Chapter 49 – Star Breakers

Ameisa was in the lounge, eating a fresh, perfectly modified fruit. She oft spent time catching up on reports from the far fringes of Xi's war effort, as well as economic data and Galanet reports on a velvety leather couch. The room flashed bright red, and a message on her portable comm read Code 278. Immediately she ran to the latest shuttle and headed to the closest Warpgate, a port where all the Elderdragons could be brought on the High-Fleet control ship for joint operations, the Counterpane. A 278 she knew immediately, meant high detail prisoners had escaped and an insurrection or incursion was likely to follow, the Elderdragons knew to expect retaliation following such a dire alert.

The shuttle rocketed through the warpgate and transported Ameisa directly to the center of the void, directly to the fleet around the prison facility. The shuttle slowed to a hovering stop, as 400 starships descended and approached to greet the Elderdragons and other top-tier crew members of the High-Fleet's top 3 divisions, those that weren't on the far edges of the galaxy fighting felines, greeted the 4. Ameisa saw Raquel, Machine Mother and Rondo over around a large hologram of the penitentiary, already observing the situation.

Machine Mother's body slushed and gushed from her liquid-nanite body, Raquel's and Rondo's stayed the same. The former always looked at Xi's troubling affairs, from the enigma to breakouts like this with a face of engraved maternal concern. For an artificial being, she appealed unusually to the pathological instincts of any situation. Empathy. Perspective. Fight or flight. Even in this case, she was mumbling about the unnecessary collateral damage orbital strikes and high-density particle beams would do slagging the prison. The political fallout, the cost of life, the moral and ethical implications. She recited them as if she'd aced a test no one else had studied for, Rondo giving his characteristic arm-folded grunts as she tried to convince Sandra, via hologram who was preparing to intervene in the lower floor, to show restraint.

Raquel for her obsessed with retrieving all the in facts, a language Ameisa could vibe with.

Sandra cleared her throat as Ameisa came into the circle from behind. "Byte. I'm heading out. Tell the usual garrison to stay out of my way."

Ameisa's face read 'disgust' as they all looked at the same data overlaid onto the hologram, a picture of Ursula in her cybergoth suit replacing her prison uniform she should've been wearing.

"But Sandra! If she escapes-"

"I don't care." Sandra started climbing into her Mech. "She won't escape, and even if she does. We can let prissy Ursula run around and play hide in seek on some other planet, a universe, whatever. But that woman? That.. thing." She looked back at her teammates. They all knew what 'thing' she was talking about. The Akura unit, a walking war machine of pure destruction. "You all know it. If she gets loose.. Xi loses."

She got into her suit, an intricate and complex armored mecha suit encasing her entire body, black and crimson accents shining her to glory. She looked like an interstellar warrior

queen, an ornate suit fit for a galactic war. As she looked to her teammates, Raquel, Rondo, and Machine Mother all went taut. "You all do it. Stop her. I'll focus on the kittycat okay. Can I count on you?"

The three gave an 'aye', Ameisa looking at Sandra's projection with a raised eyebrow. "I know you care. But we can't go in alone. This is Ursula we're talking about. We have to coordinate and we have to have a plan."

Sandra sneered. "Fine. Then wait here and send a few basic recon teams. I'll come back after the Set is dealt with and help you deal with the XU Premier. Deal? I just cannot come back without the cat." Sandra's voice was stern. When she talked, her voice, although slightly high and somewhat breathless, her Xi heritage lent it a gravity and intensity that gave it almost a metallic edge. A sense of urgency to whatever she said. The air seemed to carry an ominous tone at her word. The only time she'd ever heard that tone, was from Rondo and herself. It felt like a clap of thunder on an otherwise serene evening's summer's night before a thunderstorm.

"Deal." They all agreed, the room quiet as Ameisa and the rest watched Sandra head out the docks of the ship and fly towards the prison. This proved to be, the first of one of Xi's many fatal mistakes.

Upon this agreement, the team waited about 80 minutes- well over an hour, buying Ursula and her associated extra time. They were in the meantime scouring over the reports of their other comrades on the scene, and were just watching the datastream pictures of Shooting Star, Black Rock and Satsuma on the monitoring feed. Raquel was working overtime while they waited, attempting to gain control over the prison's mainframe, power supply and all systems. Her ability to lock them out initially, gave Ameisa and the others a false sense of confidence, she was one of the most formidable hackers Xi had employed. Able to teleport or merge with any computer system or electronic merely with her thoughts, a technopath on the galactic level.

Even if Ursula had rather convenient influence over information and technology, what was it compared to a Genus Loci’s? Raquel's unambiguous superiority in technological matters, in addition to Machine Mother's expertise, and Rondo's warrior arrogance made the group assume they had absolute control of the situation. Now for the first time in her life, Raquel could not get past an electronic security Ursula had reactivated and setup, as it were. The system was not too sophisticated, too advanced- rather, it was too out of date, an older Analog system that frustrated Raquel, like trying to write an academic essay on a children’s picture book. The primitive nature of it made her queasy and uncomfortable figuring the basic inns and outs.

Raquel couldn't penetrate it with any haste.

This wasn't because of any change in Ursula's methods- rather, she'd purposefully calculated and planted this deception, taking a page from her sister's playbook and allowing Raquel to think she was in control. The mission she'd sent Caleb on was virtually a fool's errand, made only to deceive them into thinking they, with hundreds of thousands of warships were the only ones who could bombard, hack and infiltrate the prison. Machine Mother began to grow frantic as Raquel's inability to break the system only strengthened the false sense of security, while Rondo's own arrogance told him there was no way Ursula could defeat the three, despite every indication that the three were fighting Ursula on a battlefield she'd had decades to plan

and had chosen. How could 5 or 6 people stranded in a prison escape with an entire armada surrounding them and barricaded the space for lightyears? Rondo found no reason to be worried in the slightest.

In addition to the group abiding by Sandra's word, they lost additional precious time from other unexpected events. The sight of Mercy, crashing with Sway and fighting in the midst of space the sight of the 2's onslaught and Sway tossing an entire Xi warship at Mercy was too much for Raquel, Machine Mother, and Rondo to resist, so much so they had to pause their monitoring of Ursula's group and rush to the frontlines.

"Those two are insane." Ameisa shuddered. She still remembered the day she brought Mercy home from Faeslayer capital, that little girl she'd rescued so long ago. She’d certainly taken a few levels in extreme since then.

"They're not Xi." Rondo pointed out.

"They're not even human." Raquel responded, looking over the schematics. "Some SS squabble? It's best if we don't get involved, but they did cause collateral damage and throw one of our ships."

"What do you want me to do about it?" Rondo responded.

"We'll deal with that later." Raquel said, before looking at Rondo. "If you're just going to stand there like a slug, you might as well take that slug's place." She said, indicating Rondo's lack of activity. "That and you're going to make the Xi look like a bunch of barbarians.. and we already have that problem."

The other timeloss they were dealt was in investigating the data and fallout from Nine and Sandra's battle. The timespan of space warfare, usually occurred tactically within a horse's breath- quick, brief moments and flashes of destiny at speeds one couldn't imagine. The fight between the Xistress and her rival had only taken a few minutes at most, but the sight of the two teleporting away after the Kamikatzi had been detonated, left a gaping hole in the group's plans and left the five Elderdragons without a clue what their next move should be. Raquel's mind was in overdrive, as she ran through the data as fast as she could in a way that only she and the rest of the Xi could manage. She traced the radiation, energy and dimensional trajectory of Sandra's location across the galaxy, and immediately sent her consciousness to the flickering, destroyed remains of Sandra's mech. Her holographic projection appeared in a forest, sighting its wreckage. Raquel looked around, seeing nothing but trees and rock and debris. And in front of her, the remains of Sandra's mech, an impenetrable shell cracked and open. The girl's body was nowhere to be seen, but she could sense a sizable population on this world. Raquel closed her eyes, immediately pulled her consciousness out of the mech, returning to the High Fleet.

Raquel, who knew all and sees all, sighed with relief. "She's alive, , at least. She should be able to regroup, but-" she stopped.

Ameisa fretted at her pause. "What?"

"She's not in any position to get back to use right away. We're under strict instructions to handle the Premier. We have to stay on task, we cannot worry about the Xistress right now."

"But-" Ameisa was cut off by Machine Mother. "Ameisa, I care for our dear Sandy too. But Xi is counting on us, and so is she. Can I trust you to put your feelings aside?" She put a hand on Ameisa's cheek, feeling slick and oily as she gently squeezed and ran her slimy silicone hands through Ameisa's neck and shoulders. The bare embrace was icy cold, yet had the compliment of maternal warmth.

"Affirmed." Ameisa replied.

So a further 17 minutes passes, and then a final report arrived. A few of the remaining recon teams that were still trying to approach the prison, had encountered Ursula, Satsuma and Shooting Star. The group began to debate how to deal with it- orbital bombardment, SPARTA drop teams, or to continue monitoring the situation. While arguing, the Enigma hit this sector of the galaxy. This news, of course, meant an additional setback. Information gathering on the inside of the prison and those locked up became scarce for a while. Prisoners who'd escaped had not only caused a riot, but about 2200 different pursuit teams had already been deployed to try to chase after escaped prisoners, with intel coming in now that for better or worse, Ursula and the other Starbreakers were not among those caught. They'd stayed safely on the prison still.

Raquel immediately began working on the Enigma's signal, Rondo started his work on gathering as many space assets as he could, the machine mother immediately began preparing the ships to launch an attack just in case Ursula had anything up her sleeve- but Ameisa stood aside and remained silent. Something about the situation didn't seem right to her. She, of all of them, was in no hurry to act, whether through indecision without the Xistress, or uncertainty what cards Ursula held. After a brief pause, the other three began getting the Highfleets ships ready and in position. The group began to take the data in, they were a bit surprised when sparks went flying like thunder through the night, the unexpected AOPT destroying numerous ships in the vicinity and armed scouting vessels. Even a dozen carriers with prismatic energy shields were fried heading close to the prison's artificial atmosphere upon getting caught in the AOPT's rapid crossfire.

This took the group offguard, Rondo raising an eyebrow. Ameisa pacing back and forth, demanding Ursula's files and all intel on her. And yet, despite their surprise, they retaliated in confidence and force. Within not even 2 minutes from its firing, the turret was counterattacked and turned to molten slag- the entire prison could easily be aswell, if the will was there. The Starbreakers were clearly still the underdogs, and their time was ticking fast the Elderdragons assured themselves. Overcome by circumstance and confidence, they took their time still.

They waited to act on machine mother's order after bombarding the prison's turret to fire on the prison, the group holding its collective breath- holding their willpower at the sight of machine mother's holographic projection, an armada of hundreds of thousands of starships, swarming through into position. In the center of the galaxy, the prison was clearly surrounded on all sides. The group could see the sheer mass of the armada, the numbers swarming toward the prison like an ant hive. Their position was similar to an ancient colosseum, ships surrounded in a ring hundreds of rows long, each successive ring of ships larger than the next. It was a

vision that always gave Raquel a sense of pride and self-worth, the one vision she'd ever let herself become proud of, the sight of a High Fleet armada ready to strike in perfect formation. Raquel created copies of herself on every single Highfleet ship in the sector, reminding the captains onboard of the situation, and that their act of intimidation was to remind Ursula she truly didn't have any means of escape.

And this was only about half a million ships- seven divisions worth, in an empire with hundreds of divisions to spare. All of them were around the prison like an amphitheater, a verified colosseum wall of ships on every single side of the facility in a giant ring 10 stacks high, surrounding it about around 10 million miles in diameter, each ship the size of a massive city neatly arranged 5000 KM apart as if they were a phalanx.

The 5 watched as the turret was bombarded from afar into slag.

As they prepared to send another message to Ursula and coerce her surrender, reminding her they had lethal force on their side, they lost eyes inside the prison.

That was when the Enigma hit again, and Raquel's hacking efforts were cut off, her consciousness took a hit, her presence evaporating as her soul flickered in and out. Such occurrences were common when fighting against the Enigma, the Genus Loci had dealt with much worse. She struggled to maintain her digitalized form, floating in the air and clutching her head in great pain. Throughout the entire armada, surveillance tech and monitoring was briefly compromised, but engineers working at rapidspeed alongside Machine Mother's instruction were able to use Enigma-proofed reserve systems to keep their minds on target. Contingencies had long been prepared through Machine Mother's astute and technological research in how the Enigma operated- some kind of strange signal was its trace. Using technology with scrambled ciphers, could give them a backup option. Though they were only able to do so in a mere 15 minutes, it cost them the time to see what Ursula was doing with the Datalyte materialization, as well as their more integrated, highly-sophisticated AI systems and Psi-teams for analyzing split second procedures.

During those 15 minutes while they were blind, Ursula had bought the time to put every one of her Starbreakers in their suits. Cybernetic, biomechanical augmentations were grafted onto her 3 girls, and quickly got every one of her warriors up to snuff ready to take on the enemy ahead.

"You good?" Rondo asked.

Raquel pulled her forehead, brows in anguish. "Enigma's back.. I'm going to have to close myself off.." Being connected to every corner of the galaxy, to every ship and comm, to all servers and networks, from the most obscure Galanet set to the administrative and military operations of day-to-day was usually like breathing to Raquel, but her head felt like it was going to split. "Just for a bit."

"It's going to cause us some more delay, can you hold off?" Ameisa asked. "We're in a really serious situation right now." She hadn't seen any reports of what was going on in the prison for almost 20 minutes, and it was causing her serious anxiety. What was going on below?

"Yeah, I'll get everything back online. Just give me a few minute okay." Raquel sighed, falling into Machine Mother's arms, who cradled her projected form like her own child.

Arriving rather late, a young officer ran in and handed Ameisa the files she requested- intel on Ursula and her capabilities.

As she read through the files, Ameisa could see Ursula was clearly the same formidable and terrifying opponent that she had always been, especially with all of her allies Satsuma, the former Orchidan- previously a 2nd in command to the Domina that Nezura had replaced. With all that was transpiring, Ameisa could only look up at the team with a sense of deep anxiety.

Something in the files that Raquel had provided had piqued her attention. Raquel's files on Ursula had a strange, blacked-out line, and an unusual sense of secrecy.

Ameisa looked at her with a sense of curiosity. "Raquel.. could you tell us what this line means? It's redacted."

Raquel rubbed her head, her face looking sore and flushed. "What?" She squinted at the

page.

"Why is this blacked out? It's in her 'special interjectories' section for her capabilities. "Ugh.. I'll peak into the penitentiary database and read her personal files, give me a

second." The room went silent and cold. as she closed her eyes, a room teetering between tranquility and claustrophobia "Okay, it says.. She can control electromagnetism and electromagnetic spectrum. Her powers are intermittent, but are most effective when light wavelengths, electricity, radiation and magnetic fields are in conjunction. When they're at their optimal alignment, she can manipulate data across entire solar systems- entire galaxies. And this is all we know about her abilities." She rubbed her head. "Oh, and something about eidetic memory," She looked up at Byte.

"She can remember and recall anything she's seen or any data she's manipulated, without fail." Ameisa looked at her with a sense of awe, looking into Raquel's eyes. "We had no idea Ursula could do that."

Her face went cold as a corpse. She contacted an officer via call who had a prison's infrastructure specialist onboard. "Kajimoto, when did the AOPT's weapons system first come into preliminary prototype distribution? The earliest designs."

"Uhh.. It had blueprints circulating even decades back, extremely extensive ones." "During Ursula's time?"

"Well yes, but those sorts of designs are as thick as a Bible and highly schematic. They're like thousands of pages long, and the last 540 are just the algorithmic codes."

The thought occurred to Ameisa- of course she'd have seen those designs. As they'd developed the system, she'd've had to work on the system design. The first prototypes were probably a decade before her incarceration, even if her own work on them was mostly in the

finalization process. "Okay- how long did it take before those became publicized and mass produced?"

"The designs were first produced in an operational form about 10 years back, but the schematics are over 30 years old."

"And how long did it take. To translate a complicated schematic like that, to an actual working prototype weapon?"

The specialist thought about it. "Over a decade like I said. Entire teams though, working for years over the designs, they're pretty complicated. Require both knowledge of Cascade, and higher physics to even operate."

Ameisa paused, her look deadly serious on the call. "Would it be possible for a single person to memorize the blueprints?"

Kaijmoto was quiet. "Not for a long time." He paused. "Not for decades." "Even if they'd only seen them once? For a single day even?"

Kajimoto said nothing. "I'd say that's impossible."

Ameisa looked at the group, and said nothing, but nodded slowly. Her eyes went to Machine Mother and her supported elderdragon genus loci in her arms. "Raquel, MM. Order the High-fleet to retreat."

Rondo looked at Machine Mother and stepped forward. "What? Are you crazy?"

"We're Xi. We're warriors. Our way is to fight- and we do it with pride and honor, we are stronger than the sum of our parts." He said, taking a step forward.

"We're also very smart." Ameisa's eyes were cold and dead. "Smart enough, that we should know when a mass evacuation is-"

The displays lit up around the 4 elderdragons, like a desolate wakeup call from the beyond the grave. Suddenly monitoring, radar sequencing and all detectors worked again.

Machine Mother looked like she was in a state of shock, her robotic form twitching as she pondered the situation. She looked back at Ameisa, her eyes glowing. Raquel put her head in her hands. Ameisa's mouth gave a silent scream.

12 minutes ago

Ursula watched as Black Rock and Shooting Star held hands, heading to the stop of the observatory passed the liquefied turret. The two looked at one another. "Ready to do this sis?" Black Rock said, her sister appearing bloodred in her visor. "Hell yeah! Yes yes I’m so hype this is going to be the freshest! Let's get fresh." Shooting Star responded, twisting herself back and forth while giggling and stomping her feet like a hyperactive rabbit.

She closed her eyes, and for a heartbeat, she was back on Ambera, standing in the ruins of her mother’s destroyed lab back in her childhood. Her and her sister recalled the depths of despair during their days in harvest. “All things pass. The universe decays,” her mother had whispered, pointing to the ruins of the city after the latest Nobu attack. “But decay is just another kind of creation. And there's beauty in every creation.” Shooting Star’s earliest memory was waking up in an orphanage after it’d been set ablaze. What planet was that? How many planets after did she see, did she survive on the perspectival? Harvest had a particularly bad score with that.

Accepting those words in the back of her mind, she flew out past the prison city's atmospheric generators and into deep space, where tiny lights could be seen in rows forming a ring-like barricade many layers thick in every direction of the sky. Black Rock flew in one direction, Shooting Star in the other, the two transversing thousands of miles of empty space within the minute, accelerating and picking up speed as they did. The first ship, Xi’s Radiant Absolution flew into view from a twinkling light into a vivid warship, and Black Rock took to her palms, her body glowing like a red firefly. Her red lips flattened, eyes an amber glow.

The sheer engine pressure alone of the Xi Radiant Absolution stationed ahead of them, a few thousand kilometers outside the prison's range could have vaporized any warship- and that was only the beginning of the ship's capabilities. Black Rock and Shooting Star moved together. The two had only been training and waiting for this moment. To fly as one, to dance as one, to fight as one. Traveling at 50 kilometers a second, the two flew between the gaps of the Radiant Absolution and its neighboring warship, the Morning Glorystar, Shooting Star looked around at the hundreds of other ships moving through the air. "Like toy soldiers on the battlefield.

Marching in neat little rows." Her body began to crackle with a bright purple ambience around the white core of her form, while Black Rock Road was shaded eerie crimson in the night. The fundamentals of physics and matter obeyed their will as they moved through space, their bodies the embodiment of indestructibility.

In Xi's long scientific history, it'd long been established that four fundamental forces of Physics were at their limits in the Xi galaxy. The Weak-Nuclear force, with its extremely low strength, was responsible for the transmutation between Neutrinos, holding tensile matter together, a force Shooting Star embodied. Holding Neutron and Proton particles, was the strongest force known at the level of subatomic nuclei- the Strong Nuclear force. The same force, currently manipulated and wrapped in a Strong-Nuclear conduction field around Black Rock Road. When she moved through the vacuum of space, she was undetectable to radar, spectrum wavelengths, dark matter detection or any form of observation, outside being visible to the

naked eye. Which of course, in the vastness of space at such great distances and speeds, was scarcely viable at all.

The crew of the Radiant Absolution were entirely unaware of her strong-nuclear force shielded form heading towards them like a missile, aiming directly for the back of their haul where their Cascade-powered nuclear engines would be in back. The Radiant Absolution had thousands of tons of weaponry- nuclear, laser and particle projectile armament- as well as a high speed and mass of a few hundred thousand kilometers. But it was no match for a pair of Starbreakers who'd prior their chronostasis containment, had just been training and preparing for a fight for years in space, within confines and circumstances no one could have uncovered.

Black Rock's body zoomed into the haul, and splashed into the back, her sister following suit shortly after- Black Rock's field went through the Atlas steel like a diver hitting the water. The metal instantly vaporized a ound the impact sight and sent ripples as she pieced the ship.

Shooting Star followed suit following her through the hole, the Weak-Nuclear power in her visor shooting out. 'Decay Lance.' She said to herself. Her upwards movements caused a field of superdense plasma that could collapse inwards, causing the mass and energy around her body to expand in on itself to such degrees that a mere few kilograms of her own mass could cause light to fold in on itself in a gravity well.

The ship's outer hull exploded, like a balloon had burst from too much air. Her eyes shut, for a half a minute she bled the ship's hull to the stars, its exterior plating expanding to a hundred times its original size, encompassing a spherical bubble of space around her. At the size of a few hundred kilometers, the ship expanded to become like a red sun, the sheer mass of its iron alloy frame expanding in a halo around her like a dying star, a black hole’s singularity a tiny point in the center of a sphere. However, Shooting Star's gravity well reversed the effect, causing the explosion to reverse inwards, and suck in dozens of nearby warships and space debris, expanding outwards to absorb everything in her line of sight in just a second, but also absorbing mass from its own core to such extreme degrees that the ship to fold in on itself, collapsing the ship to an infinitesimal point of mass. A blooming starflower in the dark abyss of space filling the night with brilliant vermilion light, that then shrunk and blipped out of existence.

By the time the fireball had suctioned and vanished, the two had already repeated this process with the second ship, in the span of a single heartbeat. In their wake, a trail of burning debris and plasma trailed behind them, as Black Rock closed her eyes and recalled to herself how, as children, their home planet had been devastated when their birth mother was assassinated. They'd been taken in by a kindly scientist on that world- Ambera. That woman, in her starched labcoat and kindly mannerisms showed them the wonders of superscience, the synergy of corporate and technological wonders. And the cadence of the air rippling as Ultras flew through the skies, the two showed the wonders of Greatland. The city and its chief boss, its founder- Ursula, their new mother’s boss.

The woman who'd taken an interest in them, spoke of the degenerate freedom of the society she founded in private. Inbetween the intense experiments the two were subjected to, her life was a joke. A series of absurd and meaningless events- no, no.

They'd never seen anything like that- a society that was completely and totally free.

What had happened to that woman they now called mother? They recalled Ursula took her in for an appointment one day and, well they never saw her again. But it didn't matter.

Ursula was for all intents and purposes their matron and mistress from that day on. The Premier who gave them a purpose, to realize her vision as her soldiers.

Her Starbreakers.

They looked around- the first ring in the amphitheater of ships had been annihilated, several in the second row caught in the splashes of solar eruption from the first. Shooting Star closed her eyes, and flew upwards like a comet, the light of her eyes glowing like a phoenix. She followed Black Rock as they repeated the process in the next ring, and she remembered how her late mother had said-

"All things pass. The universe decays, but decay is just another kind of creation. And there's beauty in every creation." Her eyes closed. Her body emitted a gravitic field as she made contact with the Xi Solar Decimation, pulling the hull of a massive cruiser down to an infinitesimal point of nothingness, as it's 2KM body shrank and vanished after she'd touched it. She continued repeating the same process, accelerating from one ship to the next with no stop in her momentum, changing angles, thrust and direction without any loss of speed or purpose, and all while remembering the feeling. A memory that would always be as strong to her, like a first kiss. The romantic nights with girlfriends back on that planet, late night parties after school looking up out at the stars through a telescope. Xi was but a mere concept to them, something in textbooks, nothing she could ever imagine living in. Let alone fighting.

Shooting Star carved a corridor through the armada, her wake a trail of collapsing ships, their atomic bonds unraveling into primordial quark-gluon plasma. The two who’d been through so much together, she, the youngest and the most innocent. Her sister, the oldest and the bravest. Her mother, the most compassionate and the kindest. She couldn't help but smile. And then there was Ursula, the creator.

But Ursula wasn't out here. Not in the vast darkness of space, She couldn't see her.

Shooting Star’s visor glowed. She felt a sense of fear within her. The same fear she felt, back when she was a young girl, when a strange wavelength modulated inside her head, her own thoughts became Ursula's- or rather, Ursula's speaking inside of her across the void. "I think we've made our point." Ursula told her telepathically. "That was very gratifying." Ursula told her. "But we can send an even louder message. Time to light up, sunshine." She told her.

Zari took the hint. Her pupils glowed with a fiery amber glow as the mass around her expanded, a miniature Sun that expanded in on itself, the ship in her wake imploding into a pinprick of light.

On her end, Blackrock had gone ahead of Shooting Star. She'd left behind the flaming trail of fireballs and continued spearing through the divisions of the Xi high-fleet, the metal walls of ships offering as much resistance as the air before her. Her target was an Xi Cruiser, a

few kilometers long and a handful wide, an interstellar vessel with a hull made of a highly specialized Cascade-infused material. Able to absorb even nuclear energy, the metal of its hull had only one flaw. A Starbreaker encased in pure Strong-Nuclear force piercing it at Mach 50. In Serena’s wake, it had only taken her a fraction of a second to make contact with the vessel, slashing a slender incision into the side of the ship, and causing an instantaneous implosion of the hull that she pierced. The metal melted from the contact, the atomic bonds of the ship being torn apart, its engines, its Cascade drive, its very heart was destroyed in a split second.

She remembered watching Ursula lecture her on the 'greater good' as a kid. "I believe that there's a certain point in the universe when the good and the bad, the ugly and the pretty, are one and the same." She told her. "And if you want to know what that point is. It's called reality." Ursula had taught her the lesson, as a means to motivate her to do good for the sake of good.

"Reality?" Serena, still getting used to middleschool in this logical, fantastical world that Ambera was asked.

"It means not to get sentimental or emotional." Ursula told her. “I know you have strong convictions, do not let them blind you to justice.”

Serena had always looked awry at those talks. “What justice?” She responded.

Ursula responded matter of factly in her memory. "Justice is determined through reason on one hand and application on the other- through violence. To do what's best for all people, to be rational in your thoughts and desires, to never let your personal desires or opinions get in the way of an outcome that benefits everyone. To be selfless, to be willing to fight when there is no hope. Because, Serena, the world is made of things you hate- things like injustice and cruelty.

Things like the suffering you experienced."

Ursula's hands were outstretched, she looked like a lecturer. A ringmaster even. "The things that have to be eliminated, to be made good. That's what I mean by reality." Back in those days, Serena held onto her every world with pure emotional resonance.

But now, looking at the destruction around her. She could remember the world's beauty when she was a little girl, sitting in the grass in a park, playing games with other children in the warm summer air. Her heart was filled with grief, sorrow and a sense of betrayal.

Ursula had betrayed her- in fact, she felt betrayed by everyone. Her sister, her mother, her mentors, her own self. How could she ever place her heart in Ursula’s hands? Ursula had none of her own, Serena reminded herself.

She'd become a weapon of war. She thought of all the officers and High Fleet soldiers she'd killed in the last 30 seconds, all their journeys now ended. Did they have any daughters like her and her sister?

And there was no way back. Just like Ursula said- No way to advance but forward. Only those not bound to the logical reality of sense moved back.

She flew forward again, following the wake of Shooting Star's own destructive march, her own strong-nuclear shield keeping her from any damage.

She kept moving, and the destruction continued, ships being destroyed behind her, after a full minute of acceleration she'd gone through thousands of kilometer-long warships vaporizing into nothing as she moved forward, a trail of black holes opening up in the sky behind her. She knew this day would come for years, the moment of her deployment.

She thought she'd be ready. She was wrong.

 

As more time passed, the gaps between the ships expanded and the destroyed ships drifted at leisurely speed toward the center of the fleet. The sisters, having destroyed a thousand ships and drilling through deeper through the ring-formation fleet’s interior, were now completely encircled by the fleet on all sides, several ships in. They'd gone off script in their systematic execution and were simply pinballing from ship to ship at this point. As the molten fireballs gradually faded, the glittering of the fleet’s defenses grew brighter. In the darkness of the night, the High Fleet became a series of glittering lights, flashing brightly and flickering fiercely. Ships that Black Rock speared through one microsecond, ten seconds later would be far away enough from her to be a twinkling exploding star in the far dark distance.

The High Fleet’s armada loomed like a metallic storm, their hulls glinting coldly against the void. Ursula’s voice cut through the chaos, calm yet commanding.

“Black Rock. Clear the path.”

Serena, Black Rock stepped forward, her obsidian-and-red armor pulsing as the strong interaction field enveloped her. The field, a shimmering lattice of force lines visible only as distortions along her metallic dark suit. To the naked eye, it resembled a fractal web of neon crimson around her, each node binding atomic nuclei with forces stronger than neutron stars.

She surged into the fleet.

It was over a decade ago, but even now, she remembered the same terror and panic. The same helplessness as her Ursula looked inside her head, her mind, and the wavelengths inside her brain began changing. Mental manipulation, usage of electromagnetic fields and neural wavelengths to tap into one's psyche, changing the emotional processing and logical control just like Ursula would with Li Huang. They'd been in a lab for months at the time, Ursula and her, a woman-like figure in a white labcoat, smiling at them and asking to see if she could be of service to them. Her mother had just walked into the room. "You should be careful Ursula, you shouldn't let children get that close to your business. They could get hurt." She said. "They're children, not your soldiers."

Ursula didn't take those words of Miss Azevero very well. Words that defied her. They were the last defiant words Azevero would ever make. The day after they were spoken, Ursula

informed both Azevero’s adopted daughters they would be living with her in her lab from now on as her new subjects. Ursula's eyes glowed with a ferociousness they'd never seen before. "I know everything about you." She said, and inside of both girls, thoughts began to change, perceptions becoming altered. The day Serena was adopted by her and given the title ‘Black Rock Road’, Serena saw the world through the lens of a butcher wrapped in a white lab coat, through a maniacal lens of a psychopath.

She looked inside of Ursula that day, inside the mind of their new mother, and saw an animal so ferocious that they were convinced she would rip them apart in pieces and eat them.

They ran and ran- but they'd never escape from a mind and will like hers. Ursula had been more powerful than a thousand other scientists on that world, who'd all been corrupted with the same power of the intellect.

In the deep of space, the defense network surrounding the two had finally caught on, through an accidental anomaly-reading in the trails of plasma radiation around Serena that allowed their connective computerized algorithms to discover their location. The High-Ships unloaded an array of bright beams on the two, Serena grabbing Zari's arm and shielding them both. Rapidly the fleet began to fight back, a thousand different ships and fighters firing blinding bolts of beams- energy like nothing Serena had ever experienced in her life. Beams of particle energy she could feel, with their own mass and energy. She could feel the blazing force of photons, particle beams that could turn continents to slag and incinerate worlds. The attacks, after around 30 seconds of nonstop fire, finally began to irritate Serena just slightly, as if holding a nightlight up directly to one's eyes. "Annoying.." She said.

The entire High-fleet was awash in blinding light- lasers, particle beams, photons, neutrinos and other forms of particles and energies all spamming at the two. Worthless. Serena still remembered her original planet's destruction, her mother's death. All this wasted power aimed at a Starbreaker, shielded in a shell of indestructible force simply aggravated them. "Sis, light up the night." She said. Zari didn't hear her in the vacuum of space, but she knew exactly what she was supposed to do.

“Burn bright,” Zari hissed, her voice echoing through comms. “Burn brief. Starlight, hear no grief.”

 

A sphere of golden light bloomed from her chest, expanding rapidly. Ships caught in its radius shuddered as their atoms destabilized. Neutrons dissolved into protons and electrons, reactors overloading in cascading beta decays. Hulls eroded into radioactive dust, crews vaporized mid-scream from decrees up to 15,000,000,000 degrees Celsius. The sphere swelled, consuming thousands of ships in a silent, sun-bright flash, a generated miniature supernova forged from induced radioactivity, a massive explosion forty thousand kilometers across. The sheer small size of the supernova in comparison to the real thing meant the immense pressure and heat would create another singularity at the center holding in the immense heat, enough

outward pressure to keep the star suctioning yet prevent its collapse- like a permanent nightlight left in the sky as a morgue in the sky.

Serena stood beside her sister. Her eyes shut. Her hand on Zari's side. The two flew out of the nuclear tombstone in no time at all.

Ursula watched from the prison deck, seeing the night sky light up as the solar detonation bloomed and lit up space. It was only a few tens of thousands of warships decimated from their sortie, a mere drop in the sea of Xi's vast reserves hundreds of millions strong- But more importantly, a demonstration of an old woman's capability not be underestimated. It was her science that would defeat her enemies and Crush Xi.

Two girls finally left the supernova, knowing Ursula had already predicted they'd break out of the attacking ship formations. The star remained where they'd been, currently rested in a huge blown up section of the High-Fleet divisions which remained in a ring around the prison. A few ships had scattered and abandoned formation- Other Xi ships fired on them and ripped those ships fleeing apart immediately, as abdication and retreat without proper authority was punishable by death in Xi's naval conduct.

Ursula looked inside Serena's head as she flew through the fleet and headed back to the prison. She observed her thoughts- Serena wondered why the Premier had become like this.

Ursula had been such a kind and loving mother and leader in those early days on that planet. Why'd she become such a monster? She observed Serena's emotional state, how much guilt she was feeling. She observed Serena's fear. A natural human emotion, and one that she understood. Emotions were detection algorithms, something to be used but ultimately suppressed. Afraid of losing her sister to the horrors of war. Afraid of being killed. Afraid of being captured. Afraid of being exposed. Afraid of feeling powerless. Afraid of being forgotten. But those were all things that Ursula could overcome and fight against. In the end, this would end in her victory. As long as she had the force to do so.

The two were soon visibly back above the observatory deck, Caleb, Jel and Veronica watching in amazement from a metal platform. They'd only seen explosions and flickers from their location, but understood the gravity of the situation that signaled their fortunes.

Both floated in the air before descending down, armors still deep in their neon glow. "Have fun out there dear?" Ursula asked.

"I'm not the same girl put in your lab 15 years ago." Serena said defiantly. "Well, then let's move on." The Premier didn't skip a beat.

"I know I'm supposed to kill you." Serena said. "You made me and Zari this. I don't want to kill you but I don't want to get captured either." She said. "So guess we're working together. But if Xi closes in on us, if you fail to lead us to victory- I won't hesitate to hold you responsible."

"Not a problem, I won't let it get that far." Ursula's visage turned into the most kind, gentle smile imaginable. She was looking at Serena, deep inside her, her brain, her thoughts.

"Just like we used to." She said, recalling that far distant day when she brought the two teens into her office, having lived with her for years, and presented them the vanilla folder labeled 'Project Starbreaker'.

She looked inside Serena's head. She'd already found the location of their mind. They'd been so used to her mind reading, that they hadn't taken the Psi thought-counters that many High Fleet officers did. Psi training was something Ursula specifically forbid either girl to take. up, forbidding their ability to develop psychic gifts and talents..

She'd spent the weeks before their operation taking precautions- in case of any surprises.

The two Starbreakers weren't going to become an existential threat to her, she'd be damned if she'd let that happen. She'd prepared several plans, contingencies, should they resist the her influence.

She'd put contingencies in place in case they turned on her. She was already pulling out of Serena’s mind.

No need to be inside other people's heads all the time.

The sky burned brightly with metal tombs all around them, like a sea of pyres lit aflame amidst the stars.

 

 

Present

As the Elderdragons watched, the entire rear third ring of the armada, a distance of roughly about 20000 KM in formation, got caught in the destructive blasts that seemed to wipe them out. They got caught in the chain reaction of one after another, the entire arc getting completely wiped out in one swathe of fire, a total of around 52000 ships destroyed in an a relative instant in space warfare. Machine Mother's face went slack, her face becoming a mask of horror. They group instantly began readying to their stations to counteract what was presumably, AOPT's autofire shot. The last remaining ships still stationed around the facility were all being blasted. Somewhere around a ten thousand ships in orbit in, each of them blasted in a chain reaction of implosion after implosion.

"Computer, run scans and zoom in on hyperscopic footage. Replay." Ameisa said, trying to get a read on what was happening.

On closer inspection, the ships were not blown up by any projectile. They seemed to, miraculously, close inwards like a tin sodacan. Ameisa observed in disarray when its top of a warship, a city-sized ship was sucked from its head into a single point in its back, like an anaconda eating its own tail and being crumpled by an invisible hand of fate. It shrunk and dented inwards, like a crumpling of metal. The top 30 or 40 percent of the ship's mass vanished into itself, becoming crinkled spherical metal, class breaking, beams and stations and modules ripping apart and the entire ship compressing in on itself. After about 80% of the mass shrunk

and compressed, it then exploded with nuclear resonance into molten iron, the mass of the ship exploding on itself, becoming a starry light in the night.

Rondo was left speechless, his hand running over his hair. Raquel stared at the display, her eyes blank and her brow furrowed in a frown. Machine Mother looked like she was frozen in place, and with her eyes as cold as a frozen lake in winter. The sight was utterly horrific, unlike anything they'd ever seen before. The starry lights continued, going around in a ring around the circle- it seemed whoever was responsible, had chosen the third stack rather than the first to maximize confusion and panic.

Among the fleet, the entire display of the second stack's destruction was completely silent. Ameisa felt like her spine had been cut in two, her body and her very soul feeling in pain.

"Raquel, what the fuck just happened?"

Raquel took a few seconds to register it. "That was- it was not fire.." "What?"

"It was not an missile explosion, turret or any sort of projectile weapon.." She said, trying to find her composure. The headache was subsiding. "These readings.." The holographic displays flickered, casting jagged shadows across the Counterpane’s command deck. Ameisa’s fingers trembled as she replayed the footage. Xi’s Thrust Crawler, Reaper-class warship, crumpling like paper tossed into a black hole. Its compression was silent, almost elegant, as if space itself had folded around it. Raquel staggered backward, her projected form glitching. “It’s not an explosion. It’s, structural decay. The ships aren’t being destroyed, they’re being unmade.”

Alerts blared as another ring of ships imploded, 52,000 vessels had been destroyed since the start, their hulls collapsing into neutron-star shrapnel. The debris field glowed like a funeral pyre, casting Machine Mother's worried face in jagged red light. "Order that evacuation, NOW. Spread out!" Ameisa screamed. Raquel immediately relayed the order to hundreds of thousands of ships at once, who had begun to abandon the dense phalanx like formation of their ship divisions. The fleet became a scattering of ships- still in formation, but with 10% of them gone.

"I'm doing everything in my power to get them out of the line of fire! They've all been instructed to get out." Raquel told them.

"This is a fucking nightmare." Ameisa screamed, the emerald hair on her head running up and down.

Mother looked back at them, saying nothing, her face blank. Rondo looked back at her with a sense of dread. "Are we fighting against a telekinetic? Some interstellar army with heavy payload? Stealth Set weapons?"

"A woman." A voice said over their auditory systems, Ursula's face appearing on every monitor in the Counterpane's deck. "You face a woman." She looked at the group, her voice dripping with venom. "Robbed of her position. And with nothing to lose.”

"You're an intergalactic criminal! Not a leader!" Ameisa shouted, her face red with rage.

"Your family is criminal! And you're still a criminal, Byte!" Ursula shouted. "You think I don't know that Idola went with Croix? Or the kind of crimes she committed against XU? As far as I'm concerned, anyone that works with the Xistress is guilty.” Ameisa clenched her teeth at the mention of her mother.

"Tell me- is Xi in a position to be declaring war on your behalf?" Ursula asked. Ameisa's face went blank. Raquel looked over at her with a sense of alarm. She hid her nervousness, and began to openly laugh. "Declaring war? You're ONE prisoner, with a few allies, rats running around in a maze. How could this be a war? You're so arrogant, but why not?"

"You're right. It's not a war.." Ursula furrowed her brows. "For this to be a war, any of you outside 'her' would need to be halfway competent. You couldn't even handle my sister, let alone me." Ursula gave ping on her screen, informing her Starbreakers the strike was to continue. "You're terrified of me, you're afraid of Idola. Even in Xi, where you claim supremacy, you cannot win. And deep down you're terrified of losing to me. Am I right, Ameisa?"

As Black Rock’s rampage scattered the fleet’s vanguard, Zari Azevero, aka "Shooting Star" levitated into position. Her white-purple armor pulsed with weak nuclear force manipulators, delicate as quantum silk but vast as a star's collapsing core. She stretched her palms outwards and then clapped them into her own body, fingers splayed over her chest. Her eyes and hair began to glow a blinding purple.

“Burn bright,” Zari hissed, her empty in the night. “Burn brief.”

A sphere of golden light bloomed from her chest, expanding at relativistic speeds. Ships caught in its radius shuddered as their atoms destabilized. Neutrons dissolved into protons and electrons, reactors overloading in cascading beta decays. Hulls eroded into radioactive dust, crews vaporized mid-scream. The sphere swelled, consuming thousands of ships in a silent, sun- bright flash, a supernova created from a burst of her own induced radioactivity. The Elderdragons watched the display, as a massive explosion went off in space- one that engulfed tens of thousands of ships. A riotous supernova, the exceptionally bright light of it burning away on the hulls of over half a dozen thousand ships like they were tissue paper, its radiation washing away entire squadrons of ships.

The supernova faded, leaving a ring of ships, simply gone. Ameisa clenched her fists. "Raquel, tell them not to evacuate. Just increase the distance by a few tens of thousands of kilometers"

"But-"

"It's part of her plan, she's trying to corral our fleet and will simply destroy them in pursuit from behind if we run. We need to end this here, and now."

Machine Mother glanced at Ameisa, a look of deathly concern etched on her usually optimistic outlook. "Ameisa, stop." Her tone was serious. "We don't know she's capable of. We

don't know if she can destroy a planet, a solar system. We don't know if she can destroy a Galaxy."

"She didn't break the galaxy." Ameisa screamed.

"She ruled one and ruined it, and we cannot let her do that again." Sighing, Machine Mother took heed.

"We're ordering a mass volley of the prison. It's not elegant but, we need to return a show of force."

"You're absolutely insane." Rondo's eyes were dead with rage. "Their plan was to hold us here, so that we would lose." He turned, walking to the airlock. "I'm leaving."

"Rondo, wait-" Machine Mother shouted.

"It's fine, I'll survive." He looked up and laughed, flying up to the high command deck's viewing window. "We cannot let Ursula play all her cards. I'll give her hell." He looked back and then flew out, his suited body floating into space as he started to fly towards the prison a few hundred thousand miles away.

Raquel looked down at Ameisa. "What the hell is he doing!?"

Ameisa focused on Ursula's pristine face flickering on every screen. Her eyes were ice cold, a look of pure and cold resolve etched on her face, a face focused purely on personal vendetta.

The look in Ursula's eyes was a sign of unending rage, she was the type of person Ameisa knew she could not negotiate with, or reason with. Raquel was correct in her analysis.

"She's an anomaly, an outlier, but-" Raquel looked down at Ameisa. "She may be the only criminal that can be a greater threat than the criminal Idola, and her syndicate ringleader Croix."

"Me? A bigger threat than my own sister. What high praise!" Ursula's voice hijacked and infiltrated the comms, speaking to their ship bridge directly. "But I prefer not to deal with my sister, I've worked out the mathematics." She let the comms fade into static, turning to her Starbreakers. "Destroy the base. With the high ground, I know you'll catch the fleet in your sights. Their Counterpane flagship is your final objective. Try to take the Elderdragons alive if you can. If not, boo hoo." Ursula commanded Black Rock Road and Shooting Star. The two nodded and flew back out into space.

"This is just the beginning of the show!" Ursula said, wringing her hands. "It won't stop until I'm satisfied."

The fleet stood in absolute silence as Ursula's voice carried through every comm and every speaker.

"You are about to witness the evolution of a brand new era of progress! If you don't wish to be left behind with the apes, I suggest every one of you surrender to my authority and pledge yourself and your allegiance to the cause of XU."

Machine Mother looked at the display. "We cannot let her succeed."

"Fucking hell." Ameisa said. She'd already re-calibrated the scanners, so rather than detecting radiation and gamma trails per say, they'd instead detect linear gaps and spacious expansions of vacuum amidst the flood of particle-decay from the ongoing battle. After running her hands through holograph screens rapidly, she was able to trace both the two Starbreakers locations- heading directly towards them. They'd picked up the trajectory of the two Starbreakers after they flew through the supernova star they'd created prior, and were headed towards their positions at Mach 33.9, in a straight line for both of them. "She's heading right for the center of the fleet! Engage all weapons!"

Raquel shirked. "Strong-interaction anomaly detected. There's nothing we have that can harm them, we should retreat! Order everyone to fall back."

Ameisa looked back at her. "If we retreat, she wins. We've already lost this battle, this is our last stand."

"You can't order this!" Raquel said. "It's impossible to defeat a person who can collapse the hull of a Titanium Thruster like it's paper!" She ran a finger along the back of her neck. "This is the first time anyone has ever faced one of these people, and we're out in the cold as far as information. Order a retreat."

Byte remained defiant. "Keep charging particle cannons and firing! We have enough to keep the fleet running for a long time. We're the Empire of Xi for fucks sake."

Rondo's eyes were dark. In the abyss of space he floated, tuning off his useless vision in the deep dark with only the stars for light. He concentrated all his intuition, flying near the flagship a few thousand kilometers ahead, the Counterpane preparing is particle cannons. When something came charging right at the ship- he swung his arms rapidly and yanked two necks, as if catching a twin set of footballs in his clutch. "Gotcha." He said.

The two Starbreakers looked at the chiseled, gaunt heavily muscled man out here. They didn't think to try and flee from him. Both Starbreakers paused.

"Elderdragon Rondo Mayham." Serena said. She said. "This is going to hurt."

She closed her eyes and looked straight into Rondo, her face contorting in pain as he clutched her neck and squeezed. Like a switch turned on, her entire body went cold as a slab of ice, and then she opened her eyes, her palms glowing red. She slapped his face, the power of strong-interaction attempting to go through him and crumble him, but meeting substantial resistance. Seeing this, Zari's eyes shimmered like a diamond's facets, her pupils dilated and her hair began to crackle, as a display of electrons and protons flickered around her. "Decay lance!" Her visor filled with purple, and she fired a white beam of light from her eyes, as if a scourge from the stars came down at Rondo.

Rondo clenched his teeth, the light making the muscles in his face flex, his skin beginning to glow. Zari, engulfing herself until she became a purple star, unleashed her full radiant burst of radiation. And yet, the Elderdragon sizzled and defied her by punching her in the face and then grappling her sister, Serena's armors were torn apart from the inside out, crumbling in a glorious burst of light while her armored suit was shed like aluminum foil. Both of the girls were manhandled with trivial ease as the Elderdragon slammed them against the stars while continuing to clench his hands around their necks. The light of the two Starbreakers grew cold as the pair's radiant energies stopped.

Rondo's eyes went wide with amazement. "I've never fought anyone as strong as you two, c'mon! You had so much fun tearing apart our fleet and killing all the men on those ships.

Where's the spark in you now?" The man's grip was the only one they'd ever felt strong enough to make them gasp as it indented deeply into their skin, Serena worried it might leave bruising.

Serena’s crimson field flickered, the strong nuclear force shielding her body wavering under the Elderdragon’s unnatural strength. Zari’s decay lance sputtered, her weak-force manipulation scattering harmlessly against Rondo’s psionically reinforced skin. Zari’s hair ignited into a corona of violet plasma. “Synchronize.” Their minds linked, not through comms, not through Ursula’s telepathy, but through the quantum entanglement of sisters who’d shared a womb, a childhood, and a decade of Ursula’s twisted experiments.

Space itself warped as their forces combined. "Strong-Weak Symmetry Break."

Rondo’s punch met Serena’s palm. For a nanosecond, the strong nuclear force binding his atoms held. Then Zari twisted her own empty palm into his chest, and a splash of neutrons in his body decayed at once in an eruption of force.

Protons became positrons. Electrons flooded his cells. His legendary durability meant nothing against the laws of physics, the blast creating a red-and-purple flare which tore through his arm like a chainsaw of light. Rondo's eyes widened with terror, and a red light of pain blared like fire, he let out a cry and held his arm tight, his scream echoing into the distance. "FUCK!" He released Serena’s face and began to clutch his chest. A gigantic gash of red was seen, bloody droplets spilling the vacuum of space. He breathed deeply, clenched his teeth and rapidly recovered from the pain, looking to swing and clutch them once more- but they'd already flown off in the brief moments he took.

Rondo flew after them in pursuit. They held hands, their force entangled for a brief moment, and then Zari flung him out with her Decay lance, a beam of purple pushing him out to the distance of thousands of kilometers away. He flew out to the empty of space, clutching his chest and the side of his stomach. His bloodied chest glowed, he looked up and down with a look of horror as he drifted along like a fallen leaf.

The two sped back to the prison. In the vast distances they could see the remaining fleets beginning to close in, like a ring of death made of lumbering siege machines coming together to suffocate the jugular source at their epicenter. Behind them, five hundred thousand plus Xi ships and vessels were still running from battle and the destruction of Ursula and her progeny- the High Fleet had temporarily stopped fighting the deserters and instead started charging their weapons on the prison itself. Ursula saw the bright lights of death approaching, and looked back at her Starbreakers. "Zero Sum Sonata, et tu Ameisa?" Serena and Zari stopped. They looked back and forth between each other, their fingers twirling in the air in unison. The ships were beginning to fire down a rain of death.

Serena and Zari rushed through space. They shot a joined Strong-Weak Symmetry: Lancer edition, at the far barrage coming towards the prison facility a few hundred kilometers off to intercept it. Laser weapons shot down from high overhead. Serena’s crimson field shattered under the laser’s heat. Ursula’s two progeny clutched hands. They were a thousand kilometers away from the prison, a hair's breadth in space but close enough to fly between the High-fleet projectiles, their lance managed to catch the barrage of laser fire, defying the physics of the galaxy. It caught them offguard with the resulting implosion, disrupting like a tidal wave on the rocks. The warships caught wise and rapidly outmaneuvered it, under Machine Mother's careful analysis of the trajectory of the collision and its fireball splash.

They again flew towards the Prison deck- but in the midst, something caught Shooting Star, a hand with black claws stabbing into her armor with a clutch, dragging her through the stars. "What?" Black Rock shouted, unable to see what'd grabbed her sister. She descended above the observatory deck. "Ursula, now is a good time for plan-B. Something got Zari."

"What? Was it Rondo?" Ursula asked telepathically.

"No- I, I'm not sure! It looked like a, dark blur?" Blackrock shouted.

As she thrashed through space, Shooting Star looked at her attacker- a girl with mandibles and bug like wings at the moment, her long raven-dark hair like a net around her body. "Ey'sup shinee babe?" Sway said.

She clenched her teeth and looked down the Prison observatory, a distant speck from this distance. "Blaze up!" She began to burst bright purple, radiation and immense energy tickling Sway, like the world's most lukewarm bugzapper. "Tryin' to yet lightyfighty schtick? Joost try et." She looked over at someone else pursuing her- Mercy, the girl not messing around. The two had initially been fighting, and before that Mercy was fighting some extremely strong cat lady of some kind. After tossing each other around in a rather bad stint for their relationship, Sway saw Xi ships encircling the place, then out of nowhere fireworks and thousands of them destroyed by the Starbreakers little lightshow. It had given her enough spectacle to get Mercy off her tail, at least thus far.

Mercy glared at Sway, her look piercing her with sheer intimidation. "That's enough. Pitchforks are coming out, give it up." Mercy shouted, her words reaching Sway even in the depths of space. How, Zari couldn't possible say. She took the time to slam her hand into Sway's torso. “Decay lance!” A massive well of gravity and transmuting neutrinos engulfed her. She lit

on fire with temperatures surpassing the sun, but then blew it out like a candle, the slight scorches and burns barely registering. "Lez's joost fuckin' end it, Merc!" She yelled, swinging a terrified Zari like a mace at her opponent and shield spontaneously.

Ursula paced back and forth on the observatory deck.

"This is the moment they fear the most, a stalemate. For both sides." She spoke slowly, thinking to herself. Suddenly the machinery from below, the generator she'd constructed began to turn offline. Caleb panicked. "This part of the plan?" He asked. Ursula furrowed her brow.

The datalyte generators began to come to life, creating mechanical spider-like drones. The initial success the Starbreakers assured now felt like it had been a mirage, a brief respite in a war that was far from won. Xi's forces, driven back but not broken, regrouped and refocused. Machine Mother, with Raquel's help worked rapidly through floating monitors multiple, holographic displays showing real-time feeds from her team. "Generator hijack successful. Let's download them a nasty surprise." MM said folding her arms. The master of artificial mechanics and machinery wasn't going to simply let Ursula take the upper hand without a fight.

"Did she think I wasn't going to figure out how Datalyte construction works? How handy of them to lend us the means to build drones on their turf." Machine Mother folded her arms.

From the floor below the observatory deck, giant war-machines, spider-like in their design, scuttled from hidden recesses, their limbs tipped with energy cannons that blazed with an unearthly violet light. These weren't simple automated drones, each possessed a level of tactical awareness that suggested direct Elderdragon control, Raquel's digital consciousness controlling all of them like multiple bodies spawned on enemy turf.

"I'll take care of it-" Satsuma said, before Ursula turned her around and looked at her in the eye. "No, we have other priorities. Let us handle it. The fleet is here. It's going to assess its losses and prepare another volley. I used the Enigma to fry their targeting systems and ruin any weaponry onboard, but it won’t last long before Raquel works past it. Blackrock can shield us and the entire room with her Strong-Interaction if she needs to- the problem is, if those ships are still here firing when 'they' get here, we'll be fucked. She cannot shield our getaway carriage. We need to find a way to hold them off from above and below." She thought and looked around, the spiderdrones starting to reach the top of the stairs.

Li Huang, taking to her platform-turret began firing bolts of high density electrons at the invading spider droids, each the size of a jeep, blasting them back as they swarmed.

Satsuma looked at her and smiled. "Who’s on first?" She stuck out her long wiggly tongue. “Naturally.” Ursula replied. The two began to laugh with glee, the situation dire and dark indeed, but the Xi'ans couldn't imagine what was about to transpire. "Operation: Abbott and Costello. Just like we discussed decades back. Let's give our enemies a good show." Ursula said, running to help Caleb and Li Huang stop the drones and datalyte generator below.

"They're coming in for the last blow! I’m working on getting weapons back online, 115 seconds estimate." Raquel's voice said over every speaker on the Counterpane, with Blackrock Road now visible on Ameisa's algorithmic detection system. She charged herself like a missile, preparing to pierce through ships again. "Fire on h-"

"Don't." Ameisa interrupted. "She's trying to draw our fire away from the citadel to buy time. With our weaponry it won't do us any good anyway. Instead commence flanking maneuvers, and fire when clear from her range. We need to get the rest of the Starbreakers. And Ray, tell Rondo to stay near our command in case she tries to spear us." Machine Mother turned to Raquel, then both to Ameisa uneasily. "Flank them! Escape and reposition." They left the responsibility of dodging Rock to each commanding officer, the Elderdragon Rondo's presence giving them the last incentive needed in case defense was needed, Raquel's holographic presence locating and manifesting outside of his location in a flickering instant to inform him of the strategy. He grunted, his gaunt face stoic as he flew through space. He then saw Shooting Star fleeing-

Behind her, Mercy was carrying one of the Xi'an warships like a plate, throwing it over at Sway with a juggernaut chuck.

"What!?" Shooting Star screamed, realizing she was in the path of its fall. Black Rock Road appeared suddenly and shielded her, the strong-interaction material keeping her anchored in space as the entire ship passed through them like foam- leaving a holed indent in Road's silhouette as it passed. "Hey! Nuu fair, t'was mine!" Sway screamed. Her and Mercy clashed again, the effect making shockwaves that sputtered and shook nearby warships, again Shooting Star unable to comprehend how in the vast vacuum of space, the density of interstellar locality billions of times lower than any atmospheric vacuum-chamber. It sent Zari and Serena flying.

The Xi ships unleash another wave of attacks, the prison's exterior shaking violently under the unrelenting barrage, but the shockwave from Mercy and Sway's clash disrupts their full potency sending the explosive destruction around the fringes of the citystate-like citadel. Flames erupt, buildings crash and become blasted rubble in the aftermath of the barrage.

Atop the prison citadel, Satsuma was still fine tuning her Starbreaker regalia. Her gears and pistons along the gigantic two cranes that were her arm’s regalia seemed to churn with the life of heavy machinery, the giant limbs scuttling and creaking into place like cranes along her back began to get ready, her talons tucked and assimilated neatly inside. "We'll take 'em the old fashioned way. No need for fancy machines." When the steam finished routing from the backside in a heavy hydraulic haze, she started to shuffle towards the sky above like an empress awaiting her audience in a regal gala. Raquel's heart would've almost stopped seeing her, if she had one. Her presence flickered behind Satsuma, trying to comprehend what to report.

Sway shouted as she caught up with her rival, and was almost swallowed whole by the Starbreaker. Serena's hand shot down another Decay lance, the bright purple beam going feet from Sway's face, before she swatted it away like a fly. "Nuff of that." She turned around, as if space itself had begun to rumble. Everyone in the Counterpane watched Satsuma on the monitors crank her arm, reach into a large metal barrel, one of dozens of ammo depots in the room Ursula had prepared prior for Li Huang's turret. She grappled a set of 200mm tungsten

artillery rounds, barely weighing 146 kg within her metal claws grip, sensors handling it as easily as her own grip. She clutched the ammo in both hands, her arms extending. They were outdated in their manufacture, dating back from the pre-Neo Xi era as tungsten-carbide rounds had been replaced with uranium-molybdenum and cobalt alloys Atlas manufactured.

Still, for Satsuma, they were more than enough.

In fact, holding the strong, tensile metal in her hands, she knew this would be complete overkill. Satsuma Satori cracked her titanium-clad flytrap hands. “Alright boyos. You had your shot. My turn.” She raised her arms back, preparing her pitch. "Battle fuckin' up!" She screamed, her arm whipping with massive momentum as the noise of a billion cannons reverberating through the prison walls. The longitudinal energy went flying with her biomechanical arm whirring, the rounds deposited in deep space through her gravitational-well. The 200mm rounds launched, not through cannon or artillery by through a simple throw as Satsuma swung her arm and released the stored energies through her fingers, her entire body going warm as the energy inside her was converted through space-time into a pure sling.

 

 

 

Long ago in Orchid's history, there were two species along a local star system. On this planet’s western hemisphere, were pitcherplants were natural carnivores. On the eastern hemisphere, an ant-like species of caste workers were builders and scientists. Neither liked the other, and the two eventually fought over resources, the pitcherplants devouring the ant-like species for thousands of years. The ants found a way to adapt, and build weapons for defense, and avoid the apex predator's appetite. They lived in a 2-star system, causing fluctuations in their world's weather, gravitational and environmental conditions causing vast swaths of their homeworld to be a killzone, uninhabitable sweeps that would divide the planet by its poles, and make the hemispheres of the two species unable to interact for varying lengths of time- sometimes months or years, sometimes centuries as uninhabitable storms and glaciers segregated the world. When the environment eased and allowed interaction again, carnage would always ensure, abit everytime always differently than the last era.

For thousands of years the two species lived in tenuous stasis. The ants were unable to get close enough to the Satori, so they built small fire-arms to counter the rocks the Pitcherplant race could throw from a field's distance. The pitcherplants adapted, becoming larger and more intelligent, their natural intelligence giving rise to better hand-eyed coordination, their bodies evolving longer limbs and talons to compensate for the lack of mass, increasing their throwing speed. The ants built faster and stronger guns, capable of hurling molten rock from further distances than the pitcherplants could throw. The ants evolved into more intelligent creatures, forming castes and developing society beyond the instinct. For thousands of years they lived like this, sharpening the adaptations of the others to the very limits of evolutionary principles.

The pitcherplants' bodyweight decreased but their power increased, throwing larger balls of iron with greater momentum. They evolved and their arms became longer, giving them the advantage of reach, and increasing their speed, strength letting them crush steel like it was soft

glass in their claws, muscles gaining hyperdensity in exponential increase through generational eugenics- warring clans of Satori would fling shots at each other in volatile wars, those who couldn’t throw far enough quickly perished. While those with longer range, continued and pushed their evolutionary line further along. Yet the ants, unable to evolve a longer and more powerful body due to the resource demands of other castes in their society, simply had to rely increasingly on technology. Their biological and genetic adaptations, had reached their limit.

Their enemy however still had a ways to go in successive eras to come.

Within another few millennia, the ants commanded starships across the sky, planning to raze their opponent from the atmosphere. Their intelligence had reached a level where they could make advanced spacefarers and nuclear reactors, power generators and artificial intelligence. Their evolution had been complete. The species flew over the killzones preparing to see to their foe with a show of force and power, finally able to use their ships to fly across the great storms that bifurcated their world. The ants had prepared to annihilate the Satori, to end their rule over their world once and for all. The ant commander, having reached the top of his class in naval warfare and military intelligence had intel to believe the other race, were still using little more than slings and flimsy throwing rocks, while they flew 1200KM in low-orbit above the enemy's capital.

He wasn't wrong.

As he looked down from the atmosphere at the other side of the planet below, he saw a Pitcherplant readying a rather ornamented stone, one that resembled a dart. Not just readying it for anyone- they appeared to be specifically looking at him with a strange cross in her eyes and what vaguely resembled a circle or spiral in the middle of her pupils. But that was impossible, he reassured his crew on deck.

The dart slung from the enemy, breaking atmospheric barriers at a 3rd cosmic velocity motion until it penetrated his chitinous skull, killing him instantly. The crew screamed. "SURFACE BOMBARDMENT!" The screams of the crew turning to a cacophonous howl of panic as darts, pebbles and thorny thrown daggers shot through their hauls from far far away, the advanced engineering of their ships powerless when pierced and perforated from all sides at high-speeds, quickly filled with holes. Projectiles simply thrown from the surface in no time at all, bombarded and decimated the entire war fleet the ant species had taken centuries to build up.

The ants didn't stand a chance. Overnight their fleet was utterly annihilated. Within the year the entire military was completely, utterly gone as the Satori threw across the great storms, killing them from the opposite side of the planet. Just a few of the more advanced species survived the onslaught, hiding in the polar zones. They used a barrage of technological weapons, shot against those only capable of using its sheer weight and momentum against them. Over the following decade the Satori continued to throw rocks, shards and spears, until the ants were driven to extinction.

Sway and Rondo, Mercy, Shooting Star and Blackrock Road had a mere five seconds across the tens of thousands of kilometers across to react before Satsuma's shots pelted them

like a tidal wave, Black Rock's strong-interaction shielding her from the spray out in space. "Watch where you're firing that! Tsk." She bit her lip.

After her arm's swing, Satsuma fired the tungsten rounds into hyperspace as ballistic projectiles. The nearby Xi warships, were shielded for occasions of enemy ramming and high speed deflection- but only with the expectation it'd from other ships, missiles or massive salvos over 54 Kilograms. The computerized shielding systems, were not designed to intercept weaponry as small as bullets or using only basic physics. Traveling at 95% lightspeed, Satsuma's ability took advantage of Fermat's principle by using the quantum fabric of space-time as a similar liquid conductive- effectively, manipulating control over gravity to warp her throws to hit the target temporally before they arrived at their destination, in what Ursula would later call an absolute territory vector-delineation- in fancy terms, it meant the travel resistance was effectively '0' when thrown, and always reached its destination without completely burning up or disintegrating or losing structure integrity of vectorized momentum. It was still possible to miss of course, however within Orchid, Satsuma's species had a reputation summed up in a brief saying: Pitcher's never miss. Their eyes had adapted to see at near infinite distances with perfect precision, even interstellar minutia couldn't escape their gaze. And Satsuma Satori, was considered a prodigy in that regard.

It was for this reason, she'd been dubbed in Orchid as God's Sling. One of Lyras Nezura's most terrifying and powerful challengers amidst her warring Decade.

"Talon Gun: Lightspeed barrage edition." Satsuma screeched.

As the projectile approached the within distance of the fleet, the shielding systems were incapable of dealing with the sheer speed and power of the bullets coming at them even as AI warned them of what it interpreted as rapidly of incoming solar storms. The maelstrom of gravitational distortion meant her attacks were undetectable, computers reading any data on their arrival would report errors seconds before 1500 petajoules slammed into thousands of hulls and caused a nuclear detonation to go off from the sheer relativistic speed of penetration on point of contact. The ships were engulfed in this firebomb and instantly blasted apart, the rounds crashing directly into the front of every warship like a baseball scattering and becoming a shotgun of starpower on steroids, gravitational manipulation warping each sling as to not travel in a linear array but rather curve in such a way to travel in a curved 300 degrees, hitting adjacent ships in the same shot. Shrapnel, metal, tungsten, uranium and other alloys shot out in a massive explosion, each ship aflame, the entire structure of their frames itself being flung through the air like a wrecking ball, slamming the rest of the fleet one after the next in a car- crashesque chain. The event created multiple explosions from both friction of its flight and the shrapnel exploding in the air, the debris hitting thousands of warships just barely adjacent the Arc of the Counterpane command as they were destroyed one after another, pushed into each other further with each of Satsuma's throws. The chain continued, ships crashing and destroying every other in a daisy chain, lighting the entire amphitheater-formation ablaze. Within milliseconds Satsuma already clutched another handful of shapely rounds and repeated the process, re-targeting the next row, her hand swinging with the natural momentum of each round. Again. Again. Again. And again. Dozens of throws launching collectively tons of projectiles sent hurling through space, their energy unpredictable as they as they traveled

through the vast distance to arrive at their destination in an instant. Tens of thousands of tungsten rounds blasting through the fleet, their massive and devastating impacts blasting the hulls in multiple directions. Ships being broken apart, dismembered and exploded outward as the rounds ripped apart the structures like shrapnel through soft organic tissue. Satsuma, the quintessential ascendancy of her race had been bred and borne for such battles, her mind was capable of performing spatial-temporal calculations and operations at a subconscious rate like most Orchidian warriors of her race with great measure, giving her a fraction of a microsecond to decide where to throw the next projectile- and her throws still outpaced the computers of most Xi ships. Satsuma let her next shot take flight, feeling the metal round go and watch it spiral out in space, it's mass and velocity finally speeding up and then slowing down so it'd travel in a parabola as it warped through space like a boomerang with her gravitational effect.

In the space of a matter of seconds, the Starbreaker had destroyed the bulk of the Xi fleet divisions stationed above orbit with her simplest throw. The augumentations and equipment Ursula had sealed into her had pushed her ability to the apex limit of cosmic destruction.

No other fleet was so decimated so quickly, so efficiently in one moment. Satsuma had been the most feared opponent, because to Satsuma's people, to live was only to be feared, and she was the pinnacle of fear. She was more than that, however. In a single battle, she had destroyed over 480 thousand ships and killed 240 million Xi war veterans of the High-Fleet.

Less than there were Xi warships in total number- but Satsuma surely could find many, many more rocks to throw in the galaxy than even that.

The Xi commanders were watching in a state of absolute terror as the destruction took place, some of their most experienced warriors and commanders screaming in agony as they saw thousands of their fleet destroyed in an instant, all the years of training and evolution, gone to ash. It was worse than any defeat they'd ever been inflicted on them. They rapidly messaged the Counterpane in a spam of messages, 3 Elderdragons in the bridge looking at the footage of the entire armada they'd brought, now reduced to a sea of flames in the night sky.

"How could they possibly.." Ameisa was speechless.

Raquel's expression went cold and cynical. "She's using some form of gravity manipulation as the means for her throwing force." She said.

"What?" Ameisa asked.

"It's similar to how a tether in space or a pocket of dense planetary spatial-mass can help you get velocity and mass by pulling you in." Raquel said.

"A gravitational tether? That's a ridiculous way to fight-"

"She's doing something far worse. I don't know how, but she's using it to warp the fabric of spacetime, literally.. That's how those shots can travel in an arc despite her being at the epicenter. Lightspeed bombardment.. This is bad." She paused.

"We have to abandon this position." she spoke, her words turning to grim silence.

"Wait-" Ameisa said.

"NO. There is no 'wait', we retreat. Now." Raquel replied, her. "We retreat. Now. We fall back and regroup." She turned her head to Ameisa, her eyes filled with disbelief. "Now."

Ameisa nodded, still watching as the devastation of the Xi fleet unfolded before them. It was over. The Xi commanders knew it and there was nothing left to be done about it.

Rondo turned around to see the Command pane retreating, other ships, those that survived among the hundreds of thousands lost attempting to retreat aswell.

Satsuma caught eye of this and smirked. "Think you can get away from me? Cheeky. You came all this way to play and now you run with your tail between your legs. Satsuma sends you her parting gift." Her sharp talons, encased in the biomechanical steel gripped another set of bullets and with her full muscle coordination, accelerated them to their destination. However Rondo had already positioned himself prior her throw and generated a powerful shield around it- he used his body out in space as a meatshield protecting the most vulnerable parts of the Counterpane's haul. The rest of the shots created a furry of violent explosions around the rim which destroyed ships adjacent to the Counterpane, draining their shields from the continuous splash damage, like a sea vessel offset by crashing waves. The nuclear explosions of pierced fusion engines that damaged the sides of the ship were enough to slow down its hasty retreat, Ameisa and her crew feeling their commandship rock turbulently inside.

Sway caught eye of the Counterpane fleeing and took action, swooping in.

Satsuma, readying another round quickly threw them in the blink of an eye, watching the projectiles travel 95% the speed of light, only to be swatted like flies, as Sway flying by prior her launch grasped them with a hand like a bunch of tossed stones and threw them back out into space. Her hand was glowing red and steaming from the heat of the catch, like a stone that'd been a few million degrees far too hot. "Fuck oof bitch, this party's over ya chimp." Sway yelled, her tone flat and uncompromising, no longer the sassy bug she'd been up until this point.

The next round was different. "Aha!" She said, her eyes showing a glint of recognition. As she saw an opportunity, she whipped her sling once again, twice in two directions using the last of the remaining bullets in the depot, throwing them out, aiming at the Xi ships themselves- those that could be found in debris, the wreckage, still with their hulls intact. It whipped through space and hit the commandship's adjacent vessels, slamming into them and causing them to lose their directive thrust and start to slam into the Counterpane instead- Rondo flew on one side, Sway the other, both grabbing the falling kilometer long warships and struggling slightly to prevent them from crashing into it, Ameisa watching from the rear window as Sway held it in her grasp.

As if in protest, a new ship was coming through in a suicide charge above the observatory, its speed and mass aiming at Satsuma on the ground. She screeched, sharpened her talon nails, leapt, flapped four insect-like wings from behind her and flew up, rapidly sending herself in a corkscrew around the ship before it could descend, each limb grabbing a chunk of the ships' hull. "YAAYUUHH!!!" Her hands and feet grappling the warship as it flew past. Her

sheer strength redirected it back into space, traveling dozens of kilometers before it corked open slinky-style on its axis- like a flung, flailing mace, spinning around its own axis and flinging metal in every direction. Once she reached the front, her grip tightened and she flung the entire ship out into space as if it were a toy sailboat. Pieces flew out, metal, debris, hulls and shrapnel, the mass and momentum causing the ship to shatter into explosions as they hit other ships fleeing and created an avalanche of devastation around her. Other ships had gotten wise ideas to try to rush the prison on their own, Black Rock and Shooting Star having already made it back to rapidly spear and lance through them in no time at all, destroying them just out of range of the prison's atmosphere. Like a knife through butter the Starbreakers sliced the Xi warships to ribbons, their power over their opponents only second to Satsuma's.

Rondo arrived back inside the Counterpane. The Xi leaders were now being shown the face of true power and ruthlessness. The Elderdragons looked at each other, dejected.

"This is impossible." Rondo breathed.

"We'll arrive with backup- We can bring the entire Highfleet. Spartan teams. Atlas!" Ameisa said in a fervor pitch. Raquel shook her head, looking at the monitors.

"They were careful to destroy the arc of our divisions for good reason- there seems to be some other fleet rapidly encroaching from the next sector." Raquel said.

"What?" Ameisa said.

"There's only one reason they'd destroy a fleet in one fell swoop like that- they know they're outmatched." Raquel spoke. "Well, not them. 'They' meaning their escape getaway posse would be. They were fighting to clear the way for them."

"That's ridiculous." Ameisa said.

"It's not. Because it just happened." Raquel said, pointing to the monitor. "Goddamn." She said, Ameisa's face turning pale with concern.

"I'm gonna take the helm." Raquel said, she jumped in her seat and put her hand on the helm. "We take off." She said.

"Like hell you are!" Ameisa Byte shouted. "With Sandra not here, I'm in command. You're in my way, Raquel." She said, her tone firm and rigid, her expression uncompromising.

"Nah." Raquel said. "I'm in command." She held a finger on the helm, "With or without you." She said. "You lead us to slaughter."

"If you'd all just stayed informed about what Ursula was capable of we c-"

Raquel held her breath as her fist punched Ameisa's jaw, sending her sprawling across the console into her shoulder, the impact sending pain surging into her back and head, her vision blurred.

"We need military discipline right now. Not your damn ego. Step aside. I'm in command." She said, her voice still rigid.

Ameisa shook her head, looked up at the monitors and watched a new fleet approach. It had ships, the entire fleet was larger, with massive warships and capital ships that'd never been seen before by Xi high command. But not at all foreign to their counterparts. The Starbreakers watched as their new allies soon were en route. "Our carriage has arrived." Ursula said pithily, her face as serious as the nightmare that Xi now faced.

Caleb and his friends looked amazed. Satsuma, with her leafy hands at her hips smiled smugly. Serena and Zari looked on in awe at their leader.

Ursula had led them to the promise land. "We ride."