by Shay Zana
“It seems cheating was the only way to progress,” Mazayus mutters more to Deo once everyone is back on course. That could be considered praise, a rare notion coming from Mazayus.
“Instincts,” Deo replies with an unseen shrug and a small smirk. The unmistakable warp of motion terrorises his enhanced vision for a blink of a moment, and that smirk is gone. Honing in on him is the Olympian warship, skulking for revenge.
Plasma converges on him, giving him only a split second to react and direct his vessel out of the impact zone. Still, blistering radiation scorches him, his environment blaring in heat and the force of near impact bursting him from his seat. His armoured body is flung across the deck, smacking mercilessly into a nearby bulkhead. A grunt of pain signals a broken rib.
“Deo!?” Mazayus shouts down the comms link, hot anxiety present in that usually calm voice.
His hands are a blur before his vision realigns, crawling back to his feet through the rumblings of defensive maneuvers and near impacts. “I think I pissed it off...”
“The Olympian?” Boone spouts.
“Yeah.” He has to steady himself against a console just to rasp that out.
“Ok, shit just got real.”
Mazayus abandons his course, directing Natheus and Boone to follow. “We’re coming to you. Try not to piss it off even further.”
Deo finally reaches his pilots chair again, slumping down in it with no consideration to the pain in his wounded flank. “No promises.”
Caught with its guard down, Deo’s ikamanu had nearly fallen victim to the ambush of the Olympian, but now once again on the move and diving in loops and barrel rolls, the Olympian’s targeting system is no match. Still, mission phase three will not begin until that warship is somehow dealt with.
Or not.
“Entering mission phase three,” announces the feminine programme monitoring the game.
The big finale.
Grand shudders of the stars mark the final challenge, immense proportions of compacted solar particles embarking through the void in a message of hot death. Four simultaneous solarflares.
Boone hisses a curse and Mazayus says something that drones, but the sound barely computes to Deo as his mind races. “Stay on course,” he tells his team with a steeled voice, overriding his uncertainty. “No way you’ll all make it back before you burn up.”
Silence announces their hesitance.
“What do you have planned?” Mazayus.
Deo splays his large fingers across the control terminal before him, its kinetic interface glinting at his touch with a frosted fume. Deactivating power supply to all systems.
At Deo’s muteness, Mazayus mumbles, “instincts?”
Lights, oxygen, atmosphere, auxiliary thrusters, main thrusters, even gravity suddenly goes dark. Nothing but his mind linked with the telepathic interface of his ikamanu. They are sitting ducks, just how he wants it.
“No, I have a plan this time.”
The Olympian rounds back toward its immobile prey, charging its main cannons, setting up its trajectory, plumes of energy roiling through its heavy form.
“And what exactly would that be?” Mazayus sounds suspicious.
The Olympian has taken the bait, allowing its lumbering form to fall prey to another force.
The Olympian fires.
“Cheating.”
The mega burst of searing plasma collides with the sudden sphere of entity shielding, shoving the ikamanu cruelly, cracking its internal foundations, and depleting a massive proportion of its entity supply. But the ikamanu has succeeded in its task.
The heavy plasma round was deflected.
Gashed by its own fire, the Olympian shudders under the impact, shields faltering in a dazzling snap. Armour plating peels and shatters under the wound, baring its innards and leaking atmosphere in a gust of wind.
Crumpled on the deck, clutching his side and growling through the pain, Deo manages to lift his gaze to the feeds, straining eyes identifying the monster that will end this battle. The solarflare makes impact.
The Olympian is seized from the rear, burning particles cocooning over the curves of its form and spraying out flares of solar wind in a wide arc, providing cover for the limping ikamanu.
Also limping, the Paragon stumbles across the deck, melting under the intense heat, tasting blood at the back of his throat, seeing red and hearing a whining ring in his eardrums. His own heavy breathing is his sole guidance back to awareness, echoing teasingly while all else is muted out.
“You still with us?”
He is not sure who that was, a distant voice rolling at him from the side of his skull, muffled under the vapour of his burning senses. He groans out a pained acknowledgment as his hands reach for the controls, slurring over them of their own accord. He merely watches them.
His name is being called several times, a staccato of voices, each word growing clearer and clearer until the mingled sounds break apart into comprehension.
“Deo, your vital signs are weak.” It is Mazayus, clear and sharp.
“Don’t have much time,” he reports heavily, now aware of the intentions of his hands. He is redirecting power to the main thrusters, and allowing the ikamanu to absorb the raining light from the surrounding solarflare to recharge its entity.
“Can you make it?”
Deo does not reply, his eyes are primed on the rising luminosity of the ikamanu’s glyphs, and the slowly succumbing Olympian that is shielding him. Its nikita structure will not melt under the heat, merely just break off in chunks, evaporating into solid doses.
Mazayus hums. “Our timing doesn’t have to be perfect, but reasonably simultaneous.”
“I’ll get there,” Deo presses with a hard edge to his tone. Although doubtful of his survival, he cannot stay in the shadow of the warship any longer, not if he wants to make his Sacrifice count.
His vessel leaps from the shade, exposing itself through the blare of the solarflare, its entity writhing under the pressure. His eyes are on the monitor that is displaying the force of the solarflare. He feels the burst of cold sweat, his body attempting to cool down beneath the building heat.
“Reroute power from non-vital systems to increase velocity,” Mazayus advises.
“Already done. Still not putting out enough speed.” Without that speed to pass through the solarflare, he will burn up, regardless of the supply of light feeding his ikamanu. Its entity will not be able to regenerate fast enough while under such pressure.
He is going to burn up.
Deep within his hardened shell, panic sets in. He has experienced painful deaths in the cybergrid more times than he can count, but it never dulls. Especially burning...
Death in the cybergrid is just as painful as real death.
Thoughts swarm through his mind as the heat rises, his body charging with adrenaline yet no chance to use it, sitting here playing with monitors. His joints sear in their sockets, needing to move, pace, do anything to keep his body active as his mind leaps over boundaries of solutions and ideas.
Star shift.
His hands fly across the monitors, keying in settings. “I’m gonna shift,” he announces bluntly.
“Negative, shifting will consume your entity supply,” Mazayus counters.
“...No other choice.”
The horizon of the solarflares never seems to arrive, continuing in an endless stream of pummelling power, and their communications links smear with white noise as their ikamanu struggle to endure.
They are now on their own.
Deo grits his teeth as his vessel rattles maddeningly, vaulting around his hot blood and causing his own entity to flare in angered retaliation. His pores burn as wisps of blood-red lightning crackle from him, visor lighting up in response as his eyes fling toward the feeds, rooted, straining, groaning.
The dreadful, alien squeal of pain erupts from the ikamanu, puncturing through Deo’s skull as sharp heat stings him, every fibre of his being enduring the beginnings of heat and radia
tion exposure. The scorch begins to blister his skin raw beneath his suit, a harrowing biting sensation that pulls a severe hiss through his teeth, all effort now pouring into the strength of his pain threshold.
The hard leathery material of his boots are melting, clinging to the deck like glue, hindering his wading footsteps as he stumbles like a zombie over to the forward consoles. Whatever he was planning to do vanishes from his mind as his ikamanu’s entity falters for a brief moment, allowing a burst of the solarflare’s might to singe at his entity.
After his blaze of liquid entity, his bodily strength drains away, collapsing to his hands upon the consoles, a breathy defiance leaving his lips under a helmet drenched in blood and sweat.
This time, his pain threshold collapses. A scream of demons explodes from his heaving chest, clawing up his throat with a ragged rip through flesh.
Deo is fire.
“...Deo...”
A chill wafts over him.
“...Deo...”
Hands clutch him and pull him somewhere. Voices echo over him, mutterings, firm demands, a slap to his chest and a cuff to his cheek, an annoying light motioning open his eyelids.
“That’s it, you’re alright.”
Mazayus is kneeling over him, Boone and Natheus beside him, their faces pale and sweat drenching their shirts and trousers. Deo blinks and feels his brow crease in reflex. They have pulled him from his cybergrid neural link and have set him on the floor, back propped up against the hull of the pod. The cold pod, his tense back muscles melding into its smooth surface.
He swears to confirm his awakened status, making his fellow Paragons each give a knowing smile before they clap him on the shoulders, Boone on the head with a ruffling motion to stir his hair. He swats him off.
“Did you make it?”
Mazayus’ features are still crumpled in protective concern, ill placed, Deo thinks. He grumbles something unintelligible and swipes his hand down his sweaty face, thick brow hairs rebelling downward. “Burned up.”
Boone gives a noise of disappointment and whirls away, hands flying to the back of his head as if cradling a neck injury. Natheus’ mouth merely tugs from the side, but Mazayus gives a quiet, knowing sigh through his nose. The mission failed. The chain reaction was not complete.
Deo shakes his head gruffly and goes to stand, Mazayus attempting to support him, but he shrugs him off. “I’m fine.”
“You should be proud of yourself, we’ve never made it that far before.”
Mazayus’ astute presence is looming over his shoulder, attempting to consolidate his pride, but Deo does not let it enter. He failed, let his team down, could not get to the controls to shift, was reckless and weak.
What if she had been watching?
“Come on, we should get some rest,” Mazayus encourages, brushing lightly past Deo’s shoulder as if directing the statement at him. The others follow wearily, leaving him alone.
They know how to deal with Deo. Leave him to vent off his steam, or else get your head bitten off or your jaw punched for prying too much. Only Boone has met his fist yet, but the others know not to test his limits.
His fiery eyes follow the three as they slip out of the cybergrid, but now fall to the ground beneath a drawn frown. A surge travels him, he goes tense, fists clenching at his sides.
Deo’s knuckles collide with the wall.
THE END OF THE PILGRIMAGE
A cyan glow emanates down the hall, refracting from the doorway ahead. Deo heads for the life support room for a routine check on the systems, swallowing his tedious boredom. The closer he gets, the brighter the light grows as it pulses and illuminates the halls, even more than the aero-dynamic arrow-like shape of Altair’s symbols.
Upon his entry into life support, he is immediately greeted with the presence of holographic readings floating amongst the air, phasing in and out of view like flitting slithers. The readings measure oxygen and nitrogen levels along with the other trace amounts of elements in the air. Altair simulates these elements for them to breathe, with the help of a small oxygen garden as a backup in case of malfunction, and automatically keeps track, though is it still necessary for the crew to check them on a constant basis. Some of the augmentations of the ikamanu were the abilities to recycle air and water. The crew all rotate duties on the ikamanu, including cooking, cleaning, gardening, navigating routes, and system checks.
Deo walks amidst the holograms, skimming his eyes along the readings and calculating the measurements. All seems well, even Altair's star energy reserves are above the level they had expected. The oxygen garden on the far side of the room grows healthily as it is treated with Altair's reserves of ultraviolet light. There are various types of plants in the garden, but most of them grow fruits and vegetables for the crew to harvest and consume. His stockpile for experimentation for when it is his turn to punish the crew for dissing his cooking skills. New recipe ideas always distract him from his duty.
Mathematical calculations are not Deo’s strong point, but Paragon’s are trained in nearly all fields of knowledge. He hates system check duty only a little less than cooking, but at least here, Boone is not hovering over him with drool escaping his mouth.
As Deo kneels to check the water flow, watching the currents flush through small clear tubes along the floor beneath his boots, he hears voices in the halls, peppered with the occasional comprehensive word.
Looking up from the rushing water, the radiant halls seem unusually busy. Someone passes the doorway carrying a bunch of advanced Serenity weaponry hefted in their arms, and another is hauling cases of explosives, shards and vitasuits. By the slightly shorter shadow, Deo guesses it had been Boone. Great, so even in life support he gets harassed.
Despite this, the bustling activity has him intrigued, and so he decides to temporarily halt his duties and investigate. Leaving life support, he comes to a standstill in the middle of the hall and watches after Mazayus and Boone as they carry the weaponry to the bow of the ikamanu, toward navigation and briefing, seemingly engaged in a conversation, but to what Deo cannot quite catch. Looking to the other end of the hall, he sees Natheus emerging from the armoury, carrying more gear.
"What's going on?" Deo asks Natheus as he falls into place beside him.
"You haven't heard?" Natheus asks in response, his voice conveying surprise. "Kitera informed us we would hit the outer rim tomorrow, and we should reach the Brutus System within a few hours afterwards to deploy Boone."
Deo crosses his arms over his chest as he walks, slightly angered as to why he was the last person to know. "Why didn't anyone tell me this?" he grunts out with more fire than he had planned on. Surely they are not still staying clear of him, it has been several weeks since the failed Sacrifice exercise.
Natheus just shrugs and continues walking towards navigation, keeping his usual silent attribute.
The two enter the room to see Mazayus and Kitera engaged in a discussion. Surrounding them are dozens of crates of explosives and ammunition, and in a far corner is Boone examining his selected weaponry and morphing them accordingly.
"Kitera," Deo calls quietly, breaking away from Natheus as he moves to place his gear elsewhere.
She greets Deo as he approaches by pressing all four fingers to her forehead, though she can tell he is troubled by the telltale crease in his brow. Mazayus turns to face Deo too, still holding an armful of weaponry, and simply gives him a subtle nod to acknowledge him.
"We arrive tomorrow? What happened to our two weeks?" Deo queries.
Kitera nods quickly, understanding his confusion. "Altair is the fastest ikamanu affiliated with Serenity, and it appears even the Zodiacs have trouble keeping up with it. The ikamanu are as unpredictable as they are mysterious."
"I knew they were unpredictable when it came to speed, but not like this..."
"I do not understand it either," she replies regretfully. "No one does. The Zodiacs made an estimate for how long it would take Altair to reach Scattered Planet, but even they can ne
ver be accurate with an ikamanu..."
"It's almost as if they don't travel on a direct course..." Mazayus adds thoughtfully, seeming to gaze off at nothing in particular.
"I took into account all of the stops it made, calculated every deviation around a planet or star’s path, yet it still does not add up," Kitera continues, pacing a little in thought, her jewellery clinking delicately. "If its speed was constant, we could say it was travelling at roughly SS eight hundred million, but in truth the ship is travelling a lot faster at certain points."
Deo scratches the stubble on his chin in thought and shuffles his feet for a moment, thinking how it is a little unsettling that the Zodiacs do not know everything there is to know about the universe. Serenity depends on them for guidance, yet they do not understand an entire species that stretches throughout the universe? Either that or they are lying, but then why would they lie?
"We have tonight only to prepare ourselves," Kitera concludes, her voice purposefully bold and capturing, reminding everyone in the room of the perils that lie before them.
At this, Natheus morphs his Parallel sniper rifle, the cutting edge prototype design of the three barrelled sniper, capable of integrating with the user’s datakey and locking onto and eliminating three different targets simultaneously at up to the range of five kilometres. The over six foot, semi-automatic rifle morphs effortlessly, extending its barrel and producing two more on either side to join it in perfect symmetry. Only the primary barrel has an optical scope, whilst the other two rely on the user’s datakey to identify targets.
The Parallel, and all other morphing weaponry in Serenity and the UEU are created using the metal-like compound of the ikamanu, nikita. The word is of Greek origin, meaning unconquered or victorious. This compound is unique in that it is biological and only found within ikamanu, therefore the only means of extracting it other than hunting ikamanu is to grow it. Really, nikita is the very bone of the ikamanu, supporting their structures from within, just like the bones of the human body.