Ravens of Eternity

428 The Center of the Galaxy, Pt Just as Freya was coming to the realization that their fight was nigh insurmountable and that they only held a very slim chance of winning, everything turned for the worse.

To her horror, the station’s surface began to shift and move and flow, almost like quicksand.

Every crater and scar began to fill back up and cover each of the wreckages and detritus inside of them. The station’s surface swallowed up the broken, destroyed ships that were dotted all over bit by bit as the moments passed.

As it did so, the nanite pool dissolved everything it touched. Large swaths of torn armor or chitin plating, exoframes and internal structures, modules and systems, flesh and bone. All were consumed by the station’s nanites and broken down to their finer elements.

Once completely separated into elemental soup, they were all redistributed all around the pool. Possibly even to the seven other pools as well.

It only took a half dozen seconds before the surface had once again become completely still and flat and featureless. Every wreckage and crater that had marred the station’s surface were gone. It was as though they were never there at all.

Before the surface could be struck by more falling detritus of freshly destroyed ships, it moved.

Like before, ripples spread across the surface once again. As it did so, more devastators and battleships formed from the soup and rose up. The fresh ships shook off whatever nanite sand that was still atop them, adjusted their bearing, and advanced towards the Einherjar.

Freya’s heart skipped a beat when she truly realized what they were up against. What she thought before was insurmountable was only scratching the surface, literally. The station had an infinite amount of materials to create a fleet.

.....

It swallowed up all the dead and brought them all back to life, fresh and unscratched.

This truly became an impossible situation – one where they couldn’t possibly win at all.

Her thoughts turned to Lucifer suddenly, and understood what ze was going through in the last moments of hir life. What impossibilities were in front of hir were now also in front of Freya, along with the same choice.

Whatever faults she might have thrust upon the universe slipped away all of a sudden. Everything literally held no meaning any longer, at least in the face of such finality.

Well, almost everything.

There was the Corvus Republic by her side. And of course all of the service members of the Einherjar. They were all worth something, regardless of whatever sins they held. In fact, in this very moment, their existence was the only meaning left in the universe. Perhaps even every universe.

Freya realized that she was partly to blame for all this. That her actions led everyone around her down this path. That perhaps if she didn’t start a massive war party to seek revenge, none of them would be here, in the face of complete annihilation.

Of course, the only answer to saving them, perhaps, was to fully atone for her sin. To do her best to undo the damage she had done to the galaxy.

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Right now, there was only one way she knew how to achieve this.

It dawned on her that Lucifer had once again come to the same conclusion as her, only much faster. She supposed that was the problem with relying too much on her own instincts – some realizations came far too late.

“It’s alright,” she whispered to herself. “We’ll meet again somewhere, at some point, in some other universe.”

Like Lucifer before her, the only way out was to give the problem in front of her absolutely everything she had.

Her heart thumped heavily in her chest as she entered Ascendant Form, as did Thanatos all around her. Energy quickly filled her body as she embraced her very being.

And hoped that it was enough to tear the station apart.

“All ships of the Einherjar!” she commanded over comms. “Prepare the fleet for emergency port. At the same time, focus fire on my mark! Give it everything you’ve got! We’re gonna tear a hole right through that station’s thick hide!”

“And then what?” said Halbrecht. “So we tear a hole in it – there’s still that massive fleet to contend with!”

“Don’t worry about that!” Freya responded quickly. “Everyone ‘port out the moment it’s opened up. I’ll take care of the rest.”

She was met with gasps from her declaration. It was clear what she was attempting to do. But before anyone could agree or protest or argue or debate, Raijin quickly interjected.

“You will do no such thing!” she said. Her words seemed to echo all over comms.

“We’ve got no choice!” Freya cried out. “If I don’t act, we might all die!”

“Why do you believe that only you have the strength to overcome our enemies?” Raijin countered. “Power is not within one person’s hands, but in all of ours, combined! By your same logic, if it takes the rest of the fleet to rip through the armor, then it will also take all of us detonating in order to obliterate it from within.

“However, by my calculations, even that will be far from enough! Our collective destructive capacity could perhaps only shatter a third of that station. Maybe half. In either case, the station can easily reform itself, especially if there is no-one else to stop it.”

As she spoke, more ships from both sides exchanged fire, and more ships from both sides were torn apart and turned to slag. More crew died, and the station’s surface became dotted with wrecks and craters once again.

“No, we will not go with Lucifer’s Final Strategy this time,” Raijin continued. “We will use Xylo’s Sniper Lattice instead.”

Freya’s brow furrowed, then realized what Raijin was talking about. Mechageddon seemed so long ago now that she had almost forgotten. Back then, Xylo tied everyone’s power plants together so they could all far overcharge her weapon for a single devastating shot.

It was everything they needed to turn the tide and win the match, even if it cost them the gun.

“Tell us what we gotta do,” she said.

“Simple,” Raijin replied. “We link our power plants, overcharge your graviton guns, amplify the station’s weight significantly, and cause it to fall into Sagittarius A*’s accretion disk. Then we simply let gravity do the rest for us.”

Gasps erupted from the officers on the tactical bridge. Their eyes were wide at the simplicity of the plan. But of course, things weren’t quite that simple.

“Which means we go in, too,” said Orsethii. “We’re in this thing’s orbit after all, so you know. We’re all goners regardless.”

“That’d be true even if we destroyed the station conventionally,” Colviss rebuked. “If it wasn’t for the station’s protective field, we’d all be evaporated by the overwhelming amounts of radiation here.”

“Not only that, but it’s gonna take time to set up the energy lattice,” said Sin. “And we don’t exactly have time…”

“I have already taken care of that,” Raijin intoned. “I have taken the liberty of linking every fleet’s network to each other. Energy transference can run along those same paths.”

“Alright. Time to stop gawking, and let’s get to work,” said Freya. “Anali, orders.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Anali quickly replied. “Einherjar! Shield formation! Increase energy to repairs and defense matrices. Overcharge all power plants and pour all excess energy through the lattice!”

The ships of the Einherjar immediately moved into position. Their three devastators took up the front along with the hardiest battleships in the fleet. They soaked up all of the incoming damage from the enemy below. At the same time, the rest of the fleet hid behind numerous layers of heavily armored ships.

That easily allowed them to pour all of their excess power output through the energy lattice and into Thanatos. The lattice visibly glowed out in space as the sheer amount of energy passed between the ships – everyone literally overcharged everything they had to the maximum and sent every bit forward.

Freya focused all of the excess energies into her Graviton Wave Disruptors and filled them with obscene amounts of power.

But she was far from done. She also opened up herself all the way with Ascendant Form, and allowed her own rich energies to permeate every molecule in her body. As she poured everything she had into herself, so too did Thanatos.

Its numerous demimatter generators swelled as they filled every circuit with boundless energy. They too were channeled straight towards the massive battleship-sized guns hovering outside.

Space warped at the very front of the stinger-like tips to the point that everything around it began to get pulled in. The chitin plating closest to it began to bulge outward, unable to resist the disruptors’ gravity wells.

The gravity wells expanded and grew, then contracted and condensed as the moments passed. The guns hummed as increasing amounts of energy flowed through them.

In fact, they had condensed so much gravitational force that tiny black holes began to form right at the wells’ nuclei. And as a result, any incoming beam fire began to bend and warp towards Thanatos.

And then, just as Thanatos hit its peak, the enemy ships stopped firing their beams. They left numerous scars half-completed on the Einherjar’s wrecked armor. Thanatos’ hide was also deeply scarred and wrecked, with some close enough to touch the exoframe.

Not only that, but an alert came on all their comms – one they couldn’t ignore.

—

ALERT

Requesting cease fire.

Requesting parley.

Communications request inbound.

—

Freya and all of the officers of the Einherjar were completely astounded at what they were seeing. Claire was quick to answer the comms request, and allowed whoever was on the station to speak.

The image of a young woman flashed on their comms displays and holoprojectors. She wore a simple uniform, and had a simple and common countenance. Basically, she seemed like any normal person.

“Greetings, Einherjar,” she began. “Greetings, Corvus Republic. I am the Administrator of this station, and I would like to call for parley.”

“Why?” Freya demanded. “Afraid we were about to wreck you?”

“Afraid? Perhaps. Logically speaking, I have determined that going any further in this conflict would result in mutually assured destruction. Only by opening parley is there a chance of… survival. For you or for me. Or perhaps all parties involved.”

“You’re not just seeking to survive certain death,” Raijin said. “You’re also seeking to defeat us in some way, neh?”

“I must ensure the station’s survival at all costs,” the Administrator replied. “Even if I do not agree with those costs.”

“I don’t trust you,” Colviss said. “You’ve got the tech to wipe out entire nations. Yet you wanna parley against a comparatively tiny navy? Sounds like a trap to me.”

“Then by that logic, I should have fired on you the moment you all hesitated,” the Administrator countered.

“I agree with Colviss’ assessment,” Anali added. “But I also don’t like the thought of mutually assured destruction at all. If there’s a chance to avoid that, I think we should take it.”

“How ‘bout this, then?” Freya said. “We do open parley, but as a safety precaution, you allow me to get Thanatos inside your station somehow. So if you act against your word, I can end things quickly and violently.”

“That is not a fair proposition,” Raijin interjected. “The Administrator has no assurance that you will not go against your word and detonate regardless of how the talks proceed. I will come with you to ensure you do not simply do that.”

“Same with me,” said Claire. “Also, it’s my duty as a representative of the Corvus Republic to attend this parley in person.”

“This is acceptable,” said the Administrator after a moment. “Please, come inside.”

The station’s ships moved out of the way, and cleared the path for the Einherjar to advance. Or at least, for Thanatos to advance. The surface of the station itself rippled and parted into an entrance, to everyone’s utter astonishment.

More than that, the layers beneath the crust also shifted and moved. Every module and system and circuit dissolved into nanite soup and parted into a deep tunnel.

It did so all the way down to the inner core, thousands of kilometers deep, and made a path for Thanatos to fly.