Apocalypse Redux

2106, June 4th

Potential side effects to getting a custom-built capital ship precisely suited to your needs include, but are not limited to: heavily overcomplicated sourcing for replacement parts, machinery perpetually stuck in the prototype state, and inducing a homicidal rage in any logistics officer even remotely related to said ship.

Captain Maximilian Amos couldn’t even blame the man on the other side of the desk for any of that. The Warspite, as powerful as she was, also had a whole host of issues.

This was a vessel that could be shot to pieces underneath him, survive, repair itself with the right [Skills], [Skills] he possessed in spades, and come back swinging.

The theory was good. The practice … this was the fifth time she’d wound up in the shipyard due to a regular technological malfunction.

Fundamentally, the Warspite had to be able to cope with few to no escorts, simply due to the way he fought his ship. His 4th and 5th [Classes] were [Cosmic Juggernaut] and [Constellation of War], respectively, not only made his vessel tremendously durable but also allowed its mission profile to be changed at the drop of a hat by rotating through his various “boons.”

He could easily tear into his enemies at point-blank range using energy weapons and come out smelling like roses, so that was what the Warspite was designed to do.

Maximize energy weapons while adding the capability to operate without escorts.

Missile armaments had been stripped down to a bare minimum, and the same went for kinetics, with only four medium railguns and four missile launches left, both intended more for the long-range bombardment of crippled vessels, rather than getting into actual duels with them.

Plasma spread out too much to be used at longer ranges, but for point defense, plasma weapons worked decently well.

… “work” being the operative word. These things were a large part of what had made the Warspite a dry-dock queen. The designers had talked a good game, but sadly, only a captain who specialized in making his ship work with duct tape and prayer could actually get proper use out of the damn things.

But the lasers worked, always did, so at a bare minimum, the ship perpetually had those weapons available, which included two out of the four primary spinally mounted heavy energy cannons, all of which added up to a good 75% of a regular battleship’s firepower before buffs … but the situation of barely being able to operate wasn’t improved by the amount of strength that remained.

Another thing that was occasionally causing issues was the secondary reactors. The Warspite had been designed with each of her secondaries acting as a distinct section, individually sealed with their own life support and demon-blood reactors, capable of continuing to function irrespective of what damage the rest of the ship took, capable of easily keeping the crew within safe even throughout the most reckless maneuvers Amos undertook … except the designers had failed to account for was the fact that he had [Skills] to boost reactors, but not reinforce the power distribution network.

Which wasn’t a problem, normally, because military vessels were generally overengineered to account for stuff like that, and the same went for his ship … except the additional power provided by the secondary reactors repeatedly proved that that margin for error was far too slim, regardless of how often it was enhanced.

And so on, and so forth. Once the kinks were worked out, she’d be a magnificent vessel … but that day was not today.

So yes, the fact that almost everyone who had to deal with the Warspite eventually wound up having a conniption wasn’t exactly without reason.

And things certainly weren’t helped by the fact that previous specialized vessels had had far fewer issues, resulting in him often catching the blame for the current state of affairs.

But the comparative glut of problems largely came down to the fact that all of those ships had been variations of previously successful classes, such as the latest ship to bear the name Dreadnought being a heavily modified Titan-class battleship. Also, he wasn’t the one who’d designed the ships.

… of course, such nuance was lost on far too many of the people presently throwing shade.

“How long are we going to be laid up this time?” Amos asked his chief engineer. His own diagnosis of “can be taken into battle but won’t be at full power for a month” was grim, but also less accurate than that of someone specializing in engineering.

“We can turn down the secondary reactors, directly connect them to their associated weaponry, and use them as impromptu overflow valves if we’re well clear of anyone who might think we’re shooting at them. If we keep the particle beams in the point defense configuration and temporarily enchant them for durability, they should be able to channel a lot of power, but if we end up having to do this, it’ll add to the repair bill.”

Which was, of course, the same damn issue as always. Compromise quickly got expensive. But the ship needed to be in working order as it alone accounted for a good forty percent of the navy’s strength in the local area.

But, of course, that wasn’t where it ended.

“We’re also going to need at least two weeks in the shipyard to get everything back into working order, but I’d really prefer a couple of months so we can look things over from top to bottom.

Amos groaned internally. “Make it happen, please.”

“Hopefully, it’s going to be the last time.”

“Hopefully,” Amos agreed.

But they both knew it likely wouldn’t be.

***

They’d had one week before the emergency happened. Amos had expected something to go wrong well before that and had been just about ready to declare that the demon event that occured on any day that had the numer “6” three times in its date had gone over without any disasters within his area of responsibility … of coure that was when shit would hit the fan.

Or rather, word would reach his ears that shit had hit the fan and now he had to hurry to fix the situation before things got a million times worse, the way they were wont to do when you had a monster of this caliber on the loose.

“All hands, prepare for departure,” Amos announced via the PA system, tapping directly into it using [One With the Ship]. “Suspend and close up all ongoing repairs, secure all openings in the exterior armor, and all dockworkers are to exit the ship in six hours.

“Our target is a freed [Raid Boss] in the Etna system, secure the ship for monster combat.”

In general, warships stuck with their “standard” configuration, optimized for ship-to-ship combat, with all required energy fuelling the point defenses and primary weaponry, while the secondaries got the “dregs,” railguns and missile tubes loaded with munitions that had an anti-ship purpose.

You also had the anti-personnel variant, and wasn’t that a weird thing to say about a warship, let alone a battleship. Basically, it used a combination of sweeping “area” attacks meant to get as close as possible to guaranteed hits to coral the target and feed them into weaponry whose power was more concentrated, specialized in ripping through defenses. In addition, the cooling enchantments on the armor meant to disperse the heat from reflected lasers were usually replaced by wards more specialized against spells.

And then, finally, you had the monster-hunting configuration. Cutting down on point defense to a bare minimum since few monsters used attacks it could intercept, switching out the warheads on your missiles for ones better-suited to hurting the monster in question, another modification for the exterior wards to maximize its effectiveness against the element(s) used by the enemy, and heavy beam weapons often had to also be adjusted to ensure that it could acutally hurt the enemy in many cases … it was a further task that had to be done in a ship that was already in terrible shape for a vessel that was yet to fire her weapons in anger.

All in all, this should have been an easy win, a battleship against a single Tier 10 [Raid Boss], especially considering that the Warspite was over a century ahead of the first time that matchup had ocurred, and four times larger in every dimension to boot … but the ship was in horrible shape due being in the middle of being rebuilt, the monster had been summoning minions for close to a week, and finally, the monster in question was of a sort that should decidely only be summoned on a planetary surface since it was one perfectly suited for fighting in space.

Demon Lord Clisthert was, like most demons from the event, named after one of the demons of Solomonic times, and as a boss belonging to an Event, had more power than his rank would indicate.

But the main issue was that he was linked with the cycle of night and day, said to be capable of turning day into night, and vise-versa, at the drop of a hat, something that the [System] had translated into darkness magic and light-based transcendant hellflame that moved fast, flew far, and burned like the core of a star.

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Oh, and he could also fly in the vacuum of space. And they were about to fight that bastard. Wonderful.

***

The Enta system was your average blue giant star system, a tremendously powerful but comparatively short-lived nuclear furnace blazing away at the center, a handful of comparatively small asteroid clusters flashing between rocky planetoids that would never have been settled if it weren’t for the [System]. Because the only thing that it had to show for itself were rocks similar to what you found literally everywhere in the galaxy, and a slight proximity to a fleet base.

Unless you counted “nothing to attract people who might want to set up a proper government” as a feature, which few enough people would have, had it not been for the way the [System] could be “exploited.”

The locals did the same thing that all settlements like this did.

Mine the abundant ore, use anything left over after habitat construction/repair to summon a Hunting Ground that would absorb further materials from surrounding rocks to create the loot, get magical ores from that and use those in conjunction with mundane metals to create advanced alloys that would then be fed to a dungeon, which, in turn, would be farmed for whatever truly exotic materials it could be coerced into making until it grew unstable and had to be destroyed.

And then, the whole process started from the top.

These weren’t idiots who’d flown out into the void on a wing and a prayer, or, perhaps, convinced of possessing capabilities they didn’t have, there were experienced miners, craftsmen, and warriors who’d been doing this for years if not decades.

All gone.

Just like that.

All thanks to that bastard.

Clisthert floated in the middle of the shattered remains of a large foundry, surrounded by globs of cooled metal, chunks of debris, bodies and blood that had frozen in the vacuum of space, behind him, a vast, jet-black, disk that acted as a portal summoning his minions, which would have been invisible against the blackness of space had it not been for the backdrop of wreckage.

A demon straight out of a medieval painting, with massive horns rising from his temples like that of a titanic bull, midnight-black skin that glowed balefully from within, eyes like burning coals, and a pair of immense bat wings erupting from his back in a way that would have blotted out the sun, had this been on a planetary surface.

But there was only a single question on Amos’ mind.

Where the fuck are the minions?

Out loud, he was barking orders, giving directions, coordinating the weaponry that would be unleashed at the monster a couple of seconds from now.

Internally, however …

This place should be chock-full of them, even if they all got themselves killed, there should be corps- … oh, fuck no!

“Hard to port!” he snapped, though they really could have dodged in any direction, as long as it carried them away from their path directly ahead and was conducted at the best possible speed Warspite could manage. And at the same time, he activated his buffing [Skill] in the optimal configuration for this current clusterfuck.

[Constellation’s Boon: Delphinus] for speed, and [Constellation’s Bane: Taurus], for the ability to make ramming attacks viable, or, at the very least, survivable.

The mirror abilities of [Constellation’s Blessing] could be flavored for every individual constellation he’d unlocked. He had something for just about any situation, especially ones as dangerous as this one. Because this was an emergency.

Because all those countless minions had gone nowhere. They’d simply cloaked themselves, which they could apparently do if you left them alone for long enough?

Swearing internally, Amos cast [Incandescent Nebula], a radiant curtain of light and plasma expanding before tearing through the cloud of tiny demons that had only been revealed by his [Aura], but several of them managed to somehow blow holes into the onrushing wall of energy.

Loud clangs rang out through the Warspite as the battleship ploughed through a handful of demons, thankfully without damaging the hull. That could have gone a lot worse … but the mere fact that the trap had been set was a bad sign.

This asshole was smart. For a monster, that was, which basically translated to “isn’t a brain-dead punching bag.” But that was still going to be annoying.

Clisthert hurled himself forward, kicking off the wreckage and then accelerating with wingbeats so fast they practically turned into blurs even on the Warspite’s sensors.

Yet another reason to only summon this asshole in an atmosphere. Even being a [Raid Boss], he’d have had to slow down due to friction.

But out here? He’d be able to shoot around like a colibri on crack, capable of near-instantaneously closing the distance to any target that could fire upon him and inflict harm upon them in turn.

“All batteries, fire at will,” Amos ordered, switching to [Constellation’s Blessing: Sagittarius], the power of the archer both increasing the accuracy of the Warspite’s beam weaponry and reducing the spread of those same weapons, heavily increasing its effective range.

But even as they were burning the enemy minions out of the sky, he used [Reorder Magazines] and then directed his ship’s missiles at the main big bad.

A lance of radiant light tore through a missile as it closed in, a split second before it would have detonated … but the second one did get close enough and blew, unleashing a lance of plasma that slamed straight into Clisthert’s face and sent him tumbling.

Casaba howitzers were of minimal use against warships, the magnetically charged plasma unleashed by the shaped nuclear charge of the missile could be dissipated by the same electromagnetic field meant to counter particle beams, but against anything without that defense, they could be pretty nasty.

And unlike bomb-pumped lasers and nuclear explosively formed penetrators, the name of the original concept had been sufficiently stupid that it had stuck, even one and a half centuries later. Named after a freaking melon …

But it was the final two missiles that had held the nastiest surprise. Nano-filament netting, enchanted for durability and overlaid with a [Piercing Shot] [Skill] projected all the way from the marines’ quarters aboard the Warspite.

Before he could right himself, the Demon Lord was tangled up in razor-sharp netting that almost immediately vanished beneath his skin, having at least sliced deeply enough to bury itself in his skin somewhat.

Clisthert’s roar of fury was soundless in the void, but simply seeing it was enough for Amos to know exactly what it sounded like.

Pissed off and in pain.

Now, why don’t we see if we can make both those problems even worse?

Oh, right, he was presently sitting in a multi-million block of magical metal filled with the most lethal inventions humanity had ever produced. He was sure he’d be able to figure something out.

[Constellation’s Blessing: Taurus] for a massive boost to acceleration in a straight line, and an immunity to ramming damage that scaled with both speed and current acceleration while the Warspite gunned it, straight for the monster, a tremendous wedge of orange energy manifesting around her bow, rapidly forming into the shape of a titanic bull.

“Fire primaries,” Amos ordered and the weapons at the heart of the battleship roared to life, ripping away all the energy available in the vessel and condensing it within itself, then blasting it into the demon lord’s chest, burning flesh and tearing deeper until the vaporized matter detonated outwards, tearing open the monster’s ribcage in a gruesome display … and then the battleship ran it over, sending Clisthert tumbling away, fully regenerated.

So, that was his first “life” gone, as a Tier 10, he’d have two more. Just two more.

That was when the modified plasma weapons lining the sides of Warspite cut loose, sledgehammers of starstuff hammering into him and sending him spinning, hurling him off into the distance.

“Roll the ship,” Amos ordered, and the maneuvering thrusters fired as one, bringing the plasma cannons that had previously been on the wrong side of the warship were brought to bear, something that had to happen before the demon got out of effective range.

Not to mention that if they kept the demon spinning, off-balance, it would be a hell of a lot harder to respond to their next attack.

A wide, sweeping, arc of radiant hellfire burst from his hands, slicing apart two of the netting missiles just after they’d finished expanding … but the third one had been another casaba howitzer, disrupting the monster’s stability once again, just long enough to riddle him with lasers and cleanly land the final missile.

The one that contained the singularity.

Well, not exactly, it was actually a powerful gravity enchantment that pulled in surrounding matter with tremendous force while generating an artificial accretion disk that would transform the kinetic energy of anything that touched the enchantment into harsh radiation … but at the end of the day, there was no risk of it transforming into an actual black hole, both stable and not.

So when that missile slammed into the largest hole in the demon lord’s chest, well, it sucked in anything that wasn’t properly nailed down and fed it back to him in the form of gamma rays, both immolating the beast and doing a damn fine job of holding his attention while the Warspite hammered away at him with every weapon at its disposal, boons switched back over to enhance the battleship’s ranged firepower.

The monster … well, Clisthert did not last long before he regenerated

Last life.

But at the same time, momentum alone had carried the Warspite well past him, and the demon was finally able to get his feet back under him, proverbially speaking. He was still tumbling, but that was all.

The lasers were coming in from a comparatively slowly changing direction, allowing him to throw up a veil of darkness that easily swallowed the majority of their energy.

The missiles had long flight times, leaving him with plenty of time to intercept them.

And now, the monster was chasing after them, the fury of all the injuries inflicted upon it driving it without those same injuries slowing it down in the least.

Fucking [Raid Bosses].

Lasers either missed or were absorbed by darkness magic, now that their vectors were somewhat predictable, missiles were nigh-impossible to launch directly at the monster without them being intercepted, and overall … the damn monster might actually reach the ship.

That was when the lance of white fire hammered home, spearing the Warspite like a fish, a muffled crump followed by a low whine of energy as one of the engineers squelched the damaged, or even ruptured, main fusion reactor before it turned the entire ship into a short-lived star.

The lights overhead flickered, first fueled by the emergency backups, then powered by the secondary reactors attached to the main turreted guns. And then flickered again as the wiring began to fray under the load.

Godsdamnit. Those designers better pray I never run into them in a dark alleyway.

Amos triggered [Stellar Core], a star blooming where the reactor had once been, channeling stellar plasma towards the power conduits only to then transform into electricity, perfectly adapted to what the lines could, in fact, take.

That [Skill] would only work for a couple of hours … but the fight wouldn’t last anywhere near that long.

Amos gave his orders, then cast [Spatial Slipstream] to hurl his ship across space, getting behind the monster in an instant, even as the Warspite’s tactical officer triggered a [Skill] of her own.

[Phase Munitions] sounded like it should affect the weapons to avoid point defense or the like, but it did nothing of the sort. Or, at the very least, it couldn’t last that long. Instead, it caused them to no longer be able to interact with the vessel, and when the Warspite’s main engines fired to accelerate her, the weapons weren’t brought along for the ride, falling out of her stern before igniting their own engines one by one, the entirety of the battleship’s missile load bearing down at the [Raid Boss].

Casaba howitzers and bomb-pumped lasers disrupted his balance and blinded him, netting trapped his wings, the more traditional atomic weapons fed the Demon Lord nuclear fire and radiation until the final trio of weapons, each bearing another “singularity” warhead, blew in his face.

Then, finally, he cast [Constellation’s Boon: Hydra] to make the ship start healing itself. The regeneration wasn’t perfect, and wouldn’t fix any extremely high-tech components, but it could easily put the ship back together.

And, perhaps, the ship would finally be out of the prototyping stage when it was done with its next stay in the shipyard.

Oh, also, someone else could go hunting down that monster’s Aspect. His ship was in no shape to spend the next week chasing down a barely fist-sized marble across a goddamn solar system.