Chapter Ten: Roll that Fort Save!

A klaxon blared throughout the entire launch bay. Svenk Blackscale tried to not cringe at every high, piercing note as he scrambled into his fighter craft, a draconic voice growling from the PA system.

“All wings, launch!”

Svenk Blackscale was not a heroic member of House Bryaugh’s space force. That would have been a remarkable trick for a kobold – even one that had the one tenth dragon blood that was required by the stern admirals and generals that led House Bryaugh’s military forces. But as Svenk wasn’t even a willing member of the space force, heroism felt like it was asking just far too much of his skinny body. His hands shook as he tugged on the flimsy flight helmet and strapped it into place, while goblin technicians swarmed over his fighter craft.

Svenk didn’t know what other noble houses of the Five Tal- er, the Chromatic Dominion used. He knew that he had been trained on the ASP-1011. It was named for its primary armament: A pair of alternating maximized wands that were loaded with the Melf’s acid dart and searing rays spells. They were fairly powerful spells, requiring a class three wizard to enchant them. Thus, most of the ASP-1011s cost was sunk into those two wands and their power source, leaving only a fraction for, say…

“Here,” a female goblin who had had half her face replaced by cosmetic bioplasm after a close call with an exploding reaction thrust a breather into Svenk’s claws. He took it and stuck it to his muzzle, trying to breathe slowly and carefully.

Life support. Shields. Armor. By a dragon’s tits, the only thing that the ASP-1011 had on top of its armament was its speed. And that was because it had nothing else. A frame of aluminum and cloned dragon bone around cockpit, reactor, engine and guns. The goblin workers sang a cheery work song as they screwed and then welded his cockpit shut.

“Please save me, Tiamat...” Svenk whispered. “Please, please save me.”

“This is General Omadon Bryaugh,” a snarling voice growled through his helmet mics. “Wings 12 and 10 are to flank our bombers as they go after the spelljammers that form the centerpiece of the human armada. Their vessels are primitive, relying on only the most simple magic to keep them aloft. Designed for the sea, they will surely fall easy prey. Fighters, you are to focus on the enemy strike craft, if any are launched.”

Svenk nodded.

He could do that. Primitive. He could handle primitive. He had flown four combat missions against pirates, and several of them had used mage-ships. Mage-ships were when you combined a sailing ship with an enchanted magehelm. He pictured belling sails falling to pieces under streams of acid and beams of fire. He liked that image. It was an image to make even a kobold less of a cowards. But still not a hero. This was why, as the fighters prepped for launch, he closed his eyes.

He could never bear to watch the launch.

He felt the gravitic catapult take hold, then heard the faint thump thump thump of a goblin slapping his fuselage. That meant he had-

Acceleration smashed Svenk into his seat and dragged his mouth open as he screeched at the top of his lungs, even as his ASP-1011 shot out of the launch tube that made up a good chunk of the mid-section of the battleship he had served on ever since an impressor came to his hole and forced all the fighting aged males out with morph gas and shock-prods. Then his eyes snapped open and he swung his head around.

And…

It was moments like this when Svenk did not regret his inability to hide when the impressors came. For all the fear and the horror and the killing and the eventuality of dying, he had to admit that space – especially space during war – was utterly beautiful. The space between stars was a black richer and deeper than the most powerful black dragon, and the stars shone with a harsh purity that had no twinkling, no winking, no softening. The curve of the planet and the moon that they were fighting over shone in the distance, and between him and the planet, there was the human armada. And what an armada.

There had to be thousands of ships there. None had thrust plumes or contrails, but each retained a stately beauty about them. There were flat topped ships that cut forward through space, pushed forward by immense columns of propellers that ground and spun behind them. Svenk didn’t know how propellers worked in space, but he figured that the magehelms had something to do with it. There were narrow ships that were studded with turrets, cylindrical ones that bore only a single sparse looking conning tower, but still cruised forward with a predator’s hunting grace. Peppered among them were the more familiar designs of his supposedly hated rivals: Metallic dragons tended towards elegance and beauty...but that didn’t mean the destroyers and battleships and torpedo boats he saw intermixed with the human formation weren’t exceptionally deadly.

“This is Talon Leader,” the sneering voice of Talon Leader Gigzor, the preening, brown nosing, power grabbing, butt kissing schemer, filled his ears. “The scaleless fools have not even launched their fighters! Follow me, Blackscales! Let us show the humans how kobolds die!”

How kobolds kill , you idiot, Svenk thought. Then, gulping, he realized that Gigzor might have meant exactly what he said. After all, Gigzor knew who was listening in on their coms.

Maybe it was stuff like that that got him promoted?

Either way, Svenk sighed and throttled his engine up.

***

“We should send in the B-suits!” Emperor Xosh snarled.

Admiral Thresh did not bridle. It was clear she wished to do more than bridle to Gimtesh. But no, Admiral Thresh instead forced herself to take a deep, calming breath, then said: “My lord Emperor, that would be unwise. We do not know the capacity of the enemies. There are a great deal of them and if we lose here today, that will give the Metallics time to organize and come here to the human’s defense. If we give them a foothold, then this civil war may last decades, rather than months.”

Xosh’s tail lashed. “All the more reason we should commit now!”

Gimtesh could see the eagerness in Xosh’s eyes. The thirst to see this end, and end quickly. She gulped and focused on adding – cell by cell – slightly more length to her left foot. She made sure to do it slowly. Carefully. And only when people weren’t looking at her.

She’d only have one shot.

“If we send in the kobblers...” General Bryaugh said, not looking up from the scrying pit – where glowing icons indicating the first waves of kobold fighters approaching the combined enemy armada. “They can see what the weak points are.”

Thresh gestured to Bryaugh, as if to say: See?

Xosh’s tail lashed. He looked as if he was considering, deeply. But Gimtesh could hear the quiet grinding of his teeth. He slid his arms behind his back and nodded.

“Very well. Carry on.” He spoke the words through gritted teeth. And as he took his seat at the command throne, Gimtesh grew her foot out just a little bit more. Just a little bit more.

***

Merton Miles stood in the airlock, looking at Princess Relix. Relix smiled, shyly, at him. “Come home safe, okay?” she whispered.

“Promise,” Merton said. The weirdest thing about wearing a B-suit (I.E, a transformed dragon that was genetically engineered to be used as a suit of power armor) was that you didn’t actually feel like you were in a suit. Rather, you felt the wind on your scaled balls and had a hard time remembering that normally, you were a squishy human. He grinned slightly as Brash hummed cheerfully in his head. “Now, I gotta get out there.”

“You could stay here. Protect me.” Relix muttered, looking aside.

Merton reached out. He cupped her cheek and murmured. “I have a duty to you and to Julia. Both require me out there. Besides...” He cocked his head. “I have Brash watching my back. Right, little buddy?”

Yup! Brash said, cheerfully – his voice echoing inside of Merton’s head.

Relix muttered something under her breath. It sounded an awful lot like: ‘Stupid noble human jerk bag going off and being heroic.’ She shook her head, then put her clawed palm on his chest and shoved him back into the airlock. The inner doors slammed shut and Merton let himself get blown out of the airlock and into the space above the USS Theodore Roosevel t. Or, as Merton immediately started thinking of it as, the Teddy. The aircraft carrier was one of the fifty or so that humanity had launched into space using magehelms. And one might have thought that an aircraft carrier would be uniquely useless in space.

One would be wrong.

Magehelms functioned by mystically enchanting an entire naval ship to operate in space. The key word being entire . A magical shell of atmosphere surrounded the Teddy, allowing crew to operate on the flight deck without space suits or breathers or even sun hats.

The first of the F-15 and F-16s and F-35s and F-22As and whatever other Fs that they had crammed onto the Teddy launched into space with a scream of jet engines. Yes, an audible scream. As the jet roared past Merton, he could see the glowing field of mystical atmosphere surrounding the fighter, even as it started to loop around, waiting for more fighters to launch. And launch. And launch. And launch. A Russian aircraft carrier – about fifty or so kilometers off – was launching their MIGs. A French and Japanese carrier were launching behind them. South Korea and India both had one carrier each, and even they were launching. Spain had an aircraft carrier up here.

And, yes.

She was launching.

Fighter planes roared upwards and formed into formations – sorted and organized by languages spoken and objectives assigned. Merton felt a swelling of pride.

Just a few weeks ago, some of those pilots had been ready to shoot one another down. Now, they were flying in formation towards the hazing swarm of incoming dragon fighters. Well, kobold fighters, if what Relix had said was accurate. He grinned and thought to Brash: Ready to show them what we can do, buddy?

Vroom vroom! Senketsu Shippu! Brash called out. His back shifted and grew, fanning his wings out to their full length and growing a double set of jet engines. His wings beat and the engines kicked on and Merton thrust his hands before him. Mostly to keep them from being ripped back behind his back. He whooped as he shot forward and then matched, then exceeded the speed of the jet fighters. He flew up beside one of the leading fighters – an Indian MIG. Yeah, the Indians flew MIGs. Who knew?

The indian pilot – inhuman behind flight mask and helmet – sent him a Namaste. At least, Merton thought it was.

Merton waggled his wings and Brash laughed.

But Merton’s joy at the sheer speed of the moment bled away as he saw the onrushing enemy force. He gulped – and tried to focus. This was the plan. And soon, things were going to get real dicey. He gritted his teeth, then put on an extra burst and focused. He and Brash both grew larger and larger, until they were in full dragon form, jet-pack roaring brightly enough to match a torpedo ship in terms of engine plume and thrust contrail.

If that didn’t scream ‘pay attention to me!’, Merton wasn’t sure what would.

***

“Activate PWSs!” Talon Leader Gigzor snarled.

Svenk breathed a faint sigh of relief. The Planar Whipple Shields on a ASP-1011 were weak and they took power from the weapons. It took a direct order to authorize turning them on - since turning them on fractionally improved pilot life expectancy, while fractionally reducing damage caused to the enemy. Svenk plunged his claw-tip into the controls and felt some of his shaking subsided as his ship hummed and the shimmering field came on, then vanished from visibility. It was a thin shield, but it was better than nothing . Especially considering the veritable swarm that the humans had flung up.

“Pick targets and cut them down!” Gigzor laughed. Then, he gasped. “Wait!”

In the center-front of the enemy air wings, a sudden draconic shape had appeared.

“It’s Miles! All wings! Target that fucking Dungeon Master!” General Bryaugh’s voice exploded over the coms.

“Svenk, you’re on me!” One of Svenk’s wing-mates, Lizzt yipped. She put on her after-burners and angled towards the dragon. Svenk gulped and took up position next to her. “Kiiiiyaaaaa ya ya ya!” The sound of a dozen kobold war cries filled the radio bands. Then the flight computer on Svenk’s cockpit blared warning signatures. Targeting lasers were lining up on him! His eyes widened and he flung himself into a corkscrewing flight path as missiles erupted from every single human fighter. Each missile flew straight as an arrow – straighter, actually – and sought out a different fighter. Lizzt wing-mate exploded with a screech of shock, her Asp crumpling and ripping apart in a flare of orange and white light.

Svenk groaned as G-forces dragged blood away from his head. His vision dimmed. The missile that had targeted him missed by a tail length and he swung the nose of his Asp around. Twin searing rays leaped out and shot through the missile, transfixing it. It flashed away, vanishing as its warhead went off.

Then the human fighters smashed into the wings of kobold fighters. The worst part was the sound . The howling, screeching sound of their jet turbines as they roared forward crawled along Svenk’s spine, and filled him with a single impulse: Run!  Svenk relied on instinct and instinct alone as he kicked engines to full, throttled down, fired laterally, spun, twisted, flipped. The laser targeting alarm went off every second – a screaming jangle that rattled against his ear-drums. He swung his head around, screeching: “Does every fucking fighter they have have laser targeters!?”

“I’ve got two humans on my tail!” a fighter from the Redscales screamed as he twisted and twirled, trying to swing her nose around. But the human fighter took advantage of their mystical aerodynamics with shocking alacrity: They would flip up areobrakes that would normally be utterly useless in the depths of space, slowing and dropping themselves out of line of fire, then hit afterburners to scoot underneath Asps.

But the worst part was the…

The guns.

Svenk’s eyes widened and he gaped as he saw one of the heavy bombers – which was trundling straight towards one of the steel clad, magehelm equipped battleships – was struck by a pair of human fighters. Normally, a Planar Whipple Shield worked by snapping open tiny portals to the Elemental Plane of Water, so that the needle-like darts that most railguns or the beam-rays that most magical weapons fired would zip through. But the humans took that rulebook, laughed, and tossed it into the furnace.

Their nose guns were horrible, chattering things that seemed to paint the space before them in a haze of bullets, cutting out the pattern of a fighter – guided by those infernal laser seekers. So, rather than one portal to open to shunt away one stream of railgun slugs, the PWS had to open dozens if not hundreds. The bomber’s shields flashed and rippled as portals opened across it like smallpox blisters...and then the shields shattered . Bleeding planar energy like a star whale struck by a harpoon, the bomber crumpled, then exploded as the bullets tore into their armor.

But...the bombers are adamant plated! How!? Svenk’s eyes bugged.

Then, again, he had to rely on nothing but instinct as two human fighters screamed towards him – nose mounted cannons winking like the baleful eyes of a dark god.

Svenk threw himself into a spin, felt the right moment, and pulled back on the trigger. A series of acid arrows plunged into the belly of the human fighter as it shot by overhead. The human fighter folded in half, then exploded as the fuel went up. Svenk breathed out a quick sigh of relief.

Then, it was right back to desperately trying not to die .

***

As the fighter scrum devolved and devolved, the human capital ships had not been left idle. They moved in a great, graceful V, sweeping towards the front lines of the picket ships defending the Bryaugh warsphere, which was the first to start its approach towards Earth. Picket ships was a misnomer.

They were mostly battleships.

Aboard one such ship was Captain Thrug. Thrug had not attained his post by being particularly bright. Bryaugh tactics did not reward the bright or the creative. They rewarded those that could follow orders and those that could die. And Thrug, being a lowland orc from the world of Ventalis, could die with aplomb. His crew – also mostly orcs – could do the same. And the kobolds who were mixed in among them managed to keep their opinions to themselves.

“Sir,” his scrying officer – a female orc – spoke up. “We’re detecting mage-flares from the human ships.”

“They are mage-ships ,” Captain Thrug snarled.

“No, these are active arcanic casts, not just enchantments.” Buttons were pushed by thick, green fingers. The forward screen winked and showed the deck of one of the human battleships. It flew a flag with a blood red circle in the center. Thrug grunted, slightly. He approved of that flag, though something about the massive battleship struck him as different from the human ships surrounding it. It had larger guns, yes, but it also seemed...strangely primitive.

But then his narrow eyes narrowed further as he saw the war-wizards on the deck. They were easily visible, being the only non-humans. They stood beside those main guns, and they cast.

The main guns bellowed .

Smoke rocketed from each massive barrel and flames and fury surrounded them. Captain Thrug chuckled. “They’re firing non-magical weapons...those shells, are they even plus one?”

“They’ve-” the sensor officer paused, then gasped, her eyes widening. “They’ve been-”

The PWS of a draconic battleship was considerably more powerful than a fighter-craft. They were able to draw on the energies of the plane of positive energy on a scale that made a fighter-craft seem inconsequential. But they still were designed to resist beams and railguns. And so, the portal opened by the ship’s computer was roughly a foot wide, and they were pressed right up against the skin of the ship, to save on the energy costs. Projecting a shield-portal got more expensive the further from the projectors it got, after all, and the reactor was needed to power the fusion torch of the engine, the beam weapons, and the railguns.

It was a sensible allocations of resources.

The incoming shells were eighteen inches of armor piercing, high explosive apocalypse, enchanted by professional war-wizards. They screamed in, struck the too-narrow shield portals whose edges set off contact tips. High explosives exploded with ship-shaking concussions, while glowing chunks of white hot, enchanted shrapnel struck adamantine and ignored the extra hardness provided by the mystical alloy. Decks were torn apart and internal components were ripped to shreds. Crew barely had time to scream.

The battleship reeled under the impact. Captain Thruk – knocked off his throne and blinking at his severed arm – had enough time to say: “I really like that flag!” before the second volley from the other human battleships struck. The draconic battleship crumpled and the reactors overloaded. A flash of brilliant white light flared and, across the human fleet, cheers rang out. The first enemy ship had gone down.

Aboard the Xosh Warsphere, Emperor Xosh growled. Smoke poured from his nostrils, drifting about the ceiling as Admiral Thresh tried to not attract any attention as she stood stock still in the room.

“Launch the B-suits.”

***

Julia whistled cheerfully as she twirled a wand around her fingers.

Across from her sat some cute Asian chick. Well, cute-ish. It was hard to think someone was cute when they were glaring at you with some mixture between suspicion and loathing. She was the leader of the twelve men jammed into the tiny, flying VTOL, which was right now creeping along as carefully as it could manage. The asian chick – Lt. Kisogawa – was dressed in sleek armor that looked several tech levels above what normal humans managed. She had an actual freaking laser rifle in her lap, as did the rest of the twelve man team did.

And best of all?

They were all shrouded in Julia’s spells.

Julia knew she should have been deeply nervous. But it had been hard to feel anything but giddy excitement, when every day brought her new understanding of magic. She closed her eyes and recounted everything she had memorized. Relix had granted her an unofficial rank of class six . Six, out of twenty. But the important thing was that she had gotten her mitts on Summon Sexual Partner. For after this little kerfuffle.

“They’re going to town on each other up there.”

The disembodied voice came from the pilot of the VTOL.

That made Julia nervous. But she carefully took her nervousness about Merton and put it into a tiny box. Merton had Brash watching his back. He’d be fine. She nodded slightly.

“All right, everyone,” Kisogawa said, her voice soft. “Hats on. And remember, no one fires a shot till Akko over here is out of level 1 slots.”

“Did...” Julia blinked. “Was that a Little Witch Academia reference?” She grinned – mentally putting Kisogawa up a few notches in her mind. Kisogawa grunted as she slid on the face concealing helmet. Julia was kinda glad she didn’t have to deal with that bullshit. Armor, any kind of armor, would fuck with her magic. And she’d rather take her chances ducking and using magic armor and shield spells and blur and mirror image and-

The VTOL rocked slightly. A faint crackling , hissing noise filled the deck. The members of D-Com stood. Each of them were the best of the best of the best, and they had trained their whole lives for this moment. Julia stood, bouncing from foot to foot, then readied herself. The door swung inwards – and a billowing cloud of acrid smoke flowed outwards. Through the cloud, Julia could see a pair of very confused kobolds. She thrust her finger at them and hissed. “ Sleep !”

A bolt of energy flew from her finger, struck the kobolds, and sent them sprawling on the ground.

Kisogawa stepped into the narrow corridor, swinging her rifle around, checking each corner. She was followed by more D-Com soldiers. Julia was hustled out in the middle of the group. She rubbed her palms together, then placed her palms onto the deck. She murmured the words of the spell and felt one of the buzzing knots of magical energy that she had locked into her brain with eight hours of meditation uncoil. Her palms flashed and she felt a shiver rush through her brain.

A useful spell, Locate Weakness.

She pointed. “That way.”

And together, she and D-Com started through the corridors of the Bryaugh Warsphere.

***

Merrrrtonnnnnn! Brash’s squeal of alarm jerked Merton away from his current task, which was firing spinfusor disks at a heavy bomber that was rushing towards the USS Antietam. The shimmering blue-white disks of cutting, exploding plasma smashed into the sides of the bomber, whose PWS had been taken down by the Antietam’s anti-missile cannons, which were still pouring high caliber machine gun bullets into the front of the bomber. Since they hadn’t had time to enchant every single bullet, shell and missile used by the entire navy of the entire human race, those bullets weren’t enchanted, and so simply bounced harmlessly off the adamantine armor.

The spinfusor disks did a lot better. The secondary explosion sent the bomber wheeling to the side, trailing smoke and fire.

“What?” Merton asked.

They launched the B-suits!

“Shit,” Merton whispered.

They had been waiting for this moment.

But there was a difference between waiting and actually being ready .

A hundred B-suits shot out of the Xosh warsphere, each one in its own unique configuration, suited to the cruel mind of the black dragon wearing it. They rushed towards the human ships and the dragon ships that were, even now, harrying the Thresh Warsphere. They had swung straight past the Bryaugh sphere to begin firing on the massive red sphere that made up the centerpiece of the second wave of Chromatic attack. Shells slammed through massive planar shields, while missiles tried to jink around and hit the actual armor. Most were scooped up, but even the immense power of the Warsphere’s shield emitters had limits, and some parts of the skin started to glow with the heat of explosion and shine with the fresh-metal gouges of shrapnel ripping across thick armor plating.

Brash kicked himself to full gear, shooting straight at the first of the enemy B-Suits.

Even that was too slow.

Hellwhips slashed out. Beamcasters snarled and split space. Tactical nuclear launches smashed down. Flares of brilliant white heat consumed one ship, then another. The Russian aircraft carrier – the Kuznetsov –  heeled under the impacts. Great, jagged tears were ripped across the flight deck. Bodies tumbled into space. Flames poured through those holes, and Merton’s eyes widened as he saw the whole ship start to crack in half under the strain of the damage. Lance-beams intersected and fuel tanks went off with crumps that shook him, even from this distance.

The Kuznetsov continued to tumble forward. But only as debris and wreckage.

A United States submarine was ripped from nose to propellers by a single B-suit, using nothing more than their claws. Three fighters were shot from the sky by dart-quick silver blades, fired by shrike catapults. The whole offense staggered as if it had struck a brick wall. And that was only the effect of ten or so of the B-Suits. Dozens more were forming up to attack in a unified pattern.

And there was nothing that Merton could do about it.

Brash hissed. Snarled. Bellowed .

It was a bellow that echoed through Merton’s whole body and it made him stagger slightly in space, his knees jerking up reflexively. His wings flapped and he slowed to an almost complete stop. The bellow was wordless at first, but then Brash added – with a snarl full of real pain: STOP HURTING MY FRIENDS!

And to Merton’s shock, every single B-Suit skidded to a stop, their bodies reacting convulsively.

The reaction of the human and Metallic ships was immediate. Missiles rushed off firing platforms and smashed into B-suits by the dozens. Explosions rocked and chunks of organic matter flew through space. Other B-suits were transfixed by intersecting lines of machine gun and cannon fire. Still others were sliced by X-ray lasers fired by the surviving Metallic ships.

“What did you do?” Merton whispered, his eyes wide.

***

“Noooooo!” Admiral Thresh screamed.

General Bryaugh spun around to glare – but not at Thresh, not at Xosh. No. He glared at Gimtesh. Gimtesh whimpered, grabbing onto the base of the spike that transfixed her. She made a great show of being in pain, but Bryaugh didn’t seem to care. He stomped forward, then grabbed her by her throat and heaved her up. Shifting or no shifting, the sudden pressure of the spike against her belly sent new jolts of agony through her body.

“What was that you said?” Bryaugh growled. “That there was no way the control dragon could be an issue. Not when he was so young!? That was how you covered for your brother’s failing, you half-elven bitch !”

Admiral Thresh, meanwhile, had shook off her shock. She grabbed onto the com crystal and screamed into it: “Shut down your coms, B-Suits! Go dark, go silent, and kill  that fucking traitor ! Now! Now!”

The surviving B-suits – all twenty of them – winked off the communication board. But they started to move again. Gimtesh whimpered, her eyes closed tight.

And grew her foot just a bit more.

***

Julia ran out of level one spell slots at just about the worst time. The small group had penetrated deep into the belly of the Warsphere, working their way closer and closer towards the vast guts that powered the immense Hellcannon that made a Warsphere such a destructive force. But here, the very scale of the sphere played against the intentions of its creators. There was no way to staff every corridor, every intersection, even every important room. And so, they had moved and used sleep on every knot of crew and guards that they came to.

Until Julia shook her head. “I’m out. We’re on to second and third level spells. And cantrips.” She shrugged, then wiggled her fingers – using prestidigitation to scrawl: Julia wuz here on the wall.

“All right,” Kisogawa muttered. She looked over at the two soldiers who were using a nifty little fiber optic camera to peek underneath a heavy door.

“It looks like an engineering section,” one of the soldiers muttered. “With a bunch of-”

His head exploded. The sound of the gunshot seemed to come afterwards and Julia swung her head around. She thrust her finger out and snarled out a quick work. The orc guard who had come up around the corner behind them – unexpectedly quiet – let out a garbled scream as he put his palms over the globe of acid that struck his face. But his other friends dove for cover moments before the D-Com troopers started to open fire.

The door opened. An orc, drawn by the gunfire stood there, holding a massive sword in one hand. Kisogawa reacted with astounding speed. She stepped past him, slamming her elbow into his throat with a twist that put the full weight of her body into the blow. The orc clutched at his throat, then let out a low grunt as Kisogawa rammed a combat knife into his heart. As he fell, she shouted: “Light em up!”

Laser fire strobed from her rifle, cutting another orc down as he turned to see what the call had been from. Julia slapped her palms together. “Give me the bombs!”

Kisogawa jerked her chin to the sapper. The sapper under-handed the backpack full of C4 to Julia. Julia caught it and spoke a single word...and vanished. And, painfully aware that a bullet fired by random chance was just as likely to kill her as one fired deliberately, Julia ducked low and sprinted past the door. Orcs were swarming into the engineering bay, bellowing as they realized that their Warsphere had been boarded.

Julia let the spell she had cast earlier guide herself. She slapped some C4 here, some C4 there, not knowing why this point was better than that. But she knew that it still wasn’t enough. She rushed to a door that led to the next adjoining room. Each chamber contained multiple reactors, but each room also had thick doors and thick walls. She had a hunch that each chamber held just enough reactors to contain the blast if they went off.

But what if three chambers went off at once?

The spell in her gut chimed faintly, like it agreed.

The next room was nearly empty. Orcs had rushed from it to fight the pinned down D-com unit. From the sounds of gunfire and sizzling laser blasts, Julia thought that they were having a fun time. She wasn’t sure how much more time her invisibility spell would last. But she still slapped down the next third of C4. She got to the door leading to the next reactor room just as it opened. There stood a massive knot of kobolds and orcs. They had gathered their weapons and were prepping to storm through this engine room to reach the combat in the first.

Julia grinned. It was a cold blooded, wicked grin.

Some people sneered at cantrips like Ghost Sounds.

Some people were idiots .

She whispered – and a booming voice came from the far end of the engine room, from behind the gaggle of orcs and kobolds: “Hose them down, boys!” She used Clancy Brown’s voice, because he was fucking terrifying. It worked. The orcs and kobolds sprinted for cover relative to the voice, looking around for the attack. Julia snapped her fingers and growled out the words for fireball. And this had made her giggle and clap with joy  when she had learned them.

“Yol Toor Shul!”

A sphere of bright white light appeared above her palm. It flew out missile fast and smashed into the ground in the center of the orcish formation. The explosion roared outwards and orcs went sprawling . Their bodies were blown to bright green chunks and Julia winced – feeling her gorge rise as she saw what most Dungeon Masters left out. The horrible stink of burning blood, the dripping of blood splattered against the ceiling. The screams of those who had ‘succeeded’ their reflex saves. She shook herself out of her shock, clenching her jaw as she felt the floor under her feet shudder, then still. The movement of the Warsphere had been so faint that she hadn’t noticed it…

Until it was gone.

They didn’t have time. She rushed forward, slapping the C4 into place, then cast her final spell.

Her feet lifted off the ground and she felt the lightness that came from a Fly spell. She shot forward, emerging into the reactor chamber where the main battle was still going on. She flew up to hide among the rafters, and began to sling down acid spheres – splashing and splattering against orcs in cover, who screamed in alarm.

“Let’s go, Kisogawa!” Julia shouted.

She remained above the orcs, flinging down cantrip after cantrip as the D-Com forces retreated. Once they were free, she flew forward as fast as the spell carried her. She shot past confused orcs. Shot past the D-com forces. That was intentional. She arrived at the place they had come from and found orcs rushing down the corridor. These orcs were burly and heavily armored and carried shotcannons that looked like they had been yanked right out of Warhammer 40,000. She squealed and flung herself into cover as the orcs opened fire on her. Pellets whine and screamed and Julia knew she had to do something  before D-Com showed up and got slaughtered.

In a lull in the firing, she lifted her hands up. “I surrender!” she called out.

The orcs didn’t shred her as she emerged. She saw them looking at her with narrowed eyes. She put on her cutest, most innocent face. She held her hands behind her back. She had one spell left. One little spell. She licked her lips.

The orcish leader stepped forward, growling. “Where your friends?” he sneered, his eyes dipping from Julia’s eyes to her breasts – which were barely contained by the thin band of leather she wore. Cause shirts were for other people, really now.

“Well, that’s a long story, cause, uh, stinking cloud !” Julia shouted throwing her palm forward. A shotcannon roared and she felt pellets tear along her shoulder and side. Fire hot pain screamed across her body and she cried out – but the sound was lost in the choking, gasping, coughing, spluttering sound as the orcs retched and spluttered and staggered within the sphere of billowing greenish smoke. Before Julia could so much as blink, Kisogawa was by her side, puffing and panting from her run. She grabbed onto Julia and dragged her into the ship.

Julia felt her ears roaring.

She was bleeding an...an awful lot. She looked down at the hamburger that was her shoulder. Her vision went to a narrow point and she breathed shallower and shallower. Distantly, she heard Kisogawa scream.

“Go! Go! Go!”

***

Merton grabbed onto the clawed hand of one B-suited dragon and jerked his head to to he side. Because he had locked the arm into one position, the shrike catapult’s blades whined past his ear-frill, shooting into space. But then Merton had to kick the B-suited dragon away and snap up his psi-shield. Plasma caster bolts hammered home, jackknifing him backwards. Merton was not so much thinking as he was merely reacting, letting the programming that filled Brash to guide him. He twisted away from a tail strike that could have shattered bones, swung a hellwhip at a B-suit that shrank to a mouse size to evade the attack, then flew backwards, gasping for air.

There’s too many of them! Brash wailed. And they’re not listening to me!

Merton fired off two tac-nukes from the ankle mounted mine layers. They rocketed down and one of the B-suits, too eager and not attentive enough, flew right into them. The brilliant flash concealed whatever happened to that poor sucker, and when the light faded, the remaining twelve or so B-suits hung back.

They had training.

They had number.

But whatever Brash was made of, he was made a few steps better than the other B-suits. Made sense, if he was supposed to be worn by the future prince regent of the Chromatic Dominion. Merton took some small pleasure in that. He was about to think of a new angle of attack…

When a new star was born.

The light was brilliant and everlasting. It seared through his body with the same kind of killing overabundance of life as that rewritten moment when the Talon-9  had been destroyed. The massive sphere of the Bryaugh Warsphere had peeled apart under that killing light, chunks of adamantine the size of small cities rocketing outwards. Some plowed through dragon battleships, but most of them tumbled off into space.

And then, with a dart of speed too fast to be believed, the Talon-9 shot by overhead.

Merton’s mouth opened in shock. What was Relix doing !?

***

“Shields at ten percent, we can’t take any more P-Rads!” Speccy shouted from the engineering console. Relix clutched onto the arm-rests of her command throne, leaning forward, snarling.

“Transfer all power to the planar shields!” she snapped. “We only have to last-”

The forward thrusters flared as the computer registered them arriving at the right position, the right place, with seconds to spare. Relix was almost pitched off her command throne. And then, with a quiet bink  the wish-spells woven into the Warsphere triggered and reverted it from destruction to full operation. Instantly, corridors and components were back in place. Instantly, slain crew were back at their positions, blinking and looking around with wide eyes. Instantly, the Hellcannon was once more aimed at a defenseless Earth.

Everything was as it had been, completely undoing everything the human D-com had done in the belly of the warsphere.

Save for the Talon-9 , w hich floated within the massive, zero-gravity gantry bay that held the massive Hellcannon and the power feeds that fed into the weapon. There was a narrow trench that aimed towards the Earth. Relix grinned and sagged slightly back in her seat. Gunner chuckled.

“Good thinking, Princess,” he said, quietly. Then. “Fire at will.”

The Talon-9 ’s forward railguns blazed with blue-white light. The wing-mounted plasma torpedoes opened up and darts of raw energy flew from them and into the side of the immense, ornately carved chunk of brass and orichalicum that made up the Hellcannon’s external casings. Metal and magical material peeled apart as needle thin darts of tungsten accelerated to near light speed tore through it. Spheres of blue white plasma ripped into the power supplies and secondary explosions started to rippled through it.

“Engines!” Relix snarled.

The Talon-9  bucked and shot forward, zooming out of the narrow firing trench and into open space as...for the second time...the Warsphere crumpled and exploded. It was far less dramatic this time, as the internal explosions didn’t set off the reactors. But the wave of hellish energy tearing through the sphere was more than enough to send chunks of armor plate spinning away and to cause the entire, moon-sized ship to drifting.

***

General Omadon Bryaugh didn’t look away from the screen.

Quietly, he said: “I can see why you wanted her dead, Emperor Xosh.”

The Thresh Warsphere chose that moment to crumple. There had been no fancy tricks. No subtle tactics. Merely a pounding match between two heavyweight boxers. On one side, the Warsphere. On the other side, the entire armada of humanity. Cruisers fired missiles that shot into glowing armor plate, while cannon shells from battleships taken from museums and scrap-yards exploded against planar shields that struggled to stop the wave of torpedoes. Nuclear flashes burst around the sphere, fired from the wings of heavy bombers and launched from the spines of immense, deadly submarines. The sheer weight of fire caused adamantine to bubble, then boil, then slough away in great sheets, revealing the soft components within.

Into those components came the cannons, the machine guns, the nukes.

But even as the Thresh Warsphere took a pounding...it dished it out.

There were more weapons than the Hellcannon. Polar ray turrets the size of small buildings struck torpedo ships and froze their entire crews solid. Railguns perforated submarines, tearing apart their internal components and setting off their unfired munitions. Corpses of ships and men alike cluttered space as the fighter-brawl that had been going since the battle started continued . Now, more fighters were being take out by debris and floating corpses than enemy weaponry.

The Thresh Warsphere exploded in a rippling wave of fire.

But, likewise, the flagship of the entire united human navy was burning as well.

The USS John F. Kennedy smoldered from dozens of holes and hundreds of impact sites. Dimples pock-marked the bottom, and smoke poured from a great chunk taken from the side by a glancing nuclear missile strike. Its conning tower was missing half the roof, revealing a jagged mangled mess where the internal components had been. But despite all that, its propellers still turned. Its anti-missile machine guns still roared.

And it’s commander could still give an order. Even if they were just a junior lieutenant, lucky enough to not take a scratch where the rest of the bridge officers had been torn to minced meat by a railgun slug.

“Full speed ahead,” she snarled, glaring at the crackling, sparking screen that showed where the exploding Warsphere was located.

The USS John F. Kennedy roared forward through space. Fighter planes from the Chromatic Dominion flew forward, firing blasts of acid into it, trying to slow it down. An enemy battleship gallantly burned, putting its bulk between itself and the Kennedy . But the captain had clearly still imagined that a mage-shp couldn’t possibly match a true star-ship. A Nimitz aircraft carrier was nearly a kilometer long and carried the momentum of its entire voyage.

It struck the draconic battleship.

Shoved it into the maelstrom of the exploding Warsphere.

And the universe saw what happened when a wish – to return the Warsphere to life in the exact place it had been destroyed – ran up against the stubborn, gritted will of the human race.

Wishes blink.

And the Warsphere reformed with a massive chunk of its internal components meshed with a kilometer of aircraft carrier and half a kilometer of friendly battleship. Atoms struggled to stay in the same location as other atoms for a single moment measurable only on the Planck scale. Nucleoli split with the impact of foreign atoms and, despite being mostly inert, the mass of both ships detonated. If they had been pure uranium, there would likely have been nothing left of the solar system. As it was, the second Warsphere’s true death was easily the most energetic thing to happen in the solar system since the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.

Thankfully, it was a comfortable distance outside of the Earth’s magnetosphere.

But it was still one hell of a lightshow.

***

Sometimes, Merton wished Brash was less helpful.

Two Warspheres were down. But Brash’s capacity as a radar scanner showed that the human and metallic fleets were decimated. Worse, actually. If they had only lost one ship for every ten, Merton would have been happy. More wreckage seemed to be floating out there than functioning ships. Many of the fighters were down. A few kobold fighters were still dog-fighting, and the enemy B-suits had drawn back, recalled to their last remaining Warsphere. They guarded it and intercepted incoming fire with hellwhips.

The Xosh Warsphere was driving towards the firing position at top speed, careless of any debris that smashed into its hull. It wasn’t even using portal shields to block anything!

Merton reached up, tapping his ear. Brash knew this was how Merton said he wanted his communicator online and cheerfully made a ‘bleep’ noise to indicate he was broadcasting. “D-Com, you got any ideas?”

“We’re out of ammo, our of C-4...” Lt. Kisogawa said, sounding tired. “And our wizard is down.”

Merton’s heart froze. “What!?”

“Cool your jets – your mistress just went into shock. It was barely a flesh wound...” Kisogawa muttered. Merton closed his eyes and forced his heart to slow down. Then he nodded.

“Every fighter,” he said – trusting Brash to translate his language to the myriad of human tongues. “Everyone who still has cannon and missiles, form up on my tail. We’re going to Death Star this bitch.”

He shot forward without hesitation. Brash spread his wings and Merton narrowed his eyes as he flew towards the Xosh Warsphere. He had no idea how they’d stop the Warsphere a second time. But he figured...one step at a time. He flew forward and then risked a glance backwards. He saw fighters peeling off and zooming up to flank him. There were Russian and Indian MIGs, American F-14s, British fighters, Spanish ones. Each force had been winnowed down, but the number of flags he saw behind him made his heart swell.

“Let’s do this!” Merton shouted.

The remaining B-Suits moved up, their hellwhips crackling. Brash roared in fury and then grew four extra arms. Merton strained his talent and put a psi-sword into each one. He slashed a hellwhip out of the air, grabbed onto a second and screamed as it wrapped around his wrist and began to burn. Brash’s hands grabbed others from the air as he grew yet more arms. Pain roared through his body, but Merton fought it down as Brash yanked. Hard. The hellwhips buzzed, drew taut, and the B-suits flew towards him. Two were cut down by cannon fire from Russian planes. One was blown in half by a missile fired by who knows what.

At the last second, Merton withdrew arms and legs and wings and aimed those psi-swords out, becoming nothing more than a very spiky cannonball. He mashed into tumbling, stunned B-suits and grunted as the blades sawed through limbs, necks, chests. Then he and the surviving jets were through and Brash whooped. “Don’t loooooose your waaaaay!” he sang as they arrowed into the Hellcannon’s firing trench.

Several jets clipped the walls. Even a tiny bump sent them tumbling into the vast expanse of armored hull plating. The fierce explosions made Merton wince. Then he and Brash were through, flying out into the massive, zero-gravity gantry bay that contained the planet killing weapon. It was starting to glow with gathering energies.

“Light. Them. Up!” Merton shouted as Brash extended his everything . His shrike catapults, his spinfusors, his fucking water cannon. Everything fired into the side of the massive barrel of bronze and glowing golden metal. Explosions rippled across it as the jet fighters areobraked to slow themselves down and started to pour weaponry into it as well. Merton felt his heart pang as several fighters fired for literally less than a second before their cannons went dry.

Two missiles joined his fire.

But it was enough.

Secondary explosions started to ripple along the hellcannon and Brash screamed in raw effort. Dozens of arms shot out from his back and sides. They stretched narrow and Merton felt the warmth of Brash’s surrounding skin grow thin and stretchy. He threw everything into those arms. Each one punched through cockpit and metal. Grabbed onto a single squishy human. Then yanked them forward. Planes tumbled and flew out of control and Brash’s feet kicked on a thrust plume as he shot out, holding every single human being next to him in a tight hug.

They arrowed out of the Warsphere. Merton could feel Brash tiring.

“Reliiiiiix!” He screamed.

Just as he felt Brash’s concentration start to snap, the Talon-9 swept down. The cargo hold was opened and Brash slowed down just enough that they smashed into the deck like a football tackle rather than cannonball. Brash popped off Merton with a loud slurp . The human pilots groaned as they sprawled onto the deck, even as the cargo hold slammed shut – closing on the sight of the Warsphere exploding.

Merton knew there was no time to wait. He pushed himself to weak, rubbery legs, then clung to Brash, holding the small, cat-sized dragon to his chest. Brash mumbled. “No mas...no mas...”

“It’s okay, Brash. You did good...” Merton whispered as he stumbled towards the bridge.

He arrived in time to see the Warsphere returning with a faint bing . Relix sprang up and grabbed onto the both of them, hugging Brash and Merton both to her chest. But before Merton could ask anything, Speccy stepped over with a pair of hypo-sprays. She pressed them to Brash’s body and to Merton’s neck. Merton felt a rush of energy fill him and Brash gasped as he went from gray-scaled and completely limp to dark black and quivering with excitement. He hopped onto Merton’s shoulder.

“I’m healed!” he exclaimed. Then he cried out. “No!”

The returned Warsphere was firing its secondary guns. The scraps of the human and metallic fleet were crumpling. Fleeing. Desperately turning to try and get away from the polar ray cannons and railguns.

“We are completely out of everything but the railguns,” Gunner growled.

“Come on, Brash.” Merton said, voice grim. Brash flowed around him and before Relix could do more than squeak, Merton strode to the airlock. He flung himself out without bothering to wait for the outer door to open – the inner door slammed shut and then he and Brash flew out.

“What do we got, Brash?” Merton asked.

Well, I’m strong as an ox and tough as diamond! Brash paused. But we’re out of ammo for literally every single gun we have.

Merton thought. Desperately.

He was a Dungeon Master and a Gamer Master. It had not seemed like much, when this crazy adventure started...but it meant he had seen every single insane trick that a party could pull. And he had used a lot of them. Quick talking, quick thinking, improvisation. All of it had saved the day time and time again. But no matter how hard he pushed, no matter how hard he thought, nothing came to mind for this moment . He could see nothing that could stop the glowing mass of hellish energy that started to fill the Warsphere’s main guns. He closed his eyes. He knew what he had to do. Brash gasped quietly – then cried out.

“Wait! I’m getting a planar message!”

Merton blinked as a voice filled his ears. A familiar voice.

“Open a portal on my coordinates! Now! Now! Now! Nowwwwww!”

The voice.

Was Dart .

The elven wizard that they had rescued from a dimensional maze. Who had claimed to be reformed – then snuck away at the first chance. Merton blinked, then shouted: “Do it!”

The Talon-9 created a portal using their PWS. Dart burst from the human sized hole – landing on the prow of the ship. Her magnetic boots locked home – she was dressed in a sleek space suit, with a slender firearm strapped to her back. She screamed, as loudly as she could: “Biiiiiiiigerrrrrr!”

Merton grabbed onto the edge of the portal. He knew so little about magic, but he knew that sometimes, brute force could do remarkable things. Brash beat his wings and Merton strained his arm and his talent and the portal that the Talon-9 had opened grew bigger and bigger and bigger, the Talon-9 ’s whole frame shuddering as it added power as well. It became the size of a house. Then the size of a city. And to Merton’s shock, Dart kicked off the prow of the ship. She floated out and shouted through the portal, her hands cupped.

“Oi! I’m still alive, you wanna-be-Gigerish motherfuckers!”

Brash reacted before Merton could think – growing out an arm to grab onto Dart and yank her back.

With the speed of a bullet train and the weight of a furious god, something shot out of the portal. But it wasn’t merely one thing. It was one thing that went on and on and on , a blurring spread of motion and lines and textures. Merton’s eyes bugged and he flew backwards, Brash gaping just as much as he was as Dart cackled like a mad woman. His arms were closed around her belly, keeping her close, and she let herself float and kick her legs and clap her hands.

Bong !

The unmusical sound came from the impact.

The impact...of a hand .

A hand that was nearly...incomprehensible in terms of its sheer size . It was a hand that should not be, a hand made of hissing biomechanical components, of smooth lines of ridged flesh, of hardened carapace. It was a hand that belonged in a nightmarish dreamscape, a hand that should have been on the fist of an Old One. It was a hand that made the Warsphere look like a child’s toy. And it had impacted, closed into a fist, at the speed of a screaming bullet, into the center of the Warsphere’s mass. Armor plate had crumpled, and secondary explosions were ripping through it as the surviving members of the chromatic fleet reeled in shock.

“What. The. Fuck?” Merton whispered.

Dart laughed, then sighed. “I figured you’d need help...” She licked her lips. “I found zero takers on the City of O, no dice in the Sunder, I got laughed out of Purgatory, and finally...I figured...if I couldn’t get friends , I could use my one real talent.”

“Which is?” Brash whispered.

“Pissing people off,” Dart said, craning her head back.

The fist withdraw.

The portal snapped shut.

The Warsphere exploded with a flare of pale white light, consuming Emperor Xosh and his dreams of galactic domination.

“Who did you fucking honk off?” Brash whispered.

“Oh, uh, the Night City.” Dart shrugged. “Baphomet is really tetchy when you-

Bink .

Like an unfair joke. Like a player with a broken character. Like a GM who wanted the party to die. Like all of that, the Warsphere returned. Utterly unharmed. Undamaged. Brash, Dart, Merton – and every single last survivor of the human fleet and metallic fleets – gaped at the sphere as it hung there in space, a shining, blue-black tombstone, announcing the end of everything. As it floated there, Merton heard the crackle of a radio...and a voice as cruel and as cold as the space between stars.

“I ensured that my ship had two layers of ablative wish shielding,” Emperor Xosh of the Chromatic Dominion snarled. “You may fire when ready.”

***

The wish spell had returned the warsphere to life with the amount of charge it had gathered when it had been destroyed. It was at 99%. Admiral Thresh stepped over at the order of her Emperor. She grabbed onto the firing lever that would unleash complete and utter hell upon the Earth. It would not merely destroy it. It would shunt the Earth into the Abyss itself. The rippling cascade of energies would cause each human being’s nightmare to come to hideous life, and the weak willed among them would be turned into demons. A bloody orgy of violence, rape, and worse would follow as nine billion souls were tortured for eternity.

It was the single greatest deterrent to war in the former Five Talon Empire – a weapon so horrifying that the very thought of it being unleashed upon you would stop a war before it started.

Gimtesh did not give a flying fuck about humanity.

But…

She was a red dragon.

And if heroism wasn’t enough...a desire to fuck that smug prick Xosh over was more than enough.

Her foot was just long enough for her to surge her leg up and slam her ankle down on the emergency power vent switch on the engineering console. The kobold sitting there – so utterly distracted by the pageantry of the oncoming death of a world that he hadn’t even noticed the movement until it was too late – squalled. “What!?”

Admiral Thresh flung the switch and a low, droning woom woom woom woom sound filled the bridge as the percentile number dripped from 99% to 83% to 72%. Xosh stood in complete shock – then spun around. He roared in pure fury as Gimtesh smirked and lifted up a single middle finger. The blast of raw lightning that slammed into her body and ripped her into component atoms was utterly painless.

Which had been part of the point.

***

The surviving human ships steamed towards the Warsphere – taking advantage of the baffling fluctuation in power. But the surviving chromatic ships met them. Beams of killing cold struck, even as shells soared out and smashed into adamantine hulls.

“They won’t make it in time,” Brash whispered.

“What?” Merton asked.

Brash was silent for a moment.

Then.

“Thanks. Dad. For everything.” There was a sudden, wrenching dislocation. A feeling like being squeezed and shoved. Then suddenly Merton was blind. Not literally, but the thousands of tiny augmentations that had been in Brash’s eyes were gone. He could no longer see the outlines of ships, the tracery of fire was missing. He saw only the faint winks of light that indicated movement, explosions. He looked around himself and saw he floated in a bubble of thin membrane – slightly transparent and glistening. A thin strand unwove into space.

“W-What!?” Merton whispered. Then he saw the rocket engine kick on. The thin strand continued to unweave...and following it, he could see the darting form of Brash.

Flying towards the battle.

A tiny strand connected Brash to Merton – a strand that let Brash maintain the life support bubble. But Brash himself was shooting forward. Then, slowly, Merton started to hear a snare drum. A bass line. A piano. The sound of clapping. Fingers snapping. His eyes widened.

He recognized that song.

***

Brash loved humans. He loved their cute faces, their cute noses, their stubbornness. He loved their butts. But he also loved, more than a whole lot of things, their music. He had eaten Merton’s iPod a while ago, and listened to every song ten million times. And this one was his favorite. He listened to it as his rockets flared and burned, because when he listened to the song, he could be brave. His eyes narrowed.

And Freddie Mercury began to sing. The lyrics soothed the tiny itty bitty fear at the back of Brash’s brain - especially when David Bowie joined.

Under Pressure .

Fighters zoomed towards him – beams and acid darts flying out. Brash wove to the side. He flicked his tail and knocked one – with a black scaled kobold inside – spinning out of the way. Then he saw a battleship blocking his way. He flew forward as polar beams scythed out, trying to strike him out. He shrank to cat-sized, corkscrewing around.

Brash arrowed forward at max speed. He tucked his head to the side and smashed into a weakened part of the hull and exploded through. There was a shudder and then another bang as he emerged out of the other side. Blood dripped along his scales as he beat his wings harder and harder. He stopped trying to dodge as he looked upwards, at the Warsphere. The hellcannon was growing brighter and brighter. Point defense rays reached out as he flew up and up and up.

The chorus began - the two voices reaching higher and higher, echoing as they sang off love and loss. As the last why reached to angelic, echoing levels, Brash felt cold stab into him from a dozen sides. He shuddered and beat his wings harder and harder.

He felt so cold. But he beat harder as he flew up into the red eye of the cannon. Energies throbbed there as the song reached higher and higher, like a dragon spreading its wings. Brash spread his wings wide - his ears filled with two words.

Give love .

On the bridge, Xosh screeched. He stamped his foot – fury driving him past all reason.

“Fire! Fire! Fire! Fucking fire !”

This is our last dance

Brash smiled. And grew big.

And best of all.

He shone.

Like gold.

***

Merton’s scream came at the same time as the beam struck the glowing, shining figure. It struck, then rebounded. Reflected. Shot back up into the Hellcannon, like it had struck a mirror. The hellcannon and the Warsphere shuddered with the impact. Armor plate rippled. But it did not explode. Instead, spines and spikes and snarling, crackling fissures in reality appeared. The Warsphere slewed to the side as it was sucked inwards, crumpling like a piece of tissue paper. But before the hellcannon could suck itself to the Abyss, the internal components failed. Instead of a complete transfer, the Warsphere merely floated there.

Harmless to Earth.

But it wasn’t dead, though everyone aboard likely now wished they were.

Merton hung his head, tears streaming from his face.

Floating.

With the only sound being the soft click click click of a single finger snapping.