AN:

Hello again my friends. Our story rumbles on into another climax, with important characters and events beginning to pile up. I do hope you enjoy this battle-heavy chapter. In terms of assets in play and actions happening in rapid succession, it may be the biggest I've ever done, and its not even finished. Buckle up y'all.

My Star Wars EU project Tales of the Hasty Lady also continues, feel free to check it out. In other news my old FFVII piece has been taken down for total overhaul. It'll return when I've got a better grasp of characters and themes.

I'm so starved for feedback. Can't wait to hear what you think. Here's to continuation!

Chapter 19: Augment

The gunship was chaos. Not in the chill air, but in glances, an entire aircraft of laser stares, all aimed at Bonnibel. Nobody would say a word till she decided her course of action.

"We can hold," she said, and like that it was on.

"Are you bonkers?" FP was the first of several of the occupants to get it out of her mouth. "Its not just your tush on the line, sister! We've gotta do something. Anything we can."

Phoebe cast a look to Finn, and the last human cast his eyes towards his command watch. "Thoros, can we knock down those missiles?"

"Yes, Lord Finn. However, the attrition of resources required will degrade our chances of success," came the reply.

"We can hold," PB insisted. "I may have just picked up the pieces of Old Earth, but you're... You can bet your buns that I made them my own." The monarch fixed Finn with her most determined, earnest expression. "Your forces are needed for this battle. Mine can handle their hoopla."

Finn couldn't argue with it, but Flame Princess was gonna till she changed hue. "Did you not hear me? You're not the only polity on that island Bubblegum. What about my people?"

Peebs rolled her eyes. "I've been planning this for longer than you've been kindling," she retorted. "Trust me, everyone in Ooo is covered. From you to the Goblins to the fribbing City of Thieves." Peebs hopped on her own command and control system. "PepBut, you with me?"

"Reading you clearly, Princess," came the reply.

"Groovy," she said with a vicious grin. "Wake up the out-of-town homeboys, we've got a duck hunt."

"I see it m'lady. Consider it done."

Expectant looks came upon her as Peebles closed her communication channel. "Remember how I've always said that the Gumball Guardians are too sophisticated to mass produce?" She asked aloud, to assorted nods and affirmation. Her grin cracked wider. "Didn't really stop me from making a couple more."

The sound could be heard across Ooo, a low rumble like distant thunder. Those closer to the path of interception could hear the booming calls; "Posse up!" They demanded. "Gumball boys, rep for your hood!"

The Gumball Guardians, great monoliths of magic and technology, raced to the northern border far faster than their bulk would suggest possible. Further out, the rumbling intensified, as something below the surface of the Earth began stirring. One by one, one, two, three, and then four Gumball Guardians rose from burial, each sundering a range of frosted mountains with great crunches of shattering planetary crust. "Homeboys online," they uttered, as their predecessors arrived to fill holes in the defensive screen. "Rep the hood, with particle beams!"

There was no seeing their targets, not with the naked eye and not at such distance. But there was no missing the defensive fire. Each of the great guardians opened wide and fired a brilliant emerald beam from each eye and mouth. Even at hypersonic speeds there was no escape from the obliterating rays of electrons, accelerated to a significant portion of the speed of light. Each of the 50 missiles that had been launched by the Old Earth battlegroup was shot through by a shaft of furious agitated matter. When their fusillade was done, they dispersed along the outer boarder of Ooo, watchful against any further threats.

In the gunship, the grim silence had returned, save the drone of the engines. Their aircraft broke off from the main group, accompanied by a detachment of four fighters, the same triangular, four-engined blended wing bodies that had buzzed Bubblegum's destroyer. It wouldn't do for the precious living payload to become embroiled in what would follow. Fighters broke off from the mass of bomber aircraft, streaking ahead faster. Finn watched on a hologram projected from his wrist, as Thoros directed the Silver Tower's autonomous forces against his foe. Martin's sea fleet was spread out before them, two destroyers and a bulkier, more threatening cruiser screening forward. Many miles behind them, another cluster of ships lurked, a cruiser, a destroyer, and the thick, slab shaped form of the carrier. The wide net of the enemy air patrol was already closing the distance between home base and the forward screen, and Finn's display showed that additional interceptor groups were massing on the carrier's flight deck.

The battle began in earnest with another salvo of missiles, launched from close to 300 kilometers by the hostile air wing. They were strong medicine, fast, intelligent, and devastating shots; they moved as a pack, seamlessly shifting to run down and corner their targets, like backfield footballers closing in on a running back charging through the defensive line. It was a comprehensive attack, but the counterfire was merciless. Each of the Silver Tower fighters bore two weapons running the full length of the aircraft, their muzzles flanking the blue cyclopian sensor eye at the nose. These weapons shouted their fury the moment Thoros detected the hostile launches with the Tower's powerful electronics, spitting two volleys of forearm sized projectiles that cracked the sky with their travel, blistering by almost three times faster than their targets. The first salvo tore into the closing missiles, downing all but an eighth of them. The second volley sped past, their sustainer engines carrying them along at their Mach 9 clip. Thoros applied a threat analysis, and focused his attack on both frontline attackers as well as squishier backfield elements. The frontline fighters saw the attack coming, and put out their own electronic jamming, interceptor missiles, and a web of blue defensive laser discharge. This merely blunted the attack, however, and the carrier air wing took a savage battering. Some of the surviving units pulled off, boosting to gain space and add momentum to their next missile attack. Others charged forward, launching lighter, more maneuverable close-range missiles as they charged forward towards direct visual range. These aggressors and their weapons were massacred the moment they broke the horizon, as the air forces of the Old Earth citadel triggered their own close range weapons. Each deployed four wingtip turrets from beneath stealth housings to cast rapid streams of thin blue particle beams. The fighters that withdrew to reenage were smashed with another barrage of railgun rounds. The occupants of the gunship crowed and whooped as their fighters cleaned up the last stragglers and began probing the defenses of the forward naval screen, with heavy bomber units heading inbound towards the enemy. Here was tougher resistance, as the ships boasted extensive point defense systems and hundreds of long range weapons each. The forward fighters focused on containment, using warhead and particle beam to knock down the waves of telephone pole sized missiles being dispensed by the verticle launchers aboard the Old Earth warships. The bombers released their own assault, a wide spread of anti-ship missiles tipped with cluster decoys. The volley dove low to a sea-skimming approach, as the decoy pods burst open to release their swarms of decoy modules. Each emitter projected the radar and heat profile of a mid-weight anti-ship missile, drawing the thunderous fire of the forward naval screen away from the approaching attack. The three warships struggled mightily, lashing out with their heavy missiles as well as lasers and smaller close range projectiles, but they couldn't find their targets effectively through the electronic trickery; eventually each began accumulating hits till all were crippled, helpless, and completely destroyed in their turns.

More cries of rejoice were sounded in the gunship. Finn grinned his fighting grin, wide and vicious, uttering congradulations to his new cybernetic general. "This is no trouble, Lord Finn," came the response. Finn wasn't overtly surprised that Thoros could fight and talk at the same time. "The forces arrayed against us are extensive, but primitive compared to the refined engineering avalible to us." Finn watched the display, noting that one of the hard sensor contacts was gone, replaced by the more transparent, less precise wide marker of an undersea movement plot. "The carrier has submerged, lord," came Thoros' cybernetic dulcet. "We are tracking on sonar, and will deploy additional sonar probes. However, there is another counterattack incoming."

The carrier had launched its remaining air complement, the second wave of aircraft streaking forward as the two remaining surface ships steamed forward with them to crash against Thoros' forward fighters, reaching for the bombers behind them. Missiles dropped from bays and launched from railguns crossed the skies, followed by dancing latices of laser and particle fire. Finn's forces began to suffer losses under the press of the combined air-sea attack, but the Silver Tower's unerring electronic eye systematically picked apart the coming assault, till it too was burning wreckage plowing into the ice and sinking dead into the waters below.

Next came a more tense, anxious form of fight. With all air and surface assets destroyed, the search began for the undersea forces. Units were sent back to the tower for repair, refuel, and rearmament, while fresh ones arrived on scene. Sonar probes filled the seas as the gunship team sat twiddling their thumbs, grinding their teeth and waiting. The fourty minutes between the flight of Martin's submersible forces and their detection seemed to drag on forever to the team, their nerves and blood singing for action and finding none. When the call came, Finn nearly jumped to his feet. The gunship changed course, and Finn watched as three closely clustered contacts sprung up in his projection. The fight was fierce; the attack subs were nasty little things, and the carrier was by far the most heavily armed vessel they'd fought yet. But by the time Finn and the gang were floating overhead, there was only one burning wreck, a huge slab of dark grey metal smoking from dozens of wrecked weapon systems. The team landed, pouring out of the gunship and onto the flight deck. Under PB's direction her gumball guards fanned out, securing a defensible perimeter around the parked aircraft. "Thoros," Finn said into his watch. "You know all about this ship, right?"

"Of course my Lord. It is a standardized design, after all. I have it's construction blueprints. You desire a route to the computer core, where you may access the communications system to gain information on your father's progress and activities."

"You bet," he responded. His watch fabricated a wireframe construct of the ship, with the location of the team clustered around the gunship and a new objective, all marked clearly.

"There," Thoros said. "The aircraft elevator I have marked is still functional. It will offer us a way down into the hanger, and through there, the rest of the vessel."

Peebs motioned to her people, and a group of them broke off to maintain the security of the gunship. The rest of the guards and the team from Ooo boarded the lift and took it down into the bowels of the ship.

"...Orthix?"

Bound in chains and a solid metal straightjacket, something stirred. Its voice was distorted by the cybernetic muzzle it wore, but it was clearly tortured, and bore out that suffering even through the digital filter.

"Orthix!" The captive called it, shouted it, and then screamed it, until the mouthpiece disengaged. A brutal male voice responded.

"Speak, augment," it ordered. "Quickly, or cease query immediately."

"D-deployment," she gasped. "How long?"

"Imminent, now cease query, or...-"

"No!" She cried desperately. "I can see him through the security grid, you can't shut me out." The voice switched mode, from sorrow to rage, abject agony throughout. "Your security drones are worthless. Let me take him. Now."

The warserver, a simple expert system without true sentience, gave it's closest equivalent to a scoff. She was flesh; it was a fully autonomous warfighting system, completely inorganic save for the user order interface. No matter her supposed capabilities, there was no denying her degradation to Orthix's battleplan.

"Don't," she uttered. Her teeth ground, and she felt the needles plunge into her throat, and then the stims took hold, tearing into her brain. "Don't ignore me!"

"Cease all query!" Orthix roared, as Augment began to howl unitelligibly. Her forged bindings groaned, and their sealing components shattered, the entire structure coming apart in a shower of sparks and a thunderous clang.

"Shut. Up," she hissed at the wall camera. Yanking at her cocoon of chains till she could step free, her lean athletic form struggled till she was no longer bound. She was still entombed, though not in Orthix's restraints. Her garb a formfitting black bodysuit covered in dull grey armor, topped with a blank-faced helmet, save for an array of six optical sensors. Her backpack fed into the jugular injectors that kept her trapped in a sea of drugs, while her visor bombarded her with psychologically conditioned emotional trigger symbols, subliminal, imposed over her view of the real world.

"Orthix could never hold me, not like Lord Martin. The real cage was always the boat and the sea, and the suit. The bonds could barely manage, and the Lord gave him those. But now that the boy is here..."

Augment licked her lips. "So spotless and clean. The chosen boy. Lord Martin won't mind if I can't wait to see what's so special..."

The speaker unit in the room crackled, but Augment was upon it immediately, plunging her fingers through the grille, ripping it away so she could ram her armored fist through the electronics beneath. Then she was back on the floor, landing low and coiled. She drew herself back up, tore the steel porthole off it's hinge and discarding it languidly, she sprinted down the corridor, mind set to sweet, luscious murder. Her mouthpiece closed over her pale face.

The hangar chamber was as furious and noisy an environment as Bubblegum's destroyer, if not more so. This vessel was designed to be autonomous; the only human input was designed to be from a bunker via secure command signal. Already spartan military considerations for squishy human people had become practically nonexistent. The hangar deck arrayed before them was a huge mess of damaged units under repair, maintanence drones trundling back and forth. The group had to scatter from the aircraft elevator, because the moment it touched level with the hangar deck it was accosted by a detachment of maintanence drones.

"Lord Finn," chirped Thoros. "These drones have registered our presence as intruders. However, it appears our boarding action has already been noted."

The response began massing at the stern end of the hangar chamber, as the aircraft maintanence units began to scatter under their self-preservation protocols. The team charged through into a growing hail of plasma pulses, bubblegum and Finn responding in kind as FP delivered a mass of firepower that neither gumgirl nor human boy could match. The four legged heavy units from the grasslands were back, but their intense firepower was less threatening in the cluttered and cramped confines of the hangar than the lighter units, eerily bipedal slab faced security bots. They could pick their way more freely through the equipment, machinery, and disrepaired aircraft. Finn rushed out the furthest, moving through cover while he plucked away at the foe with Dragonfang. When he managed to insert himself into groups of the combat drones, Everstroke came onto play, carving through the thin body plates and delicate joint assemblies of the infantry units.

Yet just as Finn had finished with a gaggle of the bots and was setting his sights on another, he found himself carried wide of his own jump. He caught a scrap of grey and black in the corner of his vision, but then he's been tossed again, and harder, into a crate and off it, strking the near wall and slumping down.

Marceline and Jake had followed Finn into the breach, smashing any survivors of his assault and keeping him secure against counterattack. When they saw their pointman picked off by the newest interloper, they both moved to assist; Jake cane on a looping track low to the ground, while Marceline came high with a pair of morphed, bestial paws, animal rage on both their faces, but they were cut off by a furious gout of plasma cast from Dragonfang, bursting across their armored foe and dashing her aside.

"Split!" Finn shouted. "Get to the computer core! I'll handle this biz!"

Jake nodded grimly and broke off, but Marceline didn't quite fully stop. "Finn, you need some backup! Don't be nuts about this!"

Finn fought to keep his tone friendly, the bloodlust growing unbearable as he considered this implacable new enemy. "Peebs needs you more," he said, casting a tender smile Marcie's way. "There's gonna be craziness between you and the core; you're as big a gun as me, they need you in the mix. Now go!"

The grey plated female laughed harshly, a long, wide scabbard cradled in her other arm. She'd thrown him one handed, and now she drew a huge two-handed claymore, holding it at a mid level guard stance. Its material composition was all too familiar to Finn. As Marceline spat curses and soldiered on past with the others, Finn set his stance, Dragonfang low, pointed on target, with Everstroke guarding high and ready to swing downward.

"We're gonna tango," the new lord said, his vicious grin set as he began to stalk right. "And then when I win, you're gonna tell me where you got that sword."

The harsh laugh came back. "And you're gonna tell me why you're the one," she responded, hefting her blade and bringing it down in a great hacking blow.