Homestar Saga

Chapter 105: Last Resort

Before Yvian finished speaking, Kilroy fell over. The light in his eyes disappeared.

"Kilroy?" Yvian stared in confusion for a moment. The holodisplay had winked out, as well. Confusion gave way to alarm. Then Yvian realized what must have happened, and alarm gave way to embarrassment. She placed a hand back on the control node and let her mind sink into the Skygem.

She felt it. City 43. The crystal city was flooding the sector with its anti-tech field. When Captain Mims had ordered them to prepare for the Last Resort, a third of the fleet guarding the station complex had taken up orbit over New Pixa. They'd rigged some of their guns to point at the city and set them up so they'd fire continuously even if the targeting computers were shut down. When Kilroy had relayed Yvian's order, they opened fire, and Shard had recognized it as the signal to activate the largest anti-tech field it could muster.

The largest field Shard could produce was actually pretty damned big. Skygem could see it, a sphere radiating from the city, nearly three million kilometers across. It encompassed the Gate, the Skygem, and most of the portals that the Klaath Queens had come through. The Peacekeepers that had been fighting the Klaath had mostly finished their business, either wiping out the enemy or running away at top speed before the field hit. Now the ships and the Peacekeeper's who'd been flying them were helpless. A few of the fleets were far enough away from any Klaath to be safe. The others were being swarmed.

Unlike the pulse, the anti-tech field had a definite boundary. Anything outside it's radius would be left untouched, but inside it would be impossible to use any tech advanced enough to require a computer. The two farthest groups of Klaath were outside of the effect, and they were still duking it out with the Pixen fleet. They were a long way away, and Skygem couldn't make out as much detail as Yvian would have liked, but she got the impression the Peacekeepers were holding their own.

Yvian focused in on the Vore. Vore Sphere 3 had successfully divided into a swarm of smaller spheres, but those spheres were just as frozen and helpless as Kilroy. Even better, the field had hit before the spheres had finished forming engines, leaving the entire mass of them together in a clump that Skygem could disable all at once if she got close enough.

The bad news was that the mass of spheres was still heading for the North Gate at tremendous speed. The North Gate was at the far end of the Sector, mirroring the orbit of the solar system's eighth planet, a gas giant that no one had gotten around to naming. The Vore were no longer accelerating, but inertia would keep them on course. It would only take them a few hours to reach the end of the anti-tech field, at which point they would wake up and go back to being unstoppable.

The Pixen forces at the Gate were still active and in one piece, but they wouldn't be able to destroy the Vore themselves, and they had no way to get to Yvian without being shut down. That left only one choice. "Kilroy, can you hook up the generator?"

Kilroy didn't answer. After a moment, Yvian remembered he'd been shut down. She wasted several seconds calling herself an idiot. Then she asked Skygem if she could shield the interior of the ship from City 43's anti-tech field. A moment later, Kilroy stood back up.

"Anti-tech field's up," Yvian told him, "but Skygem's low on power. Can you hook up the emergency generators?"

"Affirmative." Still hooked into the ship, Yvian couldn't see him directly, but she felt him move at speeds a pixen could never match. A few seconds later, warmth and power trickled into the ship. The generators didn't produce nearly as much energy as a ship reactor, but it should be enough to get the crystal ship moving.

Skygem didn't want to move. She was hungry. She was hurt. She just wanted to sit and eat and start to heal. Yvian tried to suppress her frustration. She coaxed and cajoled the ship, trying to explain how important it was they get to the Gate. If they could pass through the South Gate, one of the Peacekeepers could pick them up on the other side. Skygem wasn't hearing it.