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“Hah! Yeah, I bet that too. They’ll prolly gripe a bit, and maybe even get into a few fistfights back at the flagship. But they’ll forget all about it once we divvy up all the loot.”

“Templar!” said an officer. “Sensors are picking up increased power signals from within the asteroid. Incredibly faint, but they’re clearly powering stuff back on.”

Valos’ eyes went wide in shock. A mere hour had passed – that wasn’t nearly enough time to fix an entire electrical grid.

“What? Can you tell what systems they’ve got back? Or did they just get some generators going or something? Can we hijack anything?”

“Can’t do much right now. Signals are still too low for the Bluffs to fuck with. But they can see them at least. Seems like they’re rebuilding the power grid, maybe a few key systems.”

Valos scoffed. He had just penalized their power grid with a flurry of disruptor torps. Didn’t they already have enough punishment? Is that why they’re asking for more?

“Oh!” the officer suddenly yelled. “Subdued spike just occurred. Looks like they got their comms up and running. Should we do something about that?”

.....

“Nah, let ’em keep rebuilding. We’ll trash it once they get it nice and solid again.”

Merlin leaned in towards Valos and spoke to him quietly. Having seen some of the crazy things that were in the asteroid itself, he couldn’t help but worry. It was, after all, a repository of experimental technology.

“Hey Valos,” he said, “don’t you think they’ve got some sorta counter attack ready? Like a fleet-crushing mega gun or something?”

Valos shrugged. In a way he did hope they had a fleet-crushing gun. It would only increase the rock’s overall value.

“Doesn’t matter if they do. If they don’t got enough power, then they can’t use it. And the second they bare any fangs at all, we’re gonna slap ’em dead. We’ve got this in the bag, so quit worrying!”

“Templar,” said another officer, “we’ve auto-intercepted comms signals going out of the asteroid. Looks like some sorta distress call.”

“Ah, that’s great! Patch us in.”

“Coming on main screen... now!”

Admiral Chase’s visage appeared on Valos’ main display. She looked concerned, even perhaps frightened. And also a great deal confused by who she saw on her screen.

“Wait. You’re not the Federation. Who the hell are... Merlin! You bastard! Trying to steal Prometheus right from under me? Well you’re not getting away with it!”

Merlin shrugged.

“Like I said, nothing personal, just business.”

“How’d you even intercept a secure Federation transmission? Our encryption’s unbreakable!”

“Please, allow me to interject,” said Valos. “You can thank the dozens of Bluffs in your base for doing that. They’re really handy, you know? They don’t just amp up signals, but they take over them a bit, too. Or maybe more like overwhelm ’em. So whatever you think is being sent through encrypted channels... isn’t. It’s getting sent through our open channel instead. Great bit of tech that we stole from the Hegemony.”

The Admiral paled when he told her how the little devices worked. She was irritated that she didn’t think to make a countermeasure against them sooner. But her focus was only on Prometheus, and in that way lost sight of a great many other things.

“So who the hell are you?” she asked.

“I’m Valos the Shadow, Discordian Templar, and currently in command of this fine fleet. Pleased to meet you, Admiral. I’ve heard quite a lot about you.”

She immediately scowled at him.

“Well, the pleasure’s all yours. Now give me my core back, and leave Tartarus Base this instant!”

“You’re not really in much of a position to negotiate, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“I’ll call you whatever the hell I want. You – all o’ you – are at my mercy. If I want you to starve, then you’re gonna fuckin’ starve. But if you’re good to me...”

“I’d rather starve.”

“Yeah? Do the thousands of others on your base wanna starve too? You think they’re really gonna follow your ego to their deaths?”

The Admiral gave pause once she heard that. Of course they didn’t. And besides, it was her duty to protect them. Being combative wasn’t going to help any of them in the slightest.

She drew in a deep breath then exhaled it at length before she responded. She was still riled up, but was at least calmer than before.

“Fine. So what do you want?”

“Just crack open the asteroid so we can grab everything. Then we’ll be off. Easy as that, no fuss, no muss. No-one else dies. You Feds love that sort of thing, right?”

“The hell you say? Grab everything? I’m not just going to hand over my entire life’s work to you. I – we’ve spent countless years and trillions of credits putting all of this together! They don’t come so cheap that I’ll up and give them to some random asshole pirate like you.”

“Tsk, tsk, Admiral. Take another breather, why don’tcha. Actually, you know what? Why don’t you take a few hours to cool down and think things through, yeah? Think about how much food and supplies you’ve got down in there, and think real hard how long you’re all gonna last. Then send another distress comm when you wanna talk. Ciao!”

Valos unceremoniously cut the line, and his screen went back to showing the asteroid in all its cold glory.

“How long d’ya think it’ll take her to cave?” asked Merlin.

“Doubt it’ll take long. They’ll mutiny if they have to.”

Valos felt particularly smug after his call with the Admiral. Everyone knew that he had the upper hand. There was literally nothing that the Admiral or the Federation could do.

But his grin began to fade as the energy readings on the asteroid began to rise steeply. It outright vanished once the base appeared to be running on full power yet again. Lights came on all over its exterior one by one, until most were back on.

“Sir! Most systems on the base have kicked back on! Seventy percent of the transformers appear to be fully functional again, and they appear to be running with nearly half power.”

“Impossible!” cried Valos.

How did they get things back so quickly? And how was everything running so well again? If they were allowed power, they could last indefinitely with the asteroid. Their siege would have been useless.

He grit his teeth as he issued another set of orders.

“Get the torps back out and slam the base. I want that thing dead in no time flat!”

“Yessir!”

Eight of the nineteen remaining frigates then moved towards the exposed structures on top of the asteroid, and positioned themselves so they had clear firing arcs at them.

As before, crewmembers rushed as they loaded the torpedo tubes with huge Disruptor Torpedoes, and sealed their doors behind them. They were marked Green, and the operators launched every single one of them at their target.

Valos’ grin returned as he watched the torpedoes cruise towards the asteroid. He now welcomed the fact that they got things back up and running. It was a great opportunity for him to wear down their resources even faster.

“Go ahead and keep fixing the shit,” he said. “I’ll just keep slapping you until you get that I’m the fuckin’ boss here.”

The torpedoes slammed into the structures, and like before they broke open and spilled their energy everywhere. Electricity spidered outwards, traveled down every conductive surface, and penetrated deep into the asteroid.

Their energy shot past the transformers and filled the lines quickly and violently. But this time, nothing burned out and nothing broke. Instead, energy simply cycled through the modified circuit, and built up.

All the other systems had been isolated and kept in small pools. The chief engineer didn’t plan on utilizing the main circuit, as it would have been open to attack like the first time. But Miko’s adjustments changed all that.

She had turned the entire city-wide circuit into a series of electromagnetic batteries capable of reversing charge and throwing back their energy.

The chief engineer laughed out loud as he flipped the switch, and the charge flipped the other direction. Electricity suddenly shot back out the same way it came in. And thanks to Miko’s energy amplification measure, it came out stronger than it did coming in.

The structure outside shot forth streams of electricity. Arcs of it came back down on the asteroid itself, as though it was searching for something on the surface. But the great majority of it lashed out violently in giant streams.

They reached out towards the closest ships – the frigates who had fired the torpedoes initially, and swept across them with ease. Within seconds, they were enveloped with streams of cold blue violent lightning.

Their defenses were easily penetrated, and their energy shielding rendered useless. Electricity coursed through each of them, on every deck, through every passageway and every cabin. The pirate crew inside were caught by thick tendrils of pure electrical energy.

They spasmed violently as they were fried by the high-intensity currents. Many began to smoke and smolder as their cells caught fire from within. Their skin cracked as they were electrocuted without mercy, and their eyes bubbled and burst from the heat. Most couldn’t even scream as pain tore them to shreds.

All of them died a brutal and inglorious death, and fell as blackened and burnt corpses.

The ships too were made completely useless, as every module and system were burned out along with the human crew. Everything melted or burned or disintegrated.

When the electricity counter-attack subsided, Valos saw that his eight frigates had been charred black, and turned into floating mausoleums. He blanched in fear at their reprisal – he never once expected to have his forces reduced to slag.

Inside the asteroid, the chief engineer and the Admiral were slack-jawed and in shock at how effective and powerful Miko’s changes were. The pirate fleet had been cut down a great deal in a single blow!

The chief engineer shuddered at the thought of him wanting to reprimand Miko earlier. The last thing he wanted to do was offend someone with that level of genius! She could have obliterated him from existence with his own tools if she wanted!

The Admiral herself was over-awed at the sheer potential of the weapon Miko had cobbled together. The gears began to turn as she sought for ways to improve on the design. She had been incredibly impressed with Miko all throughout the project, but this was far beyond anything she had ever seen.

To think that a 13 year old could even conceive of a backlash engine, much less cobble one together using a city’s complex electrical grid... What a monster.

Raijin, the God of Lightning, appeared on their comms with a cheeky smile on her face.

“I had noticed some electrical surges through my sensors,” she said. “Many of those fuses have melted, and will need to be replaced if we are to repel a third attack.”

“I think we don’t have to worry about that,” replied the chief, “you might’ve electrocuted all of the stupid out of ’em.”