Chapter 18B

  The weirdest thing about being a girl was that it wasn’t weird at all. On the Expedition 7, Dalexa walked out of the cloning vat fully nude. She barely even noticed that his junk had been replaced with her junk. She had all of the memories of Dalex, but it was like they were shaded with a new color, and not one she had thought existed before. She also knew that she was a clone and she knew why she had been created.

  The hottest guy Dalexa had ever seen waited for her just outside the vat. His hair was green, and he wore a muscle shirt that clung to his pectorals and abdomen.

  “Seventh?” Dalexa asked.

  He handed her a towel to wipe off the vat sludge dripping down her new body. “Indeed.” His voice carried the same bored monotone that his female counterpart had used.

  “Why did you change sex?” Dalexa asked, drying herself off. “And why are you so chiseled?”

  “There is an explanation, but we do not have time.”

  He presented her with a new set of clothes and together they left the cloning chamber to return to the bridge. When they walked into the room, Dalexa stopped just beyond the door’s threshold. She sniffed the air. “What is that?”

  Seventh just looked at her, not even bothering to ask what she meant. It smelled familiar, as if she had been sniffing at all her life and just now noticed it. It didn’t smell bad, just distinctive and human.

  “Hold on,” she said, “is that me?”

  Finally comprehending, Seventh said, “The male Dalex likely left behind a strong scent when compared to the rest of the ship. You are the only two living beings onboard, and you both produce more odor than any other ship material or item.”

  Dalexa wrinkled her nose at that. She had obviously smelled herself before, but never as someone else.

  “May I direct your attention to the battle”, Seven said, gesturing to the map table, still alight with both their own forces and the forces of the enemy {far realmers}. The {gravity vortex} dominated the center of the map, surrounded by blue and red dots for the vessels occupying various orbits. Dalexa and Seventh still held the high ground, looking in at their enemy as the {far realmers} struggled not to be sucked into the heart of maelstrom.

  The enemy vessels moved slower than Dalexa’s own, but not substantially so. Both fleets were trapped in the {gravity vortex} together, one of them was just a bit deeper than the other.

  “{Inventory},” Dalexa said.

  Her fighting forces had been reduced by a third. Most had been destroyed and male Dalex had taken one of the {void stalkers}, a transport, and few dozen scouts.

  “That bastard,” Dalexa mumbled. “He ran off and left the hard work to me.”

  “Harvesting the benefine we need to win this battle will not be an easy task,” Seventh said.

  Dalexa guessed the [android] was probably right, but her male counterpart, Dalex, didn’t have to fight a desperate stalemate over the next three days, assuming she didn’t lose outright in the next few minutes. Who knew what exciting adventures he was having with the other Seventh.

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  She took solace in the expectation that he was probably exploring barren worlds with microbial life, and sifting through dirt to find bits of metal. What was the likelihood those worlds actually harbored sentient beings he could interact with?

  Dalexa scanned deeper into each allied vessel’s separate mana pool and their remaining skill casts. The good news was she still had a lot of ammo. The bad news was it would be tricky hitting her targets. The enemy was slower now, but both sides were also contending with the time dilation effects of the {gravity vortex}.

  Dalexa had to trust that Seventh could accurately spot the enemy vessels and move his own to effectively defeat them. Every object on the map was red and blueshifted to hell, and Dalexa had no idea what she was looking at. None of Dalex’s schooling—and therefore Dalexa’s own—had involved relativistic physics, and she had certainly done no independent research on the subject.

  The enemy’s first strategy was to try to sneak a few vessels past Dalexa’s defensive formation. Her vessels weren’t numerous enough to cover all of the space surrounding the {gravity vortex} and so the enemy {far realmers} made for the inevitable gaps. Luckily, she and Seventh saw the blockade runners coming a mile away.

  Two enemy groups of three vessels each shot for an opening around the far side of the maelstrom, opposite the Expedition 7’s position. The farther away they traveled, the harder it became to track their movements through the distorting gravity and light. One group moved with the gravity of the vortex, speeding up in a slingshot maneuver that threatened to catapult them to freedom. The second group moved against gravity, slowly but steadily fighting to escape through the sheer force of their {astral engines}.

  Seventh sent a single vessel to stop each group. No more could be spared without losing all chances of stopping the main enemy force from pushing for higher orbit and breaking through the blockade. Two destroyers went separately to fight six enemy vessels of indeterminate size and armament. While a destroyer could use the same skills as a dreadnaught—each were capable of blowing up a sun—it didn’t have the same mana pool as the dreadnaught.

  The escaping group following the current of the {gravity vortex} neared its exit speed. The destroyer pursuing them caught up at the last second. Seventh expelled most of the destroyer’s skills in the space of two seconds, gatling out {solaris nocturne} and {astral ballistas} in a cloud of instant death a million kilometers wide. The fleeing enemy fired back, targeting both the destroyer and the incoming skill projectiles.

  The ensuing chaos broke the map. It stopped displaying that portion of the void. The scrying tablets feeding Dalexa and Seventh the destroyer’s perspective had already been functioning only intermittently, but now they stopped altogether. Neither side could have any idea what had become of any of the four vessels, but the odds were all of them had been destroyed.

  The {gravity vortex} itself fluctuated as if breathing in and out. It pushed every vessel under its influence away and then pulled them back in, closer than before. Dalexa knew the power of the weapons they were fighting this battle with. If a {solaris nocturne} could destroy a sun, what could it do to a collapsed sun? The {gravity vortex} was supposedly ten times the mass of the realm’s sun, but that might only mean you needed nine more shots to wipe it out.

  When Dalexa asked Seventh about the risks of firing a {solaris nocturne} so close to the {gravity vortex}, he only marginally assured her, saying, “A fusion disruptor has a failsafe that prevents it from detonating too close to sensitive objects. I have activated that failsafe in all of our munitions for this battle.”

  The battle was chaotic enough that Dalexa wondered if that method was at all reliable. With dilated gravity and lensing light, she didn’t feel like anyone held onto much control of the situation.

  After several minutes passed, the broken section of the map flickered back to life. All three of the enemy vessels were gone, atomized by the {solaris nocturne}. Seventh checked for any sign of them outside the {gravity vortex} and found none. Their destroyer was still intact, but its {astral engines} no longer functioned and it was slipping deeper and deeper towards the maelstrom’s pitch black center. Seventh did not think it could be repaired in time to save it, and it had used up most of its utility completing its mission.

  Dalexa saluted the vessel’s valiant sacrifice and then she and Seventh turned their attention toward the slower moving skirmish. Their second destroyer closed on the other three escaping enemy vessels. It cast a smaller net of skills than its fellow destroyer on the other side of the maelstrom. The skill projectiles moved slowly to catch up to their targets, vulnerable to interception from enemy defenses. Dalexa watched as they fired back at the incoming projectiles and her destroyer.

  A haze of distortion washed across that region of the map as skills connected and bombs exploded. The exchange was smaller than the previous one on the other side of the {gravity vortex}, but still cataclysmic. When the realm map cleared again, two of the enemy vessels were gone, along with the friendly destroyer. The final enemy vessel pushed away from gravity well, on course to break the blockade.

  Dalexa’s heart skipped a beat. Had she already failed her objective? If the enemy vessel escaped, it would either circle around and attack her forces from outside the {gravity vortex} or it would pursue Dalex to the habitable worlds. Had it even been thirty minutes? She wasn’t keeping track of the time.

  But she had one final ace in the hole. “We have to do it, Seventh.”

  “Understood. Engaging.”

  Another blue dot shimmered into life on the map. It traversed the gravity waves of the vortex at a higher orbit than the enemy vessel, bearing down on it like a swooping hawk. One of the two remaining {void stalkers} dropped its charm of {invisibility} and fired a barrage of skills at the escaping target.

  If a red dot on a holographic map could panic, this one did. The enemy vessel rapidly changed direction, trying to avoid the incoming projectiles. It fired a few defensive weapons, but from what Dalexa could tell, it had used up most of its arsenal against the destroyer.

  It was too late. Her {void stalker} wiped the enemy vessel off the map in a brilliant ball of white light. The perimeter was secure, for the moment.

  Unfortunately, it was not all good news.

  Dalexa hadn’t wanted to reveal the hidden {void stalker} yet. Now, if the enemy was at all observant, they would guess she had sent another of the same vessel type to pursue the first escape group. They might deduce that now was the best time to strike. They would be right. The third {voidstalker} was still hidden all the way on the other side of the maelstrom, pushing against gravity to return to formation.

  She had destroyed a significant portion of the enemy fleet, but was still outnumbered. With two destroyers down and another two vessels out of position, she wasn’t sure if her defenses could survive an all-out attack from the enemy.

  “They’ll test us again, and soon,” she said.

  “Indeed,” Seventh agreed, “but it was a necessary maneuver. Sending the [stealth frigates] was the correct strategy, and they served their purpose. Neither was destroyed, and we will have the opportunity to surprise the unknown faction again.”

  “I thought I was the optimist.”

  “The cloning does come with subtle changes for both of us.”

  Dalexa did feel a little more downbeat than her memories suggested was normal. That scared her a bit. Was she just a female Dalex or was she a different person? That bastard, Dalex, leaving a clone behind to have an existential crisis. Maybe she would grow a goatee and stab him in the heart when they finally met. She bet that would help with her self-esteem.

  The enemy was moving. Red dots shifted on the map, forming into new groups and preparing for whatever attack pattern the enemy {far realmer} commander was cooking up. Dalexa wasn’t sure her heart could make it a full day of battle. But every minute she held out was almost a week for Dalex to do his job and then come back and rescue her. She tried not to look at the clock.

  “We have inbound,” Seventh announced.

  Dalexa checked the map again. None of the red dots had broken away yet to attack her lines. “Where?”

  “From Gaia-BH1’s sun. There is a [probe] diving into the event horizon heading straight for us.”

  “A [probe]? Did they have any [probes] outside?”

  She remembered the enemy {far realmers} had launched such a craft toward the habitable worlds of Gaia. Would it have come back?

  “It is not their probe, it is ours. I detect quantities of benefine onboard.”

  A grin blossomed on Dalexa’s face. “Dalex, that bastard. Did he already come to save our bacon?”

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