Mahou Galaxy: Chapter 17(Revised!)

The Resonance Hope was the name Sergio had managed to pull from the computer of Cassie's Machination in its current transformed state.  He didn't have a model of it on his shelf, but the way he looked over the ship's various systems, it seems as though he was planning on building one shortly after the battle was over.  According to his readings, it featured two independently-swiveling pairs of variable-element laser cannons, which he assured Kira were much more powerful than the tiny mining asteroid the ship normally boasted.  In addition, its engine and maneuvering thrusters were much more powerful than the Machination's, though the shield wasn't quite as heavy.  This was most likely due to the most interesting feature on the Resonance, a secondary shield that converted incoming laser fire into energy that could be redirected through a fifth front-facing cannon.  As awesome as the superweapon was, it had a huge catch in that the absorptive qualities of this shield could only remain active for a few seconds before they overheated their internals, necessitating a two-minute cooldown.  Still, a skilled pilot could use it to stop a blast from a ship many times the Resonance's size, then surprise the attacker with a volley much more damaging than would normally be possible from a ship so small.  Not that it mattered, of course.  The Resonance was barely able to provide power to its own life-support systems, as no matter how hard Kira tried to push away the emotional surge from the planet below, she simply lacked the willpower to overcome so much doubt directed at her.
-------------------------------------
Anyaria twisted uncomfortably in the cheap swivel-chair that had been placed where her throne usually went.  She was pretty sure that it was the same one that the dog-man had been planning to beat her senseless with, but since the throne was a bit too heavy to move on such short notice, she couldn't really complain.  Around her deck, the various stations buzzed with frantic chatter and reports from drone and fighter pilots alike.  She had expected there to be some resistance, but the Lusharrans were far too well-prepared, even if the defense force was small, for it to have been a coincidence.  On top of that, she was completely certain that her crew had jammed Proxima Z's subspace transmitter during the brief moment it had to send its distress message.  She could have chalked it up to mere bad luck, but there was something else a bit off.  The ship she was hoping to find, that valuable looking centuries-old AP ship, was nowhere to be found.  Too bad, too, as she had teleported to this platform with the specific goal in mind of harpooning it and dragging it home to finally add a second ship to her fleet.  Her eyes unable to keep up with the flurry of dots flitting around the planet, she spoke with a voice that conveyed her irritation.  "Status report, Epsilon.  How are the boarding ships faring?"
"The Redistribution of Wealth and Haggar's Invincible Bicep both report that they've had no trouble getting all of their boarding teams onto their target ships.  Omicron Ultra's group is having trouble with a privateer frigate that was parked in the area, but they're at least able to keep the platform between them as a shield.  All of the other groups are performing as expected, Mistress."
"Good," she replied, pointing off to the flurry of activity over the most hostile-looking slice of the planet, "set us on a course to assist Omicron, have our approach vector take us into the frigate's blind spot and warm up the main cannon to fire once we're close enough that we can stay in that blind zone faster than they can turn."
"And the Piper?"  Epsilon asked, referring to the huge freighter that had teleported in with the rest of Anyaria's group.  The pirate queen had been very pleased to see that this particular ship had come in response to her offer, and she had made special arrangements to ensure that she was going to stick close to it for as long as possible.  Like her own gamble with the generally short-lived cloaking technology, the captain of the Piper was known for using unorthodox tactics in their hijacking attempts.  It was probably the most boring-looking of all of the pirate vessels, barely more than a large gray box with a few jagged seams and the occasional window with massive engines strapped to one side, but it would prove the key to Anyaria's victory at Lusharra.
"Order it to stick around here, where there's nothing going on.  Leave drone squadron beta here to keep anyone from bothering it, and if a ship does come poking around then orders are to draw it away from the Piper."
"Understood, Mistress."
As the Undeclared Discount shot through space toward the firefight ahead, Anyaria glanced through the viewport.  For a moment, she thought that something had passed through her vision, but there was nothing they could see on the sensor sweeps.
------------------------------------
Outside of Kira's BioWarp station, Hein pounded on the door, which had slammed shut an instant after the wave of disbelief had hit the BioWarp mage.  Arnesen had told him what had likely happened, but his attempt at encouraging her couldn't mask the panic in his normally gruff voice.  "Come on, kid!  You can do this!  We're all counting on you," he yelped at the top of his lungs, "so just give us something to work with!"
Meanwhile, in the cockpit, Sergio and Arnesen were rapidly discussing options.  The ship had lost engine power, but that didn't mean it was out of momentum as well.  Without maneuvering power, the freighter was on course to pass within half a kilometer of the platform harboring The Blossomed Lily, where they had planned to install one of the three remaining elemental cores.  Unhooking Viera's core was completely out of the question, as it was providing a power of sorts--that the power was working against the ship notwithstanding--and attempting to disconnect it now would likely render the vessel completely inoperable.  With only a couple of minutes until the Resonance was to reach their rendezvous and the communications system offline, Arnesen spoke quickly to the crew of the Lily through a powerful spell that was allowing him to communicate through their computers.  A second casting of the spell by means of the cyber-elemental speaking in a loud digital squeal connected him to the station as well, and he relayed the plan that he and Sergio had thrown together to both crews.
"Station E-3, you need to treat the Resonance like an incoming meteor as far as target acquisition goes.  Redirect all available landing grabbers to pull us as close as you can manage to The Blossoming Lily, then push us away from the station immediately after we pass by, aiming us at heading NNE twenty-two point three degrees.  Blossoming Lily, start moving the core into the solar reactor room.  Have your fastest pilot ready in the landing bay to take on a guest to help your Biotechs install it.  Estimated arrival time, ninety-two seconds."  The glow from his eyes fading, he turned to Sergio.  "You got this, yeah?"
"I have dealt with Legion adapter interfaces before.  I should be able to install the core with minimal trouble.  Did your new heading take into account the planet's gravity as well as the movement of the other stations?" Sergio asked as he checked the tools in his coat's many pockets.  His eyes widened suddenly as a thought occurred to him.  "The people of your planet, please tell me that they do not harbor ancient superstitions regarding Vampires.  A solar reactor might provide difficult for me to deal with if they do."
In reply, Arnesen tapped his forehead twice.  "Elemental League, my good man.  We're all brothers, and so on.  You should be fine."
Counting down internally, the Elemental started casting another spell.  With a flash and a wink, he and Sergio were gone, and three seconds later, as gravity beams pushing the ship with all of their power caused everyone within the ship to lurch hard toward the bow, Arnesen reappeared with another wink, stumbling backwards and falling with an unceremonious thud.  Immediately, Lyn turned halfway toward him, keeping an eye on the ship's forward view.  "You got him on okay, right?"
"Yeah, it's way easier teleporting onto a relatively stationary target.  We get noticed yet?"
"Well, we haven't been shot at.  The fact that we're not transmitting anything is probably helping, but I'm sure they're gonna notice something's up with the big gravity flux we just got hit with."
Heinrich, either having given up on Kira or letting her concentrate on her own task, pulled Arnesen back to his feet as he entered the cockpit.  Squinting to try and make out their next destination, he asked, "I can't see a damn thing.  When'll we be close enough to the next ship?"
  Arnesen replied from behind.  "We've not got anywhere near the velocity now that we did on the way there.  At this rate, probably about five minutes."  In five minutes, the battle might already be over.  Through the viewscreen, nearly half a planetary distance away, those present on the Resonance could see the flickers of light that accompanied ships exchanging fire.  It was Rolarn's flagship, Fredick's Haul, and despite the Fire Elemental's eagerness to fight, he was having to keep himself reserved as the pirates he was engaged with were using the station as cover, darting in and out with little regard as to whether they were hitting the space platform of one of Rolarn's volunteer escort ships.  It seems they had already gotten a fair distance toward securing their goal, tiny specks of miniature boarding craft puncturing the hull of the medical freighter.  In a couple more minutes, the ship was likely to be sabotaged by the Gremlins that doubtless inhabited the pods, redirecting the ship's systems from areas inaccessible to its genuine crew.  Lyn pushed harder on the throttle, trying her best to will the ship faster, but it was to no avail.
------------------------------------------
Rolarn had never met Fredick before the battle, but almost immediately the two clicked.  Fredick was an older domestic Usagi, a mostly-human man in his 70s with a long white mustache that stretched and faded into his grayed sideburns and grayed rabbit ears that drooped slightly, but he had leapt--literally, his crew would report--at the chance to have the elemental core installed in his ship, overseeing its installation while wringing his hands anxiously like a schoolboy waiting for the bell to ring.  Rolarn had set up a video feed between his personal meditation chamber, a hollowed-out sphere of barely-cooled volcanic rock, and the deck of the Fredick's Haul.  Through the link, he was able to view the ship's power readouts, radar pings, and various turret cameras, but he was able to truly gauge the state of the battle through the emotional link he shared with the frigate's captain.  It had been a long time since the Haul had been engaged in a serious battle, most of its time having been spent running escort missions that had been disappointingly routine, but Rolarn and Fredick both relayed orders to the various crew stations in near-perfect tandem, tweaking the shields or the engines just in time to turn a direct hit into a near miss or a harmless shielded blow time and time again.
Fredick's Haul was primarily engaged with a long barrel of a ship bristling with hundreds of spikes, some of them ornamental and some of them sporting focus-beam laser cannons.  It was particularly difficult to distinguish the fake spikes from the cannons, as every time the blasted vessel fired off a volley, it spun around on its axis, sending out a jamming pulse wave that disrupted Fredick's weapon locks.  Making matters worse, the cowards were taking cover behind the platform, and had no compunctions about tearing some holes through it so they could fire through the station itself at their adversary.  Equipped with the elemental core, however, Fredick quickly realized that it was child's play to duck around the platform faster than the pirate ship, and ordered his crews to hold all fire even after engaging their target locks.  As he expected, once he'd acquired the turrets as targets, the enemy ship lurched into a disruptive spin, and it was then that Rolarn and Fredick ordered the gunners to fire their lasers, concentrated at the center hull of the ship.  As the enemy ship's shields absorbed the fire, the lasers rippled down like raindrops on an umbrella, and then suddenly the barrier faltered.  All of the shots had overloaded the shields, and the hail of laser fire on a single spot on the rotating pirate ship tore a tremendous gash in the side of the enemy vessel.  
Fredick ordered the shield strength directed to the bow of the Haul, half-expecting the pirate vessel to explode, as is not an uncommon sight with severely damaged Anarchist vehicles.  What he wasn't expecting, however, was for a few dozen of the ship's spikes to disengage themselves from the primary hull and streak toward his ship.  Before his crews could redistribute the shields, they swarmed the less-shielded areas of his frigate, fired a few times until they penetrated the hull, and then fired their engines backup and drove themselves in like porcupine spines.
"Clancey, damage report!" the rabbit-man bellowed to one of his crewmen.
"It's mostly superficial, but we're reading some drops in power to the maneuvering thrusters and the shields," the lavender-skinned semitransluscent woman floating next to the damage readout replied.  "And now we're getting the same with the gravity generator!"
"Damn it.  Gremlins.  Ian, Largo, you two are coming with me.  Rolarn, you've got command of the Haul now, I've got a little infestation to take care of."  Fredick grinned to himself as he pulled his laser pistol from its holster.  It seemed the ship itself wouldn't be the only one here getting a chance to flex its combat muscle.
"Alright, you heard your captain!" Rolarn barked over the deck's comm.  "We've got a job to do.  Use the fighter docking grabber to pull those spikes out.  With any luck some of those gremlins weren't smart enough to seal the holes they made and they'll be exposed to the vacuum once we get the spikes free.  Anything we can't reach, target with the turrets.  Meanwhile, let's set a course for the nearest captial-scale pirate ship, that bluish one with the rotating main turret.  I'm pretty sure I saw it scatter some mines, though, so let's launch a few missiles their way to clear a path!"
------------------------------------------
Kira was able to see her fellow crewmates struggling with the task of delivering Arnesen to the next ship via the projections on her walls.  Though the ship refused to give power to any of the systems combat would require, it had no issue with allowing her to see exactly how difficult her failure was making things for her friends.  She had tried already to order it to open the door, to force it to ignore the negative energy being projected toward it, but the ship gave no response whatsoever to her pleas.  Worst of all, she found herself unable to remove her hands from the station's terminals, and it was a herculean effort simply to keep herself upright with both arms.  With no other recourse, she took to her familiar standard of screaming at the craft.
"You want to just give up because the people down there don't trust us to win for them?  Is that what you want to do?  I get a say in this as much as you do!  At the very least, you have to give me a chance to do something!"  For a moment, it seemed to have no effect, but with a resolve that seemed too human to be mechanical, the lighting in the tiny room brightened as Kira's reflection appeared in the doorway.  From the planet below, there was a collective gasp, then a stillness that mirrored the holding of one's breath.  The ship had started transmitting her image, and what she said next would determine how the people below felt about her.
"I," she paused for a moment, pushing herself up as tall as she could muster, "am Lady Kira of the Resonance Hope."  She made sure to pronounce her name with a slight accent on the vowel sound, making it sound as close to 'Viera' as she was able.  "A century ago, the people of the Plains lost their goddess, and with it, their hope.  Now the cities of the plains pale in comparison to those under the guidance of Viera's contemporaries."  Like a massive wave, she felt the indignity of all those watching the broadcast slam into her.  She faltered for a moment, but regained her composure, hiding the smallest of smirks.  It was just what she was looking for, and now she knew exactly what buttons to push.  "So, then, do you plan to cower in your houses yet again while you let the other lands deal with this threat to your well-being?  When you next speak to your friends in the Land of the Mountains, will you be too ashamed to mention the history that unfolded today, or will you meekly thank them for saving you, too helpless to even trust in your champion to protect you?"  With a crescendo of defiance, the ship surged back to life, engines roaring with a bright blue glow.  "That's more like it!  Who among you has the courage to live your own life, as is befitting those of the Plains?  Who will honor Viera's sacrifice by being true to themselves instead of marching down the most heavily trodden path?"  Kira was nearly once again overcome with emotions, but this time she was able to harness the newfound positivity within.  Among the collective push of newfound boldness, individual experiences that had particular poignancy spiked inside her mind, pinging ripples of emotive color that streamed down her hair.  A teenager telling his father that he didn't want to inherit the family business.  A flurry of strokes as an artist pushed through her decades-long mental block.  A man overcoming his shame and telling his best friend that he was in love with him.  Each one touched Kira's soul, and as she directed as much power into the ship as was possible, she found herself subconsciously directing the overflow of emotional strength back to the people of the planet who most needed it, her smile growing brighter as she found herself humming softly along with the rhythm of the flowing energy.