Descend- Seeing Stars by Sean Oswald (the ebook reader .TXT) 📕

      “This is my power. We didn’t have enough time to discuss it earlier, but I passed it on to you. You can augment your body by absorbing things into it. Up till now I had been carrying a little piece of the ship's decking to absorb its properties and toughen up. The problem with that was that it greatly reduced my flexibility. Nanium on the other hand not only makes my skin much tougher and my muscles stronger, but it also increases my flexibility. My body can now literally be tied into a pretzel but only if I allow it,” she replied.

      Jay shook his head and wondered how many other nuances of his new powers he was gonna miss out on. This was a big one though but now that he knew he could adapt. Maybe knowing truly was half the battle.

      He set his mind to the task and activated the ability it has merged in with his other durability traits and was maxed out. He felt strange as the nanium was not so much absorbed into his body as much as his body took on the traits of the unique metal. He could not move and shape himself however he liked.

      Another realization dawned upon him. He had been waiting for the girls to finish their technology integration plans. He was nervous about the idea but now he was able to adapt his body to the crown absorbing its properties to permanently modify his body. This was definitely a useful skill.

      He watched as pilots and crews boarded their starfighters. The upgraded ships had extra gun stations, so a three-man crew was becoming normal. Jay was all in favor of anything that gave them a better chance of surviving out there.

      Next, he saw Trina walk up with a group of girls. All of them had Uremi’s flight power now, so movement in space was possible. While none of them were as fast as him, many of them were still capable of speeds in the range of several hundred miles per second.

      He was a bit surprised by how many of the girls were there. He had expected maybe five to want to take part but instead there were three women teams led by Trina, Amelia, Meikiyo, Jessie, Charlotte, Maddy, Bong-Cha, Cee-Cee, and Trudi.

Twenty-seven of his fuses out there fighting. That was going to make keeping track of each of them during a battle tricky, but he set up a partition in his mind to keep one part busy knowing where they were at all times. He wanted to be able to jump into the rescue if needed. Despite his worry, he kept his mouth shut and didn’t say anything.

      Once the signal was given that everyone was ready, he started to hover, waiting for the shields to come down so that he could soar out into space. Four thousand fighter along with twenty-eight little humans all made it outside the ship and then on his mark they teleported or made a spatial jump.

      Then they were upon the enemy and attacking. The fighter flew strafing missions which ripped up the smaller ships and made the battleships have to focus on destroying many smaller targets. Meanwhile Jay and his team started teleporting inside ship after ship. For Jay it was easy. He could scan where there were vital locations on a ship. He dropped in, killed any Forlorn present and then dropped off the bomb with a ten second fuse.

      Of the remaining ships only about three thousand were battleships, but that was still a ton of bombs to plant. Jay was managing about one ever fifteen seconds, but most of the girls were taking a full thirty seconds per bomb. Some quick math told him that at this rate it was going to take fifty-two minutes to down all of these ships.

      That was too long to ask the fighters to keep running as distractions. He needed the Forlorn thinking that the threat was coming from the fighters so that they wouldn’t start trying to intercept him, or worse one of the girls. Jay sent out a mental message to all the human fighters stressing the importance of hurrying up.

      As part of the fusion, Eesa felt the meaning of what he said and communicated through their comlink that the fighters were doing very well. So far less than 5% casualties but they had already downed ten times that number of enemy vessels. This was going fast, and Jay wanted to be happy but even a 10:1 ratio would allow the enemy to grind them into dust based upon sheer numbers.

      So, Jay had to step it up. It always came to that. He pushed himself faster and faster. Soon he was doing twelve ships per minute. He teleported directly from one ship to the next, and appreciated his new Long Range View ability, because it made sure he knew exactly what he was teleporting to in each ship.

      So far none of them had prepared any type of organized resistance against him. He teleported in, burst out with kinetic energy to kill everything in the room and then drop off a bomb before teleporting to the next one. He left a string of explosions behind him but was soon focusing on his team. They were all getting faster now and averaging three ships per minute.

      That had the time down to thirty-two minutes. It was still too long but the best that he could do. Jay didn’t want to push the girls any faster because moving too fast leads to mistakes. He on the other hand was willing to be pushed. He hadn’t taken so much as a scratch yet, but that was to be expected with his nanium body now.  So, he pushed himself faster. What was the point of moving 16% of the speed