Chapter 63: [Vol 1. Bonus 1 | Canon]: Stealing the Supercarrier

“Everybody’s ships fitted properly?” Ryouta asks. Most people in this game know him as the leader of the Divine Brigade, FluffyPups.

He always has enjoyed having silly and cute names to contrast against his deeds.

“Allll loaded up! Man, the devs really screwed up this time. Can you imagine how much salt is going to be all over the forums? Why did they think that it would be a good idea to implement a stackable chip that boosts Hacking by half a percent?” Spencer asks.

“Probably because they didn’t expect anybody to actually grind out a few thousand of them. Four months of grinding and buying them all off the market better work. You ready, Vik?”

“Da,” Viktor responds via a direct channel into their headsets. While Ryouta and Spencer are together in the hangar of their corporation’s carrier, Viktor has been on an undercover mission for the past two months. He started a new character, joined the corporation that they are about to attack, and has gained their trust. Viktor may not be the smartest man there is, but the corporation recognized his talent for intimidating people into getting what he wants as well as being a great fighter.

Right now, Viktor’s cruiser which is usually loaded up with shield tanking modules and kinetic artillery is fitted with something else.

“Alright. Spence, give the order for the diversion fleet to warp in.”

“Order sent!” Spencer says. While he may eventually become a deer-trap-thing, right now he is just a regular—if not a bit on the feminine side—human male.

Ryouta gives a few pats to the floating robot between him and Spencer. The poor thing looks like it’s about to burst at any second from how overloaded on chips it has had installed. It’s constantly fidgeting, occasionally lets out puffs of smoke, and makes concerned robot beeps and boops.

“Don’t worry, we’ll uninstall them all after this. You’re doing a good job of hanging in there – well, floating in there,” Ryouta says.

Rather than respond with beeping like usual, the bot just sort of sizzles and makes zapping sounds.

Meanwhile, several systems away, a fleet of seventy ships warps into one of Doom Squad’s garrison systems. They are one of the game’s largest corporations and are notorious for being elitist assholes.

They’re the perfect target for the Divine Brigade.

A massive citadel station within the system immediately activates its shields and fires off hundreds of station-to-ship missiles. All the other ships that were on standby are now turning to face the incoming attackers and activating their ships’ systems.

The balance of power does not favor the Divine Brigade’s fleet. Whereas they have seventy ships, the Doom Squad has a massive base and several hundred ships.

The Divine Brigade sends the first wave of ships out. They are small destroyers loaded to the brim with torpedo modules and just enough tanking modules to survive the first wave of attacks.

Normally, a few torpedo-specialized destroyers wouldn’t be an issue, especially against such a massive enemy fleet. The point-defense should be enough to obliterate any incoming missiles and torpedoes unless overwhelmed by thousands of them.

Unfortunately for the Divine Brigade, each of the destroyers only has enough time to launch a single torpedo before being blown up.

Fortunately for the Divine Brigade, each of the torpedoes has been fitted with nuclear warheads and stacked stealth modules.

Point-defense is worthless against targets that it cannot even detect in the first place.

The first wave of destroyers is annihilated shortly after deploying their torpedoes.

The rest of the ships making up the Divine Brigade’s fleet are long-range interdiction cruisers that are creating a massive bubble over the enemy fleet to pin them down in one place. However, that is not their only purpose.

Three.

Two.

One.

The interdiction bubble is replaced by one that temporarily shorts the shields of every ship in the enemy fleet. The interdiction itself was incredibly weak and only meant to fool the enemy into thinking that they were being pinned down until reinforcements could arrive. The true power of the interdiction cruisers lies in the fact that they have been min-maxed for shield dampening. They are only able to drain the shields from the enemy fleet for a few seconds before their energy grids get overwhelmed by the massive amount of raw processing required to create such a large and powerful effect, but it’s all they need.

Massive, blinding explosions erupt within the enemy’s fleet. Fifteen nuclear torpedoes explode within the enemy fleet. Over two hundred enemy ships are vaporized within seconds. The ships that are not outright vaporized get shredded into volatile debris that gets propelled throughout the rest of the fleet, tearing through hulls. The force of the explosion is enough to send ships crashing into one another. If that isn’t enough to screw over the enemy fleet, the larger ships that explode have explosions of their own large enough to damage their allies.

It is a beautiful sight for the Divine Brigade as hundreds of ships are either instantly destroyed, filled with holes by debris flying through their ships with extreme speed, crashed into by their own allies, or taken out by secondary explosions.

The interdiction ships are left defenseless without any operable systems. Their processors have been fried from overloading themselves to dampen the enemy’s shields.

Only one group of the Divine Brigade’s ships are left operational – the logistics cruisers, and their mission is to run. They are loaded with modules to prevent interdiction, but not to cloak where they are warping to.

In other words, their job is to lead the enemy away.

The logistics cruisers warp out of the system.

The Doom Squad realizes something very important that serves to really, really, piss them off.

The torpedo destroyers and interdiction cruisers are not piloted by players. They were all remotely controlled by the logistics cruisers. In other words, even if the majority of the Divine Brigade’s fleet was just wiped out, they haven’t lost a single player or any losses that they weren’t planning on.

Doom Squad’s fleet protecting the system warps after the logistics cruisers when they notice that they’ve left a trail. They figure that the trail is only left because there were not enough module slots left open to cloak it after being loaded up with modules to prevent interdiction and being able to remote control so many ships.

Sure, that’s part of the reason, but it’s also because they want to be followed.

Meanwhile, the fleet that Viktor is responsible for is called back to Doom Squad’s headquarters. The leader of Doom Squad believes that this is all just a plan to try and lure ships away from their main starbase in another system. The garrison would have been one of the first to send reinforcements in the event of an attack on the headquarters.

“Why can’t I scan your ship modules?” a voice rings into Viktor’s headset.

“Izvinite, you know I forget how to switch thing on,” Viktor replies. He enables and disables a few of the ship’s auxiliary systems. While they may recognize him as a great fighter, they all believe he’s totally incompetent when it comes to some of the game’s finer mechanics.

“Hurry up. I’m checking to make sure everybody’s ships match the fleet templates.”

“Do not rush or will take longer!” Viktor shouts into the headset. Meanwhile, he and his fleet are drifting into position alongside the rest of the Doom Squad’s fleets.

“Tovarishchi,” Viktor says on a global channel to all Doom Squad fleets, “Yob materi vashi.”

The missile pods of Viktor’s heavy cruiser open up and shoot twenty-four nuclear missiles at the nearest ships. Because he is marked as an allied ship on the fleet’s ships’ IFF systems, his missiles are not easily shot down like they would have been otherwise.

He engages his ship’s thrusters to ram full speed into the nearest carrier – the carrier of the annoying bastard always shouting orders at him.

Everybody in the voice channels can hear the Russian traitor manically shouting and laughing into his microphone. They don’t know what he’s saying, but they’re confident that every other word coming out from his mouth is an insult.

He’s maniacal like a demon.

With a cargo hold packed full of the game’s most volatile explosives and a carrier—and carriers tend to make very large secondary explosions—a fourth of Doom Squad’s present fleets is wiped out in seconds.

“Our spy fleet is reporting that their main fleet has been crippled!” Spencer reports to Ryouta. “They’re bringing in reinforcements from all garrisons and pulling back the ships chasing our logi boys. Ready to warp?”

“Make it so,” Ryouta says, a huge grin on his face as he says it.

“Are you sure that isn’t copyrighted?”

“Hey, something as awesome and classic as that deserves to be used by everybody.”

Ryouta rolls his eyes as the carrier jumps into warp.

Fifteen minutes later and the Divine Brigade’s carrier group arrives not at the Doom Squad’s main base as the enemy predicted, but at their shipyard. The shipyard is a massive structure the size of a small moon.

Automated canons in orbit around the structure immediately open fire on the Divine Brigade fleet. Their shields come online just seconds before the first wave of shots impacts them.

“Alright, Spence, you ready to steal the biggest ship in the game’s existence?” Ryouta asks.

“Aye aye, Admiral!” Spencer says, his voice full of excitement.

The fleet engages with the shipyard’s automated defenses. There are still a few enemy ships garrisoned to provide defense, but right now, most have left to protect the headquarters.

“They really bought into all that false intel. I mean, come on, did they really believe a bunch of corporations who hate us were going to team up with us to take them down?” Spencer asks.

“Of course they did. They’re just so egotistical that they think our other rivals would team up with us just to take them down,” Ryouta explains.

Volleys of kinetic shells, lasers, and missiles are exchanged between the Divine Brigade fleet and the shipyard’s defenses. Some of the Divine Brigade fleet is shot down, but they are all ships specialized to tank and controlled remotely. Ryouta doesn’t want to give his enemy the satisfaction of killing even one of his players.

“Admiral FluffyPups!” a voice says over the headset.

Hearing that always makes Ryouta smile.

“Their defenses are neutralized, you’re safe to go! ETA fifteen minutes before enemy reinforcements arrive.”

“Huh, that’s slower than I thought. Guess they’re too mad to think straight,” Ryouta replies. “Alright, let’s get going.”

Ryouta’s fighter squadron takes off from the carrier’s hangar. Sure, he could pilot the big ships if he wanted to, but that isn’t as fun as flying through space in a ship that looks like an ant amongst elephants.

The voice sounds over the headset again. “Dampening facility’s shields in five… four… three… two… one… they’re offline!”

Ryouta, Spencer, and the rest of the squadron push through an opening in the shipyard’s shields just seconds before they come back online.

“We’re in! Get back to base, we’ll see you there,” Ryouta commands.

“Good luck, Admiral FluffyPups!”

That always makes him smile.

The facility is massive enough that their fighter craft are able to fly through its sections with ease. Their target is the supercarrier in one of the facility’s construction tubes.

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It takes them a few minutes to find it, but something so massive can’t stay hidden forever.

“Biggest damn ship in the game. Look at her,” Ryouta says, impressed by the insane size of it. The supercarrier utterly dwarfs regular carriers in size. While a normal carrier could sortie hundreds of fighters, bombers, or troop transports, a supercarrier can handle tens of thousands of them at once.

This is the first supercarrier to ever be constructed in the game’s history. It took years of saving up, farming, and building to complete it. Nobody else has even gotten close to finishing one before.

To construct a supercarrier is essentially to beat the game. The only way to ever hope of defeating one is with another one. At least, that’s what players fear. Every other attempt at constructing one has always been interrupted due to other corporations banding together to take down whomever was trying to construct a supercarrier. Fortunately for the Doom Squad, they were able to keep it secret until enough defenses were built to support it.

Unfortunately for Doom Squad, all of those defenses are only just now warping into the system.

“Everybody land on the walkways and run for the supercarrier!” Ryouta commands.

Vertically landing all of the fighters on the runways isn’t a problem thanks to how long and wide they are.

“Infiltration squad, you’re up!”

A group of players rushes up to the side of the supercarrier’s hull with a heavy-duty plasma cutter to cut through the ship’s entrance. With a hole cut, Ryouta and the rest of his fighter pilots charge in. His robot is right by his side the entire time.

“Set explosives to collapse the halls, hack the bulkheads shut, and form defensive positions!” Spencer commands. Their soldiers salute them and get to work.

Ryouta and Spencer head for the ship’s bridge. It is located deep within the center of the supercarrier where it is safest.

“Cover!” Spencer shouts.

The two men hide behind a wall as red beams from energy blasters fly down the hall. Spencer peeks his head around the wall and sees a sentry turret hanging from the ceiling. “Toss an EMP grenade down there,” Spencer suggests.

“Got it.” Ryouta takes one of the grenades off of his belt and tosses it down the hall. The sound of sizzling electricity can be heard after a small explosion.

Ryouta waves his arm out from behind the wall. Nothing happens.

“We’re good, come on. They’re going to be trying to take their ship back at any—”

Ryouta is cut off by the sound of gunfire coming from above decks. “They’re mad.”

“So mad,” Spencer says.

There are a few more defense turrets between their position and the bridge, but nothing they can’t handle.

“You’re up, Robot,” Ryouta says, giving the floating robot a few pats on the head as he brings it to a command console.

“You really suck at naming things. If you ever get a girlfriend are you just going to call her ‘Girlfriend?’” Spencer asks.

Ryouta gives him a thumbs-up. “You know it.”

The robot gets to work hacking the ship’s systems. The supercarrier is supposed to have such extreme firewalls that it should be literally impossible for anybody to hack past without breaking the game. It is simply impossible to get a high enough Hacking ability to break through its defenses.

That is, until the developers went and added in a stacking half-a-percentage booster that could be installed in robots.

All of the bridge’s systems come to life. A tactical map showing the system and galaxy map is displayed above a holotable in the center of the room, there are systems for fire control, navigation, communication, energy and resource consumption – everything can be controlled from this room. And now, it is all under Ryouta’s little robot’s control.

“So, the shields on this are supposed to be active even during warp, right?” Ryouta asks.

“We’ve already come up with the plan. Why are you asking me about it and acting like you don’t know?” Spencer replies.

“Because it’s for dramatic effect. You know, the cool guys in sci-fi movies always come up with plans on the go and ask questions to hint to their crazy plans. It makes the audience more excited.”

“Our only audience is a robot, and even Robot already knows the plan.”

“You sure do like to take the fun out of things for being a hedonist.” Ryouta sighs. “Robot, warp to System NLO-PD2, within one hundred kilometers of the starbase there. Oh, and don’t forget to turn on the shields.”

Robot beeps and boops. The next thing they and everybody else hears in the ship are the shield engines humming to life. Then comes the warp countdown.

The supercarrier is torn out from the shipyard and transported into the debris field caused by Viktor. Repair and salvage ships are already busy at work, but they all stop when they see a ship rivaling the size of the starbase itself appear.

“You think the warp destroyed the shipyard?” Ryouta asks.

“Definitely. Something this big warping inside of a structure? It probably imploded,” Spencer asks.

“Good enough. Now then, Robot. If you would be so kind as to go and launch every single remote bomber we have, arm all missiles, prepare all batteries, and destroy every single thing in this system, that would be greatly appreciated.”

All of the green dots on the system map turn red.

“I wish I had an epic one-liner to say right now.”

“Don’t worry, Admiral. There’s always another ship to steal. Oh! Look who it is,” Spencer heads over to the communications station and pulls up the one pinging them.

“Is that you, FluffyPups?” a really pissed off voice askss.

It still makes Ryouta smile. He has no idea how anybody could say his name so seriously.

“The one and only! What’s your name again?” Ryouta asks. Of course he knows who it is, but he also knows how this man reacts when somebody treats him as if he’s irrelevant.

“I will fucking find you and kill you, FluffyPups! You think you can just go and fuck over everything we’ve done because you want to?! You have no fucking idea how much work we’ve put into this! You’re going to get banned for whatever you did – you have to be fucking hacking!”

“Technically, yes.”

“Fucking cheating scum! I know people who can find who you are and where you live. You really want to fucking do this?”

“Eeeee’yup.”

“You fu—”

“Listen, do you really think swearing is going to do anything? Come on, what if I’m actually an underage kid? You could be corrupting my pure, innocent, childlike mind right now. What would your mother think?”

“Fuck you! Fuck you, you fucking piece of—”

“Alright! I’m sorry, okay? I’ll make a deal with you.”

“What?”

“If you upload a video of you jacking off and moaning ‘Admiral FluffyPups’ for everybody to hear and see, I’ll give you your ship back. Oh, you also have to wear a diaper on your head and put whipped cream on your nipples. Deal?”

“Fuck you! Fuck you – you fucking piece of fucking—”

“Annndddd cut comms.”

“Aye aye, Admiral,” Spencer says, holding back his laughter as best he can. “The nipples part was a nice touch.”

“I’ve learned from the best hedonist there is,” Ryouta flashes Spencer a thumbs-up. “Alright, Robot, you can start destroying everything now.”

It’s possible that the Doom Squad just might have stood a chance if it had all of its fleets at full strength in addition to the starbase’s defenses, but without all of those at full strength, the supercarrier’s extreme force overwhelms its opponents with ease. Thousands of automated fighters and bombers lay waste to every ship smaller than a battlecruiser, the ship’s missiles and turrets make short work of everything else, and finally is the starbase itself. “Concentrate all shields on the bow.” All shields are focused on the bow. “Full speed ahead.”

The supercarrier plows through the center of the starbase as if it’s nothing. While tearing straight through it, the ship’s cannons and missiles fire directly into the now-exposed base’s interior. The starbase is cut very, very messily in half with each of the two major halves drifting off in opposite directions. Secondary explosions are ensuring that nothing will be left of the base.

“Man, this girl is really something. Shame that we’ve got to put her down. She’s just too OP,” Ryouta says. “Plus it’s going to really piss off that asshole.”

“He won’t even be able to dream about getting the ship back,” Spencer says. A massive smile has been on his face ever since the ship first opened fire, and it won’t be going away anytime soon. “Too bad Vikkypoo isn’t here to watch this.”

“It’s a miracle we got him to come on at all since his in-laws are over. Anyways, Robot, set course for the system’s sun, and then full speed ahead right on into it.” Ryouta looks at Spencer. “Give the order for everybody to get to the hangars and abandon ship. They should have dealt with the bastards who made it on already.”

“Aye aye, Admiral.”

Everybody, including Ryouta, Spencer, and Robot, head for the hangars after the ship sets its course for the sun. In one final, ultimate “fuck you,” the most powerful and largest ship to have ever existed in the game is being flown to its death.

“Let’s get all of these chips out of you,” Ryouta says to Robot as Spencer pilots the transport craft they’re in away from the supercarrier. When he opens Robot’s storage unit, hundreds of small chips fly out of it! “Sorry, had to really cramp them in there. You feeling better now?”

Robot lets out a few happy boops and beeps.

“Admiral, sensors are picking up a small ship speeding for the supercarrier. Its ID matches that asshole’s. Should we send some of the fighters after him?” Spencer asks.

“Nah. Let him watch his glory get melted by the sun. He’ll probably die from getting too close anyways.”

Surely enough, just as the enemy leader’s ship reaches the supercarrier, its shields are beginning to fail as the sun strips its hull away. There is no epic, glorious explosion. There is no final, heroic attempt to board the ship and try to change its course. There are no final last words nor epic one-liners.

There is simply an oversized ship flying into the sun.

The final disrespect to his enemy is letting his pride and joy die in naught more than a pathetic little whimper.

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