System Supervillain, Chapter 145

Chapter 145 – Symbols

Eighteen months to the day after the Gel-nak started the invasion, and we were finally ready to go. As much as I would have liked to get this show on the road earlier, I hadn’t lived this long as a villain by being an idiot. Most of the time.

Part of not being an idiot, as a general rule, meant checking your equipment and gear, and making sure everything worked before you got out in the field. The further you were from possible resupply, the more important that became. A faulty source of water was annoying, in a city, but if you were attacking a site in the middle of the desert, you wanted to make sure that your Atmospheric Condensation Canteen was working properly, because otherwise finding a tap to refill your water bottle from was going to be a pain in the ass.

That same line of thought extended to people, as well. If you were going to be going into stressful situations with people, it was better to have an idea of how they functioned under stress, and how their methods interacted with yours. When you were going out to take on an interstellar empire and bring it to its knees, you needed to know what the people around you were going to do in a given situation. Especially when one of the new crowd was the literal brains of your ship.

Working with NemesisSpark (or just Nemesis, if you didn’t want to be formal) was an interesting challenge. Gender was a ‘fleshbag social construct’, according to Nemesis, but, in English, at least, using ‘it’ to describe someone had connotations of them being more of an object than a person. I wasn’t above treating people like objects, when they were obstacles in my way or something that needed to be managed to achieve my goals. However, treating Nemesis like that was the first step on a really slippery slope that megalomaniacal villains often slid down, leading to them ignoring the needs of their minions and usually ending up getting betrayed.

I was allergic to knives in my back, which is why I always sought to avoid that trap. Sure, most of my minions were bound to me so thoroughly through the transformative powers of my ring that it took a great force of will to go against me, and the System itself stopped them from directly harming me, but I wasn’t fool enough to believe that meant I was safe. Push anyone hard enough, and they’ll look to find loopholes in the controls, and find ways to betray me while still following all my commands. And I knew I wasn’t mastermind enough to close all the possible loopholes with standing orders.

Of course, the last six months hadn’t just been working on our teamwork. The Rhuk was a beautiful ship, sleek and deadly, the first of its kind. Not just for being a warship that was AI controlled, but also for being the first spaceship built post-System. Working out the technical details and all the kinks in the system took time, because the Mechanics from the Guild didn’t know what to look out for. And because I couldn’t just pop back from another star system for repairs, working out any problems before we left was extra important.

Still, now, we were ready. I walked up the Rhuk’s ramp, with Web Mistress at my side, and followed by Bloodmoon, Stolen Victory, Pyra, Serafina, Foxtrot, FX, Titania, Mindtaker, Mistress Midnight, Lucy Morningstar, and Sibila. Together, we had enough firepower to put entire countries on notice. However, that didn’t mean we were invincible, and I wouldn’t let any of us (most of all myself) think otherwise. Villains who thought they couldn’t be defeated eventually found out that they were very wrong. Overconfidence was a killer.

Once on board, Web Mistress, Titania, and I split off towards the bridge, while the others headed for crew quarters, to get settled in. Why was there a bridge on a ship that was completely AI controlled? For the same reason self-driving vehicles still had manual overrides. Sometimes, things broke, and needed ‘hands on’ adjustments. Also, if I had to threaten someone over the comms, doing so from a captain’s chair on a bridge made more of an impression than just standing in a hallway. Perception was important, after all.

“Nemesis,” I called out as we stepped onto the bridge, “system report.”

A robotic voice, taken from a commercially available text-to-speech program, came through the speaker for the ship’s intercom. “All systems green, Iceblade. The last performance issues noted in the trial runs have been corrected. Food stores, ammunition for the main cannon, and the portal devices have been brought aboard and safely stowed for transit. We are ready to depart.”

I nodded once, as I sat in the captain’s chair. It was mostly ceremonial, symbolic. However, anyone who was involved in the game of heroes and villains knew the value of symbols. Even Nemesis understood it. Though, in its case, that was due to it reading several psychological studies on the subject, and conversing with Web Mistress. That, along with a review of current events.

Symbols were what turned the tide in the invasion, after all. I’d made three symbolic attacks during the invasion. First, I eliminated the commander of the fleet, and taunted the Gel-nak, so that they couldn’t provide orbital fire support to break down resistance. Then, I furthered that by broadcasting the ‘honorable deaths’ of the carrier’s engineering crew, which set doubt in the invaders’ minds. And then, I killed their Emperor, and shattered the gate bringing supplies to London, which turned the situation in the three contested cities into a rout.

Now, I was about to take this ship, and its passengers, on a journey across the stars, for another symbol. This one, however, was not aimed primarily at the Gel-nak, or Earth. The Gel-nak Empire was not the only power out there in the galaxy. I intended to make an example of the Gel-nak, not just as punishment for threatening my women and children, but to ensure that anyone who considered Earth to be on the menu for conquest thought long and hard about it before they pulled that trigger. The Gel-nak would be my symbol to the rest of the galaxy about why my people were off limits.

“And what about the final touches I asked for?”

“As requested, a stylized design of a Rhuk, taken from cultural records in the Gel-nak databases aboard the captured fleet, has been painted at the prow of the ship, along with the ship’s name in both English and Gelna, the official language of the Empire. The cosmetic flourishes can be highlighted with external lighting, if desired, but will not affect stealth performance when unlit.”

“And the communications systems?”

“Standard communications array functioning as intended. The recently added quantum-linked communication system is online and ready. You can expect real-time communication with linked devices at ranges up to 100 light-years.”

I nodded. When I agreed to take portal devices to allow people from Moscow and other areas to conduct a ‘cultural exchange’ with the Gel-nak, the question of logistics came to mind. Unlike the Gel-nak during the invasion, I did not have the luxury of creating a massive city shield and thousands of troops to create a perimeter while the portal powered on and people on the other side got organized and came through. On the other hand, having troops on the other side, waiting for days, weeks, or months, depending on how quickly I could get things set up? That was a recipe for disaster, as well.

Thankfully, people were still in the ‘set aside our differences to deal with the bigger problem’ phase, so reaching out to a couple tech-minded heroes like Silver Knight allowed us to get a series of quantum-linked transmitters. The science of it was so far beyond me that it might as well be space magic, but I could understand the important parts. The transmitters basically created a network of twenty-five devices that could talk to each other individually or in a group, at ranges up to one hundred light-years.

Coincidentally, that was the range the portal devices worked at, too. Well, I would have put it up as the more problematic kind of ‘coincidence’, but the truth was that the System made that kind of thing more likely to happen, given how the main advantage to boost the range of things, such as the transmission range of a radio, was the Megascale advantage, and, after a certain point, it jumped from 1 trillion kilometers (a little over a light-month) to 1 light-year, then to 10, then to 100 light-years. That was just the nature of the System.

I took a breath, and said, “Contact ground control. Tell them the Rhuk is ready to fly.”

“Confirmation received. Ground control has begun flooding the launch bay.”

Of course, a ship like the Rhuk couldn’t just sit around in plain view. Not because I was worried about heroes coming to foil my nefarious plans, since most of them were either in support of my goals, or were going to quietly look the other way and not rock the boat. However, the Guild didn’t like advertising the fact that they had a shipyard capable of making spacecraft. Especially not one that was hidden under Antarctic ice.

Sure, the place was originally designed for building and launching submarines. Best way to get to your secret underwater base, if you didn’t have magic portals and the like, was a submarine, after all. Thankfully, the facilities that existed to make sure a ship could go underwater were surprisingly similar to those that made one which could go in space. And having the launch bay open up under the ice meant that they weren’t out in anyone’s face advertising the fact that they had a shipyard. The supers might look the other way on the Guild’s holdings, but every so often government officials tried to take a swing at the ‘forces supporting the supervillain plague’, or some such bullshit, so hiding things at least a little bit was simply smart business.

“Docking clamps released. All compartments on internal life support. Inner bay doors opening.”

I took a breath, and said, “Ahead slow, Nemesis. We don’t want to annoy the Guild.”

“Acknowledgement. Antagonization of Guild facility staff without valid reason is categorized as unintelligent and illogical. Thrusters engaging.”

A light humming in the deck plates signaled the engines coming online. Thankfully, the ionic drive engines in atmospheric flight configuration could actually be used underwater, as well, so we didn’t have to worry about such things. However, we were using thrusters only for maneuvering inside the dock. It was much slower, but it was more precise than the main drives. It didn’t matter how good the steering was, when you could only ‘back down’ to going Mach 1.5 with the engines, then that was officially too damn fast for any building you wanted to keep intact. The thrusters, meanwhile, had a maximum speed of just over 25 kph under normal conditions. Much easier to handle.

“Entering primary launch bay. Vessel is now submerged. All systems green. Hull pressure within tolerance. No breaches detected. Inner bay doors sealed behind us. Pressure equalizing to exterior conditions. Outer bay doors opening.”

This was the seventh time we’d taken the Rhuk out from this base. Every time, Nemesis went through the launch checklist like, well, a computer following its program. I didn’t mind. Double-checking the things that kept us from becoming very dead villains was always a priority for me. Most safety checklists seemed boring, but they were written in the blood of those who made them necessary. Sometimes literally, if whoever it was survived, but the person writing the new rule was especially annoyed with them.

“Outer bay doors open. Proceeding through the gate. We have exited Antarctic Construction Base Beta. Safe distance reached.”

I took a breath, and said, “Engage main drives. Full speed ahead. Make for transatmospheric boundary. Let’s go teach an Empire what fear is.”