Manifold [An Interstellar Sci-Fi Progression Story with LitRPG Elements]

There was a strange chill in the air. Waves of intentionality emanated from the darkness, too faint to pinpoint its direction but strong enough that Betelgeuse could discern its unique signature. Not that he recognized it—but it felt powerful, trained, disciplined. It was a rare influence, very unlike that of the unprofessional minds he found commonplace… but it did feel familiar.

He wondered if it was a lingering mind-imprint caused by Queen She's attempt at comelling him, but the thought came and went quickly.

No, these thought patterns bear some similarity to the cyborg's… or I should say, an especial similarity to Marja Mentzer's and Commander Mzeeka's orientation. It's almost like they come from the same…

Family? Genus?

It made him suspicious.

He took in the surroundings: mounds of rubble, pools of dirt, sacks of concrete dust, bundles of rebar tarnishing in the night air. Tonight, Larua blazed with a desultory fire, baleful and angry.

"You want to wait?" Betelgeuse muttered, squinting into the darkness and trying to make out the vague shapes slithering into the subterranean access. Echoes of fear bounced across the empty space. In Desert, no creature nor man would answer.

"That's what I said," Queen She hissed back, bristling with irritation. If there was any indication that she rarely dealt with challenges to her authority, that was it.

Betelgeuse turned, sweeping his gaze over those crouched low to the ground. His men met his eyes, steady and awaiting his signal. The women did not.

There were several options and not enough information to go on. Queen She had brought him here to intercept a delivery of girls to the fleshpots of Jegorich and Saltilla. Were all her crew comprised of such 'interceptions'? How did she turn them to her cause?

"... Is that something your Ojong contact told you to do?" Betelgeuse asked, a strange intuition welling within his gut.

"Stop questioning me," Queen She said, turning her eyes toward him and chewing hard on her rebreather's mouthpiece. Irritation, hostility… a subtle sprinkling of treachery.

Why did she try to assume control earlier? Why were they waiting? … How did they meet in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere?

Betelguese scanned the Queen's face closely, noting that she hadn't, like the rest of them, covered her face up with an opaque mask (maybe it was vanity, maybe she had a legitimate reason for doing it, who the hell knew?)...

A soft breeze blew in from nowhere. His bare fingers felt cold. His heartbeat hitched. Betelgeuse had assumed that Queen She possessed better knowledge than he did of the underlying political configuration, and that this gave her a greater degree of political autonomy. He assumed that she was the puppet master, and that all he needed to do was to corner her in her own game.

She's caught within the web herself. Plans within plans. The air is thick with it. Layers upon layers of confusion and chaos.

Betelgeuse' perceptions began to shudder with the realization. Vertigo. No way to tell who the source of the mysterious intentionality was—the faint waves had dissipated, and that was somehow more terrifying.

He knew, but what could he do about it?

Too little too late, the domineering one snarled.

You ignored us, the insidious one whispered. You chose your own morality over us.

Betelgeuse ground them to dust. Silence.

The others had settled into a beetle-eyed watchfulness, woefully unaware of the seething undercurrent of energy. Even Filippov, who could sense something amiss with Betelgeuse, regarded him with wide-eyed incomprehension.

Betelgeuse peered out left of the concrete column, keeping the palm of his hand on the barrel of his railgun.

In the distance, several figures had set up in a semicircle around the dark descent into the basement. They made large and massy silhouettes against the gray wall in the background. They reminded him of Kanogg's guards. Betelgeuse was beginning to wonder if there was a factory out there which manufactured these goons en masse.

Review the immediate situation:

Unfamiliar environment;

Stranded amongst hostiles with minimal backup; and

True enemy still hidden.

Extent of exposure: critical.

Betelgeuse' hand was trembling. His mind was short-circuiting. He closed his eyes, but in that faux-darkness a great vision split his mind open. He saw, as if he had been gifted a third eye.

A towering edifice of lies. All spirit, all intangible. Babel looms tall and dread overhead.

It shifts like something alive. It draws upon the moral energies of dead nations, steals life from vast graveyards of gods and deities past. It is a galactic constellation sustained by dead labor.

The Cosmic Dragon, Theli, is its master. I think it is Him. God is a disguise. God is a sham. God is what cannot be.

Betelgeuse forced his eyelids open. The present reasserted itself. Once again, he inhabited his body, finding it half-soaked in cold sweat. His own turbid breath blew back into his face, hemmed in by a claustrophic mask. Tiredness, exhaustion, stress. Here, in a corner of Gehen, hiding like a rat. He raised his head and blinked—the image of Babel transformed into the unfinished concrete structure. It was nondescript and inconspicuous.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

It had used its drabness and banality to hide.

How had he come here? He could see like never before, as if his mind's eye had been blind his entire life. Now he could finally see the edges of a superstructure created of libidinal flows. It was the true face of Theli, given manifestation by vast market.

He had no more anxiety. Almost as if his coming here was ordained by Theli.

'Theli is a creature of imagination,' Betelgeuse forced himself to think. He was in control—not God, not Theli, not the Incunabula.

Betelgeuse bent down and picked up a piece of rubble that was about the size of a baseball. Queen She narrowed her eyes, unaware of the silent change that had come over Betelgeuse.

A billion, trillion, quadrillion shifting meridians had intersected somewhere across the galaxy. In moments, the window of opportunity would be gone, and Entropy would crush him, Betelgeuse Sakar, into nothingness.

"Filippov, get ready," Betelgeuse growled.

Gauging the distance, he wound up and then threw it, straining his muscles to the max. The object hurtled through the darkness and impacted with a loud, thumping sound. A dark figure crumpled to the ground.

Somewhere in the great void, a single calculation was changed. Then another. The constellation of mental cathexes intersected, with each affecting the other, the effect cascading, multiplying, flowing from one end of the human universe to another.

Intentionalities flared and then receded. It was the prerogative of the Overman to choose, and he had chosen.

Shouts were raised. Dark figures struggled amongst themselves, screaming and yelling in anger. Betelgeuse hefted his railgun, readying himself for combat.

"What have you done!" Queen She yelled, her voice filled with disbelief and consternation. Her mind was filled with a roaring hysteria which she brought down upon Betelgeuse in the form of compulsion.

He held his nerve, coolly deflecting her wild attempts at controlling his mind.

"Something big is going to happen," Betelgeuse said cryptically, meeting the Queen's eyes and pitying her rage. How could she begin to understand what had happened?

"Fool! You'll drag us down with you!" Queen She shrieked, glancing at the far wall. Betelgeuse knew she wanted to run.

But it was time.

"Brace!" Filippov cried suddenly.

Betelgeuse did. A commotion was raised behind them. The ground began to shudder.

"Subsidence!" Filippov yelled.

"With me," Betelgeuse said, raising his voice above the bedlam and raising himself to his full height. He ran, and the rest trailed him, including Queen She. There was no time to question his authority.

No sooner had they reached the perimeter wall than the ground behind them started to subside. With a great and lingering crash, the front half of the concrete frame collapsed into a dark chasm lanced through with pinpricks of light and churning mysteriously. The holo-buses parked at the front of the building were swallowed whole, leaving a thin strip of ground around the perimeter wall.

"Filippov, report! What are we looking at?" Betelgeuse said, crawling to the edge of the chasm and peering over. The subsidence had exposed a portion of the building's foundations, although the hole went down far deeper than that.

He didn't know what was happening any more than the others, but he had finally intuited the true vastness of the powers he was grappling with. As such, he knew that there was no way for him to know.

But at the very least, he'd gathered enough to chart a careful path forward.

"Subsidence caused by drilling activity in the subterranean Mining Tunnels, hundred meters deep plus minus ten," Filippov said. "Assume Bejana Drill-Rigs. Shear force must have gone above threshold."

"Anton, you dare usurp my authority!?" Queen She roared. Betelgeuse turned just in time to see her pounce, and he deftly sidestepped her hysterical attack. The next moment, the full force of her intentionality was upon him.

Betelgeuse countered her efforts easily, at the same time advancing and swinging the barrel of his railgun in a vicious arc. His attack clipped her in her side, sending her body smashing against the perimeter wall and causing her to cry out in pain.

His men turned on their erstwhile companions, aiming down their barrels at Queen She's honor-guard.

"Forfeit your weapons," Betelgeuse commanded, turning their fear against them and trapping them with the power of his compulsion. "I wanted a workable relationship, but your hostility will not be tolerated."

Almost immediately, Queen She's women lay down their weapons on the ground. Their fear of death had overtaken their fear of the Queen.

Imposing my will via the naked use of the compulsion had always been a blunt tool. Hijacking their emotions is far more effective.

Betelgeuse had learned much from Queen She.

"Traitors!" Queen She rasped, her body curled up in pain. Her expression shifted variously from surprise to anger—surprise at Betelgeuse' affinity with the compulsion, anger at having been so quickly and completely denuded of power. Without a word, Betelgeuse gestured for his men to gather the surrendered weapons, then strode forward, casting his shadow over the fallen Queen.

Betelgeuse' compulsion had encapsulated everyone except her. All eyes were on him.

"Don't bother trying to take back control," Betelgeuse intoned. "They're mine now."

"How!?" Queen She cried incredulously, her inflamed intentionality slamming into Betelgeuse' iron will without much effect.

Betelgeuse tried again to grasp hold of her mind, but the threads of her intentionality were slippery as eels. Her mind was a far more disciplined construct than the Sand-Marshal's.

But the balance of force was obviously on Betelgeuse' side. Queen She's life lay in his hands.

"... What are you waiting for?" Queen She spat. "Kill me!"

"That's mine to do as I please. Unfortunately, these women," Betelgeuse pointed at her honor-guard, "these women appear to have real loyalty to your cause. Their minds might melt if I kill you, and I'd rather not be so wasteful. Unlike you."

"Convoy incoming, B.T.," Filippov said, turning to Betelgeuse, his palm pressed flat to the ground. "Feels like armored cars coming down the street."

Shots rang out in the distance. Sounds of combat emanating from the direction of the concrete frame across the chasm.

Betelgeuse wouldn't kill her, not yet. She still had a part to play.

"Truce," Betelgeuse held out a hand, bringing his masked face close to hers.

Queen She stared into his fathomless eyes for a long while. Seeing no way out of her predicament, she bit her lip and took his hand.

Her mind relaxed. In that moment, Betelgeuse attacked with his intentionality, forcing his mind upon hers and causing her eyes to roll upwards momentarily.

"Tell me who's coming," Betelgeuse said, his hand still clasped around Queen She's palm.

"Armored cars are probably local militia," she replied hesitantly, her eyes refocusing on him, her face contorting strangely, as if she sensed something amiss with herself.

"Good to know," Betelgeuse said, pulling Queen She violently to her feet and almost tearing her arm from its socket. She grunted, but otherwise kept her pain to herself.

"We need to leave now. Circumstances have changed," Queen She asserted.

"Out of the question," Betelgeuse shot back. Universal consonance and not coincidence had brought him here. He had to see it through.

More importantly, he could still feel that unique intentionality-signature, pulsing beneath all the confusion. He needed to uncover its source.

"The militia—can we work with them?" he asked.

Queen She flushed her body to the perimeter wall and peered over. A trundling convoy of cars had appeared, roof lights flashing a garish turquoise and orange.

"... The symbol of the sickle. They're Ujung," Queen She said, her eyes half-dazed.

"You said your contact was Ujung," Betelgeuse recalled, penetrating the Queen's mind with his intentionality and compelling her to divulge more information as to this shadowy contact.

"Yes. Rifiq is my contact," Queen She mumbled. "He said the Ujung reserves wouldn't be activated. It was supposed to be a routine interception."

Betelgeuse filed that name away for future reference. It turned out that whoever this Rifiq was, he'd played Queen She like a fiddle.