Fighting to release stress turned out to be fun. He had never pegged himself to be a person who loved fights, but he was slowly getting around to it. On another note, the insects increased in number tremendously, more than the previous week and days, based on the intruders' reports. Then again, they were probably lying to him in order not to 'harm' him with such information. He also couldn't use his sensor well since it had been beeping nonstop since the intruders arrived hence thrown randomly in his now destroyed workshop.
Another thing he had noticed, the insects did not fight the way they had an hour ago. The cluster attacking the ship's eastern hull moved with a shared purpose that had nothing to do with the people fighting them, apart from him, anyway. They weren't trying to kill him or the others, either. Instead, they were routing around them entirely, probing the ship's structure at specific intervals.
He wondered if the others had noticed the movement, or even the fact that he had escaped the ship and was currently fighting on the other side. If they hadn't, then they were fools.
He tracked the pattern from the hatch for three seconds and felt the cold settle into his chest as he mapped it. East hull. North junction. The lower storage bay.
All were mineral contact points, most of which he had activated and were running one thing or the other. Did the insects use the mineral just like him? It strengthened his mental power and calmed him when using, it might just be similar.
"Cody," he said quietly, as he switched to a small hand-made rifle and rolled away from a praying mantis-looking insect. He quickly stood up and aimed only for another to charge at where he was standing. He jumped up with a grunt and took a dagger from his pocket, aiming for the insect's vital point right between its head and thorax, and threw as he landed.
"Already tracking," Cody replied from somewhere behind him, where he was currently hidden with another bow and rifle acting as the aid. The insects paid Cody no mind, a rather astonishing thing all things considered; they loved powercores after all. Males were hot commodities to insects, it seemed. "The clustering pattern corresponds with the blue mineral deposits throughout the ship. Highest concentration of impact attempts at the power core housing and B-3 through B-6."
"They want my activated minerals."
"Affirmative." Cody said as he dodged an insect flying past him as a result of Jinyue throwing it with his power, "Do be careful, Master. I love my appendages how they are!"
"Sorry!" He wasn't sorry; it was funny hearing Cody complain and nag sometimes.
The minerals. His minerals. The ones he'd spent the better part of two years identifying, extracting, and integrating into the ship's systems because they were the only reason the power core hadn't given out entirely. The ones that glowed faintly blue in the dark when he was working late and always made the air taste faintly of static. The ones that these intruders seemed transfixed on, and for good reason, it seemed.
The ones that, as of approximately forty minutes ago, had been radiating an activated signature across a very wide area because he had been using his mental power in an enclosed space for an extended period of time and had apparently been too busy being locked in his own storage room to notice.
"These damned beacons," he said, rather annoyed, the intruders could have just told him such. It was an easy deduction, all things considered. Their dual role as power cores and mental boosts sure was lucrative for the insects.
"Your mental power interacts with the mineral's resonance frequency on contact or close proximity. The fight inside the ship would have produced a measurable emission. Based on current insect trajectory patterns and the direction of the first swarm breach, I estimate the signal became detectable approximately —"
"During the spar."
"Yes."
He breathed in. Out.
So, it had been his fault too. Or more specifically, it had been their fault for provoking the spar, which had activated the minerals, which had drawn the insects, which had then followed the recon team's trail back because the recon team had also been near the hill deposits based on what Rin was saying, and between the two signal sources, the swarm had triangulated their location in an afternoon. A clean chain of causation. Everyone implicated. He found it deeply unsatisfying that he was among them.
An insect hit the outer hull hard enough to send a resonance through the ground under his feet. He stopped thinking about it and started shooting.
The back quadrant of the compound was quieter than the front. That lasted exactly as long as it took the nearest cluster of insects to register his mental signature going live, which was not long at all, his small outburst considered. He felt the attention swing toward him like a physical thing, a pressure changes in the air, twelve separate creatures reorienting mid-movement.
There it was again. That frantic quality. Different from how they attacked the others. Were they specialising their attacks based on the person?
He kept moving, using the compound's exterior wall as cover, picking off insects that broke from the main group and angled toward him. His adapted ammunition worked well at close range — better than standard issue, for this specific type of carapace, because he had designed it to — but the numbers made sustained fire expensive. He had to be selective.
An explosion of insect from the far side, Rin's work, by the force of it. It seemed they had noticed and someone getting closer and closer to his area. He stopped caring by then. They could come if they did but he'd ignore them either way now.
From his elevated mental sweep, Jinyue mapped the battlefield properly for the first time since opening the hatch. Now fifty-something insects. Fewer than the initial swarm, which meant the fight was progressing, and the soldiers were managing well enough that he didn't need to…
Three insects peeled away from the mineral-hunting cluster and came directly at him. They had stopped their trajectory from where the mineral deposits were and directly beelined to him.
He shot the first cleanly. Dodged the second. The third hit him from the side before he could reorient… a glancing blow from one heavy forelimb that caught his shoulder and spun him sideways and suddenly there was no ground under his feet. Flying wasn't fun.
He hit the rock formation at the compound's edge at an angle that would have broken something if he hadn't thrown a fast, instinctive swell of power between himself and the surface. It cushioned the impact. Barely. He still felt the collision jar through his spine which made him grimace and shudder. He thenhit the ground half-controlled and landed badly, one knee taking the weight, the bow knocked loose from his grip. Damn.
He was angry, more than usual, and it definitely didn't count as that analytical variety, he usually managed those well. This anger had been building since his storage door was jammed shut, since the workshop breach notification, since the alloy casting unit went offline… since all of it, actually. It sat in his chest enough to make it hard to breathe. He was fifty per cent sure that he was one step away from huffing and puffing.
His mental power surged with it.
He didn't pull it back.
The surge that had softened his landing expanded outward in a sharp, uncontrolled pulse, and with it came the anger, and with the anger came something he couldn't immediately name. A frequency he hadn't used before. Something that carried, underneath the push of it, the very specific intent to end. The nearest insect — around three meters away, mid-lunge — stopped.
Then its head came apart in a mini explosion that had him almost covered in green, slimy blood from the inside, fast and wet, like pressure released too quickly in a sealed container. Dark fluid hit the ground. The body followed.
Jinyue stayed where he was, one knee on the rock, and stared at it.
Silence, for exactly one second. The insects seemed just as shocked as himself, funny.
Then the insects within range of the pulse shrieked, if he was reading it correctly, a note of distress.
Interesting.
He straightened slowly. His shoulder ached. His power was still running hot from the anger, that specific frequency still present if he focused for it. He found it in the back of his mental reach like a tuning fork held at the wrong pitch, which was identifiable now that he knew what he was feeling for.
He looked at the two insects closest to him, both of which had halted their approach and were making small, agitated movements without advancing.
He focused on the frequency. Isolated it. Sharpened it deliberately the way he would sharpen a signal on a faulty receiver. He pushed it outward experimentally. The leftmost insect's head exploded. The second one ran. An insect… running. As in retreating. From… him? Haha!
Jinyue watched it go with an expression that hadn't moved in several seconds. He felt that quiet satisfaction slowly start slipping in. His workshop was still partially destroyed. The alloy casting unit was still offline. His shoulder still hurt. None of that had changed.
But this —
"Master Jinyue," Cody said, appearing at his peripheral. His optics were flickering at a rate that suggested significant computational activity. "Your mental output just registered a previously unlogged frequency variant. I did not have it in my records."
"No," Jinyue agreed. "Neither did I."
He retrieved his bow from where it had fallen.
He didn't even care that the sound of fighting was getting near him. He didn't care that Rin was feeling what he might be doing. He clearly didn't even understand what was going on with his power, too. He looked down at his hand. Flexed it once. He found the feeling again. It was easier this time, like a muscle he'd just discovered he had.
"Do not," Cody warned him.
"I'm not doing anything." But the insects were getting away…wouldn't that be a pity. Why should they run away after….
"You have the expression you get before you do something, I will have to log as a critical incident."
Jinyue almost smiled. "I'm just thinking."
"That," Cody said, "is what concerns me."
Ahead of them, another insect broke from the cluster at the hull and turned toward Jinyue with that same frantic, too-focused intensity that had been bothering him since the start. Some seemed to have gotten their courage back, it seemed. Though they were more frenzied.
He raised the bow.
Then, on impulse, lowered it.
He focused on his power then felt it flow out in a precise, targeted amount with the most controlled expenditure he could manage. He couldn't afford to be hasty and end up bleeding from all his olfactory senses like the last time he discovered his power.
The insect stopped four meters away. Its antennae rose. It made a sound he hadn't heard from the swarm before, and then it retreated, rejoining the cluster at the hull.
Jinyue watched it go.
Then he looked at the hull cluster, who were still methodically working at the mineral deposits and completely ignoring the fight happening ten meters away from them because they were focused, and what they were focused on was the mineral, and the mineral was in his ship, and his ship was his home, and the workshop was in there, and the casting unit —
He pushed the frequency outward at the entire cluster.
Six insect heads came apart simultaneously.
The rest of the cluster scattered.
"That," Jinyue said, mostly to himself, "is significantly more efficient."
Cody was quiet for a moment.
"You appear to be enjoying yourself," he said finally.
Jinyue picked a new angle on the retreating insects and didn't bother to deny it.