Dark Matter Ascension

Dee woke up in one of the crew beds. "Hngg," she sat up and felt her head's chitin crack against the bunk above her.

Priam's head poked down over the edge and he grinned, "You're awake! Great job last week."

"I've been out for that long?" Dee asked as she kicked her legs out onto the floor.

Priam scrambled down the small built-into-the-wall ladder, "Yeah! You were asleep a long time."

"Makes sense," Dee replied groggily. "Plorps have huge stockpiles of energy…but using all of it at once is draining." She recalled the enormous flash, the slagged fleet, and grinned. "Did I get all of them?" she asked excitedly as all sleepiness was wiped from her mind.

"Yeah," Priam said as he patted her on the small of the back – as high as he could reach on her chitinous shell. "Good job! It was…kind of scary how big it was. Jace mentioned you could destroy a planet if you had the right starship weapon and your Spinal Laser thing."

Dee cackled, "How fun would that be? Dee – the destroyer of worlds!"

Priam frowned, "Don't do that please. That is really mean sounding."

Dee sighed and ruffled the fur on the top of his head a bit, "You little furball! I wouldn't do that just for fun. Just to people who deserved it."

Xera's voice came over the comms – only to Dee, though. "You might have a chance. I'm working on a vessel to enable traversal of the Astral Verge. And there will definitely be Astral Demons and possibly ships from other hostile universes in that place. You may be able to do what you envision in the near future."

Dee squealed in delight and picked up Priam, hugging him tightly before setting him down. "How close are we to Teresii?"

The whole group was in the life-pod bay. Quinn's voice came over the comms, "The ship is on its autopilot course. The escape craft is sort of like a shuttle – it will require manual control if you want to direct its course at all. But it's going to be a rough landing."

"What if we didn't have Jace?" Greg asked as he glanced at Jace.

"The shuttle is built to auto-correct to a gliding position," Quinn replied.

Jace opened the airlock, "Everyone on board." He got to the front of the ship which was what he was expecting from a starship – a viewport that he could see through with a seat and console. Sitting down and buckling up, he felt again that sense of second-nature take over as he began to check the various systems and gauges. "We're ready whenever."

Everyone else buckled in and Quinn's voice came over the comms again, "Let the ship take the majority of the re-entry and turbulence. Then, I'll give you the go-ahead to eject the lifepod." A screen appeared in Jace's HUD, and the image of a glittering tower, arcing far above the rest of the city was highlighted. "That's your destination. The ship is going to impact Deckard's personal warehouses a few districts over. You do not want you crash into the tower – just aim for this place here."

Jace's HUD screen shifted, and as the ship began shaking violently – shaking their escape vessel at the same time – he saw a flight path appear that would lead them to touch down on the equivalent of a raised highway. The entire ship bucked wildly, and Priam let out a slight whimper of fear. Dee was cackling madly and kicking her feet with excitement, and Greg was stone-cold, solid, and unshakeable. As if he had dropped in a spaceship like this before.

The straps cut into Jace's armor, and he could feel the pressure against his chest as the g-forces hit. "Now!" Quinn shouted.

Jace pulled the release and the ship rocketed out of the bay holding it. He almost forgot to steer at the sheer sight that greeted him. And I thought that New York was big, he thought with wonder. Laid out before him was a truly massive city that curved off into the distance.

"An ecumenopolis," Ollie stated. "A city the size of a world. Actually, a giant metal shell surrounding it, with structures built on top of the shell. The whole world is powered by thermal generators under the shell's surface, and their metal structures conduct the electricity all over. This is one of the highest tech-worlds in the whole of the universe."

Jace remembered his job and took the controls in firm hands, directing the still-shaking vessel. Fighting against the controls, even with his prodigious strength, he was having trouble getting the thing to respond.

And then the control sticks broke. Sheared off partway down from the console, as his titanic struggle with the vehicle's controls was ultimately deemed effortless by fate. "Fuck!" he shouted. "Quinn? A little help here?"

Static was all that he heard, and glancing back to his allies, Jace saw that they hadn't heard him over the comms, either. "Ollie? What's happening?!"

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"A jammer. Annoying. Xera will find a workaround, but in the meantime…Verge Protocol." Ollie zipped into Jace's head, and he felt the familiar, cool presence of Ollie in his mind. Ahh. There we go. Re-establishing connections through The Cosmic System instead of the subspace relay that we were using for cross-world comms.

"What about the ship?" Jace asked.

Dark Energy Mine would arrest your momentum and enable you to descend safely from the rear of the vessel, Ollie replied in his thoughts.

"Dark Energy Mine (Rank 3)," Jace stated. "Detonate." There was a pulse of purplish energy in a shockwave, and the ship was halted. Jace got out of his chair and turned around to face the other occupants who were looking at him, possibly confused under their spacesuits. "Let's go. We're dropping here. Dark Matter Cloak (Rank 3) [Group]."

Priam unbuckled and floated up a little bit, "We gotta stick together!"

Greg floated to the back of the ship and pulled the manual release lever. A blast of air surged into the ship and began pushing the once-pressurized vehicle away – leaving the four of them floating in midair.

Jace used his grapple to get all of them adjacent to each other. "Okay!" he shouted over the wind, hoping they could hear him. "Here's the plan! I'm going to deactivate the mine, we fall, and then when we get close enough to the buildings, I'll pull us close!"

Dee gave him a thumbs up, but the other two seemed to not be able to hear above the wind. Deactivate, Jace thought, and the group plummeted.

The group remained locked arm in arm with each other as they rushed down through the skies. The ship that was not spreading out its surface area to catch more air plummeted past them. Damnit! Jace thought. It's going to hurt someone. Raising his hand, he muttered. "Void Beam (Rank 3)."

The energy drain was quite noticeable without the [Limited Range] Evolution being applied, but, to his delight, the vehicle was completely obliterated – preventing it from falling to harm anyone below. As the group kept falling, Jace re-used Dark Energy Mine at Rank 1 and detonated it. Their momentum arrested, he let go of Priam, tagged a building below with his grapple, and pulled himself down to it – with the rest of his allies in tow thanks to their interlinked arms.

The whole city was a sprawl of thousands of different designs. Tall buildings, squat buildings, structures that defied logic with their construction, missing enormous chunks of what should be vital architecture and yet standing up regardless. Glancing over the edge of the building, Jace saw miles of structures going down even further into the depths of the planet. "Ollie, how high up are we?"

Two miles. It is a large planetoid. There are layers to the ecumenopolis, just like an onion.

His group took off their spacesuits and checked all their equipment as gravity reasserted itself. "Well, what's the plan?" Priam asked as he double checked his gear.

Dee tapped her chitinous foot on the building's weird, bronze-ish metal. The wind was billowing past, so she had to yell to be heard. "We should get down to the sub-levels. Less chance we get spotted-" she stopped herself and giggled. "Right! We have Jace's Cloak. Nevermind." She pointed to what looked to be a raised highway, with plenty of vehicles racing across it. "That is our best bet for walking."

Jace reactivated Dark Energy Mine, detonated it, and grabbed Greg. "Grab the other two," he stated. As Greg grabbed ahold of Dee and Priam, Jace kicked off the building with his powerful prosthetic legs, sending them on a course for the very busy freeway with vehicles going hundreds of miles per hour. He deactivated the mine as they reached a building that was close to the highway.

Underneath was some type of rail line. Dee rapidly explained, "The top is for people to show off their fancy vehicles from all across the universe. The underside here is where the transit happens for goods and products." She pointed down the support structure, and Jace saw dozens of rail tracks and support lattices going down. "The Civilians are down lower."

Dee hopped over to an access lattice that stretched out under the highway and just above the rail line. "We can take this service path pretty much anywhere. There's a bunch of these highways criss-crossing the whole planet's surface!"

Jace hopped over, then used his grapple to pull Priam over. Greg hopped over, and as Priam adjusted his hat, he spoke. "This world is fully run by the Nebula Alliance, right?"

"Correct," Dee said. "This is where their headquarters is. It's Deckard's home world. Well, not his true home world – the one with a Civilian population large enough for him to convert to the headquarters." She pointed down into the depths of the city. "It is not very nice down there. You thought that Earth looked like a corporation run dystopia? You've seen nothing compared to what they got here!"

That got Jace's blood boiling. "Worse than on Earth?" he asked to confirm.

"Oh yeah. I mean, I didn't see much of Earth, granted. But I did some research on a cosmopanel back in Khrox – you guys were on a scary path…this is the end point of that path."

"And why are we not burning the whole fucking thing down?" Jace asked as he seethed.

"It's tough," Dee replied as she began walking, leading the way towards their destination on the map in his HUD.

That would not be helpful, Ollie replied. Taking down a universe-spanning megacorporation is going to be nearly impossible. You would have to topple every possible leader, zero out their Stardust reserves, and more. Factions built upon capitalism are hard to kill.

Jace shook his head, "Do these Civilians have any say? Or are they trapped here like the megacorps on Earth did when they kept people from getting to Khrox?"

"Nope," Dee replied. "Deckard chose this world because the civilization that achieved Cosmogenic Merging was pliable and suggestible – like Priam's species, but not as smart."

"What's pliable mean?" Priam asked.

"That means you're easy to or convince," Greg replied.

"Oh…" Priam trailed off a bit and his ears drooped slightly. "I mean…you're supposed to be able to trust people. That's what dad always told me."

"Maybe among your species," Greg replied tersely. "But others will take advantage of you."

Jace still felt that boiling rage gurgling within him. That feeling of righteous justification. "And the species that lived here before the Nebula Alliance took over? They're okay with this?"

"No," Dee replied as her voice took on a tinge of outrage. "Once a world does a Faction Assignment vote, that cements them unless they do a new vote – but that has to be initiated by the faction that is running things."

"Ollie," Jace whispered, "Is there something like a resistance movement on this world? People trying to take back what is theirs?"

Yes, Ollie replied. Why?

"I feel like destroying a faction."