Chapitre 22: Wyrm

"Ah~ Where have you been all my life you lovely, lovely lady?"

"While I knew this was going to happen it is nevertheless still embarrassing… Could you please stop rubbing your face against our new ship Mike?"

Breathing a deep sigh as she felt a headache rapidly mounting, River tried to get Mike away from their new craft, or at least stop embarrassing her in public.

"Just 5 more minutes River, I need to make sure she knows I appreciate her so she'll take good care of us in return."

With no way of stopping what was happening, River glanced around her to find that she and Mike were the only people inside the Pilot's guild hangar, her eyes became far less sharp as she breathed another sigh and let Mike do what he wanted to do.

Experience told her this was the easiest thing to do in these sorts of situations.

Finally, Mike managed to calm down and managed to stop rubbing his face against the hull of his new ship, barely managing to contain his excitement by calmly rubbing the surface of the hull with his hand.

"So, we got our hands on a Wyrm… Even as little as I know about ships I have to admit I'm also pretty excited about that."

Looking at the large ship Mike had requested to be painted mat black, River felt a mix of pride, fear and subtle pressure. This is was a Wyrm, a craft first devised 105 years ago, in that short amount of time it had become a legendary icon of the wonders mercenaries could achieve. A single Wyrm in the hands of a 3 man crew had once protected their home station Hawking orbital against an attack by the Hornet federation, destroying a total of 94 hostile ships, a group of 3 Wyrm's operating in concert had entirely destroyed the fledgling pirate nation of Zaun in 38 hours, a single Wyrm dubbed 'The red hot 251' piloted by the frankly insane trailblazer Olive Hyperion had been the first one to supercharge her faster than light drive by absorbing the charged particles ejected by a pulsar directly in its cone.

Although there had been a lot of legendary feats reported around the galaxy, most of them had been while flying a Wyrm, and for a good reason. Classified as a medium-large ship by the pilot's federation, the triangle-shaped ship was 16 metres tall, 49 metres wide and 75 metres long the Wyrm had almost twice as many impulse thrusters as any ships in its class, an all Raligen alloy hull and 6 heavy class hardpoints the Wyrm is a trough, fast and extremely durable heavy fighter and the one Mike and River had just gotten their hands on was armed with 2 twin railgun turrets and 4 multi-class 215 mill missile launchers capable of firing just about any kind of munition including fusion sidewinders, delayed impact semi-active homing cluster missiles and kinetic energy missiles.

"She's fully loaded and fueled… Let's take her for a spin."

"... I know I'm going to regret this, but yeah, sure, at least I didn't eat anything that'll come back to the surface in a bit."

Knowing exactly what Mike meant by 'taking her for a spin', River breathed a defeated sigh as she prepared herself.

"Urg, fuck me…"

Before Long River found herself barely able to keep her food down as Mike put the Wyrm through its phases.

"Woah she purrs like a kitty, just listen to those drives!"

Really absorbing the feeling of the brand new leather seats as he was pushed into them doing a 'light' 5 G's, Mike eventually cut throttle before starting to test the reactivity of the manoeuvring thrusters, but instead of spinning around like a madman he just kept it to a few light taps of the different thrusters before firing up the weapons and scan system.

"Let's make sure we're alone… You scanned for bugs right?"

Shifting mood and taking a second to let fresh air back into her brain, River realised it wasn't just for fun Mike had taken the two of them out into deep space all alone.

"Ye, no bugs of any kind… And looking at the sensors we're also all clear here so what's the next step of our grand plan?"

"Next step is the same as last time, get to the centre, new problems are as follows: Crystals and the Xenos suppression force."

Still not entirely sure on what the entirety of the plan was, or what they were even hoping to find at the galactic centre, River had anticipated that the crystalline lifeforms being a problem seeing that they had appeared earlier than Mike had predicted, but the other problem she hadn't seen coming.

"When I pressed Kate on it she answered without answering directly, there's a good chance the crystals aren't the only extra-galactic's running around as of now and the suppression force is shooting at anyone and everything, I'm worried they're going to shoot at something smarter than those crystals and start a war that'll wipe us out. What I'm afraid of is the possibility of 'remnants', automatic servants of the long-gone super-race which created this mess in the first place marking this galaxy for cleaning."

"So there's more than just one faction to worry about, and not all of them are necessarily hostile?"

As Mike continued to bring up more and more different alien fractions River started to realise what kind of cluster fuck the two of them were stepping into. While Mike was looking to make first contact with the beastmen, the crystal-like beings wanted to wipe out everything and the so-called 'remnants' wanted to be left alone and just do whatever they were doing.

"Exactly, we can't and really don't want to fuck with the remnants before combining forces with the beastmen, they have the weapons which can counter almost any other factions but they need humans' help deploying them. The faster we can make contact and secure their cooperation the fewer people on both sides will have to suffer from the crystal attacks."

"Then let's get to it, I'm also itching to try out these weapon systems, not to mention we can also carry cargo now."

With greatly expanded offensive and defensive abilities not to mention the greatly added utility, River was also somewhat excited to finally put the Wyrm to good use and start carving out a legend of her own making. As the entire galaxy was crawling with lowlifes it didn't take more than a single day before both Mike and River got their chance to break in the new ship.

"Four more contacts behind us too, seems like there are more pirates here than miners… Just like the intel said."

Running cold and sitting inside a recently cracked ice asteroid, River had spent the past hour scanning for contacts inside a recently compromised mining belt. It was about time to start.

"Yeah, let's see how many of them we can squish before they scatter. Start painting targets, I'll leave two of the missile launchers to you, keep our back clear."

"Roger."

Now with more weapons than he knew what to do with, Mike delegated some of them to River along with her duties of communication and electronic warfare.

"Here we go!~"

Sounding like a certain plumber high off his tits on LSD, Mike lit the afterburner without warning as he brought out the Wyrm's weapons and locked the first target and set the fire control system before squeezing the trigger.

"Bye-bye!"

Within a second the first target fell victim to the concentrated railgun fire, a second later the second target also exploded as its fusion reactor was pierced by a railgun sabot.

"Man having multiple railguns sure is nice, and they're gimbaled too so I don't have to move around the ship to aim like before."

Giving his honest feelings on the matter, Mike sounded like a guy reviewing a smartphone as he quickly slaughtered the opposition.

"It finally seems like they're aware of us."

Using the manoeuvring thrusters, Mike slid out of the way of a burst of cannon fire and took cover behind an asteroid which quickly started crumbling to concentrated fire from multiple pissed off pirates.

"River, eyes please."

"On it."

Operating her console with lighting speed, River launched a small drone from an airlock underneath the Wyrm, the drone went unnoticed by the pirates as it marked them with lasers and designated them as targets for Mike straight through his rapidly crumbling cover. Shooting straight through the asteroid, Mike voided his cover and started moving again to avoid the more concentrated hostile fire as the various stray bullets or laser was harmlessly reflected by the Wyrm's sturdy shielding as Mike popped out another drone.

"They're starting to get around us."

Significantly calmer than the first time she fought along with Mike, River had already predicted the pirate's actions and was perfectly ready to counter them.

"Clear launch angles please."

"On it, 4 seconds."

Using the drone Mike had launched earlier to lock on to the pirates moving silently around their flank, River counted down from the time Mike marked and then launched a set of 6 missiles, 3 from each launcher on opposite sides of the Wyrm. Propelled out from the sides of the craft by small solid rocket thrusters, the missiles shed their launch covers as the main rocket motors ignited while River linked their guidance systems and configured the targeting matrix for maximum casualties.

"Oi! He's noticed us!"

"Already on it, launching chaff, flares! ECM emitting too!"

Seeing one of the missiles was after his own craft, one of the pirates went full defensive as his shoddy little two-seat fighter started chugging chaff and flares all over the place like some sort of firework display.

"It's not taking the bait!?"

"WHA!- N-"

Even with all the countermeasures the pirate spewed all over the densely packed asteroid belt the missile still found its target as if it had been ignoring everything else, the missile's tandem warhead easily burned through the light fighter's shield with its first explosive charge before the second, third, fourth and fifth detonated in concert and spewed jets of molten metal straight through the hull before breaching the reactor core.

Within a second of the first missile striking its target, the other 5 had also found their respected prey without issue, no matter how many countermeasures they launched it didn't matter as River had used the drones Mike had steadily been deploying to laser the pirates and guide in the missiles without the use of thermal or LIDAR sensors that could be disrupted by chaff and flares.

[Seems like you've taken good care of my buddies, allow me to return that favour tenfold!]

"Here comes the pirate boss, and it seems like he really brought something outrageous along…"

"New contact… With a 3.5 mill bounty!?"

Already tracking a new contact from its thermal output alone from a range of 4 clicks, River thought the Wyrm's sensors were bugged until she noticed the accompanying bounty. With a bounty that massive there was only one plausible explanation.

River and Mike had just run into a pirate lord.

"Contact identified, it's a fucking Orca!"

Recognizing the ship type that was currently pushing itself through the densely packed satellite belt, River was about to suggest they ran as Mike lit the afterburner and charged towards the enemy.

"Mike I swear to god! This isn't something we want to fight!"

The GXR-11 Ocra was designated as a large ship by the pilot's guild, at about 130 metres in length it was almost twice the size of the Wyrm and in the same ship class as Kate's Endurance, although a few generations older, equipped with a variable array of railguns along both its sides as well as multiple missile launchers. Mike apparently didn't seem to mind facing off against such an opponent, that much was evident by the fierce smile plastered all over his face.

"Load all launchers with KEM's, this is going to be the easiest cash we've ever made."

"Fuck!"

Realising that it was happening whether she wanted it or not, River caved and started operating the console in front of her as opposed to just panicking.

(If Mike's that sure then we should be fine… Properly… Most likely.)

"Now let's see how thick your defences are…"

Stomping his foot down on the middle pedal which disabled flight assistance, Mike threw the enemies aim off by hugging close to an asteroid and briefly disappearing from sight as he fired a single railgun at the enormous Orca likewise closing the range. Disabling the G limiters, Mike forced the Wyrm into a spin as he launched multiple kinetic energy missiles without arming them.

[Is that the best you've got!? Just stand still, then I'll make sure to squish you real quick!]

Ignoring the pirate lord blasting him on an open channel, Mike turned his attention temporarily to River as he continued to move into one of the Orca's many blindspots by swerving wildly in between the asteroids that became sparser by the second, cutting past each one with razor-thin margins.

"Arm all KEM's for ripple fire, follow my mark exactly!"

"Right!"

Finally starting to see what Mike was doing, River wasted no time preparing all missiles for launch, as she did she noticed Mike had been dumping more drones all the while he had evaded the Orca's direct line of sight, by now River had countless target solutions which could only be countered by destroying each and every drone, but due to how rapidly Mike had been moving the Wyrm around, the lumbering Orca hadn't noticed a single one yet.

In the end, River was pretty sure the pirates never saw it coming, River knew for a fact that had she not met Mike herself, she wouldn't have seen it coming either.

"FIRE!"

Having chosen his moment expertly, Mike aimed directly for the Orca's armoured combat information centre, targeting the pinpoint where two armour segments had been improperly fused after a botched repair. Firing all 4 railguns separated across two gimbal mounts, Mike tightened the convergence until it was nonexistent and shot the armour pricing saborts with milliseconds in between, at the same time River launched all loaded kinetic energy missiles. First to hit was the railgun saborts, the first two harmlessly shattered on the Orca's impressive shields, dumping all their kinetic energy directly on the same millimetre of shielding, the 3rd sabort succeed in overloading a shield section the size of a cent, this hole would close in about half a second, but doing combat half a second seemed to stretch into an eternity. A microsecond later, the 4th and final sabort fired from the Wyrm's railguns hit the same spot as the 3 that had come before, as it dug into the metre of composite armour between it and the combat information centre it self sharpened, but ultimately only made it about 20 centimetres into the armour plating.

If that was all the munitions Mike and River had launched their attack would have ended there, failing to penetrate doing the brief instant the Orca's shields were in flux they would never get another chance.

"Shabingus."

Smiling like a toddler whose prank had gone unnoticed, Mike barely managed to spot the first kinetic energy missile as it flew right past the Wyrm and buried itself into the same weak point as all the other munitions Mike and River had fired, and the first missile was quickly followed by its brethren moving at over 5 kilometres a second. With no delicate manoeuvring thrusters or fragile chemical effect warheads, the kinetic energy missiles was basically a depleted uranium stick with a nitro-powered rocket engine behind it, by the time the 4th KEM hit the same place it showered the inside of the Orca's combat information centre in pyrophoric DU fragments, instantly killing every single person inside and destroying its shield generator at the same time.

"And that's why you don't try and knife fight in large crafts, much less a freaking Ocra…"

Confirming the Ocra had been neutralised, Mike didn't pay any of the pirates now running for their lives any heed as he zeroed the throttle. With the battle effectively over, River breathed a sigh of relief as she finally felt the blood in her body return to her head, releasing the controls she had been unconsciously clamping down on for dear life she turned to Mike.

"No further contacts on scope, let's get out of here."

"Yeah sure, after we pick this corpse clean of course."