RavensDagger

  Chapter Thirty-Three - Fual

  The fual forces of the universe are only invioble to a point.

  To the yman, they were absolutes.

  To Ivil, they were a suggestion.

  So she suggested to time that it take a moment to slow down a little, and the world, with a great groan from creation itself, ground itself to a temporary halt.

  Bullets slowed until they were crawling forwards, screams were caught in the air and she could make out miwitches as the pirates in the are tried to lock eyes on her.

  The first step was redug the threats pointed her way, which meant targeting those pirates who had guns, as well as those three turrets.

  The easiest way to do both at once was to simply rip the turrets from the ground and fling them telekiically across the room.

  Pirates started to scream as they were bowled over by flying maery. Ivil split her attention for a fra of a millised, ensuring that those who were struck received a disproportionate amount of damage from the blow.

  was identifying smaller threats. Those that had the potential to be dangerous but weren't yet pointed her way.

  She stretched her senses out, and when she found guns, they were shredded apart. She wasn't gentle about it. Pirates with holstered handguns suddenly had their sides ripped into as the ons tucked away in their sheaths twisted apart. Guns exploded off of ters and from wall mounts, little parts flung across the room with violent force.

  Ivil stepped forwards, the world still moving at a crawl arouhe motion was quiough, iime, that it created a small shockwave that she had to work to e.

  The and room and the pirates within had well and truly been caught with their pants down. Ivil decided that all she o do now was add to the chaos a little. A hard wave of her arm sent a burst of wind pushing ahead, strong enough to toss people and loose objects across the room.

  Ivil snapped a few more necks, food measure, then she loosened her grip over time.

  To her perception, the world suddenly leapt forwards, time rest itself like a rubber band snapping. One moment things were caught in blossoming explosions, bodies were only starting to be unched across the room, and the pirates were on the cusp of great aggression.

  In the moment, chaned and bodies were flung across the gravity-less space, crashing against walls even as several explosio rains of shrapnel across the room, embedding bits of metal into soles and puters.

  "Well, shit," Missy said as she took in the room from the partial cover provided by the door.

  The only living pirates were in a shape where they were probably wishing they weren't. Though, there were a few that had hidden behind soles and maes and who were still c. Ivil took note of them, but as long as they weren't reag for ons, they weren't worth much of her attention.

  "It's safe," Ivil said.

  "I bet," Missy muttered. She kicked into the room, floating across towards the upper tier. She seemed to be rexing, until she snapped around and fired at someone hiding behind a sole. "You missed one," she said.

  "My bad," Ivil replied. She hadn't. That person was harmless. But she wasn't going to devolve into an argument about her skills here and now. "Aurora, Twenty-Six, do you want to e in?"

  "It's likely safer within," Aurreed. She stumbled into the room, magic boots awkwardly ging to the floor. Twenty-Six followed, looking around as though she was expeg to be jumped at any moment.

  Ivil escorted them up a set of stairs in the tre of the room and to the main and terminals. These were rge maes, with seats that had harnesses for cyberically enhanced people to trol the eation with their mind-interfaces. Still, the station had plenty of trols that could be inputted manually, and Twenty-Six gravitated towards those.

  "There's a list of ships here," Twenty-Six said as she tapped a few ss. "Uh, I'm not getting much more than names ahs."

  "No cameras?" Aurora asked.

  Missy gnced back, but then refocused orances into the and room. Ivil, in the meantime, was slowly choking out any of the crew that threateo distrayoh their incessant living.

  "Lemme... okay, here," Twenty-Six said. She tapped something, and the ss at the front of the room, above the windows overlooking the arms of the station, switched from diagnostid timetables to a grid of cameras overlooking the individual berths. There were twenty-six in all, and over half were occupied.

  "I suppose we have to make a choice," Ivil said as she sed through the options. The moment reminded her of food at a cheap restaurant, almost. She poio one of the ships. "What about that one?"

  Twenty-Six followed her pointing fio the s, then she gnced down. "Uh, that's the Sappho. It's a guided missile destroyer." She tried to pull up more, but there was very little. That was not ued. The station hardly hat muformation about a ship parked in one of its berths, even if it was wearing their fa's colours.

  "I like it," Ivil said. "Shall we take it out for a spin?"

  "It's a destroyer," Twenty-Six said. "It probably needs a full crew. Or at least... more than four people."

  "It looks retively modern," Aurora said. "It might actually only need a couple of people to operate. The problem will be getting the clearao be accepted by the ship's AI. If it has one."

  Pirates didn't often use full artificial intelligen their ships. Nor did most sane navies. Martian ships had some virtual intelligences operating sedary systems, but they never had much access beyond that.

  "We at least give her a tour," Ivil said. "If needs must, we script a crew."

  "How will we disect from the station?" Twenty-Six asked. "I release some of the main cmps from here. But some of them o be released after the airlocks to the ships are retracted."

  "It's a warship. It must have some turreted ons," Ivil said. "If those aren't enough, then I'll put a bit of effort into freeing her myself. Release her as much as you , Twenty-Six."

  The meic hesitated, but just for a moment. She tapped a few ands, and Ivil saw the rger cmps holding the ship letting go arag bato the station. So did the fueling hoses and a few other links.

  They-Six switched to the ands for other ships and started to enter more ands. Ivil found her eyebrows rising as warnings popped up on the s and Twenty-Six overrode them with casual disregard. "What are you doing?"

  "The trols for the air and fuel refilling are all here. I'm log some cmps, pumping the ships with fuel past their limits, and I'm emptying the station's air tanks into the ships past their capacity."

  "Will we have a dozen exploding ships to deal with?" Missy asked.

  "No. The system's not that poorly built. Just a lot of ships with a lot of fuel and air, locked into pce. I 't really do more to sabotage them than that. This might pop a few safety valves, and if they didn't dur mainte might cause a leak, but that's it."

  Twenty-Six finished inputting the same ands for every ship currently berthed, then she moved on to another s.

  "This, oher hand, this is just mean," she said as she pulled out a small keyboard from below the sole and started to tap something into it.

  "What are you doing now?" Aurora asked. "Is that... the IFF registration?"

  "It's how the station reads the ship's IFF. It be ged. You're not supposed to be able to ge it so easily. Otherwise you could trick others out in space. But these are pirates, and that's exactly the kind of stuff they'd do."

  Ivil grihe ge was small, but it would mean that the pirate's automated gunnery systems wouldn't knoas a friend and who was a foe. The default in those cases would be to hold fire until a humaor firmed things.

  The fact that their new IFF tags were all insults ranging from The Dirty Pirate to the Gormless Asshole was only more amusing. It etty, but it was what Twenty-Six could do, so she was doing it as well as she could.

  "We 't stick around here forever," Missy said. "They'll want their and room back."

  "You're right," Ivil said. She snapped her fingers, and then noticed all of her panions wi ohere was now a fist-sized hole blown into one of the walls. The su of air being pulled into the void was enough t some loose materials towards the hole and make ears pop. Some free-flowing blood started to pool on its way towards the hole. "Let's head out."

  ***

  RavensDagger

  Starting Thursday, we'll be dropping to 2 chapters/week! I need some time to rebuild my backlog for this too! So far I've only written up to chapter 40 (+3 irl POVs) so... yeah! Oh, and new fig Thursday too! Some of my stories are on TopWebFi!-amon Bun-Stray Cat Strut-Lever A-Dead Tired-Heart of Dorkness-SpeddonVoting makes Broccoli smile!

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