Dimension

by Shay Zana

  "Yeah, I'm working on it, Commander," Lander replies tiredly from inside the facility. "We just need to finish this code fragment to initialise the rest of the decryption subroutine, then we can shut-up-shop and decrypt the rest of the data aboard the Exile."

  "What? You're still on the network while that virus is active?"

  "No, we're roaming on a separate network through the guardian station. It's not connected to this facility and the virus can't access us, but we can still download basic code fragments used for this facility that haven't been dumped."

  As Rockland listens through his glowing earchips, he heads down two decks on the kinetic platform, not even waiting for it to touch down in the ground before he steps off it roughly and continues his hasty power walk through the cargo hold, toward the horizontal hallway at the far wall that leads to engineering. "Just get it done quickly. I'm going to check on your techs that you sent to sweep the ship's systems. If the news is bad, what exactly will that mean for us?"

  "That all depends on the extent of the infection. If it's wide spread, then even taking the ship in close proximity to any UEU software could be lethal."

  "What kind of proximity are we talking?"

  "Star system-wide, maybe even cluster-wide. Anything within SS range. Not sure what wavelength this virus can travel on, but it’s not a space whale so we don’t have to worry about it transmitting anything faster than the Exile can swim."

  "Great," Rockland sighs, his sarcasm helping to hide his nervousness. "And if the infection's not too bad?"

  "Then with luck, all we’ll have to do is scrub it and reboot any infected systems."

  "Let's hope Lady Luck is on our side, then," Rockland replies, closing the channel and proceeding through engineering to find the three technicians.

  He eventually finds them huddled on one terminal, co-ordinating system checks with the many engineers cluttering the area. The engineering department is spacious, surprisingly clean, and dark, lit solely by the permanently active terminals mounted on the walls and on pedestals along the floors. The ship's quantum drive core is visible and pulsing with smooth vibrations and stored light, and the room is smothered in the familiar and somewhat comforting smell of light energy, a burnt yet luscious sensation that fills his nose and seeps smoothly through his pores.

  Rockland watches the drive core vibrate for a while, his mind put at ease by the large triangular object. The quantum drive core is about ten metres tall and wide, and is seeping with black energy, which is converted light energy. Although the UEU uses light energy and nikita for their starships, warships, and weaponry just as much as Serenity does, they have applied enhancing upgrades that sets their technology apart from Serenity.

  The UEU uses a different method of converting light energy. Once the light from a star is captured and stored in star shards, the drive core has access to these shards by running a negative electron charge through them, laced with coal, converting the energy more rapidly than Serenity's method, but also polluting the atmosphere. This upgrade of simulated and artificial hydrostatic equilibrium inside the drive core allows the UEU vessels to travel faster in atmosphere and gives them more power.

  Serenity's method is pollution free, expelling the light energy with a positive proton charge from the star shards and allowing the energy to be converted into pure hydrostatic equilibrium inside the drive core through fusion power, but at the disadvantage of a less powerful drive core and slower movements in atmosphere.

  "What's the story?" Rockland asks the three cyber technicians once the quantum core releases him from his meditations.

  They all glance up at him, their fingers still tapping away at the terminal. The man with the name Freeman stamped over his name tag speaks first.

  "Sir, it's bad news. The entire system is infected, and we can't locate the virus. Every time we think we found it, it relocates to another file. It’s escaping through so many temporary backdoors that we can’t pinpoint the location, and it’s creating copies of itself and leaving them behind through the files it contaminates."

  Rockland strains to listen to the man, his speech so fast that it makes the commander's head bobble. "Can you fix it?"

  Freeman scratches his brow. "Maybe. But right now it's not doing much. It's just sitting there, contaminating every file it accesses but aside from that, it's not messing with anything. Maybe it's not turning vicious because the guardian station is still not fully active. We're not sure what it will do if we try to leave the planet though..."

  "Damn it!” Rockland growls, running his hand over his head. "Get this fixed. We need to leave this hellhole by nightfall."

  Freeman's face burns brightly again as he looks back down to the terminal, his hands a nervous wreck. The other two technicians, George and Torney, continue to combine their brains together, discussing possible solutions and system checks.

  Tired and with a spinning head from all the technical lingo, Rockland leaves them to it, strolling out of the engineering department and back to the cargo hold where he can see Daggers mobilizing from their kinetic stands and hovering through the barrier to join with their squadrons. His face is grim as he examines the formations outside. Surely even Paragons cannot take on a force of this much heavy fire power.

  FIREFIGHT

  Shards streak into flesh and bone, the dewy air invaded by columns of elemental warfare and the shrieks of impaled soldiers. Natheus slashes the sword of his Phoenix through the abdomen of an opponent, effectively separating him in half. His scream is gurgled as his upper body quivers once, and now gives in, the gushing blood and cut spine too overwhelming, his intestines spilling out like dead worms.

  Deflected shards lacerate his foes as the Paragon smothers his form in his entity shielding, wracking many bodies in searing agony as they falter in their advances. Natheus spins his Phoenix nimbly around in his hand, pulling the trigger below the hilt of the blade and firing red-hot entity particles into those who surround him. His entity is alive in a glimmering wave of liquid, and his reflective visor mirrors his focus. The visor is menacing to his foes, an iridescent hue of red and gold, undulating vibrantly. Their last image before death.

  The entity rounds bounce against the shields of the UEU soldiers, burning through them rapidly. Soon, their shields fail, the highly concentrated energy ripping them apart viciously in streams of light.

  Under the collective fire and caught out in the open, Natheus can feel his entity begin to tug at his nervous system, growing weak. Needing to create a window, Natheus lunges at one of his attackers, yelling in defiance as he brings his sword against the rifle of his target and tears the weapon in two pieces with one powerful swipe. Nikita verses nikita.

  Weaponless and confronted with the intimidating Paragon, the soldier attempts to back away, but is brought to a piercing halt as Natheus thrusts his Phoenix through his chest with a rip of meat, bringing his life to an instant end. He withdraws his blade and lets the body slump without life, disintegrating from entity contact.

  With that last show of defiance, Natheus pulls a fire grenade from the belt of his vitasuit and tosses it into the fray of soldiers.

  As the fire erupts in a burning ball, many soldiers are disintegrated and eaten by fire, and when the element of the fire grenade fades, there is no sign of the Paragon, just the burning, screaming, and smoking bodies he left behind.

  "Deo, do not proceed ahead, there are many UEU," comes the insistent warning of Natheus.

  Deo presses at his earchip, straining to hear Natheus through the distant gunfire and explosions. "Give me their locations, I'll work my way around them."

  "That would be unwise. I advise you stay where you are until I can provide a clear passage."

  "That’ll take too long."

  "Agreed, but we cannot risk our Cipher's life."

  Kitera tugs at Deo's hand, causing him to stop and face her in a snap. "We must move with haste," she says to his confused features. "My life is not comparable to the perils we face if we falter."<
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  Deo gives her a nod. "You hear that?" he asks Natheus, not removing his eyes from Kitera.

  "If you are certain," Natheus replies over the communications link.

  "Yes," she says simply, her own earchip glowing blue.

  Deo morphs his helmet back over his head, and Kitera watches as his entity flows to his visor, setting it on fire. He gives a quick flick of his chin, directing her to follow him. “Stay behind me.”

  Acknowledging, she follows, not able to match his explosion into a sprint, but able to keep up with him at a considerable distance. They move swiftly, passing several UEU patrols without drawing more than quick scanning glances and nervousness, and as her attention is soaked up by her surroundings, leaping over obstacles and placing her bare soles as deftly as possible, she only notices now of the enveloping tingle and flaming hue of Deo’s entity encasing her.

  It is a strange experience, not just because of the fact that she is varnished in a film of humming energy, but because the energy belongs to someone else. It is a part of Deo, just as much as his blood is a part of him. The intimacy of the act is...

  Before she can finish the thought, she is inhaled by her gods. Kitera’s mind comes to an involuntary state of absence. The world slows, heartbeats within flesh staggering to a halt, bloodflows decelerating, the warm thrum of entity diminishing. As milliseconds pass, she gathers a great portion of wisdom.

  In a burst of energy and desperate purpose, the Cipher increases her speed toward her Paragon, calling for him.

  He notices the sound of hurried footsteps behind him, and now her yelling. Surprised, Deo cycles rapidly to her, hand instinctively reaching over his shoulder for his rifle, but Kitera lunges at him like a striking feline, throwing her frame into a jarring shoulder-barge and pushing as much of her weight into him as she can.

  Completely caught unawares by the sudden tackle from the Cipher, Deo manages to release his grip of his weapon in time to catch her, but loses his balance in the rush, boot slipping through the saturated soil. The supersoldier falls under the technique of the petite woman, his veins glowing through the cracks in his armour plating in a last moment of defiance. As they fall, his kinetic shields pulse and the visor on his helmet is narrowly grazed by a shard.

  A sniper.

  Upon landing, Deo, who does not even have time to thank his saviour or even contemplate how she even managed to tackle someone over twice her weight to the ground, is immediately aware that a sniper has them in their sights, and is able to send a shockwave of entity washing over them both, shielding them from yet another round.

  “Move!” Deo barks, pushing Kitera forward while he covers her, spraying the now encroaching shadows of UEU soldiers through the trees with fire shards. The flames in the shards flutter around their shields, draining them, but they return fire, taking advantage of the shieldless Paragon on the ground. He makes a run for it, feeling the nipping pings of shard impacts pepper his back as his armour deflects them.

  Lucky for him they are not using nikita rounds.

  He takes cover behind a fallen log lying on the jungle floor, bounding over it one-handed and hunkering down to allow his shields to regenerate. He casts a quick scan, seeking any sight of pale flesh beneath a red nimbus of entity shielding. She is screened by the thick trunk of a tree just ahead of him. Good.

  As shards singe the air and eat their way through his cover, Deo notices a prick in his abdomen. Investigating, he sees a breach in his armour plating, sparking with echoes of a lightning shard. Obviously someone had got in a lucky shot with a nikita shard, and someone else followed that with a lightning round. Typical. As he feels for blood, he is mildly shaken by an electric current, awakened by his touch. This pulls a slightly pained grunt from him and a curse to compliment it. The greater pain will kick in soon once his adrenaline wears off. Great.

  Pissed, Deo snaps up from his cover and returns fire, taking down several soldiers with precise accuracy from his assault rifle, quick, controlled bursts erupting from the barrel in spasms.

  Shimmering in Deo’s entity, Kitera shields her head with her hands from the pinging shards, forced to throw herself down low as some of them penetrate right through the tree, barely missing her head while other shards are absorbed or deflected by the red veil riding along her skin and pulsing through the air around her body.

  The fireteam spread out in a wide circle, attempting to flank their two foes and suppress them with constant fire, but Deo is relentless and stubborn, making sure no one gets any closer than he desires. If they do, they are greeted with the flames of his rapidly fired shards or a cluster of punching violence from his exchanged shotgun. The sound of battle creates ferocious music throughout the vast jungle. Grenades are thrown, lush blue foliage is set on fire, blood is spilled and spattered from bodies, and the colours of combat are alive with a variety of shard elements, all a disorientating, revolving mass.

  Enraged, Deo springs up again, his shields absorbing more fire as he pummels fire back. In his right hand, he continues to fire his rifle, and with his left hand, he throws a lava grenade and watches as it erupts in mid air and drops thick goblets of simulated lava onto his foes, burning through their weakened armour and melting their bodies to the bone. With his free hand, he reaches for his Phoenix, flexing it around to morph to a rifle form and combine fire. His visor flashes in reflection as he dual wields the two weapons, ripping apart the UEU ranks that scamper and take cover from his ferocious and somewhat reckless counterattack.

  One soldier manages to lob a grenade over Deo’s cover, and as it lands in a patch of grass, seconds away from exploding, Deo grabs it and lobs it right back, aiming for where the UEU are thickest. The grenade explodes in a lightning element, zapping at the foliage and utterly destroying several shields, giving Deo the chance to take advantage. With his Phoenix, he pounds their bodies with entity rounds, and with his assault rifle, he sets them alight with fire shards. A flurry of cries, flames, electrocuted meat and melted bodies echo through the jungle.

  He is pissing on them, his reflexes too quick, stamina too high, aim too sharp. Only another machine can best him.

  And his wish is granted.

  The warble of a Dagger emerges first before he catches sight of it, an angular menace of heavy firepower, lurking above the treetops. Before Deo can swear, a heavy plasma shard is propelled toward him, an immense blue ball of superheated power colliding on his cover. A whitewash of sweltering volume swallows him.

  A blinding flash of blueness and heat waves past the tree, burning at her bare skin, and as Kitera peers around the trunk of the now half burnt tree, all she can see is plasma scoring, a dead and charcoaled environment, and a very pissed off Paragon warrior, burning in his entity, now an intense gold, just like the light of the Sun. The log he was taking cover behind is now gone, not even fragments of bark exist. Pain riddles his stature, and he has dropped both of his weapons with the impact of the shard, now climbing up from the ground and his visor trained on the many approaching UEU soldiers, ready to kill them with his bare hands if they break through his entity.

  Wind stings her dry eyes, drawing her attention to the source. The Dagger’s shields are down, its armour crisp with wavering heat. Deo must have deflected the heavy plasma round right back at it. Not an easy skill to master.

  Shards continue to sieve through her cover, but Kitera is now oblivious to it, only focusing on her ally as he menaces toward a wildly firing soldier. The sounds of gunfire no longer ring in her ears, but etch at her mind, tiny talons needling and scratching, driving her to a rage. With a flurry of foreign words spilling from her mouth, Kitera sprints forward into a tight roll and grabs for Deo’s weapon lying lost in the grass, hefting the assault rifle variant in her arms, sinews protruding in wiry strength. She explodes up from the grass, teeth shining in a fanged grimace, eyes blinding in their wrath, sending a barrage of fire shards at the vulnerable Dagger caging Deo. Her scream over unloading shards is of pure fury, shrinking her foes and drawing a
quick glance from the freed Paragon.

  Her aim is true, fire rounds splintering the gunship’s visor and lancing through the pilot’s torso. The Cipher does not halt to marvel at her work of the totalled Dagger as it surrenders to fire, but hones her fury down on the soldiers. One soldier is set on fire by the shards that impact his armour, and another is driven into cover behind a tree, narrowly dodging a phalanx of shards to her helmet. The Cipher manages to duck and roll from shards sent her way, but the weight of the gun is slowing down her movements.

  Deo lunges forward, transferring his entity back to Kitera in a whoosh of heat, and grabs for the closest man to him. His hand grasps at the back of the soldier’s neck in a blur of movement, and he viciously slams it down to his raised up knee, caving in the soldier’s skull against the armour plate with a wet burst of blood. Another comes at him from his right. His hand finds the marine’s faceplate, crunching it under his paw like an egg shell. Liquid brain vomits like yolk, and the body quickly becomes a meat shield that he uses to smash against yet another incoming marine. Their two bodies become liquefied pulp.

  Warding the rest of the marines off at a safe distance, Deo now plunges to a roll amongst the grass, locating and grabbing his Phoenix as he does so. He drives the entity enveloped blade into the gut of another UEU soldier, his barrel no longer trained on Kitera, but dropped as his hands fling useless in spasms of shock.

  With Kitera receiving fire before she can flee behind a tree, his entity is pushed beyond normal parameters. The telekinetic energy releases her figure in a surge of a flare, one that he attempts to hold but fails with a groan of mental strain. He slumps, mind exhausted, his only protection his kinetic shields. His vision begins to narrow as he wavers on one knee, and when he goes to stand again, his shields are met with an assaulting train of lightning shards, bursting them within seconds and now pinging against his nikita armour. The rounds shatter against the plating and recoil his body harshly down under the stinging force, pinning him.