Close to the final mont before the devourers tore into the Gregarious Wrath, Ves gained a new idea. "Chief! Can the dinsional smoothers be overloaded?"
"Huh?"
"The dinsional smoothers that protect us from wrinkles in spaceti! Can their power be cranked up any further?"
"It’s not that simple!" The chief shook his head. "We borrowed them from the MTA under punishing conditions. If we damage them in any way, there’s hell to pay!"
"Well, the energy snakes are about to breach inside the Wrath, so I hardly think this is the ti to hold back!"
The chief faced a lot of pressure with this decision. The devourers wouldn’t give him enough ti to discuss the option with the captain. His eyes hardened as he decisively took action. His fingers brushed across a couple of options in the projected panel.
"Let’s see what happens if we dial the power up to a 150 percent!"
As soon as the dinsional boosters received an influx of excess power, they reacted by emitting vastly empowered restrictive fields. The three dinsional smoothers placed along the length of the Wrath ensured the entire tunneler beca covered in this enhanced fields.
As the snakes finally reared forward, they bumped head-long into the newly empowered field. While they initially kept flying forward, the sakes quickly halted as their bodies warped out of shape.
"It’s working!" Petrisc shouted with awe. "How did you know that would work?"
"The devourers look like they have one foot in the material dinsions and another foot in the other dinsions. I figure they are existences that straddle both sides in order to take advantage of their best parts. This kind of semi-corporeal state can only be maintained if there aren’t any barriers between the material dinsions and the upper dinsions."
In truth, Ves had been thinking of a way to fight back against his ’mother’ if she ever appeared before him again. All those hours of brainstorming eventually produced results, of which Ves applied one of them. The success of his asure strengthened his confidence against the ghost.
Perhaps his next encounter with his mother wouldn’t turn out to be one-sided.
The snakes exhibited signs of deep discomfort. Whatever the dinsional smoothers did to solidify the local space, the devourers deeply behaved as if they got scalded by hot water. Only after they shifted back a fair distance did their bodies stop looking like they would fall apart.
"How long can the dinsional smoothers hold?" Ves asked.
"Not long. They have in-built safeties that will forcefully regulate their power intake after forty-five seconds."
"That’s not long enough!"
"At least you bought us so ti. It’s all in the hands of the ch technicians that are putting back the Fire Worm together."
Ves had no more rabbits to pull out of his hat. Any other asure he could suggest wouldn’t work due to a lack of ans. Even his impromptu suggestion to overload the dinsional smoothers had been a fluke as he knew almost nothing about their properties.
As the seconds passed, the crew of the Wrath prepared for a ruinous outco. Chief Petrisc ordered the ergency deactivation of all but one of the power reactors, thereby forcing the tunneler to a halt.
"Ten more seconds to go."
Sweat poured from Ves as he readied his own counterasures. He made sure that Lucky stayed nearby before holding his fingers atop his comm. He would instantly activate his stealth module as soon as one of the snakes erged in the engineering bay.
Suddenly, the status projection sent out an audible ping.
"The Fire Worm is ready! Venerable Drake has lifted off!"
Through a hidden hatch at the rear of the Wrath, a colorful orange ch erged into the tunnel. Ves scoured his eyes over the fra of the ch and noted that it could only be the Fire Worm.
The ch appeared to be an aerial striker, though it actually wielded a combination of laser rifles and flathrowers embedded in its arms. Forces primarily utilized such chs to harass the rear lines of their enemies and disrupt their supply lines. Only rarely would any force employ aerial strikers in a frontal clash.
"Aerial strikers don’t have the room to accommodate both their lasers, flathrowers and flight systems. It takes too much energy and fuel to feed all of these systems." Ves mused.
However, the rules didn’t apply to expert chs. As long as a designer applied sufficiently advanced technology, all of those limits could be overco.
Naturally, these benefits always ca at a ruinous cost. The ch Corps could only afford to provide these treatnt to their rare and valuable expert ch pilots.
Ves always dread of designing a tailored expert ch for one of the Venerables of the Republic. Now, he’d be able to witness one of those chs in action.
Despite weighing as much as a dium ch, the Fire Worm accelerated at a rate on par with a light ch. The lighter gravity helped sowhat, but the model’s incredibly powerful systems enabled it to surpass ordinarily limits without any strain.
It took seconds for Venerable Drake to reach the closest devourer. Chief Petrisc already ceased overloading the dinsional smoothers, so the devourers quickly recovered from their montary discomfort.
At the Fire Worm’s approach, the devourer appeared to be alert. Sohow, it detected a high level of energy from the approaching machine. The ethereal snake faced the Fire Worm with a gaping maw, ready to absorb anything it threw in its way.
The Fire Worm didn’t play by its rules. Venerable Drake held back his fire and flew his ch past the maw in an arcing path. Only after his ch turned around did he open fire.
His bulky, sophisticated rifle spat out a trio of thick laser beams. They converged upon a single point on the devourer’s surface.
Ordinarily, such a mighty convergence would have vaporized any ch in the way, but the lasers passed through the body of the snake without any effect.
While the snake kept turning around to face the Fire Worm, Venerable Drake kept circling around the bewildered devourer while trying to avoid the swiping passes of its two companions. The Fire Worm tried a few different configurations, but none of the lasers left a mark on the snakes.
It looked like the expert ch pilot had to employ his full strength to tackle this alien nace.
The Fire Worm’s exterior started to glow red as so of its components started to resonate with so unknown influence. Its armor radiated so much energy and heat that Ves had an illusion that the Fire Worm caught fire.
"The Venerable is getting serious now!"
The main difference between an advanced ch pilot and an expert ch pilot was that the latter had broken through the limits posed by their genetics.
A good genetic aptitude only provided potentates with a decent start. Once they reached the pinnacle of advanced ch pilot, they had to evolve beyond the paraters holding back the human race from gaining as much might as the pinnacle alien races in the galaxy.
Even four-hundred years after the start of the Age of chs, humanity couldn’t explain how expert pilots ca to be. Ves himself only knew of a couple of traits that empowered them beyond baseline humans.
The most important of which was that expert ch pilots gained the ability to resonate with exotics. Most exotic materials actually didn’t react very strongly to an expert ch pilots, but a small portion actually reacted very strongly when an expert ch pilot made a connection to those materials.
This enabled them to bring out the dormant potential hidden deep within these exotics and perform various miracles that often seem like magic. The galactic net was rife with battle recordings where renowned experts pulled off feats such as teleportation and duplication.
One all-ti popular battle recording even showed a single battle in space where over a hundred spaceborn chs fired their rifles at a motionless expert ch. They thought the expert ch had sohow lost power.
They were wrong.
The expert ch woke up just before they pulled their triggers and began to glow in purple. Mystical lines ran through its fra as a concave field ca into being.
By the ti the lasers and projectiles reached the expert ch, they stopped and curved around as if they orbited a planet. The attacking chs quickly got torn down by their own fire.
Such incredible feats had elevated expert ch pilots to the forefront of human society, even if they didn’t show up in public that much. The more they showed off their talents, the easier it was for their enemies to develop counterasures.
Right now, Venerable Drake had no such concerns. The Fire Worm’s glow reached an apex, whereby the energy transferred to the bulky rifle in its arms. A module on rifle glowed resplendently white before the rifle spat out three white-hot beams that carried special qualities.
This ti, the lasers struck the hapless devourer, and carved out a burning hole in his body. The energy snake reared back as if it had almost been decapitated. With surprising speed, the wounded devourer flew back, but the beams kept pumping more hurt into its body.
The rifle eventually dimd after two full seconds, but by that ti the devourer stopped moving.
"He did it! He killed the creature!"
Hope blood among the crew. Even though the Fire Worm expended a significant amount of energy to kill off that snake, only two more creatures remained. Despite the initial success, Chief Petrisc held back his smile.
Ves noted the chief’s reticence. "You don’t believe Venerable Drake can do it?"
"He’s not a high-tier expert pilot. The Venerable deserves respect for reaching a realm that most can only dream of, but he can only fight on one to ten odds."
Even expert ch pilots could be classified in tiers. Newer expert pilots could generally beat ten ch pilots at once if they all piloted the sa chs.
Those that made a lot of progress in practicing their abilities eventually reached the point where a single expert could beat a hundred chs at once, but only if they piloted a ch tailored to their talents.
While Venerable Drake piloted a fitting ch, he hadn’t gained enough ti to beco a top-tier expert pilot. Still, the expert didn’t flinch from his duty. The Fire Worm turned around to face the two devourers that had beco enraged at their companion’s death. Their speed grew to the point where the Fire Worm wouldn’t be able to outrace the alien creatures.
In response, Venerable Drake resonated with his ch again. The Fire Worm regained its energetic glow, but this ti it acquired a scarlet tint. The ch calmly holstered the rifle onto its back before extending its two arms.
The two devourers tried to be clever and split up to attack the Fire Worm from both sides. Venerable Drake therefore responded by aiming the muzzles of his ch’s flathrowers in their direction. As soon as the devourers ca within effective range, the energy converged into the wrists where the muzzles of the flathrowers rested.
Then, they spat out fire.
Two humongous gouts of fla extended more than a hundred ters from the flathrowers. Even an entire corvette would be enveloped by the gigantic scarlet flas!
Once the flathrowers ceased their operation, the flas died out, leaving nothing but broken creatures in their wake. The snakes slowly drifted down to the core now that their semi-corporeal bodily functions stopped working.
The Fire Worrm massacred the energy life forms with contemptuous ease.
Inside the engineering bay, Chief Petrisc sighed in relief. "It’s a good thing those indigenous life forms don’t seem all that strong. They can be killed as long as we have the right tools."
With Venerable Drake and his Fire Worm on standby, the Gregarious Wrath wouldn’t have to worry about being beset by the strange creatures.
The journey to the center of the Glowing Planet was back on track.
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