Chapter 81: Jailbreak

“I thought there were reinforcements coming?” Derek asked, trying and failing to avoid showing how his heart had leapt into his throat at that thought.

“There are,” Isaac confirmed. “But we can’t communicate from in here, and we need to get as much information as possible to Admiral Miyazaki to make sure the next fight doesn’t turn into another massacre. Also, you’ve got most of a planet’s worth of monsters coming down on your heads; getting the hell out of here would probably be a good idea.”

Then, he grinned.

“So, permission to come aboard, Captain?”

Wasn’t he already abo- … nope, he was floating a few centimeters above the armor, tiny flames flickering beneath his soles.

Derek bit back a chuckle as he gave his reply.

“Granted.”

“Now, let’s go meet the admiral,” Isaac decided, quickly making his way off the ship and towards the airlock, moving at a pace that was just barely below what would require Derek to scramble to catch up.

They passed several sailors in the corridor, each of whom did a double-take upon seeing him follow his brother, seemingly having mistaken Isaac as being him, but no one actually commented until they reached the kitchen and the admiral sitting therein.

Of course, how else could it be? That was when there was a soft “pop” and suddenly, a wave of waver and jelly chunks splashed across the room as the enchanted gummi bears Derek had left lying out detonated as one. Or, more likely, one of them failed and damaged the other ones to the point where they failed in turn …

The water vanished as it touched Isaac, barely visible flames all but erasing the “attack,” while Naiser simply got up, walked over to the counter, and started dabbing at his now-wet uniform with a towel.

And Isaac was now turning to face Derek.

“Well?”

“Why do you think this is on me?”

“You said ‘whoops,’” Isaac pointed. “So?”

Derek sighed. He hadn’t even realized he’d spoken.

“Old science project. Those were gummy bears containing a pocket dimension filled with water I needed for an experiment and should have properly disposed of…”

“Probably,” Naiser commented, looking at the brothers as he continued drying himself. “So, what exactly brings you here, Dr. Thoma?”

“I’m here to get everyone off this rock and out of this trap,” Isaac replied, pulling out a chair and dropping into it.

“The plan’s simple: you’ve still got one reasonably intact battlecruiser floating around up there, and her chief engineer just got her fixed up. He, and a skeleton crew take her towards the planet at full acceleration, and we start putting the crew back aboard as we move.

“Now, we’re obviously going to eventually reach the point where we start drawing the World Boss’ attention; however, as you both likely know, I have combat scale precognition and will be able to provide enough warning to dodge its initial teleport, while my brother can ‘teleport’ despite The Error’s presence. Then, when we reach the barrier, I open a breach, and we’re home free.”

That plan felt … oversimplified. And had one major issue …

“Here’s the thing …” Derek sighed, not wanting to destroy the plan that might get them out of here tomorrow, but keenly aware that he had to. “I’m pretty sure I have to be the captain for my [Skills] to work on a ship.”

But Isaac just glanced over at Naiser, who then turned to face Derek, posture quickly shifting into something officious, bordering on ceremonial.

“Captain Thoma, I’m hereby drafting you for the duration of this operation. Your post will be as captain of the UENS Intractable. However, due to your total lack of seniority, you will be accompanied by a more experienced officer, in this case, Rear Admiral Naiser.”

Aka the man himself, who’d be actually in charge. But formally, on the org chart, it’d be Derek, and that was close enough for government work. Or, in this case, the [System] to let him use his [Skills]. Which threw up a new question.

“How did you know I can teleport in here?” Derek asked.

“A friend figured out how to scry in here, after a truly horrifying number of attempts,” Isaac explained. “That’s also why I had enough time to come up with an actual plan, and why I knew to leave any form of quantum-entangled communicator behind before I stepped in here. Speaking of …”

He pulled a piece of paper from a pocket and slid it across the table to Naiser.

“Once we’re outside, someone will need to retrieve them at this location so we can get interstellar comms back.”

“I’ll arrange for it,” the admiral replied.

The conversation continued on after that, but Derek wound up taking his leave, as he wasn’t needed at just that moment and did have something important to do …

***

Two people were left staring at each other across the Dragonfly’s dining table.

One, an admiral for the greatest nation humanity had ever built, and one of the few who had gotten out of the “colony” stage, mostly because it was based around the planet humans had evolved on in the first place.

The other, a “scientist.” By title, at least. Though few people would choose that word to describe him anymore. Or ever, really. His journey to true prominence had happened after gaining power to the point where that was what most knew him for.

And around them crackled enough privacy wards that no place other than the offices of CEOs of the most valuable companies and literal heads of state could compare.

“So, you wanted to talk in private …” Isaac said. “… Could you have phrased that any more ominously?”

“With an opening like that, you almost make me want to come up with something,” Naiser said dryly, shrugged, then leaned forward in his chair, fixing Isaac with his eyes. “You said you managed to see inside this place. How?”

“That is not my secret to share, though I can assure you this ability is not being used against the government, or humanity in general, and I’m willing to say as much before the wielder of a truth [Skill],” Isaac replied immediately. “I’m sorry. I’ve been on your side of this conversation, and absolutely hated it, but this really is not something I can talk about.”

“And I suppose pressing the issue would get me a colorful description of where I can shove my question, perhaps accompanied by an inappropriate anatomical drawing?” Naiser asked dryly, leaning back in his chair.

“Now, who the hell have you been talking to that gave you that impression?” Isaac replied with his own question, a soft chuckle echoing in his voice.

“Some of your peers,” Naiser shrugged.

“Sun Wukong?” Isaac guessed.

“Sun Wukong,” the admiral sighed. “Also, one would think a military man would be easy to work with, but General Ardouin …”

He trailed off, likely considering just how badly he could afford to talk about one of his colleagues, especially one who wielded so much more power and influence than a recently promoted rear admiral whose two notable achievements included conducting first contact with an alien species with a massive coffee stain down the front of his uniform, and getting some of his people out of the recent disaster.

“… Clearly hasn’t gotten any better in the last century,” Isaac completed. “I once entered his office, only to be greeted by a hole in the wall in the exact shape of the person he met with before me.”

“Angering someone to that extent is … unfortunate,” Naiser agreed. “But at the risk of doing the same myself, what can you tell me about how you were able to break the scrying barrier?”

“Nothing,” Isaac stated flatly. “The only reason I have the information I use to keep humanity as un-extinct as possible is that I have a solid track record of only sharing what I absolutely have to. If that changes, people will stop telling me things.

“And, once again, I’m fully aware of how annoying it is to be kept in the dark like that, but I’m afraid that is how it’s going to have to be.”

Naiser raised an eyebrow.

“Do you think someone with my combat capabilities would become a scientist because he was content to let the universe keep its secrets?” Isaac replied.

“I suppose that’s where I’m going to have to leave it,” the admiral declared, starting to rise from his chair, only to let himself drop before he’d fully straightened, his rear hitting the cushion with a pronounced “thump.”

“You know, I think I’m going to regret asking this, but unfortunately, I don’t think I have a choice: when you talk about ‘keeping humanity as un-extinct as possible,’ how close to disaster are we talking?”

“Close. But none of those incidents were exactly a secret,” Isaac pointed out. “You’ll be able to find out all about them from the internet, never mind the Navy’s archives. I wouldn’t keep something like that secret.”

“That’s a relief,” Naiser sighed. “But I still feel like a first-hand account might be valuable …”

Yeah, Isaac had some stories. And the other man would likely wind up regretting asking.

So the scientist began to recount some stories, while the admiral’s face became paler and paler.

***

Cosmic Awareness (legendary)

No one sees the universe as it is. Even the hand in front of one’s face is not seen where it is, but where it was, a single nanosecond prior, for light, as fast as it is, travels slowly across the cosmos.

Granting the ability to remove this information delay to any degree that they wish is only the smallest part of what this Skill provides its user.

For it also allows them the ability to sense, track, and analyze all forms of spatial magic through almost any form of obfuscation, up to and including viewing the inside of pocket dimensions.

In addition, it also allows for the direct viewing/sensing of gravity and its gradients across vast distances, albeit with reduced accuracy at extreme ranges.

Finally, this Skill supports the usage of all forms of “cosmic” magic by granting extreme levels of insight into its function as it is being cast.

An absurd level of battlefield awareness, both in terms of regular sensors and the ability to track all FTL maneuvers, plus support for all magic that could be considered “cosmic.”

Spatial, gravitational, and certain ideas Derek had about how one could make plasma-spells relate to the function of stars … and, almost more importantly, all other forms of magic weren’t hindered in the least by his specialization; they simply would not be improved.

And the new awareness of his surroundings was, to say the least, severely trippy.

The storage rings on his hands, the regular one and the modified version now holding half a dozen potion jellies, the latter of which seemed like it’d have been much easier to figure out with his new [Skill], rather than the absolute clusterfuck its creation had actually been.

Yet against the background of the ship around him, they almost disappeared.

It was easy to forget just how much of the Dragonfly had been twisted on the most fundamental level, how many conduits shortened to allow for unaturally capable transmission, how many storage containers would have taken up most of the ship’s volume without being larger on the inside, the mass manipulation ready to be exerted upon the ship’s exhaust the instant the engines fired, even the gravity magic woven into the deckplates … but now, Derek was aware of everything. All of it. Even the parts he’d never seen, thought of, even known about.

And yet, despite the clamor of his immediate surroundings, the planet beneath him stood out to his senses like a beacon, its gravity field as unmissable and unmistakable as the very sun in the sky … as was the awareness of the bubble that they were still stuck within.

But none of that was actually able to hold his attention more than a couple of seconds beyond him becoming aware of them. Instead, Derek let his feet carry him to a destination he wasn’t entirely certain of, until he found himself standing in main engineering.

Well, the only engineering room aside from the two fabrication hubs, really. The Dragonfly was a small ship.

Even with that being said, though, it was still the engineering room, chock full of all sorts of machines, devices, dohickeys, and tools.

And somewhere in here, there was something unique. Something fascinating.

Derek found himself relieved that it took him a “mere” ten minutes to finally find … the broken comm nodes that had gotten severed from their counterparts back in Sol by The Error’s reality bubble.

Mimi had started taking them apart, likely wanting to check out how they worked now that doing so wouldn’t risk breaking their pipeline home.

Yet there was still something there. “Connection” was too grand a word to describe what he was looking at, yet at the same time … even cut as it was, this was a piece of matter that had been bonded to a second, hundreds of light-years away. Even disconnected, they were still incredibly close, conceptually speaking.

And even though the sympathetic magic of witchcraft formed the basis for the connection, the idea behind it was anchored in the laws of physics. And that, in turn, put this squarely into his new wheelhouse.

Derek reached out and touched it, searching for that connection. He knew the spell to create paired comm nodes, even if he wasn’t skilled enough to actually pull it off without some very expensive reagents to stabilize the effect. Yet when his fingers brushed the crystal lying at the very core of the comm node, he could sense not only the cool stone against his skin, but also an echo of something else, distant, not present yet clearly somehow there … huh.

That felt oddly fixable … so Derek did just that, casting the spell that would link two crystals as they were touching, relying solely on the idea of both the rock before him and the one so far away still being one and the same …

The connection flared to life, a beautiful show of impossibility to even his [Cosmic Insight].

And then it promptly came apart once more, torn asunder beneath the World Boss’ power.

“Should have expected that …” he muttered, glancing down at his phone to take note of the time.

The instant they had contact with Squidworks station, he’d ask whether or not the connected comm node had briefly functioned at just this moment. Because even if he couldn’t fully fix it here, knowing whether or not that brief moment of function had led to contact might still be valuable.

For example, it might lead to him creating some kind of Morse-code-based communication system in case a similar situation occurred. Of course, that’d require him to learn Morse code first, but it wasn’t like that was overly hard. Chances were he’d manage it before he needed it, assuming he started after the end of the current crisis.

Although … perhaps it would be better if he checked what kind of damage, if any, repeated re- and disconnections caused to the crystal. An action that was oddly engaging, to the point where he only realized there was someone else in the room with him when his shoulder was shaken.

“Hey, there you are,” Isaac said. “It’s time.”

Oh shit … how long had he been distracted, playing with the comm node?

“Don’t worry, you’re not late,” Isaac assured him. “I figured you got distracted when you never showed up on the bridge. Do you need to finish this up?”

“Not really,” Derek shook his head. “More of a long-term thing.”

And if he really had to stress-test this thing more, he could easily break the connection himself.

As they walked towards the bridge, they were met by Atticus, dressed in his combat armor. But before he could say anything, Isaac spoke up.

“By the way, Amy is coming along with the reinforcements; figured you might want a heads-up.”

While Atticus blanched, Derek tried to remember who “Amy” was, until he remembered that it was his friend’s mother. And while they were both getting rescued by family members, there had to be a very big difference between a sibling taking the role of rescuer and one’s parent.

“You just love springing stuff on people, don’t you?” Derek asked his older brother as they reached the bridge’s door.

“Yup,” Issac replied, popping the “p,” a mischievous smirk on his face for a brief instant. “But that was just me being nice.”

With that, they both stepped onto the bridge, Derek claiming the captain’s chair and Isaac planting himself in the corner, clearly confident in his ability to avoid becoming a human projectile even without a seatbelt.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

On the main screen, Derek could see the Intractable begin to move. A kilometer-long capital ship that had been able to tear immense rents into the hide of the World Boss that had kept them pinned. A crew of twelve hundred required to man it at maximum efficacy. Enough nuclear warheads aboard to burn a planet’s surface to bedrock and enough railguns studding the hull to do the same, given a week to work with.

His ship. Only for now, and only on paper, but his nevertheless.

The battlecruiser was clearly not in top form just yet, but the battlecruiser’s engines and maneuvering systems were in top form according to the feed that had gotten patched into the Dragonfly’s comms at some point in the last few hours.

This was an insane plan. The Thoma family specialty, in other words.

Derek busied himself going over the ship’s status until the appointed time came around and the ship around him came alive, all of five minutes later.

“Wait, weren’t we supposed to have marines with us for this part? In case we get boarded?” Derek asked.

“You have me. The admiral figured it’d be best for as many marines as possible to stay behind,” Isaac replied, leaving Derek wanting to facepalm but refraining, considering he was on a fully crewed bridge, and only half the people present were his crew.

Around them, the Dragonfly began to tremble as she rode skyward atop a pillar of flame, the clouds of ash and dust briefly wrapping them before they burst through, turbulence causing strands of particles to chase after them like the grasping fingers of an immense phantom, falling away only once they’d left the very atmosphere behind.

They continued to accelerate until they surpassed the escape velocity of the planet’s gravity, then they flipped in place, pointing their ship’s bow back towards the world beneath them.

“We’re going to keep firing until the magazines are dry,” Naiser ordered, the bombardment plan already manifesting on the screen and within the consoles.

And a moment later, death began to once more rain down upon the former Astron homeworld. Pretty soon, they’d begin evacuating people, and at that point, everyone left behind at that point would soon be in danger of being overwhelmed.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t been able to fully replenish their stocks of bombardment-capable railgun rounds, but even what they had presently was more than enough to put a serious dent in the planet’s monster population and earn Derek two more Levels. Not enough for another [Skill], but the Stat points were still welcome, and he used them to bump both magic stats up to three hundred and ten.

At this point, the world they were leaving behind had most likely set a record for most bombardment rounds hitting a single planet in all of known space.

Once they were well and truly out of ammo, however, the Dragonfly began to once again accelerate hell-bent for leather, shooting across the orb of warped space The Error had trapped them within.

An hour later, the acceleration cut out along with an announcement of “We’ve matched the Intractable’s expected velocity.”

Of course, these were moving in the exact opposite direction, but that was what Atticus’ [Skill] would be for, even if racing onward on what seemed like a collision course with a goddamn capital ship was making Derek’s lizard brain freak out.

***

“Reverse course … now!” Derek snapped, and in an instant, their vector inverted, leaving them traveling alongside Intractable.

Of course, they were still separated by nearly five thousand kilometers, but that still put the ships well within each other’s personal space by, uh, space standards.

“Initiate docking maneuvers,” Derek ordered, then left things up to the pilots to handle from there, as Atticus coordinated things with the Intractable’s helmsman as the two ships slowly drifted together.

For all that they were both moving through space at velocities that could be easily measured relative to light speed, they seemed almost motionless relative to each other, making this a bit of a cinch.

Everything afterwards was simple as hell.

Step one: remove ass from seat.

Step two: walk ass over to the airlock.

Step three: depressurize airlock and walk out.

Step four: jump.

Step five: enter airlock on other starship while original starship begins the return journey.

Done.

Stepping aboard Intractable threw Derek for a couple of seconds. Because everything was suddenly turned ninety degrees relative to the Dragonfly.

Smaller vessels like his ship, at least when they were built to be able to land, had their decks parallel to whichever side of the vessel would be “down” when the vessel was resting upon the surface of a planet. That put the decks’ gravity perpendicular to the direction of travel. They accelerated like an airplane or space shuttle.

But anything larger, incapable of resting upon any planet with any decent gravitational pull without having a considerable portion of its own size devoted to landing gear, did not have to be built with that in mind.

Instead, they were built in a way that aligned the deck plates’ gravity with the direction of travel, along with where inertia would be pulling them during acceleration, resulting in ships built more like skyscrapers than traditional ships.

This is a mindfuck, Derek thought as he turned himself in the gravity-less airlock so that his feet were pointed in the right direction, then pulled himself into the corridor beyond and landed lightly as the magical gravity pulled his feet to the ground.

And then he froze. This place was a bit too big to navigate off vibes and his [Aura], especially with the [Aura]-dampening enchantments protecting the ship.

The Dragonfly had four main corridors, oriented around the ship’s spine and the twin weapons therein, with stairs and ladders connecting the lot.

This place was … considerably bigger. And even having memorized the naval compartment designation system hardly helped.

Suddenly, Derek felt a hand on his shoulder.

“This way,” Naiser said.

Right. Not alone in having to navigate this place.

Derek followed the admiral through the maze of corridors, the stark utilitarian decor, or rather, lack of it, thoroughly hammering home that they were in a military vessel, until they reached … the flag bridge?

“Intractable’s bridge was destroyed during the battle,” Naiser said flatly, before Derek could even ask. “There are too many computers involved for Lieutenant Commander Casimir to both rebuild it from scratch and fix everything else.”

Derek grimaced. Between the fact that there’d been no mention of the fate of the bridge crew, and that his being temporarily made captain so his [Skill] would work hadn’t required someone else to be demoted, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened to everyone on the bridge at the time.

And when he stepped inside, his jaw hit the floor.

Saying one could have fit the Dragonfly into the battlecruiser’s flag bridge would have been an exaggeration, but by far less than he’d ever have expected.

The vast room’s four walls were each covered in immense screens; a central holoprojector could likely create a true-to-scale image of a tyrannosaurus, and row upon row of personal duty stations sat empty, now that people who should have been manning them had been evacuated.

“Now, let’s hope they haven’t updated these too much since I was a junior officer ...” Naiser declared with mock-worry, marching over to the massive command chair that seemed to be ninety percent buttons, dials, and other means of control. “The latest generation capital ships are all designed to have their flag bridge double as the backup bridge, rather than having the ship’s bridge, backup bridge, and flag bridge.”

The admiral punched a few buttons, causing several other consoles to light up.

“That one’s yours. I’ll fly the ship while the others arrive.”

It was only then that Derek realized they were missing someone.

“Wait, where did Isaac go?”

His brother’s voice suddenly rang out from the intercom.

“Took you long enough. I’m on the bow. Now, just like we planned. I warn, you teleport, rinse, and repeat until we’re out of here.”

***

As the Intractable continued her journey past the planet, the sailors began to trickle aboard, some carried by the Dragonfly, others traveling aboard escape pods whose acceleration had been boosted to a genuinely absurd degree by those aboard, with very little happening while that happened.

So little happened, in fact, that Derek slowly fell into a stupor. His job wasn’t quite to “sit there and look pretty,” and most certainly no one had phrased it like that, but that was what it boiled down to.

And then Isaac nearly gave him a heart attack with a shout of “Skip two seconds, five seconds from now!”

Immediately, a countdown appeared both on the main viewscreen and Derek’s console, accompanied by the sound of an airhorn going off right next to his head,

Clearly, someone didn’t trust me to stay alert, or even awake … and Isaac wasn’t entirely wrong.

But, however mind-numbing watching the goings-on without any part to play had been, Derek’s reflexes were on point. Less than half a second after Isaac had shouted, he was already ready to trigger his [Skill]. Of course, he waited, watching the seconds tick past … then, the instant the timer hit zero, reality stuttered.

And the Intractable was elsewhere. Well, she was several tens of thousands of kilometers ahead of where she had been. Not much in the grand scheme of things, but more than enough to carry them out of the path of the World Boss now burning a hole in reality behind them.

An immense tendril suddenly whipped through space, vanishing from sight as the creature did something.

“It’s using its ranged attack,” Naiser snapped, hitting the comms button so hard Derek was surprised not to hear it crunch.

Suddenly, the World Boss was reeling, a glowing dagger impaling a tentacle that was now once again fully a part of reality.

“Next time, we’re going to have to move further. A lot further,” Isaac said in an almost bored tone. “That attack is basically it sweeping that tentacle out of 3D space and … honestly, I’m not entirely sure how it does that, but I have its number now. Derek, get ready to jump again in three minutes. I’ll call out the exact moment.”

The three minutes felt like they took hours to pass, but pass they did, and then the order came once again, at far more reasonable volume and intensity.

Derek deleted the next several seconds of normal motion, and behind them, the World Boss once again skittered past, space in its wake warping and rippling, ready to rip and tear anything stupid or unlucky enough to blunder in that mess.

Naiser made a small course adjustment, the admiral still piloting the battlecruiser despite the fact that there were already other people in the flag bridge.

“We don’t want that thing being able to teleport parallel to our course; we won’t be able to dodge by teleporting forward otherwise,” he said, by way of explanation.

Three minutes later, another skip, another instance of getting to watch a nigh-unstoppable monster careening wildly across the universe. It was almost a shame it was so alien; Dere would have loved to see its expression on a face a human could read.

Not to mention that [Flash Forward] was levelling at an insane pace.

After the eighth skip, [Flash Forward] crossed the first threshold.

Flash Forward (legendary, Level 10)

Pay mana to skip a given amount of time and travel the distance anyway.

…

When skipping with a starship, the user may also choose to place a ship in a position that would have required additional maneuvers during the skipped period.

Cost: 20 mana per second skipped, multiplied eightfold (reduced from tenfold) when applied to a starship

Aka skip not only the travel, but also be able to maneuver during that time.

Derek passed that long to Naiser; the admiral told Isaac, and Isaac would start to mention at which angle the jump should be bent.

The last few escape pods came aboard at that point, and The Error seemed to grow almost frenzied as it chased after them, but it wasn’t like it could do more.

On its most fundamental level, it had been built for hit-and-run attacks. Not a long chase. As long as all its target wanted was to play the keep-away game, without a single thought given to fighting back, the battle would remain a stalemate. And all the humans had to do was reach the barrier.

It was at this point that the Dragonfly finally docked, attaching to the far larger vessel using clamps built for just this reason, and the maneuvering systems had already been given the necessary instructions to compensate.

Twenty minutes later, said barrier was withing spitting distance of them, and Isaac had taken his position on the bow of the battlecruiser, his boots literally welded to the armor plates to keep him in place as he drew his sword, the impossibly thin blade of Mimung emerging from its sheath, already glowing with an energy that made the eldritch bullshit Derek had spent the past month dealing with look downright reasonable by comparison.

The blade swept out, carving through space as energy washed off it … the barrier that had kept them all trapped, the barrier they had barely been able to sense yet been forced to treat as an absolute boundary, split like a spiderweb hit by a baseball.

And then, Derek’s older brother glanced down, eyes meeting the very same sensor whose feed was currently being displayed on one of the main view screens, a broad grin splitting his face.

Suddenly, Intractable bucked, pitching Derek forward, seatbelt digging painfully into his shoulders even where his solidly superhuman physique should have kept him unhurt, and they were left tumbling throughout interstellar space, their former prison flying away at superhuman speeds …

***

“… As navy doctrine calls for all ships to carry eighteen months’ worth of food, we’ll easily be able to feed everyone until we meet up with Admiral Miyazaki’s forces,” the logistics officer explained. “However, I’m afraid the water situation is on the brink of getting, in a word, disgusting. We’re running seventy-five percent above capacity, and one of the main water tanks was destroyed during the battle. Between the increased demand and reduced reserve, the system is having trouble fully purifying the water. I’d suggest everyone who can be ordered to cast water-purifying spells into the tanks.”

Derek grimaced. He’d asked to sit in on the meeting to see if he could learn something, and Naiser had happily agreed to let him, with a joking “I mean, you’re the captain,” but that was not something he’d enjoyed hearing.

“I could also add some enchantments,” he offered.

“Navy ships run pretty close to the maximum ambient mana usage possible,” Naiser pointed out.

“Actually … we’re currently operating at eleven percent under the maximum,” Lieutenant-Commander Casimir interjected. “Some of that is due to enchanted systems being destroyed, but I can’t account for the rest.”

Admiral Naiser immediately glanced over at Derek. “Do you have an explanation?”

“Depends. Do you think the [System] would consider a mad flight from a World Boss to be ‘legendary’ enough for the purposes of [Skill]-activation?” he replied.

“Is your switching the buff to Intractable going to damage your ship, then?” the admiral asked.

Uh … shoot. That cat was out of the bag then, wasn’t it?

Derek sighed. “That’s not how the [Skill] works. If a ship achieves something ‘legendary’ while I’m the captain, it gets an upgrade to its ambient mana.”

It was a card he’d have rather played close to the vest, but if the Intractable had been enhanced by [Vessel of Legend], he couldn’t hide it. And while it was an impressive [Skill], it was a hell of a lot less impressive than what its effects might be interpreted as, such as the idea that any vessel he’d ever commanded would gain the boost.

He was okay with being seen as a rising star. Looking like someone who absolutely had to be recruited … that’d get annoying. Very annoying. And potentially even dangerous.

“That’s a pretty big secret to share,” Naiser commented.

“It’s not like you wouldn’t have figured it out anyway,” Derek said, tone much huffier than he’d intended.

“Point taken,” Naiser conceded, turning to fix everyone else in the room. “And that is why this will not be shared around. [That is an Order]!”

The [Skill] activation reverberated through the room. It wouldn’t actually guarantee obedience despite the name, but it would inform the man if it was disobeyed, if Derek remembered it right. And he trusted the older man to inform him if that happened.

“And captain, in light of this new information, I believe those enchantments should be added ASAP.”

Translation: get your ass over there, I don’t want to make my coffee with pisswater!

“Understood,” Derek announced, rising to his feet and hurrying over to the biggest water processing system.

Of course, he promptly got lost, and spent the next half-hour wandering in circles before a sailor showed him the way, but the point was, things still got done as quickly as possible. Besides, they’d be meeting up with friendly reinforcements soon enough …

***

Intractable dropped out of FTL ten thousand kilometers shy of the fleet dispatched to deal with “the anomaly,” now known as The Error.

Thirty battleships, one thousand one hundred meters long, armor that put anything else humanity had put into space to shame, thirty missile tubes each, three immense weapons running the length of their spines, each of which was at least thirty percent stronger than either of Intractable’s two primary weapons.

All were of the latest class, representing seventy percent of that vintage in existence, if Naiser was to be believed.

Thirty heavy cruisers, six hundred meters in length, built to deal with tasks not demanding all-out capital ship deployment, and to screen major combatants in fleet actions, with armor that could practically ignore the weapons of lesser escorts and weapons capable of cutting destroyers and light cruisers in half.

Sixty light cruisers, four hundred meters long, escorts capable of outmaneuvering even battlecruisers, yet scarcely capable of surviving even a glancing blow from their future foe.

These were gathered off to the side where they would remain, being too fragile for the fight that was known to lie ahead.

And finally, a hundred and twenty destroyers, comparable to the Dragonfly in size, mixed in with the light cruisers. They were the workhorses of the fleet, and an essential component of any missile screen, but now that they all knew there was a World Boss involved, they were staying well clear of the issue.

“Captain Thoma, I hereby officially end your emergency draft,” Naiser declared after a long moment. “The Navy thanks you for your service. Admiral Miyazaki has requested both your and your brother’s presence; a shuttle will be waiting for you in the starboard hangar.”

“It’s been an honor, Admiral,” Derek replied, rising from his chair and heading towards the indicated compartment.

And just when I was starting to figure my way around … but it’s been nice.

Once in the hangar, he quickly found himself in a shuttle with Isaac, and then they were on their way, soon unloaded onto Admiral Miyazaki’s flagship, the battleship Perseus.

And then, the instant he stepped off the shuttle, he found himself crushed between a pair of figures he barely saw more of than the familiar shade of their blonde hair before his vision was blocked by an armored shoulder.

“I know you’re glad I’m alive, but I’m not going to stay that way if you don’t let go,” he tried to say, his voice muffled by whichever of the twins was hugging him from the front, causing them to release him, granting Derek a perfect view of his oldest sibling and the shit-eating grin splitting his face.

Derek shot him the stink eye. “You warned Atticus, but let me march into this, this …”

His words failed him.

“Ambush?” Isaac suggested, his grin somehow even wider. “Yeah, some things you can only get away with doing to siblings.”

Derek sighed, shaking his head. “I hate you all.”

“Love you t- …” Isaac began to call after him, only for a loud “smack” to cut him off. Whichever one of the twins had hit him, good on them.

Derek found himself walking towards the side of the hangar bay, staring out across the cosmos through the magic film that kept the air in.

The ships were spread out across almost half a light-second, and only about half were even on this side of the ship to be seen at all, making it a near-impossibility to find even one with the naked eye … but [Cosmic Awareness] flipped that logic on its head. In fact, missing a warship was functionally impossible at this point.

A capital ship’s gravity shadow stood out like a beacon in the vast emptiness of interstellar space. But even the escorts were unmissable, and would have been even had they been located within an asteroid field.

Any vessel built to cross interstellar distances had to have countless adaptations to keep the crew alive, be it artificial gravity, FTL systems, hopefully even FTL comms to prevent the people aboard from climbing the walls from isolation and boredom. And all of those were each, individually, unmissable. Even if someone were to create a technological equivalent of the various enchantments, he’d have been able to sense those, too. In fact, Derek was pretty sure there were zero stealth methods short of actual [Skills]. And even those would have to be very good, considering that his own was of legendary quality, albeit attached to a third Evolution [Class].

“Aren’t these a lot of ships to put all the way out here?” Derek wondered. He’d known how many ships were coming, and they’d been on Intractable’s sensor feed, but seeing them with his own two eyes was a whole other thing …

“You’re assuming that anyone stupid enough to attack us would be able to choose where the front lines are.” Isaac leaned in, voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper while raising an anti-eavesdropping field of genuinely absurd strength. “Here’s a hint: we control that, whether the other guy wants it or not.”

“How?” Derek asked, at a far more normal volume.

“Secret,” Isaac winked, actually winked, before growing more secret. “I can’t tell you anything more than that; hell, I shouldn’t even know that, but you know me: the only secrets that people can keep from me are the ones I’m actively choosing not to investigate.”

Derek gave his older brother a deeply unimpressed look. “You do know our sisters don’t keep your secrets from me, right? I know you’re not that bad.”

Isaac’s voice dropped back down into an even more conspiratorial whisper, one that shaded into downright parody. “No. But the more I pretend I am, the less likely people are to try and scheme around me.”

“Cool,” Derek replied flatly. “But that only explains why they’re willing to deploy them at all, not why they’re actually choosing to do so.”

“They’re worried about the World Item. The Error is all about disruption, and if its item is even remotely related to that concept, it could break any number of things, and they’re desperate to make sure no alien gets their hands on it.”

Yeah … that made a disturbing amount of sense. And revealed a sadly unsurprising amount of paranoia. Because for all that they were “allies,” complete with trade routes and mutual defense treaties, there was still a limit to how far they all trusted each other.

And then, fully back to his normal bearing, Isaac gave Derek an “are you fucking kidding me” look.

“Also, this place is heading straight for Sol. If reinforcements wouldn’t take so long, we’d probably be seeing half the navy here instead.”

“Fuck. How’d I miss that?” Derek wondered.

“You’re the captain of an exploration vessel. When you get into deep shit, you’re going to worry about your crew, yourself, and your ship. That’s natural.”

“And what do you think about?” Derek asked.

“I’m a man who started spending his life trying to stop a world desperate to light itself on fire from combusting, and never really stopped. When shit hits the fan, I take the first second to make sure I’m still alive, the second to check on my loved ones, the third to figure out if I need to do something, and the fourth feeding the problem its own teeth, if that’s required.”

Derek winced.

“And if I’d spent my life any other way, it’d probably have been cut short over a century ago.”

From most people, the claim that inaction on their part would have doomed the world would have been an empty boast. From Isaac … well, Derek might know from his sisters that certain stories had been overexaggerated, and a few were even outright fabrications, but in the grand scheme of things … what the hell would that kind of vigilance do to a person?

He tried to imagine. He doubted he succeeded. And after a long moment of further attempts, he wrapped his older brother in a hug.

After a long moment, however, with a voice heavy with regret, Isaac wound up breaking it with a sigh of “we do have to go to the meeting now.”