The Foundry | Part Three | Chapter Twenty-Six
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Foundry
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed
Part Three | Dominion
Chapter Twenty-Six
Scarlet’s emulated perfection in flight was of blissful adulation to Echo’s self—honor. With Fox so linked into her conscious-field no less, it was quite a thing to behold for the senses of Echo Béleaph — those to feel and become — releasing into their waves of most powerful thrust, witnessing this simulated universe through the expanded means by which she’d to perceive it while embodying that pilot she was born to be.
This was the real-deal.
Everything here was a splitting-image of reality. There was no difference to discover except by strictest means of pedantic measurement. Experiencing anything within such a place, at this level of immersion, was tantamount to living it. The entirety of one’s psychology, physiology, and spiritual body was impacted identically to how they’d be in manifest form.
Echo missed this like some lover who’d eclipsed all others that she’d held too few times. There was a presence wrought from being back, and it had her feel quite like a child. She’d even flashes of her home world’s shores; it’s rivers and forests. Still, nothing could draw her from this velocity taken form by design of her every effort.
She put each spare thought into the construction of this machine her entire first time around at The Foundry. This was different though. She’d done much the same in her return, allowing such breadth of space for remaking, and a place of refinement had been discovered. Scarlet was humming now in harmony with something higher.
“Calculating a force incoming.” Fox spoke before his signature micro-second pause. “Deploying countermeasures and coaxing these fucks after us.”
The personality of an intelligence was most dependent on its creator.
“Confirming,” — “Confirmed” — “Yup, mhm.” — ‘‘Not a fucking chance.”
Echo was watching back her field of enemies, themselves quite capable of any tactical maneuver or firing method which would be found in these warships, only evoking muted outcomes made to disable. It was The Gauntlet alone where an initiate and pair-bonded intelligence ever truly faced the threat of mutual destruction. Only their minds would break before then.
An explosion rocked the crowd of goonships just before Echo watched War Cry tear through one of their shattered clouds of remains. She could almost hear Poe cursing them out in her meanest little voice.
Poe Halroth was, aesthetically, perhaps the cutest human being one could ever meet. Deemed most adorable, Echo couldn’t help but be slightly obsessed with her. The young woman wore spectacles outside of her warship, often bending her knees inward and holding one wrist with her other hand, wearing buckled shoes that felt so twee Echo’s heart could barely take it, sometimes, adorning herself with petticoats which Echo felt belonged in an ancient immersive of her home world.
Echo once heard her say, “Aw, shucks,” with no hint of artifice. Her voice was precious too, when she wasn’t growling about how she was going to tear someone in two. There was a fire in her most often unseen, crafted by a lifetime of being witnessed how stereotypes might predict someone of her outward facing nature. Yet, Poe was the last person you would ever want to cross.
Ever still, Echo would often see Poe get choked up about the sweetest things. People just being mean to each other would make her tear up and hold her heart. Echo thought she was ‘the fucking best.’
Seeing what this senior had become in the time Echo was away had been incredibly gratifying, in ways she wouldn’t know how to explain. You shouldn’t be proud of someone you’d been friends with so briefly, is what Echo thought, but she’d found herself feeling that way no matter. It was strange being the old one at The Foundry sometimes.
War Cry had twin cannons which flamed balls of magma-like hellfire. They erupted on impact, burning holes in hulls, sending energetic ripples which disabled electronics within any ship beyond the scope they’d explode by force outright.
These little goonships went two at a time under the attention of Poe’s wrath.
Only twenty or so were left and Echo was feeling bored. She’d decided to flip Scarlet straight up and back at the tip, blasting backwards at fullest bore, needlessly allowing herself to remain upside-down by means of her fully-controllable senses — just for the fun of it — closing Scarlet on this ‘weak ass fleet of chumps’ she’d later chide Leopold about until he gave them a significant upgrade.
“Do it, to it,” is all she’d chosen to say.
Fox was quite able to hear her sub vocal projections while within Scarlet’s senses. He couldn’t read her mind, but with practice, one could think with intention and be heard by their intelligence. Still, Echo liked to talk.
He’d listened to her subvocal commands as well, along with that very specific one he knew those choice words to have called for. Her silent intentions were spinning Scarlet into a twirl, engaging all throttles to full, and sending a message to her comrades in this simulation.
It read, ‘Check this shit out.’
That called-for shot was one of glorious destruction. Scarlet released it from her largest undercarriage. A new tool added to the arsenal at great expense to her versatility as a warship — one Echo would fly with every time — she called it The Void. Everyone of those ships was swallowed back into the pull of its singularity, with each last bit of thrust and force from their drive core’s proving no match for its strength of gravity.
“Oh shit!” Alan shouted through his comms from Oblivion, realizing what she’d let loose — he’d been waiting to see this too.
D’Artagnan was present, taking his own first shot at the real-deal in Thrasher; she’d be happy to hear him geek out about it later. Echo was already — most accurately — imagining how long he might be elaborating when he’d undoubtedly suck her in for a smoke session on her needed re-up run.
She couldn’t see that other one. They were somewhere, but Echo wasn’t thinking about them.
Chloe had been quite nice to her since the attack, and Echo succumbed to the realization there wouldn’t be any comeuppance for them having known ahead of time about her complete and utter destruction in that simulation upon the shores of Atreya. Stakes had grown too great to hold grudges of that gravity. Purpose was being illuminated for all, and every worthy soul’s good work would be needed most completely.
Ekara Oaksmith was ‘going to get fucked’ though.
They were the one who’d made that simulation — which meant they’d dug through Echo’s history, seeing all that happened to her, choosing not to care and create it all the same — Echo did not deem her worthy. Still, she wouldn’t resolve to aim for depriving The Foundry’s of that woman’s gifts in any way, only to teach her a lesson she’d remember the rest of her life.
The Void was unheard of. It would be spoken about for much time — debated. Wasting such potential of Scarlet’s energy reservoir, which might be utilized for weapons of many forms, to harness a force of most singular purpose. While there was no ammunition, and it was on a charge, Echo hadn’t been able to get it down below three minutes while still giving herself a few other options to explode things with.
She’d still been trying to work out a way she might utilize it while in mech form too. As of that moment, when Scarlet would become the warrior inside, that machine would be caged within and only serve to weigh things down.
Echo wouldn’t care about the noise of other’s worries. Especially after this witnessing before her, watching those twenty-some goonships collapse back onto a point of crackling vanta-blackness — a darkness so dark it consumed light and reflected nothing — visible only by that whirling energy of white-veined electricity which caged it into form.
On first-impact, triggered by that nearest target drawn back, there was a moment where the blackness collapsed onto itself, down to a microscopic speck — very much forced that way by its vicious container — then holding in a glorious moment where every encroaching object caught in the pull of its mighty circumference grew near, allowing an exponential building of that force within its hyper-contained void-technology. Which, in reality, would cause need for the use of very small amounts of antimatter to be carried aboard; something else to be debated.
Finally, and to be witnessed by so many of her peers, far beyond those few here with her, The Void exploded outward into a seismic bast of reckoning unlike any other warship of The Foundry would be capable of bearing to being, before or after.
“Fuck yes!” Fox shouted into her ear.
