Dimension

by Shay Zana

  He engages, thudding the butt of his weapon into the jaw of his first victim of the new exchange. Before the body can fall, his Phoenix is drawn, casting off a few entity rounds before unleashing its bladed wrath. He pumps another face with shotgun rounds before bashing through the body and slashing into another with his blade, severing the body apart in an upward strike through the groin and out the skull. Next, the sword meets the gut of another, separating in half while still within the solider as Deo rips it in two and shreds the body apart with outward slices. With dual blades, he blocks return strikes, counters, defeats, and repeats until all are vanquished at his boots in a mangled pool of blood. It is a slaughter in favour of the superior strength and reflexes of the Paragon.

  Examining his dulled blades, his entity rippling over them like spent electricity, Deo morphs them back together to his preferred rifle form, listening to its metallic clinks and the intricate shift of its compartments before shouldering the weapon. He stiffens as the temple gives another shudder, but this time it is not a sudden, sharp jolt, but a slow, growing rumble.

  A metallic menace rides up alongside the temple, its burnished armour plating a reflective black. The Dragon hovers for a moment before swivelling to train its main cannons upon the Paragon, secreting a low drawl as they spike in preparation. Deo’s hand drifts back for his rifle, posture taut.

  A flaming blast cracks the air, punishing the machine in a sudden assault. It shudders and lurches involuntarily, careening closer to the temple and forcing Deo to dive for cover through an avalanche of wreckage. The machine regains its composure just in time to receive another assault, this time pushing it so deep into the temple’s flank that the Paragon is caught in its ruins. He falls with it, catching multiple ledges with his armoured form in ways that jar his bones and test his entity to breaking point. With them, the temple thumps upon its crumbling foundations.

  Deo manages to cease his descent on a broken pillar laying horizontally out a shattered window, hand barely clinging until he can latch onto the edge with his other. Below, the Dragon swipes for him, clipping his boot and wrenching him from the pillar. Plummeting down the building steeply, Deo rotates on the warmachine below, watching as it attempts to morph into its gunship design, but is clipped in the wing mid-transformation by its attacker and sent spiralling in a doomed frenzy, soon to meet the grounds.

  He drops helplessly, wind battering his limbs, sure he will join the crippled warmachine in its doom, until a vessel pitches beneath him to break his fall. He splatters face-first, feeling the death of his entity in a painful rupture and uttering a pained complaint before he realises that his body is sliding along the vessel’s hull, the pilot swerving to steady her. Rolling, Deo clings on as the vessel’s aft starboard collides across the temple wall, peeling him off in the force and flinging him without mercy. He is thrown through the temple, smashing his back against a solid wall with glass splayed about his landing zone.

  Deo catches his breath and heaves out both with relief and pain as it forks down his back. His body is broken and burning, but he shoves it to the back of his mind as he leans his head back against the wall for a moment, cringing through agony and spitting out blood onto the inside of his visor. He can sense internal bleeding and feel the screaming of torn muscle tissue and tendons. He lost a few floors in that fall and will have to speed it up to make up for lost progress, peering around the crumbling interior for a way up.

  “Paragon, this is Captain Josh Remington of the G86 Fire Blade, preparing to assist on direct order from Admiral Corazon. What’s your status? Over.”

  Deo finds himself in the shadow of a Spartan warship, drifting alongside the temple with ease. A serial number and its title are plated on its starboard. He can smell light energy sweeping through the temple air and through the ventilation of his helmet, its burnt warmth filling his nose even more than the stench of fire and death that is infecting Kronos.

  “Fuck you,” he grumbles as he rises slowly and holds back a wince. “But good catch.”

  “A fluke, Paragon. Don’t be making a habit of it,” the captain replies with character. “We’ve deployed sniper support on the eastern spire from your position, and Nymph gunships are patrolling the outskirts of the temple’s zone with onboard support. Additional air and troop support are en-route. Extracting King Anzac is top priority, but the UEU have been relentless, preventing us from initiating a successful rescue mission,” Remington goes on. “Charlie Company was forced to retreat due to heavy casualties, and they are currently regrouping with Delta for a last ditch assault, but time is short, and you’re the best thing we’ve got in that temple right now.”

  Deo nods to the Fire Blade, though unsure if they have him on a visual or are just using his datakey tag as proof of identity. “This may get rough.”

  “I’d hate to see your definition of rough. Just do your thing, and we’ll have your back and be sitting pretty, ready to pull you out when it’s done. Though I’ve got no idea how you managed to get in there in the first place without the UEU raining elements on you.”

  “You don’t wanna know...” Deo groans, rubbing the back of his neck to ease the pain.

  SUPERSOLDIER

  Proceeding, Deo marches steadily through the long stone halls of the temple, up weaving staircases, pushing through fiery cascades and thick veils of choking smoke. He passes more walls inscribed with spiritual carvings of the Zodiacs, and automatically comes to the conclusion that the Spiritual Natives had designed this temple for King Anzac and the royal family. He has never actually travelled to a Spiritual Native planet before, but from news feeds and images, he knows what to expect.

  From deep inside the walls of the temple, Deo can still hear the thundering battle from outside, the whines of the Nymph gunships patrolling the area, the low rumbling of the Spartan warship hovering carefully above, protecting the temple from more orbital strikes at the risk of its own safety. Usually, in skycities as advanced as Babylon, each building would have a kinetic barrier of its own, powered by the city itself, but it seems that the UEU had quickly found a way to disable that before invading the city from above. A lot of the skycity’s fail-safes have been taken offline. The UEU have really outdone themselves this time, making Deo wonder if they had a mole operating on the inside...

  Not too distantly, he begins to hear voices and shouts laced with urgency and fear. One of them is feminine, but one male voice overrides them all with just the kind of authority that a king should possess. Quickening his pace, Deo edges his way down a narrow corridor to his right, taking more careful measures now due to the fact that his entity is expended. Taking another shot would most likely result in an overdose.

  With rifle levelled, the Paragon follows the sounds of the voices, hearing a woman shriek loudly, followed by harsh commands of men. Ahead, the corridor is decorated with fresh blood and lifeless Serenity forces.

  “No! My King!” cries a woman before she is heard fighting against restraining grasps.

  “Be still, Xania. It’s me they want,” answers who Deo suspects to be King Anzac.

  “Shut up, the both of you!” comes another man’s voice. “Admiral Coleman wants the lot of you dead, but I want information. Co-operate, and maybe I’ll let the queen and the two princes live.”

  Deo reaches the entranceway to the king’s chambers and presses his back against the doorway, out of sight and listening, waiting for the right moment. With his thermal vision, he counts seven figures in the room. Three of them UEU, holding the king, queen, and the two princes at gunpoint.

  “I will answer any questions you have,” Anzac says to the demand of the soldier. “If you give me your word that my family will go free.”

  “How did Serenity construct the distortions?” the man questions without confirming his word.

  “We did not construct them.”

  “Your Highness,” the man drones patronisingly, and Deo can hear his creeping footsteps, seeing his thermal form circling Anzac slowly. “You may want t
o keep in mind that I have a quick temper, and I do not like being lied to.”

  “I speak the truth,” King Anzac replies defiantly. “We did not construct the distortions, nor did we encourage the Zodiacs to do so.”

  “And can you speak for the Ciphers?”

  Anzac pauses momentarily. “I can’t, no. But I can tell you that instigating such horrors is against their code.”

  “And have you ever spoken with a Cipher before?”

  “I have indeed,” the King says.

  “Face to face.”

  “Nobody has ever spoken with a Cipher in person.”

  The soldier grunts in mild amusement. “Yet you believe every word they feed you.”

  “Don’t judge me, soldier. You have also never spoken with a Cipher in person, yet you think the worst of them,” Anzac bites back, making Deo slightly admire his defiance even while powerless and held at gunpoint.

  A long, impatient sigh follows. “I’ll give you one more chance to answer me truthfully. No lies. How do we disable the distortions?”

  “For the last time,” Anzac fumes. “I speak the truth. We didn’t cause the distortions, and we shall not harbour the responsibility or punishment that the Universal Eden Union so wrongly casts upon us. I do not know how to stop them, and until now, I had believed it was the UEU who had created them. You have invaded our territory and brought death to our people under false accusations, spite, and blood lusting revenge that serves no cause but to satisfy and serve one man who openly denies the power of the Zodiacs! Denies the existence of gods and thinks them mere energy that science can explain! It’s you that should be punished for your sins!” The King’s voice booms and ricochets around the chamber, whipping everyone into silence, and as that silence fills the King’s chambers for a moment, Deo hears the telltale sound of a rifle’s morphing barrel mechanism unfold.

  “How does it feel, your Majesty, to know that your lies have caused the deaths of the royal family?”

  At the sounds of two more rifles powering up and the queen’s terrified wail, Deo storms into the room and fluidly snaps off three bursts from his assault rifle, every fire shard blasting at their shields. He drops into a barrel roll to avoid their counter fire, simultaneously continuing to open fire on the soldier in the centre of the three, his body buried with fiery shards. As the man screeches at the fire eating at his limbs, Deo shouts at the royalties to run, switching to his shotgun and pumping clusters of fire particles into the other two men.

  The royalties obey and scamper out of the chamber, almost tripping over themselves in the process. Dodging relentless fire from the two soldiers, the Paragon dashes to the nearest wall, firing off a one handed pump that successfully impacts one soldier’s centre mass and disables the rest of his shields. With the opportunity upon him, Deo pushes his speed and executes a wall run, reaching optimal height to lunge off, propelling himself at his chosen foe with a brief boost from his thruster-boots.

  A heavy crunch impacts dully throughout the chamber as the Paragon brings his armoured fist down on the man’s helmeted head, cracking the skull from the crown and exposing a bloody fractured mess of brain. The neck is forced to snap and the spine crumples, disfiguring his form as he tumbles to the ground beneath the supersoldier, hemorrhaging momentarily before dying. Under close-range fire, Deo raises his shotgun at the last remaining soldier and continuously pumps shards into him until his shields falter. Taking a lunge forward, he grips the man’s rifle by the muzzle and, in one smooth stroke, thrusts it back into his chest with mighty force, the rifle’s stock penetrating right through the chest plate where it breaks his ribcage, plunges deep into his heart, and ends his life. Staring at the body still hanging by the support of the weapon through the wall, Deo places his shotgun muzzle firmly to the man’s black visor, and just for good measure, blasts his face off.

  “Our lives are owed to you, most honourable Paragon. We are in your debt.”

  Deo gauges Queen Xania as he approaches. She is a stunningly voluptuous woman with sweet features, her hair bouncing with natural brown curls that cascade to her waist. She is garbed in a royal dress of deep maroon and creamy white, with several necklaces draping around her neck. With caramel skin and green orbs for eyes, she trades Deo’s silence with a grateful smile and a bow of appropriate depth. Deo judges her to be in her early thirties.

  The two princes behind her appear to be twins, both at least fifteen or sixteen. They both have their mother’s chocolate hair and her green eyes, but with their father’s masculine and squared facial structures.

  “Pleasantries shall be exchanged later,” Anzac interrupts. “We must flee the temple.” Anzac appears to be much older than Xania, perhaps in his late fifties, with a golden beard and thick matching brows. He is clothed in a black and navy robe that falls to his ankles, revealing his golden laced boots. His grey eyes look up and regard Deo. “Lead us on, Paragon.”

  With a nod, Deo turns and jogs back the way he had come, the royalties in tow at a safe distance. “Fire Blade, the royalties are in one piece and heading to you now. Advise. Over.”

  “Solid work, Paragon. We have been contacted by another Paragon who claims to have assisted you in reaching the temple and volunteered to be your escort. A commandeered UEU Dagger transport is waiting on the south balcony on the 197th floor.”

  Rahna, Deo thinks with a slight grin, glad to hear that she had managed to shake off her pursuers. “Copy that.” He speeds up to the next corridor and peers around to check that the coast is clear, waving the royalties up subtly. But just as they catch up to him, he holds out a halting hand signal and they stop dead in their tracks. A patrol team have rounded the far corner at the other end of the corridor, armed with close-range weaponry and loaded with grenades. Making sure the patrol is not advancing too quickly, Deo encourages the royalties to move up again, but slowly and silently.

  “Dagger transport is waiting on the south balcony one floor down from us,” he whispers hoarsely to them through the electronically muffled tone of his helmet, gesturing to the narrow stairway behind them. “Whatever happens, just keep running, you’ll have sniper and air support once outside. I’ll cover your retreat.”

  King Anzac nods and glances back at his wife and two sons. “Xania, take our sons, now. Go!”

  But one of the boys shakes his head in protest. “No, father. We go together.”

  Anzac gives the young man a knowing smile and places his hand atop his curly-haired head. “Hadar, my brave son. You, your brother’s, and your mother’s safety are foremost vital to me. If you are seen with me, they’ll kill you on sight. Go ahead of me and help look after your mother for me. I will follow under the guard of the Paragon.”

  Deo rolls his eyes under his visor at the soppy family moment, growing more impatient the more the soldiers approach.

  Hadar stands firm. “Eldad can look after mother. I will look after you.”

  “This Paragon’s protection will be more than adequate, son.”

  “Hadar,” the other prince, Eldad, speaks up quietly. “Father is right. It will be safer if we go on ahead. He will follow.”

  “Come, Hadar,” Xania pitches in nervously.

  But still, Hadar stays stubborn. “No. I will not leave father.”

  “Damn it,” Deo growls at them. “Just get a move on, all of you together. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Hesitantly, they obey, running for the stairway behind them while Deo peers once more around the wall before backing up, rifle levelled and his aim resisting the temple’s rocking motion as its foundations slowly wither.

  MIND OVER MATTER

  The watery landscape is swathed in various sources of light as Altair passes over, the skycity expanding in view. Light from the tornado above spears down onto Babylon as the crew observes from the display screens in navigation.

  Natheus’ brow is drawn in concentration, watching the battle of the skycity take place below, his combat training having him automatically scanning for optimal snipe
r positions on building tops and structures. Towering spires are caught aflame, circular domes own cracks in their clear frames, artificial nature reserves and peaceful presidiums are dotted with shard scores and decrepit ground forces. On the skystreets, walkway platforms have fallen loose from their gravity fields and have crashed down to reign havoc on the structures below. The skies surrounding the hovering monstrosity of a city are swarming with aerial vehicles and interceptors, buzzing around like flies drawn to a carcass.

  “Ranity, have you been able to contact Deo again?” Mazayus asks the A.I.

  “I haven’t been able to re-establish contact with Paragon Deo again since entering the Temple of King Anzac. Activity in that region is causing severe interference, and as you approach that specific proximity, your signal is also weakening. I’m afraid that we will no longer have the ability to converse once you travel onward for at least 82 kilometres. At your vessel’s current velocity, my estimation is that I will lose your signal in approximately 3.49 minutes.”

  “Lets hope Altair can slow down in time after breaking the sound barrier,” Boone mutters quietly in the corner of the dimly lit room.

  “Yeah,” Neal agrees with a slight laugh. “I don’t exactly feel like crashing into another building.”

  Tagged as the Fire Blade, a Spartan warship is hovering over the temple, appearing to protect it with its shields from minor magnitude orbital strikes. The strikes do not appear to be sufficient enough to bring the temple down with one direct hit, so it is likely the UEU have forces inside to extract the royalties alive.

  “He is inside,” Kitera informs them almost absently, none of them questioning for a moment how she knows this.