The Only Gods We Know, Ch 16: Targeting the Void

Brynja's gambit had worked. Now she had to justify capturing a single unarmed ‘light-sculpture’ to a God of War who only understood overwhelming force.

The captured Weaver vessel sat in the main hangar bay of the Gungnir's Vengeance, a silent alien presence that sucked the noise and purpose from the massive space. Golden shimmer surrounded it - a containment field thrown up by Ulfr and his Rune-Breakers. Not to keep it from escaping. "To keep its reality from bleeding into ours," Ulfr had said, his voice flat. Heavily armed Einherjar stood guard. Their faces carried awe, yes. Mistrust, more.

The ship itself. Strange. Skeletal. Beautiful in a way that made Brynja's jaw tighten. Pearly bone-like material that shifted with the light, flowing rather than fixed. Angles and curves that had nothing to do with normal engineering. No obvious engines. No visible weapon ports. No hard functional edges anywhere. Art, not hardware. Silent. Profoundly, eerily silent.

Brynja watched her best people work - hard science mixed with esoteric warfare specialists. Mist led a team of Asgardian engineers, their faces tight. Frustrated. Fascinated. They ran sensor sweeps, searching for a power core, a control interface, anything recognizable. Nothing. "It's like the entire hull is the system, Captain," Mist reported, confusion bleeding through her usual precision. "The power distribution, the drive… it's all integrated. Grown, not built. We can't find a single wire."

Ulfr and his Rune-Breakers ran their own analysis. Their hands glowed - not the raw green fire of Auracium, but controlled diagnostic light, precise and sharp. They traced energy patterns woven through the ship's structure, trying to unpick the hard-light and probability fields that made the bastard so goddamn hard to catch.

Brynja walked the perimeter with Sigrun. Two old wolves circling something new. Something strange.

"Doesn't feel like a warship," Brynja said.

Sigrun grunted, eyes locked on the alien craft. "A sharp one."

Near the hangar exit, Astrid held court with her newly assigned squadron pilots, arms crossed. Pride radiated from her - the successful capture, her kill. Disdain, too. "We risk our lives, take systems damage across the entire strike force, all to capture a glorified light-sculpture," she muttered to her second-in-command, loud enough for Brynja to hear. "There's no glory in bagging an enemy that refuses to fight back like a proper warrior."

Brynja let it slide. Astrid's frustration was a luxury. Brynja's problem was more immediate: selling this ‘light-sculpture’ as a war-winning prize to her superiors.

The summons came quickly.

Brynja stood at attention in her ready room. The holographic forms of High Command materialized before her. Lord Tyr, centerpiece, his expression a thundercloud. Lady Freyja, interest sparked, gaze analytical. Loki in the background, silent, smirking. Enjoying the show. Commander Geirskögul's hologram stood there too - stoic, silent. A supporter, Brynja hoped.

Tyr wasted no time. "Report, Shield-Captain." The new rank, formal. A reminder.

"Lord Tyr." Brynja kept her voice flat, professional. "Operation Light-Breaker was a success. We have captured a hostile Weaver vessel intact for analysis."

Tyr's good hand clenched. "You risked an entire strike force, sustained systems damage across multiple capital assets, and actively pissed off a previously neutral power, all to capture one small, unarmed scout ship?" His tone could cut steel. "A direct assault would have given us territory. A real asset. You have brought me… a trophy."

Brynja held his gaze. This was the moment. "Lord Tyr, with respect, a direct assault would have been useless. A waste of ships and lives. Our weapons are ineffective against their perception defenses. Our sensors are useless. We were fighting ghosts, and losing." She paused. Let it land. "Now, we have the means to understand their technology. To see through their illusions. To turn their greatest strength into a crippling weakness. We captured not a ship, Lord Tyr. We captured the key to this entire fucking war."

Before Tyr could argue, Freyja spoke. Her voice cut through. "The Captain is correct. Ulfr." The Rune-Breaker's holographic form appeared beside Brynja. "Report on the nature of this 'light-weaving.'"

Ulfr gave a stiff bow. "My Lady. A form of esoteric warfare we have never seen. Not simple illusion. They manipulate quantum foam, weave hard-light and localized probability fields. They don't just fool the eye. They fool reality itself, on a small scale."

Freyja's eyes lit with intellectual fire. "This is not a battle for territory, Lord Tyr." Her gaze shifted to the God of War. "It is a battle for reality itself. Their methods are a potential threat to all of us. Also a potential source of immense knowledge. Captain Brynja has secured the more valuable prize: intelligence. The kind you cannot get by leveling a city."

Tense. The debate was tense. Tyr, a god of direct action and overwhelming force, clearly uncomfortable with this esoteric thinking. But Freyja and Geirskögul stood behind Brynja, unspoken but unmistakable. He was outmaneuvered.

He gave a short, grudging nod. "Very well. Your analysis is approved, Captain. But be advised" - his eyes narrowed - "your next move had better yield more than just a single goddamn trophy. It had better yield a decisive, undeniable victory." The threat hung there, clear. She had won this round. Her neck was still on the line.

***

The next few days blurred together. Round-the-clock work. The captured Weaver vessel became Hlíð Þrír's sole focus. Hard science fused with raw magic. Mist and her engineering teams, frustrated by the lack of normal interfaces, began using micro-drills and sonic scanners to map the ship's internal structure. Brain surgery on a rock. Ulfr and his Rune-Breakers worked in shifts, chanting in low guttural tones as they wove complex diagnostic runes, deconstructing dormant probability fields woven into the hull itself.

Brynja stayed present. Silent observer. Soaking up every piece of new information, building a coherent picture of her enemy.

The breakthrough came from Mist. Her face pale with exhaustion, eyes blazing with discovery. She burst into Brynja's ready room without knocking. "Captain, we were wrong. We've been looking for a crew, for a pilot." She paused, catching her breath. "There isn't one."

"What are you talking about, Mist?"

"The ship… it's not a vessel. It's a prosthetic. A complex, biomechanical, psycho-reactive shell." Words tumbling out. "There's only one life form aboard, integrated directly with the ship's core. They don't pilot these things, Captain. They are these things. Symbiotic with their technology on a level we can barely understand. The illusion isn't just a cloak. It's an extension of their body. Their will."

The implication hit Brynja like a fist. The Weavers' "impersonal" warfare felt suddenly, horrifically personal.

Armed with this understanding, they focused on the ship's core - a sealed, fluid-filled sphere at its center. Hours of painstaking work. Finally, they breached it.

Brynja stood with Sigrun and Astrid, flanked by Mist and Ulfr as the final layer became transparent. Inside, floating in pale glowing fluid: not a humanoid, not an insect, not anything they could have imagined. A slender, graceful being of pure coherent energy. Its form vaguely resembled a celestial ribbon of light. Still now. Its inner light slowly, inevitably fading.

They hadn't just captured a ship. They had captured a being. Ripped it from its own reality. It was dying before their eyes.

Brynja stared at the fading light-form. A profound, unsettling feeling washed through her. She thought of the Weavers' tactics - the lack of lethal force, the focus on disabling and disorienting. They hadn't been trying to kill her pilots. They had been trying to get them to leave. Swatting at flies. And the Asgardians had ripped the wings off one to see how it worked.

The line between ship and pilot, between technology and life, had just been erased.

Brynja felt a sudden, chilling certainty: they had just made a grave mistake.

***

The dissection produced one critical piece of actionable intelligence. The breakthrough came from Mist's cold data analysis mixed with Ulfr's esoteric bullshit.

"Their light-weaving is nearly perfect," Ulfr explained in the hangar bay, standing before the dead Weaver shell. "Nearly. Not instantaneous. The creation of a hard-light construct or a probability field causes a tiny, almost undetectable gravity shimmer at its point of origin."

"Too fast for our standard Auspex suites to lock," Mist added. Her datapad showed a complex wave-form diagram. "The sensor refresh rate can't keep up. By the time our systems see the shimmer, the illusion is already fully formed. Origin point hidden."

"But." Ulfr continued, a rare gleam in his old eyes. Something like excitement. "Not too fast for the trained eye of a Valkyrie, when augmented." He pointed to the new "Truth-Sight" helmet visors. "We've re-calibrated the runic arrays in these visors to specifically highlight that gravity tell. It will appear as a brief, faint 'tear' in the visual field. Ignore your targeting computers. Ignore the ghost signals. Train your eyes to see the tear. That is your target."

Their new weapon: not a torpedo or a laser. An optical illusion of their own.

The next two weeks were hell. Brynja put her pilots through grueling, mind-bending simulator training. The techs programmed the simulators with the new Weaver TTPs - a confusing nightmare of phantom fleets and sensor ghosts. Brynja drilled them relentlessly. Forcing them to unlearn a lifetime of combat instinct.

"Eyes off the HUD, Hrist!" she would bark over training comms. "Your targeting computer is a fucking liar now! Trust the visor! Find the tear!"

"I can't get a read, Lead!" A frustrated pilot from Wyvern squadron. "There's nothing there!"

"There's always something there! You're just not looking hard enough! Again!"

Astrid struggled most. Her entire fighting style built on aggressive, decisive action against a clearly defined target. This new way - this patient, perceptive waiting game that required trusting a faint shimmer over her own goddamn eyes - infuriated her. She failed the simulation three times in a row. Frustration mounting with each failure.

Brynja cornered her after the third failure. "What is your problem, Astrid?" Voice low.

"My problem, Captain," Astrid spat, "is that this isn't fighting! It's… it's bird-watching! We're waiting for a flicker of light in a goddamn light show! A warrior meets her enemy head-on!"

"Your enemy isn't the ship in front of you anymore." Brynja stepped closer, voice dropping lower. "Your enemy is the lie they are telling you. You are the best duelist I know, Astrid. You can read an opponent's feint before they even think it. This is the same thing. Different scale. Now, learn to fight the space between the duelists." She paused. "Get back in the damn simulator."

Astrid stared at her. Jaw tight. A storm of pride and anger in her eyes. But she turned without another word and stalked back to her cockpit.

The training continued.

***

The FRAGO for their second probe into the Ljósvættir Nebula was simple: confirm viability of the new TTPs. A test, yes. Brynja knew it was also her final chance to prove her unorthodox methods to Tyr and High Command.

She led a small, elite task force - just her Stormbringers - back into the shimmering, deceptive veils. This time, they were the hunters.

They provoked a response the same way as before. A single frigate broadcasting crude, powerful sensor pings. Three Weaver ships appeared. Perfect. Shimmering. Utterly fake.

"Hostile contacts designated," Brynja said over comms. Her eyes scanned her visor, ignoring the useless clutter on her main tactical display. "Ignore the bogies. All pilots, scan for the tell. Report on visual contact."

Silence. Tense. Focused. Five of the best pilots in the fleet straining their senses, their minds, their souls, searching for the almost imperceptible flaw in reality. The Weaver ships began their subtle systems warfare - flickering shields, phantom alarms, distractions.

"I have one!" Hrist's voice, sharp, triumphant, cut through the silence. "Bearing two-seven-zero, low on the ecliptic! I see the shimmer! I see the tear!"

Brynja's eyes snapped to the coordinates. She saw it. A tiny, fractional distortion. Heat haze on a summer's day, lasting less than a second. Nothing. Everything.

"Solid copy, Hrist! That's our target!" Brynja's heart hammered with cold, fierce joy. "All Stormbringers, converge and fire on Hrist's mark! Volley fire, full power!"

Five Valkyrie fighters executed a perfect converging attack pattern. They didn't fire at any of the shimmering, visible ships. They fired concentrated volleys of Gungnir-lance energy at an empty patch of space where the shimmer had appeared. Five golden lances met at a single, precise point in the void.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the space itself tore.

The targeted Weaver vessel, its illusory cloak shattered by raw focused energy, revealed itself for a split second - smaller, more fragile, skeletal - before it vaporized. Clean. Hard. Impossible kill.

The effect on the remaining Weavers: immediate. Profound. The other two illusory ships didn't just vanish. They stopped. The subtle system attacks on Brynja's squadron ceased. Sensor ghosts faded. Deep, analytical silence descended, as if the enemy was processing this new, impossible data.

Then, they transmitted.

A single, complex, beautiful light-weaving pulsed directly at Brynja's flagship.

Mist's voice came over the private command channel. Her tone carried awe. Unadulterated dread. "Captain… the message. I'm translating the core concepts now." She paused, breath catching. "It's not a threat. Not a surrender. It's a declaration of war. A formal one. They are acknowledging us as equals. As worthy opponents."

Brynja looked out at the two silent, real Weaver ships as they turned with impossible grace and vanished back into the shimmering veils of the nebula.

She had broken their code. Bloodied their nose. Forced them to see the Asgardians not as noisy, blundering primitives, but as a genuine threat.

And in doing so, she had just officially started a real war with an enemy whose rules of engagement she was only beginning to understand.

***

Glossary

Standard Military & Combat Acronyms

• FRAGO (Fragmentary Order): An abbreviated operation order. It is issued to change or modify an existing order as the tactical situation changes. In the chapter, this is the order Brynja receives for the second probe into the nebula.

• TTP (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures): The standard methods and patterns used by military forces to conduct operations. Brynja attempts to rewrite the Weaver TTPs to train her pilots against the illusions.

• HUD (Heads-Up Display): A transparent display that presents data without requiring the user to look away from their usual viewpoints (e.g., inside a pilot’s helmet or on a cockpit canopy).

• Bogie: A military air/spacecraft term for an unidentified or enemy contact.

• Asset: A useful or valuable thing, person, or quality. In military terms, usually refers to ships, bases, or high-value equipment.

• Volley Fire: The simultaneous firing of weapons by a group of soldiers or ships to maximize impact or saturation.

Navigation & Targeting

• Auspex: A catch-all term (common in sci-fi/fantasy) for advanced sensor and detection arrays used to scan the environment.

• Bearing: The direction or position of an object relative to the observer, usually given in degrees (e.g., "Bearing two-seven-zero").

• Ecliptic: In space navigation, this refers to the flat plane defined by the orbit of the celestial bodies (usually planets around a star). "Low on the ecliptic" means the target is positioned "below" the central plane of the system.

• Ghost/Sensor Ghost: A false signal on a radar or sensor screen caused by interference, jamming, or (in this case) enemy illusion.

Asgardian/Story-Specific Terminology

• Shield-Captain: Brynja’s newly appointed rank, designating her as a high-level field commander.

• Einherjar: The elite heavy infantry and guards of the Asgardian forces. In mythology, they are the spirits of warriors who died in battle; here, they serve as High Command's muscle.

• Rune-Breakers: Specialists who combine magic (runes) with technology (code-breaking). They serve as combat hackers and esoteric warfare experts.

• Hard-Light: A sci-fi concept where light is manipulated to have mass and physical solidity. The Weavers use this to create "fake" ships that can still trigger sensors or block paths.

• Probability Field: A field that alters the likelihood of events occurring within it. The Weavers use this to confuse reality, making it difficult to predict where they actually are.

• Gungnir-lance: A directed energy weapon used by the Valkyrie fighters, named after Odin’s spear (which never misses).

• Truth-Sight: The nickname for the re-calibrated helmet visors designed to filter out the Weaver illusions and spot the "gravity tear."