Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

Chapter 140 – Break for the Border

Calypso sets down a short distance from Erenmoor once again, and this time Emily doesn’t leave the ship. Instead, she sleeps for six hours, completely resting all of her cores ready for the final break for the border.

After, she wakes up and heads towards the engine room to meditate till lift-off. On her way, she hears faint gunshots from the front of the ship and so makes her way over to check on them. She arrives at the main entrance hatch and finds Angela sitting at the top of the stairs with a clockwork rifle, firing potshots at three passing sand stalkers, a fourth lying a dozen metres behind them in a pool of blood.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Emily asks, leaning against the doorway behind her and ignoring the beasts.@@novelbin@@

“Something like that,” Angela says, lining up another shot and catching the lead stalker in the leg, knocking it to the sand. “I’m not used to sleeping when it’s light and I saw these guys running by, so I decided to get some practice in. Just in case.”

“Hmm,” Emily hums, her hand moving down to rest on the Spitter as the beasts close in on the stairs.

Angela manages to hit one of the last two stalkers before it can reach them, but her cylinder runs dry as the last places its front paw onto the metal below her.

“Shit,” she mutters.

Emily draws her gun and flips it around in her hand before tapping Angela on the shoulder with the handle, offering it to her.

“Just flip the little switch on the side up once and shoot away.”

“Thanks.”

Angela takes the offered pistol, aims it straight down the stairs and does as she’s told, squeezing the trigger and sending a bullet into the head of the stalker that’s now charging towards them.

“Nice shot,” Emily comments as she takes the gun back and fires two shots into the heads of the two bleeding stalkers still alive on the sands before heading down the stairs to harvest their tongues and move the corpses away from the ship.

Angela remains seated, watching Emily with a conflicted expression until she starts back up the stairs to board the ship again.

“Hey, Emily,” she says, a look of resolution flashing across her face. “Do you do it on purpose?”

“Do what?” Emily asks, dropping down to sit on the top step beside her.

“Scare people off.” Angela takes a deep breath, pausing and gauging Emily’s lack of reaction before continuing. “I’ve been looking for it since we left Ashdon, and you said I should rightfully be scared of you. You know, most normal people, no matter how dangerous they really are, would reassure people that they won’t hurt them if they want to get along. But you seem to do the opposite. I know you can be friendly; you’ve shown me that plenty. But instead, you make idle threats that you don’t seem to have any desire to follow through with. Hell, you even came out of your fight against that elemental covered in your own blood and you chose not to clean it until you saw us. I refuse to believe you just forgot, you’re not stupid…”

She trails off, turning to Emily with a questioning gaze and waiting for a response.

“Okay, that one I blame on the combat high,” Emily says, flashing Angela a small grin. “I really enjoy killing things.”

“See, like that.”

Emily shrugs, pushing herself off the stairs as her face drops back to neutral again.

“What can I say? Some of it’s intentional, yeah, but some of it’s just me. I’ve spent long enough cultivating a relationship that could never work because of our differences,” Emily says with a wistful tone, walking into the ship under Angela’s watchful gaze before turning her head back to finish. “You see, I do mean it when I say you should be scared of me. If being around me doesn’t get you killed anyway, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill most members of this crew myself if it would benefit me. If it’s true, what’s the point in telling you otherwise?”

Angela shivers at Emily’s cold, detached admission, turning away to stare out into the open sands with her face twisted in a complicated blend of emotions as Emily disappears into the ship without another word.

***

A few hours later, as the sun is approaching the horizon ready to set, Emily opens her eyes in the engine room. The crackling lightning that dances across her skin as she meditates fades, and she stands up to leave the room with purpose. Podrick notices the faint crackle disappear and rises from his own light meditation, not deep enough in a trance to completely block out his surroundings, and follows her out.

“Go make sure the others are prepared,” Emily says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We take off in a few minutes.”

“Okay,” Podrick chirps, turning and running towards the crew quarters.

Emily winds her way through the twisting corridors of the ship until she arrives at a crawlspace close to the centre of the hull. She slips into the tight space and shimmies towards the centre of the large-scale array she’s worked into the ship’s upgrades.

She quickly reaches the five empty sockets left there and summons five crystals to fit them: two normal wind, two normal earth, and one greater wind. She places the normal crystals on either side of the central socket with each element opposite its corresponding partner, before slowly lowering the greater wind crystal into place in the middle.

“Let’s hope I designed this right,” she mutters as the crystal locks into place. “Or I’m going to be hit with a nasty backlash being stuck this close to the power source.”

The connecting channels between the crystals suddenly light up with a magical glow that stays contained within a few metres as all five crystals pulse rhythmically. Emily holds her breath with expectation, waiting for the tenth pulse. The moment it arrives, the light from the crystals suddenly spreads, lighting up the rest of the runes visible in the crawlspace.

Emily feels a delicate hum of mana surround her as the array activates, and a proud smile spreads across her face.

“Perfect!”

She extricates herself from the tight passage and places the covering panel back in place before making her way to the bridge. The engine kicks into motion as she’s walking and, by the time she enters the ship’s command centre, the balloon is fully inflated and ready to carry it up into the skies above.

“Are we good to go?” Anton asks, glancing back as she steps into the room.

“Yep,” Emily responds with a nod, fixing her eyes on the altimeter on his dashboard. “The array has been activated. Time to test it out.”

“You heard the woman. Let’s get going. We have a country to flee!”

Angela and Tony chuckle, the former glancing over her shoulder and flashing Anton a playful smile as she responds.

“Aye aye, captain!”

The ship shudders slightly as the propellers turn on, tilting slightly down to give them a kick off the ground, and they quickly begin to rise.

“Damn!” Angela exclaims, double-checking her readings and quickly adjusting the steam flow to the balloon. “I don’t know what your magic did, but by Goddess is it working. We’re rising almost twice as fast as we normally would.”

“Haha,” Emily chuckles. “I should hope so. I used some valuable materials on this. The array both reinforces the armour on the hull against physical and magical attacks, and reduces its weight. I splashed out a little on the crystals powering it, so it should be completely self-sufficient and automatically refuel faster than it uses mana unless we’re hit by multiple strong attacks.”

“So…” Angela says, finishing her adjustments to balance out the reduced weight and turning back to flash Emily an excited grin. “We’ll go faster?”

“Yes,” she responds with an eye roll. “We’ll go faster.”

As if to prove her point, they reach optimal cruising altitude and divert all propellers to push them forward through the air. Everyone in the bridge marvels at the ship’s newfound speed as the sands rush by beneath them, and after a few minutes, Ash and Podrick finish up in the engine room and join them to comment on the speed as well.

As the excitement from the ship’s improvements begins to fade, a tense silence settles over the bridge, with everyone waiting and watching the horizon for danger as they head towards the sea.

The sun sets as they pass to the south of Erenmoor, just out of sight of the city’s walls.

“How far to the coast from here?” Emily asks, breaking the silence.

“About five hundred kilometres,” Tony answers her.

“And how fast are we going right now?”

“Almost one hundred and thirty kilometres an hour,” Angela answers this time. “Your upgrades have done wonders for our speed! We’re about four hours out from hitting open water.”

Emily nods, falling back into silence.

If they know we’re coming, they’ll probably start gathering now.

An hour later, nothing has happened so the tension in the bridge eases a little and the crew start quietly discussing the possible ambush awaiting them. Emily remains silent, not joining in with their conversation. She stands still as a statue behind Anton’s seat while staring out of the window ahead, with one of her cores watching through her bird’s eyes above.

Two hours later, they spot their first sign of enemy movement. Floating in the air far ahead of them, they see the faint lights of five small ships, less than half the size of Calypso, their outlines barely visible in the light of the moon. With her enhanced eyesight, Emily can easily make out their designs, seeing a dense mass of propellers mounted in a ring around the back of each of them, and four long pipes, two on either side, half-embedded in the ships’ hulls pointing straight forward.

“Five scout ships approaching straight ahead!” Anton announces, straightening up in his chair and raising a looking glass to peer through before glancing up at Emily. “Can you deal with them?”

“Easily,” she responds, turning and heading straight for the drone hatch.

She opens it up and drops out, stepping on the air and launching herself around their fast-moving ship to stand above the bridge with air walk. She hears five faint pops in the distance as she slides to a halt on top of the hull, and four fist-sized balls of metal fly past the ship. The fifth catches the ship in a glancing blow, sending a shudder through it and leaving a long scratch in its armour.

Emily whistles in appreciation as she pulls out the Whisper and drops into a seated position.

“That’s some impressive range,” she mutters, raising the sight to her eye and flicking the firing selector to full. “My turn.”

She pulls the trigger and, with a silent kick into her shoulder, the Whisper sends a bullet rocketing into one of the scout’s balloons. The projectile rips a small hole in the reinforced fabric, but the scout continues forward unaffected.

“Tsk,” Emily clicks her tongue, racking the bolt on her gun and firing again.

She sends six more bullets into the same balloon, aiming to keep them as close together as possible, widening the existing hole until the ship starts to slowly lose altitude. However, the moment the ship starts dropping, she sees a strange white foam spraying out of the hole through her scope. Within a few seconds, the foam solidifies at the edges of the tear, slowly shrinking it until a solid white stopper has completely blocked the leak.

I should’ve expected they had ways to protect their ships against being shot down. How many more times can you do that I wonder?

Emily fires again at the same time as all five scouts unload a second shot each, and she watches as five more heavy projectiles sail towards the ship. This time, Emily raises one of her hands and pours out mana, forming it into four large, green magic circles. All of them are a modified form of wind barrier, and they create a long, flat barrier of powerful winds pulling straight down.

The five oversized bullets smash into the wall of wind and instantly arc down, sailing under Calypso and slamming into the sand behind it with five heavy impacts. Emily cancels her spells and checks to see what her shot did, seeing the solid foam stopper has been knocked out of place, but more fresh foam is rushing back to replace it.

“Damn. I guess taking them down quickly with normal bullets is out of the question,” Emily says to herself, quickly dropping the magazine from her gun and reaching into her pouch to pull out a new one.

She slams home the new magazine with an engraved flame on the side and lines up another shot. This time, she aims for the top of one of the scout’s hulls before squeezing the trigger. The bullet slams accurately into the ship and explodes, sending a wave of flames up to engulf the balloon, and creating a sizeable hole in the ship’s metal hull.

However, the flames on the balloon quickly die out, unable to burn through the resistant material, and Emily gets a system notification that immediately draws her attention.

¯¯¯¯¯

-Leave the country without killing any of your pursuers (Failed)

_____

“Oh, come on,” she growls in frustration. “To die in that you’d have to have been stood directly under it!”

Sighing, she shakes her head.

Ah well. I was probably going to fail at least once anyway. I may as well use this as a chance to work out what I’m facing and how I can get through it without causing any deaths.

She changes her target, aiming her explosive bullets at the propellers at the back of the ships instead. It takes her five carefully aimed shots to completely remove the propellers from one ship, and it stops advancing as she does, becoming stuck hovering in one spot after its speed dies out.

“That works at least,” she mutters, conjuring another large wall of wind to block another volley of shots as the four remaining ships close in on them.

Emily places the Whisper away and stands up, calling upon her connection with lightning and charging forward into the open air to meet her opponents. She reaches the ships quickly and sends a powerful, arcing blade of charge towards one of their balloons. It burns a long gash into the fabric that the repairing foam can’t respond fast enough to fix as all of the held steam is released.

The targeted scout plummets to the ground, crashing into the sand below with a harsh impact that crumples the front half.

“That probably killed everyone inside,” Emily muses with a frown.  “Maybe I can create a wind cushion when I drop the ships to stop anyone dying?”

Next, she casts four wind currents directly below one of the scouts as a hatch on the side pops open and a lightly armoured man leans out with a rifle in hand, aiming it up at Emily. He fires, but a small twitch of her lightning-charged legs displaces her several metres to the side, dodging with ease. She points a finger at him, sending a small bolt of lightning into his chest that scorches his armour and freezes his muscles, before sending another large lightning blade into the balloon of his ship, sending it careening down into the waiting winds below.

The ship shudders as it falls, moving unstably in the powerful updrafts, but it hits the ground with less force than its predecessor and only a few small segments of armour fold inwards as it does.

It drains more mana than I’d like, but as long as there aren’t too many ships waiting for us, this should work.

With a light nod, Emily pulls in the crackling charge surrounding her, compacting it down into a small orb before releasing it in a powerful wave of lightning that knocks the remaining scouts from the sky. She returns to the ship and sits above the bridge again before releasing her lightning-charged state.

A short while later, the glistening blue expanse of the open ocean comes into view, momentarily taking Emily’s breath away. Her admiration quickly fades though as her eyes focus on the large force awaiting her.

Dotting the shoreline are several large, grounded ships. Emily counts fifteen metal behemoths, covered in powerful light crystals that light up the surrounding ground troops. The people on the floor are standing in formations, carrying an assortment of long-range weaponry ranging from rifles to large, threatening, unwieldy metal tubes. There are ten other, more complicated ships with their balloons completely removed, lying in the sand behind them, and their bodies butterflied open, secured to the ground to support the large artillery cannons within that are pointed at the approaching Calypso.

To top it off, Emily counts around thirty-five ships still in the air. Half of them are larger than the scouts she took down, with an assortment of cannons pointed at her and several magical lights, and the rest are smaller and lightless, with a mixture of two designs, both lacking any obvious weaponry.

“Well shit,” Emily mutters in disbelief, an excited grin stretching her lips. “This is gonna be fun.”