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

Betelgeuse was being pushed, struggling, towards the front. The swelling disturbance about him became conspicuous enough that the PDF Lieutenant swung around on his heels, and when that man's sharp gaze locked onto Betelgeuse, his eyes contracted in surprise to recognize the blue lapels of a TAF jacket.

Intentionalities swirled and pressed down upon Betelgeuse, mixing in with the racket that had been raised by the discordant crowd to create a ball of white noise that saturated his perceptual faculties. 'There's too many,' he thought, even as he gathered himself and made ready to utilize the compulsion, 'too many to control. And the Lieutenant—there's no telling if his affinity is high enough to turn the tables upon me. There's too much risk. If I pit my intentionality against him and he counters…'

He stopped himself and let his tensing intentionality dissipate. It just wasn't worth the risk.

"What is this?" the Lieutenant bellowed, flexing his neck and jutting his powerful jaw toward Betelgeuse. Then he eyed the inflamed brand upon Betelgeuse' forehead and squinted: "Penal Legion. Identify yourself!"

"PLP Sakar, sir" Betelgeuse said, shrugging off the hands pushing at him and deliberately refraining from saluting the Lieutenant. Though the man's face was wide and strong, Betelgeuse saw the unmistakable thread of anxiety and fear within those eyes and felt that he couldn't have been much older than himself.

"—Stop them!" a woman cried from somewhere behind him, and the crowd of light-skins chorused, buttressing her plaintive plea with their own chaotic jabbers. The PDF soldiers were still engaged in brutalizing the dark-skins, and by now none of the ragged creatures could muster up any semblance of resistance.

'It's like being in a mob drops their IQ by 50 points,' Betelgeuse scoffed silently.

"... I am confused. State your business, PLP Sakar," the Lieutenant instructed, attempting to stare Betelgeuse down but quickly realizing that intimidation was thoroughly lost on that PLP; whatever intimidation factor was likely to be lost anyway, because although the Lieutenant might count as tall amongst his own people he was almost a half-head shorter than Betelgeuse.

"Just taking a walk in the city and enjoying my off-day, sir, but I couldn't help but realize those citizens appear to already have been subdued. I would advise we get them to a hospital ASAP," Betelguese pointed to the cringing dark-skins.

Shouts and ragged shrieks, cursing Betelgeuse, cursing the government, cursing the TAF, yelling at him to "stop the violence" at once.

"We are engaged in the official business of suppressing bad elements, PLP Sakar, and I advise you to be on your way," the Lieutenant returned, glancing at the flaring light-skin crowd with hooded eyes and gripping the baton in his hand hard enough for his knuckles to turn white. Betelgeuse folded his arms across his chest, unconvinced. The savagery had long since shaded over into a public show of official sadism.

Suddenly, one of the dark-skins rose to his feet and bolted, stepping over his flailing comrades and just managing to break out of the PDF's tightening corral, and he retrieved an object from his pocket and unfurled it to show another laminated picture of the boy—a young boy of about nine or ten, coal-dark and cherubic of countenance, his snub-nose finely shaped, his eyes wet and reflecting light, his hair long enough to reach his chin—and the picture captioned in bolded crimson majuscule: "REMEMBER EUGENE".

The Lieutenant returned his attention to the front, barking out orders to take down the "terrorist" who was now declaiming with wide-eyed passion: "Bring Eugene's murderers to justice! Down with the corrupt military! —", and the Lieutenant was swinging his baton in threatening arcs and advancing with violence on his mind.

The crowd clamored behind Betelgeuse, and he could feel hands clutching at him again, hands that he brushed off brusquely. He clenched his teeth, contemplating his next action carefully, scoffing against the overwhelming sense of deja vu; he'd been dragged into this conflict against his will, just like he'd been dragged into Michael Thane's foolish attempt at mutiny. It was liable to be the death of him, all this 'wrong place, wrong time' bullshit, and he figured he really had to learn to keep his distance from problematic occurrences.

And he reflected:

Once I put on the dress of a TAF soldier, my destiny was no longer my own. I was dragged into this because of my injudicious proximity and because I was identifiable as a member of the TAF, a key protagonist of this metastasizing civil conflict. I must maintain my anonymity in the future, or, failing that, I should not let curiosity get the better of me.

Still, I've done as much as I can legitimately do. What the Lieutenant said is right—he's prosecuting official business, and I'm just a PLP on his off day. The dark-skins can go to hell for all I care.

But there's no telling what the crowd will resort to if I just walk away. On the one hand, they want me to do what they're too cowardly to do themselves. On the other, they're running entirely on mob psychology, and given their incredibly complicated relationship with the TAF I can't say for sure what they can be pushed to do.

There are two main potentialities I must consider. Firstly, say I make my escape safely—I already see a bunch of them taking pictures with their transceivers' civvie-addon, so I can assume this is all going to make it onto the Intraweb. I couldn't care less about the TAF's reputation, but the TAF higher-ups are likely to question me, and if I screw up seriously enough they might even throw me into the Detention Barracks to keep Edith company. Secondly, say one of the crowd or maybe an over-enthusiastic PDFer decides to maybe become violent with me, and I'm forced to use the compulsion to defend myself—then the chances of my compulsion matrix affinity being divulged to the TAF skyrocket and then I'm fucked all over again.

Is there another way to resolve this?

Betelgeuse shifted his weight from foot to foot, his mind absorbed in attempting to parse the situation and come up with a practicable course of action. Before him the dark-skin who was brandishing Eugene's photograph had become embroiled in a tussle, as several Privates—including the Private who had stepped on the head of the motionless woman now burbling through her own fluids and likely minutes away from death—and one Corporal were attempting unsuccessfully to tackle that slippery and light-footed man.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"You," he turned and pointed out the nearest in the crowd, a beautifully made-up, dimple-cheeked woman clothed in a beige blouse, whose skin was light enough to be described as fair and whose shrieks seemed practiced in how distraught she could make them sound. "Ambulance, now," he commanded in a tone that was hard and final.

"And you," he pointed out the gaping man beside the woman, the man clean-shaven and lean-cheeked, his eyes sullen and puffy perhaps from alcohol or insomnia or both. "Call Saltilla Police. Get them here, now."

The two of them gurgled and began flicking through their transceivers. Satisfied that they were doing as he instructed, Betelgeuse stalked across the pavement toward the Lieutenant now engaged in beating the snot out of a youngish rebel-eyed woman, the woman sporting a bloodied bulbous nose that took up a full quarter of her oval face.

"Hand it over! Hand it over!" the Lieutenant barked repeatedly, ordering the dark-skin to produce the 'contraband' he was somehow certain she was hiding within her jacket, and the woman curled up into a fetal position as he rained down blows upon her back, his strikes hard enough that the thumps were discernible even through all that commotion. Betelgeuse imagined she was screaming, but by then so many people were shouting and so many cars were honking that he doubted he would hear her even if she did.

The Lieutenant raised his baton, taking it up in a reverse grip and moving a step closer—Betelgeuse could see he was going to jam it down in the woman's side, and that at that angle it was liable to destroy the woman's kidney.

The baton, angled downward, fell several centimeters and then had its motion arrested by an arm that snapped out and caught its middle before it could achieve any real momentum. It was Betelgeuse, towering over that PDF officer and gripping that weapon tightly.

"She's done. Listen to me, Lieutenant, or this whole place could ignite," Betelgeuse hissed, his face a rigid mask, his eyes edged with adamantine resolve.

"Get your fucking hand off me, PLP Sakar—"

"Look at them," Betelgeuse urged, interrupting the Lieutenant and straining against his efforts to break free. He forced his face close to the Lieutenant's ear and began speaking in a tone that was low and icy. "Look. The civvies are looking for an excuse to do something. You best give some thought to how your coycom's gonna take it when your stupid face is plastered all over the Intraweb. Now, do you want the caption to read 'brutality' or 'murderer'? In fact, I've heard the Gimma Ashby's looking for murderers…"

"Who the hell do you think you are?" the Lieutenant seethed, his lineaments contorting in a fantastic rictus of rage. But Betelgeuse knew that the man had mistaken anger for strength, could feel a well of fear bubbling deep within his pupils.

"I am PLP Betelgeuse Sakar," Betelgeuse responded flatly. "You've added enough fuel to the fire, Lieutenant. As we speak, both the Police and an ambulance are making their way down, and the best course of action, in my opinion, would be to clear up the roads so they can get these guys to the hospital… that one specifically," he said, pointing with his other hand at the woman face down and twitching spasmodically upon the pavement's cracked tiling.

The Lieutenant opened his mouth, ready perhaps to let loose a torrent of invective, then held it open in a gape, his expression faltering.

Fear, indeed. This man can hardly bear the fear of being judged by the public.

He closed his mouth and pursed his lips. His eyeballs swiveled, glancing over Betelgeuse' shoulder toward the crowd. For one brief and uncertain moment Betelgeuse thought the man might call upon the compulsion—and he sharpened his mind, dredging up his intentionality and readying himself for the clash, feeling his Incunabulum pulse against his chest—when he felt the strength dissipate from the Lieutenant's arm. Betelgeuse released his grip, letting the arm fall back to the Lieutenant's side.

"Marcus, turn that woman over!" the Lieutenant hollered, adjusting his helmet so that it almost covered over his eyes, and one of his Privates arrested his baton-swing mid-motion, straightening his back and casting a fraught look in the Lieutenant's direction.

"Sir…"

"Hurry up, you shit! The woman's drowning!" the Lieutenant roared. "The rest of you, line them up for handover!"

Hearing this, the rest of the PDF platoon stopped in their tracks. The man whom the Lieutenant called "Marcus", a Private's chevron threaded into his epaulet, picked through the whimpering and trembling bodies to find the woman and turn her over right-side up.

A collective gasp. Whimpering from the dark-skins. The crowd had become silent, and their shouts had receded into sirens and honking. The woman was choking on something, maybe her own tooth. Accusations replete with anger and offense. Marcus, scrunching up his face, grabbed the woman by the throat and shoved his fingers into her mouth, and the woman flailed strengthlessly, retching and then regurgitating the contents of her stomach out onto the pavement. There, Betelgeuse observed a piece of enamel floating in the pool of vomitus. With a disgusted face, Marcus wiped his hand onto the back of the woman's blouse and threw her body backward onto the ground. The back of her head thudded onto the pavement, the impact causing her blood-gelled eyelids to flutter, and her eyeballs rolled up so far only her bloodshot scleras could be seen.

Her face was a mess of blood and threading fluids, her lower lip split viciously into two where the one remaining tooth on her lower gum had cut into it, so that it looked like she had three lips. Her delicate nose was twitching and ejecting blood-streaked mucus down her philtrum, and her lower gum had been mashed into a wet and trypophobic honeycomb.

'What a mess,' Betelgeuse thought, staring at that dying woman and surreptitiously backing away into the crowd. He would have to find a chance to escape the moment the opportunity presented itself. No way he was standing around when the Police showed up.

"We are handovering to who, sir?" a gaunt and sallow-cheeked PFC asked tentatively.

"... Saltilla Police," the Lieutenant growled, throwing Betelgeuse a glare and finding the PLP in a state of curious distraction.

The blood-streaked members of the PDF platoon looked at each other, nonplussed, their expressions reflecting confusion and perhaps a slight twinge of consternation.

"What are you waiting for?" the Lieutenant growled. "Line them up!"

The platoon jumped into action, hollering amongst themselves frantically and taking the prone and quivering bodies and dragging their screaming bodies into formation.

'What a culture of fear this young Lieutenant has managed to cultivate! A respectable attempt at control, but I would be remiss to admire it given that he has only achieved abject failure,' Betelgeuse mused, stepping backwards into the milling light-skin crowd.

The fitful activity continued at speed. After several minutes, the Lieutenant turned toward the loitering throng and started pointing and yelling at them to "disperse immediately"; his language was loud and forceful, and he gave them the impression that he'd set his platoon on them if forced to do so, that he'd brutalize his own kinsmen if only they gave him an excuse.

And he turned again to regard that PLP Betelgeuse Sakar, the one who'd shown him for an incompetent and cowardly fool. That was the one he owed a truly vicious beating. The Lieutenant scanned the multitude of faces, narrowing his eyes.

…

… Where had he gone?

The Lieutenant spun on his heels, trying to distinguish the PLP amongst the dissolving mass but in the circumstances perceiving nothing but a handful of scattering gawkers.