No matter how much he tried, Ves couldn’t recall what happened when his mind got sucked into the Kaius. It was as if conscious mind got pulled into the vast vortex of the chira ch’s subconscious.
Fortunately, most of the workers ignored his unmoving presence. They probably figured he was making calculations in his mind and didn’t wish to interrupt his train of thought.
Ves departed the workshop with a flush on his cheeks and spent so ti to freshen up. All the while, he ntally assessed his state of mind. Nothing appeared to have changed. He didn’t get the sense that he lost anything, nor did he gain any boons from the encounter.
He simply lost half an hour of his ti.
"I don’t believe I wasted my ti."
Sothing must have happened, his instincts told him. The uncertainty of what happened and whether it changed sothing in him gnawed at his nerves.
Lately, the more he dipped into taphysics, the more he realized how unfathomable the unknown represented. Doctor Jutland’s shenanigans alone amply demonstrated its potential as well as its dangers.
In order to be certain of his health, Ves returned to the treatnt center and had himself checked. Predictably, they found nothing unusual, they did state that his regulator organ beca increasingly enshed with his spine.
"It’s a fascinating process." Doctor llow admiringly told him. "It’s as if your body isn’t content with these strange new additions and seeks to subsu them completely. Rarely have I witnessed such initiative without being prodded by an outside stimulus. From what I’ve learned of Jutland’s research, the regulator organ is supposed to stay self-contained in the event he wishes to update an older organ for a better-performing one."
"What about my Jutland organ?"
"There are no signs your body is rging it with anything else. It wouldn’t make sense to do so since it serves a unique role."
Ves nodded in relief. "That’s good to hear."
Despite the seemingly benign changes, llow cautioned him about the consequences of deviating from the human norm. "A different physique requires a different set of treatnts. Standard dicines designed for baseline humans may react unpredictably when applied to cases such as yours. For example, a simple sleeping pill might make your drowsy for a second or put you in a coma. It’s best to have a personal doctor on retainer who truly understands your body."
He’d consider such luxuries later. After thanking Doctor llow, Ves left the treatnt center and returned to the workshop. The entire site buzzed with energy this ti.
"Ves!" Chief Ramirez called. "I don’t know how the scientists figured it out, but the Kaius is actually responding to the cockpit now!"
Ves looked with interest as the Kaius gently lifted a limb before lowering it again. It did so for all six of limbs, demonstrating the exact control the pilot in the cockpit had over the appropriated ch.
Did he unlock the Kaius sohow with his weird thirty-minute seance?
"Is the pilot reporting any issues connecting with the Kaius?" He asked, concerned about the ntal health of whoever served as a guinea pig. "I imagine it’s quite dangerous to interface with a half-living ch."
"There are doctors monitoring his condition. As soon as they detect sothing amiss, they’ll pull the plug."
The Kaius turned into a docile machine, seemingly willing to let the ch pilot take the lead. The neural interface connected the pilot to the ch without encountering any hindrance this ti, but Ves still had his misgivings. It didn’t make much sense for the subconsciousness buried deep to give in so suddenly.
"Still, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it." Ramirez muttered. "We only need to get it to work for a day at most. By that ti it’ll be clear if we’re getting rescued or getting captured."
They spent the next couple of hours undoing all of the damage the Kaius suffered. While the exobiologists did an amazing job regenerating damaged tissue, the ch would never regain its full mobility. They had better luck plugging the gaps with machinery, though most of the tis they went half-cocked due to lack of ti.
Ves shook his head as he supervised the installation of additional laser cannons on the flanks of the Kaius. "Imagine certifying this beast. The MTA would hate this ch."
Their hasty modifications had rush job written all over it. Ves decided to add the laser cannons on a whim because the Kaius possessed an abundance of power. They hadn’t even been properly calibrated. Furthermore, they only put in a standard targeting system designed for humanoid chs for lack of anything better.
Ensign D’Amato shook his head. "It’ll be a miracle if it can hit sothing beyond spitting distance."
"It’s not ant to be a sharpshooter. The great thing about installing laser weapons onto the Kaius is that its heat organ acts as both an inexhaustable power source while also functioning as the perfect heat sink. it will be able to devastate a whole company of chs on its own with its laser cannons firing almost nonstop."
Frankly, the heat organ functioned as a massive cheat in this regard. Ordinarily, directed energy weapons had no place in the hunt for hexapods, so the groundside team only stocked a couple of lasers for contingency purposes. Their current crisis qualified as one.
After several hours of working, the pirate fleet in orbit finally made a move. An alarm alerted everyone to the threat.
Ensign D’Amato approached Ves. "Our monitoring system has detected many incoming transports. They’re on track to enter the cavern entrance."
"How much ti do we have left?"
"Two hours at most. It depends on how many chs they’ve committed to the first wave. The incoming fleet is still fifteen hours away, so we only need to hold on for half a day before the pirates beco preoccupied with bigger enemies."
Ves thought about the exhausted personnel and worn out equipnt and figured they’d be hard-pressed to hold their ground. It wasn’t impossible to hold for thirteen hours, but the pirates must be feeling the crunch as well and hoped to wrap it up quickly.
The ch technicians quickly finalized their current assignnts and made sure that nothing stuck out from the Kaius. With the Olympians wrecked, the Kaius took over their role as the hunting platoon’s bulwark.
When he looked over the mobilized chs, he noticed the imbalance between lee chs and ranged chs. Against hexapods, such a deploynt made sense.
"It’s not as bad as it looks." D’Amato told him while they retreated to the inner base. As noncombatants, they played no role in the upcoming battle, especially when the ensign still waited for a new arm. "The Dragons of the Void are impatient for results. They can’t run out the clock by sieging us from a distance. Once they commit their chs to a full-on assault, our lee chs will be able to hold the line."
They quietly waited until the first signs of danger erged through the haze in the air.
"Are those aerial chs?" Ves asked with an astounded voice.
Around two squads of flying chs buzzed around the base. Their flight systems scread as they strained to keep the fliers aloft. A couple of turrets fired projectiles at them but their speed and distance along with their ECM kept them out of harm’s way.
To all accounts, the pirate chs behaved as if they were playing with their food. The passes high in the air was ant to test their defenses while observing the base camp’s exact layout. The low-level miasma forced them to fly a little closer, but in turn it also interfered with everyone’s targeting systems.
In the anti, half of the defenders looked on with anticipation.
"There they go!"
The native wildlife finally detected the delicious morsels darting in the air. Huge flocks of hexabats converged from far away as they honed in on the heat emitted by the chs trying to fly under 1.4 tis standard gravity.
The formation in the air fell apart as thousands of hexabats gnawed at their lightly armored fras. While their armor proved to be a little more resilient than those enjoyed by civilian transports, many of their surface components such as sensors and joints sustained a lot of damage.
Furthermore, the aerial chs had mainly been configured as riflen and harassers, so they lacked the lee options to throw off the hexabats. They shot their lasers and rifles as best they could, but even as they harvested hundreds of hexabats, thousands more flocked to their constant heat build-up.
The invading force suffered a heavy blow with the loss of all of their flight squadrons. Best of all, the defenders didn’t even have to lift a finger.
Ves shook his head as he sympathised with the hapless pirate chs. "I guess it’s safe to say they haven’t received any intelligence of what is going on here."
"The Dragons of the Void haven’t received any transmissions from base camp." Ensign D’Amato nodded. "Our investigators suspect that one of our attached rcenary vessels left behind a dead drop whenever they transitioned into FTL. That left a trail of breadcrumbs right into the Groening System."
"Didn’t you keep an eye on this kind of stuff?"
"We did, but evidently the traitors outsmarted us."
In any case, the fact that the pirates only gained so coordinates and nothing else ant that they ca in blind. Their lack of knowledge concerning the habits of the hexapod life forms would co to bite them back several tis.
Ves could already imagine the land-bound hexapods drawing to their heat emissions, though the expedition had already cleaned up most of the creatures in the vicinity.
The landbound pirate chs took their ti approaching the base, as constant hexapod harassnt must have delayed their deploynt. Still, they ca with numbers on their side.
"How many chs are out there?"
"Around a hundred so far, but they’re definitely holding back."
The expedition could only scrape around seventy chs that functioned well enough. They also fielded a handful of half-crippled chs that couldn’t do more than stand and shoot, even if they didn’t possess the right configuration to handle ranged weaponry.
The numbers alone highlighted the precarious state of the groundside team. Without support from the main fleet and with depleted supplies, they lacked the depth to withstand an overwhelming assault.
To put it simply, their backs were on the wall.
"Can you lend a gun?" Ves asked his escort.
"Why?"
"Just in case. If they co for , I won’t go down without a fight."
In fact, Ves had no intention of staying aboard a sinking ship. If the worst case scenario happened and the base had been breached, Ves intended to sneak away under stealth and survive in the wilderness with his adapted body.
However, he’d have to leave behind lkor to do so. His cousin’s Stanislaw had joined the defending chs in huddling behind the walls, using them as cover to fire pot shots at the approaching pirate chs.
Between the risk of getting captured and having his System robbed of his possession, Ves would rather give up his cousin. As a noncombatant, Ves lacked the ans to change the course of the ensuing battle. No matter how much his body grew stronger, he could never match Doctor Jutland’s display of strength.
The pirates swelled to around two-hundred chs. At least they ca without any additional assets such as infantry or artillery. Still, as kings of the battlefield, chs alone operated well-enough on their own.
No one spoke a word. Everyone waited with baited breath for the pirates to make their move.
This ti, the pirate chs ca in a dizzying array of colors and symbols. Like House Kaine, the Dragons of the Void enlisted other groups to fill up their ranks. The lack of unity among the pirates could serve as a weak point.
A brilliant-looking swordsman ch in black stepped forward. Its sleek black coating had been decorated with a pair of coiling red dragons. It wielded a slim but high-quality ch duelling sword that looked perfect for swift, aggressive strikes.
The loudspeakers of the elite ch bellowed out the terms of the pirate commander. "I am Jaded Serpent. In the na of the Dragons of the Void, I lay claim to your lives and your possessions! We have gained complete orbital supremacy. There will be no help coming for your rescue. I will only say this once. Shut off your chs and lock down your turrets!"
Captain Kaine’s Cathrec stepped up above the wall and faced Jaded Serpent’s ch. She gave a simple reply to the pirate commander’s demands. "Get lost!"
Her reply fird up their resolve. Even Ves felt an irrational sense of pride at the thought of resisting the pirates with his comrades in the expedition. He held his borrowed laser pistol with a tightening grip, though he quickly regained his cool.
The dragon ch reacted swiftly to the course reply by stretching out its sword. "Comnce the attack!"
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