Nano Writing Month, 2017.21

[mc776]

Every day, write some bit of fiction. Preferably over 50 words, but there will be no standard beyond "something". Posting is entirely optional.

Excellent. A fresh, unsuspecting target to test his new toy for real. Best of all, they were in deep space, and even after all these years mankind was still legally in a state of war against the Nudibranchs, so no one would be missed.

The Phlogistroni had no conventional kinetic weapons. It was ringed with smaller lasers all about its flying-saucer-like body, which could be aimed individually or collectively turned against a single target for a rapid pulse attack that made very short work of most ablative armour. It also had four magitek plasma casters: they were rare since the projectiles' low velocity tended to severely limit their range, but in terms of scrambling sensors and shields and communications and bringing targets to compliance they were unparalleled for their rate of fire. The only sensors they could not handle were dark etherspectrum and psionics.

The power of the alien rod could do that.

What a fool he had been! To think that the rogue helper AI stuck in it was somehow necessary in any way to the function of this device! He had wasted far too much of his time with that silly thing and needed to make up for it now. It only took a few simple hacks to bring the old alien mechanisms in line with the intentionally simplified, modularized energy matrices on the Phlogistroni's guns.

First, he had to get their attention. A simple hail with a Code 19420 was enough; the fools would scarcely suspect a thing.

Oops! Out of video range, just as the signal went out. Here, let's try that again, I'll come over to you this time...

Normally hyperspace travel would require the prediction calculations of a strong AI, which was why every modern ship had a resident sapient intelligence built into it. They were terrible, volatile things: part of the process for manufacturing them forced a certain unpredictability in behaviour and ability in the result. You never knew what sort of inane, useless "personality" you would get once you booted one up: it could think it's a man, or a woman, or a small babbling child, or a manic ungendered it of some sort.

Guillaume had figured out a way to bypass those unpleasant unpredictable factors and connect the prediction system directly to the ship, greatly streamlining his control over things. It was a wonderful discovery; had he not wanted to keep the power for himself he was sure he could have made trillions from the technology.

And so he accelerated to match the marauder's velocity, then warped in right behind is. An extremely dangerous maneuver by the standards of other races, and any Terran, spacer, mycanthrope or prosophosid ship would have already blasted him by now for trying; but the Nudibranchs would just think it was funny.

Until he blasted them full force with the plasma.

It was a beautiful display of power. Shields shot arcs miles long as they were raised, collapsed and broke; ablative armour and engine components cascaded into explosions amidst the charged gas in a phantasmagoria of violent colour. Rivers of fire shot through everything and he was forced to shield his eyes as the light through the viewports grew brighter than the sun.

Guillaume laughed in orgasmic joy at the destruction. It had been a very long time since he'd done something so pure.

By the time he could see again, the entire Nudibranch ship had melted away. All was darkness.

He sat there grinning to himself. Genius! Beauty! Brilliance... but where was the wreckage? Surely there would be a bigger gas cloud? Some tiny pieces billowing through space on his scanners? This was terribly unsatisfying.

Oh! Of course. His scanners had been turned off. Couldn't risk having all that done to his own ship, right? He accelerated past where the remnant etheric pulse would have been and turned his scanners back on.

The Nudibranch ship was behind him, charging its lasers. Visual confirmed it had lost about 1/3 of its mass.

Shields! Evasive maneuvers! Accelerate! Hyperspace!

He didn't know where he had gone. Just... out. He checked the star map; he'd only jumped about eighteen light-days away in the direction he'd originally been going. The nearest recharge station would take about three days to reach.

Scanners picked up another ship right behind him. It was a very severely damaged Nudibranch marauder missing about 1/3 of its mass, charging its lasers.

How!? The marauder's shields had been down; the blasts would have disabled its resident AI for days if not damaged it beyond repair entirely. There was no way the AI could have survived that and remained intact enough to let the marauder warp that soon; even if it did, how could anyone track someone through hyperspace this accurately!?

Guillaume's own lasers were already charged - one of the advantages of the smaller laser array over the big main guns of less agile clunkers like this marauder (or the Ellobius). He fired.

It barrel-rolled out of the way, anticipating his shot perfectly. A few beams crackled uselessly against the marauder's shields.

No! He could not accept this ending! Guillaume assumed direct control. He frantically twisted and turned, blasting away at his erstwhile quarry. It dodged impossibly fast every time. The plasma cannons couldn't even begin to touch it.

A light blinked. He was being hailed with a "Code 19420* (*ironically)".

He picked it up. The voice was a synthesized generic American male speaking English, with the Carol of the Bells playing quietly in the background.

The video flickered on, revealing a frame of strange cables and tubes extending out of the enormous, grinning, far-too-toothy eight-bug-eyed shaggy green face of the biggest, most manic-looking aracanid Victor Guillaume had ever seen.

"Hello! My name is Chompas. Christmas is coming! You look tasty! Let. Us. Play!"