Massive Disaster 4-18

Kinesis thrusters powered on, engaged and humming, the ISV Grande rising smooth as silk through atmosphere exactly the way it was designed to.

And he had designed it perfectly well.

From where he sat in the cockpit, there was not even the slightest hint of vibration, barely any engine noise past a slight hum, nothing else worth noting but just a steady ascent. All in all, it made commercial shuttles look like they were held together with emergency bonding tape and prayer. 

…He blinked. Why does duct tape still exist in the twenty-second century?

Nina pressed back in her seat, knuckles white against dark blue armrests. "This is really happening."

Course it's happening. With a slight shift, the ship banked a smooth left over Providence's skyline, turning the controls as he watched lights spreading below, the city a lit up circuit board in so many different shades of blue.

Caleb watched from his own seat just behind and to the left of Zedd, eyes locked outside the viewport as he watched the ship go even higher. "Feels smoother than any ship I've been on."

"No inertial dampening lag. How?" Kira's voice carried professional curiosity wrapped in growing suspicion, like she was trying to reverse-engineer the ship through observation alone.

"Trade secrets, Special Ops Barbie." The nickname slipped out before he could stop it, even though he knew he’d never stop it anyway.

“You…” Kira growled back at him, irritation bleeding through her usual control. "I'm not even blonde right now."

True. The blue hair thing was still something he liked to see again, though he was still getting used to the long hair. Very Pippi Longstocking. He laughed under his breath as they continued climbing through cloud layers, Providence shrinking to toy-town proportions below them, the stars becoming visible above them as the atmosphere thinned from blue to black.

"Merde. We're actually leaving the planet." Adele seemed to be struggling on her own, her NicStic thrown away, but not anywhere as bad as Nina.

"Zee,” Dev cut in, grinning wide, “this is mental, bro."

Mental was a great way to describe the sight of it all, the orbital view revealing New Abraham's twin suns in full glory, light painting everything in gold and orange that would've been pretty if he'd had time to care about pretty. "Ladies and gentlemen, we're officially in space."

His hand hovered over thrust controls, fingers dancing across interfaces that most people would need years of training to understand. "This is the sublight engine. Can go up to zero-point-zero-five-c. Straightest line you can fly, at least."

The ship began a smooth acceleration, stars shifting slightly while the cabin stayed comfortable as a living room. No sensation of movement inside, just readouts confirming they were moving fast enough to make Alliance admirals weep with envy.

Nina's head tilted, calculating in that way that meant her brain was doing math he didn't want to interrupt. "Zero-five-c... that's around fifteen thousand kilometers per second, yeah?"

"Give or take. Not bad, right?" Understatement of the year, but who's counting? 

Caleb leaned forward, curiosity overriding his usual laid-back attitude. "What do Alliance ships hit?"

Kira's response came flat, professional, like she was reciting technical specifications from memory. "Frigates cap out at zero-point-zero-zero-two-c cruising, maybe zero-point-zero-two-two-c in a straight sprint. Some special frigates or top tier Salarian ships could hit that sort of sublight move. Pretty rare outside of that."

And they think they're hot shit for managing that. "Yeah, eezo drives are kinda shit for straight-line speed. This thing's not that much faster in combat though, nobody's perfect."

Yet. His expression shifted, showing more teeth beneath his aviators as thoughts jumped to other possibilities, other demonstrations he could give..

"What's perfect look like?" Dev's question carried genuine curiosity mixed with wariness, like he'd learned to be careful about asking Zedd what came next.

Good question. "We'll see. Besides, this drive is basically nothing compared to what we're really here for." His gloved fingers traced activation sequence across haptic controls, muscle memory guiding him through startup procedures he hadn’t practiced in nearly three months. Time for the real show.

Nina watched his hands, recognition dawning as she caught that particular tone of voice that meant he was about to do something stupid or brilliant or both. "Zedd, what are you doing?"

"Showing you why I'm not worried about alien ships." The words came out lazy, drawling, like he was explaining something obvious to particularly slow children.

V-Drive systems warming up, subsonic hum filling cabin as exotic matter containment fields stabilized and dimensional matrices aligned. Space outside beginning to shimmer with energy distortion that made reality look like it was melting at the edges.

Kira leaned forward, curiosity overriding caution as she processed what she was seeing. "How fast can this thing go FTL... in comparison?"

Oh, now we're getting to the real fun part. His smile widened, eyes meeting hers through his aviators. "Not much faster than twenty-four LY per day."

"Twenty-four light years per day?" Nina's voice carried the particular disbelief that came from having your understanding of physics forcibly updated.

Kira's response started sharp but dissolved into frustrated gibberish as her brain tried to process numbers that didn't make sense. "Sublight is fuc-fuckin'... fuck me, Zee." The words trailed off in more of a frustrated whine than actual language.

Opening there. "You offering?"

"Stop." Nina's warning came quick, automatic, like she'd had this conversation before.

“I’m just asking?”

"L-look, okay, just... twenty-four lightyears per day..." Kira's voice carried the particular strain that came from trying to reconcile impossible information with military training.

"Twenty-five if you wanna be specific." Accuracy matters, even when you're breaking people's brains.

"F-fuck. That's more than twice as fast as the fastest ship the Alliance has. Like... that's... that's... that's..." Kira's vocabulary apparently reached its limit somewhere around the third repetition.

Adele exhaled smoke, French accent thickening as stress hit her pronunciation. "Mon dieu, Zee. You broke my best friend's brain."

Not permanently. "She'll be fine."

Caleb nodded with easy acceptance. "Yeah, he told me about this a while back."

Dev's response was just as casual. "Zee doesn't do anything small-scale, ya."

True enough. Nina stared at him with mixed admiration and exasperation, like she couldn't decide whether to be impressed or annoyed. "Still can't believe you've had faster-than-light travel for months and didn't tell us."

Timing matters. Some revelations worked better with buildup, dramatic presentation. 

This felt right.

Kira's tactical mind was clearly reeling, trying to process strategic implications and it showed on her face, sweat beading on her temple despite the temperature controls. "The strategic implications... every naval doctrine in Citadel space just became obsolete."

That's the idea. "Come on, it's fucking me. Did you think I'd be happy with anything less?"

"But that's fucking insane." Kira's voice rose with the particular edge that meant she was trying to reconcile impossible with the real.

Insane's relative. His grin turned predatory, satisfaction bleeding through as he reached for the next set of controls. "Oh, you haven't seen anything yet."

"What?" Nina's growing alarm was probably justified, considering what came next.

His hand found the specialized lever system, the chrome and blue interface opening up from behind a glass panel with a slight hiss. His right hand gripped the chrome lever and with a slight but hard pull, it extended slightly. Now, let’s get this going. He twisted the lever handle clockwise, symbols illuminating in sequence as exotic matter containment reached optimal parameters, and then finally pushed it back down.

As it entered back into the recessed panel with a solid thunk, the first actual noticeable vibration shuddered through the ship's hull. The lighting inside shifted from blue to a lighter purple, according to safety protocols he wrote, even when safety was a relative concept.

"ADAM: Shatterspace." 

"Initiating Dimensional Fracture." ADAM's acknowledgment was just as calm. 

Everyone except Zedd started to speak at once, talking all over each other with just one word leaving their mouth. "Shatters—"

Reality fractured in front of the ship's nose like someone had taken a hammer to the universe itself. Cracks appeared in space, edges crackling with energy as the tears began widening, revealing a swirling void beyond normal spacetime that almost threatened to hurt the eyes.

“Moving on down Main Street!” Zedd cackled as the ship lurched forward and into the breach.

Everyone except Zedd let out a panicked scream as the Grande shot into the dimensional tear, normal space disappearing behind them.

"FUUUUUU—"

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The GUARDIAN training facility buzzed low, like static under skin. Kinesis stabilizers humming too hard for comfort, afternoon light dragging lines across steel walkways. Right beneath one of those walkways, Pedro O'Hara made his own way.

The eighteen-year-old clung to the underside of the metal walkway, fingertips finding purchase in surface grooves far too small to hold anything, let alone his weight.

It didn’t matter.

Gravity definitely didn’t seem to mind, at least.

His brown eyes locked onto his mark on the ground as a grin cracked open across his face like he’d stolen something.

Charles Bartlett, codenamed Blinspot, sat still as a sniper’s nest. His buzzcut caught the light, gaze nowhere but on what was right in front of him. A datapad, probably full of some tactical data or whatever else the guy liked to look at in his spare time.

Tension was molded to Charlie like a second skin, like a hardsuit almost, and it made sense why half the team joked that Blindspot was the kind of weirdo who probably vacuum-sealed his toothpaste.

Pedro shifted his weight, silent and still, as his grin widened.

The drop was lined up.

Charles didn't look up from his datapad but he moved first anyway.

No look, not even a head tilt.

He just stretched his hand out, smooth and lazy, fingers curling around a pen.

The flick was casual, almost bored, and if Pedro hadn’t been looking right at it, he might have missed it.

Pedro’s danger sense exploded behind his eyes, a flashbang to his nervous system. The teenager twisted midair like a crash dummy. A split-second after, something shaved air right past his cheek, close enough to part his dark hair.

His head turned with it and his brown eyes went wider as he saw the pen embed itself in the wall with a sharp chunk, the tip piercing through the first layer of wall material.

Holy shit. Pedro flipped up onto the railing of the walkway in a controlled crouch, breath leaving him in heavy spurts. That would've taken my eye out.

"Try that with someone else," Charles said, not even bothering with a glance back, voice flat as concrete. 

The wall-crawler straightened up, grin returning despite nearly needing a trip to the medbay or a visit to the boss for a freshly regrown eye. Even still, it was more than a little shaky. "H… how did you even—"

Charles finally pushed back from the table, chair scraping against polished metal flooring. He turned to face Pedro, blue eyes as cold as winter and almost as pale. "Breathing pattern changed when you started moving. Slight air displacement when you shifted position." He tilted his head to the side, clicking his tongue. "Your cologne."

Pedro blinked. "I'm not wearing any cologne, bro."

"Body wash. Same difference." Charles's expression remained flat, professional. "Also, you're terrible at stealth."

The words hit with that particular brand of plains honesty that made arguments feel pointless. Pedro's grin shifted into something sharper, more knowing.

"Fair, one thing though..."

Charles raised an eyebrow, the movement barely perceptible. "What?"

"I'm just the distraction."

Displacement wind hit the room like a kinetic pulse, papers scattering as something moving faster than human perception, a blur of motion, slammed into Charles from behind. 

Speed met mass and physics gave out as the man went skidding across the floor.

Mateo Eisenhardt clicked into visibility just beside Pedro, silver hair still drifting like it was catching up to the rest of him. The speedster's lean frame vibrated slightly with residual energy, cybernetic systems bleeding off excess momentum through controlled micro-movements.

"Ja, gotcha," Mateo grinned, accent sharp around the edges as he bounced on the balls of his feet. "Didn't see that one coming, yeah?"

Pedro dropped down from his elevated position, muscles absorbing the impact as he landed in a perfect crouch. He straightened with his hand up, and Mateo met it palm-to-palm with a sound that cracked like a gunshot.

“Later, Blindspot!” he shouted, already yanking himself downrange with twin webs. Mechanical arms flared out of his back, anchoring to pillars with sharp clinks as he moved like a loosed spring.

Mateo blurred into motion beside him, speed carrying him in a controlled sprint as they escaped through the facility's main corridor.

Charles pushed himself up from the polished floor, blonde buzzcut now disheveled as he brushed dust off himself. His pale eyes tracked the direction of their escape with precision that suggested he was already calculating revenge scenarios.

"Fucking kids.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Meanwhile, back in the broken laws of physics…

Reality twisted, fractured, and danced off in the nonexistent horizon with all sorts of geometries and indescribable colors that made his eyes water if he stared too long. The Grande continued its travel as space folded around the ship like origami made of physics violations, swirling energy patterns and aurora lightning that shouldn't exist painted everything in ways they wouldn’t be able to find the words for. Still gets me, every time.

Nina gripped her armrests hard enough that her knuckles went white against dark fabric, casual clothes wrinkled from her panicked movement. "What. The actual fuck."

There it is. It was the expected reaction, really, and the exact same one he was waiting for. He honestly wasn’t sure how bad some of them would take it, considering that even Kai nearly screamed. Which was… hilarious.

"Zee, what is this place?" Caleb was still strapped in, but his voice was quiet, softer, almost back to what it was before he went under the needle the first time. “What… the hell is this place?”

"Shatterspace." The answer came out casual, a tone built for explaining weather instead of literally breaking reality. "I just told you."

Well, technically I said Shatterpoint, but close enough. His hands moved across exotic readings that shifted colors with each dimensional flux, numbers that meant something only if you'd spent a month learning to read the mathematics of folded reality.

Kira leaned forward against her restraints, blue hair catching weird light as she tried to process impossibility. "Are we in another dimension? How is any of this possible?"

Good questions. Good questions. Just wish the answers were less complicated. "Think of it as... sideways from normal space. Still connected, just... different rules. It’s all technically based on the basic principles of the kinesis and stasis modules, same as the V-Drive, just smashed together and scaled up… so to speak."

Dev's voice carried that tight edge he got when enhanced physiology ran into things it couldn't adapt to. "Boss, my head feels like it's buzzing. Is that normal?"

"Dimensional resonance. Your implants are trying to sync with local physics." Which is probably uncomfortable as hell, but it'll pass. "You'll adjust."

Adele had an unlit NicStic between her lips, hands steady despite everything spinning around them. "Zedd, c'est quoi cette merde? Where the hell are we?"

French bleeding through when stress hit her filters. Normal response. Probably wants to light that thing but figures the exotic radiation might make it explode. Smart call, actually.

"Parallel dimension, technically. Physics work different here." He gestured at the swirling madness outside, reality bending in ways that made geometry textbooks obsolete. "ADAM can explain better."

"You're currently traveling through folded spacetime," his AI's voice filtered through speakers with that particular smugness that meant he was showing off, "within a dimensional layer that exists parallel to normal space."

"You insane m-man,” Nina rasped out loud, “how long have you been able to do this?"

Now, that was a loaded question. "Non-eezo FTL? Longer than I've been able to enhance genetics, technically. Almost the same amount of time, really, but it's..." He trailed off, actually unsure how he would explain that. Research timelines got complicated fast when new things seemed to pop into his head at random intervals. Still need to put effort into making actual giant mecha. I know I could pull it off. "Shatterspace was about six months ago."

Six months of testing, anyway. Design work took longer. He leaned back, hands off the controls because the ship knew where it was going, following trajectories through twisted space that conventional navigation couldn't plot. "Think of it as a shortcut. Instead of going through space, we go around it."

Caleb's engineering background was clearly struggling with the concept. "Around space? That's not how space works."

"Normal space, sure." Zedd's grin felt sharp in the weird light. "This is different physics entirely."

Understatement of the year, but explaining quantum foam manipulation and dimensional membrane theory wasn't exactly casual conversation material.

Kira's tactical mind was engaging, probably running threat assessments for scenarios that didn't exist in any manual. "What are the risks? Radiation exposure? Dimensional displacement?"

"Negligible with proper shielding," ADAM answered before Zedd could. "The Grande's hull is rated for extended Shatterspace exposure."

Show-off. Though accurate. He'd spent weeks designing containment systems that could handle exotic energy patterns that could turn people inside-out if you got them wrong.

Dev unbuckled himself, leaning closer to the cockpit with that restless energy that came with being built for action but stuck watching impossible things happen. "How fast are we actually going in here?"

Zedd tilted one open hand side to side in that classic gesture that said 'complicated' without having to explain fourth-dimensional mathematics. "Speed doesn't really… work here. To even try and define it that way would basically insulting your intelligence. We're not moving through space, more like we're slingshotting forward while space folds around us."

Adele exhaled phantom smoke from her unlit cigarette, stress habits running even when she couldn't actually light up. "That makes no sense whatsoever."

"Welcome to my life." The words came out dry, carrying months of figuring out engineering problems that shouldn't have solutions. "Half the shit I build doesn't make sense until it works."

He clicked his tongue. And sometimes not even then.

"The energy requirements though..." Kira shook her head. “I mean… like, this isn’t something you can just… it has to b-”

"Actually quite efficient," ADAM interrupted. "Shatterspace naturally wants to fold back on itself. We're just encouraging it."

Like surfing dimensional currents instead of fighting them. Zedd watched as the ship automatically adjusted course through energy streams that flowed like cosmic rivers, the Grande effectively surfing waves of folded space-time.

"Where are we going?" Nina's voice was as strained as he’d ever heard it and he’d heard her yell herself hoarse a few times, most of those unrelated to him.

"To where I actually built these drives and tested them. Kai was with me the whole seven months I was gone." Poor bastard. "Guy is not a fan of Shatterspace, not gonna lie to you."

Caleb's laugh burst out of him in something more like a bark than anything else. "That explains the look on his face back in the hangar."

Yeah, seven months of this would make anyone prefer solid ground.

"Seven months of this?” Kira cut in again, his stressed N7 friend actually curious. “How did you not fucking lose it?"

Because I kinda did lose it, actually. Not from stress, more from excitement. 

Hard to explain the rush of rewriting physics without sounding completely unhinged. "Honestly, the Shatterpoint Drive lets you jump pretty much anywhere you have coordinates for."

His hand gestured toward control systems that glowed with readings no human had seen before he'd built them. "This one's the smallest I could design and it still lets you make a jump about six hundred LY in about an hour."

Not instant like the mass relays, but way more flexible. "Not instant, like the secondary relays, but a good bit further than most of them can manage."

Kira's voice came out faint, like she was afraid of the answer. "...six hundred..."

"Light years, yeah." The delivery stayed casual because making it sound like a big deal would just freak everyone out more. "About six lightyears per minute. Took me months to design this baby on top of the ships and get it all working. Some of those months were math. Some of those months were screaming. Some of those were… screaming math."

Kira pressed back in her seat, face in her hands like she was trying to hide from reality. "Months, he says."

Poor Barbie. He winked at her reflection. She didn’t flip him off, which meant she was melting inside.

"First the V-Drive, then the ships, then the Shatterpoint. Pretty much took me a whole year of my life." Best year ever, honestly. "A year I enjoyed, not gonna lie, and I honestly kinda miss the place. Should be almost there, been about half an hour."

Time moved weird in Shatterspace, but the navigation readings said they were approaching the exit point. Reality ahead was starting to stabilize, energy patterns coalescing into something that looked almost normal if you squinted.

"...where are we going again?" Nina's voice carried processing overload strain, brain probably still trying to fit impossible into neat categories.

Didn't I just... "You already asked that."

"I knooooow." The word stretched out with exhaustion that came from having your worldview forcibly updated. "Please. Just tell me. I can’t keep counting my fingernails."

Fair enough. Zedd nodded his head slowly, able to understand that much. "One of my outposts and manufacturing labs, deep in an empty system in the Terminus."

Empty being relative, considering what was probably waiting for them. The exit point was forming ahead, rip in space appearing with edges that crackled like electrical discharge having a fight with geometry. Normal starfield visible through the dimensional tear, looking almost boring after half an hour of impossible physics.

Ship systems were preparing for transition back to standard reality, Shatterpoint system returning precedence to the V-Drive as it cycled back down. Always weird, going back to normal after this.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to—"

The Grande shot out above a tight asteroid field, stars wheeling as the ship completed its exit maneuver, dimensional tear sealing behind them like reality was healing a wound. Zedd brought them out of FTL in a wide arc, expecting the routine transponder ping that should have come from his automated systems.

Instead, silence.

That's not right.

Sudden targeting lock acquisition lit up every threat warning on the ship, klaxons screaming as systems that were supposed to be friendly started painting them with hostile intent. Warning lights bathed the cabin in angry red as something slammed into their forward shields hard enough to rattle the hull.

The ship jerked violently, internal dampeners triggering as blue emergency lighting flickered throughout the cabin. Everyone felt the impact through their restraint systems, weight shifting as physics reasserted itself with prejudice.

Dev, still unbuckled, jerked forward but caught himself against the seat backs. "What the hell was that?"

Zedd didn't answer.

Couldn't, really, because his attention was locked on the multiple ship signatures appearing from stealth, emerging from concealment in the asteroid field like predators that had been waiting for exactly this moment.

I worried about this. No traffic on the sensors since his night out days ago, but that didn't mean no one had been watching. Idiot. And of course he’d gotten way too sucked into the demonstration to really consider that someone might have found his hidden base and decided to make it their problem.

Fuck.

"Boss?" ADAM's voice carried urgent query protocols, systems already spinning up defensive measures without being asked.

Zedd stared at the tactical display, watching hostile contacts resolve into ship profiles that stood out as undeniably military-grade and definitely not friendly. Should have seen this coming. "...I see them."

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

5k Words (100 FP)

ROLL: -PT Theory 101 (100 CP) [Super Robot Wars OG Saga Endless Frontier] {Vehicles}: "You've been around robots long enough to know the basics behind their engineering, at least in regards to the structure and reasoning behind the more common mechs, including the Earth Federation's standard Gespensts, and the TLI's Grungust Type 1: the example of the average Super Robot.

Weapon knowledge is also included in regards to both, which is basically ballistics and some small degree of beam weaponry."

Forge Points: 600