The Hierarchy Of Now And Forever Ch 10

Captain John Tangent clenched his jaw as the Kruul battlefield moved into position, firmly ensnaring the UNN

Excalibur

in their pincer movement. The crackling beams of the mass-net that stretched from frigate to frigate had formed a near total web around his ship - disrupting any attempt to reach the lower tiers of the SOF and escape. The Kruul cruisers and their fighter escorts remained at range, forming up into interlocked chevrons of fighters that spearheaded their heavier capital ships. He rubbed his hand against his chin, forcing himself to relax, to sound calm.

"Options, Triana?" he asked, turning to his XO.

"Those are Galling class frigates," she said, having checked her databanks in a tearing hurry. "Those mass nets have to be sucking up most of their power. They've either got shields or weapons on, not both. The shields are on par with a Liberty class, but their weapons are likely similar to the normal Kruul line."

"You mean guns that eat you?" Albert asked, frowning as he watched the dots on his console move and shift.

"Likely," Shey said. "Ship powered masticator guns are capable of tearing through durasteel. But there we have an advantage."

"The hull!" Albert perked up. "It's made of that indestructible Luciferian hull material!"

John nodded subtly - the

Excalibur

wasn't exactly a normal Terran ship, easily torn apart by Kruul weapons. But Shey's expression made him purse his lips. She sighed and leaned back in her seat. "Yes, the teeth won't penetrate the hull. But the Kruul don't just chomp - they can grab. Shake. Imagine being shook around like the middle of a threeway with a bunch of Qorr." She paused, then reached up, subtly fingering her pheromone masker. "Let me tell you, while they don't break bones, it sometimes feels like they might."

"The inertial dampers will give out before their mastication guns can stop their hold," Triana muttered.

"How about the cruisers?" John asked.

"Two classifications - a Defenestration and a Pogrom class," Triana said.

"Did we have to give them such evil names?" Albert asked.

"Those are Terran translations of the Kruul designations," Eugene cut in from his computer console.

"Oh." Albert frowned. "Seriously, what the fuck did the Zemturga do to those guys?"

"Several thousand years of engineered evolution for evil," John said. "Maybe it can be reversed - once we destroy the empire. Give me their specs, XO."

"The Defenestration is built around her main gun: An inverter beam strong enough to pull a ship out of tier four and smash them into realspace so fast that they get mulched. But since it's only good against ships going at FTL, she's also got a whole suite of secondary weapons - plasma beamers, RG cannons, nukes. The Pogrom is a bit nastier: They're built around an unstable multidimensional quasi-fission core and use it to power a bank of six putrefaction cannons, backed up by heavy mastication weapons along the belly."

"...Shey?" John asked.

"Take a chunk of highly unstable radioactive elements, shunt it to Tier 6 of the SOF where distinctions between elements break down. It turns into a big green crystal that emits generalized bad energy. Shunt that energy up through hardened conduits and it fires green rays that...just kinda...melt stuff," Shey said. "At that level of abstraction, the physical effects are randomized. And nasty."

John pinched the bridge of his nose while Albert didn't even have the energy for a quip.

"Those shouldn't do well against our new shields," Trianna said. "So, if we can keep out of the teeth, the nukes, and the railguns, we might be able to survive the P-Guns. That leaves the fighters."

"That's my job," Eugene said, and despite his cool, professional tone, it was clear that a gleam was beginning to glitter in his eyes. "To put it bluntly, sir? They're

fucked

."

John turned in his seat, frowning. "They outnumber our Avengers ten to one."

"And that's not enough." Eugene nodded, confident.

John nodded slowly. "All right. We have a plan."

***

Aboard the Kruul flagship, the

Unending Genocide

, Admiral Slaughter felt a twinge of pain along his spine as his aged muscles grumbled at having been taken from their comfortable chair back home, in his cruelty enhanced free range farm. He had been enjoying his quite retirement of whipping the ralsta, quen and vormaps and making sure that each animal was fed precisely the amount to prolong their life to dinner while still being sickly and weak. Even now, he could remember the glitter on their tiny cages and the piteous squeaks and mews that had sung him to sleep every night...

He shook his head, casting aside such pleasant memories as he focused instead on the strange Terran ship. It looked like a vast black wing, and it was made of a material that his scientists had never seen before. They were even now still tirelessly torturing the universe for the secrets, trying to wring cosmic pain with spectrographic analysis with their esoteric tools of torment - but he needed to act now, not on the say so of some eggheads who did all the work of wringing suffering from non-sentient matter and energy.

Caution. The slow brand sears the clearest.

"Send in the first wave. Lets see how they do," he said, nodding slowly.

"Admiral, we have ten times the fighters waiting in the bay-" one of his officers said.

Slaughter lifted his hand. "Silence! Don't teach your grandmother how to squash kittens."

On the screen, tiny pinpricks of green light flared to life as the first several chevrons of their Evil class fighters plunged through the mass-net and towards the scrambling squadron of Terran Avengers. Admiral Slaughter leaned back in his seat, tapping his fingers together above his belly, his long beard tickling his knuckles. He harrumphed. "And tell me...what are the Vornash doing?"

"Maintaining distance," his sensor officer said, immediately. "They aren't sending any communication signals."

"Good. They're letting us tire one another out," Slaughter said, quietly. "The Terrans stand alone in this field. But they're not our playthings yet. They may still gore us at the worst time - be on your toes."

The officers all nodded with a grunt.

And the fighter battle began with a flare of glittering pyrotechnics.

***

Delta Vee slammed back into her cockpit, whooping as she corkscrewed past two Kruul interceptors. Their green contrails caused her dosimeter to flash a warning yellow for a second - despite her shields and armor - but then she was through the danger zone and cruising free of the furball. The chatter of her pilots played through her helmet, and with the learned multitasking of a veteran, she was able to parse through overlapping noise, tangling it out into a strand of vectors - just like the battle she was in.

Alpha-2 had just gotten a third kill, making him a shoe in for the new ace. But they might need to declare this battle didn't count on that count, since there were enough fighters for everyone to be an ace, and they were

absolute

dogshit.

Beta squad was cleaning up - she could hear their war cries, their cheers, their reports...

Alpha-3...

"Shit! I got five, repeat, five tails! I'm a kitsune out here, not a

dog

!"

"On it, Alpha-3!"

Delta swung her stick around her Avenger shuddered as it pulled a bank off, its wings screaming as they bit into the invisible aether of the space opera field. Ahead of her, she could see Alpha-3, her retro rockets burning furiously as she flew backwards away from the five Kruul ships that were charging after her. Despite their fragile shields, weak engines, and tendency to explode when coughed on, the Evils were able to dodge the streams of railgun rounds that Alpha-3 was playing around as she twitched her nose up, down, left, right. Meanwhile the Evils were all spitting their green plasma blasts right back at her: The Avenger's shields flashed and strobed as energy weapons punched through weak points, bubbling off ablative armor in hissing clouds.

Delta flicked her thumb up on her stick - her missile tracking computer whirring, clicking...and then the loud

deeeeet

of an acquisition lock filled her ears.

"Fox-2, aspects away!"

Delta felt the cha-chunk

clunk

of her missile pods firing and the rapid fire seekers were off, streaking and fanning out. Two per Evil was the exact right amount: Shields flared, then cores exploded as all five fighters burst apart at the seams, blasting away into so much vapor. Alpha-3 continued her tangent, then flipped her nose around, her panting breath coming through the com, clear as day.

"Thanks, Alpha-1!"

"Don't mention it!" Delta said, tapping her helmet. "Come in

Excalibur

actual, this is Alpha-1, we're cleared of bad guys out here."

"Roger. Come in for resupply and- hold on, Alpha-1, something's going on out there."

Delta snapped her head around, peering at the distant dots of light that were the Kruul fleet. Her eyes narrowed slightly. She could just barely see the wedge shape that was their flagship, the Defenstrator class

Unlimited Genocide

. According to her rather trifiling sensors, there was a pretty serious power drain going on there - even her Avenger could pick up that the energy output of the

Unlimited Genocide

was going down and down and down. It was like they had just thrown up a titanic series of power faults, and their energy core was going off line.

Except...

Delta hit the afterburners.

"Alpha-1, what are you doing?"

Excalibur

Actual's voice came clipped and harsh.

Delta came within spitting distance of one of the frigates, twisting her wings and bringing her into a corkscrewing spin to avoid the point defense railguns - but that still got her into line of slight.

"Captain!" she shouted. "The

UG

is powering up their main gun!"

"That's impossible, their ship's

losing

power, not gaining it!"

But it was there, clear as day: An orb of midnight black energy, gathering at the narrow barrel of the Inversion Cannon.

"I see what I see!"

"It's not on your gun cam, or our sensors-"

"Just dodge already goddamn it!" Delta shouted.

The

Excalibur

fired her ventral RCS - blazing lights flicking to life along her midnight black belly. The massive vehicle lifted, slowly, too slowly. The bubble of glittering darkness became as big as a house, as big as a skyscraper, then collapsed into a searing beam of pure un-light that drank in the glittering stars around them. The beam whipped right past the belly of Delta's home and family, and she breathed out a slow sigh.

Then she started to fly like her life depended on it as what seemed like every Kruul fighter in the universe dropped on her at once.

***

John spun in his command chair. "Shey, what the hell was that?"

"I...I...it's not on any of the scanners!" she said, then looked up. Her sky blue face paled. "Captain. I think they inverted the inverter beam."

"What the fuck does that mean!?" Albert exclaimed, his hands still knuckle-white against his console, his face beaded with fear sweat.

"Now, it's an SOF

launcher

beam - it would have shredded us against the mass-net!" Shey said.

"And we can't even see it to dodge..." John said, his voice grim. He turned to the screen - and saw that more and more and more wings of Evil fighters were launching from both the

Unlimited Genocide

and the

Malicious Intent

. They weren't forming up into wings, they were simply streaming into space. Eugene gulped.

"Okay, now we have a problem," he said.

"Sir, the

Malicious Intent

is approaching on an attack vector," Shey said.

"Shields to maximum - bring the plasma beamers to bear!" John said. "Albert?"

"Yes?" Albert asked.

"Take us down their throats," John growled.

The

Excalibur

leaped forward as the

Malicious Intent

swung herself around. The greenish beams of their P-guns started to play along the forward shields of the Terran ship, causing witchfire to flare to life along the outer edges of the hull, illuminating the exact inflection point between shielded space and non-shielded void. As she pulled around, the

Malicious

came directly into range of the forward mounted plasma beamers. Actinic, blue-white lines of scalding hot plasmafire screeched along the hard, geometric planes of the Kruul shields, causing them to sputter and flare. One cut through and pierced into ablative armor along the belly of the cruiser - a plume of superheated hull began to act rather like a thruster, sending her skewing up and to the side.

The battle was on.

***

Steam bloomed from one the manifold pipes leading off from the main fusion power plant in the heart of the

Excalibur

. Something had sprung a leak - either from impact or from sheer when the ship had quaked like San Francisco - and Chief Engineering Katria Kyleen was

not

happy. The slender Paw's ears were pinned back against her head as she worked in a bulky radiation suit, fresh from the deeper guts of engineering. A glove dangled from her suit harness and she clacked away at a keyboard that was built for operations in situations as dire as this. She slammed in the enter key, then shouted. "All right, we've remodulated our shields, can someone

please

fix that seam vent!"

"On it, Chief!"

One of her many technicians picked up a pincer and a laser welder. He hurried into the steam, dragging his facial protective hood down. Within seconds, his body was subsumed by the mist - and the bright red beam of his welder flared like a ruby in the shroud.

Kat scrambled from workstation to workstation, checking in on everything as damage reports and energy transfer requests came in almost as fast as she could process them. She barked out swift orders to her team - and a tiny part of her, hidden behind the bramble of her grumbling barbs and her sharp tongue, that was proud of how well they were doing.

The com rang up.

"Yeah whatta you want?" she snapped.

"This is bridge actual, we need the forward shields resequenced to deal with plasma weaponry."

"Fuck off!" Kat shouted into the coms. "We're currently working overtime on generic evil green radiation and you want me to try and boil off plasma? Shunt the water out of the cleaning sluces and just use ice armor, and stop wasting my time!"

"I...would that work?" The com clicked off.

Kat wasn't sure they had enough water in the tanks for it. She honestly didn't care either. She scowled at her board - and then frowned even harder. "What the fuck - Kory!"

One of her techs paused as he sprinted past with a fire extinguisher. He skidded slightly - the floor was damp, and she didn't have time to figure out why.

"What the hell is happening to shield emitter two?" she snapped, pointing at it. "We just shunted extra power there, why is it going down?"

"I just checked, Chief, it was fine-" Kory jerked as flames leaped higher on another part of the engineering deck. Kat did one of her many calculations per second, then shoved him towards the fire.

"I'll handle it!" she shouted over the din - then leaped up. Her hands gripped onto one of the cloth wrapped steam pipes, feeling the heat of them through the padding. She swung her legs up, then released, flipping twice and ending up standing on the top of one of the computer consoles, right next to an airvent. She swung it open, skimmed inside, then started to wriggle. People said that Paw could fit through essentially anything, which wasn't quite true. They actually had very fine electromagnetic fields that emerged from their cheeks that brushed against the walls and bounced back - giving each Paw an instinctive sense of whether or not their shoulders could fit through. For Kat, it was like being gently slapped in the cheeks - but she was well used to knowing that her cheeks were...a bit sensitive.

She forced herself through a narrow opening, wriggled, squirmed, rolled around and landed with a grunt in the gantry bay leading into the shield emitter. The emitter, the same weird flower thing that had been installed on the Avengers, was newfangled and strange when it came to its internal workings, but the external hookups were all pretty normal shield input and outputs.

The only problem was someone had unplugged half of them at random.

Kat scowled. "What the fuck?" she muttered, kneeling down and sliding her gloves back on, even if it hurt her manual dexterity.

She picked up one of the inputs, then glanced at where it had fallen compared to the plug.

It was almost like someone had just...yanked them out and-

Her ear twitched.

Danger screamed in her mind.

And normally, Kat would have dodged with the fluid grace of her kind. But the ship chose that moment to be shot by a masticator gun and, as the dimensional teeth clamped onto the ship and twisted hard, veer wildly. Kat was flung left and the woman behind her with the wrench was cast that way too. They both smashed into the wall, then were flung right again as sparks exploded from one of the still connected input lines. Kat and the woman sprawled, the wrench skidding away along the metal grating of the floor.

Kat shook her head, groaned, pushed herself up - then saw that her attacker...was a Kruul female.

"Boarding party!" Kat shouted, grabbing at her coms.

The Kruul woman made a quick jerking motion and the coms vanished from Kat's hands, then appeared in the Kruul's palms.

Kat scowled. "A psychic boarding party," she said.

...then she noticed that the boarding party was a single curvy Kruul woman wearing what appeared to be the Kruul version of a frilly dress.

Kat blinked.

Then she sniffed.

Then she sniffed again.

Then she sniffed a third time.

The Kruul scowled fiercely. "What are you- "

"You're the Kruul princess that Eugene dicked down!" Kat exclaimed, pointing at her.

Princess Evilla exclaimed in shock. "You cannot smell him on me!"

"You're the one who hasn't had a shower in a week!" Kat snapped.

"We do not bathe as you do we...I...what am I doing!?" Evilla snarled. She thrust out her palm. The wrench vanished off the ground and appeared in her hands. "I am going to kill you!" She snarled and leaped at Kat. Kat dropped onto her back, lifted her feet, kicked the Kruul in the belly, and then flung her over her head. Evilla flung through the air, smashed into the wall, then crumpled down onto her head, her skirts flaring around her thick, grayish-brown thighs. She squalled, more shocked than hurt, and Kat rolled around, then scrambled for her communicator - dropped in the scuffle. She snatched it up, shouting into it.

"Captain, Kruul Princess on-"

Evilla kicked out, clocking her in the jaw and sending Kat sprawling to the side.

***

Delta was having less fun now.

Her Avenger smoked from one wing as the...tenth? Fifteenth? She had lost count of how many Evil class fighters had dogged her. This one was right on her ass, threatening to scorch his own paintjob as he slewed left, right, left again - aiming and firing with a series of energy blasts over her shoulders, past her wings as she juked and dived frantically. She looked around wildly - but saw that the rest of the squadron was just as heavily outnumbered.

"I can't shake him! I can't- ARRRGH!"

Beta-2's Avenger exploded in a spray of orange white light. His ejection pod tumbled through the air - only for six Evils to break away. The pod crumpled around the edges as invisible teeth chomped into it...but rather than crushing it like grape, they instead held onto it as the fighters swung away and soared off towards the

Malicious Intent

and the

Unlimited Genocide

.