Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-One: Bring Down the Sky (Patreon)

<Nanocloud>: Andrew? You okay?

<Belessar>: Yeah. You guys?

<Nanocloud>: Shaken but survived. What was that?

<Belessar>: Railgun round hitting City Hall. They’re going to keep this up unless we stop them.

<Nanocloud>: What do you need?

Need?

I needed a bigger cannon. A much bigger Starfall missile. A battleship of my very own, to stop this one.

What I had…

“Mahotsukoi,” I barked. “Your powers include weight manipulation, right?”

The floating Japanese girl nodded. “I can make things heavier or lighter… but I have to be within a few hundred feet.” A pause. “And it doesn’t work through shields.”

“Chequers?”

The battlecognitive shook his head. “It won’t work. The disrupter can handle a Carnotuar’s shield - it’s not designed for something that big. Or that far away.”

Another blast rocked the buildings around us. The earth trembled.

“That was Cantor field,” a voice announced in my ears. “They hit the National Guard staging area.”

“Powell’s dead,” Pemberley said. “Colonel Angus Butler is assuming command. Guard mission is now evac and rescue.”

“Where’s the Air Force?” barked someone. “They need to get that thing out of the sky?”

“Fourteen jets shot down already. Whatever’s getting near that thing is getting swatted.”

“What are the ultras doing?”

I tuned out the voices.

We needed to take down that ship’s shield. And then we needed to bring it down to ground level….

“Indradhanush. I need you to take a shot at the ship.”

The boy paled. “Uh… that’s a bit farther out than I can reach, Belessar.”

“That’s why Chequers is going to tell you when to shoot. Use gamma rays, the 0.05 Angstrom wavelength range. They’ll smash right into the shield and knock it down.”

“Uh… I don’t think I have that kind of power, Belessar. That’d take one hell of a big battery.”

In response, I yanked the tarpaulin off the third truck. “I promised you a truckload, didn’t I?”

Indradhanush gasped.

In my third truck sat my entire stockpile of Power Packs. Everything I’d been able to put together over the last few months of experimentation, production, and rampant hoarding.

Five thousand Heavy Power Packs.

And another four thousand Mega Power Packs. Every single one I’d ever made.

Including, and not to put too fine a point on it, all my spares.

“You can pull power from multiple batteries at a time,” I found myself saying. “Use these. Drain them all in a single shot, and put it right in the centre of the alien shield.”

Indradhanush gulped. “What if I miss?”

“Don’t. Chequers? Make sure he doesn’t miss, please.”

“Will do,” the British ultra nodded.

“To take down that shield, we’d need a weapon capable of hitting it with sixty-eight million megajoules of damage,” I told everyone. “The packs together store seventy-eight million megajopules. If you use them all together, a gamma ray beam can take the shield down for a bit. Long enough for Mahotsukoi to work her magic.”

“You want me to fly up there?” asked Mahotsukoi. “They’ll see me coming a mile away.”

“Which is why you’ll be flying with me. I’ll draw their fire, you wait for the shield to drop and then push them down.”

Mahotsukoi smiled and nodded. “Okay.”

“Timing is crucial, so Chequers will signal when Mahotsukoi has to start using her weight power. When you hear ‘Red’, Mahotsukoi starts the chant, and when you hear ‘Green’, Indradhanush fires. Chequers?”

“Got it.”

“Let’s go, folks. Mahotsukoi - follow behind me.”

And with those words, I ripped open a portal above us.

A thousand MP vanished from my pool, as the skies a kilometre above us were brought to within touching range.

“Go!”

The Wolf Armour skyrocketed through the portal, followed by one very determined magical girl. As the portal shut, Mahotsukoi spoke. “We’re too far off.”

“It’s too far for me to cross in a single jump. Wait.”

And I ripped open the next portal.

We dived through, a kilometre nearer to our goal.

Five seconds to recharge, and then we teleported again.

The Xeranai battleship’s sensors weren’t stupid. Evidently they could register portals opening, even at a range this far. A laser bolt passed through the space our portal occupied.

Fortunately, it missed by a dozen metres.

As we got closer, the shots would too.

I ripped open a new portal, this time eleven hundred and sixty-two metres up. The next shot from the battleship passed harmlessly one hundred and sixty-two metres below us.

“Shorter portals,” I transmitted to Mahotsukoi, “and faster jumps.”

She nodded.

We dodged a dozen shots as we jumped through one portal after another, my MP meter draining itself to keep us ahead of enemy fire. The eighth portal took us to within a kilometre of the ship.

The ninth took us to sixty-five metres from the hull.

At this range, the battleship filled our field of view.

“Close enough,” yelled Mahotsukoi.

Chequers’ voice came over the radio. “Red!”

The Japanese superhero spread her arms and began to chant, her staff glowing with an unearthly hue.

I raised my Mass Driver and fired.

XERANAI BATTLESHIP IS UNAFFECTED BY MASS DRIVER ROUND!

XERANAI BATTLESHIP HAS TAGGED YOU AS A THREAT!

The Battleship’s systems might be intended for dealing with large numbers of targets, but the priority would always be the ones actively shooting at them instead of those standing aside and reciting a chant. Hundreds of guns swiveled at the only active target in the sky (me) and fired.

I’ve never been more thankful for Dodge Bullets.

Streaks of laser fire roared through the sky where I’d been, even as my power hurled me out of the way.

When an AI misses a target, they recalibrate with the observed data. It’s a common theme in machine learning.

This AI wasn’t any different. The Battleship’s computers, noticing how I dodged, began to recalculate whether it was worth firing at me, and if I evaded would they be needlessly wasting energy, or whether they should switch to a different weapon.

All this thinking, even for AIs, takes fractions of seconds.

In battle, those fractions count.

“Green!”

Gamma rays, however, travel at the speed of light.

XERANAI BATTLESHIP HIT BY GAMMA RAY BEAM!

XERANAI BATTLESHIP -468 BILLION HP!

XERANAI BATTLESHIP SHIELDS ARE DOWN!

Indradhanush had been as good as his word.

And that very second, Mahotsukoi finished her chant.

STATUS EFFECT INFLICTED ON XERANAI BATTLESHIP: CRUSHING WEIGHT! 1000x WEIGHT MULTIPLICATION!

Little-known fact about gravity manipulation:

When you increase the weight of an object, you don’t increase its mass.

Weight is a force. The more the force on an object of the same mass, the greater the acceleration.

AIs are good at optimizing. The Xeranai battleship had been floating above the city using its anti-gravity coils to neutralize the effect of Earth’s gravitational field, and the AIs had made sure that only exactly as much power as was needed to keep it floating was routed to the coils.

Under normal circumstances, a gradual increase to a thousand times the gravity would have inconvenienced the battleship at best. The antigrav coils would have spun up and counterbalanced the effect in a couple of minutes.

The spike in weight, however, didn’t give them time.

The Xeranai Battleship found itself pulled towards the ground at nine thousand eight hundred metres per second, squared.

A second later, the Battleship came crashing down amidst the city.

XERANAI BATTLESHIP IMPACTS CITY!

IMPACT EFFECT: DUST CLOUD.

The ship ploughed into the ground, shattering buildings beneath it. Great fountains of dust and smoke rose into the air.

XERANAI BATTLESHIP SUCCESSFULLY IMPLEMENTS DAMAGE CONTROL. IMPACT DAMAGE REDUCED TO 130 BILLION.

XERANAI BATTLESHIP INTEGRATED ARMOUR COMPROMISED. ARMOUR SECTIONS WILL NOW REACT LOCALLY.

XERANAI BATTLESHIP SUFFERS STATUS EFFECTS:

INERTIAL COMPENSATORS OVERLOADED.

ANTIGRAV ENGINES OFFLINE.

HYPERDRIVE OFFLINE.

PRIMARY REACTORS OFFLINE.

CAPITAL SHIP DISRUPTER CANNON OFFLINE.

YOGZUNE LASER CANNONS: 133 OF 150 OFFLINE.

XERKAN MISSILE LAUNCHER OFFLINE.

QUEST COMPLETED: BRING DOWN THE SKY.

REWARDS: +5,000,000 XP.

------------------------------------------

I switched back to the command channel. “Xeranai battleship is grounded.”

“Noticed that,” Heath said calmly. “All units, move in position to surround it. Artillery fire, target the ship and break the hull apart.”

“We still have people in that area!” screamed a new voice. “And who thought it was a good idea to drop that thing in the middle of a city?”

“There wouldn’t be a city left, Colonel,” Pemberley replied. “Air assault element is providing covering fire. Bring in the artillery.”

“Xeranai point defense is still active,” I said. “Be careful.”

“Roger that. Mongoose out.”

“Any idea what we can expect next?” a quieter voice asked.

Once again, white letters scrawled across my field of vision, reminding me that the battle was not over.

NEW QUEST ALERT: DEFEAT THE ARMY OF THE GUTHNAR.

CLANLORD DAEMORAS OF THE GUTHNAR LEADS THEIR FIELD ARMY AGAINST TANISPORT, REINFORCED BY THE HEAVY WEAPONS AND SHOCK TROOPS OF THE GRIZZELOID AND SARNAK.

THIS ARMY WILL SCOUR ALL LIFE FROM TANISPORT UNLESS YOU STOP IT.

SOME OF THEIR TROOPS HAVE BEEN KILLED OR GRAVELY WOUNDED IN THE CRASH, BUT THE REST WILL BE OUT OF THE SHIP AND CUTTING THEIR WAY ACROSS TANISPORT SHORTLY.

OBJECTIVE: ALONG WITH YOUR ALLIES, KILL OR NEUTRALIZE THE SURVIVING GUTHNAR ARMY OF 1,876,355 RAPTORS, 34,332 GRIZZELOIDS, AND 116,233 SARNAK.

SUCCESS REWARDS: XP FOR EACH ENEMY KILLED BY YOU OR YOUR ALLIES.

FAILURE PENALTY: DEATH, DESTRUCTION OF TANISPORT, 35% INCREASE IN CHANCE OF HUMAN SURRENDER AND ENSLAVEMENT.