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

Shouts and hollers stabbed past them from around the bend. The PLPs huddled flush against the mold-streaked concrete-siding, carbines held at the ready.

"Use the compulsion matrix," Betelgeuse said, pressing up against the diminutive sergeant beside him.

"It's not so easy as you think," Thete snapped. He looked down and to the side to observe glinting beads of sweat form upon the side of her face and around her nosebridge.

"Just confuse them enough so we can pick'em off," he returned.

Somewhere behind him, Douglas was muttering softly that he'd "dropped a magazine in the drain" and cursing his disability. Waves of static emanated from Voke's transceiver, alternating with his clipped and repeated calls for urgent backup—once, twice, three times—and each time the reply was coded in noise that was featureless and white and damning.

"I will use it," Thete said finally. "Ready in three."

The NW-FAPER carbine was in Betelgeuse' hands, and he flipped it around to check that the safety was off, cocked it, then brought its buttstock up and pushed it against his shoulder. "Voke, you're with me," he instructed, "Doug, you check that no one's fucking us in the ass."

The Saltillans' bellows had risen to the height of apoplexy, and their garbled shouts made confused twangs in his mind. Thete stuck out her hand and raised three fingers.

Three…

Her form pulsed darkly, sending out emanations of blunt tendrils toward the enemy. A familiar feeling crept into the periphery of his perceptual faculties, and the corners of his vision started to darken.

Two…

"Lay down your weapons!" Thete shouted, bringing her face close to the edge of the concrete wall and receiving in reply a muddle of loud and confused noises.

One…

Betelgeuse strafed out and aimed vaguely down the street; there were Saltillans there, glazed-eyed and milling around drunkenly. He gunned the trigger; his carbine bucked, its muzzle splaying a tetra-flash, and a stream of bullets lanced across that frontage. He kept his finger on the trigger, keeping a tight control over his weapon as he wheeled counter-clockwise. Voke had lunged out and slammed into the ground to Betelgeuse' left, his own weapon opening up fully-automatic.

Bullets pinged off the ground and raised swirls of sandy smog, some finding their marks in limbs and torsos, some ricocheting off the side of the flanking concrete walls, some penetrating through glass windows and eliciting muffled screams. Saltillans were screaming and falling, and one in particular who was gaping stupidly had his head riddled with holes, blasting bits of his brain out in misty clumps.

Betelgeuse scanned the frontage. Salleh was nowhere to be seen.

The half-headed torso slumped lifelessly to the ground. Adjacent to that damaged piece of flesh were men who had fallen reflexively into prone positions and who were just snapping out of their momentary confusion, their minds having been shocked into awareness by the sudden and wretched deaths of their companions.

Thete can't hold the compulsion! She lacks affinity!

Grabbing onto Voke's vest, Betelgeuse strained and stumbled back toward cover, just barely making it around the wall to avoid the return fire that zinged past and scoured the ground and skimmed bits of concrete and plaster off of the covering-wall's edge.

"Got a few of them!" Betelgeuse yelled. "But no Salleh!"

"I… cun't get him…" Thete breathed, muttering confusedly and gritting her teeth. "He's gotten some training—"

The chunk of wall they were covering behind blasted inward, disintegrating into pebbled lumps. Gusts of heat flared and steamed the exposed portions of Betelgeuse' face, and his vision tumbled. His body reacted before he knew he was falling, and he twisted to the side, breaking his fall and regaining his feet in one smooth motion.

Before him was a gaping hole where a section of wall had once been, and to the other side of the wall was laid out Thete face-down in the dirt, her legs bent so that her shins were flat on the ground, her calves were squeezed against her thighs, and her ass was sticking out backward.

"RPG!" someone screamed, but Thete remained where she lay, and Betelgeuse squinted to see a shallow dent pounded into the back of her helmet.

She's knocked out. I need cover, quickly.

Betelgeuse lunged forward and slammed his back into the section of wall still standing and peeked out the side into the newly-opened hole, to see, inside the hovel, a young Saltillan girl wrangling a weapon off of her back, her expression teetering between terror and exhilaration, her coal-dark skin streaked gray with dust, her small and flattish nose upturned and flaring, her face beautiful with its first brush with mortality. A flash of recognition—it was the small girl who had been with Salleh's group.

At her feet lay a spent RPG canister—the detritus of an ancient weapon that had retained its efficacy after so many centuries. He had seen videos of it upon the Vespertilio—seeing it firsthand was a much different experience.

The will in him knew what had to be done. His heart pounded in his ears, forcing his blood through his veins; the world slowed down, and in that moment there was only combat and the detached recognition that he was in it.

He did not hesitate to let his intentionality envelop that small body. The swirls of concrete dust stung as they coated the scars burnt into his forehead, and the dribblets of pain seemed to inflame his soul. The girl had just gotten her arms over her rifle, its long barrel almost as tall as her, when she stopped and shuddered; the will that moved her body blazed with feverish intensity, and Betelgeuse found that it was a pure and unadulterated will, buttressed by belief and a zealous, sacrificial commitment. Her Incunabulum, a Hollow grade strapped around her waist, pulsed with an energy that felt weighty with internal magnetism.

To have undergone the Analysis at such an age! Or—is this perhaps an illegal graft? Like the Nook barber's Incunabulum?

No time to think about it now. He banished all superfluous thoughts and, with great difficulty, brought to bear every ounce of his strength to crush her will underneath his; he flayed her intentionality viciously and eradicated all trace of resistance and saw her soulful green eyes quaver and glaze within her sockets.

Seconds of struggle. Movement, melting away into stillness.

Betelgeuse picked through rubble and half-destroyed furniture to come beside her. The battle had reached a lull and an uneasy silence, broken only by pained and plaintive cries coming from outside the half-decimated structure, descended. He looked back to see Voke and Douglas peeking at him through the hole and decided to ignored them. He turned and brought himself close to her ear and whispered softly: "Those out there, they are your enemies. They have turned their backs on your people, your family, and intend to hurt you. They will eventually kill you if you do not kill them first."

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"I… I have no family," she manged, her lower lip quivering.

"The memory of your family. They will desecrate and dishonor it," Betelgeuse continued, struggling with the remnants of her intentionality and the fading dregs of her willfulness. "It is your duty to kill them, for the glory of your god."

"For Ahman?" she asked.

"Will you question Him?" Betelgeuse threw the question back.

Shaking her head emphatically, she turned and made her way mechanically to the door. Betelgeuse hid himself behind the section of wall beside, his boots crunching bits of glass underfoot. He glanced at Voke and Douglas, and motioned for them to be ready. They nodded with morose expressions.

The girl shot him a difficult look, and he nodded at her, encouraging her to bring the fight to her newly-recognized enemies. And she was gone.

Jabbering sounds filtered in through the half-open door. Betelgeuse leaned slowly to his left, where shards of broken window still stuck out from transoms shot through and splintered in parts. His left eye peeked out and he was just in time to see the girl raise her firearm. And all of a sudden she became a blur of movement, opening fire upon her former allies and killing them where they stood. Shouts of anger, shouts of surprise. The girl cut down her fellows remorselessly, efficiently, flitting between their falling bodies with preternatural swiftness and dodging their flimsy retaliations.

An immense crash. Betelgeuse' head whipped around—to see Salleh materialized out of nowhere, the tall and fearsome creature roaring in rage and engaging Voke and Douglas in a furious melee. Salleh swung his long arms like whips, cracking them against Voke and sending him flying into the in Betelgeuse' direction. Voke's body rocketed into the decimated structure and crashed into a smattering of wooden surfaces, splintering them and sending gouts of dust into the air.

Douglas faced Salleh alone now, his arm and non-arm held out before him, his face streaked with soot and etched with hardy determination. Betelgeuse raised his carbine at the combatants, aiming at Salleh, attempting to avoid Douglas—there, now—but before he could fire, Douglas pounced onto Salleh, dodging a wicked backhand and jamming his arm-stump into Salleh's face. The combatants whirled and tumbled back behind the section of wall to the right, disappearing from view.

Betelgeuse lowered his carbine. He glanced down to see Voke given over into unconsciousness.

"I need your aid!" Betelgeuse called out, reaching for the girl with his intentionality; within moments the Saltillan girl was beside him, covered in blood but otherwise unharmed.

"We need to help Douglas—Ahman's chosen, he is battling against a demon! We must not allow him to die!" Betelgeuse yelled, stepping over Voke and rushing out the hole to see—

Douglas, his body wound around Salleh's upper body, the two engaging in a ferocious grappling contest. Strips of flesh hung from Douglas' bloody face, scratched off by Salleh's long and wicked-looking fingernails, and they flapped around wildly as he was sent whipping through the air by Salleh's brute strength; but still he held on, and he jammed his weirdly bent arm-stump into the muscular White's face over and over again. His arm-stump had been broken, Betelgeuse observed, and a piece of bone was sticking up and out of his sleeve.

"Kill him!" Betelgeuse yelled, directing the girl toward the flailing Salleh.

But she was fighting back—the girl was attempting to resist him!

"No!" Salleh roared, glancing at Betelgeuse and the girl and suddenly given over to a mad rage. With a powerful twist he finally managed to dislodge Douglas, sending the walleye flying out into the air and into the shadows to crash down onto a motionless figure naked upon the floor—it was one of the destitutes grappling with Bloaming pains, and when Douglas smashed into that man's still-humanoid skull, the head was crushed into the graveled ground, exploding its contents like a burst pustule and expelling a radial welter of sanguineous fluids and ejecting gobbets of meat and bone that tinkled lightly upon the surrounding concrete surfaces.

The alleyway was awash in sunlight, Betelgeuse suddenly realized, and he surmised that Salleh must have cut through the massy tangle of wires to ambush them from above; further up the alleyway some of the semi-sentient destitutes were gibbering and moaning and attempting to crawl away from the lethal commotion.

"Release her, now!" Salleh commanded, raising himself up to his full height and pointing his bloodied fingers toward Betelgeuse.

Betelgeuse' Incunabulum pulsed; he braced himself, feeling a thousand dark fingers dig into him at once.

The world was rent asunder. The full force of Salleh's intentionality smashed itself into Betelgeuse, warping his perceptions and sending him into freefall. The universe was a vertiginous vortex, confusing and circuitous and spinning in every way that was wrong.

He fought back, sharpening himself into a point and smoothening out his edges into something aerodynamic, raging against the tide and forcing himself through the immense pressure. Something inside him was sapping his strength and threatening to destroy him from within, and he realized it was the girl, still resisting, still attempting to break his hold.

She and Salleh… such an uncommon bond…

Betelgeuse was caught between them, harried but refusing to buckle. Slowly, his perception began to return to him, and a murky reality emerged out of brightness and dullness and blackness and whiteness. The girl was still beside him, and Salleh stood looming some ten meters away, his mouth streaming with blood. Douglas was lying where he fell, and Voke and Thete were nowhere to be seen.

He was alone.

A growl ripped itself from Salleh's throat, and the White redoubled his efforts, causing Betelgeuse' vision to swim. The girl had gone from passively resisting to mounting her own all-out offensive; he was losing ground under their combined onslaught, and it was only a matter of time…

Sparks. Imaginary figures. Symbols were racing through his mind. There was the red triangle, its upward-facing vertex a golden finial that pierced upward into nothingness. The Hereford meant enduring, it meant endurance even in the face of loss or pain or impossible odds. And even if death came, the pride of the Edomite lay in enduring unto the end.

Betelgeuse pushed back with a sudden and colossal expenditure of energy, catching Salleh off-kilter; with a swift motion he plucked the combat knife from his belt, the one they'd been instructed to sharpen on their return to Saltilla, and he flipped the blade around and leapt into the girl, grabbing her by her shoulder and clavicle and dragging the serrated edge of his knife across her soft neck.

Skin and flesh parted; a curtain of blood oozed down and enveloped his fingers in warmth. Then he hit arteries and tore through them to release bright-red blood that spurted in a piddling stream.

He dragged the knife back and forth, sawing the serrated edge into the girl's neck. Metal sliced through flesh then grated upon her vertebrae, and the girl's gasps turned to gurgles and chokes and asphyxiating gasps that sent more of the sanguine fluids burbling out of the space in her neck.

Wretched screams tore from Salleh's mouth, and Betelgeuse felt his mind shudder at the sudden weight of Salleh's intentionality, the man's will now melded with a torrential rage that threatened to overbear Betelgeuse. But the girl's resistance had ceased, and now that Betelgeuse' full attention was given to resisting Salleh's attempts at compulsion, a defense was much easier to muster.

With a maddened howl, Salleh lunged, his considerable bulk bolting forward at breakneck speed. Betelgeuse turned and, gripping onto the girl's hair, twisted her head around so that it was looking where her back was facing, her pretty eyes staring straight at Salleh, her tongue flexing outward. And he pushed, shearing the head straight off; the headless body flopped, twitching into the ground, and Betelgeuse was carried by his momentum into Salleh.

His bet paid off. Salleh swerved and crashed into the adjacent concrete wall, unwilling to pulp the girl's gaping head. Betelgeuse dropped his knife into the dirt and with the same hand grabbed onto his carbine's handle and threaded his finger through the trigger guard and—

Sounds from behind, distracting him. Engines humming, high-pitched whines powering down. Betelgeuse wheeled, still holding on to the girl's head by her dark and silken strands. It was a swarm of armed men with makeshift armor strapped to their torsos, bearing knives and clubs and hunks of sharpened metal that could double-up as swords. Their bare faces had skin that was half-dark to tannish, and under the direct sunlight their complexions were a semi-shade off from fair.

"Salleh!" the fatty-cheeked man at the head of that troop barked, the contingent brandishing their improvised weapons at the gasping White now stumbling backward and shivering as if he were being lacerated by a corrosive amalgamation of pain and fury—