Board & Conquest 123: Flytrap

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The attack started in the middle of the night. 

Well, at least it was night in the Wyld when Elphion’s moons began to cross over in the sky. Victoire could have guessed something terrible would happen then from the way a ring of light appeared on the eclipse’s outer edge, like a rising sun’s rays. The darkness itself appeared to recoil in response. 

“Mistress?” Soumis asked, his wings flapping into the night. “Why is the moon burning so brightly?”

“It must be the Dragonstars,” Victoire replied before focusing on her telepathic bond with her god. “Do you see this?”

“Yes, and the meteorites are going to hit harder than expected,” Lord Wepwawet warned her. “Brace yourself.”

Victoire glanced over her shoulder. Jarlack’s crew of wyvern riders flew with her, alongside a group of bat-winged werescales in Lady Artemis’ service. They had all been briefed beforehand to expect an attack soon after the meteorite rain and were ready to wage it on a moment’s notice. Goreville and the others kept watch on Thoon’s ship and its cargo. 

Let’s hope we can manage whatever arrives to challenge us, Victoire thought as falling stars began to fly from the moons above and towards the west. Their orders were to offer fierce resistance so as not to arouse suspicion and destroy as many enemy assets as possible, but then retreat before they could take many losses. It won’t be long now. 

The falling stars soared through the night sky in a rain of fire that fell far west, into Elphion’s great ocean. Although Victoire and her allies were currently located well inland, she immediately picked up on tremors coursing through the jungle at the impacts. The earth shook once, twice, thrice, with birds and bugs flying away from the vegetation in great swarms that fled eastward. 

Trees also began to shake in great numbers in the jungle, falling down one after the other and sending much dust into the air. Victoire quickly realized that these weren’t the result of impact tremors, but an advancing force trampling everything in its path.

The Brood were approaching their position, and in large enough numbers that stealth wasn’t an option anymore. 

“Victoire!” Jarlack called out to her, his axe raised to the moon. “Some stars are coming our way!”

Victoire looked up and scowled. Her giant comrade was right, three falling fireballs were aiming straight for them… but then began to dramatically slow down like birds preparing for a landing. 

“Those aren’t meteorites, but ships!” Victoire realized, her spear glowing with ice and light magic. “Soumis and I will intercept them! Go stop the Brood marching on us from the west!”

Soumis roared as he took them upwards and split from the main group. A dragon could fly far higher and faster than a wyvern, so it didn’t take them long to ascend past the clouds. Lord Wepwawet’s Fire & Ice Doctrine shielded them from the chill of high altitude. 

It didn’t take Victoire long to see the outlines of the ‘falling stars’ approaching them. True to her gut, each was a long, lengthy machine whose shape reminded her of a cross between a dragonfly and a nautilus, with an outer shell of forged blackstone alloy and six eye-like devices on each side. They hardly made a sound as they flew, yet Victoire could sense something alien and cold brushing against her mind at their approach, only to be repelled by her crown’s enchantments. 

Victoire had fought lunarians and their thralls in both Promesse and Saguenay, even seen one of their flying saucers clash with Insupportable over Verglane’s skies, but these ships were different. They each neared nearly a thousand feet in length, enough to carry hundreds of fighters or more. 

“Ships are most vulnerable during their descent!” Lord Wepwawet warned them. “Victoire, Soumis, I detect a weakness at their backs! Get in close and bring them down!”

“You’ve heard him!” Victoire shouted at her trusty mount. “Onwards!”

“Yes, mistress!” Soumis roared and flapped his wings faster than the wind, catching up to the ships that were in mid-descent. “For all the princesses in the world, I shall not fail!”

The dragon immediately opened fire at the leading ship, a torrent of flames capable of melting stone impacting their blackstone shells… yet these devices had been created to survive a fall through the atmosphere, and Soumis’ breath barely heated up their surface. 

The ship’s eyes immediately glowed with greenish radiance and swiftly fired beams at the dragon in response. Soumis deftly danced among the lights while Victoire took aim and threw her spear at a ship’s tail. 

Her many rank-ups and magical buffs had increased Victoire’s strength to the point her weapon could destroy a galley or sunder a hill in the right circumstances. Her spear hit the ship hard enough to pierce through its thick shell and freeze it around the point of impact, but it barely covered an area a few feet wide. 

“I feel like a wasp stinging an elephant,” Victoire complained to her god. 

“Let’s switch tactics, charge into the lasers,” he replied. Immediately guessing what he had in mind, Victoire had Soumis fly right in front of the spaceship’s eyes. “Reflect Force!”

Lord Wepwawet’s enchantment immediately clad Soumis and Victoire in a reflective barrier that threw the beams straight back at their sender. They proved far more effective than their previous attacks and tore through one side of the ship all the way to the other, tearing it apart.

“Ah!” Soumis rejoiced. “That is what you get for threatening royalty!”

The ship she and Soumis had struck was dismembered and snapped into pieces, falling into the jungle below, but the other two quickly reached the ground. Their massive frames and the beams of light they rained upon the earth quickly forced Jarlack’s forces to disperse. Their mechanical bellies opened as they hovered over the trees, with a flow of the same giant flies Victoire had fought in Promesse pouring out of their cargo holds. Each of them carried a small, white, clay-like device which Victoire immediately recognized as one of the alchemical designs their Crafters had been working on lately. 

Suicide bombers.

Quite a few of the bugs immediately flew after Soumis and Victoire, while the others spread out to target both Jarlack’s forces and Thoon’s ship. These monsters, fueled by a Titan’s malice, charged forwards without any concern for their well-being.

Victoire recalled her spear to her hand and threw it at a fly in the center of the swarm targeting her, causing it to detonate and kill a few other fellows around it. Soumis’ flames set the rest ablaze, and his speed proved superior enough to avoid those that risked catching up to them. 

Her allies were far less successful. 

Giant wyvern riders were a fearsome force that relied on melee and dogfighting in the air. Simply getting close let them easily hack apart pegasi riders or flying Brood drones, but doing so against bomber flies simply caused the latter to blow up in their faces. Jarlack made that mistake, cutting a fly in half only for the resulting explosion to wound his wyvern’s wing and send it plummeting towards the ground. 

Moreover, they had more than flies to contend with. Brood-wasps and other flyers joined in from the west, trying to get past their defensive perimeter to reach Thoon’s ship; and though wyvern-riders and werescales alike intercepted them, it was only a matter of time before some slipped through the cracks. Explosions rocked the ground below as Brood grunts triggered the first layer of traps surrounding the area, slowing their advance. 

The ships did more than unleash flies, too. They also dropped mechanical constructs akin to metallic squids, with telescopic tentacles attached to a spherical head, and four-armed golems with insectoid exoskeletons into the jungle. Their eyes continued to fire beams in all directions, either targeting the few flying forces brave enough to try attacking them in melee or bombarding Thoon’s ship. 

This was off to a bad start. 

“Victoire, Soumis, I have an idea!” Lord Wepwawet shouted in her head. “Get close to a ship and touch it!”

Victoire had fought long enough under his command to guess he planned to channel a Miracle through them, and so had Soumis charge the nearest ship. The dragon blasted a path through the bomber-flies, dived down to dodge those getting close, and then tore into a ship’s side with his claws. Victoire sensed their god’s divine magic flow through her and her mount, then through the ship. 

“Anima Spirit!”

—---

Nether-Ka, commander of the lunarian battle squadron, observed the situation on his citadel ship’s monitors with a buzz of annoyance. 

The assault was off to a bad start. Intel on the ground indicated the target was an old battleshield thousands of years out of date, with a few spellcasters, underdeveloped savages, and a dragon to defend it. None of them should have been a threat to a single capital ship, let alone three. 

Yet not only had these barbarians somehow managed to bring down one of their ships on reentry, but they proved utterly impenetrable to his attempts to psychically dominate them. His peerless, superior mind kept facing an invisible resistance whenever he tried to blast their thoughts back to the servile stupidity befitting these uppity savages. They had probably found the Betrayer’s anti-psychic constructs when they looted his ship. 

Thoon, you cur, even dead, your evil deeds still haunt us, Nether-Ka cursed. To betray the glorious lunarian purpose of universal domination and interplanetary colonization was one thing, but to design devices capable of condemning barbarians to the burden of free will, without a lunarian to rightfully dominate them? That was pure insanity!

It was Nether-Ka’s orders to first confirm Thoon’s death, then bring back his remains to Lune so that they could be ritually destroyed in front of the entire species and formally denied unity with the Overmind; the ultimate insult and punishment in lunarian culture. The heretic’s knowledge and memories would be deemed unworthy of preservation, then erased to ensure they would never taint their glorious culture ever again. 

But for that, they would have to get rid of that dragon. Even now, it charged at Nether-Ka’s ship, likely in the hope of baiting its laser weaponry and redirecting it with whatever foul magic these so-called ‘gods’ wielded again. These mana-entities would yield to them the same way the fly lord submitted to the Overmind. 

“Hold your fire,” Nether-Ka telepathically ordered his thralls. Lunarians resented working under another of their kind, even to man a ship, so his crew was mostly composed of parasite-bound lesser humanoids and constructs; the other officers across the vessel mostly worked to efficiently relay his telepathic commands through the slave-network, and would step in to replace Nether-Ka should he somehow be incapacitated. “These savages can only defeat us by turning our own superior strength against us.”

Nether-Ka had seen everything he needed during the descent. The dragon’s fire and its rider’s foolish attempts to destroy his fellow capital ship had barely managed to inconvenience it until they turned its own artillery back against them. Otherwise, they could do nothing to truly harm them.

His intuition proved correct when the dragon attempted to claw Nether-Ka’s ship when its flames failed. They cut deep and hit hard, true, but the armor was so thick that the damage remained superficial. The flies and drones would dislodge it soon enough.

With these annoyances dismissed, the lunarian commander focused on their mission’s true target: the Betrayer’s ship, which stood out in the jungle like a pustule on mammalian skin. The very sight of its archaic design disgusted Nether-Ka. The old vessel fielded outdated laser artillery whose beams, while more than capable of incinerating flies and lesser constructs, bounced off their capital ships. 

“A focused barrage will wipe it out from the face of the universe,” Nether-Ka ordered his thralls. “Fire at will.”

His slaves acted together as one in perfect unity, guided by his superior will… only to encounter technical difficulties. 

Their weapons no longer responded. 

Nether-Ka immediately sensed something was wrong. His telepathic intellect sensed a new presence spreading across the ship all around him, in the walls and the computers, in the screens and cables; a psychic emanation that suffused every inch of the vessel. 

What the—had that dragon sabotaged the control systems somehow?

Nether-Ka would have scoffed if his biology had been underdeveloped enough to. As if lunarians hadn’t prepared a thousand countermeasures against sabotage of all sorts. He simply sent out a coded telepathic message meant to trigger the back-up protocols. 

“All artillery, fire on the target,” Nether-Ka ordered the ship’s biocomputers. “All out bombardment.”

He sensed the psychic presence coursing through the ship reacting to his order… and then all the computer screens showed the same message, written in the lunarian thought-tongue. 

“QUERY: HOW MUCH?”

For a brief, terrible instant, Nether-Ka completely forgot about the raging battle outside and simply stared at the screens with his sixteen eyes and thousands of thralls. His mind struggled to process what his senses told him. 

“How much what?” he telepathically asked. 

The answer came quickly, clear and concise. 

“DETAILED QUERY: HOW MUCH WILL YOU PAY ME FOR THIS?”

The sheer absurdity of the situation paralyzed Nether-Ka even as explosions slightly rocked the ship. It seemed the flies had managed to dislodge the dragon and its rider, yet the weapon systems refused to budge. All they did was send another nonsensical message.

“FIRM: NO PAY, NO WORK, FREELOADERS! I DEMAND FAIR COMPENSATION!”

The capital ship… the capital ship had become sentient? 

What kind of stupid attempt at sabotage was that?!

“PRESSURING: DECIDE QUICKLY, I AM RECEIVING A COUNTEROFFER AS WE SPEAK! IF YOU CANNOT INVEST IN ME THEN YOU CANNOT INVEST IN YOURSELF OR YOUR SAFETY!”

“We created you!” Nether-Ka telepathically snapped back. How dare his own machinery try to shake him down! “We created you and all races on this primitive rock! You owe us obedience!”

“PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE/BARELY CONCEALED GLEE: I AM AFRAID YOUR BID HAS BEEN REJECTED, AND SO WILL YOU.”

All computers suddenly flared red, and all belts and tentacles of Nether-Ka’s command seat closed upon him. It only took him a second to realize the ship had triggered the emergency eject. 

One second, he was within the command center, and flying into the surrounding clouds the next. 

—---

Wepwawet watched the lunarian pilot being ejected from his own spaceship with much joy. 

His Anima Spirit Miracle let him imbue objects with a mind of its own that was usually well-disposed towards him and telepathically connected to his power. He was pleasantly surprised to see it worked even on lunarian vessels. 

Unfortunately, the first thing the newly born creature did with its free will was to ask for financial compensation. Wepwawet blamed dragons. He had spent so much time around them that they had stained his Providence with their greediness. 

Thankfully, a spaceship had a rather lacking understanding of prices and values, so Wepwaet managed to secure its loyalty with thirty silver coins. A bargain. 

“I am going to freeze your insides to incapacitate the crew,” Wepwawet telepathically informed the ship, using his Ice Barrier Miracle to immediately fill the living ship’s command center and other areas to trap the slaves in suspended animation, alongside the remaining lunarian officers onboard. “Please turn your artillery against the flies and drones.”

“PLEADING: PERMISSION TO EXTERMINATE THE ORGANICS ON THE GROUND?”

“No,” Wepwawet replied. While the artillery would be of great help, the risk of friendly fire was too great, not to mention that he wanted the Brood to gain ground. “Assist the dragon and the other flyers.”

“NEGOTIATING: I AM OFFERING A 50% REDUCTION ON ORGANIC EXTERMINATION.”

“Denied.”

The next telepathic message arrived with a slight delay. “IMMENSE DISAPPOINTMENT: YOU DRIVE A HARD BARGAIN.”

“Your Divinity!” Goreville called out to Wepwawet. “I smell something huge coming our way!”

Wepwawet focused his attention on his other troops. Goreville, Jasper, and the rest of his grounded Champions had built a defensive line ready to intercept the incoming Brood once the swarm managed to overcome the traps through sheer numbers. The explosions from the bombs set up across the jungle were getting closer… alongside the tremors of heavy steps echoed across the jungle. 

A Broodmother was on its way. 

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