It fell upon the decks of the Gotengo like a psychic crash, and some of the officers on the bridge who were not braced for it were thrown back or otherwise collapsed upon their instruments as it passed. Ochazuke felt their presences flicker out; though they yet lived, these members of his crew came near to perishing, and among those that still stood, they could do little but rear back as the blood darkened their eyes and spilled from their noses. Yet so determined they were that the will that governed their souls, they would not turn back now. Silent, mocking laughter filled the bridge, and he felt their ki flood the vessel despite their condition.
Even if their minds thrown asunder, their hearts were not backward now, and for each life that lay in the balance, those that remained roused a fighting spirit. Their companions on the Coldlight had the faster vessel, and the deft maneuvers it made against the drones were exacting as they were swiftly cut down. The sheer mass of the thing, however, sent the numbers of the parasitic drones out as innumerable as the ocean's waves, and the relative size made the distance to their target stretch long and nigh continental. Laser light turbulence crashed, ashen mechanical figments broke apart, and the Gotengo's bow drill, filled with the collected power of its crew, continued to gather the energy and push forward.
If it would speak a last word, the gnashing cries of an irrational beast may perhaps suit a thrall of Sakin well.
_____
Standing in the siphon engine that empowered one of the Wave Motion Cannon's power plants, Kenshiko's stance was rooted, and the power she gathered before her was several order of magnitudes larger than she'd ever held before. While she couldn't quite feel the energy stirring from the Earth itself, she knew the faces of every single one of the EDF Corps under her charge, and the names of those who used to march beside her in the Red Raiders. Atop the Ring that cradled around the world, they stood, the elite fighting force at the vanguard of Earth and Outer Space. Their ki, she could sense them all, the hundreds of thousands who took up arms when they came calling, and all those who would fight that she had trained. Far below them on the Lookout, there was the cook, Zaofan. For such a talented guy, he always had his hands full with some spot of trouble whether he went looking for it or it had stumbled into him.
Out there before her eyes, there was the last Orthodox student of the Tiger School. She stood here watching his back as he led their attack forward into a path she could not follow. He'd reached out to them and the wider universe in rebuttal to that creature who stood astride his throne of blood and bones, and she'd intended to ensure that Sakin knew it for true.
"Wave Motion Cannon, 65%! The vector's locked!"
One hundred thousand ki adepts synchronized upon a single point. Bound by the unspoken covenant, they shared a common course of thought guided by their will. The power conduits shook as great gates opened. Within the firing chamber, Kenshiko stood next to the mechanism that issued such power it overloaded the conventions of physics. The phenomena could hardly be explained, but as it had been observed for thousands of years upon the Earth, it had been enacted by their martial lineage.
"Tannhauser Gates open! Releasing the final safeties!"
"Good. On my mark," she ordered, "fire
directly at the Gotengo."
The power that flooded before her gathered to a pulsating orb. It was a cruder expression of the
Genki techniques she'd only begun to unravel, and gathered from the dedicated offerings of ki from warriors, the myriad realizations were not in harmony. This it fell to her to use the grit pounded into her flesh over the years to rouse the Master's expression.
Zxu'ro...I've never asked anything of you that I couldn't gain for myself. If it was to keep the Earth safe, I'd do whatever it took...
The
Lion's Mane wreathed the shot, and the
Phoenix's Wings spread to take flight, and curling her fingers, the Tiger's Fangs took the head of the Techniques of the Ten as she contained it there.
But it was never about that, was it? Fighting mindlessly, that's a strength without purpose.
"3! 2! 1! Mark!"
But fuck you if you think I'll take this lying down. A Master has responsibilities, and if it's for those two, I'll do them one better than you ever did.
_____
Long spatial knots remained as the Gotengo burrowed forward into the energy beam of the Dreadnaught, the energy gathered into the ki-construct shrouding its drill seemed to have reached a limitation. No matter how far it pressed, it seemed the force would not abate, and this was as far as they could go. Ochazuke grit his teeth. Now effectively alone on the bridge as his crew had either sheltered or passed out from the spiritual strain, he continued to fight through the cultivation of the energies they'd passed along to him.
Then one by one, a small miracle happened. It came coursing along the small golden path, a trail of Genki flowing upon Heka issued from the residents of the Big Ghetti Star. Bit by bit, every civilian, security officer, or wayward trader who'd speculated into a surer thing added their will and support to his own, and against the torrent of power before them it passed through like a ray of the sun. They believed in them, and small as they were, their intentions were, too, magnified.
Then suddenly from behind, the
Wave Motion Cannon fired. Sculpted by Kenshiko, the power aligned exactingly with Ochazuke's own technique, synchronizing the EDF's weapon output with the energies put into the Gotengo, and pushed into the rotations of the bow drill, the energies aligned with the Dreadnaught's, in turn, and the extradimensional presence surrounding it.
In an instant, the burrowing ki construct expanded across the distance into a great, flaming energy lance that hurtled forward. Its tip twist on impact with the surface, and began spinning directly into the eye of a god.