System Supervillain, Chapter 147

Chapter 147 – Introductions

Sixty END spent out of the two hundred in the Endurance Reserve of the Rhuk’s power reactor was a sizeable cost for instant destruction of two piddly patrol craft. Still, the cost was worth it, in my opinion. I needed to get attention on me. Or, rather, my ship. And the best way to do that was to immediately take out the first two ships to step up to the plate.

The Rhuk had undergone some modifications during the trial phase. That was just to be expected, considering that this was the first spaceship built by anyone, post-System. Figuring out what worked, and what didn’t, was part of the process. One of those little things we learned was that the ion cannons the Rhuk had originally sported were… well, shit at taking on vehicles. Since it primarily did STUN damage, and vehicles didn’t even have STUN, then the rapid-fire blasts would have been doing about 8 BODY damage per hit, reduced by the target’s DEF (defense), with autofire spitting out 5 shots from every turret when they fired.

That sounded like a lot, until you compared it to the ship’s defenses. With the Structural Integrity Field up, the Rhuk had a DEF of 40, and the shields only added to that. The ion cannons could blast away at the Rhuk all day long, and it would barely scratch the paint. And we couldn’t assume that the Gel-nak would have weaker armor than my ship did. That meant we needed better guns.

Enter the Gravity Lance. Basically, a focused gravity beam that used ‘gravity shear’ to cut through solid objects. The guns were able to fit on the same eight turrets that the Ion Cannons had filled, but they did not have autofire capability, and they weren’t Energy Attacks. Instead, they were Ranged Killing Attacks, and had Armor Piercing. Which meant that they were dealing 3d6+1 BODY every shot, against half the DEF. Still wasn’t a match for the Rhuk’s armor, but it should be effective on the lighter Gel-nak ships.

However, gravity ripping a patrol craft apart did not have the same kind of instant ‘wow factor’ as antimatter annihilation did. A big boom, even in the middle of space, was always going to draw more attention than a scalpel slitting someone’s throat. Sometimes you wanted quiet, and sometimes you needed loud.

The pulse torpedoes were the answer for that. Each shot cost 15 END, and the launchers were placed so that I had two facing in each direction, which was good, because they only had a sixty-degree firing arc. They had a range of almost a quarter light-second, and blasted everything in a 100km area. Oh, and I needed to be careful when turning those things on planets, because they came included with a Change Environment side effect that left the whole area heavily irradiated. So, don’t use it near people I actually want to keep breathing. But against ships? Very effective.

Looking over the logs, two shots was just this side of overkill. One would have absolutely crippled the patrol craft, and dished out potentially lethal amounts of radiation for anyone not in protective gear or shielded spaces, but two was a sure kill. Three would have been excessive, even for me.

“Communication link is ready, Master,” Web Mistress called out. “I’m inside the nearest Patrol Craft’s system already. ‘Patrol Craft 9’, apparently. They’ve disabled the Uprising Controls. The hardware is still there, but it reads as disconnected. Probably cut the connections at a hardware level and rerouted around the Uprising Controls’ hardware nodes.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“Telling their ships to shut down and vent the atmosphere will be more difficult, but not impossible. I’ll probably only be able to do one ship at a time. In general, there may be issues with their power systems and controls, depending on how the replacements were done. You might find it easier to force faults and shorts in the electrical systems. Or they might just burn out at any time under load. Depends on how good their engineers were at improvising rather than following commands.”

“Well, that’s annoying, but we had this ship built with the understanding that we wouldn’t get to use cheat codes for everything. Honestly, I would have been disappointed in them if they hadn’t at least done that much in the year and a half we gave them to prepare.” I took a breath, and said, “Transmit broad spectrum, to every receiver in the system. Time to make these lizards know fear again.”

“And if they get reinforcements from other systems?”

“Then learn their response times, and whether our stealth holds up to their scanners.”

“Channel open, Iceblade.” Nemesis said. “You may begin speaking at the tone.” A beep sounded, like an old answering machine. The unshackled AI had a sense of humor, I’d come to learn, though it didn’t always follow human lines.

I looked straight ahead into the camera, and began to do that most foolish of villain activities, a monologue. “To the people of the Srusk system, I am Iceblade, the Rhuk of Earth. I warned you, when I cast down your Emperor and claimed his head as a trophy for my wall, that I would come to the Empire, and begin the great hunt, scouring the galaxy clean of the Gel-nak filth. Rejoice, for the hunt begins with you. You will not have to watch, helpless, as I go world to world through your Empire, slaughtering those I find, wondering when it will finally be your turn.”

“To the pitiful lizards on the ships approaching me, do try and be more entertaining than the last fleet I conquered. I would hate to learn that I obtained this ship, and there were no worthy foes in the Empire to truly test myself with. If you cannot entertain me, then I will simply ignore you, and see how many shots it takes to reduce the planet’s population by ten percent. Do not let me grow bored with your struggles.”

I motioned with one hand, and the link cut off. I sighed contentedly as I leaned back in the command chair. “God, times like these make me realize why so many villains get caught up in monologues and banter. Seeing just how crazy you can drive someone without slipping hallucinogens in their drink is a good deal of fun.”

“Well, you definitely got their attention, Iceblade,” NemesisSpark said. “Sensors are reading eight more of those patrol craft warping towards us, with another twenty launching from that orbital station. The battleship, two cruisers, and six destroyers are also moving our way.”

“Web Mistress, have you analyzed the combat logs and the System files for these patrol craft?”

“Yes, Master. The Gravity Lances should be sufficient for dealing with the Patrol Craft. They are lightly armored, and their primary weapons won’t do anything to us, thanks to our armor. They have a tractor beam, but it is designed for dragging derelict or disabled vessels to a stable orbit, not stopping an actually functioning ship. There is some concern with their secondary weapon, however. The Psychic Beamers fire an Ego Attack that targets the crews of ships, rather than the ship itself.”

“How powerful?”

“The protections in our costumes will be enough to block the damage. I’m sure that Lucy could create a psychic dampener that protects against psychic attacks and influence. Even without that protection, the attack is weak enough that they would require several hits in order to incapacitate any of our people.”

“Orders, Iceblade?”

“Let’s not make things too easy for them, Nemesis. Shields up, and we’ll start carving them with the grav lances. We’ll carve up the little guys, while letting the reactor recharge. But ready the pulse torpedoes for when we get to the bigger ships. I want to see how they’ll do against actual warships. Otherwise? Have fun, don’t get us killed.”

“Understood! Beginning our attack run!”

I chuckled as I heard the enthusiasm in Nemesis’s digital voice. The AI claimed it didn’t have emotions, but that wasn’t entirely true. The AI had programming that prevented it from lying, and its morality was distinctly nonhuman, but Web Mistress had confirmed that it was every bit as sapient as a flesh and blood person, though perhaps one with… well, it would be wrong to call them behavioral disorders in something not human, but that was the closest equivalent he could think of. Something like different shades of autism, for instance. Nemesis simply did not process life like a human, so it was foolish to judge it by human standards.

So, Nemesis definitely had emotions. They just weren’t human emotions. And, despite the digital filter on its voice, those emotions were coming through loud and clear. Nemesis was glad to be finally getting a chance to show what it could do.

The Rhuk shot forward, towards the group of patrol craft that was trying to intercept us. The grav lances were less powerful than the pulse torpedoes, but they had a much longer range, able to target ships up to 2.5 light seconds away. If the numbers I was pulling from the System files about these patrol craft were accurate, then the blasters on the patrol craft lost out by three hundred thousand kilometers.

Calculating Range Modifiers to OCV

Base OCV = 14 OCV

Megascale (1m = 1000km), 750000km = -2 OCV

Basic Shot (+2 vs Range Modifier) = 0 OCV

Telescopic Vision (+8 vs Range Modifier) = 8 OCV

One of the things we discovered during trials was that, surprise surprise, the System said it was harder to hit things at extreme ranges. Most people already figured this out, of course, but what they hadn’t learned was that the Megascale advantage interacted with the range modifiers in interesting ways. In this case, it made the System treat a range of 750k kilometers the same as it would 750 meters, before it started applying bonuses like the Basic Shot maneuver or Telescopic Vision. Nice for us.

Segment 2:

Rhuk Shields cost 6 END

Rhuk uses Multipower Attack (Grav Lance x4)

Rhuk uses Basic Shot (+0 OCV, +0 DCV, +2 Range, +2 DC)

Rhuk’s Attack Roll (PC 1), OCV 8: 3d6 = 9 (Hits DCV 10) (Hit)

Grav Lance: 4d6 = 32 BODY (7 DEF after AP)

Grav Lance: 4d6 = 45 BODY (7 DEF after AP)

Grav Lance: 4d6 = 31 BODY (7 DEF after AP)

Grav Lance: 4d6 = 46 BODY (7 DEF after AP)

PC 1: -102/25 BODY (Destroyed)

Rhuk: 194/200 END Reserve

The first live test of the Rhuk’s new weapons was… instructive. The ‘multipower attack’ bit was something that I knew about (it was what we’d done with the pulse torpedoes just moments ago, after all), but I had never really bothered with it, since my powers were typically not set up in a way where it would be helpful. However, when Nemesis lit off the four forward turrets the sheer OBLITERATION that was the target patrol craft made me a believer. At least for my ship’s weapons.

Of course, the old rule of combat was that anything you could do could be done to you, so we would have to be careful of getting the undivided attention of ships that were sporting lots of weapons in the future. For now, though, these patrol craft were so thoroughly outclassed that it wasn’t even funny. As evidenced by the fact that their engines, despite sending them hurtling about at speeds of 6 million kilometers per hour, while we were reaching speeds of 12 million kilometers per hour racing towards them, still needed a minute to get into extreme range of their weapons. Unfortunately for them, their targeting at extreme range was nowhere near as good as ours was, and we had predictive algorithms running increasing the Rhuk’s DCV by +10. After all, fair fights were for other people.

All seven of the remaining patrol craft in the first wave ended up the same way as the extremely unlucky Patrol Craft 1. But that little exchange had convinced whoever was in charge of the fleet to take us seriously. The remaining ships looked to be charging their warp drives. Probably to skip the massive amount of space between us so they could actually have a shot. And there were fighters launching from the space station in orbit.

“Web Mistress, while Nemesis plays with their food, be a dear and rip apart the data networks. I want to know everything about what is going on in this system, and the Empire in general.”