The Red Sect Sovereign status applied to her battle-frame when the split of Sineul swapped with her. In addition to the sovereign autonomy that it gave the battle-frame, the swap granted her an all access pass to all the resources and the Fabricators in the ship. With her current designation and privilege level, She was above permissions, she could cite all the material acquisitions under the clauses about emergency provisions.
She was a backup soul from 70 years ago. She only ever remembered Varul as an ally, but the context data stream showed her that this time, he would be planning against her. She knew about Vervid, Anarul, she had enough data to synthesize everything that led to this point from the condensed data log that Sineul left her.
She picked up two white cylinders from a nearby cart and placed them on the conveyer belt that fed the Fabricator. The cylinders were heavy, even for the battle-frame and they contained one of the most powerful materials ever created. These were G-Catalysts, the building blocks of weapons that kept the galactic peace among factions and ideologies through mutually assured annihilation. The fabricator absorbed the cylinders like a hungry beast.
Another fabricator nearby whirred, its Materium core printing matte black balls the size of an eyeball in a sizable grid. When the transparent shield around the fabricator's print area cleared, She picked them up one by one, loading them into a huge rectangular cartridge. The added weight of those 160 Catalysts that could fit into a small box was nearly three quarters of the entire weight of the battle-frame.
As she printed 160 more on the nearby machine, a third fabricator next to that finished printing a large black beam with a rectangular profile. It had intricate, smooth shapes on its surface. It resembled the unmaker rifle’s barrel, but much larger. A hole cut through diagonally into this, a slot for battle-frame’s right arm. She clamped it on the forearm and flexed her hand to shake its internal mechanisms. After nearly 10 hours of printing, the new augment was satisfactory.
She mounted the Catalyst cartridge on her right shoulder after loading the 160 new matte black balls. This configuration was one planned by Sineul way before arriving here and now, all preparations for it were complete. The total Material cost of what she printed so far was enough to put a planet in debt, but it barely dented Varul’s massive wealth. More Fabricators around her kept printing various weapons, She was supposed to print anything that could be of advantage and her first plan was escaping with whatever that finished before The Fifth came here.
Sineul didn’t anticipate that she would have this much time unsupervised. For some reason, She nearly had 13 hours to herself in the Fabricator section. The Fifth didn’t return as Sineul promised and this was all to her advantage. Now she had the best layout possible, with that extended time limit.
She initiated the new configuration with predicted calibrations. This was a new weapon and that usually took decades to get used to. Sineul had the solution for that as well, a mighty shortcut that extrapolated these calibrations based on past soul data. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough in a hurry.
> L98 BFrame: initializing [custom configuration]
- enabling voider mode…(5s)
- applying [VM-Custom Parameters]…
- complete (s)
> L98 BFrame: voider mode calibrated
One hour and thirteen minutes later, she saw the V2 Darnek fire its secondary propulsion engines. This was one of the triggers that she had to look out for and she had an entire plan plotted out from here, branching into more possibilities with their own plots.
It was about time she made her own move.
Varul sat on his throne in the command bridge of V2 Darnek looking ahead with a scowl on his face. His plan had backfired in ways he had failed to anticipate. It was supposed to be easy, The Third agreed as much. He didn’t need the intimacy, he needed to coax her body back to Varul’s ship.
That all changed when The Vellek used its main drive to hop to Ephistome III’s orbit and land there. There were no open transmission lines, The Vellek had gone dark, he knew why she was forcing his hand. He had to visit her in person, if he wanted his biologics back.
That was exactly what he was going to do.
“Do you think she duplicated her ascendant? Or was it a simpler program?”
“It passed all the checks for an Ascendant when it entered my ship,” The Fifth told him calmly. “I believe it was the actual ascendant.”
“Then what did the Third say, is it that she duplicated the ascendant? Or is this another layer of her plan, we have to be certain.”
“It is impossible to use the main drive to that level of precision without an ascendant. Too many parameters to consider, and millions of nanosecond adjustments. It is likely the ascendant was duplicated.”
“Good, we can use that against her in a Sect Hearing, this is something we can negotiate away as wel,” Varul kept his eyes on the screen as the planet grew larger before him. The V2 Darnek stopped 20000 km away from it. He brought it here as a symbolic threat. This was too close to fire the planet buster from. “The ascendant and her battle-frame, disable it.” He ordered the Fifth.
“The ascendant in a battle-frame is harmless. He can only access its basic functions,” The Fifth told him, patiently. “But I will disable it, just to be sure,” He left the command bridge to exit V2 Darnek back to his ship which was following close behind.
“Cinetra, prepare the meeting” Varul thundered at his ship.
“The guests await your arrival in the resonator bay, my priest,” a sharp middle-aged woman’s voice echoed through the command bridge. This was his ascendant. The only one that could fully integrate with a ship the scale of the V2 Darnek.
"Prepare my battle-frame as well, Use the second configuration."
"Understood, do you wish to use your personal ship without me?"
"Yes, I need you here. Prepare it for landing."
Varul walked over to his personal resonator bay, he had few people he needed to talk with. The chamber resolved from a white void into a pleasant image as soon as he entered the center circle. A scene laid itself before him in millions of cubes that subdivided themselves from visible scales to microscopic.
It was a brightly lit day, overlooking a huge forest that spread to a flat horizon. Wisps of clouds were painted across an aggressively blue sky. He was standing on a marble platform, carved with intricate details too complex at a glance. This place was old, and pleasant. He walked over to the ancient tree protected by a white marble and gold platform. The tree was a deciduous behemoth, falling apart from every angle, overgrown for its own platform. It was held together with golden supports and threads, and its leaves danced in a slow, gentle breeze.
Beneath the tree, sitting on a bench sat a small figure, looking at him expectantly. Even from this distance, their black and golden eyes were intense. Varul walked over there in his confident stride and stared back. It was a young body, no more than 16, decorated with permanent gold lines. The sex couldn’t be judged at a glance, but Varul had thought this person more feminine than masculine.
“What is this about?” He asked from Selus, the Prime Minister Supreme of AUM.
“You haven’t still agreed to the removal of Ephistome III from the Netheris star system. 87 hours had elapsed since you responded positively to our proposal,“ He said in his characteristic flowery voice. The golden irises on his black marble eyeballs remained unblinkingly on Varul, in contrast with his harmless, polite voice. Varul could sense the animal behind those eyes, the centuries old animal that wore this young skin.
“I have my reasons,” Varul told him without flinching. He bowed to no one. “If you interrupt, I will destroy the fleets that you send. I’m under the impression this was made clear in our first conversation.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Yes, it was plenty clear. There will not be any AUM Galactic interruptions in Red Sect internal matters. However, you also acknowledged the danger Ephistome III poses for our civilization.”
“I’m already in the system, there is no greater security guarantee that anyone else can give you.”
“You’re stretched thin,” Selus told him bluntly. “We have our own methods to gather information on the matters beyond the frontier. I urge you not to underestimate us.”
“It will be handled,” Varul told him coldly.
“And the retraction of the declaration of war?”
“It is currently being handled,” Varul answered, even more coldly. He couldn’t completely hide the urgency hidden behind his sharp tone.
“You seem stressed,” Selus stood up. “You used to be reliable once.”
Varul glared at him silently. He owed nothing to AUM, but the profits he stood to gain from this were truly massive. He couldn’t imagine ruining this very lucrative deal because of an insult. He could tell Selus knew that as well. This was a creature from a bygone era, sharpened to a fine point by manipulating trillions of people across millennia. He knew better than to bury himself deeper in Selus’ loathsome web.
“This is concluded,” Varul announced shortly, as the blocks dissolved around him.
“I genuinely hope that you win,” Selus smiled for the first time as his figure crumbled into a billion small blocks that grew in size and faded away.
Liera watched as Calan walked around outside picking up and throwing rocks everywhere. He was happy to finally be back on solid ground after his space adventure.
“When is it going to explode again!” He asked excitedly, looking over the mountains. He had watched it twice now, the furthest wave of the Dome Reactor explosion hammering the mountain range on the other side. Weirdly, he wasn’t intimidated by it at all. He was playful when the ground shook below him, giggling and running around excitedly. She noted this for later as well, she couldn’t tell if this was behavior unique to him or common in all other children.
“Can I draw with lasers on this!” He asked, pointing at a large slate rock resting on some jagged rocks. It was the perfect surface.
“No more lasers for you for a while, Calan,” She told him, keeping her tone resolute than before.
“WHY NOT?!” He was outraged. He had grown too fond of lasers too quickly for his own good.
“Draw with rocks, It will be fun,” Liera concluded and hovered back towards the hole in the cargo bay where Commander Brenvalo idled as he lay on his back, watching the sky with his eyes glazed over with the painkillers. He gazed blankly at Calan trying to find a rock that he could scrape the big slate with.
“Your biologics, Priestess! Please watch him carefully. This is dangerous terrain!” Sineul was worried out of his mind about Calan running around carefree. She had to give him basic protection before setting him free, which is why he was now wearing the boots from the space suit. Sineul would’ve had a machine stroke if Calan was allowed to roam barefoot.
“He’s fine, just keep an eye on him. It hurts him if he falls, I don’t think he’ll fall for fun,” She told him dismissively.
She flew over to the priest, lying sideways against a jagged rock. He was taped thoroughly this time and he was already knocked out with painkillers. The fall he suffered wasn't trivial. He had bounced off at least twenty jagged rocks down the slope, 200 meters away. Given that they no longer had a battle-frame, there was no way to recover him back to the ship. The ball wasn’t built for lifting heavy weights. Sineul had the idea of using tethers to pull the priest towards the ship, but this was unnecessary for the next part of the plan. The priest was fine where he stopped rolling, safely secured with foam.
As she idled, she saw the first signs of trouble coming her way. A cloudless patch on the steel sky had a dark, blurred out shape on it. She knew what it was without having to ask Sineul for confirmation. It was the V2 Darnek. Two super carriers were accompanying it, the Fifth’s ship was the one flanking the left side. She marked it with a visual anchor in case she needed to zoom in to it fast later.
Varul was here.
She checked the time.
1H:03M elapsed since the last Dome Reactor explosion. The loop was 1H:27M, leaving her with 24 minutes.
“He’s coming, Sineul,” She said as a silver dot hovered above the storm clouds like a moving star. She zoomed in several times to identify it. It was nearly the same as The Vellek, this was Varul’s personal ship.
“Get the boy back in the ship!” Sineul told her, panicked. She rushed to get Calan inside The Vellek. For some completely unknown reason, he was carrying a pile of rocks in a great hurry into the ship.
“What is this for?” She asked, genuinely puzzled.
“I wanna play with them!” He smiled, as if it made complete sense. Leaving him for his shenanigans, Liera shut the landing hatch of the Vellek.
“Sineul, the soul module,” She found it next to the hole in the cargo bay. She had stored herself in this rectangular module like she did when she went to meet Varul in his ship. She lifted it, securing it with one arm. She held the plug in another arm. These steps were crucial for her plans.
“Let’s hope this works out!” Sineul told her, his voice shaking. This was the most precarious part in their plan against Varul. If she failed here, she risked everything she did so far going in vain.
“I’m off, I’ll see you later,” She told Sineul. “Plug the hole, and prime the engines for take off if needed.”
“Understood, my priestess,” Sineul told her in a worried tone.
Liera floated back to the priest. Varul’s ship began its descent in a single silver line,
1H:07M elapsed.
Liera expected better from him, but she had pushed him to the edge of his patience with her actions. He surely saw through the threat she was preparing for him, she knew Varul enough to predict that much. He was coming now with extra time so he can drive her to an amicable solution with talking. He had allocated about 15 minutes for it, minus the time it would take him to descend and come to the meeting.
If talking failed, She knew he would do anything and everything to grab his biologics. This was the reason for the next part of her plan.
She watched patiently, knowing full well in herself, what she would do with this opportunity and stakes.
The second Liera in the Fifth’s ship delivered it in mere seconds as if on cue.
She zoomed into the fifth’s supercarrier and in a split second, a spherical chunk disappeared silently from the top half of it. The diameter of that explosion could’ve been at least 300 meters. It cut a visible hole in the super carrier’s silhouette.
She knew the weapon printing had gone extremely well, if this was something her battle-frame could do now. She estimated her winning again with this information alone.
At the same time as the explosion, a thin silver line ejected from that explosion at incredible speed toward’s Varul’s ship which was now in mid-descent. She saw the silver dot distorted with orange klin shield light. The other Liera was doing something wild, something that she was now staring in awe at.
She had used that powerful explosion to propel herself off the supercarrier. She hit the planet’s atmosphere at speeds that could’ve crushed a space ship, but she was relying on a power expensive klin shield for protection in a hyper calculated move.
Liera watched as her battle-frame punch through Varul’s ship like a gunshot from space. She didn’t see any explosion of the magnitude that damaged the supercarrier, So Varul was alive. She was glad she wasn’t completely psychotic. The other Liera had wisely figured out Varul was needed for the negotiation, he needed to be beaten, not killed outright.
She saw two orange dots as Varul himself used the klin shield to counter the impact but he absorbed the massive force that she burst into the ship with and he shot off the sky towards a mountain, crashing about 30km away from his intended landing location. Using the impact to divert the force, Her battle-frame landed much closer at just 2 kilometers away, flattening the tip of a small mountain as it grazed by and and deployed a strong klin shield for impact landing. Dust and soil flew far into the sky, rocks flying over nearby mountains and raining down their slopes.
Liera used a laser beam to signal her location as soon as she saw her battle-frame hopping towards The Vellek hundreds of meters at a time. She could also see Varul flying off a mountain top far beyond in the horizon. She calculated 47s for him to get to her.
Her battle-frame arrived, steaming hot from the orbital landing, with the klin shield flickering from overuse. Without a base-frame inside it, this was a high load to strain the battle-frame’s two field reactors with.
“You’ve gone ahead and done it this time,” The other Liera told her as Liera swerved to the back of the battle-frame.
“I never lose,” She told herself, plugging the cable from the rectangular module. The ball rolled away down the mountain as soon as the high bandwidth data-stream.
“You never do,” The other Liera agreed in the last few milliseconds as they both assimilated into a new, identical soul with the gaps of their continuum simultaneously filled by each other’s data. A regular human would suffer extreme neurobit damage from something like this. Calan for example, would never be able to use a human body if he was assimilated this way. Liera’s neurobit score was already abysmal, so she could afford to ruin it further as she had no hope whatsoever. She estimated this to lessen her time in her body by at least 13 seconds moving forward. Sineul was outraged with her proposal when they planned this, but she made him agree with it regardless.
> L98 BFrame: soul assimilation
- complete (1.3s)
“Voider mode!?” She exclaimed, finally figuring out what these new printed augments were for. While she wasn’t psychotic with Varul, she had gone completely overboard with the amount of battle power required.
There was no time to dwell on the specifics. She grabbed Varul’s biologics as she seamlessly integrated with the battle-frame, molding the foam around him like a roll. Her claws were still hot and melted the foam where she touched, but it was insulating and thick enough to hold for a while.
23 seconds until Varul’s arrival here.
She grabbed his body off the floor, held it with an impact dampening configuration with her arm decoupled from her body. She dashed far above the mountains behind the Vellek, running away from Varul. Zooming in backwards, she saw him pause momentarily, seeing his biologics being carried towards Rhea in a mad dash, towards the Dome Reactor. It would explode in 17 minutes and trap his biologics in a time loop.
She saw the realization kick in as his movements slowed for a little bit and then, the panic kick in within the next milliseconds. He used everything he had to dash towards her, over the Vellek, over the mountains. This was his fastest and longest dash yet, as he used the full power of his configuration’s klin shield to propel himself forward.
But she was faster.