Starship pilot who don’t need no fancy shields or lasers
everyone else watched. nobody could interfere. this was a duel between captains, after all.
everything on the line. crew, cargo, the whole kit-n-kaboodle. at least, what's salvageable after the fact.
Captain Uriel Apollodoros. pompous bastard had to push me. It's the price of notoriety, sometimes you have to take out the trash. It's my refueling platform, my rules, but this armor-clad technowizard thought he knew it all and deserved it all. he deserved what he got, alright.
we staged ourselves the standard distance apart with many onlookers tuning in with visuals as well as instruments. my old bones may ache and i may not be as quick as I used to be, but agility isn't everything. i still haven't lost a fight, so when I must fight, it's always a sector-wide spectacle.
these technomancers think they know it all
no, they know they know it all. they're wrong though. it's not lasers or shields or even suped up sensors that win fights, it's ingenuity and careful planning.
Each side is allowed an hour to get into position and an hour to prepare. The tides were right to try out a new strategy id been itching to try out.
First hour start.
The buoy line in between us being the border, i maneuvered my craft on impulse alone. every so often, seemingly at random, I would drop a small package out of my cargo bay. 20 minutes in I receive a hail.
"Captain Domar, what the hell are you doing? get into position!"
"I will, in time. Have patience. I have an hour to squat on that orange beacon, I'll be there in time."
The officiator was not pleased. He hurled a string of curses at me. I hung up. I was right of course, which is why he waxed so... colorful.
Eventually I made it to my corner of the ring and powered down all but life support and sensors. Uriel did the same.
the fight was over before it even began.
I could try to explain the science behind what happened, but it's best explained as an old space dog's intuition. I never powered my ship back up. I sat back and watched the carnage. Every shot my opponent attempted on me was blocked or fizzled out before it reached me. I must have looked like a sitting hasbuck.
Uriel, ever the hothead, got fed up and decided to approach. My intuition said he would, it's what I was banking on. Uriel crossed into the circle. A blinding light seared retinas across the sector. Then, calm.
The crates I had dropped were attuned to something older than modern technology. Older than electricity. Older than man. Naturally absorbent energy conduits made from nothing but wood and a prayer. Meant to gather energy for witches of old to use in spellcrafting, they didn't just block Uriel's laser battery, they had absorbed the energy wholesale. These altars are minimally effective on a planet, but out here in the void? energy is all we have. They grew fat on the natural energies, Uriel's laser batteries making them visibly bulge.
When he crossed into the circle, Uriel had disrupted the flow of energies.
Every altar I meticulously placed exploded in concert. A beautifully terrifying spectacle, but karmically targeted to the one feeding the most into it.
All of my systems turned on and went haywire for a minute.
The Apollaetheon was gone.
Another notch on my belt. "Deliberate Damar" remains undefeated.