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

Betelgeuse tapped his transceiver on the terminal affixed to the wall and the three of them passed through the steel doors to find themselves in a narrow, low-ceiling-ed hallway that turned pitch-dark as the doors slid close behind them.

Someone cursed.

At Betelgeuse' command they affixed their carbines with their Standard-Issue torches, and three beams of light materialized to make bright and roving patches upon the smooth wall two meters opposite. As far as he could see, the walls were made of tessellations of triangular panels that glistened a dull, gunmetal gray.

They went on through the hallway and followed the turn rightwise to find the ceiling and walls flare outwards into the landing of a descending stairwell, and they continued down the steps, their hearts pounding against their ribcages, their thumbs rubbing absentmindedly against their carbines' safeties.

The shadows were dark and suggestive of eyes, and Voke was whispering warding prayers to himself, his cursive sayings threading an anxious pitch through their lightly echoing footsteps.

It was maybe four or five flights of steps before a curious smell started to become noticeable, and Betelgeuse wrinkled his nose at the pungent and smoky aroma.

"... Someone farted?" Douglas snarked mutedly, and Betelgeuse almost burst out laughing.

"There's a familiar smell," Betelgeuse said, clearing his throat and taking several more steps and then coming to a complete stop, his companions following suit.

Voke's prayers died on his lips, and Betelgeuse could observe his face drain of color even by the dim illumination that the stray bounce of photons made.

"It's dead pipo, God Almighty, I'd recognize that smell anywhere," Voke muttered.

"Safeties off," Betelgeuse instructed, and their carbines clicked live and their muzzles were trained at the frontage.

The environment was filling with an ambient light that gradually increased in intensity as they descended, and they reached the stairwell's base and peered across and into the threshold to witness, framed against burnished steel, a ghastly sight that sent a cold and spectral tingle running up their spines.

Mass death. The steel floor streaked with gore and partial limbs. The smell of refuse and iron and vinegar. Somewhere in there was mixed the acrid odor of burnt gunpowder.

They stepped carefully into that capacious place, finding nothing alive, nothing completely whole. A thin pool of blood had spread over a large portion of the floor—reaching almost halfway across the space—and Betelgeuse dipped the tip of his boot into its surface to watch it jiggle rather than ripple, the whole asymmetrical lake having set up into a pudding of purples and reds.

It was cold here. The conditioners hummed on without pause. The lattice of overhead panel-lights buzzed incessantly.

Betelgeuse turned right of the stairwell's threshold, stepping through the pool of blood and making toward its center where a cluster of tables was located, right in the middle of that gore-spill. His bootsteps made sickening imprints in the layer of coagulate, and as he neared the splintered surface of the central table upon which was spattered a variety of different body parts—half-faces, bits of stained skull, splotches of gray- and white-matter, splays of teeth and quarter-clefts of jaws—the sides of his boots became caked in gummy, dripping matter.

Douglas and Voke followed him reluctantly, treading carefully through the bloodpool and coming to a stop at the head of the collapsed table, where the remnants of a curiously-shaped device lay smoking, sparking and sputtering. Across from the charnel profusion was a huge and half-opened metal box looming over Betelgeuse, the box appearing to contain several rack-fulls of carbines.

"God…" Voke breathed, skirting the table's edge and bending down close to a body which appeared to have been sliced down diagonally from clavicle to kidney, the top half of that man's torso connected to the bottom half by the merest sliver of flesh, the top half fallen over face-first into a plastic splinter that gored it through its eye-socket. He brought his face closer, inspecting the edges of the slice, where the flesh had been parted, and found it uneven and ragged, and when he peered over into the exposed cavity of that torso, he found the organs still slick purple polyps under the stabbing glare of the OLEDs.

"Even God would hesitate," Douglas said, strabismic eyes splaying wide apart, his tone uncharacteristically grim. "The Jims are fuggin' brutaler than the Chimes…"

"Lets not get carried away," Betelgeuse said, poking at a caved-in head with a muzzle and causing a piece of brain to spill out onto one of the many canted facets of that shattered table. "It was a pure hit-job. Can't be sure if it's even the Gimma Ashby…"

"B.T., you gotta stop doing that. It's disrespectful," Voke counseled, his already-blue face paling biliously to see Betelgeuse act with such nonchalance.

Betelgeuse shrugged, pointing with his carbine-muzzle at the soaked waist-pouch of the dead man: "See, they still have their Incs. Whoever it was that killed them—and I'm going out on a limb here, but I don't think the Gimma Ashby had anything to do with it—whoever did this didn't even bother to strip the corpses of their incs."

"Wait, why would they care about Incs in the first place?" Douglas inquired, raising his eyebrow.

"Are you seriously asking me that?" Betelgeuse said, his expression turning incredulous.

"They're worth credits, Doug," Voke interjected, raising his head to stare at the ceiling.

"Ha! So whoever killed these guys didn't really do it for the money!" Douglas exclaimed, smacking his palm flat over his own helmet.

"Not for the value of their Incs anyway," Betelgeuse said. "We don't know what's happening in the background."

"... B.T., can you report this quickly so we can go? I don't feel so…" Voke mumbled, lowering his gaze at Betelgeuse and then almost doubling over with disgust to see the newly-minted corporal picking at one of the corpses. "Jesus fucking Christ Dogballs, what the hell are you—"

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"No one else knows they're here but us. It makes sense to take their Incs," Betelgeuse said simply, and Voke stared at him, nonplussed.

"Uh… so we can, like, sell it, right?" Douglas said, squelching over to Betelgeuse' side and wondering if he should not assist in their erstwhile commander's grim endeavor.

"Yes. I happen to know how to monetize it," Betelgeuse said, unsheathing his combat knife and tearing through the blood-gummed waist-pouch to retrieve from within an Incunabulum that—save for a few streaks of blood—appeared to be in almost-perfect condition. Its shimmering and tell-tale translucence identified it clearly as a Hollow Incunabulum.

Good quality. There must be twenty or thirty corpses here—it's a gold mine.

He was just about to flip the cover open when Douglas tapped him lightly on his shoulder.

"Now is not the time!" Betelgeuse snapped, wheeling around to shoot Douglas a difficult look.

"No I… I just wanted to say that I happen to be very sorry bout what I said earlier," Douglas said, his face hung with an expression of profoundest contrition. "Regarding all my whinging about the support coy and—"

"I don't wanna hear it. You'll get a cut of the money. Both of you. We'll split it three ways. Now get to work—I want every single Inc in this place," Betelgeuse instructed flatly.

But before he could return his attention to the Incunabulum before him, Voke was there beside the obsequiously nodding Douglas, murmuring importunately.

"Betelgeuse…"

"What now!"

"It's..."

"Spit it out!" Betelgeuse scowled.

"We must turn them in. This isn't… it isn't the path we should walk," Voke said, and Douglas snapped upright, growling: "Shut the hell up, fucking pussy—"

But Voke shouldered Douglas aside and stepped forward, squaring up to Betelgeuse. "These souls deserve their rest," he said stubbornly.

"We don't have the time for this, Voke, I beg of you," Betelgeuse returned, a hint of anger intruding upon his features.

"Betelgeuse, listen to me, we can't be playing with souls. That is the pathway to destruction. If you do this, if you commit to this, you will regret it."

"I can't understand what you're saying. It's illogical—"

"We just can't. Not everything can be easily expressed in words! There are hidden things, things we cannot do!"

Voke was ranting by now, his eyes lighting up with a zealous conviction.

"I just wanna sell the goddamn things. What the fuck kind of problem do you have with that?" Betelgeuse said. He could feel the rage build within him. Whatever he was expecting, it surely wasn't Voke scuttling his plans.

"It is not the way of the Godly nor the good. Selling it for money is a sacrilege."

Betelgeuse drew himself to his full height, bringing to bear his dread presence and lacing it through with his brimming intentionality. Voke winced, but didn't back down.

Voke was technically his subordinate now, and Betelgeuse thought about berating him as was his place to do. But he paused to recall the incident that had occurred in the Nook, and considered if taking a gentler approach might not result in a better outcome: it had been after their escape from the mob, after he compelled that working-girl to divulge the exit to the main city…

Voke said that the prostitute was going to help us. I didn't need to compel her, he said. She would've helped us anyway. And I know he hated what I did. He likes to live in a reasonable world, where only reasonable actions are taken. Such conceit!

But it's what I have to work with, so I must show him that I'm being reasonable, that all I want is to make him understand my sincerity, even if he doesn't share my convictions.

I should hold off on utilizing the compulsion on him either way. If I break my promise now, it will only serve to make Douglas suspicious of me, and Douglas is the most loyal ally I currently have. Not to mention I do not have enough faith in my ability to maintain the compulsion over long periods of time nor do I have any experience with it.

Douglas made to speak again, but Betelgeuse held up his hand and signaled for him to hold off.

"Voke, listen to me," Betelgeuse began, softening his gaze and letting his shoulders sag a little. "We're in a battle for our lives here. No one's going to help us if we can't help ourselves."

"What do you mean?"

"Douglas is right to think about finances. You have to be realistic. The way things are going we're not going to survive a single year in the Penal Legion, much less ten."

"That's got nothing to do with—"

"Logically speaking, we're not going anywhere if we don't have money. We have no choice but to sell these Incs. Trust me—we'll need every bit of money to escape the Penal Legion."

"You don't understand, Betelgeuse, you're not getting what I'm saying… I'm telling you you're dealing in souls. That's God's business, and God's business only," Voke returned, his voice losing its edge. "If we do this, we will go against the fundamental tenets of right life, right thinking. We'll create pariahs of ourselves."

And Betelgeuse sighed deeply, turning to gaze sadly at the corpses strewn about. "... that kind of thinking is a luxury we don't have. Think about it—really think about it. We're the last remaining members of the 67th Penal Legion in Saltilla. What makes you think we'll survive long enough to practice those immaculate precepts in any way that's worth a damn?"

"Betelgeuse…"

"I'm not doing this because I want to, Voke Thatcher. I'm doing this because I must, because we have no choice. Our merciful Father must forgive us this minor infraction if only because it will enable us to live. Only if we have life will we be able to give Him thanks. Our souls—their souls—are not within these Incunabula. They reside in action and deed, even you must recognize that."

"... That's not… It's no… How have you come by such an interpretation? That's nonsense! There are doctrines which are writ in the very fabric of the Democracy—no, souls cannot be other than—"

But Betelgeuse, seeing clearly Voke's equivocation between the souls of the dead and that of the living, cut into his train of thought with a burst of passionate energy: "Listen to me! As a friend! God wants us to live so that we can continue to do honor by Him. That is the meaning of life! I believe, even, that the dead will live on in us, that, provided we live on, we will do things that are right by those who have died and that will honor their true souls. We will monetize these artifacts, and it will be used to help us escape the yoke binding us to injustice. That is the greatest use we can put these Incs to. It is also the most honorable use."

"There are… things which just cannot be done… my friend… there must be a way other than to desecrate what is the most sacred possession of a person…"

Betelgeuse sighed and looked deep in Voke's dark-ringed eyes, and said, finally: "... If you won't help, you should go back upstairs to wait. I completely understand. I will give you your share of the money anyway."

"I…" Voke said, turning away at last, unable to muster any further response.