A/N: I started writing this chapter late 2015 and tried to finish and update before New Year's (Happy 2016 by the way to everyone still reading this), but life just gets in the way a lot. Just had to get this out now because it's the 12th anniversary of this fic! Whoa! I'm not quite sure for how much longer chapter-wise "Memory" (or my other fics) will be going; I probably will change the flow of the original I had in my head for completion sake, but this WILL be completed sooner or later. In any case, I hope you still enjoy!
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CHAPTER 20
Intelligence
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Dita was visibly confused despite trying to maintain a brave front.
Her fusion ship with Jai consisted of a single huge control room; they were each seated on separate mobile chairs that could freely revolve in and around a massive central virtual "map" of the surrounding area. A virtual "glove" covered Jai's left hand, as well as Dita's right, and apparently served as a means of interacting with the central interface.
She was trying to take in everything at once. "This is a really huge map. We look so small, just this one marble in the middle. Here's the Nirvana, and a few other planets, and asteroids, there's a comet..."
"These are some impressive sensors. Can it go even further?" Jai then waved his control-glove, and their view extended out even further, so that their ship was a barely visible speck. "That seems to be the limit, though. Impressive..."
The 3-dimensional representation of space they hovered around was not just a map; it was a veritable trove of statistics and instructions. Instead of just showing a nearby planet, for example, the display detailed vectors, velocity, orbital path, energy readings, gravitational force, and more.
"It seems to specialize in information. Interesting, very interesting," Jai mused, already beginning to pore over said information.
"I'm...not very good with all these numbers and words..." Dita's eyes were starting to daze over. As she shook her hand in front of her face, more and more data started showing up.
"Oh, sorry," Jai turned his attention to the other pilot, moving beside her. "Easy there, Dita," Jai said reassuringly, waving away most of the clutter, and centered the map view back on just their fusion ship. "We'll figure something out that we both can work on in here...slowly, okay?"
She still looked unsure. "S-sure..."
Even on the map, their ship looked like a simple floating sphere. "Doesn't look very cheerful, huh?" Dita commented, looking just a little unhappy, which suggested to Jai that she was REALLY unhappy.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jai mused, 'Kinda looks like a small Death Star. Can't call it that, though.'
Jai looked around, trying to make more sense of what else could be done. He then noticed the communications link they had with the Nirvana was empty. "Nirvana, is everything all right there?" Even Dita noticed and looked concerned.
A few moments passed, and Magno appeared onscreen. "Heh, sorry for making you worry, it's just that our scientist over here who was talking to you a while ago seems to be overwhelmed with bliss." The view then panned to show a dumbstruck Parfet, who was sitting askew on the floor, with glazed-over eyes, and breathing heavily...and...drooling.
"Looks like an o-..." Jai started mumbling, but then suddenly stopped and cleared this throat, "uh, never mind. So, how do things look like from that end, Boss?" He said, addressing the pirate leader once more.
"I don't doubt you there, doctor," Magno mumbled similarly, before also clearing her throat, "I mean to say, that is an unusual craft. It's near-invisible. If we didn't know exactly where you are, we would probably not even know you were there. Amarone?"
In the background, the addressed navigator nodded, "That is correct, leader. There is barely a signal on our sensors, and the fusion ship is hardly visible looking at it directly; it's almost impossible to tell there's a ship at all."
"Bart?"
A voice from somewhere below sounded. "Same here, I can't make out their outline very well. I might've dismissed it as just an aberration in space."
"Is that so?" Jai adjusted his glasses, which seemed to gleam. "Meanwhile, we can see all of your energy outputs, weapons storage, even the number of crew, and Dreads, and Vanguard, there are onboard, including everyone's locations. I can predict the Nirvana's movements and position within the next five seconds based on your vectors and shifts in power allocations." There was just a little mischief in his voice.
"YOU CAN SEE ME FROM IN THERE?!" Bart yelled, no doubt trying to cover himself up.
Magno chuckled. "That is indeed a formidable, not to mention dangerous, system you have. Truly, I am more uneasy of this one than Jura's Swan-Shot."
Jai cringed slightly at the name Jura had christened their Swan fusion ship's massive beam attack with. "Knowledge is power, you know," he replied with a wide yet crooked grin.
"Dita?" Magno queried, looking towards the other pilot onscreen.
Dita wore a worried expression, "He's scary, leader!"
"Oh, he's just excited, there's nothing to be afraid of," the Boss retorted, then to Jai, added warningly, "isn't that right?"
He snapped his head up, but blanched visibly, "Ah yes, sorry, was just having a little fun there."
"Very good," Magno said, "and I see Parfet has returned to her senses."
Jai laughed in response. He got carried away a little. Their fusion ship did hold a lot of tactical potential, but what could Dita do that would be useful?
'There must be a reason...'
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From the Nirvana, Parfet snapped out of her stupor and was now the one brimming with excitement. "THIS! IS! MY! FAVORITE OF THEM ALL!" she bellowed. "Jai, you MUST let me aboard, maybe next time, or MAYBE NOW!"
Other members of the crew had also arrived at the bridge in the meantime.
Jura laughed, "What a plain-looking, boring little thing! As expected, nothing can match the elegance of our Swan fusion ship."
"Shush, Jura," Meia reprimanded the other pilot, who shrugged but stopped all the same. "Its strategic value is indeed immense."
"Like he said, knowledge is power!" Parfet was still staring enviously at the screen, trying to peer at everything at once, wishing she could jump through to the other side right then.
"Well, it's like Jura said," Dita was still crestfallen at the other side of the communication link, "it's not too pretty, and it's really hard for me to understand everything. I'd much prefer my fusion with your ship, Mr. Alien!"
Hibiki had a smug grin. "Heheh, well ours is more of a power, fighting machine, right?" After hearing of Jai and Jura's "Swan-Shot", he was proud to have at least one up on the other Vanguard pilot. His best fusion craft indeed was that with Dita. Still, he felt a little bad she was THAT disappointed with this one; it looked to be the most unique of all the fusion ships.
"Hey Dita," Hibiki hollered in spite of himself, "it's a very unique ship, and don't worry, I'm sure you'll get it in no time. How about calling it something cute like the 'Dita-Base'?"
Everyone stared agape, Jai and Dita included. She then asked, "Do you really think so, Mr. Alien?"
After a few moments, Hibiki then seemed to realize only then that he had spoken out loud. "E-eh...I guess?" He stuttered, faltering, starting to turn a shade crimson.
That seemed to brighten Dita right up. "Okay then, Jai, we're calling this the Dita-Base! I'll do my best to be helpful and make this an amazing ship!" Briefly turning back to the com-link, she beamed dazzlingly at Hibiki. "Thanks so much, Mr. Alien!"
Everyone on the Nirvana's bridge now snickered teasingly at the Tarak mechanic.
"Sh-shut up! Darn it..." Hibiki could only turn away in embarrassment. He had brought this upon himself. The thing was, he didn't feel too humiliated; those were his honest sentiments. 'It just sounded really uncool,' he thought.
He felt a pat on his shoulder after a while, and peered to see the pirate Boss. Though she still had a huge grin, her words were frank, "Joking aside, thank you for cheering Dita up. Only you could have done it, I think."
He merely nodded and grunted in response, before slowly and quietly exiting the bridge. As he left, he heard Magno admonishing Parfet, "Don't plaster your face to the screen, you ninny!"
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Dita was in higher spirits. "Thanks so much, Mr. Alien!" she had said to the com-link, before turning back to Jai. She was still pensive, but much more enthusiastic. "Okay, slowly, right?"
Jai nodded, glad that the earlier tension with her was gone. They soon figured out movement was achieved by "dragging" an outline of the Dita-Base on the map; movement was relatively slow but fluid, and made them even more difficult to detect.
"What of the weapon systems?" Parfet asked after a while. She was intermittently scolded by Magno for being too close to the monitor on the Nirvana, but she managed somehow to avoid totally going overboard.
Jai was nonplussed, "Yeah, I've been trying to figure that one out since sometime ago...maybe we're a purely support craft? There's surprisingly no information on our weapons on here, not to mention there aren't any other buttons or the like."
"That's a little unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected," Meia pondered.
'Was that a triple negative?' Jai found himself wondering, when all of a sudden, Dita was waving at him and pointing at some moving entities at the edge of their scanners. "Jai! Bad aliens!"
He turned to see. The Dita-Base's field of vision was set to maximum, so the mobile units were still quite a long distance away. "Nirvana, are you seeing this?"
Ezra answered, "Negative, Dita-Base, nothing's showing up yet on our sensors."
Jai nodded. "I see. Well, we've got, I'd say, a smaller platoon of those same unmanned craft we had before. No mother-ship in sight, looks like. They're moving quickly, but aren't heading straight for us; might not have even detected yet that we're here." He then addressed Magno. "Boss?"
The Boss had a serious tone when she spoke. "This time, we initiate the battle. B.C., Meia, get everyone ready. Jai, Dita, we could test out your information capabilities, but just in case more firepower is necessary..."
Just then, the interior of the Dita-Base glowed a faint red, and the words "Combat Mode: Engaged" flashed for a few moments.
"It would seem that we do have a combat mode," Jai interjected. The reddish luminosity remained throughout their cabin.
Dita let out a small shriek of surprise when something began materializing on her glove. "A...mallet?"
"Like the ones in the arcade? What the heck is going on here?" Jai voiced. Dita was now holding a fancy virtual model of such a bludgeoning device; nothing had formed on his own glove.
Looking at the central map, he now saw that the "bad alien" ships had angry cartoonish alien face overlays, which looked so silly that he almost laughed out loud. "What the absolute heck?" He exclaimed instead, completely perplexed.
By now, the enemies were almost within range of the Nirvana. Understanding seemed to dawn slowly on both Dita and Jai; she finally said, "Am I...supposed to hit them with this, then?"
"What's going on in there?" B.C. queried the pair. Parfet had been dispatched to the engineering bay, and the other pilots to their ships, so only the bridge crew remained on communications for now.
"I wish we could be sure," Jai answered, "but I think Dita's supposed to play 'Whack-a-Mole' with the enemies."
"Come again?"
Magno was now at her seat. "So that would seem to be your method of attack, somehow. We're already picking up the enemies' signal, and they seemed to have noticed us as well. Now, Dita, would you be so kind as to deliver the first blow." It was not a question.
Dita first looked to Jai, who nodded. She then turned to Magno, who motioned as if swinging a hammer. "Y-yes, Boss!"
She inhaled slowly, and "Ei-ya!" struck at the nearest enemy ship, which made a *ding* sound upon contact. 'Odd onomatopoeia for an impact,' Jai mused; he almost expected a coin symbol to appear.
"I hit it!" Dita exclaimed, visibly proud of herself.
Immediately, the "face" took on a dazed expression and began careening off to one side. "Interesting," Jai noted, scanning the data on their interface, "its main navigation systems have been disabled."
Parfet once again appeared on a com-link. She was at the hangar of the Nirvana. "Jai! Dita!" the mechanic clearly did not lose a bit of her earlier zeal. "That looked like a concentrated EMP wave going off inside that fighter! Was that one of yours?"
"Looks like it," Jai replied, while Dita seemed to be having a fun time whacking enemies one after another. "Every time Dita smacks a hostile, there seems to be a confined pulse that wreaks havoc on their systems, at least for a time. Don't ask me how, though. I'm just going with it. Looks like this will be the perfect initiator against these kinds of foes."
"Roger that, standby," Parfet confirmed, then began relaying information to the Nirvana crew, as well as the other pirates who had launched and were moving to engage in the battle.
"You okay there, Dita?" Jai asked, turning back to his red-haired companion.
She was zooming around the sphere-map, clouting alien faces. "You're not getting away from me!" she laughed.
'Yeah, she seems good,' He chuckled inwardly, then opened communications once more. "Captain, have you been briefed by the Nirvana?"
Meia blinked, "Yes, just. Two squads will be enough to handle this many enemies, I think. We'll be following your lead. Hibiki and Jura will be staying back to defend the Nirvana if needed."
"The fusion crab, huh?" Jai noticed the said craft on the map, hovering not too far from the base ship; its imposing shields were already powered. "Jura must be livid. Anyway, very well, let's get this thing started for real." Jai could hardly conceal the glee in his voice.
It was like conducting an orchestra – all the information before him was the musical score, and his allies the instruments. The timing was precise, the execution, surgical, almost to an excess, a sliver from perfection. Jai would instruct Dita which alien to hammer, and then coordinate with the Dread group the same foe to obliterate. Enemy patterns were disrupted; ambushes interrupted before they could even begin. The Dita-Base map whirred and spun, enlarged and contracted to his whim, his needs, and it didn't matter that he lacked his own mallet – analysis was his greatest weapon here, and it served its purpose very well.
Dita's hammer had different detrimental effects on the enemies depending on the force and trajectory of impact on the map. Once she accidentally "hit" the Nirvana, but fortunately did not cause any problems. "It almost looks like an instant EMP detonation at those instances," Jai observed. Their ship had no other form of offense, however.
Even then, the battle was one-sided, and progressed quickly. "Only four more enemies," Barnette uttered.
"Six," Jai corrected, "there are two hanging back towards the asteroid field over there. Be careful."
The green-haired pilot "hmph"-ed, but then followed Meia's directive to pursue.
Soon, none of their opponents remained. The red glow inside the control room of the Dita-Base slowly dissipated, and Dita's hammer de-materialized as well. She looked a little out of breath, but still wide-eyed. "That was really, really fun! Somehow it didn't feel like a battle, more of a game, I think."
Jai grinned. "You did marvelously! Glad we found something that you like about this ship, huh?"
"Oh, it's not so bad now that I suppose I'm getting used to it," she replied, looking around now with a sense of familiarity.
A communications link from the Nirvana blinked on. "I must say, that was thoroughly remarkable, all of you," Magno declared, "especially Jai and Dita."
"We did well, huh, Boss?" Dita exclaimed.
After words of congratulations and praise, and orders to return to base, Jai interjected, "Boss, with your permission, I would like to call a meeting once we're all back."
"Something on your mind, Jai?"
"I know where they were heading to, and their purpose. It doesn't look good."