Chapter 82: Plan

The Perseus was, just like literally every other capital ship in the reinforcements, an Ascendant-class battleship, a latest-generation warship built to the highest standards, and it showed.

Of course, it was also already outdated, if rumors were to be believed, and a whole new generation of warships was being designed on the basis of the alien warship Derek and his friends had wrecked back in the Horizon system, but as of right now, these ships represented the cutting edge of science.

An absolute monster on any battlefield she was brought onto. Unfortunately, that also translated directly into her being an absolute pain in the ass to navigate, with even Isaac needing to take a couple of seconds to figure out the correct way forward on one occasion.

Which, for Derek’s older brother, was probably like anyone else spending ten minutes fiddling around with a map and then getting lost anyway. Or something.

For Derek, it was more impressive that Isaac was clearly using his [Aura] to navigate, an [Aura] that seemed utterly unbothered by the ship’s wards, yet said [Aura] was also proving entirely impossible to track.

That level of mastery was clearly achievable, and they both had a sensory-type [Aura], so Derek should be able to reach that point … in theory. But the gulf between them felt utterly insurmountable.

But even with the unfamiliar layout of the ship, they still reached the conference room after just five minutes.

The room was, at that moment, largely empty, only containing the admiral and his flag captain, discussing something at the head of the massive table, though the contents of their discussion were hidden by privacy wards.

Everyone else present was clearly not a military officer, though to Derek’s eyes, and the [Eye of the Predator] he cast through them, it was still blindingly obvious who they were. Well, what they were.

Some of the strongest humans in existence, the upper echelon of humanity.

S-Rankers.

The old ranking system had been largely made redundant when everyone had the potential to hit Level 200, but that term had stuck around. The kind of power that literally broke the scale … of course there was a term for that.

He recognized most of them, but he only knew a couple personally. Like Atticus’ mother, sitting on one of the chairs, feet up on the table, reading what seemed like a magic grimoire that had been resleeved to have the cover of some trashy romance novel, for whatever reason.

Hadn’t Isaac said she was here to meet her son, though?

The answer was pretty obvious the moment Derek started listening to [Cosmic Awareness], however. Teleportation.

That was an impressive trick.

His sisters were also present, clearly having known and/or figured out a more direct way here from the hangar.

And then there was Leon Schmidt, “the Reaper,” who’d taken over Akashic Academy when Isaac had left, dressed in his typical outfit of a grey shirt, black suit, and a tie so dark it looked like a gash in reality itself, sleeves riding high enough for the barest hint of a tattoo to be visible on his right forearm, the stored form of his shapeshifting soulbound polearm.

There was also a thin blonde man in jeans and a “live long and prosper” T-shirt leaning against the far wall, eyes staring off into nothingness that indicated he was either very, very high, trying to decipher the secrets of the universe, or both.

[Eye of the Predator] declared him a mage, so it was probably option two.

The two remaining individuals were unknown to him. A Greek woman wearing armor that gleamed in copper hues with a [Class] related to the ocean, and an almost ethereal-looking redheaded man who gave up little, save the warning of “be, very, very afraid.”

“[Inspect] everyone, then see what your [Inspect]-variant comes up to,” Isaac advised, voice low and covered with yet another privacy [Skill].

Derek had already done the first part, and was now kicking himself for forgetting to do the second of his own initiative, because it had jumped four whole Levels.

Eyes of the Predator (legendary, Level 13)

Gain general information on inspected target, bypassing infosec abilities.

…

This Skill is also far more undetectable when the target is strong enough that they should not be hunted, under any circumstances.

[Inspect] variants were already pretty much impossible to notice, but further increasing that ability in situations where he’d most need it was definitely the sort of thing that’d save his life, somewhere down the line.

“Those two are Areti Tassa and Tiarnan Mac Liam,” Isaac explained, pointing towards the mystery pair. “Ocean-based warrior capable of summoning a phantasmal version of Atalatis, and probability-manipulating fae. I don’t need to tell you not to pick a fight with either of them, do I?”

Derek felt a mischievous grin creep across his face.

“Oh, I don’t know, I feel like I’d get quite a lot if I survived …”

“Now, let me introduce you to Patrick,” Isaac declared in lieu of responding to the joke, all but dragging Derek towards where Amy and the thin man were standing, before Derek could agree. Or protest, for that matter.

“Patrick, this is my younger brother Derek. Derek, this is Patrick, the smartest person I know. Also the sole reason why, in the early years, our research group had a statistic of more people tripping over dead monsters than getting hurt by live ones.”

“That’s rich coming from someone who once famously lost control of his office to a housecat,” the other man replied without even bothering to look at Isaac, then turned to face Derek.

“Pleased to meet yo- …” Patrick froze, then his eyes flicked down to Derek’s right hand, which he promptly grabbed, pulling it up in front of his face, eyes fixed on the storage ring.

“You figured it out.”

The voice was a breathy whisper, one that would likely have left Derek severely uncomfortable, had it not been spoken at the ring.

One hand dropped away to wave lazily through the air, yet beneath it, space itself seemed to part, sweeping around the three of them, temporarily separating them from the ship in a way that prevented anyone from overhearing. Potentially beyond even what Isaac could achieve with his abilities.

It was only then that Patrick fully released Derek.

“Like I was saying, it’s very nice to meet you. That’s a very impressive piece of enchanting.”

“And it does … what exactly?” Isaac asked.

Patrick didn’t answer, instead turning to Derek, “graciously allowing” him to explain on his own. Though Derek wasn’t all that upset. The other man was almost certainly a man obsessed with magical research.

“Basically, I figured out how to put potion jellies into storage rings by separating the pocket dimension from the jelly, and adding it back when I pull them back out. It doesn’t actually allow me to increase the space inside the storage ring by putting another one inside, but I can store spare rings.”

“And, more importantly,put potion jellies somewhere no one will be able to target in a fight,” Isaac commented, stroking his chin. “Do you know where you’re going to go with this?”

“Honestly, that was mostly intellectual curiosity. I haven’t thought about it,” Derek admitted. “Mostly, I just wanted to see if I could.”

“Wrong answer,” Isaac said. “The correct one is: patent application. Soon as this mess is done. If you walk around with that ring in public, someone is going to see it and steal the idea. Then, you figure out how to manufacture them, because everyone and their dog is going to want one, military included, and the government can compel the manufacture of patents with life-saving potential.”

“Advice?” Derek asked.

“Take my credit card, buy a factory, staff it, and watch the money roll in,” Isaac offered, the plastic rectangle in question already held out, pinched between his middle and index finger.

“I’ll think about it,” Derek decided.

Part of him expected that, in the end, he’d do pretty much exactly that; in the end, he had zero desire to get caught up in the world of commerce. But he really did want to think it over first.

Most people in a situation like that, young “inventors” being advised by much older, wealthier, and more experienced people, would wind up robbed of both credit and inventions.

But Derek trusted his brother, even where money was involved. Hell, especially where money was involved, considering how much of Isaac’s money had been spent on him, with a far lesser likelihood of repayment. Not that there had been any mention of him paying back the costs of setting up manufacturing either.

“So, you’re focussing on spatial magic, right?” Patrick asked. “Did you know it’s possible to use a portal to siphon the plasma straight out of a starship’s fusion reactor and disable it without inflicting the least bit of damage?”

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“I do now ...” Derek finally answered, once he was done picking his jaw up off the floor.

“I’d also advise you learn a good ward-cracker or two to get past another ship’s defenses. That’s how you get the ability to start using subtle disruptive effects. And then you’ve typically won already. You can, for example, as I mentioned, quite neatly shut down their power systems.”

Things continued on like that for a while. Patrick proved to be incredibly knowledgeable, with several incredible ideas that Derek doubtlessly could use, but he was also much further along in his journey of mastering magic, and as such, it’d be a while before they were anything near as useful as they had the potential to be.

The conversation eventually came to an end when Patrick dropped the barrier to show Rear Admiral Niaser entering the room and sat down at the head of the conference table, next to Admiral Miyazaki. The room had also filled up in the meantime, the table having a grand total of thirty men and women seated along it, each bearing the rank insignia of a UN navy captain.

An addition had been pulled out at the bottom end of the table, seating for Derek, Isaac, and the other civilians, while both admirals had taken position at the head.

“For starters, I believe we need to hash out loot distribution, in consideration of the independents among us. We will be using the standard distribution,” Miyazaki declared, rising to his feet.

Derek could see several people nodding along, including his older brother, but several of the captains looked confused, an expression he hoped he had been able to keep off his own face, or were surreptitiously looking it up on their personal devices.

It wasn’t like Derek expected to get anywhere even remotely close to a World Boss battle for decades yet, so he’d chosen to focus on the history of them, rather than anything else.

With an insufficiently concealed sigh, Miyazaki began to explain.

“Everyone whom the [System] grants the ‘massive’ reward tier will be required to give up one of the monster’s parts they receive as loot, and the holder of the ‘decisive’ tier will give up two; these will be auctioned off, with the proceeds going towards the families of the dead.

“As for the World Item, it is the property of the one it is awarded to, barring it being a specifically combat-oriented one, in which case the holder will be compensated appropriately.”

It sounded unfair, in many ways, yet at the same time, would anyone really feel comfortable with planet-wrecking items such as the Eye of Balor or the Key to the Fifth Circle being in open circulation?

But Miyazaki wasn’t done.

“If it is a buff-type item that can enhance a given planet in a significant way, its use will not automatically grant the planet; however, you will be able to lay claim to a significant chunk of it, as outlined in the Treaty of Paris. Please consult that document for the specifics.”

Ah yes, that. The use of a World Item to empower a planet and running off with it was how Isaac had ended up with Olympus Mons after using Ymir’s item to terraform Mars.

The admiral looked around the room, making sure to meet the eyes of everyone who was not one of his officers.

“If there is anyone who does not agree with these conditions, this is the time to speak up. Staying will be considered explicit consent.”

No one spoke, no one acted, no one left.

“Good.

“Now, thankfully, we have information about the creature’s abilities, so we have information on which to plan.”

The admiral then did a brief recap, clearly trusting that everyone present had done their homework on this topic, at least.

“Something I only just realized is that the monster always teleported out of my real-time sensor area. I don’t know if it was deliberate, or just it moving as far away as possible, but unless one of us has a range to cover the entire bubble, it’s something to keep in mind,” Naiser threw in.

“I do,” Miyazaki replied. “Should Perseus be damaged or destroyed, however, you will have to adjust.”

With that, he turned back and looked down the length of the table.

“Considering the relative strengths of mine and Rear Admiral Naiser’s force, we should be able to destroy The Error in the three-minute interval between teleportations. However, barring someone here having an idea, the creature’s arrival alone will cost us at least one ship.”

“Dr. Thoma’s combat-scale precognition might be able to allow the targeted ship to dodge.”

Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t Naiser who suggested that. Or anyone else who’d been a part of their mad escape from The Error’s trap. Instead, one of Miyazaki’s captains had offered that suggestion.

Huh. It seemed like knowledge of that particular ability of Isaac’s really had been widely known.

“I’m afraid that covering the entire fleet will be … imprecise,” Isaac replied. “It might have to do, but I’d prefer another tactic.”

“Whatever our plan is going to be, our formation will have to be structured in a way that prevents The Error from jumping through multiple ships in a single teleport.”

Right, letting it lance through the formation and take down multiple battleships with a single warp would be … bad.

Several other small improvements were suggested and implemented, while the actual plans would end up growing increasingly ridiculous.

Randomly scattering battleships around the bubble.

Blind-firing the entirety of the fleet’s missiles into the trap and hoping enough would hit.

Sending in the S-Rankers on their own.

In other words, the “best” ideas would only waste material. The less-than-best ones were downright terrible.

And the mood was quickly souring.

It wasn’t that the new ideas were failing. It was just how ridiculous of a threat they were facing.

So, half an hour in, the first extreme plan was proposed.

“This thing is moving towards Sol. We might not know where it’ll drop out of FTL, we know where it’ll eventually end up. Let me take in the Robin Hood. Bridge crew only, relocated to the smallest compartment we can wire full control of the ship through, reinforced as heavily as possible by Mrs. Shaw and Mr. Lerch.

“We head in sixty seconds ahead of everyone, and hope the bridge survives the World Boss’ initial strike.”

… Well, at least the woman was making no bones about who would be expected to go through with the sacrifice play. But this was the real world; self-sacrificial attacks did not automatically win the day.

Aside from the idea of having Patrick and Amy reinforce the area with people inside, it was a simple plan.

“The Error has, historically, only attacked groups of more than a thousand,” Naiser replied, his tone icy. “And without any ability to communicate through the barrier, we have no way to take advantage of the opening your sacrifice might create.”

So yes, the desperation option would not fly. But hearing it voiced aloud … there was something to it.

Derek finally decided to pull out his phone to check the one piece of information that would determine whether or not he could speak up.

“Actually … we should be able to reconfigure the spatial targetting arrays into shields,” Amy offered at that point. “Give me help, access to the enchantments, and a couple of days.

“Unfortunately, this will disable the targetting function while the shield is active, and switching back will take at least a minute.”

And manually aiming the spinal weapon by lining up a goddamn battleship was going to be an issue, even if they were willing to burn cooldown [Skills] to achieve the effect.

“In a worst-case scenario, would you be able to cancel an ongoing switch and return the field to its defensive configuration? Or would we run the risk of being hit during the escape teleport?” Miyazaki questioned.

“In theory, undoing a conversion should take an amount of time equivalent to the length the conversion had been going on.”

This time, it was Patrick who spoke.

“We don’t need to worry about that,” the same female captain who’d offered to play bait announced, though this time, she’d turned to look down the length of the table and Derek could see her nametag, reading “Smythe.”

“As long as we are protected for the initial attack, if a portion of our vessels retain the defensive function, we would be able to place them between The Error and unshielded vessels. And, knowing we will have real-time data on any position The Error could attack from, we will be able to do the same when it returns. We will have to make the initial entry while shielded, but after that, a sizeable portion of the fleet will be able to maintain a defensive posture.”

“It’s a good idea. In theory,” Miyazaki announced. “The issue is that it will significantly cut down on the power of our alpha strike, and in turn, force us into a protracted battle where we will lose ships to more than the initial teleportation attack.”

Crud.

Thirty battleships pouring fire into the still badly injured World Boss for three minutes damn near guaranteed victory. Well, twenty-nine, with them likely losing one to The Error’s emergence.

Thirty battleships doing the same for two minutes, once they’d switched their initial shield back to their targetting array, might result in The Error teleporting away through a ship, causing them to lose one anyway.

Thirty battleships entering shielded, converting the shields, firing one minute before they had to start switching back to the teleport shields to block The Error’s exit was likely going to result in, like the admiral had said, an extended battle that’d cost a lot of vessels.

And even with Smythe’s plan of only some ships switching back and forth, they’d still be down a lot of firepower.

Honestly, if there was ever something to permanently put Derek off pursuing fleet command, in any way, this was it. Trying to play it safe would cause numerous casualties, but not playing it safe would feel like getting people killed, even if it was, paradoxically, the one that’d save lives.

Ultimately, it was a choice between accepting the loss of a ship during their entrance, praying that they could win even if they emerged shielded, or … or they could figure out how to make The Error come to them without losing a ship.

“In that case, I can still take in Robin Hood on her own, shielded,” Smythe argued. “If it can’t kill us by teleporting into her, we should be able to survive long enough for the rest of the fleet to arrive.”

“We still won’t be able to communicate with you, and it’ll likely be able to crush your ship with its regular arsenal,” Miyazaki replied, shooting down the idea in an instant.

There had to be a solution, and perhaps, there was.

“I think I have an idea,” Derek announced, blanching when everyone looked at him.

Not hostily, mind you, but … a lot of attention.

“Can I use the holographic display?” he asked, and Miyazaki motioned for him to go ahead.

So he connected with the conference room’s table and began to try and show what he’d set up on his phone. Tried.

Derek bit back a curse as he realized this device was of a newer generation than what the Dragonfly had, and sufficiently different that he was having real issues getting it to display what he wanted it to.

Now, he’d almost certainly be able to figure it out on his own given time, but everyone was waiting on him, and he was unlikely to get a second chance, so time was hardly something he had in abundance.

So, after a few more seconds of fiddling with the damn thing, he surrendered and decided to just create an illusion instead.

At first, it showed their section of the galaxy, highlighting Sol, the anomaly, and the anomaly’s system of origin, connected by a line.

“The Error is bringing the planet it was summoned on along to Earth, whose location it learned from the first scout ship that reached it, and that bubble’s been absorbing anything that comes into contact with.”

Two symbols flashed into existence, traveling from both ends of the line towards the middle.

“We, on the Dragonfly, were heading towards Sol and rear-ended the anomaly, while Rear Admiral Naiser’s forces were traveling in the exact opposite direction.”

Again, the illusion changed, this time showing just the anomaly, with a tiny Dragonfly on one side, and the doomed flotilla on the other.

“And we appeared on exact opposite sides of the bubble. I double-checked it just now; we can predict where we wind up when entering, because it depends entirely on the point of contact.”

Derek paused, taking a deep breath, leaving open a pause just barely long enough for someone to interject.

“While that’s valuable information, it is not a plan,” one of the captains said, a challenge burning in his eyes, his nameplate thankfully clearly visible.

“I’m getting to that, Captain Casia,” Derek replied in a far more even tone than he’d expected to manage. “The plan is not complicated. I’ll take Intractable back in, with enough crew to immediately draw its attention. The Error tries to teleport on top of us again; we dodge, then the rest of the forces enter, perhaps even in weapons range, to find a World Boss that can’t teleport for three minutes.

“I also figured out how to reconnect a comm node from inside the anomaly. The connection will break immediately afterwards, but even the attempt is noticeable on the other node, and that will be the signal for us having successfully lured in The Error.”

“That still leaves the problem of targetting,” a different captain said in a thick Russian accent, stroking a full beard Derek was stunned was not against regulation. “Only knowing the monster is somewhere in the vicinity of your entry point is little enough information as it is. But when combined with the complexities of FTL navigation, there are far too many ways for this to go wrong.”

“Thank you, Captain Barinov,” Miyazaki said before Derek could respond. “That feels like a risk that can be compensated for, however. I believe I have a plan that takes into account everything …