Lake Erie Community Park, Pennsylvania
The HDS Pandrosos begins to lose altitude, with its shadow looming larger over the Junkyard.
Antigonus, current Governor-General of Earth, watches it from below: with its mass, even the reinforced building won’t prevent it from crashing down over his head.
That’s perhaps why he’s not that concerned about the Myridian woman holding him up using only one hand: Kari Zel won’t have the time to kill him.
Or so he thinks, until the HDS Pandrosos stops its descent. Despite the damage sustained by its antigravity generators, first it hovers in place and then it rises faster and faster.
<Hey, eyes down here, scumbag.> Kari gets his attention with a slap on the face; she’s only using a fraction of the strength granted by her 10K Rise technique, or this would have crushed his skull.
She then creates enough duplicates to round up all the Athenian soldiers she previously knocked out, including those who are being carried out of the Junkyard.
<Thank Null you heard our prayer!> Ganos Lal says, coming out of the building followed by Shinobu Tanaka and the Nullbot housing O.D.I.N.’s programming.
<I’m not so sure she liked that. We weren’t going to show up for another couple of weeks, but your message made us change our plans.> Kari says, dropping out of her 10K state.
<Then Null should have left better defenses for Earth.> Shinobu complains.
<You’ll get to complain about that with her in person.> Kari adds; all of her duplicates vanish in the typical flash of light indicating the use of a teleporter, and moments later the Junkyard disappears from sight as well.
<Did you… kill those men?> Ganos Lal asks.
<No, they’re prisoners of war, we’ve just picked them up together with what we needed from the Junkyard. Just get ready for transport, and don’t take too long with Noriko, okay? She’s a bit, uhm, impatient these days.> Kari suggests.
A few moments later, she disappears with the others in a flash of light.
Earth orbit
Bridge of the N06-Xibalba
After the destruction of the N01-Ragnarok at the hands of Baal, only one of its sister ships remains in operation. Created by Noriko’s clone Viper and later donated to the Mortal Republic, the Xibalba is currently the fastest ship in the known universe.
Upon her conquest of the Galaxy, Athena appropriated the Xibalba to act as her capital ship: it was a bit of poetic justice, since Noriko’s other doppelganger Abyss was the reason for the destruction of Athena’s previous warship, the Aegis.
As the ship drops below lightspeed, Earth is occupying its entire viewscreen.
<We have reached the destination, Your Majesty.> the helmsman informs her.
<Locate the position of the HDS Pandrosos and bring us in geosynchronous orbit above it.> the goddess instructs, immediately noticing something unusual.
Even before the officers have the time to analyze what the sensors are telling them, her divine senses already picked up the lack of other ships around the planet.
<Where is the 149th fleet? They were supposed to be keep Earth under quarantine.>
<We are not picking up any ship, Your Majesty, except…> one of the officers informs her, stopped by the surprise of seeing half of a ship flying right past the viewscreen.
<That was… the Pandrosos. Cut in half.> the first mate observes in disbelief.
<Half of it. Where is the rest?> Athena asks.
The answer comes from the other half of the ship materializing a short distance from the Xibalba.
They don’t even have to raise the shields: just like the Ragnarok, the ship’s hull is composed of indestructible Neutral Matter.
<Who threw that?> Athena asks, starting to be annoyed.
<No other ship within sensors, Your Majesty. No life signs detected on the Pandrosos.>
<That doesn’t sound like Noriko’s style. Could another god be attempting a takeover? Scan the remains of the ship for deceased bodies.>
<None detected, Your Majesty, but… massive spike of transdimensional energy detected!>
<Raise shields at 30% power.> Athena orders.
And just in time: the Xibalba is hit by another ship colliding with the shield. And then another, and another, and another.
<Where are those ships coming from?> she asks, now with a touch of anger in her voice.
<Unknown, Your Majesty, but… we are identifying the ship registration numbers and they are…>
<The 149th fleet. Somebody’s throwing my own fleet back at me.> Athena deduces.
<Correct, Your Majesty. No life signs detected there either.>
<Shields at 80%. Order the N17-Sleipnir and the N20-Nidhogg to dispose of them.>
<Acknowledged. Ships decloaking and attacking.>
Two other ships in close proximity now become visible. The last two remaining ships of the Surtur class that Null used to fight both Apollo and Ares, the Sleipnir and the Nidhogg are modular ships.
They separate into swarms of much smaller drones and surround the capital ship, tearing through the rest of the fleet like a school of piranhas.
After destroying their target, the two ships reform and position themselves next to Athena’s warship, now surrounded by an immense debris field.
<Your Majesty, a ship is de-cloaking in front of us and hailing.>
<Shields at 100% power and prepare to fire Black Hole Warheads. Order the N17-Sleipnir and the N20-Nidhogg to do the same.> Athena orders.
No officer would ever admit noticing her holding her hand against her chair tighter than usual.
Something appears on the viewscreen, fully shifting back into the visible spectrum.
It’s a ship, roughly the same size as the Ragnarok and with a similar design. But it’s not as shiny as it was after it was outfitted with a Neutral Matter hull, and its markings are different.
The registration number SSN001 is painted over the right side of the ship, while the left side has the word DESTINY in green.
A light keeps beeping on the console integrated into the captain’s chair.
<Should we… answer the ship’s hail, Your Majesty?>
<Tactical report.> Athena orders.
<No active armed systems detected in the enemy ship. No active shields either.>
<It’s just waiting there?> Athena asks, raising an eyebrow.
<It would appear so, Your Majesty.>
<Hmm. Keep the other ships ready to fire at my signal. Answer the call, on screen.>
At the press of a button, the main viewscreen shows the bridge of the enemy ship.
Specifically, it’s focusing on the captain’s chair, where a woman with silver eyes wearing a leather jacket of a horrible shade of green is waiting with her legs crossed.
<This is the Destiny-One of the Resistance fleet. Order your men to surrender right now and they will not be prosecuted after their arrest.> Noriko Null says.
<Arrested under what authority?> Athena asks.
<Really? You kill my allies, take away my throne, terrorize my galaxy, invade my planet, ruin my reputation and steal my ships, and the first thing you want to talk about is protocol?>
<You are in no position to make demands, Noriko, I know full well that you lack the resources necessary to be a threat. I am, in fact, more than a little surprised that you managed to stow away an entire ship from my view.>
<A little prototype I was working on. Hidden in intergalactic space, outside of any sensor range and far enough from anywhere interesting to be detectable unless you knew where to look with pinpoint accuracy.>
<Looks more advanced than a prototype.> Athena admits.
<I worked really hard to finish it. It’s designed with the express purpose of wrecking your s#it.>
<A poor choice of last words for someone with your accomplishments, Noriko. Care to give it another try before I remove you from existence?>
<Sure. How about this: “take your best shot”.>
Athena considers the possibility that Noriko is just bluffing. But the report from the sensors insists that the Destiny-One has not raised its shields, and her own divine senses confirm that.
<Fire.> she finally orders; the N17-Sleipnir and the N20-Nidhogg fire their Black Hole Warheads.
As the name implies, the projectiles fired from the two ships release microscopic black holes.
The event horizons of the artificial singularities are far enough from the ships that launched them to be at a safe distance, but anything closer will be devastated by their gravity.
Some of the debris caused by the destruction of the 149th fleet is indeed swallowed by the black holes, but the Destiny-One remains untouched. Even when the two black holes attract each other and collide, releasing a devastatingly powerful surge of high-power particles before they decay into nothingness, their target remains intact.
<No damage sustained. How is that possible?> the first officer wonders out loud.
<My turn now. I’m taking back my planet, and my ships. Kari, hit the Sleipnir and the Nidhogg with the Dimensional Scrambler.> Noriko orders to her off-screen weapons officer.
The bridge of Athena’s ship is flooded by the sound of all the alarms going off.
She doesn’t need the viewscreen to sense spacetime around the two ships being twisted beyond the third dimension: the space itself between its atoms cracks, with the target reduced to a loose collection of atoms in just a few seconds.
Athena’s crew is speechless: they have never seen this kind of weapons technology before; in fact, the sensor didn’t even pick up anything being fired.
<Shields at 100% power. Attack with all Relativistic Plasma Cannons, continuous fire, maximum velocity and intensity.> Athena orders.
At her command, the Xibalba releases high density beams of superheated plasma: literally tons of molten metal accelerated at very nearly the speed of light.
They should hit the Destiny-One like a solar flare. They pass right through it.
<No contact! Is that a hologram!?> one of the officers’ wonders.
<I spent years trying to reverse-engineer the Eden’s phasing technology, until I figured out how to integrate it with Lar and Amazonian dimensional warping. As long as the ship is phased out of three-dimensional space, Athena, nothing you have can literally touch me.> Noriko boasts.
<Such technology must be a strain on your ship’s power systems: I easily deduce that you can’t stay intangible forever, and that you can’t attack us as long as you’re in that state.> Athena retorts.
<As if I couldn’t figure out a workaround. You have two options here, Athena. Option one: I take your crew into custody, then blow your ship out of the sky; you’ll run home to safety to lick your wounds, and I will kill you the next time we meet.>
<I assume there’s a second option?>
<You teleport in front of me so I can kill you right now. That will spare you the humiliation of your men being transported across the Galaxy to tell everyone how I humiliated you.>
<This is a bluff. This ship is covered in Neutral Matter; it has protections against it being destabilized and hyper-cooling isolation to prevent Vesta from melting it down. Not to mention, I have upgraded the shielding considerably. I know for a fact that you don’t have the means necessary to destroy this ship, Noriko.>
<You like facts, uh? Fact number one: I’m through bluffing. Fact number two: the only reason you’re still alive is that I need you to be within range to kill you. Fact number three: at the end of this war, before I kill you, you’re gonna cry for mercy. Like a little. B#tch.>
The woman and the goddess stare at each other for a couple of seconds through screens.
<New target. Redirect all weapons against Earth.> Athena orders.
<But Your Majesty, that…> the first officer protests, before disappearing in a flash of light.
The entire crew disappears the same exact way: Athena finds herself the only person on the ship.
There isn’t enough space on the Destiny-One for all the enemy combatants captured, but there’s no need for it; thanks to dimensional technology, its hangar is bigger than the ship that contains it.
<Option one it is. Kari, fire the Hyperflux Cannon. Single shot.> Noriko orders.
The Destiny-One fires its shot. Similarly to the Xibalba’s plasma weapons, it releases a ball of superheated molten metal… only it’s millions of degrees hotter and it’s fired faster than light, with the warp field surrounding it collapsing after a fraction of a second: before it hits, it has the density of a small moon.
It’s also phased out of three-dimensional space for part of its journey, completely bypassing any shielding. The heat and the collision are more than enough to melt through Neutral Matter, carving a hole through the ship and completely annihilating any chance of recovering it.
Athena is quick to fly into space, wondering if she could have survived the blast if she was directly on the path of the shot.
She hesitates for a moment. She could attempt to blitz the enemy or fly towards Earth… Noriko certainly wouldn’t risk endangering humans in a fight on her home planet.
But then she notices the Destiny-One is now targeting her directly. She has to make a split-second decision, and she chooses to flee this solar system.
Leaving Earth behind and abandoning her loyal soldiers, she reasons that she has no reason to be upset… wisdom dictates that losing a battle is perfectly acceptable as long as you win the war.
And still, throughout the entire journey towards her nearest stronghold, all she can hear is Noriko Null repeating three of her words.
“Like a b#tch”.