Chapter 23: Leo’s Talent Pulls Through!

"Now shoot them, you stray!"

Elena’s scream was still ringing in Leo’s ear when he let go of everything else.

He closed his eyes and sank straight down into the neural link.

ZAP!

The cradles bit into his palms and his body dissolved as he didn’t have hands anymore.

’I need to lock in... All of their lives...’

He gulped.

’...All of our lives are on my head.’

He had two magnetic barrels, nearly three meters long, set into a rotating mount on the ship’s spine.

He didn’t have ears either... He had a radar sweep, painting every moving thing within three kilometers of the hull.

He didn’t have lungs too... Leo had capacitors, drinking the last of the ship’s power and humming so high it buzzed in his teeth.

The crater outside exploded into his mind as a map of red heat.

...Fifty-eight blooms.

Eight worms coiled around the hull with their mouths grinding against the plating, bellies shivering as they tore into the copper lines.

Out on the grey rock, dozens more were boiling out of the broken cooling vent like a living carpet of white bone and amber light and rearing up in the middle of the crater, crushing boulders to powder under four hundred tonnes of armor, was the Brood-Mother.

She’d finally chewed her way out.

[Turret: ONLINE]

[Mode: Manual Neural Control]

[Ammunition: Tungsten slugs, pressed from scrap by this unit about forty seconds ago. Supply is limited. This unit was in a hurry.]

[Ship Power: 15%]

[This unit will cut turret power at 5% to keep everyone breathing... That leaves you ten percent. Spend it like it’s the last ten percent you’ll ever have, because it is.]

’Ten percent?’ Leo thought. ’Fine... Lock.’

The turret whipped around on its bearings so fast it would’ve snapped a human neck.

THOOM!

A three-kilo tungsten slug left the barrels at eighteen kilometers a second, there was no smoke and no fire either.

...It was just a perfectly straight line of blue light and the worm that was chewing nearby stopped being a shape.

The impact turned the front three segments of its body into a cloud of purple mist and shattered white plates that sprayed ten meters out into the vacuum.

’Next.’

THOOM!

The second worm, half-buried in the starboard sensor trough, came apart mid-chew.

Its back half went spinning off into the stars like a severed fire hose.

’Next.’

THOOM-THOOM!

Two slugs went straight through one skull... They kept going, out the far side of its body, and punched two smoking craters into the rock under the landing struts.

[Ship Power: 14%]

Down in the cargo bay, Harper, Chloe, and Camila stood frozen beside the dead worm still corking the hole in the wall.

Every shot from the roof didn’t sound like a gun... It came through the deck plates like a giant iron hammer slamming straight into the ship’s spine.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

"The hull camera!" Camila gasped, pointing a shaking glove at the bay’s little wall monitor. "Look!"

On the grainy screen, the worms weren’t swarming anymore, instead they were being erased... One every half second was dying like a metronome.

THOOM!

A lunging head, caught fifteen centimeters off the hull, turned to purple dust that splattered across the canopy.

THOOM!

A body split lengthwise, its acid boiling into white frost as the vacuum took it.

THOOM-THOOM!

Two worms by the ramp, gone together with their remains painted across the same door they’d nearly broken through ten minutes ago.

"Holy..." Harper breathed. "He’s not even aiming. He’s just... looking at them."

Inside Leo’s head, the gold counter erupted.

[+16 SP][+14 SP][+13 SP][+11 SP][+11 SP][+9 SP]

The numbers rained down across his vision like sparks falling down a chimney.

[Current: 111 SP]

There was no wind out here and no air to slow a slug down...

The pull in the small of his back that told him where a ship was drifting fused perfectly with the turret’s tracking so he didn’t lead the targets.

’Go...’

He just looked at where they were going to be and put a slug there.

THOOM!

[+8 SP]

THOOM-THOOM!

[+7 SP][+7 SP]

[Ship Power: 12%]

But the payouts were shrinking and he could see it happening... Every worm was worth a little less than the last.

[For the record, Master Captain, killing the same species over and over makes each one worth less... You are now executing worms for six points apiece. This unit would call that a poor return on investment but this unit would also call it very satisfying to watch.]

Out in the crater, the swarm finally understood the tin can on the rock wasn’t food.

The surviving worms broke with their blind heads thrashing as they turned and scrambled back toward the cooling vent.

Leo didn’t let a single one reach it, instead he switched the turret to sweep.

THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!

A continuous line of blue flashes carved across the crater floor, kicking up towering plumes of shattered rock, and every white body it touched came apart.

[+6][+6][+5][+5][+5][+5][+5][+5]...

[Ship Power: 10%... 9%]

[Tungsten Slugs: 11 remaining]

[Current: 452 SP]

’Four hundred and fifty,’ Leo thought while breathing hard as warm wetness trickled out of his left nostril. ’Four hundred and fifty, and I can’t feel my hands...’

[Neural strain: High... The Master Captain is bleeding from the nose. This unit wishes to note it is not this unit’s fault but it is the Master Captain’s brain’s fault, for being made of meat.]

Then the floor of the crater moved.

GGGRRRRRRRRRRR!

The Brood-Mother had watched her entire brood get turned into mist but she didn’t run.

She reared her armored head back.

Her five-meter mouth stretched wide, rings of crystal teeth grinding against each other like an industrial compactor and deep in her throat, a sickly green light began to swell, climbing up from somewhere inside her like a rising tide.

[WARNING!]

[Target is building pressurized acid in its throat.]

[If that hits the hull, it melts through the armor in under two seconds... The hull is currently made of rust and optimism and this unit does not like these odds.]

FWOOOOOOOOOSH!

A river of glowing green acid twenty meters wide erupted from her throat and came straight at the ship.

"LEO!" Jin-Ah screamed from the bridge. "MOVE THE SHIP! IF THAT HITS THE CANOPY WE MELT!"

He didn’t have time to answer.

He tore half his mind out of the turret and slammed it back into the flight cradles.

"HOLD ON TO SOMETHING!"

BOOM!

The four chemical thrusters on the ship’s belly fired all at once.

The Wanderer-7 didn’t lift off gracefully at all, the ship launched itself off its bent landing struts like a brick out of a catapult, rolling hard twenty degrees to starboard.

"ELENA!" Leo yelled. "BRACE!"

"I’M IN A PIPE, YOU IDIOT! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BRACE ON?!"

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

Up in the crawlspace, Elena tumbled sideways through the cables and slammed into a rib.

Down in the cargo bay, Harper, Chloe, and Camila went flying.

Chloe snatched Camila out of the air with one hand and jammed her other hand into the wall, holding them both.

The ship rolled... and the acid passed.

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

It roared through the empty space where the canopy had been half a second earlier and hit the rock below.

The stone melted, boiling into a foaming lake of green slag as a spray of droplets clipped the edge of the port landing strut.

[Port strut armor breached. Hull: 18%... 16%.]

The Brood-Mother’s head snapped upward, tracking the ship as it rose against the stars.

Her neck bunched like a coiled steel spring and then four hundred tonnes of armored nightmare leaped off the ground straight after them.

"She’s JUMPING?!" Harper shrieked over the intercom. "SHE CAN JUMP?!"

[She can jump... This unit is as upset about it as you are.]

"Leo!" Ms. Tachibana braced both hands on her console as the bridge tilted.

"I see her."

His teeth were clenched so hard he tasted blood and the pull in the small of his back tightened into an iron fist.

He didn’t fire now... He waited instead.

The gravity on this rock was almost nothing.

Once she’d left the ground, she couldn’t turn and couldn’t stop either... She was locked into a perfect upward arc, her open mouth coming straight for the belly of the ship at forty meters a second.

...Thirty meters.

[Tungsten Slugs: 4]

[Ship Power: 8%]

...Twenty.

Through the hull sensors in his neural feed, he could see every single yellowed tooth in those spinning rings.

He could see the green acid sac pulsing at the back of her throat, swelling up for a second shot.

...A second shot they wouldn’t survive.

...Ten.

’Now.’

He fired the port maneuvering thruster.

PSHHT!

The Wanderer-7’s nose dipped hard at about fifteen degrees, and the turret on its spine swung down and pointed straight into the open throat of the climbing monster.

"Overcharge the rails," Leo whispered. "Everything we have left."

[Ship Power: 8%... 7%... 6%... 5%. This unit is warning you. This unit is warning you very, very loudly—]

THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!

...Four slugs.

They went straight down her open mouth, punched through the soft back of her throat... and hit the acid sac.

KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The Brood-Mother’s whole neck ruptured from the inside in a blinding fireball of green and violet as the blast tore her head clean off her body.

A storm of shattered black armor, boiling green acid, and pulped white flesh sprayed out across the vacuum in every direction, missing the ship by meters and raining down slowly onto the crater floor far below.

Her headless body tumbled past the canopy, spinning end over end, and crashed into the rock with a silent, ground-shaking impact.

Then it lay still.

Ding!

[Apex Threat Eliminated: Void Carapace Brood-Mother (Level 1)]

[Survival Points +140]

[Current: 592 / 1,000 SP]

[Turret power: CUT. Ship Power: 5%. Life support: protected.]

[This unit would like it on record that the Master Captain fired his last shot with exactly zero percent to spare... This unit has aged ten years even though this unit was not born ten years ago.]

Leo barely saw it.

He feathered the belly thrusters with trembling fingers, killed their climb, and let the battered ship sink slowly back down onto the rock... a good fifty meters from the smoking crater.

CLANK!

The struts groaned and held as the thrusters coughed, sputtered, and died.

...Silence.

Nobody on the bridge moved.

Jin-Ah sat frozen with her fingers a centimeter above her keys with her chest heaving, staring through the glass at the headless corpse of the thing that had nearly eaten them five seconds ago.

Ms. Tachibana slowly let out a long shaking breath as her hands peeled away from the edge of her console one finger at a time.

Down in the cargo bay, Chloe was still holding Camila in one arm, her other hand buried wrist-deep in the wall.

Neither of them had let go yet and up in the crawlspace, Elena lay flat on her back in a nest of cables, staring at the warm smoking underside of the turret mount. Her ears were ringing and her heart was slamming against her ribs like a trapped bird.

[All hostile life signs within range have stopped...]

[Threat status: CLEAR.]

[Congratulations, crew. You are officially no longer food.]

Leo slumped forward in the throne and rested his forehead against the cool rim of the display.

His suit was soaked with cold sweat from his neck to the small of his back and his hands were shaking as blood was drying on his upper lip.

A dry ragged laugh scraped out of his throat.

"No longer food... High praise. From a box."

[This unit is not a box... This unit is a sophisticated vessel intelligence. Also, you’re bleeding on the console. This unit just had that console cleaned, by nobody because there’s nobody to clean it.]

"Leo..."

Harper’s voice crackled through the intercom, breathless and dazed.

"Did you... did you just blow a giant space worm’s head off from ten meters away? While flying the ship? At the same time?"

"Ask Elena," Leo muttered, tilting his head back to smile faintly up at the ceiling. "Her gun works."

Up in the crawlspace, Elena’s cheeks went hot.

She wiped a smear of black grease off her face with the back of her wrist and glared up at the intercom pickup.

"Of course it works, you insufferable stray! I installed it! When a Sterling aligns an S-Rank rail mount, it doesn’t fail!"

Her voice caught in the middle, it was just enough for something vulnerable to slip through the cracks in all that aristocratic armor.

"...You didn’t miss either," she added, much more quietly. "For a mechanic."

Leo snorted softly and closed his eyes.

"Thanks, Princess."

In the cargo bay, Chloe finally pulled her hand out of the wall and set Camila gently on her feet then she sat down very suddenly on the floor, wrapped her arms around her knees, and stared at the dead worm plugging the hole.

...At the violet blood drifting near it.

She swallowed.

Her throat felt dry. It had felt dry for a while now, ever since the nest, but she hadn’t said anything as there hadn’t been time.

’Later,’ she told herself, and looked away from the blood. ’I’ll deal with it later.’

Harper flopped down beside her, laughing breathlessly, and threw an arm around her shoulders.

"We did it, kiddo. We actually did it."

"...Yeah," Chloe whispered. "We did."

On the bridge, Leo opened his eyes and stared out through the canopy at the stars.