Elsewhere

Apparently, the person whose identify Duke had stolen was innocuous because no one stopped him or really seemed to notice him on his way to the bridge. Duke kept his AURA CONCEALMENT Ability on as well which he thought might be contributing. It was only a ten-minute walk to get to the bridge. He stepped onto the bridge and saw the dreadnaught dominating the viewscreen next to the ship and again paused at the scale of it all.

He stepped to the side of the entrance and saw the dozens of consoles laid out in semicircle terraces radiating from the Captain’s chair set nearly at the rear of the bridge. The Captain’s chair was raised up, allowing the Captain to look down upon all the bridge crew. Duke was unsure if that was from the practicality of being able to see everything happening around, or if it was from arrogance of the position. I still don’t know enough about how the Syndicate operates to come to any conclusions.

“Communication from sector headquarters coming in on the fleet crystal, Captain. Open video protocol.”

“Put it on the main screen. I expect the Commander wants all of us to see this. Record it for ship-wide transmission if this is what I think it is.”

The main viewscreen lit up with the image of the Sector Commander. The ship’s Captain tightened his grip on his command chair as he listened.

“Punishment Fleet Quazar, you are authorized to engage the Steel Tusk Clan on planet Capnok. They have refused to conduct business with the Syndicate after all our good faith efforts. Make an example of them. If any do survive, bring them to me. Operation Mechrise is nearly complete, and you will be pleased to hear that your sister fleet is on their way to some backwater planet called Teldin to root out that annoyance from Altis Marin Six. Be thankful that it wasn’t you who were selected to escort the hounds!” A vicious smile spread across the Commander’s features before he finished his speech. “For glory and profit!”

The entire bridge rang with the response, “For the Syndicate!”

At the same time, Duke’s stomach fell. He was an unknown distance away from Teldin, fighting someone else’s battle while his adopted home was about to be invaded. Rage rose within him, and he prepared to act.

He was interrupted by his communication crystal, “Duke, where are you?” The sound rang out like a cell phone in church. In that moment, his innocuous cover evaporated as multiple sets of eyes turned towards him. He acted instinctively, activating his most potent Ability and TELEPORTING the entire bridge crew out of the ship and into the path of the dreadnaught.

“Fucks sake, Mira, I’m on the bridge of the goddamed battleship!”

“Oh. So, what’s your plan then?”

“I think I’m up to plan E at this point. I couldn’t get through the dreadnaught’s shields and my clever trick kinda missed. So, I wound up here.”

“Then take out the shields with the battleship.”

“I doubt even this ship has the firepower to get through those shields.”

“Probably not, but if you ram it in the right spot, you can probably take the shields down at least temporarily.”

“About those piloting lessons we talked about? Yeah, we’re a bit overdue. I’m not exactly rated on flying a battleship.”

“I’ll walk you through it, OK?”

“Better make it quick. The bridge crew I just launched into space is still alive. I got no system messages of their death.”

“Shit, OK. Get to the Captain’s chair. First you…”

It turned out that the basic task of flying a battleship was not that hard and Duke had it down in less than a minute. The ship was not designed for rapid maneuvers, but Duke managed to get it pointed at the dreadnaught and aimed it at the aft section where the engineering section was.

And then the dreadnaught opened fire.

The first shot made the entire battleship shudder as the shields bled the energy across their entire surface area. Duke responded by firing everything he could control from the captain’s chair at the dreadnaught. It did make for some fluctuations in the shielding but wasn’t potent enough to do much else.

The follow-up, full salvo from the dreadnaught caused Duke to instinctively TELEPORT away, appearing a thousand kilometers “above” the dreadnaught. He watched as the battleship’s shielding failed and the dreadnaught’s weapons quickly gutted the ship. But the great thing about the use of energetic magical weapons rather than kinetic energy weapons was that they did not actually alter the course of the wreckage of the battleship which still slammed into the dreadnaught’s shields.

Duke saw the flare and flicker of the dreadnaught’s shields as they absorbed the impact, and he acted. He poured over forty million Mana into his TELEPORTATION and pushed with all his will. Instead of standing on the bridge, he found himself standing on the shielding of the dreadnaught. He was directly over the bridge, five hundred meters away from the hull of the ship but still outside of it. Even his Grandmaster-ranked Ability could not penetrate the shields despite how much they were strained. What truly surprised him is that standing on the shield moved him along with the ship.

“Duke! Holy shit! Are you OK? Did you make it off the battleship?” Mira’s frantic calls came to Duke, but he could not respond, having no atmosphere to carry his words.

Duke’s Mana regenerated as he stood on the shield, his stealth and related Abilities enough to escape notice for now. As he stood there contemplating his next move, Mira continued to call out to him, “I don’t know if you can hear me, but I am taking off. We will head for the first rendezvous point and wait there for one day.”

Duke shrugged in response. There was little he could do without returning to the ship, but he had a final plan to try. Plan G now, I think. Just need my Mana to finish refilling. This is either going to work spectacularly or not. Making sure I save enough Mana to get back to the ship and then it’s go-time. Again.

Duke’s Mana topped off and he prepared himself for his next step. He gathered his focus and prepared his Ability, setting his feet and steeling his mind. His focus deepened and he prepared to unleash. Suddenly, he was blinded as the dreadnaught’s main weapon fired. Even though the weapon was on the belly of the ship, the flash as a seemingly impossible amount of Mana was released left him reeling from the up-close sight. It would take a few seconds for his REGENERATION to fix his burned retinas, but Duke didn’t wait. He unleashed his Ability.

Duke had never used this Ability with any significant range even though he knew that it would work at a distance. Still, he unleashed UMBRAL REAPER with as much Mana as he dared, leaving himself with only a few hundred thousand left to get him back to the dropship.

The Ability reached into the cavernous depths of Duke’s Psyche and released all his inner demons into the world. Every frustration, insult, and disappointment came flowing out. But the Ability reached deeper, latching onto the deeper pains in his Psyche – the things he hid even from himself. It dragged the pain and loss, the horror of scenes that lurked beneath the depths of his mind. It pulled the fiery scenes of death and destruction his consciousness had learned to repress. All his failed hopes and dreams boiled to the surface and ripped out of him, seeking a place to rage, flesh to tear, and minds to consume. Duke screamed silently into space, his own enormous Psyche strained to its limits as blood leaked from his eyes to freeze in the void.

UMBRAL REAPER expanded inside the ship, spreading outward from Duke’s target, the bridge. His expectation was that the Ability would expand in a sphere and that much of its effect would be lost as it spilled out into space but he knew he had to make sure the bridge crew was affected. Instead, it expanded inside the ship, filling corridors, bypassing doors, and tearing into victims.

Inside the ship, creatures of psychic darkness raged. Most victims never understood what it was that attacked them before their own psyches and flesh were torn asunder. Some saw the creatures coming and attempted to flee or fight the horror. The creatures moved at the speed of thought when they attacked their victims. Escape was not possible. There were some, however, who had their own strength of will, resisting when the creatures came for them. Even those able to resist were not left unaffected. Madness reined supreme amongst the majority of the few survivors, as their own psyches had been forced to release their own inner demons into near physical form. Despite all that, there were still a small number that weathered the terrible storm, surviving intact.

The system notifications immediately started flooding Duke’s vision and he decided that it was time to leave. He TELEPORTED to where the Iron Reaver was last only to find destruction. The area around the Clanhold was blackened ash filling a massive crater that surrounded the Clanhold’s shield for at least a kilometer around. The ship was just gone. Everything around the Clanhold was gone. Duke hoped that Mira had left before the blast struck as he stared at the scale of destruction around himself.

Without warning, Duke was engulfed in darkness as every single one of his internal demons came home, slamming into his mind and burying themselves deep once again. This time, however, they brought new horrors with them, dragged from the crew of the dreadnaught to fester deep in Duke’s subconscious. He collapsed to the ground, curled in a fetal position as it all raged through his soul. Pain was an old friend of Duke’s and this time it came home with company.