He furrowed his brow but the dark-haired woman returned his gaze with an assuring smile.

“Oh, alright,” he grunted. “Do it quickly before I change my mind.”

Lana held the implant to his temple and it oozed in easily, settling as a thin silver strip behind his ear.

Diamond blinked rapidly. “That’s it?”

“Yep.

“Huh, easier than I’d thought.”

“Alien knickknacks tend to be like that.”

He chuckled. “You’re funny, girl. It’s a good trait to have in battle.”

The cargo hold door closed and the freighter gently took off.

***

Nathan was already strapped into his capsule back at the bridge, his visor once more opaque. He was not comfortable with all the clatter that was going on in the cargo hold. Instead, he busied himself with diving into Unity’s warm and secure embrace.

With practiced moves, Nori gently guided the ship on its course.

“How does this thing work?” she heard Diamond's voice speaking directly into her ear.

“You just think of who you want to talk to and you talk to them. The implant does the rest,” Lana’s voice answered.

“Guys, please keep it down, I’m trying to concentrate here,” Nori said. She pushed her fingers forward and the ship accelerated, speeding toward their next target.

19 - Shooting Gallery

“ETA - three minutes,” Nori said tensely into the ship’s internal comms. The Navigator glanced to Lana who was working the ship’s sensors. “What do we have?”

Lana frowned. “It’s weird. The Warped are assembled a few hundred meters from the Old Stadium. Looks like they’re just standing still.”

Nori’s face clouded. “Damn, that’s bad.”

“Why? By the looks of it, we’ll be able to engage them in time.”

“At the Grand Mall, they trickled in slowly enough for us to fight them off. If they attack Martin all at once …”

Lana felt a chill run down her spine. “Then they’ll all die,” she whispered.

Nori nodded grimly.

“We have the cannon though,” Lana said. She opened a new light console and studied the monitor above it. “Hmm, looks like it uses an electromagnetic coil to propel Mithril-tipped projectiles at extremely high velocity,” she said. “Wait - I know what it is, it’s a rail gun! If I’m reading this correctly, the kinetic energy transference is enormous. No wonder it’s used against asteroids. It can make them go poof whereas an energy-based weapon would just burrow through.”

“Lucky for us,” Nori added. “It also makes the Warped go poof quite well. How many rounds do we have?”

“From what I’m seeing here, it works much like your dart launcher. The cannon generates rounds on its own and coats them with a molecule-thin layer of Mithril, so it never runs out. Its firing rate is limited though, about a shot every three seconds.”

“That’s still pretty amazing.”

“I guess,” Lana said, frowning.

“What’s wrong?”