332 Large processor 2

Greeted with a particularly harsh shake followed by immediate warning lights and alarms flashing, Ke immediately realized that this had been a significantly harder 'jump' than the others she had witnessed, although she still didn't know exactly why that was. Glancing around the bridge, her eyes immediately locked on to a live camera feed of the outside of the craft which showed the centre of the system they had just entered.

"... What… Is that?"

"That's the event horizon which covers the black hole, around it is the accretion disk which is made out of debris that's superheated through friction from the gravitational pull."

Gazing into the abyss of the event horizon, Ke felt an uncomfortable amount of existential dread build up inside her, no matter how much she looked at it she couldn't understand it, no matter how long she looked at it and how much she wanted to stop looking, she couldn't look at away. Sensing the space around her, Ke found no trace of magic or spells which directed her to such actions, something which made looking at the dark abyss of the event horizon even more frightening, that is until Dax forcefully broke her line of sight.

"Don't worry, this happens a lot when people see the real thing."

Also taking a second to glance at the black hole, Dax told Ke what she was experiencing.

"It is 'the call of the abyss'. When I first heard that phrase I thought it was a load of bullshit, but when I first saw a black hole with my own two eyes I understood. It feels like you're drawn to it, like a moth to a flame, but unlike the moth, you feel like you want to reach out and cross the event horizon, even though you are aware that such action would kill you."

"Yeah… How did you overcome it, Dax?"

With Dax perfectly describing how Ke was currently feeling, Ke realized that he must have experienced the exact same thing at some point. In that case, how the hell did he surpass it?

"No clue."

"Eh?"

With both Dax and Ke looking at each other like they were dumb, Dax eventually realized he had to explain it a bit better.

Although, predictably, that was a tall order for Dax.

"Don't look at me like that, I just gazed into the abyss until I felt like something was reaching out from it. Realizing I had no real problem with that sensation, I overcame it."

"Don't worry Ke, Dax is the strange one in this situation. I'm pretty sure his synapses are fried when it comes to feeling like this, although I can't confirm since he won't let me open up that thick skull to take a look."

With Ra bringing Ke back to reality with her off hand comment, she finally realized that Dax had been distracting her from the dread she had been feeling, but as he had already left she couldn't thank him, so in response, she just showed a smile.

-

"How does the shielding look?"

Glancing at the almost countless screens which displayed constantly alternating information on Styx-B's constantly fluctuating magnetic field and the impact it was having on the ship he was currently on, Dax quickly realized it would be way easier to just ask Mu of her professional opinion.

"It's holding up, I'm more surprised that we haven't been attacked yet."

"Really? I'm not surprised at all. We hurt their pride last time, there's no way they'll feel like they got back at us crushing us all the way out here."

"You sure seem confident about that."

"Yeah I am, if recent events are evident I feel like I've gained a good understanding of that particular subject."

"What subject?"

"Overconfidence. I'll get ready to deploy."

Sparing Dax's back a quick look before she got back to her work of constantly alternating and adjusting the counter pulse which was countering Styx-B's extremely high energy magnetic field.

"Overconfidence, huh?... Good luck out there."

Although Dax said he was going to get ready to 'deploy', Dax was already wearing his vacuum suit so the only preparation he was doing was making sure that the others in his assault party were also ready for what was ahead.

"Although Styx-1 is a piss poor excuse for a stellar object, it still has a tiny bit of gravity so don't get caught up and forget about your reaction fuel stores, if that happens you'll end up as dead weight."

"Roger, I believe I've gotten pretty good at low G manoeuvres, but what's the exact value?"

While Dax wasn't happy about the fact that Ke wanted to join, he had nonetheless seen her simulation results as well as the result of Mu's training, he still had to admit that she had what it takes.

"Surface gravity is 0.06 G, but expect that to greatly vary depending on what kinds of tricks our dear 3rd party will throw at us. Be ready for anything."

"We're deploying with an open jump from high orbit, be ready for extreme deceleration doing the powered descent, after establishing a beachhead we're storming the planetary core through the former core mining infrastructure left behind by the Iron race. The main tunnel which extracted the core is about a kilometre in diameter. While it's wide enough for manoeuvres it is uncomfortably narrow for wide scale weaponry. I expect this area to be a kill zone without equal, but this is these kinds of operations the 125th was originally created to deal with."

"Final issue is that 3rd party of ours. Dax says he has a plan to deal with them so we'll leave it to him… Dax, do you need anything else?"

With Dax and Phillipa both acting professionally, Lux followed up to the two of them by bringing Dax's plan into question, not that Dax minded that.

"Nope, I should be fine on my own."

"Then there's nothing left to say, get ready for deployment."

""""Roger!"""""

With nothing else left to say or do, Dax and his team got ready for combat as they entered the airlock, ready for deployment. As the light shut off inside the cramped room, a certain kind of calm fell over Dax, he felt that this moment right here was what he had been searching for. Surrounded on all sides by dependable, first class allies which he found himself able to entrust his back to, but not mindless enough to blindly follow him they were the best kind of subordinates any commander could ask for, independent when they needed to and loyal when it mattered.

[STANDBY FOR DECOMPRESSION.]

As the surrounding sound slowly disappeared along with the atmospheric pressure inside the airlock, the ship shifted around due to the high G evasive manoeuvres it was pulling as it entered final approach to Styx-1. 

[DEPLOYING COUNTERMEASURES, DEPLOYING ACTIVE DECOYS, DEPLOYING 349TH DRONE DETACHMENT, PHASE: BLUE.]

With the lights inside the airlock shifting over to a blue light, then green, the outer door suddenly disappeared together with all sound, next thing Ke knew, she was in deep space.

[LOCK ON BEACON ALPHA, SHIFT TO MANEUVER NODE #4.]

This is what deep space was like, even though she had seen this in simulations before, experiencing it for real was something else, but unlike the black hole she was trying very hard not to look at, being in deep space was nothing.

(Shift to node #4, as for the LIDAR, it's all clear… It really is like Dax said, they won't attack us up here.)

Having split up to make them a harder target, Ke couldn't see any of the other people around, only the absurdly large drop pod belonging to the 349th Lazarus drone detachment was vaguely visible if she relayed on the sensors in her vacuum suit.

[SHIFT TO MANEUVER NODE #2, READY FOR POWERED DESCENT.]

With the constant and strong flashing light emitted by Styx-B, Ke clearly saw the small planetoid she was rapidly approaching, the highly irregular surface which was a product of the low surface gravity as well as the highly volatile system the small ball of dirt had happened to form in.

"Look at them charging like that… They kind of look like ants the old farts used to talk about so much, stepping on them is so irresistible, but if I leave them be they're all so interesting to observe… What to do?~ What to do~~~~"

Playing around in the extremely low gravity at the centre of Styx-1, the precursor was already well aware of the current attack on the planetoid, but instead of worrying about their own safety, they were more worried about what they would enjoy playing with more, the Emergence or Dax and his unit. Having expanded their vacuum suit to the size of a small house, the precursor floated around inside it as freely as their mood shifted. Although they hadn't realized it, this was because of one of their implants, a hormone regulator which was starting to malfunction.

"... Arg!!! Fucking prest, all of you should just beave and let me play with you!... Wait that might actually be the solution after all."

Calming down all of a sudden, the precursor stopped their self induced spin and seemed oddly serious for a moment.

"Then I just need to capture the pureblood, then I can play with it as much as I want~"