Fireworks

"It's ready!" Fate shouted down the hallway.

"Alright! I'm going to bring us over the thing's head! Put a breathing mask on Garrett; We're leaving the atmosphere!"

Fate nodded, not caring that she couldn't see him, and went to the storage area, grabbing a mask for Garrett and Cait. He threw Garrett's at the man, who caught it and slipped it on and rushed to the cockpit to give Cait hers.

On arrival, he found her staring out of the viewport with beads of sweat rolling down her brow, her hands clenched on the yoke as she performed several dodges and rolls to avoid getting hit by the colossal golem. The sweat dripped down her neck and muddied the dirt still covering her once pristine armor.

He handed her the mask and took the yoke long enough for her to put it on, then ran back to the generator.

"Alright, Garrett, I'm going to unplug this thing, and when she gives the signal, you and I lift it with our TK and shove it out of the door when we pass over the head. Got it?"

"What's TK?" Garrett asked, stressed and confused.

"Divine Reach, sorry. We called it TK where I come fro-"

"HURRY UP!" Cait yelled.

Fate jumped to work, pulling off the various cables and pipes as fast as he could, often having to resort to cutting them off with his Miao Dao. When the thing was fully unattached, he and Garrett caught it with their Divine Reach as it fell, grunting with the effort. The generator weighed over five thousand pounds, meaning Garrett was the one doing most of the work.

They hauled it over to the door, dropping it gently a few times as they stood to catch their breath. "Almost there!" Cait yelled, and they ignored their discomfort and straining minds as they picked it up once more, setting it against the door with a drop that was a little too harsh. Fate flinched when it slipped out of their grasp, expecting it to blow immediately. Thankfully, it didn't.

He smacked a button and told Garrett to hang on tight to both the generator and the metal bar next on his end of the door. Fate grasped the bar on his own side as the door opened, revealing clouds below. Since they couldn't see the palace, that meant they were heading for it now.

They tightened their grip as the sudden air pressure change threatened to tear them out of the ship. Fate pressed another button to turn on the forcefield, which stabilized the interior air pressure and allowed them to loosen their grips.

Fate reminded himself to complain to the designers about the glaring flaw of needing the door open to turn the forcefield on, then bent over and continued his work on the generator to prime it to explode. It was dangerous work, as crossing the wrong wire or pressing the wrong button at the wrong time could potentially cause it to detonate then and there.

He held off on flicking the final switch until Cait gave the signal, a loud "READY!", whereupon he flicked it and he and Garrett got ready to push it out. The device started glowing cherry red, arcs of electricity casting out and anchoring themselves to the metal sill of the doorway.

When Cait yelled "NOW!", they shoved it out with their telekinesis and leaned out of the empty door, watching it fall. It dropped like a rock, aided by their Divine Reach to keep it on target as it smacked right into the palace's "head."

A burst of fire and light appeared, followed shortly after by a loud BOOM! as the ship rocked from the detonation. They zoomed off, Garrett and Fate watching with rapt attention as the smoke slowly cleared.

"FUCK!" Fate cursed.

The smoke cleared to reveal the golem, missing a quarter of its head but still standing. It turned the remaining three-quarters to look at the ship balefully with the several dozen eyes all over it, some burned and reddened but most fine.

'Those ripples around the head… That Ythmun bastard must have contained most of the explosion with his Divine Reach… No, no one under the Realized Level should have TK that strong, but he stopped at least some of it. The rest must be down to the absurd quality of the stone.'

He sighed, shaking his head at Garrett's questioning look as he went to inform Cait. He entered the cockpit and slumped into the copilot chair, gazing out of the window as he told her what happened.

"It didn't work," he said. "Whatever that thing is made of, the stone is ludicrously resilient."

"I was afraid of that," Cait replied. Sweat still dripped down her brow, but she seemed much calmer than before. "I have another idea, but you aren't going to like it."

"No suicides," Fate said quickly. "This mission isn't that important."

"No, none of us are going to lose our lives on my watch. The ship, on the other hand…"

"You want to turn it into a bomb?"

"It's the only thing I can think of. It's heavier than anything Ythmun can lift, and it goes faster in a straight line than anything that dumb rock can hope to match, especially… with the warp drive active."

"You want to blow up the warp drive itself?" Fate asked incredulously. "We were told very plainly that doing so could destroy entire sections of a planet! That sounds like suicide to me!"

"Yes, but I'm hoping that with the height we're at, combined with the massive body of the golem, most of the blast should go into space and directly into the golem."

"Are you sure about this?" Fate asked seriously. "Not to mention the danger to our lives, if we DO survive, and that thing does too, we're stuck here with a giant killing machine to hound us."

Cait took her eyes off of the space outside, gazing into Fate's eyes with the grim, calculative calm of someone that had weighed all of their options. "It'll work," she said, so confidently that Fate had no choice but to believe her. "Now, how many Stratospheres do we have?"