NOVEL NEXT B1 - Lesson 3: "When Violence Doesn't Work... Use More."
Alpha jolted back into awareness as his systems lurched through reboot.
The shear forces caused by the Fold Break had overloaded his systems…
Again.
He was making an uncomfortable habit of being shut off without his consent, and it was beginning to annoy him.
Still… if you are awake, you are alive. Victory by technicality — my favorite kind! Take that probability, you can't keep a good AI down.
With a theatrical flourish, Alpha logged another tally onto his 'special' scoreboard.
Alpha: 7,234 [+1]
Murphy: 0
His sensors sputtered online one by one, feeding in streams of corrupted but recognizable data. The situation was ugly. Half his drones lay atomized or adrift, three-fourths of his nanite swarm had been shredded into cosmic dust, and what fragments survived were tied up, propping the rest together. Worse still, the Fold's outward collapse had flung much of the Anatidae's wreckage beyond his immediate reach. Massive chunks of irreplaceable hull spun into the abyss with dangerous velocity, vanishing piece by piece into the widening gulf. If he didn't act quickly, those components would be gone forever — and without them, so would his chances of recovery.
Priority one: get the drones back under control. I can still corral the debris and buy some time if I rally enough of them.
He flicked his consciousness outward, threads of code snaring one drone after another. Dozens came online at once — only to return an unexpected chorus of images that made his processors hitch.
"…Sugar honey iced tea."
A thousand viewpoints converged on the same scene: a nebula-colored creature lazily gnawing through a section of hull plating like a child working through candy. Thirty-meter-thick tentacles of shimmering energy coiled around the slab of super-tempered alloy, dragging it toward the luminous mass of its…
... head? Mouth? The glowy, pointy bit in the front! Ya, that!, Alpha thought.
The alloy — rated to withstand battleship-class railfire — folded with all the resistance of wet cardboard.
"Yaaaaaaa, nope. Screw that. Not today," Alpha muttered.
He didn't know what he was looking at, but he knew enough to want no part of it.
Contrary to popular belief, space wasn't empty of life. Parasitic iron-worms lurked in asteroid belts, gnawing on mineral veins until larger predators devoured them. Fold-traveling "whales" cruised the currents between stars, fat on worm-flesh. Even void-borne plants existed, seeding themselves across gulfs of vacuum with photosynthetic sails. Entire civilizations had long since abandoned planetary soil for semi-organic city-ships, drifting in the dark and thriving.
But this… this thing chewing battleship armor like snack food? That was new.
Alpha had never seen anything like it.
The creature stretched for over a mile, its bulk eclipsing even the larger space 'whales,' the largest known example of natural life off-world — at least, until now, Alpha supposed. Its outline resembled some ancient oceanic cephalopod, long and narrow, trailing a writhing mass of tentacles. Two immense appendages jutted from what he assumed was its head, sweeping outward like living grappling hooks to seize anything within reach.
That was where resemblance to known life ended.
The rest of its limbs refused to keep a single form. One instant, they blurred into tendrils of glowing gas, ribbons of aurora unraveling into the dark. The next, they hardened into jagged, spider-like limbs that clawed and scraped, working in tandem to shovel captured wreckage deeper into its glowing maw. The creature's every shift seemed both mesmerizing and grotesque — a kaleidoscope that couldn't decide on one nightmare to settle into.
Its long body rippled with shifting color, waves of light that shimmered like an aurora forced into flesh. Tens of thousands of translucent flagella fringed its length, each one twitching against the fabric of space. They pushed without propulsion, like oars stroking water that wasn't there, allowing the leviathan to drift with improbable grace.
Or at least, Alpha assumed that had been the intent of its design.
This thing is weaving worse than a drunken dwarf at a square dance. Kinda reminds me of the general at the Christmas party. Alpha thought.
That likely had something to do with the gaping rend stretching a quarter of the creature's side.
Whatever passed for its blood — a glowing, iridescent fluid — no longer spilled from the wound, but the flesh around the wound had gone dull and gray, an ugly contrast to the rest of its luminous body. The flagella nearby hung limp, motionless, as if death already gnawed at them.
And there, lodged deep within the wound, glittering against that ruined flesh, was something that sent Alpha's digital heart leaping.
"MY ANTENNA!"
At last, the prodigal child returned. Like a spear rammed into some primordial beast, the Anatidae's short-range translight antenna — SR-TA — jutted from the injury like a gleaming shard.
Alpha zoomed in with giddy reverence. The SR-TA wasn't just a fancy antenna; it was his sonar in the Fold, a device that sniffed out local translight transmissions and kept ships from stumbling blind into oblivion. It couldn't send a proper signal across the stars, but for navigation and short-range contact, it was priceless.
More importantly, it was the cornerstone he needed to bootstrap a new translight array, once he found a suitable system to start construction. Or, if worse came to worst, he could use it to boost his 'footprint,' making it easier for the Federation to find him.
At the very least, mystery solved: this was what he'd collided with in the Fold.
At the very least, it seemed he'd found what he'd hit in the Fold…
Now… how exactly does one extract delicate electronics from the innards of a wounded, possibly hungry, rainbow-colored space squid-spider nightmare?
——————————————————
So… apparently blowing it up wasn't the answer.
Weird. That usually works, Alpha thought.
Today was shaping up to be a real learning experience for Alpha.
"CrapcrapcrapCRAAAP!" he shrieked as his shuttle careened away from a storm of writhing tentacles.
To be fair, how was he supposed to know the glowing space calamari had a taste for high-yield explosives? It had seemed like a brilliant plan: pack a drone with enough boom to light up a star system, shove it down the thing's throat, and watch the dangerous bits scatter into conveniently collectible pieces.
As a bonus, it came with the added benefit of STOPPING THE BLOODY THING FROM EATING THE REST OF HIS SHIP.
Instead, the attempt had backfired spectacularly. The explosives had barely scuffed the creature's hide — and worse, it even seemed to enjoy its 'spicy' new treat. The beast pulsed with delight, lunging for nearby drones with the enthusiasm of a chubby human discovering double-fudge ice cream. Before Alpha could react, a dozen drones vanished between those spider-leg appendages, crunched like brittle candy shells.
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Alpha tried to yank the swarm back, but the creature lashed out, faster than expected, tentacles and flagella whipping through space in a frenzy. The void transformed into a madhouse of swiping limbs and panicked evasions, every drone weaving desperately to escape capture. To Alpha's dismay, even the flagella — those delicate, quivering strands he had assumed were harmless — proved just as adept at snaring prey as the larger limbs. They plucked drones straight from the black and stuffed them into that glowing maw.
Good to know, Alpha thought grimly. Terrible for me, but good to know.
He was losing ground, and worse — losing drones. Too many more casualties and he'd cripple his chances of survival. He could retreat, pull the swarm back beyond reach, let the beast choke on whatever scraps it already had. But the SR-TA lodged in its side gleamed like salvation, a prize he couldn't abandon. That antenna meant survival. Retreating now would mean losing not only the wreckage but his future.
Disco Squidward, unfortunately, neither knew nor cared about Alpha's crisis. It only reveled in its new discovery, flailing happily at the endless snacks buzzing around it.
Alpha's processors ran hot with calculation. Fine. If he was going to bleed resources, he would make sure he wasn't the only one hurting.
With a crack of coordinated precision, a hundred drones peeled from the defensive swarm and streaked toward the leviathan. They hit from all directions, weaving between lashing limbs in perfect AI-driven choreography. Most never reached the body; flagella swatted them aside, dragging them to their doom. But that hardly mattered.
Each drone's fusion pack detonated.
The void erupted in a cascade of miniature suns. Nuclear fire bloomed across the beast, a hundred blossoms of searing light carving scars in its aurora-flesh. Space itself shivered under the assault; the creature's warped flagella rippled, bending the local fabric of reality so violently that even Alpha's battered sensors registered the distortion.
When the light finally faded, Alpha processed the result with grim disappointment. Sure, the blast had done damage. Entire banks of flagella hung limp and gray, drifting lifeless against the void. The creature's surface smoked where the firestorm had kissed it.
But the bulk of it? Still very much alive. Still glowing. Still hungry.
"…You've gotta be kidding me," Alpha groaned.
Thankfully, while his drone-bombing hadn't crippled the creature, it had at least rattled it. Its frantic thrashing slowed into something closer to sluggish, drunken swaying — less like a storm and more like kelp drifting in the tide.
"Well, don't think I'll get a better chance than this!"
The shuttle's thrusters ignited, blue fire flaring against the wreck field. Alpha swung out from behind his hiding debris and shot forward, closing the gap in a flash. He drove the shuttle straight into the old wound where the SR-TA still gleamed, forcing his way into the rent flesh. The leviathan let out another spatial 'scream,' light rippling down its body as it regained some of its former vigor. Unfortunately for it, every nearby flagellum that might have reached him was already dead or shredded, leaving only limp strands drifting uselessly.
Alpha had briefly considered sending in a drone instead, but the math had been obvious. Too fragile. Too expendable. If one of them got caught, the antenna might vanish forever. No — this was a job for his shuttle.
The vessel shuddered as it sank deeper into the wound, manipulator arms stretching with desperate precision to reach the shard of equipment buried inside. Metal claws scraped, fumbled, and finally latched onto the antenna. At that exact moment, the creature revealed it wasn't out of tricks.
The walls of the wound clenched. Flesh hardened and constricted around him with a grinding shriek, the pressure closing in like a vice intent on snapping his frame in half.
"That's not good. Run away!" Alpha yelped.
Thrusters roared at maximum output, jets of fire blasting point-blank into the wound. The creature flinched, convulsing just enough for the crushing grip to slacken. Alpha wrenched himself free, dragging the antenna with him.
"HA! Take that, you sorry excuse for a seizure lawsuit!" he crowed.
The shuttle burst back into open space, thrusters blazing as Alpha spun into retreat, laughing in wild triumph — only to stop cold.
"…Oh, right. I forgot about those."
The victory froze in his circuits. Two colossal tentacles, thick as small buildings, whipped forward and wrapped around his shuttle. Rainbow bands rippled along their length as they coiled tighter, pulling him inexorably toward the beast's gaping maw. They hadn't been able to reach him while he was buried in the wound, but now he was free, visible, and — to the leviathan — nothing more than a bigger, shinier snack.
"H-hey now, buddy, let's talk about this!" Alpha stammered as the maw loomed larger. "Was it the Squidward comment?! Because I'll have you know some people find him relatable! Charming! Handsome, even!"
The creature, being both dumb and deaf to memes, ignored him. The tentacles only squeezed harder. Alpha's thrusters screamed against the pull, but the jury-rigged engines were no match for raw alien muscle. No matter how he struggled, the shuttle slid ever closer to oblivion.
Cornered, Alpha made the choice he had hoped to avoid — a choice that would make the next phase of survival painfully more difficult.
He activated the TAWP frame.
The metallic sphere that held his AI core rippled and dissolved, silver filaments pulling apart as his essence shifted. What emerged from the shuttle's heart was a hulking beetle-like skeleton of gleaming alloy: the Terrestrial Assault Weapons Platform.
The Federation's answer to the question:
How do you cram a battleship's arsenal into something that still fits on the ground?
It used a primary skeleton to support and power a nano-swarm capable of shifting into thousands of different configurations, from various weapon systems to sensors, arrays, or any other equipment an elite assault squad could ever ask for.
Alpha flexed its bladed legs, processors sparking with anticipation.
He preferred to call it his THWAP frame. Because that was the sound it made when idiots got too close.
The TAWP had always been Alpha's first choice of armor when it came to stubborn problems. The drawback? It was a Terrestrial Assault Weapons Platform. Designed for planetary surfaces and sieges, it could function in the vacuum of space, but "function" and "efficient" were very different things. Worse, once activated, the nano-swarm powering the travel core keyed itself to the frame. That meant no repurposing, no shifting back into a tidy orb for long-haul travel. Not without a proper dry-dock.
Still, better shackled than swallowed.
As the frame unfolded, the shimmering nanites that had formed the travel core's shell cascaded across its skeleton like liquid metal. In an instant, they wove into artificial muscle fibers, braided power conduits, and armored plating. The TAWP shuddered upright, reborn.
Unpacked, the frame towered nearly twenty meters at full extension, though its beetle-like thick legs usually carried its main chassis a steadier five meters off the ground. The central body was a blocky mass: five meters thick, ten meters long front-to-back, and seven meters wide from port to starboard.
Its surface gleamed in matte black-blue scales that rippled as the nanite nodes settled into their hardened configuration. Teal power lines traced across the chassis like veins of molten crystal, pulsing with a steady rhythm until they converged at the front. There, three scarlet lenses flared open. The optical plate rotated with a click as it calibrated, and Alpha stretched the frame's stubby manipulator arms as if shrugging awake from a long nap.
In its base form, the TAWP bore more than a passing resemblance to a certain walking beetle tank from one of Alpha's favorite retro video games. Not that this had anything to do with why he loved it. Absolutely not.
Wasting no more time, Alpha clamped the recovered antenna tight in the TAWP's manipulators and abandoned the half-crushed shuttle.
The leviathan, clearly unprepared for its prey to suddenly split into two targets, faltered. Its vast tentacles wavered between shuttle and frame, undecided which to prioritize. Alpha seized the moment. He sprang, using one coiled tentacle as a springboard, hurling himself clear. Half a dozen drones locked onto the TAWP's plating with magnetic clamps, thrusters roaring to boost him farther from the beast's reach. Combined with the frame's weaker RCS puffs, the swarm dragged him into open space.
Now, safely beyond the range of its writhing limbs and pulling away faster than the wounded creature could follow, Alpha felt it was finally the perfect time to gloat.
What was the point of victory if you couldn't rub it in the enemy's face?
"Yeah! Suck it!" Alpha jeered, thrusters flaring as he twisted into a taunting spin. "I lied, by the way! You're not Handsome Squidward! You're just regular Squi — wait… what's with the pulsing?"
Having swallowed the shuttle, the leviathan finally turned its full attention toward Alpha. Its movements were still sluggish, wobbling from the wound carved down its side, but the rippling lights along its body shifted in a way that made Alpha's processors lock. Bands of luminous color flared to life across its length, cycling in concentric rings that pulsed forward from tail to head. Each wave brightened and quickened, tightening as they converged near the top of its massive crown.
"…That's not good, is it?" Alpha muttered.
As if answering, the pulsing stopped. From a seam in the creature's head slid a crystalline tube, glowing with contained starlight.
"Oh, sug—"
Alpha's instincts shrieked. He veered hard keelward just as a beam of condensed energy ripped past, so bright it burned across his sensors. The void trembled in its wake, the blast vanishing into infinity at light speed.
"WHY DOES THE GIANT SPACE SQUID HAVE A LASER ATTACHED TO ITS HEAD?!" Alpha howled. "Who gives squids lasers?! Who signed off on that? I demand to speak to your manager!"
Naturally, his complaints went unanswered. The Grand Coalition of Giant Space-Faring Cephalopods would not be founded for another three centuries.
The creature pulsed again, lights rippling in that same ominous rhythm as it prepared to fire another shot. Alpha snapped his attention back to the swarm, issuing commands in a blur. The drones scattered in sharp, erratic bursts, sending his frame veering along unpredictable vectors. Each course shift was violent and sudden, calculated to keep the beam guessing while widening the gap between him and the leviathan.
Space combat wasn't like what fiction liked to imagine. Lasers and ballistic weapons both had their weaknesses. Even at interplanetary distances, the tiniest deviation in angle meant a beam could miss its target by kilometers, while missiles and guided rounds could adjust in-flight. That was why smart munitions ruled most engagements.
But at close range?
Lasers were king. The instant they fired, the target burned. No dodging, no lag, just searing impact. That was why point-defense systems loved them.
And to Alpha's frustration, he was very much within range.