Chapter 77: Interlude Fleet

“So …”

To all those watching, Rear Admiral Jayden Naiser appeared to be dragging things out, all but torturing the people who had had the supreme misfortune of having fucked up while the captain of his flagship was stuck on the comms, dealing with family issues. To them, it’d feel like he was savoring this, making them sweat, trying to make this as unpleasant as possible … in reality, he was just trying not to burst out laughing.

Oh, some part of him was furious, demanding he find an actual book to physically throw at these dunderheads, but that part was currently being thoroughly suppressed by the part of his mind that he was desperately trying to wrestle down, bind in chains of discipline and duty, doing his absolute damnedest to maintain the dignity required of a flag officer of the United Earth Navy.

Naiser leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers, and held that pose for a few more seconds, entirely focused on not even letting the corners of his mouth twitch.

Then, he sighed, having decided he was at the limits of the delays he could afford to make.

“I’ve heard a lot of stupid excuses over the course of my career. But you all take the cake. I …”

Naiser barely managed to stop the laugh bubbling up from the depths of his belly, shaking his head instead and hoping, praying, that none of the people who were actually in trouble noticed. He took as deep a breath as he felt he could afford to, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“An orgy aboard a warship is already a serious enough breach of discipline as-is. Holding it in a section of engineering temporarily locked down due to ‘checking vibrational dampening,’ is …”

He cut himself off once again, shaking his head. The sheer goddamn stupidity of the situation was going to give him brain damage, if holding in the laughter didn’t cause an aneurysm first. Even knowing how this was going to end, the utter absurdity just would not let him speak with a straight face without herculean effort.

Naiser was all for second chances, for learning from mistakes, for people taking full advantage of their potentially functionally infinite lifespan to grow in every way they wished.

But sometimes, people just revealed such fundamental, foundational flaws that even he reached his limits. And the sheer stupidity on display here definitely counted as something that would permanently disqualify them from naval service moving forward.

He only needed to get through laying down the sentence with all the dignity it required. And no- …

Beneath him, his flagship shook, pitching his own tablet at Naiser’s face. He batted it aside before it could strike, then snagged it out of the air and slammed it down into the hollow in his desk meant just for it, locking it in place before it could become a potentially dangerous projectile.

Something suddenly began to yank him up towards the ceiling, gravity beginning to invert …

Alarms began to howl even as Naiser mashed the mental button that triggered [Flag-Rank Override], taking a metaphorical axe to the very real force trying to mash him and everyone else into the ceiling.

Cutting off the effect left everyone staggering, it having still been active long enough for people to start to adjust to it, but nothing should have been able to happen.

Naiser threw the people he’d been about to fire an annoyed look.

“Dismissed.”

Not from the navy, just the proceedings. They’d pick this up once … whatever the fuck was going on was over.

That done, he stepped through space and right onto the bridge. Tried, to, at any rate. The teleport tried to activate, stuttered, grasped him and held him immobile for a split second, and then spat him back down, leaving him to land heavily in his chair.

That really wasn’t good.

Naiser leaped to his feet and stormed out of the door, slowing down to something that was just barely not a dead sprint. Seeing the admiral in a hurry would be bad enough for morale. Seeing him run? There was no possible speed he could reach that would compensate for the downsides.

He was only grateful that the conference room he’d just been in, along with any other flag-rank specific compartments like his office and bedroom, had been carefully placed right next to the flag bridge, even though there shouldn’t be a single admiral in the fleet who couldn’t simply teleport there.

In the corridor, the alarm was still blaring.

“All hands to battlestations, all hands to battlestations!”

As he “ran,” he tried to get a proper grasp on what was happening, drawing upon the Party that had been established to supplement the tactical network, feeding every scrap of data through [Skills] that would, in theory, let him run a fleet all on his lonesome.

It was … it worked the same as it always did. Badly.

But it was still better than nothing; the human brain was simply not meant to juggle that kind of information without the visual aid provided by monitors and consoles, no matter what magical enhancements one tacked onto it.

Yet all of that still meant that, by the time he burst onto the flag bridge and the battlestations alert was muted to a dull roar by the room’s noise dampening, Naiser had a fairly good idea of what was going on.

A swarm of eldritch monsters, ranging from Level 30 to 200, a lone planet two and a half light minutes away, and somehow both his flotilla and said planet were being moved across the galaxy quickly enough to see the stars moving in the distance.

As such, he was able to start giving orders after mere seconds of entering.

“Flush the missile tubes at targets of opportunity, reload with anti-boss munitions and hold. All battlecruisers, charge and hold primaries for further orders, use secondaries to cover the destroyers, use point defense to clear the immediate area. All destroyers are to move to the center of the formation for protection. All ships, prepare for enemy boarding action.”

As Naiser spoke, his [Skills] added detailed maneuvering orders into the comms, transforming “protect the destroyers” into a precise formation that saw the battlecruisers surround the fragile escorts that were meant to be escorting them, using the heavier secondaries to sweep the area around the less durable vessels in the formation while protecting the battlecruisers with weapons designed to work merely against missiles.

But the battlecruisers could take the assault. For a bit. And only if whatever was responsible for their surroundings didn’t show up.

All around his ships, six sleek yet massive kilometer-long battlecruisers, and twelve of the comparatively tiny destroyers, each no more than a hundred meters in length, space burned.

Lasers flash-frying abominations that had no place in a rational universe (not that they lived in one), particle beams simultaneously irradiating and shredding the monsters they struck, light railgun rounds hammering clean through their targets, leaving vast arcs of gore to spray across space … capital ships built to fight Raid Bosses and their alien equivalents had little trouble erasing these small fry from the face of the universe.

Each battlecruiser was a blazing star against the black void of space, pumping out enough energy to vaporize a large city every second, metal projectiles flashing across the universe while carrying enough energy to shatter a destroyer with a single blow.

And then missiles erupted from each of the capital ships, riding pillars of plasma as they dove into the densest patches of monsters their sensors could detect before detonating, unleashing their myriad payloads to rend their foes asunder.

Enchanted nets of micrometer-thin wire that covered hundreds of square meters of space and diced anything that flew into it to pieces.

Magical homing shrapnel.

Nuclear shaped charges that acted more like flaming serpents than raw explosions, hunting down their targets and spearing through them with casual ease.

And those were only the munitions they’d packed to deal with regular monsters like they’d expected to face in the system they’d originally been aiming for. The weaponry that was sliding into the launch tubes in their place was something else entirely …

Finally, on the rare occasion that a monster was able to ignore the “normal” weapons mounted on humanity’s warships due to the sheer fuckery that was their eldritch nature, well, even those were barely able to do more than scratch the paint before an airlock popped open and one of the marines blew them away.

Orders given, he took a brief moment to make sure his chair was clear, then sat down and buckled in.

Not doing that immediately was a very bad habit, but one only had to accidentally sit on the ship’s cat once to become a little gun-shy, not that Naiser would ever admit that out loud.

With the initial swell of orders given, he returned his attention to the tactical plot.

There was an obvious danger here, namely, the swarm of lesser monsters, but that couldn’t possibly be the only issue here, or even the main threat.

Something was dragging an entire planet across space, and even if an enchantment to that effect were reasonably possible, its existence would have been glaringly obvious at these distances. And the idea that a [Skill] could do this … there were some truly absurd abilities known to exist, mostly found in the emergency contingency plans. But those were hyperspecific and Capstones to boot; this effect was too comprehensive, and any group combining efforts should have drawn monsters, which was not something he was seeing.

That just left one possible source of this mess: a World Boss.

It had to also be the source of the anomaly they’d been expected to pass by, the one an entire fleet had been sent to find and take care of. Five battleship divisions, with S-Rank “civilian volunteers” along for the ride, another two weeks behind them.

However, Naiser was unfortunately quite certain of one thing: if they couldn’t win this on their own, they wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving until reinforcements arrived.

World Bosses had a cap on their power. So if this thing had spatial warping capable of dragging along a planet, it had to have significant shortcomings in other areas.

Taking a battlecruiser division against Ziz or the Leviathan would see them reduced to scrap metal before they managed to do more than break its skin.

Against a more cerebral challenge, such as the space-warping, dimension-segregating, reality-twisting of the Earlking, or the embodiment of fundamental fears that was the Big Bad Wolf … well, Naiser would certainly take six battlecruisers against the Earlking and expect to win.

As for the fact that he’d have more luck getting the ship’s cat to like him again than bringing such a force to bear against the most frustrating World Boss in humanity’s roster … honestly, that was a whole other kettle of fish.

Point was, there was at least a chance that this would not be a one-sided slaughter of his people. A slim one.

Naiser glared at the main tactical plot.

Come on, show yourself. Turn this into a fight before people have time to panic.

There was a distant, ugly, crunch, followed by the operations officer announcing, “Intruder on deck six. Marines respo- …”

The officer was cut off by an equally distant but nevertheless loud explosion. And when he continued, the message was a new one.

“Major Payne reports all intruders destroyed.”

There was a brief moment of silence, and even though everyone was carefully keeping their thoughts to themselves and out of the Party, Naiser knew there was a single word echoing in their heads the same way it was in his own.

Marines.

It was then that the communications officer dropped her own bombshell.

“All the comm nodes unpaired the moment we were yanked out of FTL. On all ships.”

“The backup systems still work,” Naiser said flatly. It wasn’t a question. If the magical “radios” that could send messages at FTL speeds with the help of magic were broken, any officer qualified to work on a flag bridge would have said so.

As for the “radio” itself, it still had the scientific community endlessly debating about whether or not the carrier wave was comprised of the “mythical” tachyons.

It was also the backup for a couple of very good reasons, neither of which applied here.

The short range of “only” several light years didn’t matter when everyone was within less than a light second of each other, and the interceptability hardly mattered when they were fighting monsters. Or, at the very least, it shouldn’t. Any monster that could intercept, decrypt, and use military communications would be an existential threat.

“All monsters within two light seconds have been eliminated.”

“Good.” Naiser nodded, not bothering to take his eyes off the main screen. Where was that goddamn World Bo- …

“Admiral, comms from the planet! Emergency channel, standard civilian encryption! Ship of origin: Dragonfly, armed civilian scout ship, Captain Derek Thoma commanding.”

“Put it through,” Naiser snapped.

“No live feed, Admiral, just a data packet. There’s a World Boss present, The Error. Eldritch type, locks all teleportation in the area save for its own, and leaves behind a damaging dimensional effect anywhere it teleports past. We’re also locked inside a bubble of warped space, five light-minutes across, centered on the planet, that we cannot leave by any means they are aware of. The World Boss …” the comms officer swallowed. “It targets any position with a population above one thousand individuals.”

And all six battlecruises under Naiser’s command, including his flagship Intractable, had a crew of one thousand two hundred.

This new information required several new orders to be given.

“All ships, prioritize avoiding any place the World Boss has passed through above keeping the formation intact.”

The next order was given much more surreptitiously.

“Lieutenant Fletcher, get started on figuring out an evacuation plan, scattering off into groups of eight hundred or less,” he muttered under his breath, sending the message entirely via the Party and suppressing the sound before it could reach anyone else on the bridge.

The likelihood of them having to run was horrifyingly high, but hearing him plan for defeat before the enemy had even shown its face would destroy morale so thoroughly it would never recover. As such …

On the screen, the battlecruiser Ranger exploded. Shattered into thousands of pieces as something erupted through it, light that burned his eyes even through the screen for a couple of seconds before the filter switched on, leaving the World Boss visage free to be horrifying only in the mundane way.

Which was more than enough.

Dragon, which had been behind and slightly off to the side of Ranger, began to slew around, desperately trying to avoid her momentum carrying her into the space the World Boss had just teleported through.

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She made it. Mostly.

The bottom third of the battlecruiser simply … split off, sheared away by the dimensional blade forged of the monster’s power, weapons falling silent as their power supply was bisected.

But the ship seemed to be somewhat intact beyond. For about five seconds. Naiser wasn’t entirely sure which piece of equipment blew first, only that several followed less than a second later, sending the ship reeling. Technically intact, but functionally out of the fight.

“All ships, evasive action; priority target is the World Boss. Destroyers back to the exterior of the formation.

“Primary armament is to fire on the World Boss whenever possible; secondaries are to engage minions as targets of opportunity; point defense is to target minions exclusively. Keep the perimeter clear.”

If the weapons on the sides of the ship facing away from the biggest threat could fire on the lesser monsters whenever they came into range, they’d be able to avoid getting swarmed. Again. The big fucker was going to be trouble enough …

Naiser triggered one of the few non-teleport active [Skills] he could affect the fleet with, an [Incandescent Nebula] manifesting in the monster’s path, a wall of glowing plasma that no sane being would fly through.

The beast ignored both it and the surface-level burns said ignorance resulted in.

Space around The Error blazed, energy weapons ripping into its star-speckled body, while the black-hole-like “head” seemd to look around curiously, the colorful radiation wreathing the sphere of absolute darkness oddly expressive.

And what it was expressing was both curiosity and no small amount of disdain as it dove through space, heading straight for the destroyers that had been meant to be protected in their position within the formation.

However, the small ship’s captain seemed to have come to the realization that there would be no escape in less than a second as, rather than making a futile attempt at flight, it spun in place until its bow was lined up with the World boss.

Then it fired, the railgun that ran the length of the ship unleashing a one-kilogram slug at speeds that would have seen it evaporate in less than a second had there been any atmosphere to provide friction.

And for the briefest of seconds, The Error seemed to care. Seemed to feel the need to avoid that projectile, when it was shrugging off the heavy energy weapons wielded by the four fully intact battlecruisers that now surrounded it.

When the World Boss slewed to the side, Rear Admiral Jayded Naiser felt a small burst of hope … only for an impossibly long tentacle to manifest along its side, lashing out into what seemed to be an unnatural angle that reached out of the normal three dimensions the rest of them existed within …

The destroyer Acheron was erased from existence a moment later, folding in half around the impact of an invisible titan’s fist before vanishing entirely. No dust, no debris, no bodies.

It was only then that it became clear why the creature had changed course. It wanted the rest of the destroyers as well, and continuing on a straight-line course for the Acheron might have made that more difficult.

Half a dozen of the escorts died in rapid succession as The Error tore through them, followed by one final ship being evaporated away in the same manner as the first one.

Naiser finally gave the next order.

“All battlecruisers, fire missiles.”

His voice came out in an angry hiss that had no place on the bridge of a warship, as he tried to push down the fury bubbling up from the very core of his being.

A hundred and nine missiles flashed out into space, twenty-four from each of the intact battlecruisers and seventeen from the ailing Dragon, all curving their trajectories to come together on the eldritch titan in their midst, aiming for the kind of simultaneous impact that could wipe out fleets and shatter some dwarf planets.

Against a World Boss, on the other hand? Their most fundamentally nasty ability was the power to downgrade the damage of anything that could generally be considered to be “overkill,” especially nuclear armament.

Atomic fire blotted out the creature’s horrible visage for several seconds, material that was giving any sensors trying to analyze it conniptions manifesting appearing deep within the clouds of radiation and plasma as the monster’s flesh was vaporized …

Yet the monster’s continued existence was announced not by its reappearance, but by three lances of plasma erupting from the cloud, each spearing one of the three remaining destroyers … insofar as “spear” was the right word when each of the beams was wider than the ship it had been aimed at and casually tore it in half.

It was only then that The Error truly made its return, its “head” the first thing that emerged from the blaze, revealed due to how it was sucking in the energy that wreathed it like some grotesquely demonic halo.

“All units, not striking the head is now your highest priority. Switch to missiles with shaped-charge warheads.” Naiser ordered as he continued to direct the fleet via the touchscreens beneath his fingers and brief mental instructions via the Party, sent to the other people on the flag bridge even while his voice was otherwise occupied.

His five battlecruisers were spreading out, avoiding giving their opponent the same kind of concentrated target the destroyers had wound up doing, while burning away any and all regular monsters that entered their range. As long as they weren’t dropped into the middle of a swarm, again, they wouldn’t have to worry.

But there was a sixth surviving ship that could not do the same.

The Yukikaze’s linguistic ancestor had been thought to be unsinkable, a vessel that had survived far more than it ever should have, yet none of that luck seemed to have rubbed off on its namesake.

Their foe had chosen to hunt down the final destroyer, and nothing he could possibly do could change that.

Ordinarily, this would have been the time to run, warp away, and go hide behind a capital ship, or even abandon ship, teleport the crew off to a safe place, but that monster stopped any and all methods that could achieve that.

And now, none of those people would get out of this alive.

However, Naiser could not look away. He would not let himself take his eyes off the tragedy unfolding before him.

There was nothing impressive or poetic about the Yukikaze’s death.

The World Boss was a car driving at full speed.

The destroyer was a bug.

The bug splattered across the windshield that was The Error’s black hole of a face.

Five seconds after that, finally, Naiser’s remaining ships were in a position to strike back. Truly strike back.

Another salvo of missiles flashed out, each one bearing a warhead that would unleash a focused lance of plasma and radiation that could be cleanly aimed past the monster’s head, and their opponent had proven entirely lacking in point-defense capability.

And at the same time, all five battlecruisers’ main propulsion cut out, thrusters firing to spin them in place and point their bows back towards the monster, space twisting and warping before them, the fabric of reality itself becoming the barrel of the titanic guns that were the primary weapons of a Drake-class battlecruiser.

Two immense energy weapons that ran the entirety of their length, one a laser, one a particle beam, both impossibly destructive.

Around Naiser, the entirety of the Intractable began to hum, the charged weapons entering their firing sequence, the overhead lights dimming briefly as every spare erg of energy the ship had was dumped into its most lethal of weapons.

For a brief moment, it was as though reality stood still, as though the hellish energy erupting from the vessel’s bow superseded all other processes, even the inexorable march of time …

Across the flotilla, ten immense beams of energy erupted from the battlecruisers, passing through the spatial warping ahead and being precisely aimed with a fidelity that lining up the entire ship never could have achieved.

And then they hammered home, even the impossible flesh of The Error giving way beneath the incandescent rays that tore immense rents into its body, gouts of plasma bursting forth that, thankfully, the sensors had been programmed to not properly analyze, lest the computers start melting …

The World Bosses writhed in apparent pain beneath the assault, its silent screams inaudible across the vast expanse of space.

Yet one laser struck The Error’s head, seemingly absorbed without effect. A split-second afterwards, a massive ray of energy erupted from that same sphere of absolute blackness, not back at the battlecruiser that had fired it, but at Dragon, flashing straight through the massive gap in the ship’s armor and eviscerating it.

Along with over a thousand human beings, the United Earth Navy Ship Dragon vanished in an eye-searing explosion.

No destroyers left, four battlecruisers remaining. Intractable, Dauntless, Invincible, and Furious.

And a World Boss that had clearly not enjoyed being on the receiving end of all that firepower, nor was particularly eager to eat another missile salvo.

The Error vanished, clearly having teleported away.

“All ships, evasive action, random direction perpendicular to the potential escape vectors,” Naiser ordered, seeing it was too late before he’d even finished the sentence.

On the screen, the Invincible was being … something. The battlecruiser looked like …

Word failed him, even as the certainty that every single person on that ship was doomed settled in his gut.

What had once been a kilometer-long triumph of engineering, forged from truesteel and human grit, was warping, twisting, spinning around a seemingly random point amidships like a bowl of spaghetti in which a fork was being turned, enchanted metal shifting as though the Invincible had been constructed from soft cheese …

Then the unseen “fork” gave one final twist, one final wrench, and the ship simply came apart, pieces flying around in an immense arc as though tossed by an invisible vortex’s centrifugal force.

“My God.”

For a brief moment, Naiser feared it was him who had spoken; when he realized he had not, he chose not to try and figure out which of the others had.

It was only then that the enemy reappeared on the tactical plot, a full four light minutes away, clean on the other side of the reality bubble they were all stuck within.

And, wouldn’t you know it, once one accounted for light-speed latency, it was clear that the “vector” of its teleport had taken it clean through the Invincible.

The World Boss was looking more than a little ragged itself, however, horrid light bleeding from deep chasms torn into its body, the internal glow of its star-covered body dimming as though its very life essence was leaving it.

Yet its head was entirely intact, utterly unbothered by the attacks it had absorbed and hurled back at the ships under Naiser’s command, glaring at them across all those light minutes, as though it was staring into his very soul …

“All ships, initiate random evasive maneuvers,” Naiser ordered, for all the good it would do. Teleporting on top of a ship barely more than a kilometer across from seventy-two million kilometers away without real-time data was functionally impossible. With it, on the other hand, especially considering the accuracy the monster had proven to have … assuming it lacked the ability to see across those distances was foolhardy. And almost certainly wrong.

But however long it would take for the monster to return, they’d prepare.

However long it gave them, they’d spend readying surprises that it would not enjoy receiving …

It gave them three minutes.

Three. Goddamn. Minutes.

And then it flashed back into existence in their midst.

The evasive maneuvers proved their worth, however, and the Dauntless “only” had the forwardmost two hundred meters of her hull shorn clean off, and The Error manifested a mere two hundred meters off its bow and moving away from it, rather than poised to smash straight through her hull.

Having lost the front of her main laser would have rendered that weapon useless, but a linear particle beam was a different story. The particles would come out with less momentum and be nowhere near as focused due to the lack of the final stretch of their “journey,” and the absence of the spatial targetting in the bow would kill the accuracy at any realistic engagement distance.

The ten kilometers that presently separated the battlecruiser and the World Boss were not a “realistic engagement distance.” That was beyond point-blank range; in space combat terms, they were so close that Dauntless was practically kissing the eldritch abomination when she spun around in an instant, and the particle beam fired, an immense plume of radiation and near-light-speed iron ions hammering into The Error’s side like the fist of an angry god.

Even at reduced overall strength due to damage, not even a World Boss could ignore the impact.

More limbs manifested, ready to smash the battlecruiser to pieces as the monster began to turn and begin to close the distance ... but whatever maneuvering boost Dauntless’ captain had used hadn’t worn off, and the battlecruiser was already burning for open space. There was a lot of spare room to play keepaway in, even with them having been trapped within a five light-minute diameter bubble.

And wasn’t it nice of The Error to give the other human warships a perfect target?

Had the Dauntless been a battleship rather than a battlecruiser, she’d have already been nothing more than dust and debris. But for all that all of his past capital ship commands had been of the battleship variety, Naiser had to admit there was something to be said for the principle of “can run away from anything it can’t beat.”

Now that their foe was chasing after one of their number with all the chances of success of a dog attempting to catch a squirrel … and after it were flying forty-eight more missiles.

That was when four immense beams of power tore into the rear of The Error as the other two battlecruisers fired, Intractable and Furious unleashing their own primaries, ripping into the monster’s flesh.

At this point, maybe a tenth of its skin remained, everything else torn open and/or away, and at least a quarter of its body was just gone, vaporized far more thoroughly than even the weapons used should have accounted for, the impossible material their eldritch foe was comprised of vanishing due to as-of-yet unknown reasons.

The missiles hammered home two minutes later, their foe seemingly having resigned itself to having to eat the damage, as it vanished behind yet another series of eye-searing explosions, sensors having another brief conniption before they all collectively decided to ignore the issue.

Unfortunately … unfortunately, it seemed their opponent had put slightly more thought into its efforts at destroying its target than it had initially seemed.

Because that was when, exactly three minutes and two seconds after it had reappeared, The Error vanished once more. And Dauntless was torn apart by the force of its passage.

The dance of evasive maneuvers continued, despite the fact that the monster’s teleport was almost certainly on cooldown, the one hundred and eighty-two seconds between spatial jumps seemingly fixed to that exact number, according to the “historical data.”

That fact was once again proven when it appeared almost directly on top of Furious, a reflexive flurry of point defense fire absorbed by the black hole of its head as the World Boss thundered past, spinning and unleashing a lance of light into one of the battlecruiser’s main propulsion units.

Something exploded.

Furious staggered through space.

And when the monster started off after her, the reduced propulsion would clearly prove fatal.

Under Naiser’s orders, Intractable followed. Intractable chased the World Boss, its every weapon blazing, burning their foe’s hide, even as they were forced to watch the only other human warship remaining in the system be torn apart.

First the escape pods went flying.

Then the weapons started blazing with more power than they could safely handle.

And finally, the main propulsion cut out and the nearly empty warship began to flip until its remaining engines were pointing in her direction of flight, at which point they began to burn at a level well past what they or the ship were capable of sustaining.

They would have burned out in half a minute at most … yet a mere two seconds after reversing course, the Furious collided with the World Boss and exploded as every fusion reactor overloaded as one.

Naiser made a mental note to figure out whoever had been onboard to make that happen, as he watched the World Boss reel. His opinion would not be worth a wet fart after this disaster; his influence functionally non-existent, but he would get them the Medal of Honor if it was the last thing he did. Assuming he lived that long …

And then the Error launched itself at the last vessel. The flagship, closing at terrifying speeds.

Naiser triggered [Solar Flare], a titanic gout of plasma erupting from the hull of the Intractable, curving around the World Boss’ head to hammer into its comparatively vulnerable body. And then it pushed.

Now, the monster did not give a shit what the [Skill] wanted, what it was trying to do, and what the laws of physics said should happen.

Except that [Solar Flare] wasn’t just a short-ranged attack [Skill] with a week-long cooldown.

It was a point-blank attack with a week-long cooldown that was guaranteed to buy distance.

And the other guy’s only options were moving or being moved.

The Error chose the latter, and with a titanic burst of light, it was shoved away, a massive crater dug into its side. Its course diverted, the range sufficiently open that hitting it again with magic was not an option.

And Naiser was once again cursing their comparative lack of directly damaging [Skills], especially those that had decent range.

Normally, they didn’t really need them; their ships’ weapons had all the punch they needed, especially with all the passive bonuses the captains’ and crews’ [Skills] added.

No, under “normal” circumstances, the issue was being able to bring them, or any weapon, for that matter, into range of the enemy across the vastness of space. If one could do so from an unexpected angle, all the better.

As such, the vast majority of active abilities were movement-based, in one way or another.

More tentacles burst forth from the World Boss’ body, erupting outwards and stretching off into directions that seemed to go beyond the normal three dimensions …

Intractable rang like a bell. Then the lights went out, and the regular noise of the ship went with them. The emergency lights did not activate.

“Status report,” Naiser snapped.

The sound of the operations officer swallowing echoed like a gunshot in the silence that followed.

“The bridge and main engineering are gone. Captain Hammond is dead. Lieutenant Commander Casimir says that whatever hit us, and I quote, ‘ate the juice right out of the dang batteries!’ He won’t be able to get any reactors online for at least twenty hours, and had to spend all instant-repair [Skills] on keeping Intractable intact.

“There are three … no, there are four one-hundred-meter holes through the hull; damage control doesn’t have a full list of affected systems yet.”

Hell.

Between the damage, the estimated repair time, and the status of the other ships, there really was only one order left to give.

He activated [General Broadcast] and spoke directly to each and every man and woman left alive on Intractable.

“All hands, abandon ship.”

On a civilian vessel, that would have likely resulted in a panicked evacuation, but this was a military vessel. A slow and steady stream of humanity heading off towards the escape pods while the ship died around them.

Ordinarily, most of this would have been done via teleports; they likely would have stepped straight onto another warship, ready to continue the fight … but no. Their opponent would not allow it. A slow and steady march throughout the ship was what they were left with, hoping, praying, their foe would not decide they were still a target worth going after.

There was one individual going against the flow, however. Namely, the Chief Engineer.

“Lieutenant Commander Casimir,” Naiser began, pressing his back against the bulkhead so as to not block the corridor.

“Admiral, I’m staying. Intractable is a hulk at the moment, but it shouldn’t re-attract the World Boss’ attention unless we shoot it once she’s been evacuated.”

“Alone?” Naiser asked.

“Several of my engineers are staying as well.”

And before Naiser could give any orders to the contrary, the man had already vanished amongst the throng of people. It was risky. Bordering on suicidal. But it might just work.

When he caught sight of the leader of the ship’s marine detachment, the solution was obvious.

“Major Payne, the engineering department wants to stay here to try and fix the ship,” Naiser ordered. “One platoon of your best is to stay here with them. If their presence draws the World Boss back, remove the engineers no matter how they protest.

“If Intractable is ignored as a derelict, they are to support them to the best of their ability.”

“Yes, sir.”

Payne immediately began barking orders, while Naiser continued on towards the escape pod, stopping at the hatch, closing his eyes, and trying to mentally sweep his senses across the ship, trying to find anyone who might have otherwise been left behind.

In theory, the damage control teams and Marines should have found and rescued anyone trapped.

In practice … leaving without checking was something he never would have forgiven himself for.

If anyone was about to be left behind, save for those who had elected to remain, he did not notice. And with that, Jayden Naiser ducked through the hatch and lowered himself into a seat before strapping in.

When the escape pod then launched, his attention should have been on the pod’s rudimentary sensors, looking for the monster. Making sure it hadn’t decided that chasing escape pods would be its new pastime.

Yet in that moment, he could focus on only one thing, no matter how inappropriate that was: the damn cat was in the same escape pod as him.