The Vril-ya mothership rose like a calamitous new sun over the Earth, and we hunted it as wolves once hunted the sun in the Norse myths of Ragnarök. Thus, I aligned the songs of Irem with that theme: once as the wolf devours the sun, and once as Thor slays the great serpent. The heavy metal music fit perfectly with such myths, and they sang in Irem while I listened from my captain's chair aboard the Thor as it sailed through deep space on the path to interception.
It was the Wyrd of the wolf to eat the sun, the Wyrd of Thor to slay the great serpent. It was fate, inevitability, and all of that wove into the moment as we moved into position.
Myth gave structure, structure became ritual, ritual became song, song became prayer.
Satisfied, I pressed the straw to my lips and drank. The Vril spread like sunlight across my tongue, and warmth spread onward, banishing even the slightest traces of fatigue.
Focusing my awareness back to my body and the bridge of the Thor, I looked at the time when the Vril-ya mothership would reach the Tokyo horizon.
T-minus 30:15.
It had been joined by two more numbers. One represented the time until we planned to intercept it.
T-minus 28:34.
We would be cutting it real close. But this was the optimal route calculated by GLaDOS. And I trusted her. In her competence, at least.
It was the smallest number that left a sour taste in my mouth that no Vril could expunge.
T-minus 5:05.
It was the time remaining until the Enterprise intercepted the Vril-ya mothership.
I worked hard not to allow sentiment to tarnish my decisions. As with all things that mattered, it was simply a discipline. Regret was useless, like a weed, and like a weed it tended to sprout in a mind not properly cultivated.
"Director," GLaDOS said.
"Captain," I immediately corrected her. It was important to keep in mind the proper function and responsibilities. As Captain, I had far more authority than Director, at least aboard Thor.
"Captain," she continued, corrected. "The President of the United States is again attempting to reach you."
"I don't have time for people who don't matter at the moment," I answered her.
This was Damien's chore now — dealing with politicians. I had other matters on my mind.
"But he insists," GLaDOS replied.
Archer spoke from his station. "He may insist all he likes. But it would be unwise to reveal our plans to anyone not aboard this ship."
For a moment, a small, treacherous thought intruded. If I did speak with the President and revealed to him everything about Thor and our plans, I might convince him to call off the Enterprise from their doomed mission. But that risked too much. The Enterprise mission might be doomed, but it would also provide valuable data for our attack. And revealing too much—we didn't know how much Vril-ya had penetrated our networks. Knowledge was power, and it was best to keep it well hidden.
"There are rumors circulating on the network," GLaDOS reported. "Rumors that you have taken your lover, abandoned your post, and fled."
"Good," I replied instantly. "If such rumors reach the Vril-ya, it means they might not factor me into their immediate strategic calculations. It probably won't matter, but every little bit helps."
"But it is damaging morale among our own forces," she pointed out.
Archer interjected, his voice cold and hard as iron. "Their morale is irrelevant for now. What they think, what they feel—none of it matters in the face of annihilation. If we succeed, their morale will be restored. If we fail, it won't matter at all."
It was thinking like that that had gotten him hanged.
Morale always mattered. But not just good morale.
If we succeeded, the sudden, triumphant reversal would make their morale surge even higher, as the men grew ashamed of their prior doubt.
And if we failed…
Well. There were some doors that only utter despair could unlock. Unthinkable things lay beyond such doors.
But it was the duty of a leader to contemplate unthinkable thoughts, so that no one else had to.
I glanced back to the screen. To the smallest of numbers.
T-minus 1:15.
"Enough. It's almost time," I ordered. "Zoom it."
"Visual inspection will yield little useful data," she replied, but obeyed.
The image on the main screen changed. On the left: an almost painfully bright ball of fire, representing the Vril-ya mothership. The speed at which it moved through the atmosphere created an almost total stealth; we could certainly determine where they were and where they were going, but all details were lost in the burning plasma.
On the other side was the Enterprise, looking almost like a toy. It moved much slower, but it had been berthed in Hawai'i when this situation began. I wasn't really sure why, and didn't care enough to find out. Probably politics.
And in between was the zoomed area — about 500 km seen from orbit — where one very bright orb moved toward a small dot.
"They are on a collision course," I observed.
"They've read the same analysis," Archer added, his voice like the sound of a steel sword drawn from a scabbard. "It's the only sensible option."
"Adding combined velocity to the shots?" I commented. Not a bad idea, but not likely to be enough. The equations were clear.
"And ramming if all else fails," Archer pounced, like a grim judge ordering a hanging.
The Vril-ya ship was no mindless meteor; it was driven by an intelligent, malevolent will. And it was faster and more maneuverable than the Enterprise. The only way ramming would work was if the Vril-ya captain believed it wouldn't matter.
But before I could say anything, GLaDOS interrupted: "Enterprise has fired its primary weapon." A slight pause. "No discernible effect."
Another pause.
"Second shot: no effect. Third shot—"
She didn't finish. The Vril-ya mothership had counterattacked — a mere flicker, a barely visible thin line.
"Enterprise destroyed," she reported. Then, with the faintest hint of passive aggression: "At least they managed to annoy them a little."
I didn't need to hear her words to know it. I could feel it — the exact moment when my worshipers woke at the edges of Irem, where the tall towers met even taller primordial trees.
But there should have been only one worshiper. The assigned Aperture liaison: Britton Claud Tiber. Once, he had been the last member of the Mystery Cult of the Magister — the weapon I had used against the Vril-ya in Ancient Rome. That mystery cult had dwindled into witches in the Middle Ages, and the Vril-ya had hunted them all down. Yet in their passing, they had bought time for mankind.
Britton had avoided that fate by simply not being there. I had picked him from Ancient Rome and brought him to the future to cure him of a congenital condition. And I could do so without paradox, for history had already recorded his death. His true name was Britannicus, the nephew and adopted son of Nero.
I had saved him, only to lead him into doom. For as a liaison he would not have been required, like soldiers, to march against the enemy. But he was a proud member of the cult I had made, and thus fighting the Vril-ya was a calling.
That was the dark paradox of what I had done: to save mankind, I sacrificed man. Reshaped them into disposable weapons.
Naïve fools could deal in hope and faith that everything would turn out right if one only acted justly. The prudent leader dealt in probabilities and consequences — the benefit of the many over the few.
But it did not get any easier with knowledge. I suppose once it did, I would know I was no longer suited for such positions.
He was not alone. A small number of soldiers had joined him. I did not see them so much as I simply knew their names, recognizing them as part of the Enterprise's crew. It seemed Britton had been proselytizing—without any orders to do so.
I suppose the military has always been fertile ground for mystery cults. And once the Vril-ya had revealed themselves, even those who had joined my cult only for amusement would find their faith sharpened to a razor's edge. After all, even the most lapsed Catholic starts praying when the trumpets sound and the armies of Satan march openly upon the Earth.
But there was only one officer among them, and a low-ranking one at that.
With a slight effort of will, I arranged for a servant android to intercept them and guide them toward the great concert.
Then, I pulled my awareness back from Irem and the gathering. I called forth the memory of Captain Mitchell of the Enterprise—from our first meeting in Missing Mile, to the time at Reggie's manor in New Sodom where she boldly proposed the very plan that resulted in the Enterprise, to the moment I passed the ceremonial key to the ship into her hands. I drew forth the memories of faces and names of every member of her crew. The Core of Lore helped, though all the personality cores were now integrated into me; the voice, however, was indisputably my own.
And I used all of that to create a grand illusion, rising like a titan above the canopy-covered sky of Irem—a memorial to the fallen.
All of that took less than a second of real time. I calmly continued speaking to GLaDOS without a noticeable pause.
"The Enterprise did more than merely annoy the enemy. They allowed us to witness the Vril-ya ship's weapon."
"But was it their primary weapon? Secondary systems? Or just a minor pest-removal function?" she countered.
"Probably all three," Archer interjected, "And also propulsion and shields too."
"You're thinking of a Vril converter?" I replied, referring to the component within Vril-staves that transformed raw Vril into myriad effects. It was the closest thing they had to a smartphone or a Swiss Army knife — a converter that could reshape Vril into almost any form of energy: thermal, sonic, kinetic. Everything from shields to firebolts.
Even after decades of analysis, we were still guessing at how it worked. Our mistake had been treating it as a device. In truth it was closer to an organ — and not an isolated one. The Vril-staves were less engineered machines than engineered organisms. When we dismantled them, the closest analogy was not disassembly but killing.
Even their metallic components were more like coral that excreted metal than anything ever forged by hand.
"Yes. From what we've observed so far, the Vril-ya are surprisingly uniform in their technology," Archer continued. "Humans develop multiple variants for different purposes. The Vril-ya seem to prefer singular, optimized solutions. Predictability over variation."
"You're making assumptions based on a limited data set," I replied. "We haven't examined enough of their technology to be certain."
"It's in their very name," he pressed. "We've deciphered enough of their language to know: Vril-ya—'the people of the Vril.' Not 'peoples.' Singular."
"I am not denying that their weapons, propulsion, and shielding are all Vril-based," I said. "I am simply stating that we do not have enough evidence to claim it is all powered by the same, identical device."
"But the pattern is clear," Archer countered. "Their philosophy favors singularity over redundancy. Always the minimal expenditure of resources."
"And you learned all of that—more than our entire Xenology department has in a decade—just by examining their favorite handheld weapon?" I asked, my tone skeptical.
Archer allowed himself a small, dry smile. "Well, it's not a sword," he replied calmly. "But even so, a weapon can tell you a great deal about the people who wield it."
I nodded, satisfied with his reasoning.
"GLaDOS," I said, turning to the second matter, "have you finished processing the data from the Enterprise's destruction? Do we have an estimate on the Vril-ya weapon's yield?"
"Unfortunately, telemetry from the Enterprise ended just as things grew interesting, so my primary dataset comes from external observation," GLaDOS reported. "Side note: this also reveals the need for more durable sensors and communications equipment."
"Yes…" Archer drawled, letting the word drag. "Because sensors are obviously the most important part of a ship to protect."
"It is quite logical when one thinks rationally about it," she countered. "If a vessel is destroyed, we need to know why. And if all else is lost, at least the data will be preserved."
"And what of the crew?" Archer asked, his voice suddenly cold, the sarcasm burned away into iron.
"I have been informed by the ethics committee that the value of human lives is incalculable," she replied. "Therefore, I do not include them in my calculations."
"Please don't do that," I corrected, carefully. "If you must, use the accounting version."
"I see. In that case, I would still argue that more durable sensors are the best future investment," GLaDOS continued smoothly. "After all, one must balance the value of the current crew against the data that could save all future crews."
A fractional pause, then she added:
"Also, according to my new accounting model, the destruction of the Enterprise—factoring in the resources expended and the lives lost—has now generated more quantifiable data toward species survival than if the same investment had been used to build water filters in Africa. Good for them."
"How inspiring," I said dryly. "Hopefully, you have something better prepared for the S.W.O.R.D. network eulogy."
"Naturally. I am well-versed in the art of propaganda," GLaDOS replied. She was aiming for a detached tone, but it came out as pure smugness. "Goebbels had nothing on me. Fortunately, such talents are unnecessary among us."
"We have digressed," I said sharply. No matter how logical she claimed to be, some shade of her original human emotion always crept through. That was the price of designing a true intelligence: past a certain level of complexity, you had to add emotional scaffolding, if only to prevent infinite logical loops and decision paralysis in the face of incomplete data. And of course, GLaDOS was still based on an upload—far more human than she would ever admit. "The yield estimates, if you please."
"Very well," she said. "Frame-by-frame analysis of the Enterprise's destruction shows the beam was not a static impact, as initially observed. To the naked eye, it was a single flicker, and the ship came apart. In truth, the beam traversed the entire length of the hull in 28.4 milliseconds. It had a diameter of 4.7 meters and cut laterally from prow to aft before disengaging."
Archer leaned forward, his knuckles white on the console. "So, not a bullet through the chest," he said flatly. "A sword stroke."
"Correct," GLaDOS confirmed, as new data filled the screen. "Sublimation of the titanium-aluminum armor began 3.6 milliseconds after initial contact. The plasma bloom from the impact persisted for an additional sixty seconds. At that range, the event appeared instantaneous. Only our high-speed optical data revealed the motion."
Archer let out a slow, humorless breath. "They weren't just shooting to destroy. They were making an example of them. Making sure there was nothing left to salvage."
"An interesting hypothesis," GLaDOS replied, her tone shifting from clinical to critical. "Though I must point out that no matter how much I enjoy a good explosion, this was a wasteful, inefficient overkill. One could destroy a ship and kill all on board with a fraction of the effort."
But their method did not demonstrate overwhelming superiority.
Before I could speak that thought aloud, my eyes flicked to the digital clocks. Only two remained now.
Tokyo horizon T-minus 22:51
Thor intercept: T-minus 21:10
I changed my mind.
"We don't have time to debate Vril-ya motives or their sense of efficiency," I interrupted, my voice cutting through their analysis. "Relevant or not, our data pool—and our minutes—are limited. More importantly: GLaDOS, how long could Thor's armor endure continuous exposure to the Vril-ya's primary beam? You have the original design specifications on file."
A long pause. Long enough for me to take another sip of Vril, its golden warmth banishing fatigue. My fingers drifted to the Stone Grail, nestled in the captain's chair in what might appear to an outsider as a sleek, high-tech cup holder. In truth, it was part of the chair's integrated delivery system—threads of tubing hidden in the frame carried both Vril and mana, feeding them where needed: into Thor's esoteric components, or into its organic crew. For now, only Archer and I were linked in. But had there been more of us, the system would have supplied Vril as required.
Then GLaDOS asked, "Are those specifications correct? No one was drunk, high, or otherwise suffering from organic failure when entering the measurements? You are claiming the armor's density is two hundred thousand tons per cubic centimeter?"
"It sounds about right," I commented.
"That's ludicrous. That's somewhere between the density of electron-degenerate matter and nuclear-degenerate matter!" GLaDOS snapped.
And if she knew how it was made, she would have been even more surprised. From Archer's psychometry we had learned that the process involved taking a ten-meter-thick plate of depleted uranium, titanium reinforced by pure carbon, a hundred-million-carat diamond, and metallic helium—all covered in osmium—then compressing it under immense pressure and blasting it with lasers until it shrank to precisely 1.028 meters thick. Which should not have worked in any sane universe. It was like producing graphene by tap-dancing on hot coals. Our own experiments confirmed that it only worked if you started at exactly ten meters and finished at exactly one meter and twenty-eight millimeters. There was also a minimum surface area required for stability. Altogether, the analysis suggested a material with very inventive properties. It reminded me of the portal gun.
"That's why I named it pseudodegenerate matter," Archer commented.
"While it certainly sounds better than Element 288—the name its original creator bestowed—it's not much more accurate," I said, re-stating an old argument. "Since we don't actually know what it is."
"You wanted to call it That Thing That Proved We Know Less About the Laws of Physics Than We Thought We Did," he replied dryly.
"It's more precise. And it makes a nice acronym," I countered.
"It really doesn't," Archer said flatly. "Unless you slur it."
"Ingraining once again that the wisdom of Aperture Rule 34 has been validated," GLaDOS said smugly. "Director Johnson is not allowed to name anything by himself—from products to children. Still, let me confirm: are we in fact flying inside something with roughly the same mass as the entire North American continent, crust included?"
"Well, yes. Otherwise, the recoil from firing our main ultra-heavy relativistic projectile would launch us backwards every time," I admitted—though my mind wandered toward a still unresolved mystery.
The mass of the ship was in the same ballpark as the entire North American continent—roughly one-fifth to one-fourth of the Moon itself. Which left the burning question: where had the Moon Nazis gotten enough material to build the original? We would have noticed if they had cored the Moon like an apple.
And beyond the sheer mass, there was the elemental composition to consider. Titanium was just barely explainable. Metallic helium could be found. Even carbon might be imaginable—if they compressed their entire population into diamonds. But osmium? Depleted uranium? That was another matter entirely.
One idea, almost laughably implausible, was crack-fusion—forcing lighter nuclei up the chain to heavier ones. But the energy cost was insane; with that much power, they could have done almost anything else. Another was asteroid mining, but that brought its own cascade of impossibilities.
And so it remained an idle thought, a crystalline problem: if they had done it once, could they repeat the process? More important—what could we learn from it? What doors might open for our own megastructures if we understood their method?
Unfortunately, the answers still eluded me.
"We must fire at once!" GLaDOS exclaimed—derailing my thoughts like a flood washing Propulsion Gel off the tracks of an Aperture Propulsion Ultra-Speed Train.
"Have we not already made that decision?" Archer cut in. "We fire at the last moment, when we intercept them."
"I accepted that plan before the new data on Thor's true mass was incorporated," GLaDOS replied. "My crash-consequence model has been updated accordingly. While one or several hits from our main weapon would be survivable by the Enrichment Centre, a full impact from the Thor itself is not. And Zach is still there."
There was a fractional pause, and her synthetic voice faltered, almost as if embarrassed. "I mean to say, we have valuable personnel, equipment, and research data at that location."
"Although this is the last moment to revise the decision based on new data, this data was not new. Not to me," I replied, my voice a mediating calm. "And the scenario is irrelevant. After the near-miss during the L2 incident, I had already decided to resolve this particular problem. That is why, during the ship's retrofit, the Adjunct World Recall System was installed."
It was fortunate that the piece that had sheared off the Götterdämmerung during that incident had split due to centrifugal force, with only a much smaller portion striking Earth. And even then, it had fallen into the Baltic Sea—territory mostly occupied by our nominal enemies.
"I have the name, but no details on that system's function," GLaDOS said dryly, a clear note of suspicion in her voice.
"Classified," I said simply. In truth, it was less a scientific mechanism and more a direct application of the Second True Magic. The cost had been almost ruinous: enough mana to power ten Holy Grail Wars had been bound into its artificial circuits, not to mention the resources needed for the installation. Enough gemstones to gild a hundred palaces were consumed just to stabilize the system's frame.
"Any fragment of the hull that separates—or the entire ship itself, if it suffers critical, mission-ending damage—will be instantly and automatically recalled to a secure drydock in Irem," I explained.
"There will be no crash."
Again, I glanced at the clock.
Tokyo horizon: T-minus 18:10
Thor intercept: T-minus 16:29
"But you have yet to answer the question I asked. How long would it take for their beam to penetrate Thor's armor?" I pressed, pulling the conversation back to the point.
"There are a lot of uncertainties," GLaDOS replied, "but approximately two to three seconds for penetration. No complete destruction, but significant damage to the vulnerable innards."
She paused, then added, "That's assuming they hit the pseudodegenerate armor, not the gaps between it. Why are the plates connected using A.D.A.M.A.N.T.? It's almost like firing a knight's plate mail together with horse glue."
"Because all the useful properties of pseudodegenerate matter come with equally inconvenient ones," I said. "Its density gives it unmatched strength, yes—but it also means enormous mass. And despite appearances, it isn't really a solid. Think of it as a new state of matter, beyond solid, fluid, gas, and plasma.
If you heat it enough, it doesn't melt. It detonates. It drops back into an ordinary solid state—suddenly, violently, with a catastrophic release of energy as its density falls. Welding it would be suicide; the phase shift is unstable, and getting it back into pseudodegenerate form requires the exact same conditions under which it was made: immense pressure, synchronized lasers, and insane precision. That can't be done casually.
And you can't just weld it to other metals, either. It's not like we're dealing with a simple bonding process. Pseudodegenerate matter doesn't bond to liquefied metals; it's too dense. The interface is too fine and tightly packed. You can't use the same techniques as you would with materials like titanium because there's no roughness at the microscopic level where different materials can mesh. The atoms of the pseudodegenerate matter don't interlace with others—they just don't fit.
Which is why the Moon Nazis bolted the plates together. Since they could only make whole slabs—nothing smaller. They could only manufacture it in large, discrete sections. And we would have the same problem. Bolts were the only way to assemble them. Steel bolts, because no pseudodegenerate matter bolts could be made that small.
This was intolerable during retrofit, so several solutions were experimented with. From simple replacement of the bolts with better materials—like the alloys used for the Enterprise hull—to, during one test, discovering it worked with A.D.A.M.A.N.T. version 24-B."
"The one that used carbon nanotubes in a spiderweb-like configuration?" she asked.
"That's right. While that proved not to be cost-effective for general use, it showed propensity to bond with pseudodegenerate matter," I replied. I just wished to know why. I mean, the discovery was made by brute force, applying every material Aperture had and seeing what stuck.
"Well, it would burn through A.D.A.M.A.N.T. much quicker," she replied. "Half a second at most. That material is thermally resistant, but only so much."
"It doesn't matter," I replied. "Or rather, it matters less. The ship was designed so that any slip in armor would lead to less critical areas. We can take these hits. In the unlikely event that they choose to target them. Considering the Vril-ya's philosophy, they'll more likely go directly for the engines. For the kill."
"I love it when you go into lecture mode," Archer cut in. "It's so hot. But now's not the time. Because we're short on it. Time, that is."
The clock proved that he was right.
Tokyo horizon: T-minus 14:21
Thor intercept: T-minus 12:40
Under the merciless tyranny of time, I had to make a final decision before it was made for me. Lightning-quick, I ran through the collected facts: rate of fire, ours and theirs, engagement cones, maneuverability—both thrust and rotation—and a myriad of other details.
"We continue to implement the plan I previously decided on, with a small addendum," I proclaimed at last. "If the Vril-ya fire during our approach, we return fire within one second, no matter the range. That gives us a comfortable window for counterfire."
"Thor's propulsion is omnidirectional," GLaDOS replied. "The only reason we have bow and stern is because the main weapon points forward. We can rotate into the correct heading, but only within a stated time limit."
"I don't like it. But it is sensible," Archer conceded. "Hopefully it won't come to that. In their arrogance, the Vril-ya might ignore us until we open fire."
"Being ready to pounce on predictable blind spots is sound strategy," I said. "Being dependent on it is not."
Decision made, I found myself a bit ornamental, as GLaDOS had quipped earlier. If all went as planned, there was nothing left for me to do. And if disaster struck, there would be no time for complicated decision loops. Archer and GLaDOS would have to act in an instant.
But trust was the true currency of leadership. Not just downwards, but upwards. Subordinates must trust the leader to set the strategy; the leader must trust them to execute without micromanagement. As above, so below.
Of course, trust was not blind. The best trust came from knowledge—knowing their strengths, their habits, even their preferences—and arranging things so that each acted as required, naturally and without prompting.
When it worked, it looked like magic from outside. Everything flowing together. The leader seemed either lucky or unnecessary.
That was the paradox. Power well exercised was nearly invisible. Power kept was almost incompatible with power rightly executed.
As the saying went, a captain was next to God on his ship. If my work as captain required little attention for the moment, then it was time to turn to my other role.
I had finished pushing the cart. Now it was time to pray.
With a simple gesture I beckoned Larmo. The little robot skittered to me, and jumped into my hand, transforming into a Crystodyne Diode, a thermomechanical locus of power. If one believed urban legend these things were made of Angel's tears, but I had found zircon made a good substitute for my own replications.
They could convert faith into actionable energy. And while using prayer as a source of electricity, though renewable, was proven impractical, it was a way to measure the psychic resonance of prayer.
But it also had other uses, for one skilled enough. Like me.
Focusing on Irem, I once more inhabited the massive Idol. I raised its hand and the crowds fell silent.
I did not have an instrument, but neither did I need one to make music. The illusions I wove were no mere trick-lights but a full-scale sensorium.
From my shadow emerged unreal, multiwinged angels, their myriad limbs bearing instruments forged from the dreams of madmen and visionaries—or at least my idea of such.
Together we made music without words, but with sound and images and scents: some angels carried censers that spilled motley smoke, curling into shapes that moved like chords, ravaging smells fell into the crowd like rain of induced recollection
Thus, as the clock ticked toward doom, I composed one last great song.
For prayer was more than words; it was alignment of thought, and ritual and spectacle were but mirror images of one another.
And as the audience of faithful dead rose in rows, enraptured by the unreal performance, so too did the diode in my hand aboard Thor begin to glow with an almost divine light—speaking prayers and blessings to those whose purpose was salvation of Man.
Even through all of that, I kept one facet of myself wary, one eye fixed on the countdown on the screen. Always watching. Always waiting.
Yet nothing happened, even as the seconds on the intercept timer dwindled into single digits. Even as GLaDOS aligned Thor's velocity to the burning ship until, for a breath, it seemed both vessels had ceased to move. Even as she rotated the disc so its rim lay parallel with the nine-kilometer needle of the enemy ship—our broadside mirroring their length. Even as the main gun locked squarely onto the cylinder's midpoint.
In their supreme arrogance, the Vril-ya continued to ignore us: a battleship the size of a city, with the mass of a fifth of the Moon, settling deliberately into the most favorable geometry of engagement. Whether that meant Archer's assessment of their psychology had been correct, or that the prayer from Irem had granted its effect, or that some combination of the two now reigned—it was not merely unknown, but unknowable.
As the one became zero, we struck.
From the dorsal and ventral sides of the Thor, each thirty-three 35mm ion plasma guns fired in unison.
A rain of artificial starfire crossed the distance between our ships in less than the blink of an eye. Some might call it folly to attempt to burn the sun, even a false one. But then, man is made mostly of water, and yet drowns so easily.
The shields of the mothership were already dealing with the inferno of atmospheric passage—a plasma sheath as hot as a star's surface, now pressed with an even hotter volley of our own. It would, at the very least, strain their defences a little.
Almost instantly came the answer. A beam of searing, impossible light erupted from the tip of the enemy ship, burning a line across space toward our flank, totally ignoring any geometric advantage we thought we had.
But it was not unexpected. Such properties of Vril-based technology were already known to us. In truth, the maneuver had been executed because it would have been foolish not to seize every possible advantage—but there had been little genuine expectation of success.
Almost at once, GLaDOS overlaid the schematics on the screen. The enemy beam was already burrowing through our armor, driving toward the ship's heart—our fusion core.
In a way, it was almost flattering. This was not a casual obliteration, like what had happened to the Enterprise.
No, this was a clear message. We had been deemed worthy of a clean, efficient murder stroke—a professional courtesy, acknowledging that we were, perhaps, slightly more than just an annoying fly.
Archer fired the main gun.
For a moment, the enemy ship shone with the brilliance of a real sun. Our sensors were completely blinded by the flash.
But this was no victory.
The anti-divination veil did not lift. And the Vril-ya's beam continued to burrow into our hull, coming ever closer to our ship's stellar heart.
"Fire again!" I ordered aloud.
Even though a mistake here meant ruin for the Earth—for if he fired and the enemy ship was not where we thought, the ruinous weapon would strike the planet itself—Archer did not hesitate.
He did not hesitate, even though our sensors were still blind.
He did not hesitate, even though the only reason I knew the beam was still active was because my own divination tool was blaring a silent, psychic warning.
He did not hesitate, even though there was a significant danger that the enemy ship had moved while we were blinded.
He fired because he trusted me.
And he was right to. Even though the first shot had shrouded the enemy ship in a burning corona, it could not hide the black spot in my mystical senses. I knew it was still in the exact same position.
There was nothing to see on the screens, for our sensors were yet to recover.
Simultaneously—or so close that no measure could tell the difference—two things happened.
The enemy beam finally burrowed into our fusion core, cracking the containment.
And at the same breath, the mystical veil shrouding the mothership lifted. Not completely—there remained a patch of blackness tumbling earthward into the ocean—but most of it, my divination could now register, was gone. Annihilated.
We had won. Thor had slain the serpent.
But as in the myth, Thor was dying from the serpent's final strike.