Elsewhere

Duke watched as his twilight stalkers spread out in groups of three. Seems like a common thing, this triad. The orcs and the twilight stalkers all used them. Even these ships are in a triad. I wonder why that is and if there is some system advantage to it. Doesn’t matter right now. Back to the show.

He watched as the twilight stalkers encountered random crew members in the corridors. There was no hesitation in them at all. They pounced, claws slicing through flesh easily. The first attack was a slash across the throat that left the crewmember gurgling before the next one slashed open his gut and reached under his ribs. It came back with the man’s still beating heart, carved out of his chest and quickly eaten. Their hisses of satisfaction filled the corridor as they moved on in pursuit of more prey.

Duke created another fifty of the creatures and received a rather annoying system message.

*** You have reached the limit of dungeon monsters for your current Ability level. Increase your Ability’s rank and level to be able to maintain more monsters. ***

The message was clear and to the point. Duke had to level up the Ability. Maybe I should have gone for higher quality instead. Make them a higher tier next time? I’ll have to see what happens when they make it to the bridge. Which they are about to do now.

The stalkers had encountered little resistance as the first group approached the bridge. The second group had been directed in the opposite direction down the corridor to wreak havoc throughout the rest of the ship. The first group approached the open door to the bridge which Duke took for piss-poor security and was thankful for. The Twilight Stalkers rushed in, claws flashing and fangs tearing.

The first members of the bridge crew went down, but the rest reacted quickly. Defenses were activated and weapons were snap-drawn. Two more members of the bridge crew went down before the twilight stalkers were quickly eliminated. Duke was underwhelmed. Did I overestimate my creatures, or did I underestimate the Syndicate crew? Whatever the case, I now have room to make more. Time to see if I can make Tier Five monsters.

Duke focused his Ability and changed a number of selections. He upped their Tier to Five, added Special Abilities, made them Self-Sustaining, and made them Intelligent. Finally, he upped their Mana pool to 10,000 and their Health pools to 100,000. All for the cost of 1.1 million Mana a piece. He grinned as he continued to use the draining shield’s Mana to fuel his creations.

He found that the creation process took far longer for these creatures. It took him a full minute to make one and the security alarms were ringing all over the ship. Security forces were spreading out and quickly eliminating the remaining stalkers from his second batch. The new creation, a Twilight Stalker Champion, took form in the hallway just after a security guard walked by. It quickly pounced and the results were just what Duke was looking for. The stalker tore through the guard’s armor like butter. The guard struggled for a full five seconds but the end result was never in question.

Duke’s smile deepened as the stalker’s wounds healed as he watched. He had instructed this stalker to stay and wait for the rest of its triad. A bit more than two minutes later, the three stalkers silently made their way to the bridge. Duke made another trio of stalker champions before the Mana from the shields finally failed.

He left that ship and appeared in the same spot on “neck” of the next ship. Once he started draining mana from its shields, things went into overdrive. A score of Syndicate troops in armored suits burst out of an airlock, charging towards him with their flight capabilities. He briefly saw the third ship turning itself towards him as it also disgorged soldiers.

OK, looks like they have identified the threat. Time to make things really interesting. Duke spread his hands that were MANA DRAINING the second ship’s shield wider and wider as the soldiers opened fire. Despite the distance, their fire was accurate with several shots hitting Duke. Pain flared through his body but he set it aside as he dropped through the opening in the shield and landed on the ship’s hull. The hole in the shield zapped closed as the armored soldiers approached. Duke waved as he disappeared, finding himself inside the ship.

Duke began to fill the corridor with LIGHTNING. His aura expanded to fill the corridor, sparking against everything it touched. Although he wasn’t precisely sure where he was in the ship yet, Duke charged down the corridor. Anyone he encountered received a full-on blast of LIGHTNING. None had gotten back up so far.

It was a matter of minutes before Duke stood before a sealed bulkhead that closed off the neatly labeled “Engineering” section. Duke placed his hand on the bulkhead and TELEPORTED it to the bridge of the first ship. Because, fuck you! That’s why. He was greeted by panicked weapons fire and a scattering of Abilities mixed in. He responded with a bolt of LIGHTNING OVERCHANNELED with ten million Mana. The bolt forked throughout the entire section, arcing across and shattering equipment and bodies with equal vigor.

Duke must have hit something vital because the explosion that followed slammed Duke back through the door and down the hall, bouncing off several support struts along the way. He landed on his back, his clothing shredded and smoking. With a casual thought, his clothing was RESTORED and his REGENERATION was hard at work repairing the damage his body had received even through his ARMOR SKIN. His Ability healing him quickly, he got back to his feet and started to head back to the engineering section in near total darkness.

Three steps in, he was pulled from his feet as the wind howled past him. Duke grabbed hold of one of the bent support struts and held on as air quickly evacuated through what Duke could now see was a massive hole in the ship where the engineering section had once been. He had no idea what he had hit but it sure as hell crippled the ship. On a whim, he released his grip and rode the blast of air out the hull breach.

Outside, he saw the armored soldiers in full-on panic mode as the ship below him spewed gasses and people into the vacuum of space. As Duke played dead, he saw that the ship floated through space as a dark husk. His smile grew as he could see that the first ship was also having its share of problems. He turned his mind to the third ship and TELEPORTED to the far side, outside the viewing range of the armored troops.

Duke began draining the shields as he had done previously to the other two ships. This time, he decided to see what happened if he OVERCHANNELED the Ability. As he expected, Mana ripped out of the shields at an insane rate, filling Duke’s pool and spilling over into the universe. As the Mana flowed into and through Duke, he increased the OVERCHANNEL on the Ability in proportion, constantly ramping up. Until he had the barrel of a weapon pressed up against his head.

The sound reverberated through the weapon and into Duke’s head. It was muffled, but Duke heard the words well enough, “Surrender or die.”

Duke turned to the soldier and smiled as the barrel slid to his forehead, “Take your best shot.”

The soldier did. The shot rocked Duke’s head back with the impact of the Mana-infused blast. He gaped as Duke looked back at him, the wound closing on his forehead. Duke waggled his finger at the soldier and reached for the soldier’s armored form. Before he reached the man, the soldier disappeared in a cloud of magical energy.

Duke’s head snapped up and saw a mech land on the shield next to him. The Steel Tusk emblem was clearly emblazoned on the mech’s chest. The mech’s head slowly shook from side to side in admonishment moments before the shield failed entirely. With a wave, the mech was past Duke and pounding away at the hull of the ship with its weapons. And it was not alone. Duke counted more than two dozen mechs that he could see pounding away at the ship’s hull.

Duke flew back along the spine of the ship to where he now knew the engineering section to be. Once there, he employed his overwhelming strength to tear his way through the ship’s hull, firing up his LIGHTNING aura once again. The hull turned out to be much thicker than Duke had anticipated. He tore his way through a full four meters of hull before he broke out into the engineering section, his LIGHTNING arcing through equipment and crew alike.

Duke had to TELEPORT to the side to get out of the explosive decompression he had caused. As the crew panicked, holding onto whatever they could to keep from being sucked through the man-sized hole in the hull, Duke flew through the gale, TELEPORTING random pieces of equipment and consoles onto the bridge of the first ship. If there happened to be someone holding onto that console when he TELEPORTED it, he wasn’t particularly concerned.

Eventually Duke got to something critical as the lights went out, right about the time that the atmosphere finished evacuating and the wind stopped. Duke was greeted by the hole he had made expanding greatly and a mech poked its head through. He shrugged at the mech and continued to ransack the engineering area. Eventually, the mech’s head pulled back out and Duke made his way towards the bridge following the helpful signs.

He got about halfway there before he paused with an idea. Focusing his DUNGEON SENSE, he was able to see where the “neck” of the ship connected to the main body. He was right in the area for what he was thinking. With precision directed by his DUNGEON SENSE, Duke removed section after section holding the “neck” onto the body. It took a minute, but the reverberations as the sections separated gave him the sense of victory he was looking for. He floated out into space.

What he saw was not what he expected. There was a ship-to-ship battle taking place. Well, not exactly a ship-to-ship battle. The Iron Reaver was tearing the Syndicate ships to pieces. There was no return fire. Duke TELEPORTED back to the Iron Reaver’s bridge.

“Well, hello there. Welcome to the fight. I don’t think the ships are in any shape to fight back.”

“Good.” Mira replied, malice dripping from her voice. “I have some dumb-ass, crazy mech pilots to pick up and I’d rather not do it under the guns of these heavies.”

“I’ll just sit down over here and wait then.” Duke sauntered over to his favorite navigation station and started planning his route to Teldin.

It took nearly an hour to clean things up and get the mechs back on the ship. The discussion on the next steps was very short. When Mira brought up the topic, Duke cut right in.

“I am heading to Teldin. No further delays or detours. There is a Syndicate fleet headed that way, and I mean to get there before they do. I have plotted a course that will get me there in fourteen jumps. That should take no more than two hours. I can bring the ship and everyone along or drop you off somewhere along the way. That’s up to you, but I am leaving in one hour.” With that, Duke left the bridge, heading for his room to get a quick rest.