The Ballbreaker powered through the void, engines firing at maximum thrust. It was still moving backwards towards the second farthest group of Queenships. Yvian's fleet had been accelerating for over five hours. They'd been moving at the best speed a YEET Artillery Barge could manage, and while the Ballbreaker was faster, it would still take almost four hours to counteract their momentum and make forward progress.
"Captain Evans," Mims stood as he talked into his wrist console. "I'm coming to relieve you."
"This unit does not require relief," the Peacekeeper responded. "This unit is a more efficient pilot than any meatbag."
"It's not about your abilities, Evans," Mims sounded annoyed. "If we have to use our ace in the hole, it'll fry your operating system. You'll die." When City 43 had sent out its' anti-tech pulse, it had destroyed every power system and battery within its range. It had also fragged every computer system that had power running through it. The Peacekeepers had repaired the units the Pulse had taken out, but they'd had to completely replace their computer systems. The bodies had been the same, but the minds behind them were gone forever. Their experiences, their memories, everything that made them individuals had been lost.
"This unit is expendable."
Mims tipped his helmed head towards the ceiling. Yvian realized he was rolling his eyes. "There's a difference between being expendable and throwing yourself away. I'm coming up. Get your ass down to the hangar bay and meet Yvian at the Skygem."
"Confirmed," Captain Evans grudgingly accepted the order. "Try not to get us destroyed with your inferior meatbag piloting."
Yvian and Lissa shared a look. She'd never seen anyone insult the human's flying skills before. Mims just grunted. "I'll be sufficient." He turned to Lissa. "Walkers talkers?"
"We're not calling them that," Lissa reminded him. She opened a compartment under the holodisplay console. She pulled out four clunky looking handheld radios. They were as low tech as she could make them, with no computerized components and primitive chemical batteries for power. The range was limited to a few hundred kilometers, but they should still work if Skygem had to activate its anti-tech field.
Everyone grabbed a radio. Mims opened a compartment in the floor of the bridge and started pulling out supplies. "If we have to Pulse, the suits'll stay sealed, but they won't recycle air anymore." He passed two tanks of compressed air to Yvian. "Should be six hours of air per tank."
"I'm not gonna need it if I'm on Skygem," Yvian pointed out.
"Don't care." Mims took out a bag of small cylinders. "Take them. And take these." Yvian opened the bag and found that the cylinders were chem-lights. The human handed more air tanks and lights to Lissa, then took some for himself. "Kilroy, you're with Yvian on Skygem. We'll need you and Captain Evans to coordinate with the other Peacekeeper units. Lissa, grab anything you think Yvian's gonna need and bring it, then power down the Encounter. I don't want to have to replace our computers again."
"You're not the one that had to do that," Yvian reminded him.
"I don't want to have to make Yvian replace our computers again," Mims corrected himself. "Join me when your done. I could use a co-pilot."
Twenty minutes later, Yvian sat on a crystal chair in the crystal ship. Skygem had, as always, been happy to see her. Kilroy and Captain Evans stood behind her in identical suits with identical fedoras. She thought Kilroy was the one on the left, but she had no way to be sure. The ship was indifferent to their presence.
Lissa had set her up with a small holodisplay that was patched in to Ballbreaker's sensor network. The Ballbreaker was still on course. The Klaath weren't bothering to try to intercept it. As she watched, a dozen Frigates chivvied a fleet of Corvettes, Fighters, and Raiders on a nearly identical heading, a mere four hundred kilometers away. In the face of the Vore, the Klaath weren't going to spare resources to attack a single ship that wasn't threatening one of the Queens.
The Vore had consolidated their infected Queenships into one massive ball of nanomachines. The Klaath completely surrounded the mass, over a million ships forming a near perfect sphere. Yvian knew the smaller vessels couldn't aim farther than two kilometers, but that didn't stop them from blasting away at the mass of Vore. A few of them were missing, and some were hitting other Klaath, but they didn't seem to care.
Stinger Fleet Four kept a respectful distance from the Klaath sphere. They fired their beam cannons into the gaps, adding their own streams to the torrent of plasma crashing into the Vore. If the nanomachines were successfully destroyed, the Peacekeepers and the Klaath would go back to killing each other, but for now they had bigger problems.
Stinger Fleet Five blasted away at the Klaath near it's target portal. The Peacekeeper ships kept a firm hundred and twenty thousand kilometers between themselves and the Queens, careful to stay out of weapons range. Instead, they used their own beam cannons to slaughter the smaller Klaath vessels just as fast as they could. When the Klaath responded by charging one of the fleets, the Peacekeepers ran away with their guns still blazing. The Klaath Raiders were as fast as the Stingers, but the larger, more dangerous ships were too slow to catch up. Stinger Fleet Six would be there to help in another two hours. Yvian guessed the two fleets together could destroy most of the Klaath near the Queens, opening the way for the Gladiator class fighters mixed among them to make use of their MACdrivers.
Stinger Fleets One and Two were each engaged in similar maneuvers against their own targets. In theory, at least. In reality, both fleets were being chased by massive waves of defenders. Only the Raiders were fast enough to catch the Peacekeepers directly, but Frigates and Corvette fleets were scattered throughout the area in great numbers, swooping down on the Stingers from all directions. The Peacekeepers were scrambling to avoid being intercepted. They constantly changed course, firing in all directions in a desperate effort to avoid being overrun.
Stinger Fleet Three reached its target an hour after Yvian boarded Skygem. Rather than wait for the Peacekeepers to engage, this set of Queens sent half a million Klaath screaming straight towards them. Stinger Fleet Three strafed away, soon to be embroiled in the same deadly chase as Fleets One and Two. Only worse, because the Gladiators that had been sent to help them had been chased off course by more Klaath than they could handle.
As the hours passed, Yvian got bored. Fear and tension were constant companions, but there was nothing she could actually do. Skygem was too slow to go out on her own, and her anti-tech abilities wouldn't be useful unless and until they reached the Vore. Death and doom and desperation reverberated throughout the Sector, but all Yvian could think of was how nice it would be to be watching Space Captain right now. Or at least listen to an audiobook. She forced herself to refrain. She was a professional, after all. Plus Kilroy would definitely tell the Captain.
Three hours after Yvian boarded the Skygem, Admiral Zhukov decided the Gladiators wouldn't reach Fleet Three in time to make a difference. Instead, Fleet Three stopped dodging the Klaath, instead diving directly towards the ring of Klaath Klusters that made up the portal. They just barely managed to avoid getting swarmed as they closed in. Unfortunately, getting close enough to strike the portal meant getting within firing range of the Queens. It took eight seconds of sustained fire to collapse the portal, cutting the Queenships in half. By the time it was done, there were only four thousand Stingers left. They managed to finish off the Queens just before the bulk of the Klaath reduced the rest of them to debris.
Four hours after Yvian boarded the Skygem, she started to wonder what The Crunch the Vore were doing. She'd seen the attack on Dorado. A mass of nanomachines had smashed its way through everything the humans could throw at it, reconfiguring itself on the fly to deal with each new threat. That mass hadn't been much bigger than the clump they were dealing with now. Why was it just sitting there getting shot?
Six hours after Yvian boarded the Skygem, Stinger Fleets Five and Six managed to kill their Queens. Fleet Five left to reinforce Fleet One, while Fleet Six headed to help Fleet Two.
Eight hours after Yvian boarded the Skygem, Stinger Fleet Seven reached the portal at the far edge of the solar system. Or at least, they reached where the portal had been. Severed sections of Queenships floated in the void, immobile, defenseless, but very much alive. A mere three hundred thousand Klaath guarded the Queens. The rest had bypassed Stinger Fleet Seven and headed directly for the Vore. Outnumbered a mere twenty to one, Yvian didn't think the Peacekeepers would have much trouble.
Twelve hours after Yvian boarded the Skygem, the Vore made their move. Over four million Klaath vessels now surrounded the stuff, throwing down enough firepower to turn a moon into molten dust. The Vore seethed and roiled, rebuilding itself almost, but not quite, as fast as it was cut down. Yvian had almost started to believe the Klaath would pull it off, that they would kill the stuff before it could infect anything else.
She didn't notice the change at first. Kilroy alerted her. She zoomed in the sensors and saw every single Klaath vessel surrounding the Vore change color. From purple to silver. Silver lines snaked out, connecting them, first to each other, and then to the Vore in the center.
Yvian heard Mims yelling into the comms. "Fleet Five! Get out of there now!" The Stingers moved, accelerating away as fast as they could. It wasn't fast enough. As the Vore finished converting it's new mass, spears of silver shot out, faster than Yvian would have thought possible. They crossed the thirty thousand kilometers between the Vore and the Peacekeepers in five seconds. The Stingers dodged, but the spears changed course to match. The Vore spears burst, spreading nanomachines far and wide over the entire fleet.
The mass that used to be Stinger Fleet Five pressed into itself. Fifteen thousand ships crushed themselves into a ball. The ball shifted, stretched, streamlined itself. Massive engines formed, and the Vore ship rocketed forward. Yvian clocked it's acceleration at seven hundred meters per second.
"Yvian?" The Captain's voice was perfectly calm, a sure sign of panic. "Are you seeing this?"
"I see it," said Yvian. "Where's it going?"
"New Pixa," said the Peacekeeper on the left. Yvian still wasn't sure if it was Kilroy or not. Blue and purple light flashed in the eyes of both units. "It's on course for New Pixa."