I form a new construct shield but the drones down it at once and my construct ram isn't quite fast enough to destroy it while it's phased in. Fine then. I can still track them, they can't move as fast as my constructs can and they don't appear to have-.
We see the Scarab Warrior prepare to fire, and move-.
Sure, if you
could get your hands (or rather, constructs) on the drones, they'd be smoked easily enough. The trick is doing it while they're dodging and disrupting constructs...
There's a sudden burst of heat along the armour of my right shoulder.
That wasn't a construct disruptor. That was… Ring?
I doubt they'd equip the Scarab with
only anti-Lantern weaponry, after all.
Weapon was positron ray.
Partially deflected by my armour's force field and it still burned a line across my shoulder. Positron beams aren't light speed weapons, but at this range they're close enough for most purposes. This armour isn't rated against Scarab Warrior-level opponents.
Though to be fair,
few things are rated for Scarabs. There's a
reason they're the pre-eminent power armour of the galaxy.
A drone prepares to fire but I ignore it. I'm not doing badly for ring power, but I can't afford to just throw it-
The drone fires, hitting me in the chest-. And with an awkward gasp I realise that it just shut down my environmental shield and I'm having to breath normally.
Oh, gee. How long has it been since you actually used your lungs, again? 
To be fair, the sudden shock
would be a bit disorienting for a moment.
On the upside, once you do get back online with
Best Snek, she's going to be
pissed at the Reach.
I don't know if they're going to fire but I'm going to evade anyway and-. Good choice! Re-establish contact and re-activate my environmental shield and there we go.
That was terrifying and dodge again and try and hit them with a laser construct which we drop a fraction of a second after if fires to stop the drones hitting it with their counter fire.
Yeah, hit and run seems the order of the day for these things. Don't stand still, don't maintain a construct for long, and don't let them see you bleed.
I don't think that the laser hit, but it wasn't that powerful a laser and to be honest the Scarab Warrior's self-repair system could easily handle it even if it did hit.
The scarab…
Ah, bypassing the host and attacking the symbiont directly? Could work.
We reach out and restore out light to the host, and twist the desires of the parasite so that it actively wants to be inactive. We're not sure how much mental freedom scarabs have to disobey their hierarchy. Certainly, they haven't ever been slow to throw themselves at Maltus-aligned forces, but that might just be a combination of hate and arrogance programmed into them to ensure that they would always remain friendly to Reach interests.
Sadly, their indoctrination programming is probably too severe to allow that to work. But the conflicting desires
might give you an opening at a critical moment.
Of course, if the host is Reach-loyal, that won't help. Or at least won't make me win. But A.I.'s are a lot faster at well defined tasks than organics, so it might slow their shared reactions a little.
Dodge, dodge, miss with a hammer, miss with a laser, and the Scarab has stayed in its phased state for a little longer than it needs to. Waiting for an opportunity or grateful that it has agency again? Can't tell.
And no doubt
angry at you. Whether for messing with its' head, your continued resistance or your tenacious refusal to just
die, I don't know.
So okay, no subspace, and the sternguard have actually started accelerating in this direction. It looks like it'll take them a few minutes to reverse their momentum, but while a Scarab Warrior might be manageable without long lasting constructs an actual fleet isn't.
Can't access subspace, and blocking access is a lot easier than breaking in. The actual physics are well beyond me, so-. So I can't force through block reliably. I mean, I can try to steal my own things because it did scan the device that the Sivanas used-.
Perhaps if you can work out
how they're doing it, you can at least let NEMO techs work out a counter, once you get away...
Not reliable.
So.
Formation there, warp space and accelerate! Energy to matter transmutation would take too long. Use x-ionised blades to carve sheets off armour. Not big sheets, but-.
When you don't have any other materials, anything will do...
And a drone hit me with its ray and I'm alone in my own head again. It's only for seconds but the Ophidan's absence chills me to my soul.
Re-establish, and-. Well, that's tiny, but it'll do for now. X-ionise-
To some degree, without that connection, you don't even
have a soul. Depending on how
literal you consider his bearing the heart of the Ophidian to be...
"What a fascinating-"
-and block, making sure to let go as the beam is intercepted and grasp it again once the drone falls back into its phased state.
"-technique."
Heh, basically juggling his constructs while they try to destroy them. At least he's putting on a
show.
"Thank-"
The Scarab Warrior is doing… Something, and it and the drones are moving to catch up with me. I use a ring scan to try and determine exactly what's different about this sort of phasing, but I don't get any thing that means anything to me.
"-you."
The joy of now knowing the
ludicrously advanced physics involved.
Okay, construct scanner. Get me more detail. Work out what's happening there.
Compliance.
Block-block and calculate, and take back a small amount of my hate for normal physics and fly that way. Tricky to judge, but if I-.
Skill use under duress: -20 to all skill checks. They're not making it
easy for you, OL.
Report available.
And I'm sure that Dox will find it fascinating, but is any of it actionable?
Yes.
So, it's identified some weaknesses, eh? Time to
exploit them.
Okay, that's good-. Or… Not. At least that explains how it blocked my access to subspace. A phased object -probably the scarab itself- is somehow keeping the rest in subspace. Or.. something like that. I think the ring is dumbing it down for me. So a phasic round could in theory hit the scarab, but those are fairly small targets and not exactly fragile. How the drones are managing… Slaved to the scarab? Fine, except I have no-.
So, to some degree, the Scarab
is hopping in and out of subspace, or something? Or merely emitting a disruptive aura at OL...
Ring, keep-
Block and dodge, because the Scarab Warrior appears to have spotted that something is up and is shooting at us a lot more. We frantically alternate between interposing our small x-ionised plates and normal construct shields as we struggle to sniff out-.
Ah, the good old '
pinpoint barrier' method. So much easier to have the AI handle it, rather than some bridge bunnies with trackballs.
For a moment the Scarab Warrior fully emerges into normal space. My laser hits it at once, but it forms a shield to prevent me hitting anywhere fragile and reconfigures… Something, before vanishing again with only trivial damage.
Looks like I can't just replicate Thaddeus and Georgia's trick and steal the body from subspace. Which is a shame, because a Scarab Warrior without a scarab probably can't self-terminate.
And probably isn't all that
useful anyway. Heck, the shock of being separated might well be fatal.
Alright, vector's good, scarab is as off its game as it gets. Let's try this again. I-.
Drones shoot at the same time as the scarab, anti-construct shots pass through the space where my construct shield would have gone if I hadn't opted to evade instead. Somewhere deep in Reach space their creator may be pleased that the function they designed into them worked as desired. We manoeuvre again and attempt to acquire the subspace band being used by the scarab to hide in, and-.
Hah, it
is diving in and out of subspace. Pity you don't know exactly how it's doing it, or you could disrupt it in mid-transit. See how it likes it...
Drones firing constantly, the Scarab phases in and resets again. We calculate and use our body to shield out gravity manipulator construct as we bend space just-.
Ugh, hit again. But did it-
Sometimes, you need to take a hit to deal a hit. As long as it doesn't end up with a mutual kill or a cross counter.
The Scarab Warrior phases out and-
-work-.
Fingers crossed, whatever you...
-reappears immediately, spinning out of control where the phasic round I fired earlier intersected with their scarab implant. The drones materialise at once and I-.
They melt, their self-destruct systems consuming any technology I could have recovered.
Now for the Ascendants.
...Did. Huh, clever. Basically laying mines in subspace... Sneaky, OL, sneaky.
