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

The air was strangled with a choking haze.

Something ignited within the thick smog. The concrete floor caught on fire, the ensuing conflagration blazing a demonic color that saturated the hallway in oranges and yellows.

Humanoid figures were flailing in pain, tumbling out from the fire and contorting into strange shapes across the ground. Their flesh sizzled and gave off keening whistles that reminded Betelgeuse of boiling kettles.

He gunned his trigger, emptying his magazine into the press of dancing imps all bumping against each other. He sensed Douglas and Voke, both of them crouched a little behind him, doing the same.

The Jegorichians positioned on both sides of the corridor started firing their weapons, filling the hallway with jarring rat-tat-tats that were barely discernible under the general cacophony.

The immolated figures twisted and fell, their lives snuffed out by the incoming spray of lead.

The firing stopped. Betelgeuse reloaded his carbine, letting the empty clip clatter to the floor.

Now there were only whistling sounds and the crackle of fire. The underground hallway filled with a smell that was, at the same time, sickening and enticing.

They must have had Molotov cocktails, Betelgeuse thought. He glanced to his right; the Commander was still trying to figure out the wires. Corporal Venna Tajiran was also in the generator-room, frantically dodging in and out of Betelgeuse' sight as she shimmied around its perimeter. She had probably been instructed by Cacliocos to assist the Commander.

"The Lord is with me even though I walk through the vale of the shadow of tears…" Voke was mumbling, praying fervently to his god. He held the muzzle of his weapon steady, aiming it down the hallway at the flickering flametongues.

"That's fuckin' wretched," Douglas breathed, and Betelgeuse could feel his eyes boring holes into the bottom of his chin.

"Is Thete okay?" Betelgeuse heard himself say. He stared down his carbine's iron sights, unwilling to turn away. Some of them might still be alive.

Shuffling.

"Yeah… yes. She's sweating," Douglas returned.

It was two minutes later that Cacliocos' voice pealed through the hallway.

"I need a bucket! The fire's gonna choke us out!" he said.

Belekov turned his head sideways: "Smit! And, uh…. you—"

"It's Poulank," the one that Belekov was referring to replied.

"—Poulank, go with Smit, see if you can find buckets. Or fire extinguishers," Belekov snapped.

Smit and Poulank side-slung their weapons and broke away from cover. They sprinted down the hallway into the flickering darkness of the basement, torchlights held out and scanning the ground before them.

No sooner had their footsteps receded than the ceiling started to vibrate. Dust and bits of rubble fell in a curtain, seasoning the charred bodies.

"It's a fucking drill-rig," hissed Cacliocos, springing to his feet and indicating frantically for the rest to "get further in!"

Belekov yelled for them to take up positions behind the generator room, and Betelgeuse instructed Douglas and Voke to take Thete, and to follow after the rest of the contingent.

"Commander!" Cacliocos called, now at the entrance to the generator-room. The contingent was yelling all around them and rushing to reposition their makeshift covers. Betelgeuse came beside the Captain, keeping his eyes on the entrance to the special-access-stairwell. The whole hallway was starting to shake, and whole chunks were falling from the ceiling. The worst of the shaking appeared to be occurring around the burning section of hallway.

"Commander—they've got a drill-rig, we have to go!" Cacliocos shouted, spitting saliva with the force of his words.

"Get back to your position and hold the line, Captain!" the Commander returned, his eyes never leaving his work. A tangle of wires now led directly from the Power Magnifier into the nape of his neck, and the metal interfaces that had been implanted into the Commander's flesh were slick with a kind of glistening ichor. Betelgeuse glanced at the Commander, saw the mess of wires, and observed on the ground a thick cable that was lying next to the humming back-up generator.

Venna was holding up a torchlight to the laminated technical manifest stuck to the side of the generator, her dark eyes darting anxiously to-and-fro.

"Commander," Cacliocos pressed, "they could collapse the whole place—"

Forcing the last of the wires into the base of his skull and wincing at the squelch, the Commander turned and glowered: "You will hold outside this room, Captain. That's an order! I'm already done, it's up to Dr. Piltor—"

The rumbling crescendoed suddenly into a thick whine. Clanking sounds reverberated through the walls.

With a deafening crash, the ceiling just above the special-access-stairwell came collapsing downwards.

Flamelit dimness gave way to light.

The spinning drill-tip slammed into the floor, goring apart a charred corpse and ripping up other proximate bodies into a dark mist. It dug into concrete and tossed up the floor in a tumultuous churn.

Then it halted. Artificial sunlight streamed in at a canted angle.

The Jegorichians were shouting. Betelgeuse twisted sideways to cover within the generator room. Venna readied her weapon and came to crouch beside him. He glanced at a corner-cover that was diagonal from him to see one-armed Douglas and Voke, their jaws clenched, their fingers held over the triggers of their carbines.

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Cacliocos had abandoned trying to convince the Commander to withdraw and was now mustering the men, instructing them to aim forward and to wait for his command.

Betelgeuse saw, further up the hallway, Smit and Poulank sprinting back down, each of them carrying two buckets, the muzzles of their carbines hitting dully against the buckets' blue polyethylene surfaces.

They took one look at the drill-rig and threw the buckets to the floor, springing sideways to cover behind an adjacent corner.

Seeing this, Cacliocos lunged out from cover to grab one of the buckets before returning into cover.

A whirring sound drew Betelgeuse' attention back to the front. Adrenaline poured through his system.

"It's opening! Shoot-to-kill!"

The hull door on the top face of the drill-rig slammed open and out came spewing a mass of dark-skins, howling in abandon, their eyes glazed over with the compulsion. Betelgeuse mustered up his intentionality and shot it into the mix, seeing several of the enemy halt in their tracks, confused, before they were cut down by the ensuing hail of lead.

Then, shouts of pain from the Jegorichians.

"Julla!" someone shouted.

Private Julla Abouztani, who had been covering behind a metal table further up from Betelgeuse, fell clutching his neck, the blacksteel surface of his prosthetic foot reflecting a beam of sunlight.

Betelgeuse suddenly realized that they were being shot at. The first wave had been a decoy. Diagonally above them, standing on the surface, was a row of figures backlit against the lattice-suns and aiming their guns down at them. They were firing into the basement hallway.

Rat-tat-tat-tat—

Julla's head was deleted from existence, his brains spattering out through the back of his skull. Betelgeuse withdrew into the generator-room, breathing hard, feeling his lungs start to fill again, mustering his intentionality for another burst of compulsion. Venna was crouched beside him, staring at him with fear in her eyes.

The firing stopped. Taking the opportunity, Betelgeuse shot out from the generator-room, his arm upraised, and sent a blast of intentionality against the figures on the surface. He saw them shudder and strafe sideways out of view.

They're too far away, thought Betelgeuse, narrowing his eyes and returning to cover.

"Commander! We need to go! We need to—"

"Hold the line or die, Captain!" the Commander shouted from within the generator-room. His left hand was holding the Power Magnifier's power-cable to the generator's housing, ready to plug it in at a moment's notice. His right wrist was held to his face, the wrist-transceiver's screen shining a square patch onto the side of his chin.

Spang! Spang!

"I'm hit!" someone else cried out. It was one of the PDFs that had been found with Douglas. He was dragged further into cover by one of the others.

A shrieking noise filled the hallway. It was feedback from a speaker. The tendrils of a powerful intentionality suffused the air.

"krrshk All who go against the Sul must die. Sacrifice yourself for the greater glory of the Sul. All who go against the Sul must die. Sacrifice yourself—"

Betelgeuse intuited immediately that they were using the compulsion to flush the Jegorichians out.

Venna was already moving past him. She would reveal herself; the enemy would kill her immediately. Mustering his intentionality out of reflex, Betelgeuse let his hand grab onto the collar of her vest. He felt for her Incunabulum and cleaved through the shackles of the compulsion binding her, then yelled in her face: "Snap out of it! It's the compulsion!"

And he raised himself to his full height and started raving, shouting to the rest, pointing at Voke, Douglas, Belekov…

"It's the compulsion! it's the compulsion!"

It was too late for some. A hail of bullets cut down three of the Jegorichians, and they fell, gurgling to the ground. The rest managed to slump confusedly back behind cover.

"Sakar—get to Cacliocos, get him to muster. Leave Venna to me!" the Commander said, raising his arm. Throwing Venna's slender form toward the Commander, Betelgeuse rolled out into the middle of the hallway.

"krrshk All who go against the Sul must die. Sacrifice yourself for the greater glory of the Sul—"

'It's coming from the drill-rig—someone's inside!' Betelgeuse thought.

Lunging into the opposite cover, Betelgeuse came tumbling into Cacliocos. He saw that the officer was engaged in filling up a bucket with an oily, colorless liquid. Half of his thumb looked like it was missing, and his cheeks were gaunt and shallow in the dim lighting.

"Captain, they hijacked a mass-compulsion matrix. We gotta destroy the drill-rig," Betelgeuse said hurriedly.

"Let's go," he said immediately, raising his dark eyes and pushing the bucket to Betelgeuse. Mustering his own intentionality, Cacliocos started yelling to the surviving Jegorichians, compelling them to follow his instructions.

"Covering fire! Up there, into the opening!" Cacliocos commanded.

He was already moving, Betelgeuse behind him, both of them sprinting toward the drill-rig as bullets whistled over their heads. Betelgeuse tried his best to stop the nitroglycerin within the bucket from shaking too much, but it was futile given the circumstances.

They covered the 10 or so meters to the drill-rig within a few seconds. Betelgeuse tried his best to keep the bucket level as he clambered up the rubble, and as he reached the top of the slanted chassis of the drill-rig, he saw that Cacliocos was already spraying lead into the hull.

"Throw it in, Sakar!"

Betelgeuse did. The bucket thumped on the floor and bounced upward. There was a flash and a large profusion of sound as the nitroglycerin inside ignited—

The air expanded with the explosion, throwing Betelgeuse and Cacliocos back into the wall and knocking the wind from their lungs. The drill-rig split open like a melon, shooting a spout of gray-white smoke into the air which impacted upon the ceiling and turned dark, then fell over the entire area so that visibility dropped to less than three meters.

Betelgeuse' breath was loud in his ears. It was impossible to tell who was shooting and where the shots were coming from. He glanced leftward to the Jegorich position, observing the dead and dying. He saw Smit twitching upon the floor nearby, realizing that the Private had been shot in trying to reach them.

Groaning in pain, Betelgeuse raised his broken body to its feet, keeping himself flush to the wall. To his right was Cacliocos' senseless form, which he grabbed and pulled across the rubble.

Gotta make it there…

A large form shot through the smoke, barreling into Betelgeuse and sending him flying into a wall.

Pain had already become an abstract concept for Betelgeuse. He pushed himself off the rubble and blinked away the dust. In front of him was a large and distended form. It was unnaturally tall for a Desertian, and its arms were very long and very muscular.

Its face was flat, and its head was shaped like a thumb.

Salleh.

Salleh clearly recognized him. The man's striated cheeks were flexed into his face like a chimpanzee death-grin. He leered at Betelgeuse, a pistol held in his fist. Salleh's hateful expression left it in no doubt that the Gimma Ashby cadre had sought him out specifically.

Did he recognize my intentionality? Is that even possible?

Salleh fired. The bullets slammed into Betelgeuse' chest, pushing him back into the wall.