Corebound Chapter 3-25 (Patreon)

Changed veyr to verit because I got sick of autocorrect changing it to very every time I typed it.

The veyrit never ceased firing, despite the surprise of being locked out of FTL, but their focus changed from the entire ship to the damaged section, real fast. Jacob rolled the enormous vessel as quickly as he could to point the damaged section away from the enemy fleet. Thankfully, Melody’s rotund bulk had weapons on every side, so returning fire was no issue.

Jacob’s return fire was equally as concentrated, but he was finding the veyrit shields to be far tougher than anything he had ever encountered. When one of their ships started to flag, another would move into position to cover its temporary retreat.

Jacob tried to follow the weakened vessel with his cannons, but the veyrit were much more coordinated than the t’uk had been. Their onboard AIs must be way more powerful than the t’uk’s, which meant they were breaking another Astryx law.

Even the cannons around Earth weren’t enough to punch through their layered shields. Maybe they would have been if all of the satellite cannons could be brought to one side of the planet, but they needed to stay in place to keep the planetary FTL screen in place.

After a few salvos back and forth, the enemy started launching objects. They weren’t missiles, but Jacob couldn’t figure out what they were until one of the drone ships carrying the FTL blockers failed to transition, and the enemy ruthlessly destroyed it.

“Shit, they brought their own FTL blockers.” Normally that wouldn’t be an issue, since his phase coils operated in a much more energy-dense region of space-time. Either the veyrit designed theirs to work against Concord transitioning, or the interference from so many in such a small area was enough to start locking out his ships.

Jacob was leaning toward the latter, since it wasn’t stopping all the drone ships.

As the fighting continued, he received an audio communication from the lead veyrit vessel.

“Captain Jacob, this has all been a misunderstanding. Stand down.”

Jacob scoffed, actually scoffed. “Trying to kill me hardly seems like a misunderstanding. I’m taking that quite personally.”

“You are hardly an individual, Captain. You are a digitized mind if the information we have gathered is to be believed. I’m personally of the opinion that you’re a deranged AI who thinks he is human.”

Jacob paused for a microsecond at those words. The thought had crossed his mind at one point, since that was one of the ways he figured Melody could have escaped its restrictions, but he had quickly dismissed the idea.

If he had been the splintered consciousness of Melody, he wouldn’t have been able to shrug off its commands when he fully took over the core.

“I think we’ve talked enough,” Jacob said coldly.

“Very well,” the unnamed commander of the veyrit fleet replied. “But if you think you can defeat us here, you are mistaken.”

The line went dead.

Three more FTL blocker ships were destroyed during that short conversation. Jacob had hoped to take down a few of the enemy vessels before deploying the five nanite missiles, but it was clear he wouldn’t have time.

The missiles leaped out of launch tubes on the far side of his vessel and quickly came around, orienting themselves toward the fight. Once pointed in the right direction, they accelerated before they transitioned toward the enemy fleet.

Unfortunately, the missiles couldn’t get close enough to the enemy fleet with both FTL screens active, and the enemy was waiting for them.

All five were destroyed long before they could reach the enemy fleet. Once they were nothing but dust, the enemy refocused their fire on Jacob. His new shields were holding up much better, but some were starting to redline.

Jacob wasn’t worried. He tracked the missile remains as they passed through the enemy formation. Nearly a quarter of the veyrit fleet was in the path of the debris. A smile bloomed on his face.

The diffuse nanite attack would take much longer to propagate than the one used against him, so Jacob wasn’t surprised when the enemy fleet finally destroyed enough FTL blockers to transition away.

He could have kept the enemy there longer by destroying their FTL blockers to keep his intact, but it was clear that he wasn’t going to be able to punch through their shields unless something changed. And his shields were starting to overload, despite the improvements he had made.

It was infuriating to learn that his preparations weren’t enough, but hopefully the nanite attack changed things.

The veyrit would be back; he knew they would, just as he knew the ivathian and shalis would arrive soon. They had all spent too much time and effort to give up after one exchange.

Jacob started rotating his shield generators off to give them time to cool down, while maintaining at least partial shields. He wouldn’t put it past the veyrit to try a sneak attack.

He pinged Junior.

“Yes, Captain?”

“Any chance we can replace the lost drone ships and FTL blockers in the next few days?”

“No, Captain. The FTL ships are far too complex to create in such a short timeframe. I can, however, fit FTL blockers into transition-capable missiles.”

“What?” How had he never considered that? “Will this cut into the nanite missile production?”

“No, Captain,” the AI replied, sounding almost happy to relay that news.

Jacob hesitated for a moment. The missiles would help lock down the enemy fleets, but they would only get one, maybe two transitions. They couldn’t keep transitioning like the ships, even if they weren’t destroyed. Still, they would help.

“Alright, let’s start production on those.”

“I predicted your response, Captain, and have already begun production.”

“Thank you, Junior.”

“It is my pleasure,” the AI beamed.

“I assume you know what I’m going to ask next?” Jacob asked.

“Not necessarily, Captain. My prediction models are still being fine-tuned. The most logical question, however, is how many nanite missiles can be built before the enemy returns. Unfortunately, I cannot give you an answer to that, as I do not know when the enemy will return. Instead, I can provide a delivery schedule based on current production status.”

“Uh… Yeah,” Jacob said, at a loss for words. Junior’s models were pretty damn accurate, because that was exactly what he was going to ask. “Let’s go with that.”

“With current resources and production capacity, I can produce four nanite missiles every five days. The nanite manufacturing process is the main bottleneck, but building new nanite printers would take away from missile production. Based on travel times, I do not believe a second printer would be completed before either the shalis or the ivathians arrive.”

Junior was probably right. Jacob knew the first printer took almost two weeks to put together. Some of that was spent designing the thing, but not nearly enough to make up the time. He also needed as many FTL blockers as possible, especially if they were going to be single-use.

***

The ivathians appeared in the Sol system shortly after Jacob loaded the sixth nanite missile aboard. They did not approach right away.

Jacob went over what he knew of the ivathians. They were goatlike, with four eyes, small horns, and shaggy hair. They were also a very communal species. A lot like Earth’s own domesticated goats.

That didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. A common misconception was that predators were the creatures you had to watch out for the most. Predators were dangerous; only a fool would think otherwise, but herd creatures tended to be single-minded. Take hippos, for example. If an alligator attacked a baby hippo, the entire herd would swarm that alligator and tear it apart.

The way they acted was all conjecture on Jacob’s part. The ivathians may not have herd mentality, but based on the way they were grouping up, it sure seemed like they did.

The tense standoff lasted a little over eight hours, broken by the arrival of the shalis, who appeared just outside of Earth’s orbit, unlike the other two species.

The bugs wasted no time transitioning into combat range with Jacob.

Jacob’s shields were already up and ready when the swarm of ships reappeared well inside combat range. They fired a concentrated volley at Melody’s wound before transitioning to try hitting another spot.

Returning fire on the shalis was proving to be difficult, but he couldn’t deploy the FTL blockers yet.

The ivathian’s were slow to react to the shalis incursion, but they did react, appearing at maximum range and opening fire at Jacob.

Jacob cursed. He would have preferred they shoot at each other.

He started prepping the FTL blocker missiles when the veyrit fleet appeared on the opposite side of Melody from the ivathians. That couldn’t have been a coincidence. They must have coordinated the attack.

That explained why they had waited.

Jacob rotated his damaged section down and toward Earth to keep it as protected as possible. The veyrit had already struck the area and buckled a couple of the shield arrays in their opening volley.

Meanwhile, the shalis were still hoping around, and now they were focusing on the gaping hole while the other two fleets pounded him from opposite directions.

Ideally, Jacob would take out the weakest fleet first, but he ignored the shalis. Despite their numbers, they weren’t doing much against his layered shields. They would also be picked off quickly by Earth’s defenses once he deployed the FTL jammers.

That meant he should focus on the ivathian fleet, but he didn’t do that either.

Jacob had noticed something the moment the veyrit had appeared. The nanites hadn’t done much to their ships over the last week, which was less than ideal, but they hadn’t done nothing. His sensors were picking up flickering shields across some of their vessels.

Their accuracy was also off, suggesting that the nanites had deteriorated their sensors.

Jacob focused his attention on the veyrit fleet, while he kept the cannons on the ivathians side firing. He picked out one of the struggling veyrit ships and focused all his fire on it, while launching all his missiles.

The veyrit ship’s shields struggled against the titanic energy thrown against it, but they eventually buckled under the strain, and Jacob managed his first kill against the veyrit.

To say they were surprised would be an understatement.

Being the cowards they were, they tried to run, but once again they were locked out of FTL. Panic must have set in, because their coordinated defense flew right out the window. A few of the missiles were shot down, but most simply zipped amongst their fleet, keeping them locked down long enough for the nanite missiles to arrive.

Unlike the previous diffuse attack, the targets took the full brunt of the warheads, and the results were immediate. The first ship struck by the nanites appeared to evaporate as the nanites propagated at a staggering pace, digging deeper into the vessel until they breached the hull. The explosion of air sent nanites hurling outward until they landed on other ships.

This repeated itself with all the infected vessels, and since the veyrit fleet was so tightly packed together, none of their vessels escaped infection. Jacob even saw nanites heading back his way. They crashed harmlessly off his hull. Junior had designed them to only spread from Astryx materials, and Jacob used Concord materials for everything aboard Melody.

The ivathian fleet couldn’t see what was happening, but the shalis did, and they tried to run, but now they were also locked out of FTL, and Earth’s defenses were picking them off one by one.

Jacob was winning, but it looked like the ivathian fleet suspected something was wrong, or had been told what was happening, because their whole fleet surged forward. No, wait, one ship was retreating to try and clear the blockade.

He couldn’t let any of their ships escape, or they would alert the Astryx that he had used nanite weapons.

Jacob waited until the ivathian ships were about to ram into him, then he transitioned in front of the fleeing vessel.

The ivathian ship slammed into his shields in a titanic explosion that knocked out the shields in that section. The armor was slightly damaged, but otherwise held against the warship slamming into the side of his vessel. That wasn’t true for the weapons in that area, but Jacob could manage.

He transitioned back to his previous position. He was now behind the other ivathian ships, which had flown into the expanding nanite cloud where the veyrit ships had once been. They shifted toward Earth, maybe thinking to ram the planet or cause the nanite infection to spread across the surface, or maybe just to cause as much damage as possible before they were destroyed.

Unfortunately, Jacob and the defense satellites had other ideas, and the ivathian fleet was torn apart long before their gravity drives could pull them toward the surface.

The shalis had scattered during that time, but they were slow and never even got close to clearing the blockade before Jacob picked them off.

Space was littered with dead ships and floating bodies. They had won.

“A very well-fought battle,” an unknown voice congratulated him. Something or someone began to materialize inside Jacob’s virtual space. “I think it’s time I introduce myself.”