Maybe it's time for a blunt instrument.
The burning in his real-world hand grew severe, and he had no micros for pain management. Around him the wall had taken such a beating that a direct assault on Max's trunk was inevitable.
During his previous encounters within the worlds of mystic technology, he'd never felt this comfortable with raw energy. But could it be made to serve his purpose? He squeezed with all his might, making it conform to his will. The more he compressed, the more potent it became. It sought release.
“You're running out of time,” Max said. “Get back out there.”
Even Max's voice sounded distant. Jordahk felt his physical body heat up. That wasn't a good sign. In the past such things had taken him out of action. He couldn't afford to falter now, not with that vile DAWG bearing down on them. The situation had to break. Light streaked through his fingers as he squeezed a couple more times until his burning hand refused to obey.
Wixom must have sensed the energy, for two concentric walls of obsidian brick formed in the dark woods, surrounding them. They were strong and without flaw.
“You—will—not—stop me, machine. I am the master, you are the servant!”
He poured the heat of that sentiment into the compressed energy. It hit critical mass. He felt powerless to do anything but open his hands and let loose destruction. He put his back to Max's tree, picturing them together as ground zero, and willed the discharge outward.
His arms flung open with a flash and a yell. A dome of white and purple energy blasted forth. Max's wall vaporized and every wizened tree beyond turned to ashes. It roared into the first obsidian wall which exploded. The dome dimmed but did not slow. More trees vaporized before the energy slammed the second wall. Light shone between every black brick before it too blasted apart. The hemisphere of destruction felled trees beyond for considerable distance before finally fading. Fallen trees did not rise again.
Jordahk sensed he'd cut into real territory, giving the AI something to think about, and adding real consequence to unacceptable behavior. Wixoms's offense halted and the heating of his real world hand subsided.
Jordahk fell to his knees. The real world pulled at him, but he was not ready to return. Both he and Max needed new protections from Wixom since their forced partnership must continue. The ground won in this desperate contest would not be lost.
He slammed his hands into the dirt. Even this virtual act caused pain in his burnt palm. The ground heaved upward in a ring around Max's tree. It traveled outward in a wave, slowing as it did so. Jordahk found the strain increasing with distance. He could bear it no longer when it reached the foundation of the second obsidian wall.
Far enough… for now.
There Jordahk raised a new wall from the forest floor, a scaled up version of Max's original protection. But the stones this time were the rose-tinted matte gray of ruthenium. They were also larger, scaled for castle building. Jordahk erected them higher and deeper than before. As his strength waned, Max was more protected than ever, gaining compy territory of his own. It would be a greater challenge now for Wixom to retake.
Jordahk pulled his hands out and gave himself a second to admire his handiwork. The forest was just a little less endless now, as seen from Max's new small ranch sized territory. He looked up into the blue sky until it dissolved into the real world violet hues of Adams Rush.
He breathed deeply feeling anew the grit of the rawlands in his nostrils. He went down on one knee and realized his smoking gauntlet was crackling with current. He raised it. A miniature bolt of white lightning tinged with purple discharged straight up. Letting go was the easy part.
“He's going to see that,” Kord said.
Jordahk shook his head trying to restore full awareness when he was tackled by his father. At the same time, the wall fragmented and a line of flame filled his vision.
Chapter Four
The shot sizzled by within arm's reach, close enough to raise hairs, etching a path in their vision. It would've hit.
Jordahk suddenly felt more vulnerable than what the previous shots had triggered. “Whoa, that was almost my three gun salute.”
“It had your name on it,” Kord said.
The man looked more winded that he should. His mouth was set in a grimace and his forehead knit in strain.
That espy destroyer's draining him. We've got to end this.
Jordahk glanced toward the distant upthrust of rock. “Dard, I can make it to that tor, stay behind it for protection, and engage the DAWG. They'll have to deal with two angles.”
“You need your AI.”
Jordahk's gauntlet was burned—and his hand. The pain increased when he saw the damage, but he pushed past it. “Max, you with me?”
“I'm here. Wixom's retreated into passivity. I've got a mountain of new territory to learn, but I'll help you as best I can.”
Jordahk dropped the useless gauntlet and wrapped the compy bracelet back around his wrist. It re-coupled and flattened to his skin.
“I'm afraid you only have a minute,” Highearn said.
Kord looked him in the eye. “Do it. Get behind that rock and try not to make a big show of it. I'll distract him.” He hobbled off down the wall, his gait reflecting his state.
Aimed toward the tor, Jordahk powered the belt. He quickly reached the previous peak, and the physical world faded into monochrome. The rocky upthrust stood out, centered in his vision. It felt as though the belt was cutting a tunnel to it.
“I'm getting visuals from this thing,” Max said.
A new projection overlayed the scene and confirmed what Jordahk sensed. Wavy lines of distortion tapered into the distance. They formed a tunnel which began to pulsate with increasing energy, causing increasing strain. But it wasn't overwhelming… yet.
Of course, the act itself of jumping over a cliff is also not overwhelming.
He heard another sniper shot bust the wall, and his father returning fire with the grister.
“I can't read everything the belt's saying,” Max said. “This stuff's beyond me. When it's ready I think you need to take a careful step. I've projected the approximate length of it below.”
“I can't get to final activation.” The sphere of force surrounded Jordahk again, pushing back dirt and sand. It spun like a tornado with him at the center. Sound was drowned out by its din. “Max, there's got to be more.”
“I'm giving it to you as it awakens. I hate to say it, but maybe you've got to go deeper.”
Jordahk took a deep breath, and let his mind plunge into the belt, but not so far as to lose awareness. He still saw the tor in the distance through the wavering, half-formed tunnel. He focused hard on it. His desperate desire to get there crossed some threshold. His vision doubled and he feared loss of consciousness. The belt surged with activity, and he started to feel the dreaded, burning heat in his brain.
“Max…”
“Watch your temperatures kid, I've got no micros to help.”
That slag Wixom had robbed them of an important tool. He funneled that feeling of righteous indignation into the belt—and his double vision became triple vision. Three tors appeared before him, the wavering tunnel leading to the center one. The belt engaged further and the surrounding sphere solidified with space bending density.
“I've got Sojourner runes,” Max said. “Projecting now.”
Two rings of counter-rotating Sojourner runes circled the tunnel. He couldn't read them, yet they made an impression of sense. He had to act fast. The din was crushing his head. Somehow he heard his father yelling a warning. Without turning Jordahk was aware of the wall beside him bursting forth with a flaming line. It happened eerily slow. The flame adopted the shape of his sphere, spinning around it as if caught in a gravity well. It circled faster and faster until its energy was absorbed into the phenomenon.
The new energy surged through the belt, through him, into the tunnel. His mind fired with energy it could not contain. He was so close to understanding the runes, to seeing t
he functionality.
Though his body felt distant, he instinctively drew his autobuss and pointed down the tunnel. Energy and vibrations resonated through it and abruptly his awareness changed. Dimensions expanded before him. Psychedelic colors bracketed the stark. He sensed the forward and backward... Time was splitting. He was splitting. The runes asked him for confirmation.
“Yes.”
The tunnel firmed into a swirling pathway of light. It wasn't unlike the phenomenon created by downhill drive.
“Take the step, kid!”
He felt like he was in three places at once. He took a step forward according to Max's estimation. The world zoomed and blurred. A great wind tore at his body.
▪ ▫ ▪
Kord watched the semi-reflective sphere around his son grow with intensity that shone over the wall. It made Jordahk an easy target for a sniper gun that could penetrate rock. The Sojourner runes were like a beacon. Kord yelled a warning but it went unheeded, and his dire concern became reality when a shot burst through the wall.
But the high energy particle burst didn't penetrate the sphere. It conformed to it, orbiting faster than the eye could follow. Kord blinked. It normally took something like warm plasma shielding or heavy duty hard air to stop a sniper gun. But he was learning that “normally” didn't fit the high-end mystic world.
And then it just got weirder. As the last of the energy from the sniper gun was absorbed into the sphere, Jordahk split into three flickering images of himself, one before and one behind. They came together as he and the abruptly lengthening sphere streaked down past the tor of rock.
He looked through his zoomies to see Jordahk tumble out of a flash of light and arcing discharges of current. Kord was relieved to see him moving, but his son had overshot the protection of the tor. The sniper had to be distracted without delay.
Bracing his arms over the wall, he fired downrange with abandon. His zoomie vision showed the sniper adjusting to fire at Jordahk. Becoming two widely separated targets was working in their favor. It was the first thing going right. Kord smirked with dark satisfaction. No one should leave him unmolested in a firing position.
“Jordahk! Get behind the rock!” he transmitted.
He rained fire upon the sniper as few could with a pistol at rifle ranges. Sparks flew off the gun and one ammo nut hit the sniper himself. The man hunkered down and activated a clipeus. The blue tinted, hard air shield deflected numerous follow-up shots, but the distraction was sufficient for his son to reach the rock.
Now it was two on two, but their position was hardly one of strength.
“Highearn, we need something. Anything.”
“I believe the espy destroyer has followed its desire enough to prevent the dampening net from being reformed. I've touched the satellites and made contact with Vittora's compy.”
“Finally.” Kord relaxed his mystic concentration, and immediately felt energy returning to his bones.
“More good news. Your boom-stick wasn't destroyed with the fanicle. I'm getting a ping about twenty-five meters past the wreckage.”
Out in the open, it might as well be a thousand meters.
▪ ▫ ▪
What could only have been a split second felt longer. He was keenly aware of the universe streaking around him, but not his own body. He had the time to admire the wonder of it, and fortunately, not enough to be scared.
He was slipping through the edge of dimensions, or between them. It was hard to know aside from the sense that he occupied none of them completely, and that if he emerged into any that were not his own—well, it would be bad. He didn't have faith enough in his current abilities to consider that for long. The tunnel exit brightened and the physical world slammed into him.
He tumbled across the ground. Feeling came back slowly.
“Get up, kid, hurry!”
His mind caught up in a jolt. Jerking his head around made it plain he'd overshot the mark.
“Jordahk! Get behind the rock!” his father yelled.
He started to stand but was hit by a wall of force coming from the direction of his launch point. It knocked him back over.
“Wha—”
Wixom chuckled coldly. “Dimensional momentum. You understand so little.”
Jordahk scrambled to his feet. His mind raced to grasp the tactical situation. He staggered toward cover. His father was firing wildly in the distance. Stumbling to the rock, he put his back to it and let himself breathe.
“Max, where were we?”
“You're asking me? The DAWG's coming. Twenty seconds.”
He thought briefly about taking the etch from his bag and peering through the rock. Although that booty from his last adventure had proved useful, here it would only show him what he already knew. The DAWG was bearing down on them, about to emerge on either side of this rock.
“Just make sure I'm pointed the right way.”
“The three vault cartridges are prepped,” the AI said. “Remember, they're good for only one shot each.”
Jordahk hadn't released the autobuss through his entire slipping through dimensions. His grip was strengthened by desperation, but activating the first vintage cartridge with his disheveled mindset was proving difficult.
“Three, two, one,” Max counted down.
He pushed all the energy he could into the cartridge. The autobuss flashed with heat, shooting pain up his arm through an already damaged hand.
The DAWG emerged, skidding off speed, preparing to pounce. Its dark metal form was brawny and powerful. A jaw capable of crushing platinum opened, assaulting his ears with a completely unnecessary howl. Glowing red eyes reignited the old fear.
Jordahk's hands shook as he fired. A white-hot molten slug blasted out, bucking the autobuss, but missing the head. Instead a hole bored down the length of the mechanical beast's abdomen, blowing it off its carefully controlled skid. It rolled in a dust cloud with its own momentum. A short couple seconds later it found its feet again and plowed to a halt. It glared with fierce defiance despite the hole Jordahk could clearly see through. Then it leaped.
Immediate instinct was to put up an arm. “Max, harden that armor!”
He concentrated on the next vintage cartridge. He couldn't afford to miss again. Wheeling back, he tucked the autobuss close as the lunging machine snapped down on armor just hardened.
Its fangs penetrated immediately, and in a second the armor was crushing his arm. It was like pulper to the renowned jaws of a DAWG. Jordahk's hardened bones, a gift from Aristahl's ravelen, wouldn't even last that long. But the second it took was long enough for him to pour his will to survive into that second cartridge.
It burst to life within the autobuss as his arm exploded in pain. He put the muzzle to the DAWG's head and fired. Its eyes exploded as a point of light blasted out the other side. The pressure increase on his arm stopped, but did not release. The DAWG, now inert, remained clamped to him with a bone-crushing death grip.
▪ ▫ ▪
The DAWG was beaten.
Truly the occurrence surprised him, for his kind allowed no thoughts of defeat. His brotherhood rarely failed. He would not blame the equipment, although it was tailored to the primary mission, and not this secondary opportunity.
Somehow, one of his targets crossed the plain in a manner for which there was no preparation. Additionally, they had destroyed his overwatch. His suspicion was mystic X-factors. Without triangulation, he couldn't accurately shoot his assailant pinned behind the stand of rock. Nor did he have time for estimates, because the elder of his prey was quite accurate, for a standard human, with a grister. Although his brotherhood had armor and construction that made them resistant to such fire, the man might hit a vital point given enough time.
No, his best bet now was to abandon the sniper gun and close to attack the injured opponent behind the rock. At his best speed he would be there long before the elder. A clipeus and the sporadic cover along his projected route should be adequate protection from a grister, no matter how
accurate.
And I have a grister, too.
He was more accurate than any standard human. Indeed, victory may yet be in his grasp. But just in case, he sent a final activation command. It was received and wendells on standby filled with thrust plasma.
He bolted up and ran with a swiftness reserved for an elite few.
▪ ▫ ▪
“He's charging? Jordahk, put some fire on him!”
Kord rolled into the open toward the fanicle wreckage. He adopted a prone firing position and put expert shots downrange. The sniper positioned himself on the run behind his clipeus with equal expertise. Shots bounced without effect off the hard air in flashes.
The unique thunk of Jordahk's autobuss echoed twice across the plain. His son, from an apparent tangle of DAWG and human, scored hits with the powerful autobuss. The sniper re-positioned the clipeus in a blur and deflected both volleys.
“Usually those hit harder,” Jordahk said over the comm, bemusement in his voice.
Kord used the opportunity to roll backwards, pivoted into a braced kneeling position and fired three-shot bursts. Their assailant rebuffed them as well, continuing his unrelenting approach.
Through zoomies Kord realized, just in time, he was being targeted by the man's grister. Dust exploded around him, and the air was filled with faint streaks. Kord risked standing and leaped backwards. He landed as a leg was hit, spinning him like an old-fashioned ice skater. Pushing off of his good leg, he tumbled in a heap behind a piece of wreckage barely large enough to cover him. He was only halfway to his goal.
“You're bleeding,” Highearn said.
Numerous phrases Vittora wouldn't approve of came to mind, but he took his own advice not to argue with his AI. “Thanks for the newsVAD.” The shot had hit just above his treader, destroying the armor. He noted with macabre detachment the profuse bleeding.
“The sniper's using anticoagulant ammo. I'm doing my best to staunch it with micros, but it will undoubtedly start again when you get up.”
That kind of ammo signified Perigeum special forces. Who were they dealing with? To emphasize that point, and since Kord had stopped firing, the man's speed increased to inhuman levels.
Tethered Worlds: Star in Bankruptcy Page 5