Chương 126: Chapter One Hundred and Ten - A Time for Subtlety, A Time for the Unsubtle

Ivil quickly realized that the time for subtlety would eventually pass, and sooner than she might have wanted. The Earth Alliance fleet entered that mid-range point where they could start taking direct shots at the Uranian fleet. The last of their torpedoes chose that time to start hard-accelerating as well. It meant that the Uranian fleet, as well as the Sappho in their midst, was being peppered by railgun rounds and accelerated particles.

The vast majority of these were slamming into shields more than capable of taking the occasional hit, but sometimes something would slip through. Ivil was working double time to catch those rounds before they impacted the Uranian ships. There were contingencies against exactly this scenario. They involved moving the entire fleet so that they dodged incoming fire while also avoiding crashing into each other. The Uranian fleet had a hard time just getting their ships into something even approaching a formation.

That kind of tight maneuvering was beyond them, so they mostly sat there like gormless ducks staring down the barrel of a shotgun. Ivil was secretly tempted to let some of the bigger rounds crash into the lead ships of the fleet, just to wake them up to all the hard work she was doing to keep them alive, but she was quite certain that Pixie and Aurora were willing to work together to justify the destruction of a larger ship as being worth an order of magnitude more than the loss of some unmanned freighter.

Soon enough, however, it stopped mattering. The Earth Alliance fleet eventually caught on that there was something going on that couldn't even be explained away as a statistical anomaly. A few torpedoes getting taken out early was bad luck. Over a hundred of them missing their mark? The constant railgun fire never hitting so much as a single weak spot, in a fleet composed mostly of civilian ships? There was no way. Which is probably what prompted the Emperor of Earth to act.

She was expecting it, of course, but also doubting. If she pushed her senses forwards, then maybe she might have been able to tell if he was even in the fleet, but she didn't dare. He might have been an incompetent idiot, but even he would notice her probing. The Earth Alliance fleet contracted, ships approaching each other, then one of them shot ahead. It was the largest in the entire fleet, and one of the only proper warships there.

"Twenty-Six, do you recognize that one?" she asked. Twenty-Six stared, then shook her head.

"It's Earth-built, and might be built off one of their frames. Maybe a Washington Class heavy corvette? But no, the bridge is in the wrong spot. I think it's... new? Look at the burns, here, and here." She blew up an image, zooming in to some baffles next to the thrusters.

"I don't see it," Aurora said.

"Oh, I get it," Pixie replied.

"They're clean?"

"Yeah! There are bits of ships that are never clean. No matter what you burn as fuel, things eventually get cooked up and dirtied. You can clean it, I guess, but it doesn't last. So either that ship was washed really recently... and why would you clean off carbon scoring? Or it's basically new. Probably on its maiden voyage, even."

"Well done, Twenty-Six," Ivil said. She enjoyed the way Twenty-Six flushed with the praise. Unfortunately, it would be one of the last things she enjoyed. The large ship launched a brace of torpedoes. They came up and out, then carefully hovered next to the ship. It was unlikely that anyone but Ivil could see it, but something like a thousand long, translucent arms, all of them shunted one dimension to the left, came out of the centre of the warship and grabbed the torpedoes. Then they threw.

To anyone looking, the projectiles had gone from a relative standstill next to the charging warship and turned into blurs of rapid movement, outpacing just about any modern railgun. Railgun rounds were usually small, however. These were multi-ton torpedoes, filled with high explosives or nuclear bombs. At the speed they were going, they'd hit the Uranian fleet in a microsecond, regardless of the range.

All were aimed at the largest ships in the fleet, including the Tech Maid ship hovering protectively next to the Sappho. Stolen story; please report. Modern shields could take a beating, but this would strain even the best. Ivil sighed, then caught the torpedoes out of the void, crunching them like an aluminum soda can under the treads of a main battle tank. There was no hiding now. Ivil stood.

"I'm going to step out for a bit of fresh air," she said.

"Okay!" Twenty-Six replied. It was Aurora who frowned first.

"Ivil, we're on a spaceship."

"That's fine," Ivil said. She very carefully translocated to the exterior of the Sappho. Then she started to casually stroll towards her longtime enemy. A bit of herself, however, was left behind, to keep the Sappho safe. And if that bit happened to keep the Uranian fleet safe as well, then that was nice for them. She took a step and covered a league, she took another and the stars blurred. Then she came to a stop a few kilometres ahead of the rushing Earth Alliance flagship.

Its front, narrowed to a point, had a large and rather gaudy figurehead at the front. A woman with arms outstretched and chest protruding out. Ivil sighed. That was very much something the Earth Emperor would slap onto his own vessel. She tensed ever so slightly as a dozen tiny pinpricks of light shot out from the core of the ship, then slipped past it. They took off towards her, tiny missiles packed full of something nasty. She gestured and they were swatted aside.

"Not even going to come out yourself? Are you a coward to the end?" she asked. It was the dead of space, and yet she knew that every unguarded soul in that ship had heard her loud and clear.

"Are you the bitch who's been sticking their dumb fingers in my master plan?" came a reply. It was deep and sonorous, a sound created from nothing powerful enough that the waves of it might have flayed the skin off her bones if she cared to let it. Ivil blinked. He didn't know who she was, then. Did he assume her to be a high A-classer? It was possible. All that she'd done so far could be done by someone with the right cores, obviously. Someone like Sonic Spectre could do half the work she did.

Bring her over here with a few other Martian elites, and the effect may have been the same. To think he'd underestimate her so badly. Perhaps she should have waddled over slower, or made a show of having a difficult time with those missiles. Then he would probably have started to monologue. The idiot. Monologuing was a right given only unto the powerful.

"Fool!" she roared right back.

"In your haste to crawl your way up to mediocrity, you have once again managed to gain my attention, and this time it may well be your end. The theft from an ally is enough to put you in the ill graces of Mars, Emperor, but the interruption of my dating life? That is unforgivable." Ivil reached out to the flagship. Some small part of her wondered what its name was. The ship was rushing its way to her, and with her having stopped, impact was inevitable. And so she rent it apart.

Space screamed as she opened it, making room where there was none and carving out a blade of null taller even than the ship. The initial impact killed a good number of the crew, but mass and momentum had a way of turning a disaster into a catastrophe. The ship with a name that no longer mattered roared forwards, its own thrusters burning as it wedged itself apart almost down the middle. It wasn't a perfect cut.

When the last of the ship was done blowing past her, it was split through, but the cut was more of a curve. Something in the middle had deflected the slice to one side. The smaller section went rolling off into space, bleeding fire and the last echoing cries of the crew within. The rest tumbled over itself, then something within ignited and Ivil felt the warm breeze of a nuclear armageddon blow past her. What was left after the explosion ran its course was a sphere. It was metallic, and glowed with an inner light.

The surface shifted, like rippling water, and soon the sphere opened to reveal a puppet of a man.

"There you are," Ivil said.

"Ivil Antagonist," the man replied. She smiled, because even though they were the eyes of a puppet, she could still read the naked emotion behind them, and it was fear.

"I would be kissing cute girls right now if it wasn't for you," she threatened.