Homestar Saga

Chapter 146: Insufficient

"Stay in the shield bubble." Yvian hoped she sounded calmer than she felt. "No point in exposing ourselves before we find the target." She squinted through the viewport at the swirling blue light of the Gate. "Don't take off on your own when you see it. Sound off and fire your weapons so we can find you."

The target would be a Federation ship. At least one. The humans had managed to impregnate the Last Hope five times before Yvian took her away from them. Five baby Lucendian ships to be turned into anti-tech weapons. One was sitting just outside the Xill Hub. At least one other had just exited the Jumpgate. All of them, if Yvian was lucky.

When the humans had tried to take Yvian at Tenril Station, their anti-tech field had spread over two hundred kilometers. No one believed that was as far as they could stretch. The Peacekeeper Queenships were scattered as far from each other as they could get, at the very edges of the Jumpgate's two thousand kilometer width. The best case scenario would be four ships that could cover five or six hundred kilometers. The worst case would be four ships, each capable of jamming the whole space by themselves. Yvian had no way to know, but she supposed it didn't matter.

Yvian's job was simple. Lead a small fleet of gladiators piloted by the best flyers New Pixa could muster. Which wasn't saying much. Until three days ago, they'd been students at the Military Academies the Peacekeepers had set up. None of them had even stepped foot in a real fighter ship before.

Yvian would have preferred people with real combat experience, but there were none to be had. Even if there were, Military Cadets were the only pixens she could get away with bringing into the Sector. They'd sworn allegiance to the Pixen Stellar Defense Force, and promised to obey the orders of their Commanding Officers. Since their Commanding Officers were Peacekeeper units, the students could technically be seen as Servants of the Peacekeepers units. The Peacekeepers were classified as Servants of the Xill, which technically made them Servants of the Xill as well. It was a flimsy excuse with a lot of technically in it, but Kilroy had assured Yvian the Xill would accept it. According to Kilroy, technically correct was the best kind of correct.

Yvian half expected some rookie to give her guff, or go off on their own. No one did. Her Cadets were inexperienced, but they'd all spent at least a year being trained by the finest instructors in the verse. Peacekeeper units were as inpixenly adept at teaching as they were at everything else. These students might be as capable as Yvian was after a year with Mims. At the very least they were disciplined.

Yvian listened to the silence of her radio as she stared out the viewport. Weapons fire obscured a lot of her view. The remaining Xill were still pounding the Doomsday Clock with everything they had. The Queenship's shields were impressive, but they wouldn't hold out forever. Yvian had no idea how long it would take the Xill to smash through them. Hours? Minutes? A few seconds from now? The thought pushed her sense of urgency into outright anxiety. Yvian had to close her eyes for a few seconds and focus on her breathing, an ironic thing to be doing if the shields failed and she died.

Slightly calmer, Yvian went back to searching. A few more seconds of squinting failed to yield results. Satisfied their weren't any ships close enough to see with the naked eye, Yvian reached for the gun next to her seat. It wasn't the trusty BFSR4 sniper rifle she was used to. The Peacekeepers could have built her one, but they didn't have a way to manufacture its special ammunition. Instead, they'd given Yvian the sexiest gun she'd ever seen.

The Bigger Better BFG was actually smaller than the BFSR4. Much smaller, considering the name. It looked and handled like an assault rifle. The Bigger Better's barrel was wider than a beer bottle, with a reinforced ring around the muzzle. The gun was thick and bulky, but there was an odd sleekness to its frame. It felt brutal and elegant and advanced, like a gun from the future. It also fired actual MAC rounds with just over half the force of a MACdriver Cannon.