energy that disintegrated small sections of the enemy vessels. Each was then followed up with a combination of bio-radiation ability to affect their organic parts, supercharged electricity for its ability to fry at least temporarily some of their cybernetic parts, and super condensed flame for its ability to just plan burn everything up.

  Still because he couldn’t stay still long enough to bring his true power to bear on any one ship, he was stuck flying at astounding speeds and weaving in and out of the fleet. His count showed him that there were over five hundred and fifty thousand ships left. They had done a goo
d job of whittling it down, but it was still too large.

  Jay had to hope that this next trick would be worth all the effort that Trudi and Ava had put into making it. He flicked his hand across the subspace crystal that Ava had given him. It opened up to a pocket dimension that was stuffed with a hundred tons of nanium.

  He focused his will on the individual bits of the metal that responded to PSI so well. The material exploded out of the dimensional pocket with incredible force and formed ten then twenty and eventual fifty massive tentacles. Jay then wove between the ships again using the tentacles to puncture holes in the engines or command decks, or weapons depos on the various ships he flew by.

  Instead of focusing on the battleships like he had before, he now focused on the smaller cruisers and even smaller shuttle type ships. The tentacles were each ten fent in diameter so the precision strikes that they launched were almost always fatal to the ship and crew that they hit.

  He was pushing himself beyond anything he had expected to be possible. Desperation forced him to stop thinking about what he couldn’t do and just act. So, each second, he flew through he was destroying forty to fifty ships.