Chapter 42: The Star-Forge
⫸ [ TIME: +75 DAYS SINCE THE SKY WAR ]
⫸ [ LOCATION: GEO-STATIONARY ORBIT – THE ANCHORAGE ]
⫸ [ STATUS: CONSTRUCTION PHASE 4 ]
Space was no longer silent. It hummed with the vibration of industry.
High above the blue-green marble of Aethelgard, a monstrosity was taking shape. It was not a ship. It was a suspended city of violence.
The Nemesis sat in the center.
Surrounding it, arranged in a perfect X-formation, were the four captured Destroyers: Vigilant, Bravery, Dauntless, and Liberator.
Connecting them were massive girders of black Void-Steel, thick as redwood trees. The metal had been mined from the planet, smelted in the base, shot into orbit via mass-driver cargo pods, and welded into place by the Iron Legion.
Elian drifted in the void between the Nemesis and the Vigilant.
He was in his Tier 3 Reactor Form. The vacuum didn't bother him. The cold was just a variable.
He ran his hand along a weld seam that was fifty meters long.
"Micrometer variance detected," Elian transmitted.
"IT IS SOLID, LORD," Grom's voice crackled in his earpiece.
Grom was floating nearby in his Titan-Mech. The massive machine had been fitted with a Zero-G maneuvering pack. In its hydraulic hands, it held a welding torch the size of a flamethrower.
"Solid is not enough," Elian corrected. "Grom, when we fire the main cannon, the recoil will be equivalent to a tectonic shift. If this weld has a bubble in it, the shear force will tear the Vigilant off the frame. And if the Vigilant tears off, the reactor balance fails. And if the balance fails, we turn into a supernova."
Grom looked at the seam. He adjusted his mech's optical zoom.
"I WILL REDO IT. PERFECTION IS IRON."
Elian nodded and fired his maneuvering thrusters. He shot across the gap to the central hub.
The scale of the project was terrifying.
They were effectively building a Type-1 Civilization artifact with Type-0 labor.
The Deep-Kin—creatures of the dark tunnels—were now space-walking in pressure suits, laying cabling along the girders.
The Giants—warriors of the jungle—were now structural engineers, learning about torque and tensile strength.
"A.R.C., status on the Reactor Link?"
[ The physical connections are 98% complete. ]
[ The Super-Conductor Cables (made from refined Spirit Stone copper) are holding stable. ]
[ However, we have a software problem. ]
"Chief Sol?"
[ Affirmative. The Federation Engine Control Units (ECUs) are resisting the slave-link. They are fighting the synchronization signal. ]
Elian's eyes glowed with a harsh white light.
"I'm going to the Engineering Deck."
⬡ ─── ⬡ ─── ⬡
⫸ [ TIME: 10:00 SHIP TIME ]
⫸ [ LOCATION: THE NEMESIS – AUXILIARY MESS HALL ]
⫸ [ STATUS: EDUCATION ]
While the monsters built a gun in the sky, a different kind of construction was happening on the flagship.
Alara stood at the front of the mess hall. The tables had been cleared away.
Sitting on the floor were thirty children—the "Refugee Class."
And sitting behind them, looking uncomfortable in their orange jumpsuits, were a dozen Federation engineers who were on their break.
"Today we talk about Aether," Alara said. She held a piece of chalk in her hand.
She drew a wave on the board.
"The Cultivators say Aether is the breath of the Gods. They say you must pray to it, chant to it, and beg it for power."
She drew a line through the word 'Gods'.
"The Federation says Aether is fuel. They say you harvest it, compress it, and burn it."
She drew a line through 'Fuel'.
"So what is it?" Alara asked the class.
Kora, the sharp-eyed girl from the Southern Kingdom, raised her hand. She was wearing a clean grey uniform now, with the Iron Sect insignia on the shoulder.
"It is a field," Kora said. "Like gravity. Or magnetism."
"Correct," Alara smiled. "It is a Non-Baryonic Energy Field. It exists everywhere. Cultivation is just the biological ability to interact with that field. Technology is the mechanical ability to interact with it."
Chief Engineer Sol, sitting in the back eating his protein ration, scoffed.
"You're teaching savages quantum field theory? They still think the sun is a chariot."
Alara looked at Sol. Her eyes were sharp, like her father's.
"These 'savages' built the hull you are sitting in, Chief. And unlike your Federation academy graduates, they don't have preconceived notions about what is impossible."
She turned back to the board.
"Elian—my father—is not a mage. He is not a god. He is an engineer who realized that the laws of physics apply to magic too. If you understand the math, you don't need to pray."
She picked up a Spirit Stone.
"Calculus Lesson 4: The Rate of Decay in a Crystallized Aether Matrix. Who wants to solve for X?"
Kora stood up.
Sol watched as the "savage" girl walked to the board and began to write complex differential equations that he hadn't seen since his university days.
"My god," Sol whispered to the technician next to him. "They aren't just building a fleet. They're building a civilization."
⬡ ─── ⬡ ─── ⬡
⫸ [ TIME: 13:00 SHIP TIME ]
⫸ [ LOCATION: F.S.S. VIGILANT – MAIN ENGINEERING ]
⫸ [ STATUS: CONFRONTATION ]
The air in Engineering was stale.
Elian floated into the room. He didn't walk; he hovered a few inches off the deck to save energy.
Chief Sol and his team were huddled around the main console, arguing.
"Problem, Chief?" Elian asked. The synthetic reverb in his voice silenced the room.
Sol stood up. He looked exhausted. He had been working 18-hour shifts for a month.
"It's the ECU, Commander. The Vigilant's computer is designed to optimize its own reactor. When we try to slave it to the Nemesis, the system interprets the external command as a hacking attempt and shuts down the magnetic containment."
"Bypass the safety protocols," Elian ordered.
"We can't!" Sol shouted, slamming his hand on the console. "It's hard-coded into the kernel! If we bypass the safety, the fusion reaction becomes unstable. You're asking us to daisy-chain five nuclear stars together with a shoestring! One millisecond of lag, and the harmonic resonance will shatter the containment fields. We'll all turn into stardust."
Elian drifted closer. The heat from his chest reactor warmed the air.
"You are thinking like a Federation officer, Sol. You are afraid of the instability."
"I am afraid of dying!" Sol retorted. "This 'Hex-Link' is insane. It's theoretically possible, yes, but you need a super-computer to manage the micro-adjustments in real-time. The Nemesis computer isn't fast enough."
"I know," Elian said.
He tapped his chest.
"That's why I am the computer."
Sol blinked. "What?"
"I will plug into the central hub," Elian explained. "I will filter the data streams from all four ships. My Neural-Net will handle the load balancing."
"You?" Sol laughed nervously. "You're a cyborg, sure, but that's... that's millions of calculations per second. You'd have to process the thermal variance of four stellar masses simultaneously. Your brain will melt. Your synapses will fire until they burn out."
"Then I burn," Elian said simply. "But the fleet fires."
He grabbed Sol by the shoulder of his jumpsuit. The metal grip was firm but not crushing.
"Listen to me, Sol. The Carrier is coming. It has a Harvester Beam. It doesn't just kill; it sucks the soul out of the planet. It leaves a husk. Your Federation masters are going to peel this world like a fruit."
Elian pointed to the monitor showing the school feed—Alara teaching Kora.
"They will die. She will die. Unless we make this work."
Sol looked at the screen. He looked at the monster in front of him.
For the first time, he didn't see a machine. He saw a desperate father willing to lobotomize himself for a chance at survival.
Sol sighed. He typed a command into the console.
"If we strip the localized error-checking, we can reduce the latency by 40%. It... might give you enough buffer to survive the connection."
"Do it," Elian said.
⬡ ─── ⬡ ─── ⬡
⫸ [ TIME: +76 DAYS ]
⫸ [ LOCATION: THE NEMESIS – THE FLUX CHAMBER ]
⫸ [ STATUS: THE LINK ]
The Flux Chamber was a new room built in the center of the Nemesis.
It was a web of heavy cables. Thick, insulated pythons of copper and gold, running from the external airlocks directly into a central chair.
The chair was made of Void-Steel.
Elian sat in the chair.
He was naked. His grey armored skin glistened.
Deep-Kin technicians were attaching the leads directly to his body.
Four massive cables plugged into ports on his spine, shoulders, and hips. These carried the data and power load from the four Destroyers.
A fifth cable—the thickest one—plugged directly into the port on his chest, linking his Bio-Reactor to the Earth-Shaker Cannon mounted on the hull.
"All ships report ready," Alara's voice came over the intercom. She sounded terrified. "Dad... the simulation says there is a 40% chance of neural cascade failure."
"Never tell me the odds," Elian whispered.
He looked at the technicians. "Seal the room."
They scrambled out. The blast doors hissed shut.
"A.R.C., initiate the Hex-Link."
[ Warning. This will hurt. ]
[ Initiating Handshake Protocol. ]
[ Ship 1 (Vigilant): Connected. ]
[ Ship 2 (Bravery): Connected. ]
[ Ship 3 (Dauntless): Connected. ]
[ Ship 4 (Liberator): Connected. ]
SNAP.
It felt like being struck by lightning. Four times at once.
Elian's back arched. His mouth opened in a silent scream.
His vision vanished, replaced by a wall of data.
He didn't see the room.
He felt the Vigilant. He felt the heat in its starboard injector.
He felt the Bravery. He felt the vibration of a loose bolt on Deck 4.
He became the fleet.
His mind split into five streams.
Process. Adjust. Coolant flow to Sector 7. Magnetic field stabilization on Pylon B. Harmonic frequency 400Hz.
[ SYSTEM ALERT: CPU LOAD 95% ]
[ TEMPERATURE RISING ]
His body began to glow. Not just the reactor, but his veins. Lines of white fire traced across his grey skin.
"Stable," Elian gasped. The voice was distorted, layered with the hum of five engines. "Targeting."
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⫸ [ LOCATION: THE BRIDGE ]
"He's holding it," Lin said, staring at the bio-monitor. "His heart rate is 300. His internal temp is 105 degrees. But the grid is green."
Alara gripped the rail. "Target the debris field. The wreckage of the Profit Margin."
"Distance: 4,000 Kilometers," Grom reported from the gunnery station.
"Charging main cannon," Alara ordered.
⬡ ─── ⬡ ─── ⬡
⫸ [ LOCATION: THE FLUX CHAMBER ]
The charge began.
Elian felt the energy rushing toward him.
Four fusion reactors dumped their output into the grid.
The energy flowed through the cables. Through him.
He was the lens.
He had to focus the raw power of four suns into a single point.
Pain.
It was beyond pain. It was dissolution.
His cells were vibrating apart.
The Blood-Core in his chest pumped frantically, using the biological essence to repair the damage as fast as the radiation destroyed it.
Repair. Destroy. Repair. Destroy.
[ Warning. Power Surge detected in the Bravery. Malicious code attempting to scram the reactor. ]
"Sol," Elian gritted his teeth. "Hold... it... together."
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⫸ [ LOCATION: F.S.S. BRAVERY ENGINEERING ]
Chief Sol was sweating. The console was screaming red alerts.
"The Federation fail-safe is kicking in! It's trying to dump the core!"
"Override it!" his deputy shouted.
"I'm locked out!"
Sol looked at the manual release lever on the wall. The "Emergency Scram" lever. It was vibrating.
If he pulled it, the reactor shut down safely.
If he didn't, and the software forced a dump, the ship might explode.
Sol looked at the camera. He knew Elian was watching. Or rather, Elian was the ship.
"To hell with the Federation," Sol muttered.
He grabbed a heavy wrench.
He smashed the control panel.
CRUNCH.
Sparks flew. The "Scram" signal died.
"Hard override!" Sol yelled. "We are riding the bomb!"
⬡ ─── ⬡ ─── ⬡
⫸ [ LOCATION: THE FLUX CHAMBER ]
The surge smoothed out.
Elian felt the Bravery fall back in line.
"Charge... 100%," Elian synthesized.
He channeled the power to his chest. To the cannon.
The Earth-Shaker barrel on the hull began to glow white. The cooling coils hissed, dumping clouds of steam into the vacuum.
"FIRE."
KA-KOOM.
It wasn't a sound. It was a hammer blow to the universe.
The Nemesis kicked back. The massive Void-Steel girders groaned under the stress.
The entire station shifted 50 meters backward in an instant.
From the barrel, a projectile launched.
This wasn't a simple slug.
It was a Hyper-Velocity Rail-Dart, surrounded by a sheath of concentrated Aether-Plasma.
It moved at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
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⫸ [ LOCATION: TARGET ZONE ]
The wreckage of the Profit Margin drifted 4,000km away.
A massive chunk of hull, the size of a city block.
The shot arrived.
There was no impact.
There was atomization.
The kinetic energy was so high that the metal didn't melt; it vaporized into its constituent particles.
A blinding flash of light lit up the dark side of the planet.
Like a new star being born for a fraction of a second.
Then, the shockwave.
The expanding cloud of plasma obliterated the smaller debris for miles around.
⬡ ─── ⬡ ─── ⬡
⫸ [ LOCATION: THE NEMESIS – BRIDGE ]
Silence.
Everyone stared at the screen. The target was gone. Simply erased.
"Impact confirmed," Lin whispered. "Target destroyed. Overkill rating... 5000%."
"Reactor status?" Alara asked.
"Cooling down," Sol reported from the Engineering channel. "The grid held. Structural integrity is at 88%. We popped a few rivets, but... she flew."
Alara slumped into the captain's chair. "He did it."
⬡ ─── ⬡ ─── ⬡
⫸ [ LOCATION: THE FLUX CHAMBER ]
The blast doors opened.
Alara and Grom ran in.
Elian was still sitting in the chair.
Smoke was rising from his body. The cables were glowing red hot.
His grey skin was cracked in places, revealing the raw muscle and circuitry beneath.
"Dad!" Alara cried, rushing to unhook him.
Elian opened his eyes.
They weren't just white anymore.
They had a ring of gold around the pupil. A halo.
He coughed. A puff of blue smoke escaped his lips.
"Disconnect," he rasped.
Grom gently pulled the massive plugs from Elian's spine.
Elian fell forward. Grom caught him.
"YOU BURNED HOT, IRON-STAR," Grom rumbled softly.
"The math..." Elian whispered, his voice gaining strength as his reactor cycled fresh blood. "The math works."
He stood up, shaky but supporting his own weight.
The cracks in his skin began to seal, the nanites and biology working in overdrive.
"A.R.C.," Elian said. "Status."
[ System Reboot Complete. ]
[ Neural Pathways: Reinforced. ]
[ You have successfully processed a Terawatt-load through a biological interface. ]
[ Evolution Detected. ]
Elian looked at his hand.
He clenched his fist. The air around it distorted. He wasn't just generating power anymore; he was bending the field around him.
"I saw it," Elian said. "When the connection was fully open. I saw the network."
"The Federation network?" Alara asked.
"No," Elian looked up. "The Aether network. The planetary grid. I can... touch it now."
He walked to the viewport.
The Hex-Link floated around them. A weapon of mass destruction.
"We are ready," Elian said.
"Let the Carrier come."