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

Pain blossomed across his sternum.

Betegeuse coughed, but knew that the bullets had not penetrated his vest.

His carbine came apart in his hands, either destroyed by the pistol-fire or by Salleh's shoulder charge or both.

Betelgeuse retaliated with a vicious stab of his intentionality, causing Salleh to buck and writhe.

He pushed off the wall and strafed to the side, tearing his combat knife from its sheath and slipping past the piles of dying Jegorichians. The occasional bullet pinged against the side of the hallway, sparking off bits of concrete dust that caught the dribbling lights in firefly blinks.

There, around the corner, Douglas and Voke were yelling at him, pointing their carbines in his direction and mouthing words he could not hear. Belekov was there also, his features contorted into silent horror.

What! What does he see behind me?

Betelgeuse' ears pricked at the predatory growl behind him. He twisted and felt the force of a wild intentionality slam into him, powerful and keening.

The mind that interfaced with his was burbling with an intense psychosis. Its fiber shimmered with such shocking tangibility that Betelgeuse thought he could see the air between him and Salleh warp into folds.

Betelgeuse grunted, blinking away the illusion to witness Salleh's giant frame charging towards him, pistol held out and clicking empty.

Betelgeuse' eyes widened.

Salleh's face was morphing into something beyond human. No, not only Salleh's face, but his whole body had been bathed in a soft white glow that started mutating his frame into something larger, something inhuman.

He's manifesting an Etching!

Betelgeuse' mind reverberated with the word, and he roared in a mixture of pain and dread. He kicked violently, jumping out of the mutating Salleh's direction of travel. Betelgeuse' shoulder slammed into the floor and jolting his broken body violently.

Salleh smashed into a metal table, crushing it under his weight like a piece of paper. He kept going, his brute momentum taking him through the Jegorichian position and into the side of the hallway with an intense crash. Concrete broke off in heavy chunks.

Pops and squelching and the snapping of bones.

Salleh's distended body had bounced off the side of the hallway, and his long arms were splicing into multi-boned appendages that were splitting wetly into caul-fat silhouettes. Betelgeuse looked on in horrified fascination.

Dying Jegorichians were pulped by his intense flailings. Streaks of dark blood spattered the adjacent walls. The blood was glistening by a fire that had started from within the flayed remains of the drill-rig.

Betelgeuse forced himself onward, tumbling into the generator-room opposite the corner which Douglas and Voke had taken cover behind.

Salleh was howling; the howling was getting louder.

The noise had become a screech that pierced eardrums and made brains hemorrhage. Betelgeuse turned his head toward the back-up-generator to see the Commander, still waiting, hooked up to the Power Magnifier. The Commander's expression was grim and unyielding. Venna was crouched beside him, her dark eyes almost popping out of her head from fear or anxiety or both.

"Hold him!" the Commander said, lowering his vision to his wrist-transceiver but not yet finding what he was looking for.

Braaap went Douglas' and Voke's carbines. They could fire, now that Betelgeuse was out of the way.

Their carbines clicked empty. The thing Salleh had become bucked and roared and writhed, but otherwise didn't seem any closer to dying.

Betelgeuse wheeled to observed that the Salleh-beast was whimpering and licking at the air with its long and eel-like tongue. Black ichor flowed from the shallow holes which the carbine bullets had made. Its skin had become thick as leather.

Its head was now shaped like a cone, and its eyes looked like they had melted into flat obsidian slates that gashed into the flattish surface that was its face. The thing probably couldn't see. It was snarling in pain and smelling the bodies.

Betelgeuse knew it was trying to find him.

"Corporal Tajiran! Get over here!" Betelgeuse spat, snapping his head around and lacing his words with the compulsion. Venna's body jerked, her legs moving toward the opening of the generator-room, where he was. A confused expression overtook her features, as if she wasn't really sure why she was moving.

Roars from the front. The Salleh-beast had heard Betelgeuse.

Venna sprinted up beside him, and he let his combat knife drop to the floor as he snatched away her carbine. Betelgeuse turned—

The Salleh-beast bounded across space. Betelgeuse depressed the carbine's trigger at the same time, firing at its face as it hurtled across the air, the bullets boring into its hardened cheeks. Betelgeuse threw his intentionality into the creature, catching it at just the right moment as its mind recoiled reflexively from being shot in the face.

That great body crashed right into the wall, splaying out partially into the generator-room. The Commander yelled in surprise and consternation as he finally saw the mutated creature. Venna screamed and tumbled backward, her fear reaching such a fever pitch that it broke the compulsion's hold over her body.

The carbine in Betelgeuse' hands clicked empty. He threw it to the floor and grabbed his combat knife. Then, he jumped into Salleh, sticking the tip of his knife into the side of its torso and pulling it downward with all his strength.

The beast's flesh and organs tore with a sickening sound. The pain made it shoot to its feet, but by now it was so tall that the top of its conical head impacted the ceiling. Betelgeuse gritted his teeth and held on, forcing his own intentionality into the beast's mind and lacerating its fading sense of ego with an unrelenting fury.

The beast flailed the protrusions of bone that its arms had become, managing a stray hit on Betelgeuse' torso. Betelgeuse clung on to the knife, and the force of the hit translated to a further tearing of the beast's flesh.

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Voke and Douglas had charged the beast on the other side, Voke with his combat knife held in both hands, Douglas with his knife held in a hammer grip. They stuck the beast's shuddering torso, pushing their blades into its tough hide, and held on through its savage throes.

It fell, finally, planting its face into the rubble. Its body twitched. Betelgeuse held on. He would hold on until it died. He wouldn't allow it to escape. The beast's cone-head turned toward Betelgeuse, and its mutated pupil caught the light in a suggestive glint.

It's looking at me. It can see.

Betelgeuse felt its mind crumble to dust. The eye was still focused upon him. Betelgeuse could see an emotion within it.

Sorrow.

The beast sighed as a human would and then fell still, its intentionality completely snuffed out.

Betelgeuse coughed and tried to stand, but recoiled from the stabbing pain that lanced throughout his body.

Breaths.

Sounds came from outside the room. Yells in Aluaa.

The dark-skins were coming.

"Commander! Do it now!" Betelgeuse roared, whipping around to see the old man still watching his transceiver, seemingly unfazed by the struggle with the Salleh-beast. The Commander did not react to his words.

Betelgeuse was about to bring his intentionality to bear once again, to turn his compulsion upon the Commander, when those old eyes suddenly locked gazes with him.

The Commander knew what he was about to do. At once, an immense power bore down upon Betelgeuse' mind and body, and he was forced down upon his knees. The crushing force was akin to a boulder pushing down upon his back.

"Fool! You will hold the line with your body!" the Commander hissed. "Reload. Fortify position. Fight until you die."

Betelgeuse knew then that the Commander could overbear his mind at a moment's notice. He clenched his jaw and pushed to his feet, then retrieved Venna's carbine from the floor. To his right, Venna was curled up and almost catatonic.

"Venna, fortify position," Betelgeuse said, echoing the Commander and compelling her to rise. She pushed herself toward him and he passed her the carbine.

Douglas and Voke were dragging Thete's limp body into the generator-room. Now, Belekov was there as well, his pigsnout twitching as he skirted the carcass of the Salleh-beast still bleeding black ichor into the rubble. There were seven people in the room now, including Thete.

"Reload! Shoot-to-kill!" Betelgeuse snapped. Voke and Douglas leaned Thete against a metal rack. Venna and Belekov immediately did as Betelgeuse instructed, snapping their magazines in place and sticking their muzzles out the side of the generator-room to fire at the incoming horde of suicidal dark-skins.

"Commander. Colonel Mzeeka," Betelgeuse said, limping toward the Commander. Take a different approach. The old man raised his eyes toward him.

"If you don't do this, the chance will be gone. You'll die yourself," Betelgeuse said.

The Commander lowered his eyes, then raised them again. The carbine-fire continued unabated.

"... A little longer," he said, his voice tinged with weariness. "Hold them a little longer."

"We're holding them. You must make the decision now," Betelgeuse pressed.

Silence passed between them. Time that they could not afford ticked down inexorably.

"... I need a distance," the Commander said finally. "Quickly. Give me the approximate distance to the outside. Otherwise, I'll bring down the whole building on top of us."

Nodding, Betelgeuse limped back across the room, pushing the four out of his way so that he could peek across the corner.

The frontage was filled with a thick smog that almost completely obscured his vision. Dead bodies and parts of dead bodies were strewn amongst the rubble. The smog was coming from the burning drill-rig.

Up in the top-right corner of the hallway, behind the smokescreen, where the ceiling had been collapsed by the drill-rig, a faint light could be seen. A few still-living dark-skins, not all of them whole, were crawling around near the drill-rig. These were the remnants of the most recent wave that had been cut down by their carbine fire.

Betelgeuse squinted at the wan light.

That's outside.

About 20 meters down to the special-access-stairwell.

I estimate that it's... 30 meters straight-line distance to the outside. No, 40 meters, give or take 5 meters.

Betelgeuse dragged his body back to the Commander.

"Approximately forty meters plus minus five. Straight line distance."

"What's the height of the corridor?" the Commander shot back.

"Approximately five—no, four—meters plus minus one."

The Commander's thin lips set into a hard line.

"Commander!" snapped Betelgeuse, indicating the Power Magnifier.

"Just… a little bit more," the Commander said.

Carbine fire resumed. More pained screams came from the corridor outside.

"Ballsman!" Douglas shouted hoarsely, "Last clip! We can't hold them much longer!"

"Commander!" Belekov yelled from his position, shooting down the corridor.

Betelgeuse brandished his knife and faced the entrance. He would meet death standing.

The shouts were coming closer now. Venna had substituted for Douglas at the edge of the entrance, Douglas cursing and wrangling with his jammed carbine.

"Commander, they're coming!" Voke shouted frantically. The smell of burnt gunpowder and dead bodies filled the room.

The Commander's wrist-transceiver suddenly lit up. His expression brightened.

"Now! Sakar—plug it in!"

Betelgeuse' head snapped mutely in the Commander's direction. Suddenly realizing what the Commander had said, he dropped his weapon and scrambled for the power-cable and slammed it into the interface on the back-up-generator's chassis.

The generator started sputtering violently, as all power in the hospital was rerouted into the Power Magnifier. The crimson fish-eye lights on the ceiling blinked off.

A droning sound emanated from the Power Magnifier. Betelgeuse started to feel a churning in his stomach.

"Get to the side, all of you!" the Commander instructed, indicating to the other end of the generator-room.

Douglas and Belekov sprinted toward the side and took their positions crouched behind a metal rack, Douglas pulling Thete's body into cover beside him.

Venna and Voke sprayed down the hallway with their remaining bullets. They heard their weapons click empty, then rushed to join Douglas and Belekov.

The time was nigh. Betelgeuse limped toward the far side where the rest had taken up positions, but his foot caught on a piece of rubble. He stumbled and fell. Venna and Voke were already next to him, dragging his body across the rubble-strewn ground.

The Commander stood. Waves of energy emanated from his body. His eyelids pressed closed.

He raised his arm. The reality of the world shifted under their perceptions.

A great blast echoed from somewhere in the distance. Betelgeuse felt a strange force pulling on him.

Pulling him upwards.

There was a terrifying sound. The next moment, the roof was ripped off.

It took Betelgeuse a moment to realize that he was staring at the ceiling of Saltilla.