Three Square Meals Ch. 111

*Here you go!* Alyssa widened the connection between them, channelling a torrent of psychic power into Dana that supercharged every fibre of her being.

When Dana's eyes snapped open, they were ablaze with a glorious golden light and she held her hands in front of her as she stared out into space. Her gaze locked onto the lead drone carrier and she used it as the fulcrum for the energy she was unleashing. It was harder working by line of sight, rather than being able to touch her target, but Dana had no intention of being anywhere near that drone carrier when she was done with it.

Energy arced over the ochre hull, quickly gathering into a golden maelstrom focused in the middle of the trembling capital ship. Roiling waves of force began to darken in the centre, light now sucked in rather than blazing across the cosmos as Dana massively ramped up the gravitational forces. Sections of the Kirrix ship began to buckle, twisting ominously as it succumbed to the enormous pressure it was under.

Dana cried out as she threw her full psychic might into her terrifying stellar construct, the drone carrier folding up like a crumpled tin can as it violently imploded. The Kirrix ship ripped itself apart in a savage explosion, the subsequent blast wave hurtling outwards before being sucked back in on itself. What had once been an enormous capital ship was now compressed into a solid sphere of ochre-hued debris, the orb glowing with a forbidding golden light. The two nearest drone carriers began to lurch towards the mangled wreckage, dragged inexorably into the newly-formed gravity well.

She wavered unsteadily, then Rachel and Tashana were beside her, catching Dana before she could fall and helping her to sit on the deck. "Thanks..." the redhead muttered, sagging in their arms. "I think I overdid it a bit."

Rachel gaped at her lover in wonder. "And I thought Alyssa was powerful..."

Dana gave her a tired but contented smile. "Not bad, eh?"

"There's no escape for the Kirrix now..." Tashana said, watching the pair of ochre capital ships desperately throwing their engines into full reverse.

***

John unsheathed his Crystal Alyssium sword and started to gather his will, channelling it into the glistening blade. Runes flared as they responded to his psychic might, feeding off the eldritch energy and amplifying it until the blade seethed with raw power. He turned to look out through the airlock door, his eyes settling on the perfect target. They were hurtling between two columns of hive ships in the centre of the enemy formation, which meant the Raptor was about to pass one of the segmented alien vessels on the starboard side.

*The girls stripped the shields, it's ready,* Alyssa informed him, although she sounded distracted.

*Everything okay?* he asked as he swung back his sword in preparation.

His young matriarch hesitated for a second before replying, *Dana overdid it a bit, but she's fine... just exhausted. Her gravity well will stop the Kirrix jumping out though, they won't dare go into hyper-warp anywhere near that thing.*

John paused and asked with concern, *Is she alright maintaining it?*

*Yeah, she's already done the hard work and I'm keeping her topped up with energy,* Alyssa replied, her tone reassuring. *Besides, she won't need to maintain it for long.*

He lunged forward, whipping his sword around and letting fly the powerful arc of telekinetic energy he'd been building within the blade. The blue wall of force swept across the short gap between the ships and blasted into the trio of engines, battering them apart with the titanic impact. The orange glow from the huge propulsion systems guttered out, the engines going dark as power feeds and fuel lines were unceremoniously severed.

*Alright, let's knock out the rest of the hive ships as fast as possible,* he agreed, before looking over his shoulder at the blonde. *How's everyone else doing?*

***

Jade watched the holographic depictions of the Kirrix fleet, her emerald eyes narrowed in concentration as she studied the enemy capital ships. The Kirrix were firing their broadsides as soon as their Neutron Beam batteries had cooled, so she carefully timed her wild manoeuvres to coincide with each salvo.

The Nymph shoved the flight stick forward and ramped up the Invictus' thrust to maximum, the six Trankaran engines roaring to life as the battlecruiser charged into the dive. Her opponents were expecting her to make another roll and bank, just as Jade had done the last three times, so the Kirrix gunners were caught completely unprepared by the rapid shift in direction. Twin barrages sailed harmlessly above the Invictus' topdeck, not landing a single hit with over forty energy beams.

"How do you do that?!" Faye marvelled, watching her in fascination. "It's no wonder the Kirrix can't hit you... I haven't got a clue what you're going to do next!"

Jade flashed her a grin and shrugged. "I just do whatever feels right. It's like hunting an apex predator... you keep them off-balance until it's time to strike!"

She smiled in satisfaction as Calara returned fire, the 16 Tachyon Lances from the topdeck slicing the first drone carrier in half. The Nymph pulled the flightstick back then directly to the left, pushing the battlecruiser into a fast roll that brought the 24 Tachyon Lances on the underbelly to bear. Anticipating the death-roll, Calara had already picked out two more drone carriers for execution, splitting her gun batteries between them. For a split-second the Invictus was connected to each ship by 14 brilliant columns of light, until their shields overloaded and she filleted the enemy capital ships, energy beams carving them up into ruined hulks.

Faye sighed in frustration, knowing that she'd never be able to fly by instinct like the Nymph. The best way she could emulate Jade's wild unpredictability would be to modify her piloting algorithms, perhaps selecting her manoeuvres purely by random rather than by choice. She imagined the kind of piloting disasters that might result in and shuddered at the thought, quickly dismissing it. Faye knew that Jade wasn't flying completely at random, she was skilfully misdirecting her opponents, but it was astonishing that she could do it without much conscious thought.

With Calara manning most of the guns and Jade showcasing her exceptional piloting, Faye was left without much to do. Her avatars were all occupied, with Secondary flying the Raptor, Tertiary acting as her gunner, leaving Quaternary through to Duo-denary manning the Pulse Cannons and shredding any drone fighters that came in range. That left Faye Primary at a bit of a loose end and she meandered over to the IntOps station to see how Irillith was progressing. The Maliri hacker stared intently at a bank of holo screens, her angular eyes shining with a fierce violet light.

"Have you had any luck breaking through yet, Creator?" Faye enquired politely as she leaned against the console.

"Not yet..." Irillith murmured, sounding eerily distracted. "But I'm trying another psychically assisted hack like I did with the Vulkat archive."

"Thinking like a Kirrix?" Faye asked, her curiosity piqued.

"Pretty much... except for the rape and murder part," the Maliri replied, her brow furrowed in concentration. "They seem to use six-sided shapes a lot inside their ships, so I'm thinking the solution is hex-based... The Kirrix work as a Hive Mind too, although I'm not sure how relevant that might be..."

The purple sprite waited patiently for any signs of a breakthrough, glancing back at the holographic depiction of the battle that floated in the centre of the Bridge to see how it was progressing. Between the Invictus and the Valkyrie, the Kirrix drone carriers were being systematically annihilated, unable to withstand the ferocious power of the Tachyon Lances. Meanwhile, John and Alyssa were working their way along the Hive ships, knocking out their engines and leaving them marooned in space.

Turning back to Irillith, she tentatively offered, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Irillith shook her head, her frustration quite clear. "Afraid not. I'm struggling to even make any kind of data connection. It's worse than the Vulkat archives... at least I was able to view their data and try to decipher a way of interpreting their system. With the Kirrix, it's like there's no digital network there!"

"Maybe there isn't?" Faye suggested, lost in thought. "Or at least not in the way we would expect. Perhaps they use some kind of organic computing?"

The Maliri turned away from the screens to give Faye her full focus. "Yes... that might explain it. So how would the Kirrix setup their computers in the first place? Psychically?"

"Are the drones powerful enough for that?" Faye asked, looking dubious.

Irillith shook her head. "Perhaps just the higher-tier Kirrix interact directly with their computers? We know the Hive Lords and Broodmothers are both psychic..." She glanced back at her holo-screens and chose one of the Hive ships at random. "Let me just try something..."

***

Zelkrixa watched the battle through her children with mounting dread, unable to look away from the horrifying spectacle of two mighty drone carriers being dragged to their destruction. Retro-thrusters blazed along their flanks as they frantically turned, desperate to use their full engines to escape the freakish gravity anomaly that had just appeared before them. By the time they were fully rotated and flying at maximum thrust, they were far too close to evade its powerful gravitational clutches.

The engines were the first part of those vessels to make contact and they buckled and cracked with the impact, going still as the grave and accelerating the capital ship's demise. Breaking and twisting in their death throes, the huge hulls were soon little more than a crumpled outer layer to the sinister ball of ochre metal, which glimmered with a macabre light that seemed to hunger for more blood. The appalling death toll left Zelkrixa stunned, as she knew that 10,000 drones crewed each vessel. What was even more shocking was that most of the drone carrier entourage had already been destroyed by that malevolent white ship, leaving only three vessels out of the original twelve.

She had no time to grieve however, as she was too busy directing her drones into making evasive manoeuvres. Continuing with their existing course would just result in sharing the fate of those mangled drone carriers, but at the same time, Hive ships were being quickly incapacitated behind her. She ordered her children to make an abrupt turn to port and scatter from the rest of their besieged fleet.

Her crew shut down the port and central engines, while ramping up power to the starboard one, assisting the retro-thrusters and accelerating the turn. As soon as they were facing away from the battered Kirrix fleet, power was ramped up to full and the Hive ship made a run for safety. Zelkrixa was just daring to breathe a sigh of relief when she received a flurry of bizarre messages from her drones... It seemed that doors throughout the vessel were acting bizarrely, opening and closing without being prompted to do so. There were a whole catalogue of other reported issues, with systems randomly deactivating before powering up again.

Zelkrixa reached out to the living core that controlled the systems of the Fertile Dream, in a hurry to investigate what was wrong. Her Hive ship had served her faithfully for decades without so much as a single problem, so this sudden series of glitches was greatly disturbing. She initiated psychic contact and was expecting to be met with the usual helpful eagerness to assist, but instead sensed a profound state of bewilderment.

*What is wrong?* she demanded, her voice sharp with alarm. *Why are you operating systems without instruction?*

*I serve, as I have always done...* the Fertile Dream replied, sounding even more confused.

*I did not ask you to perform those orders!* Zelkrixa exclaimed in panic.

Then Zelkrixa froze... sensing another presence there, something malignant and disturbingly alien.

*No, but I did...* Irillith said with a wicked smile. *This is a fascinating construct. I just needed to figure out how it works, so I could do this...*

Zelkrixa yanked her mind out of the ship, quivering with terror as she realised some insidious servant of the Progenitor beasts had infiltrated her Hive ship. She stared in shock as doors throughout the vessel slammed open, all except those that led into the nest and impregnation chamber. Then the outer hull doors began to lift and she screeched in horrified disbelief as the atmospheric shielding was deactivated. Her entire crew was then sucked through corridors and forcibly blasted out of the Hive ship. She could only watch helplessly as her choking children asphyxiated in the freezing vacuum of space, each death marked by their sudden painful disappearance from her mind.

Shrieking with grief, Zelkrixa's mind threatened to break under the strain of losing her entire brood that she'd spent a lifetime tending. Over 13000 of her precious children were gone in less than five minutes...

***

*That's the last of them,* Alyssa said cheerfully, as John's psychic arc battered the rear of the hive ship, disabling its engines. *Sakura just gunned down the final drone carrier and we've swept the battlefield clear of strikecraft.*

He lowered his sword and spotted a broad door opening in the side of the hive ship, shortly followed by a macabre plume of thrashing insectoids. *Has Irillith vented all the crews?*

*All except the Broodmothers and Hive Lords,* she quickly replied. *She could have taken out the Broodmothers as well, but I'd like to have a little chat with one while we're evacuating the prisoners. I want to try to save the colonists on Menganus IV, Karron, and Valia Gate...*

*What're you planning?* John asked, watching the Kirrix drones go still.

He leaned out of the airlock and glanced each way, nodding with satisfaction as he saw no signs of movement in what was left of the marooned Kirrix fleet. Hive ships hung motionless in space, the forlorn ochre vessels surrounded by debris, which was all that remained of their propulsion systems.

Alyssa placed her hand on his shoulder, letting him know she was there. *Another bluff.*

He turned to face her and raised an eyebrow. "You're not seriously considering trying to contact the Hive Mind again are you? Don't you remember what they did to you last time?"

She pulled off her helmet and nodded, her expression grim. "No, I haven't forgotten by a long shot. But we're talking about the lives of 40,000 people... I've got to do something."

"Do you want to tell me about it, or is this another one of your surprises?" John asked, his frown making his opinion on the latter quite clear.

She looked him in the eyes. "I need your opinion on this one. I want to try to make a deal with the Kirrix, but I want to make sure you agree on the terms..."

"Why don't you tell me about it on the way to the first hive ship?" he suggested, sealing the airlock door behind him.

Alyssa nodded, then stifled a yawn. "Sure. Faye's taking us there now."

John studied her with concern. "Are you alright?"

"Just a bit tired," she replied with a shrug. "I used tons of energy this morning in the fight with the Hive Queen, then Dana needed loads more to make her gravity well."

His expression grew troubled as he said, "If you're thinking about speaking to the Hive Mind, you'll need to be sharp... just in case they try anything again."

Alyssa hesitated for a moment then nodded reluctantly. "You're right. I don't want to be doing this tired..."

"Go get some rest, honey," he said, giving her a sympathetic smile. "We've got a dozen hive ships to board... It'll take us hours to disembark all those colonists to the Invictus."

When he pulled off his helmet, she leaned in to kiss him. "Okay, I'll go have a nap. When I wake up again, I'll tell you all the details..."

***

Admiral Nathan Zelig studied the initial reports from the medical teams on Carolus III, his mouth set in a grim frown. While it was true that the Lion had miraculously scoured the system of Kirrix forces, unfortunately the rescue had come too late for many colonists. The medics reported the deaths of thousands of children and elderly citizens, all of whom had been deemed too small or too weak to serve as hosts by their cruel and sadistic captors.

The comms interface chimed, interrupting his reading of the bleak casualty reports. It was an incoming call from Admiral John Blake, so Zelig quickly swiped his hand across to accept it. "It's good to see you again, John," he said courteously.

"Likewise, Nathan," John replied, giving him a friendly smile. "I just wanted to give you a status update to keep you informed. We hit the Kirrix fleet as they were evacuating Brecken's World and managed to catch them still in the Eta Piscium system before they could jump out. We're about to start boarding actions to rescue all the colonists, then we'll start treatment of the infested and return them to their homeworld."

"That's excellent news!" Zelig exclaimed, feeling a surge of relief. "I probably shouldn't be surprised after the miracle you performed on Carolus III, but that's great to hear."

"You're still several hours from Tasmaris Prime aren't you?" John asked, leaning back in the pilot's chair aboard the Raptor.

Zelig nodded, glancing at the Sector Map floating above his desk. "We're currently following the intercept course Alyssa provided... I must say, my navigator was astonished when he saw the flight path she created."

John laughed, his smile infectious. "I remember that feeling! I trained her myself, but she soon made me look like a bumbling amateur." He glanced off-screen, then focused on the admiral again. "We're just about to dock with a hive ship, so I better go. Good luck in the battle, Nathan. I hope you don't need it."

"Wait, John!" Zelig blurted out, raising a hand to stop him ending the call. "I need to talk to you about Carolus III."

Looking concerned, John asked, "Is everything okay? The medical teams didn't get ambushed by Kirrix did they?"

"No, you did a thorough job... the marines providing security haven't reported contact with a single surviving Kirrix trooper," Zelig quickly replied. He looked despondent as he continued, "I just wanted to forewarn you about the Brecken's World colonists..."

John frowned in confusion. "Warn me about what?"

"My medical teams have reported an epidemic of suicides on Carolus III..." Zelig replied, his voice as sombre as his expression.

John's face fell and he slowly shook his head. "But they're safe now... Why would they do that?"

"My medical teams believe that a few were because they couldn't handle the shame and humiliation." He let out a heavy sigh. "But most of them are parents, John. They can't cope with what happened to their children..."

"I can't even imagine how horrific that must be..." John said softly, gazing off into the distance. "Those poor people..."

"According to the medics, they're suffering from a deadly combination of grief and survivor's guilt," Zelig said, glancing at the report. "We've been trying to identify all the parents, so we can keep a close eye on them and help with grief counselling."

"I should have thought of that," John said, slumping in his chair. "I saw how devastated the survivors were..."

Zelig gave him a sympathetic look. "Don't blame yourself for this, John. If it wasn't for you, all those colonists would have died. You saved hundreds-of-thousands of people and helped them as much as you could. I just wanted to give you adequate warning so you can take the appropriate steps with the Brecken's World colonists."

John sighed then nodded in gratitude. "I appreciate it, Nathan. Thanks for letting me know."