Derelict 3, Chapter 26.

Chapter 26.

His cyborks at target one had been caught out in the open, stacked up on the doors and ready to breach the building. The death contraption thingy went straight at them, the heavy laser beam eyes of the ungainly machine continuously firing. In response, the pair of gnomechs assigned to target one counterattacked, moving in close to draw attention away from the less protected cyborks. Turning to face the cyborks had left the weaker armor on the sides of the machine open to attack, and his gnomechs were taking advantage of that weakness.

Slater pushed out with his mana, creating a shield over the cyborks as the twin beams from the death contraption’s lasers swept over the line of MOBS. While hopelessly inaccurate, the beams were powerful, and Slater watched his mana dip rapidly as he tried to maintain the shield. His cyborks didn’t hold back either, their shoulder mounted weapons pouring out fire as they charged into melee range. The shield overloaded and shattered, allowing one of the beams to connect with the lead pair of cyborks, cutting them in two and killing another that was behind them.

His cyborks reached the gnomish contraption, their axes hacking into the armored front of the machine, the Derelict fashioned weapons cutting deep into the armor as they tried to reach the delicate machinery inside. The gnomechs were making more headway, the heavy machinegun rounds punched easily through the side armor, of the contraption, exploding inside to cause casualties and damage. Grenades from the other gnomech blasted in as well, but the high explosive weapons didn’t have the armor penetration of the machinegun, so instead that gnomech focused on blasting off the legs that the contraption used to move around on.

A flurry of laser blasts hit the armored side of the contraption as the Chixturax warriors joined the fight. They charged in, heedless to the occasional laser blast fired from the gunports in the side of the contraption. Slater’s attack must have caught the Elgenflazzle’s by surprise and only a few gnomish warriors had boarded the contraption, given the weak return fire they were receiving. A few beams hit the Chixturax warriors, the carapace deflecting or absorbing the first few shots without problem. He doubted they would stand up to the much more powerful lasers mounted in the front of the machine, but Slater made a note to see if he could get a sample of their chitin, it could make for some improved body armor for his forces.

Once they reached the side of the death contraption, the warriors went to work with their claws, the oversized appendages snapping off the thrashing, claw tipped legs of the machine before digging deep into the armor. Whatever that natural material was that that their claws were made out of, it didn’t seem to have any trouble cutting through the gnomish contraption. His cyborks had a harder time, the front of the contraption had too much armor to break through easily with their melee weapons, and the pistol caliber shoulder mounted guns weren’t doing much either. With a few swings of their axes, they were able to damage the barrels of the eye lasers. A growing heat and telltale glow starting almost immediately from the damaged weapons.

“Pull back, get into cover!” Slater shouted over comms. His MOBS knew his wishes, but the Chixturax still needed to be told directly. True to their promise, the Chixturax followed his orders without complaint, which also saved their lives. By the time his forces made it back to the debris field, dropping into whatever cover they could find, the death contraption thingy exploded as whatever powered the laser weapons overloaded. Shrapnel from the machine sept over the area as more of the warehouse wall was blown inward. With nothing to stop their progress, his forces rose, and resumed the assault.

Turning his attention to the other teams, it appeared there had only been one death contraption thingy in the gnomish arsenal. His other forces were only having to contend with the hasty defense put up by the unprepared gnomish warriors. They may have been unprepared, but there were sure a lot of them. As his MOBS made entry, Slater could see that dozens of the enemy had already been killed in their initial assault, the remainder falling back deeper into the warehouse where they were trying to build up barricades.

A few gnomes tried to make a break for it, jumping out of windows or running from the various emergency escapes each warehouse had. His kobots were ready and had a field day, picking off any who tried to escape. A small group of gnomes appeared on the roof building two, trying to set up some kind of heavy laser weapon. Before the kobots could respond, a grenade launcher armed gnomech began to plop grenades across the roof of the building, killing the weapons team. The other grenadiers began to include the roof in their rotation, preventing any similar attacks.

Another of the heavy laser weapons was installed in a makeshift barricade inside target three, the weapon frying three of his cyborks before a pair of grenades were thrown past the barricade to deal with them. One grenade exploded, showering the weapons team with fragments while the other was a ripper globe. Spikes shot out into the crowded group of gnomish enemies, piercing through their body armor. Once set in place, the globe began to spin, the razor-sharp wire connecting the spikes started to flail about cutting any unarmored portions of the gnomes into small chunks.

With the barricades taken one by one, his forces moved toward the center of the warehouses as the enemy defense collapsed. Several gnomes tried to surrender, but Slater only wanted a few prisoners for questioning, the rest were killed on sight. They had attacked defenseless Chixturax workers and ordered the death of Kraxton and Bexlan who Slater considered his friends. It took time to mop up the remaining gnomes, and Salter’s MOBS took more casualties as the desperate gnomes counterattacked, making one last attempt to break out.

“I got this one, Slater, let me take care of this,” Pixi said, the camouflaged fur of his stealth rat body going unnoticed as he slipped into the final room occupied by the gnomish forces. A loud explosion was heard as the detonated the grenades inside his body, a cybork team charging in after to hack the survivors down.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” Slater asked.

“Oh yeah, you never told me that blowing yourself up to kill your enemies was so much fun,” Pixi replied.

“It isn’t very fun when you die doing it, you were just wearing that MOBS skin, it wasn’t really you in there,” Slater replied, annoyed that his Pixi fragment was having so much fun.

It took them twenty more minutes to root out the last holdouts among the large warehouse buildings. During that time, his construction drones had already printed up replacements for his losses. A quick call to Hixrax got some of his people to come over and help haul out any salvage in the area. Anything the gnomes had inside the warehouses was free game. The buildings themselves were likely owned by someone else, so he didn’t do any further damage to them or attempt to reprocess them for their base materials. The last thing he needed was a beef with another group on the station when had just, hopefully, eliminated the Elgenflazzle clan’s ability to interfere.

Questioning of the pair of gnomish prisoners they had taken revealed this was the last of the Elgenflazzle’s forces, only their civilians remained. As much as he despised the gnomes, Slater didn’t make war on non-combatants if he could help it. One of the gnomes spilled the beans that word had gone out to allied clans, calling them to the Station. Whether the other clans would do anything was up in the air, gnomes weren’t known for working well together and if anything, Slater felt another clan might arrive to scoop up the survivors of Elgenflazzle. Taking whatever wealth remained to the Elgenflazzle Clan would be easier their allies to do, rather than risking losses in doing battle with a Derelict core.

With the Chixturax on site, along with their impressive warriors, Slater felt it was safe to return his MOBS back to the Derelict. There was still time left on the countdown timer that the station had given him, but he didn’t want to push it. It turned out there had been a substantial force of gnomes housed in the warehouses, the final count ended with over a hundred and twenty gnomes. Along with the death contraption thingy they destroyed, there was another, partially assembled one in warehouse two. The materials to complete it were on hand, giving him a good boost of salvage for their shipbuilding efforts.

When his MOBS were just about to leave, station security showed up, allowing Slater a look at how they worked. About fifty personnel arrived, heavily armed and armored. While they didn’t hassle Slater’s MOBS or the Chixturax, they did place a cordon around the area, an implicit warning to Slater not to break any part of their deal. Like his previous encounters, Sarton Station’s forces consisted of mostly dwarves with a sprinkling of other races mixed in. One thing did catch his eye, two heavy weapons teams hauled tripod mounted heavy lasers to cover the area. These were a different design from the crude weapons the gnomes had just tried to employ, and had a heavier-duty, military feel to them. In addition, at least one in ten of the security force members had a tube that could only be some form of anti-armor missile. Tangling with Sarton Station’s security teams would not be as easy a task as taking out the gnomes.

After his MOBS returned, things dropped back into a familiar pattern, with an occasional group of challengers arriving to try out his Derelict while construction work continued at the dockyard. Slater’s first round of research on his avatar project completed, and he once again pushed all his research into the second round. This was his life at stake and the development of drones for his ship could wait until he felt a bit more secure. His rankings improved and the battle with the Elgenflazzle Clan seemed to help boost his rankings, even though it had nothing to do with the arena. Slater pulled up the latest rankings after another mixed group of challengers were stopped just before the chow hall after losing two of their number.

Sarton Station Ranking for the Chixturax core shard: 31/274.

Total views: 88,133,112.

Victory/Defeat: 36/1.

Total kills: 386.

Fan favorite MOBS: Gnomech.

Number of fan followers: 47,226.

Credits earned in last match: 17,221.

Despite the increasing cost of salvage, their income was growing at a fast pace, allowing work to continue non-stop. To support their efforts, Slater printed up more construction drones for the dockyard, eventually hitting the limits of his control. This didn’t bode well for making spacefaring fighter drones, but that was a problem for later. Thinking back on the last version of the Franklin, he felt his control limit had grown. It looked that as his mind recovered, it also slowly improved and evolved. That was already true for his magic abilities, his mana pool growing to 2000 points. He still wasn’t sure what measure of energy constituted a “point” of mana, but the elves at least had given him a way to quantify it. He hadn’t unlocked any new abilities to use with his mana, the same three that he had started with were the only ones he could use.

His plans for Franklin began to finalize and after the second pass on his avatar completed, he split his processing power between the third and final avatar improvements, and the other research items fighting for attention in his queue. Slater was frustrated with his progress on enhancing his core signal, and the drone research that went along with it, choosing to shelve those for a later time while he focused on the various ship systems that also needed attention.

The whole time, thoughts over the giant ship attacking the human fleet nagged at him. Slater felt his new Franklin would be the most powerful ship in space, but that monster sized ship gave him doubts. Would his ship be able to tackle something like that on its own or was there something else that he wasn’t thinking of that would enable him to defeat a ship that much larger than his own?

“Hey Slater, are you busy? We can always come back another time, but I heard the number three ranked group of contenders was going to try your Derelict out today and we wanted to watch in person?” Kraxton asked. Slater had been so occupied in his thoughts and research; he hadn’t noticed the kids entering his core compartment. Sure, they were tagged as friendly, but the fact they had surprised him wasn’t good. After setting warning prompts for himself, even if friendlies entered his core room, Slater replied.

“Sorry, I’ve been busy trying to solve some issues with my ship. You’re more than welcome to watch the fight from here. I haven’t had a top five ranked team take on my Derelict yet, the best ranking was a fourteen, but they were extremely cautious and quit at the barracks before taking any losses,” Slater told them. It was true, the higher ranked the teams, the more skilled and better equipped they were, but they were also extremely cautious, not that he could blame them.

“Oh, what kind of ship problems? Maybe I can help,” Bexlan offered. She was the thinker of the pair, but Slater doubted she was warship design engineer.

“It’s complicated, essentially I may have to face another starship that will massively outsize the Franklin and I’m not sure if the guns and missiles I have aboard will be enough to deal with it on my own,” Slater told them.

“Just make a bigger gun, that shouldn’t be too hard for you,” Bexlan offered, her brother laughing at her suggestion.

“It’s a bit more complicated than just make the gun bigger. It needs to be housed in a turret, powered up by the reactors, and new problems always arise when scaling up something. I’ll already have the largest main guns on any ship I’ve seen,” Slater said.

“Bexlan would have you turn your ship into a giant gun if you let her. She kind of fell in love with all the firepower you’ve added to our new hive ship design,” Kraxton said, taunting his sister a bit. Once again, the Chixturax kids reminded him of human teenagers, despite their sometimes-strange speech patterns and thought processes. But was Kraxton onto something? Slater had been thinking in terms of turret mounted weapons to bring firepower to bear at any angle, but at the distances an encounter with a monster ship might take place at, perhaps there was another way to mount a bigger gun. Design ideas were starting to flow, and, on a whim, he pulled current research away and pushed everything into this experimental design.

“Well, she may have given me an idea, thanks Bexlan,” Slater said. She looked pleased with herself, much to her brother’s chagrin. They stayed and watched the next match, but Slater wasn’t interested in it, a high rank team wouldn’t be out to kill his core and since he had upgraded his defenses, nobody had even made it past the med bay yet.

The newest group was a diverse lot, containing a pair of dwarves, a troll, and four gnolls. They were decked out in top-of-the-line gear and carried packs with every conceivable device they might need to overcome a challenging encounter. Being prepared as they were, Slater had no doubt that they had watched previous matches aboard his Derelict, and their progress supported his theory. The first two compartments were easily cleared and even his kobot snipers in the cargo hold only gave them a moments concern, the group using small flying drones laden with explosives to take them out.

Slater wasn’t like the less flexible core shards that these challengers were used to, his MOBS would adapt to the threat. The brig gave them their first setback, the forces inside were ready when the explosive drones were sent in, his kobots prioritizing them over other targets, and his kobots never seemed to miss, whether the target was a small flying drone or a death contraption thingy. Moving forward behind the cover of heavy shields didn’t work well for the challengers either, Slater’s mobs hurled grenades in response and even reinforced shields didn’t hold up to heavy machinegun fire for long. Their advance halted, and running out of tricks, this supposedly top tier group of challengers surrendered, skulking out of Slater’s Derelict, none too happy with their performance.

“Nice work, Slater, they didn’t do as well as I had expected,” Kraxton said, sounding somewhat disappointed.

“I think they were too worried about losing and forgot that winning sometimes takes risk,” Slater said.

“True, but that’s going to hurt their rankings, look, they’ve dipped down to rank twenty-two,” Bexlan said. Slater hadn’t been interested in the challenger ladder, the ranking system didn’t give him any insight into how they fought or how they were equipped, and only listed the group name and current rank, useless in his estimation, but the kids seemed excited by the news.

“Ask him,” Kraxton whispered to his sister once they were done perusing the latest challenger ladder rankings.

“Fine, I’ll ask. Slater, with the restaurant closing, we have had little to occupy our time. We both enjoy staying here and watching matches with you, is it okay if we continue to occupy your core room during matches?” Bexlan asked.

“Sure, I like having you two around. You can hang out here any time you want to. Just make sure your father is fine with it and you aren’t shirking you other duties,” Slater replied.

“We have limited duties right now, in the morning we typically help catalogue supplies for our journey but after that, we have nothing but free time,” Bexlan said.

“I might as well make you two useful, give me a minute,” Slater said. He had one of the drones in his core room print up a VR game console and a research terminal. Perhaps he could get some work out them, the kids seemed to think out of the box, which might make a difference in his research.

“What are these, is that a game console?” Kraxton asked, scuttling over to the game system.

“Yep, help yourselves, but also try to help me some each day with research problems I have. I know you’re not scientists, but I’m just looking for broad ideas and new ways to approach problems,” Slater said.

“That is acceptable, we shall help in any manner that is possible,” Bexlan replied, looking a bit dejected that Kraxton had logged into the gaming system first.

“Do I need to put the two of you on a game timer to make it fair?” Slater asked, not wanting one of the siblings to miss out on the fun.

“No, we can work out an equitable system of game time allocation on our own. Perhaps you can create a second game system to prevent any dispute?” Bexlan asked hopefully.

“Nope, you want to play, you have to work. There’s a reason I have one game console and one research station. Dig in and see if there are any projects in there you might have some ideas for,” Slater said. With a sigh, Bexlan logged into the research console and began looking at all his pending projects.