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Channelknight Fadran

By Channelknight Fadran
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Channelknight Fadran

Channelknight Fadran

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HAPPY SIXTEEN THOUSAND POSTS

--uhh... me.

Hrm.

Anyhoo... welcome to my brand-new mini-story writing corner. Basically, this place is for anything on the shorter side that I happen to write. I have a number of short stories / novellas stuffed deep into my google drive that I'd honestly love to share with y'all, so I decided to make an entire scudding thread for them.

I'm gonna kick things off with the story that got me into the TABC anthology: The Forest Guardian. It's a soft fantasy based on various cool spiritual thingses like Princess Mononoke. It clocks in at just under six thousand words, so it shouldn't take too long to read through.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zLET5x3ZxXrHHnGdxuwyAjAPMovdMhaQ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108238934762779874751&rtpof=true&sd=true

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Medium

Medium

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wow.

w o w.

ww oo ww.

wowowowowowowowow.

....

 

Ẅ̷̨͖̻̯̳̤͕̼̩̦̟̰̫͒̈͛́̈̈́̔̽̇̚͝͠Ơ̵̡̦̻̦̝̯̩̪̱̄̽̔́̀͗͒͂̕͝ͅW̴̢̡̢̠͇̝̳̹̣͇͚͙͕͐

 

THAT WAS AWESOME DUDE. DARK, BUT AWESOME. SUPER DARK, BUT AWESOME. You have a really good writing style, dude.

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Channelknight Fadran

Channelknight Fadran

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Sneak peek at another thing I'm working on:

Spoiler

    Three hundred students stood in ranks, every one with their arms and legs tucked into a straight line. The room was dark, save for the few little electric lights hanging haphazardly from the ceiling. One of them flickered, leaving a large chunk of the students in occasional darkness. Walls of almost fossilized-like ruins and rooftops of ancient cement made up the entirety of the caverns, from ages ago when humanity first built these colossal cities. The area had been chosen for its lack of contact with the rest of civilization, leaving us with plenty of room to blow stuff up.
    All in all, it was a pretty sketchy-looking place for the 106th Cadet Roll.
    I wasn’t in the front or the back, though I was close enough to the commander down the middle. He was absolutely covered in muscles—enough so that even the sleeveless Cytocorps uniform still seemed too tight for him to be wearing comfortably. Then again, the suit’s whole point was to be skin-tight… I guess he just made it look a lot more menacing.
    “Soldiers die!” Commander Itrin shouted. “They may very well be dying as we speak! And you may very well be taking their place to fight and die some more!”
    Huh. An interesting way to kick off our training. I kept my back straight, arms tucked, head up, and eyes fixed on the commander.
    “You there!” He loomed over one of the students in the first row. “What’s your name?”
    The young man gulped, looking nervous. “Uhm… Tios, sir.”
    “Tios who?”
    “No clue.”
    The commander growled. “Wonderful, Tios No Clue. Let me tell you. You’ve got a seventy percent chance of never joining the Cyto corps, and a solid fifty that you’ll be dead after a year.”
    “I—those…” Tios shook his head. “That can’t be—”
    “You!” The commander moved on to another student. “Who are you?”
    The girl shoved her arms in closer, staring up at the sky. “Ahna Desie, sir!”
    “Look me in the eyes when I’m talking to you!”
    “Ahna—”
    “The eyes, I said!” The commander stepped away and glared at her. “Your eyes are the soul’s manifest! Do you want to dedicate your body? You mind? Your strength?”
    “Ye—yes, sir!”
    “Did you think that a soldier can fight with just that?”
    The girl looked like she was shaking. “No! No, sir!”
    “You have to put your very soul on the line!” The commander tapped the bridge of his nose with the end of his fist: the Cytocorps salute. “We don’t fight a war of weapons, Desie! We fight a war of people and monsters!”
    “O-of cour—”
    “You there!” He stared right at me. Holy wow were those eyes terrifying. “What’s your name?”
    I thought I was prepared for this sort of thing. Everyone else fumbled, panicked, wet their pants… no wonder. This man’s gaze was… something else.
    “V-Verde Aleri, sir!” I pointedly stared into his eyes, but it hurt like the devil and sent my hand up shaking to salute.
    “D’you have family, Aleri?”
    I swallowed, a pang of anxiety stabbing at my heart. “Yes, sir!”
    “They die!”
    W—what? I almost fell out of stance. That couldn’t mean… how… there couldn’t be any way he knew…
    “They die! Every one of them!” The commander continued striding, his eyes now off me. He was sweeping the crowd with them now. “If a superior officer tells you that it’s for the sake of dozens that you let a faiemen drag your mother’s bloody corpse away to be eaten in some cave, you listen! If the borders will only hold if you allow your little brother to wander outside and get himself torn to pieces, you stay!” He turned around and strode in the other direction. “If it’s a choice between your greatest friend and all of humanity, then you watch them die.”
    The entire room was silent, save for the echoes of his words.
    “Not a soul goes unbroken.” The commander returned to his place in the middle, sweeping his gaze across the students. “We will shatter you… and then you will shatter them.”

 

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Channelknight Fadran

Channelknight Fadran

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Gave up on that, so now I'm working on another another thing.

Such is the way of the author.

Spoiler

Prologue
    Sipping on coffee and scrubbing old stains off the panel, Keivan found himself staring out into the infinite expanse of the cosmos through the monitor. They were close enough to some old moon that the faintest stars couldn’t be seen, but other than that it was like he could see everything all at once. Lonely specks of white, blue, red, and yellow, all dotting infinity in their own way. How many of them were surrounded by the colossal spheres of rocks and gas? How many of them served as a homeland to billions of people?
    There really wasn’t any other reason to go out flying. Relaxing on a turret seat, flicking on the immersive, taking in breaths and sips of coffee… it was like staring out at the rain from a library’s window back at home. So much nothing, so much everything: and he was there.
    Ladies and gents, this is your admiral speaking. She cleared her throat, filling the comms with breathy coughs. We’re just a few mags out from the docking station. Once we arrive, feel free to disembark at your discretion, as we will be running maintenance for about seven hours, standard galactic. In local time, as I’m told, that is about half a day or thirteen and a half… ah… ‘ai’kalaki’ for this moon here—bear in mind, of course, that it is tidally-locked, and cycles are measured by the planetary rotation.
    That’ll be all, thanks. The line clicked.
    Keivan nodded, turning off the immersive and spinning around in his swivel chair a little. When had his mug gone empty? Honestly, his stomach had a mind of its own sometimes; he stood up to pour himself another cup.
    The entire ship rocked to one side, throwing him off-balance. His mug went flying as he grabbed the panel for balance, clattering against the wall and to the floor. Keivan’s stance was well-refined from years of enduring the hardest turbulence… and that just now hadn’t been any comet flyby.
    The alarms started blaring.
    “Garkshi,” He swore.
    Every monitor flashed on, closing down any and all background software to prioritize the alerts. The loading sequence—a progress bar over Airen Fleet’s crest—booted up, flickering each screen to its primary objective in seconds: ship integrity reports, area scanners, current protocol, and status of his own turret on the big one just under the controls. The intercoms reset to default, sending everyone’s shouts in his sector straight through to his speakers.
    “By Ega-sul, where the blast did they come from?” That was Captain Ngin, taking priority messaging. Everyone else’s voices went onto half volume. “Everyone, ring in!”
    The red button on the side of the dash started blinking. Keivan grabbed the back of the seat, pulled himself in, pulled the full headset on, and jabbed his finger into the button. “Granite Three, all set!”
    “Granite Fourteen, ready to go!”
    “Granite Twelve, savvy!”
    “Granite One, got a burnout! Minimum Required Stability: Consider negligible!”
    “Granite Seventeen, immersive static!”
    “Granite Nine, weapons lock still active! Further protocol requested!”
    Captain Ngin swore again. “One kell of a bodge-up we’ve got here. Nine, redouble shields and work maintenance! Seventeen, continue at your discretion! Everyone else…”
    There was a moment of silence—likely he was checking the monitors.
    “Fifty, prox, interceptors. Starboard side for now. Orders to fire when ready and to keep the fighting on one side.” He took his voice off priority and grunted. “Godspeed, works. Keep yourselves alive.”
    Then came the waiting.
    Keivan’s eyes were fixed on the grand expanse of space as projected from the camera pairs on his turret to the holographic immersives fixed to the chamber. A spheroid radial display blinked at the edge of his peripheral, centered around a rough 3D model of their ship and flashing triangles of various colors: red for Airen interceptors, blue for the enemy. Thus far the flagship’s sensors were still completely intact, sending real-time updates to everyone. Based on their current status, the enemy wouldn’t be wrapping around to their side anytime soon… not as long as starboard kept up their barrage of gunfire and interceptors.
    There’d been maybe a couple battles where he’d gotten off lucky: nothing more than a couple stray interceptors to blast down on his side. Every soldiers crossed their fingers and prayed whenever the alarms went off… but more often than not, they’d have some real hell to get through. Keivan had seen his fair share of it.
    Starboard was getting their fill right now, and that wouldn’t be the end of it. Fifty drones didn’t just appear out of the void. Someone was behind this, and they’d be something far less easy to deal with. Up there, command would be running through all their options in a panic, trying to decide where the rest of the enemy would be coming from. How many carriers would there be? Was this a whole fleet or just a heavy gunship? Was the focus on starboard a distraction or a compression of efforts?
    Most importantly: where the kell had all these ships come from?
    “We have incoming!” Mel—Granite One—called. “Drones, off-radar. Based on the signals there’s about a dozen.”
    “They’re taking their time of this warmup, huh?” Captain Ngin cracked his knuckles audibly. “Blow ‘em to pieces, works!”
    Keivan buckled in and swung the turret around to the left, twisting to the far end of his range. There they were: little specks against the stars in the distance. He flicked on the crosshairs and readjusted the distance focus, then cranked a lever at the side to reconfigure his turret to rapid-fire. His zooming in multiplied the sensitivity of his aim on from the controls, but the rapid spray of energy bolts should make up for that. It was a strategy he’d worked to a remarkable degree in the past.
    The moment the lens adjusted, Keivan reeled his gun to face the drones. They weren’t anywhere near large enough to hit from this distance—or any distance, for that matter. Drones were essentially just boosters with guns strapped to them, directed by either internalized algorithms or remote pilots depending on the model. These didn’t look like anything more than single-use weapons, given maybe a few dozen maneuvers to follow by stimuli. The most basic AI for the cheapest possible ships. No shields, no specialized engines: he had to wonder if even all the guns worked.
    Don’t underestimate anything, Keivan reminded himself. It didn’t matter if he’d seen the same old maneuver a million times, because one never knew when something completely unexpected was just a moment away. Unwarranted assumptions killed more men out in the void than any battleship.
    “Coming in range…” Mel held the last syllable for a few tense moments. “Now!”
    Keivan squeezed the trigger and opened fire.

 

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Channelknight Fadran

Channelknight Fadran

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On 5/25/2022 at 5:07 PM, Channelknight Fadran said:

Gave up on that, so now I'm working on another another thing.

Such is the way of the author.

  Reveal hidden contents

Prologue
    Sipping on coffee and scrubbing old stains off the panel, Keivan found himself staring out into the infinite expanse of the cosmos through the monitor. They were close enough to some old moon that the faintest stars couldn’t be seen, but other than that it was like he could see everything all at once. Lonely specks of white, blue, red, and yellow, all dotting infinity in their own way. How many of them were surrounded by the colossal spheres of rocks and gas? How many of them served as a homeland to billions of people?
    There really wasn’t any other reason to go out flying. Relaxing on a turret seat, flicking on the immersive, taking in breaths and sips of coffee… it was like staring out at the rain from a library’s window back at home. So much nothing, so much everything: and he was there.
    Ladies and gents, this is your admiral speaking. She cleared her throat, filling the comms with breathy coughs. We’re just a few mags out from the docking station. Once we arrive, feel free to disembark at your discretion, as we will be running maintenance for about seven hours, standard galactic. In local time, as I’m told, that is about half a day or thirteen and a half… ah… ‘ai’kalaki’ for this moon here—bear in mind, of course, that it is tidally-locked, and cycles are measured by the planetary rotation.
    That’ll be all, thanks. The line clicked.
    Keivan nodded, turning off the immersive and spinning around in his swivel chair a little. When had his mug gone empty? Honestly, his stomach had a mind of its own sometimes; he stood up to pour himself another cup.
    The entire ship rocked to one side, throwing him off-balance. His mug went flying as he grabbed the panel for balance, clattering against the wall and to the floor. Keivan’s stance was well-refined from years of enduring the hardest turbulence… and that just now hadn’t been any comet flyby.
    The alarms started blaring.
    “Garkshi,” He swore.
    Every monitor flashed on, closing down any and all background software to prioritize the alerts. The loading sequence—a progress bar over Airen Fleet’s crest—booted up, flickering each screen to its primary objective in seconds: ship integrity reports, area scanners, current protocol, and status of his own turret on the big one just under the controls. The intercoms reset to default, sending everyone’s shouts in his sector straight through to his speakers.
    “By Ega-sul, where the blast did they come from?” That was Captain Ngin, taking priority messaging. Everyone else’s voices went onto half volume. “Everyone, ring in!”
    The red button on the side of the dash started blinking. Keivan grabbed the back of the seat, pulled himself in, pulled the full headset on, and jabbed his finger into the button. “Granite Three, all set!”
    “Granite Fourteen, ready to go!”
    “Granite Twelve, savvy!”
    “Granite One, got a burnout! Minimum Required Stability: Consider negligible!”
    “Granite Seventeen, immersive static!”
    “Granite Nine, weapons lock still active! Further protocol requested!”
    Captain Ngin swore again. “One kell of a bodge-up we’ve got here. Nine, redouble shields and work maintenance! Seventeen, continue at your discretion! Everyone else…”
    There was a moment of silence—likely he was checking the monitors.
    “Fifty, prox, interceptors. Starboard side for now. Orders to fire when ready and to keep the fighting on one side.” He took his voice off priority and grunted. “Godspeed, works. Keep yourselves alive.”
    Then came the waiting.
    Keivan’s eyes were fixed on the grand expanse of space as projected from the camera pairs on his turret to the holographic immersives fixed to the chamber. A spheroid radial display blinked at the edge of his peripheral, centered around a rough 3D model of their ship and flashing triangles of various colors: red for Airen interceptors, blue for the enemy. Thus far the flagship’s sensors were still completely intact, sending real-time updates to everyone. Based on their current status, the enemy wouldn’t be wrapping around to their side anytime soon… not as long as starboard kept up their barrage of gunfire and interceptors.
    There’d been maybe a couple battles where he’d gotten off lucky: nothing more than a couple stray interceptors to blast down on his side. Every soldiers crossed their fingers and prayed whenever the alarms went off… but more often than not, they’d have some real hell to get through. Keivan had seen his fair share of it.
    Starboard was getting their fill right now, and that wouldn’t be the end of it. Fifty drones didn’t just appear out of the void. Someone was behind this, and they’d be something far less easy to deal with. Up there, command would be running through all their options in a panic, trying to decide where the rest of the enemy would be coming from. How many carriers would there be? Was this a whole fleet or just a heavy gunship? Was the focus on starboard a distraction or a compression of efforts?
    Most importantly: where the kell had all these ships come from?
    “We have incoming!” Mel—Granite One—called. “Drones, off-radar. Based on the signals there’s about a dozen.”
    “They’re taking their time of this warmup, huh?” Captain Ngin cracked his knuckles audibly. “Blow ‘em to pieces, works!”
    Keivan buckled in and swung the turret around to the left, twisting to the far end of his range. There they were: little specks against the stars in the distance. He flicked on the crosshairs and readjusted the distance focus, then cranked a lever at the side to reconfigure his turret to rapid-fire. His zooming in multiplied the sensitivity of his aim on from the controls, but the rapid spray of energy bolts should make up for that. It was a strategy he’d worked to a remarkable degree in the past.
    The moment the lens adjusted, Keivan reeled his gun to face the drones. They weren’t anywhere near large enough to hit from this distance—or any distance, for that matter. Drones were essentially just boosters with guns strapped to them, directed by either internalized algorithms or remote pilots depending on the model. These didn’t look like anything more than single-use weapons, given maybe a few dozen maneuvers to follow by stimuli. The most basic AI for the cheapest possible ships. No shields, no specialized engines: he had to wonder if even all the guns worked.
    Don’t underestimate anything, Keivan reminded himself. It didn’t matter if he’d seen the same old maneuver a million times, because one never knew when something completely unexpected was just a moment away. Unwarranted assumptions killed more men out in the void than any battleship.
    “Coming in range…” Mel held the last syllable for a few tense moments. “Now!”
    Keivan squeezed the trigger and opened fire.

 

Finished up the prologue here

Spoiler

Prologue

    Sipping on coffee and scrubbing old stains off the panel, Keivan found himself staring out into the infinite expanse of the cosmos through the monitor. They were close enough to some old moon that the faintest stars couldn’t be seen, but other than that it was like he could see everything all at once. Lonely specks of white, blue, red, and yellow, all dotting infinity in their own way. How many of them were surrounded by the colossal spheres of rocks and gas? How many of them served as a homeland to billions of people?
    There really wasn’t any other reason to go out flying. Relaxing on a turret seat, flicking on the immersive, taking in breaths and sips of coffee… it was like staring out at the rain from a library’s window back at home. So much nothing, so much everything: and he was there.
    Ladies and gents, this is your admiral speaking. She cleared her throat, filling the comms with breathy coughs. We’re just a few mags out from the docking station. Once we arrive, feel free to disembark at your discretion, as we will be running maintenance for about seven hours, standard galactic. In local time, as I’m told, that is about half a day or thirteen and a half… ah… ‘ai’kalaki’ for this moon here—bear in mind, of course, that it is tidally-locked, and cycles are measured by the planetary rotation.
    That’ll be all, thanks. The line clicked.
    Keivan nodded, turning off the immersive and spinning around in his swivel chair a little. When had his mug gone empty? Honestly, his stomach had a mind of its own sometimes; he stood up to pour himself another cup.
    The entire ship rocked to one side, throwing him off-balance. His mug went flying as he grabbed the panel for balance, clattering against the wall and to the floor. Keivan’s stance was well-refined from years of enduring the hardest turbulence… and that just now hadn’t been any comet flyby.
    The alarms started blaring.
    “Garkshi,” He swore.
    Every monitor flashed on, closing down any and all background software to prioritize the alerts. The loading sequence—a progress bar over Airen Fleet’s crest—booted up, flickering each screen to its primary objective in seconds: ship integrity reports, area scanners, current protocol, and status of his own turret on the big one just under the controls. The intercoms reset to default, sending everyone’s shouts in his sector straight through to his speakers.
    “By Ega-sul, where the blast did they come from?” That was Captain Ngin, taking priority messaging. Everyone else’s voices went onto half volume. “Everyone, ring in!”
    The red button on the side of the dash started blinking. Keivan grabbed the back of the seat, pulled himself in, pulled the full headset on, and jabbed his finger into the button. “Granite Three, all set!”
    “Granite Fourteen, ready to go!”
    “Granite Twelve, savvy!”
    “Granite One, got a burnout! Minimum Required Stability: Consider negligible!”
    “Granite Seventeen, immersive static!”
    “Granite Nine, weapons lock still active! Further protocol requested!”
    Captain Ngin swore again. “One kell of a bodge-up we’ve got here. Nine, redouble shields and work maintenance! Seventeen, continue at your discretion! Everyone else…”
    There was a moment of silence—likely he was checking the monitors.
    “Fifty, prox, interceptors. Starboard side for now. Orders to fire when ready and to keep the fighting on one side.” He took his voice off priority and grunted. “Godspeed, works. Keep yourselves alive.”
    Then came the waiting.
    Keivan’s eyes were fixed on the grand expanse of space as projected from the camera pairs on his turret to the holographic immersives fixed to the chamber. A spheroid radial display blinked at the edge of his peripheral, centered around a rough 3D model of their ship and flashing triangles of various colors: red for Airen interceptors, blue for the enemy. Thus far the flagship’s sensors were still completely intact, sending real-time updates to everyone. Based on their current status, the enemy wouldn’t be wrapping around to their side anytime soon… not as long as starboard kept up their barrage of gunfire and interceptors.
    There’d been maybe a couple battles where he’d gotten off lucky: nothing more than a couple stray interceptors to blast down on his side. Every soldiers crossed their fingers and prayed whenever the alarms went off… but more often than not, they’d have some real hell to get through. Keivan had seen his fair share of it.
    Starboard was getting their fill right now, and that wouldn’t be the end of it. Fifty drones didn’t just appear out of the void. Someone was behind this, and they’d be something far less easy to deal with. Up there, command would be running through all their options in a panic, trying to decide where the rest of the enemy would be coming from. How many carriers would there be? Was this a whole fleet or just a heavy gunship? Was the focus on starboard a distraction or a compression of efforts?
    Most importantly: where the kell had all these ships come from?
    “We have incoming!” Mel—Granite One—called. “Drones, off-radar. Based on the signals there’s about a dozen.”
    “They’re taking their time of this warmup, huh?” Captain Ngin cracked his knuckles audibly. “Blow ‘em to pieces, works!”
    Keivan buckled in and swung the turret around to the left, twisting to the far end of his range. There they were: little specks against the stars in the distance. He flicked on the crosshairs and readjusted the distance focus, then cranked a lever at the side to reconfigure his turret to rapid-fire. His zooming in multiplied the sensitivity of his aim on from the controls, but the rapid spray of energy bolts should make up for that. It was a strategy he’d worked to a remarkable degree in the past.
    The moment the lens adjusted, Keivan reeled his gun to face the drones. They weren’t anywhere near large enough to hit from this distance—or any distance, for that matter. Drones were essentially just boosters with guns strapped to them, directed by either internalized algorithms or remote pilots depending on the model. These didn’t look like anything more than single-use weapons, given maybe a few dozen maneuvers to follow by stimuli. The most basic AI for the cheapest possible ships. No shields, no specialized engines: he had to wonder if even all the guns worked.
    Don’t underestimate anything, Keivan reminded himself. It didn’t matter if he’d seen the same old maneuver a million times, because one never knew when something completely unexpected was just a moment away. Unwarranted assumptions killed more men out in the void than any battleship.
    “Coming in range…” Mel held the last syllable for a few tense moments. “Now!”
    Keivan squeezed the trigger and opened fire.
    An unending spray of bolts flowed from the rotary, flashing against the darkness. They soared out into the enemy formation, most going wild from the distance. All across their sector, the bolts rocketed out into the void: rapid-fire, standard auto, concentrated beams, and all the types in-between. For every shot there could be anywhere between two and five thousand kiloFactors packed in, capable of pulverizing a concrete building.
    Most of them zipped out into the nowhere, doomed to diffuse and dissipate over the next several hours.
    Come on, you worthless drones. Keivan cracked his knuckles for a moment, then pressed his hands back to the triggers to continue fire. Open up for me a little.
    No matter how long he did this, there were always those tense first seconds before he could read their movements. Every turn, pivot, and bank seemed erratic and unpredictable: the kinds of motions that could let them weave towards the ship and open fire. If they shut down his turrets, that was it: his services were just about through. He’d be sitting and waiting for the rest of the battle. 
Maybe it wasn’t anyone’s dream to run out into the field… but sometimes it was a million times worse to sit alone and watch everyone else do it for you.
But the weakness passed. The drones were moving in fixed patterns. They were all seeded by the actions of him and the others, feeding strings of numbers through logic gates to tell the engines and weapons what to do. Maybe the mechanics of it weren’t completely predictable, but the outcomes certainly could be.
You lead the pack down to the left… Keivan pulled his turret upwards, fighting the heavy recoil by all the energy rounds, swoop around, bear back in…
There!
The stream of bolts slammed into the drones, cracking through the flimsy shields and bursting into the circuitry. Exploding on contact, the bolts broke through the metal plating and into the engine chamber: that would be the end of the drone. All the details happened in an instant, unseen to any of them specifically—all Keivan saw was the bright flash and silent sphere of plasma spray shrapnel and debris into the void, where they’d soar endlessly until some atmosphere burned them up for good.
Everyone else had managed to get the read on them by now as well, tearing through the ranks of drones like a machine gun on tissue paper. Responding to the sudden loss of signal, all the drones broke off and soared away. They’d regroup soon enough to make another attack, but for the time being they’d be gone.
“That’s it, works!” Captain Ngin sounded pretty enthusiastic, given that it was nothing more than a few dozen drones they’d taken care of. “Keep up the pace.”
“Everyone good?” Keivan asked. While the captain was generally on top of these things, he tended to skip protocol when things went well. Nobody replied negatively, though.
“How many’d y’all get?” That would be Granite Eight: ever the overachiever, he was. “I’m saying four myself.”
“Aesch… I only got three.”
“Five for sure!”
“Something between one and twenty, I bet.”
Keivan shrugged. “Not zero. I can tell you that.”
“No time for talk! Look alive, y’all!” Mel took priority messaging. “Two squadrons, coming in!”
“They’ve got us flanked, the devils!” The captain growled. “Alright, I got us down at this end. Three, take command down there.”
“You got it, boss.” Keivan pressed to maintain priority on his dash, then zoomed his sights back in. “Mel, you got eyes?”
“Like kell I got eyes. What, do you think I’ve been seeing with my nose this whole time?” She transmitted a visual to everyone down of ten. “Bigger drones this time. I think that’s a gunship near the back… might be manned, even.”
“Two, three, seven, nine: pick off the cowards on the side.” Keivan loaded the orders through the monitor, flicking switches as he called off numbers. “One, four, five, six, ten: focus fire on that gunship. See if one of you can rupture that shield.”
“At this range, pil?”
“I’ve asked you to do crazier things.” Keivan aligned his turret, redoubling exhaust release for the time being to cool the engines back down. “Keep on comms, everybody. Follow orders, act at discretion. Take priority if things go south.”
“Roger that.”
The ships entered range, and the gunfire continued. With the drones flying in tighter formation, Keivan managed to pick off just a couple near the start. They soared in too familiar a pattern for him to miss, leaving their shells spiraling off into the abyss. From there the drones loosened up, flying in pairs to attract their fire.
That flag wasn’t just a gunship: it was a command center. It was a multi-manned crew, then? Someone to fly, someone to command the drones… at the rate, they might have separate gunners and technicians as well. It was always hard to tell shapes and sizes at this distance, but now that it was approaching…
“Two, seven, reassign to the gunship. Me and nine’ll keep the drones from blowing us to pieces, but if you guys can get it down then these things’ll be nothing more than old piles of metal with guns attached.” Keivan swiveled to the left, following a drone pair and blasting through one of their hulls. “Disable if possible, but… well, you know the drill.”
You didn’t survive the void without getting your hands dirty.
Granite Five took point, reconfiguring to piercer and launching an initial pair of missiles at the gunship. Any shield serving up to par would block more than just a few high-velocity shots, meaning the only consistent way to break through was with something a tad slower. There wasn’t any way to reduce a bolt’s speed without having it break apart mid-flight, but by packing the necessary power into a container…
Two pairs of drone interceptors shot towards the missiles, opening fire without hesitation. For the first time that day, the enemy fired back, sending their own stream of plasma bolts at Airen weaponry.
Kell. That’s what he’d been afraid of.
The bolts sliced through the missiles’ metal casing and ignited the plasma packed within, blinding just about everybody in a moment of pure energy expanding through the cosmos. The metal wouldn’t even fly about as debris: more likely it had been vaporized in mere instants.
At the very least, the sudden influx of energy had slightly jammed the transmissions between drone and gunship. Keivan managed to catch a couple reverted to backup protocol and send them reeling in their own plasma, but mostly tried read the gunship as best he could. At least his hunch had been right: that ship was shielded and armed heavily enough that it was worth risking a whole flight of drones to defend. Breaking that armor would finish that endeavor to take out this side of his ship.
“On second thought, gentlemen,” Keivan said, “focus fire on the drones. Let’s get Five a clear shot.”
Flashes and streaks of light filled his vision, sending the void ablaze with plasma. The drones flew in evasive patterns, but there was only so much even their more advanced computers could handle. Nearly a dozen of them had blown to smithereens in the first few seconds of the chaos, and several others in the next minutes of gunfire.
Keivan’s fingers never let off on the trigger, save for the few precautionary moments to release pent-up heat and leftover gases. His stream of plasma bolts was relentless, mowing through the drones and sending them careening into the void. Some bolts sliced through the mechanics chamber, disabling the drones from performing any further actions and sending them spiraling into the abyss; others broke into the energy stores and caused the entire body to erupt.
He tried to make a rough head count of how many they’d need to destroy in order to stop the swarm from taking out their missiles. The display to his left kept him posted on how many individual ships were within range, currently reading up to nearly a hundred: not enough to make a meaningful counterattack, but certainly sufficient to keep their fire at bay for just a few more minutes. Destroying half might be enough, but it would only take two or three lucky shots to destroy each missile, and there was no telling what backup forces that gunship might have.
What was it lining itself up for anyways? Flanking, for sure, but from where? Against what? It was headed downport, sailing at sixty percent speed with shields at full power. It certainly wasn’t being conservative with its energy stores, but thus far had no signs of a counterattack. If only he could get a read on its target…
“Reinforcements, sir!” Mei called out. “By Gleinkei… kell, they’ve got pods. Three.”
So this gunship was worth sending manned spacecraft to defend? Had they forced this enemy to show its hand, or was this nothing more than a feint? “Five, we’re taking the pods. Everyone else keep at it. Get aggressive.”
“What did you think we were doing?”
Two turrets down, Five clicked out of missiles and switched to a concentration beam, flagging Keivan with a green to clear the way. A risky play that kid was making, but he didn’t have any reason to protest.
The maelstrom of fire continued, arcing across the void as Keivan swiveled downwards to melt through the drones in the way of the newcomers. The pilots shot out away from each other at the sudden downpour of fire, splitting up soaring about. Intercepted transmission readouts began to read across the corner of Keivan’s display, but only read gibberish without the full encryption broken yet.
Keivan focused fire on his leftmost pod, tracing its path with his bolts. It constantly spun as it soared about, making its model a complete mystery to Keivan’s eyes. It ducked about and around with each passing moment, a chaotic trail in its of light  wake. The pod had yet to perform any offensive maneuvers… and, come to think of it, neither had the drones. The only plasma fire from any of the enemies thus afr had been to intercept Five’s missiles. What were they waiting for?
Then everything went dark.
It didn’t happen all at once. The overhead lights and automatic maneuver compensators went first, ultimately stalling his movements and sending several dozen bolts of plasma wildly out into the void. All the subsystems on his turret went next, setting off every warning light on his display - but only for a split second right before the immersive went dead as well.
For a whole three seconds, Keivan was in complete blackness and silence. No lights, no comms - not even the weak hum of the coffee machine to his left. It was perfectly still.
Then those moments passed and the ship began to rumble.
The turret switched to backup power, throwing the lights and comms back on. A cacophony of voices over general went off while his immersive rebooted.
“Everything just went dark—”
“...for anyone else?”
“I lost visual!”
The captain wasted no time in putting his voice over priority. “Can it, works! Does anyone have intel?”
“Nothing from the bridge, reactor, hull… nowhere, sir! Someone killed the master commlines!”
Keivan’s immersive rebooted, giving him a full view of the battle once again.
“FULL SHIELDS!” He shouted, taking priority over the captain. “FULL ON SHIELDS. THEY—”
His arms instinctively shot up to guard his face as a whole barrage of missiles crashed into the immersive display, tearing through his almost completely unguarded turret and killing the cams. The explosion’s shockwave rippled through the ship and shook his chair, sending vibrations all the way across his desk. Dozens of warning lights began flashing red across his dashboard.
“Damn, they killed the power!” Ngin took priority back, sending a loud thump through the comms: slamming his desk, it seemed. “That wasn’t any accident. We’re cut off! By Jiovin…”
Keivan blinked away the shock, then flicked the switch to retract his controls and kicked himself back in his chair. He leapt up onto his feet and threw off the headset, tapping a button on the side to patch comms through to the compartment loudspeaker. The shouting continued as he began scrambling through the manual controls, navigating an entire array of lights, buttons, and switches before settling on some near the bottom right: a pair of covered buttons to access his bot supply.
Before pressing those he flicked another switch located clear across the dashboard, setting the display from immersive to holographic. With the buttons pressed a small projection flickered to life above his dash: pathetic compared to the immersives, but significantly less energy-consuming. It listed how many of each drones he had access to with visual, statistical, and general summary sections: an MD-13, AD-72, and an SD-99. Nothing remarkable, but it would have to do.
He sent on the MD, trusting his own instincts in this situation over that of the calculative systems that the AD had to offer. In seconds the drone had been ejected from its hold, its camera view flickering to life across his holographic.
What he saw was just about awful.
A whole barrage of plasma fire flung out across the ship’s hull, now easily tearing through the backup power shields. Airlocks and life sustainers were going off all over the place—luckily for everyone, the enemy didn’t seem intent on destroying the ship entirely. As each section of shield crackled and shattered away, though, Keivan could only imagine how easily they could blow the entire vessel apart at any time.
His own section looked relatively undamaged, though there were several portions of his turret’s outer armor that had been burned through and disabled. Acrid vapors drifted uncannily outwards as the plasma bolts dissipated, enveloping the turret in a half-stilled silvery smoke.
Keivan got right to work on these, navigating the drone through the wreckage to scan the most damaged portions. General readouts flickered across the top left corner of the holographic: heavily damaged electrical array, potentially compromised mechanical controls, effective destruction of heat maintenance… amongst other things.
“Mine looks half shot,” he said into the comms. “I can replace the wiring… kell, I don’t think I can aim it.”
“They sliced my damn barrel in half. Can’t believe it…”
“My reactor’s hit. The whole thing blew. Kell…”
“They jammed mine halfway ‘tween configs. God knows what’ll happen if I try to shoot it now.”
The captain took priority. “Anyone with function?”
“Pretty sure, but I’m locked into beam.”
“Mine’ll overheat but it’ll shoot.”
Keivan scanned the displays again. “Mine’s aiming right at that battleship, but I’m on rapid.”
“Blast. See what you can do, Three. Eleven, Thirteen: hold for now.” He grumbled into the comms. “I don’t think those attacks were any accident. We’ve got a real situation here.”
Keivan got back to the drone, forcing a hard read on the damaged electricals first. It would take maybe a minute or two for the MD to scan, print, and replace the circuits there, so he set it secondary and sent out a survey drone to scan the mechanical damage in the meantime. 
The camera quality for this one was incredibly improved, though right now he frankly couldn’t care less. Keivan piloted it over to the misty bolthole inside the turret’s main housing. It had effectively blown through all aiming mechanisms… but maybe he could still switch configs? With a bit of luck and the right timing he could probably send a few missiles into the battleship’s shield, and whatever turrets hadn’t been completely blown could maybe do some real damage to it.
“I think I have a shot,” he said, swapping camview back to the MD as cut away the broken circuit board. “Anyone with control on standby; if you don’t mind, sir.”
“Not at all, work. Have at it. I told you: act at your discre—”
He was interrupted by an explosion… but not from the hull.
This one had come from behind them.
“rust—” Captain Ngin’s profanity was somewhat muted, his voice sounding a bit far from the mic. “They’ve infiltrated the damn ship!”
Kevain was staring at the door behind him, then tore his gaze away back to the holographic. The drone was printing the replacement part now, but that could take several minutes. That explosion hadn’t sounded far at all, and now distant zips and bangs were sounding off: the intense depressurization of plasma weapons alongside regular firearms. They sounded… the break hall, just a couple hallways down. That was the only place their guards could maintain a shootout like that: any further and the invaders would’ve made it to his chamber already.
Print projection - 1:44.22.
Two minutes.
“I need those drones taken care of,” Keivan said, running over the diagnostics report one more time. “Whatever you guys can do to thin their numbers… as long as I can switch to missiles I can hit that ship hard.”
“I’ll see what I can do, mate.”
“You got it.”
“This old gun’s got a few more shots left in her, I bet…”
Plasma fire began spraying out into into the void again, taking the mostly stationary drones by surprise for a full second or two and carving a sizeable dent into their numbers. His fellow operators had concentrated fire on larger clusters, scattering out individuals to drop their threat level. A satisfying smattering of lights went off as the bolts sliced into the drones’ fuel chambers and exploded them.
But the moment didn’t last long. Keivan’s view with his little SD wasn’t excellent, but he didn’t need eyes on the action to tell what was going on. The remaining ships regrouped in instants, flying down the firing turrets and launching a barrage of plasma right back at them. The frustrated cries of disappointment shot across the comms as eac turret was completely destroyed and disabled.
Was that enough? Keivan checked the number’s display again. In those few crucial seconds, the turrets had destroyed almost a dozen full drones: impressive - commendable, even - but far from the kinds of numbers Keivan needed.
Print Projection: 0:57.23.
More turrets began to fire: above and below their level, apparently keeping posted on the situation. Captain Ngin had been being rather quiet for a last few seconds. Each scuffed-up, battle-worn turret left fighting ejected as many plasma bolts as it could before the drones and pods regrouped and took the thing clean out.
He set his turrets to reconfigure to missiles immediately after repairs were complete.
Print Projection: 0:48.59
The gunshots from down the hall began to fade away. It was a welcome dose of silence… but for whom’s victory it spoke to was unknown to him.
0:47.00…
0:46.00…
0:45.00…
“Step away from the console, please.”
The breaking of the silence was jarring. Keivan froze, breathing gone dry and shaky. A touch of uncomfortable warmth had started against his back.
“Hands on your head.” The voice was… it sounded young. Akin to a young adult, perhaps. “Nice and easy.”
Keivan took his hands away from the console, pulling them slowly up to the back of his head. “Who—”
“I’ll ask the questions. Name and rank?”
He took in another shaky breath. “Laren. Keivan Laren. Lieutenant.”
“How many years have you been stationed here, Lieutenant?”
“Five. I was on a military-class for two years before that.”
“Quite a lot of experience, then. Why not go for a promotion?”
0:32.00…
Keivan pinched his lips together against his tongue, eyes on the clock. “You hear stories. About how they’ll torture officers.”
“That’s against the Conventions.”
“You hear them.”
The captor clicked his tongue. “Who do you believe you’re up against?”
0:26.14…
“I assumed pirates. Couldn’t tell you which.”
“Not quite, but close enough I suppose.”
0:23.66…
“Last question, then I’ll let you go line up with the rest of the crew. Answer well and you’ll be free to go.”
0:20.00…
Keivan took in a breath.
The captor leaned in, his voice coming uncomfortably close to Keivan’s ear. The pinprick of heat against his back grew a bit warmer.
“What do you know about an individual known as the Yinlander?”
His breath caught. An assassin, renowned throughout the galaxy, claiming to be from a long-lost empire from a million years ago. Many boasted the same story, but none with the ancient blades or arts to show for it. None knew this man’s face, origin, or history: only a trail of crime reports and leaked jobs. He’d been a cold case for decades.
“Nothing anyone else doesn’t.” Keivan replied, and that was the truth.
The captor nodded. Keivan could hear the rustling of… what, a mask? A hat? “I suppose not from a simple lieutenant like yourself.” With those words the captor pulled back away, bringing the heat with him.
0:03.11…
“Stand up slowly. Keep your arms there. Line up down the hall, don’t speak back, and don’t make a fuss.”
Print Complete.
Reconfiguring… A loud whirr came from the console.
The captor stopped. “What’s that?”
A little red light flickered on the dashboard. Successful swap to missile configuration, with full stock and charge.
Keivan shot up onto his feet and shoved his hands onto the controls. The captor moved to apprehend him, but didn’t catch him in time to stop Keivan from squeezing the trigger and launching a full barrage of plasma-bearing shells into the gunship’s shield array.
“I GOT ‘EM! I—”
The captor grabbed Keivan’s shoulder with an iron-hard grip, throwing him down to the floor and pushing his head underneath his boot. The heat returned, this time shining on his face. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the edge of a dark black blade of sorts.
“Shield’s down, works! Now!”
From his position down on the floor underneath someone’s boot, Keivan couldn’t see a thing, but judging from how the weight of his captor pressed further down on his head he could imagine what might be showing up on his monitor screen right now. There wasn’t any audio of course, but some clarifying buzzes and dings from the system went off to confirm the barrage of plasma fire cutting through the gunship’s outer walls and destroying what Keivan imagined was a significant portion of that side.
A part of him wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t very well say anything right now.
“You’re going to regret that,” the captor hissed.
Shouts sounded from down the hall. Certainly not from his own ship’s crew, if this not-child had them all lined up as he claimed. Word must’ve gotten through.
The boot left Keivan’s face, and the iron grip returned to his shoulder to heave him to his feet. “Get up. No more games. I won’t hesitate to use this next time.”
Keivan let the captor lead him from behind, still yet to glance at his face. Hands once again behind his head, walking with the old soldier’s stride he still kept on him for special occasions and rainy days. Despite the energy blade held terrifyingly close to his spine and the seething rage of the man who would very soon be deciding his fate, he couldn’t help but crack a tiny smile.
In all his years operating that turret, not once had he let an enemy fly away without getting a little hurt of their own.

 

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