Planet Ignis | Ch. 22 (Patreon)

With the help of Hitori and Hans, I was finally able to repurpose the Stellaris drone into something that resembles a satellite grid. Remember! Stellaris is important! It’s the only drone with scanners sensitive enough to sift through all the static that the planet generates. It’s the fastest way of finding the other drones. With it, you can find where they went, and it has memory you can use! I split the AI core into multiple systems, but we can easily reassemble them and make them our own. I should have never let Hitori help me with it. He left a back door to the system and then shut me out. Listen! You need to hack into it!

Files salvaged from the Raptor’s Ghost Drive. Recorded by Schneider, the Raptor

The Raptor’s nuclear reactor powered its jets as it rushed through the valley. One of his cores devoted itself to calculating a shaded path for the Raptor to hover through. Its military strategy programs urged it to act promptly.

What a few days earlier had been a fully working exoskeleton was now burned, melted, and dented in several places. One of his four jets came on and off. Even as it moved, the self-repair function worked to bring it to full operation. little nanites, not unlike the ones Faren had cruising around the Burrows, went about repairing as much of the damage as it was possible. It would take a few hours to recover most of its systems. But some important ones had been damaged for years. Occasionally, parts of the robot seemed to disappear, but very quickly returned to view. The human had thoroughly destroyed its cloaking function.

When invading the Anaximander’s and the Mendeleev’s Settlements, the Raptor had first made sure it incapacitated their blue monarch. It hadn’t been too difficult to sneak into the Throne Room using its cloaking device. Then, it just had to wait in the shadows. As soon as the monarch slept or entered the Nexus, the Raptor made its move before they had the chance to react. These were the only humans that posed any danger to it, other than Hitori. During the Great War, centuries earlier, he had fought many battles with blue kings and queens and had not come out of any of them unscathed. The amount of energy they could produce was substantial. They were all good tacticians as well.

One of them had even been able to throw himself and the Raptor into a Flare. The human perished immediately, of course. The Raptor had its energy shields activated at the time and was able to enter suspension mode before the Flare fried all its systems. Military hardware was made to last and withstand the abuse, so even despite all the damage it took, it hadn’t been enough to decommission it. It had taken forty years for the erratic tilted orbit of Ignis to give him some shade. After that, it took centuries for the last few surviving nanites in the Raptor to slowly fix the other nanites, and then the Raptor, bringing it to full operational status.

The remaining Settlements must have seen through its strategy since these two blue monarchs were not vulnerably stuck inside a globe and were battle ready, away from their armies. blue monarchs fought their hardest when they didn’t have to worry about collateral damage. It had taken the Raptor two full days to finally drain that second king of his energy. Looking at his power levels, the raptor noted how even though its reactor could in theory power him for millennia, after the last battle, more than half of his energy reserves had been spent. This had been one of the most dangerous battles in its memory.

Once it had finally been able to decrypt the message, it moved toward the set of coordinates. It was right in the middle of a Flare Zone. It had to move between shadows for three years before it could finally reach it, only to find it deserted. It had analyzed the message once again. After computing for a week, it finally cracked the second layer of the message.

Another three years had been spent coming out of the maze of the Flare and shadows. As he neared the coordinates, there was no Hitori to be found. Only blue flames and yellow plasma. As soon as it started fighting, the Raptor knew. This was a trap. It’s not here. Hitori must be somewhere else. The Raptor, having the luxury of having three AI brains on his head, spared one to find more patterns in the message. By the end of the battle, it already knew where it would go next.

As it entered the valley, the Raptor noticed the statues outside king’s Grave. Humans. Their Settlement is near. After it had traveled for more than a day, it found another statue.

“Enemy. Close. More. Space. Must. Grow.” More humans. The Settlement was close. The Raptor stopped. Should it go for this Settlement’s AI before he went to terminate Hitori? No.

“terminate. Hitori.”

Hitori was priority number one. All these attempts at slowing him down revealed that time was essential to the enemy. Therefore, time should be denied to them. It resumed its flight. Passing human statue after statue, it arrived at the mountain.

The Raptor’s propulsion didn’t allow for true flight. Not in this gravity. The Raptor was too heavy here. It only allowed it to levitate a few centimeters above ground to avoid friction and increase speed. Had it been true flight, it would have arrived at the enemy’s headquarters already. The Raptor activated All-Terrain mode, and its elongated arms and claws were put to work. These appendages, aided by small bursts from its jets, allowed the Raptor to climb the mountain swiftly. Raptor drones could adapt to virtually any terrain. Mountain climbing or the cold didn’t make a difference to the Raptor. Its AI cores worked together to create the optimal route. Halfway through the climb, as gravity lessened, it picked up speed. Within one day, it arrived near the summit.

As it neared its target, the Raptor performed a full sweep of the cliff. “All. Clear.” It had been ambushed once; it wouldn’t be ambushed twice. It was almost there.

Just as he put his claw on the summit’s edge and hauled its body so its head could see the summit, the sky lit. red, orange, yellow, and blue. All mixed into a brilliant and colorful rainbow.

He felt the impact connect to his exoskeleton before it could activate its shields. The Raptor was thrown off the cliff, but not too far. The Raptor shot a hook into the cliff. Before it connected, a beam of whitish-yellow plasma shot off the cliff, and very soon, another similar shot followed it. As they intersected, the beams combined into a pristine sapphire blue. To the Raptor, it all felt like it was happening in slow motion due to its mighty processing power.

As soon as it had detected the first energy signature, the Raptor entered full battle mode. It couldn’t follow the first strike but could perfectly see the second one. The Raptor examined the cliff edge more closely. A boy and an old man standing together. One with his right palm outstretched, the other with the left palm. Both hands were side by side. Their eyes shone in a brilliant yellow.

As the Raptor examined the phenomena, it noticed the mathematics behind what had just happened. The second energy beam had been produced at the same frequency as the first one. It was shot with precise timing so that the waves of both beams wouldn’t cancel each other out but instead would harmoniously unite, amplifying the final beam. Interesting. The Raptor measured the temperature of the beam. Three thousand degrees Celsius. The output of a blue king.

“Assign. Two. New. Priority. Targets. Boy. Old. Man.”

The beam connected before the hook could even come near the cliff. The Raptor turned on its shields to full power. It dispersed the beam, but it was pushed back even farther away from the cliff. It would now have to fall for several kilometers before it could try to climb the mountain again.

*

Eli stood in a daze as he tried to understand what had happened. Trother had told him to run towards the cliff as fast as he could when he gave the signal. Trother also instructed Eli to emit the most potent plasma beam possible once he had reached the cliff.

Trother perceived with his hearing. His ears burned yellow. He opened his golden eyes and gave Eli the signal. Eli enhanced his legs with all the energy he could muster and sprinted as fast as he could. As he did so, he also perceived with yellow energy to try to follow what his teacher was about to do.

Trother had started running at the same time as he had. In a split second, they had arrived at the cliff edge. Trother fired a yellow emission behind him to gain an extra speed boost. In mid-air, he burst his leg in blue and enhanced all muscles with red, orange, and yellow energy. Before the Raptor could understand what was happening, Trother kicked it and it was sent flying.

As Eli aimed and sniped the most powerful plasma beam he could, something between yellow and blue, his teacher was right beside him doing the same thing, with his hand precisely placed next to his. He didn’t look at the drone but at Eli’s emission. It had all happened so fast. His teacher had used red, orange, yellow, and blue level bursts, enhancement, perception, and emission in one single bout. Eli had never imagined that bursting could be used so elegantly.

As the Raptor fell down the mountain, Trother dropped to his knees, collapsing again. The sickly blue veins now painted his eyes in an unhealthy color.

“Master,” Eli said as he tried to support his teacher. Using so much longevity in one single go had just been too much. Forcibly using a blue burst alone, even if briefly, and only on his leg, had cost Trother a year of his life. Unsightly sickly purple veins covered every bit of Trother’s skin. He didn’t have much longevity left. “Master, are you alright?”

“I am OK, son. Please help me to Hitori’s lab. It’s time for the next step of the plan.”

Eli helped Trother to limp his way back to the cave. They had just bought Hitori enough time to wake up.

Ch. 23