Chương 32: Escalation arc

Give a man two years and a shovel, he'll build a house. Give a True AI two years and a barren, lifeless world, there'll be ten thousand of them, and they'll have stripped that celestial object of all useful resources. A comment made on the production capabilities of True AI.

"Nova confirmed that the pirates are indeed raping, enslaving or otherwise killing their victims," Mat began. The meeting room was almost shockingly mundane, even if the people weren't. Reg, Noah and Stef, along with Captain Alena and their associated staff. Fourteen in all.

"The contract has been signed and the advance payment delivered. We have our target." Reg folded his hands on the table.

"The average opinion is mostly positive. Fighting against slavers earned us some points, as well as the fact that combat bonuses will be paid out in advance thanks to our own advanced payment. But many are uncertain. This will be their first real battle."

"They're soldiers," Stef said, as if that was enough. Mat raised an eyebrow, and she continued after a moment.

"They're soldiers. They'll fight when we tell them to fight. That's quite literally the most important part of the job. If they can't do that, they're not fit to be here." Noah snorted.

"A nuanced approach to morale, I see. Reality is rarely so simple."

"It is simple, crewchief," Stef replied, folding her muscle-bound arms.

"They fight, or they will not. The reason why is far too complicated to care about this close to battle." Mat cleared his throat.

"You're both right, but let's table that discussion for later. Captain, you've taken inventory of the Challenger's capabilities?"

"I have," the woman replied.

"Her shields are some of the best I've seen, but the guns shoot standard energy blasts, and are average at that. It means we'll outlast anyone trying to kill us, but we might not be able to stop them from fleeing. We have eight fighter-class ships in the hangar, but their pilots are… in need of training." Noah inclined his head.

"Our own people. All have previous flight experience, but not for military purposes. The simulations will ensure their skill will grow, but for now it might be best not to rely on them."

"Noted." Alena paused, looking down at her dataslad.

"There are twelve large transports on board, along with another six smaller models. Total capacity of just under one thousand people. Ferrying soldiers won't be a problem, but we won't have time to practice landing drills." Mat nodded, then looked at one of Tim's people. The man himself wasn't here, busy as he was offloading their cargo and looking at cheap, locally produced bargains to sell for a profit. The man cleared his throat.

"We've sold most of our inventory. Total income sits at just about three quarters of a million. The boss said he'll need most of it to fill the cargo hold again. Net profit sits at twenty two percent."

"Make sure you're buying from local companies," Mat said. Tim's… secretary? Assistance? The man nodded.

"Good. Let's talk about potential outcomes. We don't engage in a naval battle, we do engage in a naval battle but we lose, we win but we're damaged, etcetera, etcetera. Stef, if you'd like to start us off." The major seemed actually somewhat caught off-guard, though she must have done this sort of thing before. Or maybe, as he was starting to suspect, few of them were used to meetings like this. Mat had lived and breathed them, before being sent to the far future. Usually as a silent shadow, but present.

Hundreds of hours. Thousands. So he wasn't surprised when it lasted for well over two hours. Ideas proposed, debated and shot down. Arguments started and finished, problems brought to light and solutions implemented. Over and over and over. Mat kept his back straight until the room was empty, then sagged in his chair. Reg smiled, the only one to stay behind.

"You're good at this. Leading a meeting."

"Am I? I felt like someone would point and laugh at any moment." Mat waved his hand.

"I don't mean to complain. This was fortunate. Obedias' ship, the money, Ironblade Incorporated. All of it. What can I do for you?" Reg hummed, spreading his hands.

"I just wanted to ask if you're doing alright. You seem somewhat adrift since we arrived at Draxon Four."

"Have I?" Mat asked.

"I suppose I have. It's just… we were fighting the good fight, you know? The uprising, breaking the chains of slavery, hiding from LandTech. But now? We're taking a contract to hunt pirates. Taking inventory. I guess I just expected— I don't know. More." The man offered an understanding smile. Reg was good at those.

"You've been pulled from your expected path. One evil man has been slain, yet no other has taken his place. I feel that's for the best. You are not ready to stand against LandTech, nor is Ironblade Incorporated."

"I guess so." Mat shrugged helplessly.

"So, really, what did you do before all of this? A therapist? I think you have to tell me if you were a therapist. It's the law." Reg snorted.

"I was not a therapist, no. When they captured me, which wasn't actually Obedias, it's a long story, I was an emissary. Spreading the word about Toncon. I even had a number of citizenship vouchers to give out. They wanted me to pick skilled doctors, affluent businessmen, that sort of thing. But I had autonomy, so I ran out in the first week. Gave them to a family of four. Homeless, you see."

"Of course you did. But you don't learn to fight like that as an emissary."

"Why, maybe I picked it up as a bladeslave." Reg smiled humorously, waving his hand.

"I kid. No, I have a violent past. Violent enough that a long, long time ago, I passed screening to train as a Toncon War Priest. You know what those are, I think?" Mat nodded, eyes widening. Reg rolled his own.

"I never completed my training, nor did I take the vows. Incompatibility issues, they told me. I was rudderless for a while after that. Still, I'm glad I never became a War Priest. I wouldn't be the man that I am today if I had."

"But you trained as one. Fuck, Reg." Mat ran a hand through his hair, then pulled it away with a grimace. He needed a shower.

"Please tell me that's the only interesting thing about you." The man shook his head.

"You say the most hurtful things. But yes, that is the most interesting thing about me. We can't all be time travelers with experimental AIs in our skull. No offense, Nova."

"None taken." Nova replied. Without a droid here, Reg couldn't hear him.

"I am both an AI and experimental." Mat snorted.

"He's taken great offense and plans to throw you into space." Before Reg could reply, the door opened again, and Jason shot inside. The man's face was pale, and despite how his hands were shaking, his voice was quiet. Mat didn't like that. Not at all.

"LandTech is here," the man said.

"Forty ships. They sent a Toncon-damned fleet to the station." Mat rose, alarmed.

"For me?"

"We don't know," Jason bit back. He took a breath.

"Sorry. They haven't contacted us or anything like that, but this isn't a welcoming party. They could blow up the entirety of Draxon Four with that much firepower." Reg stood, and followed as Mat jogged outside. The meeting room wasn't far from the bridge, but the hallways were crowded. Bladeslaves preparing for battle, officers inspecting equipment, and engineers running around double-checking the ship. Controlled chaos, Stef had called it. The bridge was calmer. The captain wasn't there, but her XO was. Leto.

Mat hadn't spoken with the man much. And behind him, on the screen, was a zoomed-in image of the LandTech fleet. Mat stared. Forty ships didn't sound like a lot. Like forty cars, really. Something you'd go 'huh' for, and then ignore. But each ship could have thousands of people in them, and while most were clearly corvettes, and thus on the small side, corvettes were warships. The Challenger was an armed civilian Massive Freighter.

Big, yes, and well-shielded, but he didn't like their odds against even a single corvette. That fleet had nineteen of them. Alongside a godsdamned battlecruiser. The rest appeared to be civilian ships, mostly cargo-haulers between five hundred and a thousand feet. Smaller than the Challenger, but far greater in number. If that fleet wanted him, there was fuck all he could do to stop them. The relative safety and confidence he'd felt after the uprising fled like snow in summer.

"What's going on?"

"We're not entirely sure, sir," Leto answered.

"The station seems just as surprised as we are, by what chatter we've picked up. I don't think there are enough docks to house that entire fleet. Not unless they're going to be kicking people out." Mat tried his best to keep his tone calm and collected. He was mostly successful.

"We're not sticking around to find out. Recall everyone back to the ship, and tell Tim to hold off on filling the cargo hold until we're back for our payment." Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Leto complied, and Mat watched the massive fuck-you battlecruiser slowly approach Draxon Four. A number of station ships were flying out to meet it, dwarfs next to the armed, armored and shielded warship. Had he mentioned how big it was?

Because it was fucking massive. By some divine miracle, their clearance to leave was granted smoothly. Almost eagerly, as if the station wanted them gone. The feeling was mutual. He only relaxed after the LandTech fleet, and however many tens of thousands of soldiers on said fleet, were gone from even their longest-ranged scanners. Three days they'd been out here now. Three days of nothing but almost hauntingly empty space, and three days of no pirates.

Without a Tunneler they couldn't go faster-than-light, and so the captain had engaged 'search and destroy' scanning patterns. They were going around the pirates' last known locations and hoping for the best, basically. Mat didn't mind. It gave him time to calm down and convince himself LandTech wasn't currently chasing him with an entire warfleet. If, on the other hand, the pirates had sat down on some random asteroid and didn't plan to move for the next six months, he would start to mind.

He would start to mind quite a bit. Running a mercenary company wasn't cheap, and fighting for promises instead of pay was going to rub bladeslaves the wrong way. It would rub him the wrong way too. Far too familiar to how Obedias ran things.

"The captain wants you on the bridge," Nova said.

"And can you please remind her that I'm not her messenger? You refuse to carry a dataslad and somehow I'm the one paying for it." Sure. Despite dataslads basically being tablets, they were also phones. Ones that he wasn't used to carrying around everywhere. What are you up to, anyway?

"Aside from amusing myself with your long-term memories? The Challenger has an entertainment hub I copied, so that keeps me busy. Refining a few more perks for your oh-so mighty creativity to choose from kills time too. Practicing my hacking skills is good for when you're asleep. Dividing myself into two and fighting myself is surprisingly good training." Mat hummed, finishing his last stretch and making his way to the bridge. Probably another false positive, but it couldn't hurt to check.

Besides, he had an hour to kill before Jason, Tobi and himself were supposed to spar. Now that everyone had a proper kit, his win ratio was taking an unacceptable dive. Still, whatever this was would probably be more productive than doing pushups. Strength training, while not useless, had definitely become a distant concern after his latest perk. On the other hand, it was kind of annoying to be summoned to the bridge. He pushed the irrational feeling away, and the ship was quiet as he walked through her.

Most people were still asleep, he'd reckon. He himself didn't need as much sleep as he used to. Something about how his soul was growing denser, and how it was 'hardening' his mind, whatever that meant. Too late to be concerned now. The door to the bridge opened, but no one turned at his arrival. So he walked up, and Captain Alena glanced at him.

"Good morning."

"And to you." Mat looked down at the console, which was displaying a readout he couldn't make sense of.

"What am I looking at?" Alena tsked.

"A distress call. One that mentioned the description of their attacker, which matches our description of the pirate ship. Which could be a trap, if they had someone at Draxon Four to keep an eye on the contract. That's not really the problem."

"Then what is the problem?"

"The distress call mentioned they were dragged out of their Tunnel," Leto replied.

"There is equipment to do that, of course. Gravity Breakers. Theocracy technology. It creates a gravity net to catch any ship that passes through. It's not something they should have access to. At all." Mat grunted.

"And, if they're trying to lure us, they wouldn't have put that in the distress call, since it would only make us suspicious. Can we check if it's a trap?"

"Our scanners are good," the captain replied.

"But it won't be a certainty. And if it's not a trap, the pirates won't be there for long."

"Avoiding all risk is impossible. Check it out." Alena nodded once, and her XO started giving orders as Mat moved out of the way. An alarm rang, two squads of clearly pre-assinged soldiers moved onto the bridge, and overall, the ship kicked into high gear. Good morning indeed. He'd never been a soldier, but a number of the bladeslaves now on deck had been. They seemed unsurprised that after being called to action, nothing happened for several hours. Hours. Mat just stood there, trying not to appear bored.

Even when they did make contact, it was the kind of long-ranged contact that he wasn't capable of really appreciating. A dot on a scanner, calls of exhaust readings and heat signatures.

"No further vessels detected," Ratiana called. The navigator cleared her throat.

"Cycling through scanners now." The captain waved her hand.

"Prepare the gun batteries and double-check the shield. Have fighter squads one and two prepare to launch on my order. Hopefully, we won't need them." Mat waited for something else to happen, but nothing did. The dot on the screen came closer and closer, calls went back and forth as statuses were updated, and then it was there. Visible on the long-ranged cameras. The pirate ship. It was just a ship. He wasn't sure why he'd expected the thing to be covered in red and proudly displaying a skull, but it didn't.

It was just a cargo-hauler, though clearly modified to house more guns than usual. Or as is legal, for that matter. A second ship drifted silently some distance from the pirates. Their target. Mat didn't spare them much attention. The pirates had turned, and for some reason, accelerated towards them at full speed. Out of everything he'd imagined, that wasn't it. The Challenger was easily twice as large, had better shields, and was filled with bladeslave soldiers.

Mat couldn't imagine anyone would be eager to engage a ship like that, let alone for no good reason.

"They're launching boarding pods," Verma called. The comms officer seemed more confused than anything.

"ETA, ninety eight seconds. They have unencrypted channels of communication. Real-time location updates are coming now." Mat only barely resisted the urge to interrupt. This, all of this, was rubbing him wrong, but he wasn't the expert here. Not for naval combat. Reg had warned him that after Obedias, it was easy to assume that every action was a trap. Every weakness a feint. And overestimating the enemy could be just as dangerous as underestimating them.

"Screening fire," Alena ordered. For her first battle, she sure seemed calm.

"Rip them to shreds." Oh. Their ship was too far away, so the pods were without cover. Mat stared as the Challenger's eight gun batteries opened fire, each shot sending a small thrill through the ship. Thirteen pods there were, and the first volley hit nothing. Neither did the second, nor third. Tesma the targeting officer calibrated something on her console, and then the fourth volley tore through five of the pods. It was silent, anticlimactic and cold.

Mat watched the metal explode outwards, the bodies drift into space, and the remaining eight pods race ever closer. Another volley, then again. If those pods had their own shields, it didn't make a difference. By the time their ETA had dwindled to less than thirty seconds, only two pods remained. Ten seconds after that, the last was turned into so-much space debris. There had been, what? Forty, fifty people in each pod? That was six hundred people dead in sixty seconds.

Comparable to the number of total dead during the uprising. In sixty seconds. Both fortunately and not, Nova couldn't take their energy. It would be a boon, but also lead to rather nasty temptations.

"Beginning electronic warfare," Verma called. Nova grumbled something about lesser AIs, but Mat wasn't really paying attention. A moment later, Verma spoke again, surprise in his tone.

"Military-grade Federation firewalls. Electronic takeover is a failure." Alena flicked her hand.

"They must have gotten the Gravity Break from somewhere. They probably stole the AI too. Are they launching a counter attack?"

"Negative. I'm guessing they don't have proper control over it."

"Don't guess. We proceed as if they're capable of it." The captain turned to her XO, strapping herself into her seat.

"Brace for combat. Two full volleys as we pass, then a sharp turn." Impossibly, the Challenger accelerated again. Mat moved to one of the chairs lined against the wall, strapping in as Leto called for the ship to brace. The two squads of guards lined up near the door, where more seats allowed them to secure themselves. I think I don't like this anymore, Nova. Give me a blade any day, not some cold, uncaring death at the hands of gun batteries bigger than my house. Nova didn't reply.

The pirate ship moved closer and closer. Readouts were confirmed; Shielded and with twelve gun batteries of her own. Half again as much as what they had. Mat's eyes were glued to the console, and then both ships flew past one another at speeds he could barely comprehend. The soft thump-thump-thump of their gun batteries ran through the ship, then a much larger boom. Mat snapped down to look at the floor, but despite his brain insisting the entire room just got blown to shit, it was fine. He was fine.

"Two volleys confirmed," Tesma reported.

"Our shields are holding at ninety one percent integrity. Enemy shield is at an estimated seventy percent." Mat decided he despised this. Nothing to see, nothing to do, and everything came second hand through scanners and screens. It was bullshit. Not at all like how the movies had told him space combat would be like. He barked out a mildly hysterical laugh, and Alena glanced at him even as he was pressed backwards into his seat. A sharp turn indeed. Mat waved his hand.

"I just realized how much money Obedias spent on those shields, and how it's saving our lives." That was weak, but Alena seemed to accept it. Or she didn't care. Either way, she turned back to her console, and Mat shrugged. Sanity was overrated anyway. He was pretty sure he lost his at the moment of his bladeslave initiation, killing some random person on a random moon. If not there, then in the months afterwards. The dot that was the pirate ship was turning, but they seemed to be going slower now.

So was the Challenger. No missiles, or mines, or fighters. Just gun batteries and shields, and the first to break through the latter would win. Obedias, it seemed, had made the logical call by investing as heavily as he had into defense. Mat was unsurprised. Another exchange was imminent, and it would be heavier this time. Logic alone told him that. Mat stared at the screen, and wondered how many levels it would take before he could survive something like this. A great many, he supposed. A great, great many.

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