Dark Matter Ascension-Chapter 18B3 - : Fighting a Titan

Jace rocketed across the snowy landscape. He could see the sleet, snow, and ice accumulating along the ground at a faster rate than the last time he was there. When Jace mentioned it to Ollie the otter just nodded and said, “Sometimes rogue planets pass through other celestial bodies, like nebula clouds. Poltor Six is now passing through one such object.”

Continuing his travel, Jace eventually made it back to where he had last left off from: the prison complex. The entire white wasteland was barren, save for a large, black speck on the horizon that slowly moved away from him. “Must be the tank thing that the Conclave has,” he muttered.

“They are heading towards a cluster of Complexes over there,” Ollie stated.

“I’ve got a mean idea,” Jace said as he held up his hand, putting it through the small energy shroud keeping the snow and ice off the hypercycle. “Void Beam (Rank 1),” he stated, aiming at the back of the armored vehicle.

Jericho was relaxing in his bunk, eyes closed as he tried to fall asleep, when the whole room got incredibly cold. Opening his eyes, he was shocked to see that he could see up to the bunks on the floor above him. What? He thought as he sat up and felt the blistering sleet against his skin that would have instantly afflicted frostbite if he was not wrapped up in blankets.

Activating his Black Hole Barrier (Rank 2), he felt the temperature normalize and saw that something had bored a hole through the entire exploratory tank. By some miracle, whatever had shot the vehicle did not hit any vital components as the vehicle kept trundling on.

There were screams of shock and calls to alarm. Jericho put on his heavy winter clothes as quickly as he could, dashing out into the hallway and making his way toward the command center to maybe help in some way: but the ground vanished from under him, and he fell to the lowest levels of the exploratory tank.

I was almost hit! He thought as he felt relief and shock at the same time. Just a few inches higher and I would’ve lost my legs to whatever it is!

A series of warning sirens went off and the vehicle ground to a halt. The emergency barrier popped into place, and the temperature stabilized as Renlas came over the speakers. “We are under attack by a distant target. Get on the drones! Hypercycles, go!”

Tonda scoured the wastes, arriving at the prison complex that his drone had been downed at. He could see something with an odd, silver hue that barely stood out from the snow and ice. Found you, he thought with glee as he saw the tell-tale, slight glow underneath the silvery canopy: showing that it was operating on some type of hover technology.

Tonda was still a good five-hundred feet away, and brought his obliteration laser to bear. Just stay still for a few seconds, he thought as the weapon charged.

Jace took a total of three shots at the Conclave’s vehicle, his Void Beam able to travel until it impacted a target, bored through it, and then it seemed to dissipate. He drained half of his energy doing so, but the Primal Hide and its stockpile of energy refilled before slowly restocking itself. Lowering his hand, he began to drive towards the exploratory tank, pulling out his sword as he did so.

Something approached him from behind. Edge’s Intuition (Rank 5) [Danger-Sense] screamed at him to dodge, and he tumbled down from the hovercycle right before a beam of black energy slammed into it: disintegrating it entirely to ash. Rolling up to his feet, he tried to track where the beam came from but could not see anything in the blinding sleet. “Quinn? I need help here!”

“Go for Quinn,” she replied.

“Enemy somewhere. I can’t see them because of the environment.”

“Right. Activating Coordinator’s Warning System (Rank 5), and several Stratagems at (Rank 10).”

Jace’s HUD was overlaid with Quinn’s various augmentations which would last two minutes. At the same time, he activated Void Blade (Rank 5) [Rending], Void Shield (Rank 6), and Dark Matter Cloak (Rank 3). “Ollie, any chance we can track whoever is hitting us through the System?”

“No, and I don’t see anything.”

Fine, Jace thought, then I just have to run that way until I find it. He began running towards the direction he thought the beam came from.

Tonda saw the vehicle vanish, but just before it did, a figure tumbled from it and then vanished. Cloaking? He thought, cycling through every single type of visual sensor he had. No. Not cloaking. Then let’s try gravitics. He activated his chassis built in gravity detector that had a range of one-hundred feet.

He was able to pick up movement, but his obliteration laser was on cooldown. It doesn’t matter, he thought as he switched the chassis out of its ‘stabilized firing platform’ mode and swapped it to its ‘mobile apocalypse’ mode. I’ll be able to keep ahead of whoever it is and keep shooting at them, he thought as he began moving his treads in the opposite direction, bringing more guns to bear.

Hundreds of various firearms from dozens of worlds, carefully integrated and grafted into the chassis. He knew that one of them would be able to hurt whoever this person was. This unknown assailant who he was sure was the one that had taken out his drone chassis. Once more, Tonda felt the rush and exhilaration that only came with the knowledge that if he died, which was a slim possibility but still possible, that he would be dead for good.

The thrill of combat he had not felt in a long, long time.

Jace caught sight of some tread marks in the snow and ice. Continuing to sprint, his Edge’s Intuition warned him a split second before thousands of different projectiles, magical energy blasts, bullets, tank rounds, lasers; all manner of different attacks slammed into him: and all were negated by the Void Shield.

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Annoying, he thought as he kept running forward, trying to push as much speed as he could into his legs and focusing on running more than dodging or defenses. He saw the slight outline of something big, bulky, and dark grey through the sleet and ice in front of him. Dark Energy Mine (Rank 3) [Distant], he thought as he placed the small black dot on his sword’s tip. Cocking his arm back, he threw it, saw it shoot forward, and impact some type of reactive armor plating.

Detonate, he thought. At the same time, he summoned his sword back to himself. The vehicle began to float a little bit off the ground before grappling lines shot out and tethered it to the ground. It could not move anymore and was stationary. As Jace got closer, the assault of various firearms, guns, and other weapons continued to impact him.

And time for the trump card. Hope’s Edge, Void Shield (Rank 6) [Reflecting]. The combination resulted in his energy fully refilling from the assault, and the vehicle in front of him began to crumple in on itself.

What the fuck?! Tonda screamed through his circuits and servos. Everything I have used on this bastard has done nothing! How am I supposed to kill him? Everything can die! He saw damage readouts accumulating and his processing speed put two and two together: this person was reflecting his damage, somehow, and his Titan chassis was able to keep up with the damage, but only barely.

I need another alter- Tonda would have smiled if he could have, as he saw a series of hovercycles flying over the landscape towards him. Yes! Buy me time for my laser to recharge.

Jericho was one of the group sent out on the hovercycles. There were twenty of the vehicles, and two Aspirants were on each. A large, metal tank was barely visible because it was sparking and there were small explosions blossoming on the exterior.

And a message came over their localized communication network: someone had hacked their way in.

“This is Tonda. Operative hunting here on Poltor Six. Invisible, untrackable, and undetectable hostile target within range of my gravitic sensors. Uploading operational parameters: working together is advised.”

Jericho felt a pit in his stomach as he saw the readout that appeared in the corner of his vision as someone directly fed him information from the System: which should not be possible without a Wayfinder, from what he understood, unless one of the Conclave contacts in Khrox was feeding them the information directly. Whoever this Tonda person was, they were a savant when it came to System operations.

The readout seemed to show a target about thirty feet in front of the enormous battle tank. Jericho raised his hand as they got closer, and he could detect something…off. Something was there, not too far from him as they raced closer to the still-taking-damage vehicle that was firing a stream of bullets, arcing energy, and explosive rounds into something that was invisible.

But Jericho could sense it. His Gravity Sense (Rank 1), even with its weak, thirty-foot-range, was able to pick up on a target within the radius. Oh, that’s not good! Event Horizon (Rank 3!).

Jace weathered the assault with ease, but his HUD flashed and he felt his Edge’s Intuition nudging him to run to the side. He did so, and where he had been standing, a small singularity appeared. “Ollie, if something manifests inside my shield, will it still hurt me? Or does the shield take it?”

“Skills cannot manifest inside of other entities empowered by The Cosmic System. It would be shunted adjacent to you, then effect any defensive Skills you had.”

Jace saw his timer on Hope’s Edge fading, and the enormous tank vehicle had suffered a lot of superficial damage: but the armored plates on the outside were thick. He had thrown his sword dozens of times, but the two damage-over-time effects were moving slowly. No choice, he thought, Void Beam (Rank 1).

The beam of energy lanced out and pierced through the center of the enormous tank. He could see sparking circuitry and the remains of interior components…and then the metal healed itself. “Oh,” Quinn said. “Smart metal. Shit. That is going to be tough to take down unless you can destroy all of it in one go.”

Jace saw the hovercycles that were circling his location, and he saw the various Black Hole Skills that were launched towards him only to be negated by the Void Shield. Well, they know where I am. No need for my Dark Matter Cloak. He let that fade to conserve energy, and shot out his grapnel to the tank, yanking himself over as he landed atop the chassis. Black Hole Skills continued to fire at him: but they also affected the tank under him. I’ll just use their powers. But, I need to deactivate the Dark Energy Mine to let the tank get affected. Shutting that off.

Idiots! Tonda thought as he was struck by dozens of Black Hole Skills: entropy and small singularities that ruined his ability to repair his chassis. Opening up the comms, he shouted as best he could given his mechanized state. “You idiots! You’re hitting me!”

He could not hear any comms return to him, as his antenna array was disabled, leaving him in the dark comms-wise. He was no longer under the effect of the anti-gravity field, and he rolled into the middle of the group of hovercycles. Folding his configuration down as much as he could, he compressed down to the size of one of the automobiles that his world used to operate with fossil fuels, before they discovered the secrets of fusion energy.

Pushing the smart metal to his antenna array, he was able to reestablish comms, “Get him off me and I can blow him away!”

Jericho saw the figure in the black armor making stabbing motions down into the now-smaller tank, and heard the message over their comms network as rent apart metal healed over as it flowed like liquid. “How can we pull the person off? We can’t touch them! Everything is doing…nothing!”

He felt despair and dread fill his gut. They were facing a foe that seemed unstoppable who they could do absolutely zero damage to. He saw black holes spawn around the person from various Skills: and the enormous gravitic pull did absolutely nothing.

Jericho pulled his hovercycle further away, and his companion Signer dismounted and charged off towards the figure. We can’t do anything against them.

Jace was stabbing down into the now-truck-sized tank, but every time he stabbed, the metal seemed to heal itself. And the Conclave members had stopped throwing around black holes, started to dismount their vehicles, and rushed towards him. Fine, he thought, I’ll deal with them first, and then come back to work on this tank thing. He let the grapple line loose, hopped off the truck, rolled with the landing, and began sprinting towards the oncoming Signers.

Quinn’s Stratagems were still active for another minute and thirty seconds, and Jace’s energy was about three-quarters full. I’ve got this, Jace thought as he sprinted towards the Signers. He saw them bringing weapons to bear, and trusting his Edge’s Intuition, he deftly dodged and then countered every single hit with one of his own.

They stood no chance. Going from one to the next, he sliced, slashed, stabbed, and in the case of one particularly unlucky Signer, punched clean through their head, exploding it in a fountain of blood and brain matter that froze almost instantly in the air before clattering down to the icy ground below.

One of the Conclave Signers rode off: one who had not dismounted from their hovercycle and instead went towards the exploratory tank. Jace ignored them, and turned back to the smaller, smart-metal, truck-sized tank.

It had an enormous barrel trained on him, and he dodged to the left as it fired.

But he was not fast enough.

The beam tore through space, tore reality asunder, and popped his Void Shield, taking his Ghostlight Grapnel Arm off with it.