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

Hours of travel, hours stuck sandwiched between Entuban's thigh and a mountain of jerry cans sloshing about in the dimness.

Someone sniffled. Betelgeuse supposed it was Misha. She sounded like she was sobbing. For what reason he could not tell.

Voke and Douglas were bantering. Edith's head was resting on his shoulder, her neck-tumor pressing up against his suit and her Ash-grade Incunabulum held tightly to her chest. Betelgeuse let her alone only because there was nowhere else to move her to.

It was very dim, because the light filtering in from the windshield could not make it through the wall of hypergolic fuel that was their ticket out of Saltilla.

Betelgeuse turned his head. There was the thin man to the other side of Edith, contorted into a strange position but otherwise looking unaccountably comfortable.

Some hours ago, Betelgeuse had asked his name. "Filippov," the man answered, before returning to his smug-grinned musings.

A copper-colored Incunabulum was held between Filippov's knobbly knees. He was a Bronze grade.

Through his opaque visor, Betelgeuse stared, a mess of hidden grievances dredged up from God knows where.

Imagine.

Imagine having the Bronze grade you always dreamed of.

Imagine taking it from Filippov. Imagine grafting it.

It is your birthright, is it not?

Our power will be legendary.

'Our?' Betelgeuse suddenly thought, frowning to himself. 'There is only I.'

The other voice melted away into his consciousness and did not return.

Silence. Silence, but for the interminable trundling and the occasional earth-shattering crash that echoed far away, far beyond the metal cage that was his world.

"What was your rank?" Betelgeuse asked suddenly, still staring at Filippov. He felt Entuban turn to look at him, roused from his half-dreaming.

The question hung in the air like something poisonous. Like something left over from the oppressive system they now found themselves without.

"Military Auxiliary," Filippov said, after several seconds of thought.

"You were a Blueprinter?" Betelgeuse asked, thinking about the Blueprinter who had freed him from the cave-in back in Liberation's Reach. That Blueprinter was also a Military Auxiliary, Kimmerling or Himorlin or Himmelin, his name was.

"... I was a Navigator," Filippov returned.

Betelgeuse had never come across a Navigator before, nor did he know what their function was.

"What does a Navigator do?" he asked.

But Filippov turned away. He did not appreciate the line of questioning.

Betelgeuse was about to ask again, when Entuban answered on Filippov's behalf: "They are navigating systems architecture or hacking. Sometimes they do a reconnoitering of complicated terrain. Although I do not know what flavor of Navigator Filippov is being."

Betelgeuse was about to direct another question to Filippov when a ghostly message appeared on the inside of his visor, alerting him to a transceiver call.

"Hold up," Betelgeuse sounded. "Tenzhian's finally returning my call."

Entuban stiffened. Betelgeuse let the call connect.

"Tenzhian, status?"

"—Sakar, I need your ETA," Tenzhian returned. "The Chimes are blasting holes into the kakking walls—"

"Did you see my message? We're travelling overland to the Western Quadrant. We need to get the APC through to the Nook."

"Dammit Sakar, we need the holo-craft loaded now," Tenzhian cursed. "What entrance are you coming in by?"

"The same one Aisya got us through the last time. We need someone to get that ingress open," Betelgeuse shot back.

"Okay. Need your ETA," Tenzhian breathed. Something loud was happening on the other end.

"Von! ETA!" Betelgeuse yelled behind him.

"We're just coming up on the Western Quadrant walls!" Thete returned.

"I need an ETA, for God's sake," Betelgeuse groused irritably.

"Give Ballsyboy the ETA," Douglas echoed from somewhere out of sight, and for some reason this just irritated Betelgeuse more.

"Say ten minutes," Von replied. "Rough driving ahead."

"Ten minutes, Tenzhian. Can you get the entrance open?" Betelgeuse returned through his MDES' transceiver.

"—I'll try. I'll get in touch with Kanogg."

"Ten minutes, Tenzhian, remember the timing—"

Von yelled something. A warning. He was telling them to brace.

Before Betelgeuse could finish his sentence, the troop compartment bucked savagely. His body crushed against the tumbling jerry cans. Edith squealed in pain. Somewhere above him, he could hear Entuban grunting as he lost his balance.

***

The APC juddered violently for many moments. Betelgeuse swore they were in freefall.

Then, it slammed into something hard. Yells and shouts.

The vehicle held. Even though Betelgeuse thought it might tear open from the sheer force of impact, it held.

"E-Everyone okay back there!" Thete called out.

Betelgeuse blinked. It was dark. Edith pressed up to his chest and whimpered painfully. Something heavy was lying on both of them, and Betelgeuse didn't know if it was the jerry cans or Entuban or both.

"I'm okay," Voke said.

"Voke, your leg is on me," Misha said.

"Sorry—"

"Fuck! What the fuck was that!" —that could only have been Douglas.

"The engine's busted," Von cursed loudly.

"Open the hull door," Betelgeuse said.

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Misha said something about being stuck.

"Open the hull door!" Betelgeuse said again, louder this time.

The sides of the troop compartment groaned. The hull door shuddered open. Betelgeuse felt a weight shift off of him and Edith.

He pushed himself upright, letting a shivering, semi-conscious Edith gently down beside him, then dyoof looked out the hull doors.

Shafts of gray light made a large patch upon the ground. Beyond that was a colossal tunnel that shot off a long way into the forbidding darkness.

"Von, we're in the Underground!" Entuban sputtered, tumbling out of the hull doors and scrambling to his feet.

Betelgeuse stepped out of the APC and onto the tunnel's granite surface. He jogged his wrist-transceiver.

The call with Tenzhian had cut. There didn't seem to be any reception.

He raised his head. The ceiling of the tunnel was about 10 meters above him.

It looked like a sinkhole had opened up, causing them to fall some way into the middle of an Underground tunnel. A large amount of concrete rubble was piled up just next to the APC.

The tunnel was very wide, and the APC had come down just next to one of its walls.

"It's subsidence," Von said, exiting from the APC cabin and popping the hood on the lateral-mounted engine. "Ninsei didn't do their Due-D* before digging the Underground."

*[Due-diligence.]

"No," an unfamiliar voice called. Betelgeuse turned. It was Filippov, clutching his Bronze Incunabulum to his chest and bringing his face close to the surface of the ground.

He rapped his knuckle on that granite hardness and pushed his ear into the dust, as if trying to hear something.

"Not Ninsei. It is the alien. They came through with their Earthborers," Filippov rasped, straightening himself to his full height and sounding very sure about himself.

"How d'you know?" Douglas said, peeking out with his gas mask and thrusting another of it into Filippov's hand, together with an oxygen canister. "Is your Inc power or what?"

Filippov didn't bother gracing Douglas' question with an answer. He pulled on the mask and fitted the oxygen canister into its end. Then, he sat cross-legged upon the ground and stared up into the patch of gray sky.

"The Chimerae are in Saltilla," Betelgeuse echoed, the realization just dawning on him.

They needed out fast.

"Von," he called, pushing past Filippov and Douglas and trudging across the granite dust toward Von. "How's the engine? We need to get it running ASAP."

"Doesn't look good," Von said, his voice sounding muffled through the rebreather he had fitted into his mouth. Betelgeuse squinted. He didn't even know where Von had got it, the rebreather.

Thete was beside Von, holding aloft a torchlight and shining it into the engine compartment. Betelgeuse peeked over Von's shoulder: it looked like a morass of metal and rubber tubing in there.

"Got to get it running," Betelgeuse said. "We don't have a choice because all the fuel's inside."

Thete glanced at Betelgeuse as though he had volunteered a particularly unhelpful assessment of the situation.

"I don't know…" Von mumbled to himself, scrutinizing the engine. "Might have to take it apart to—"

"Uh, Ballsman!" Douglas called out from the back end of the APC.

"What is it!" Betelgeuse hollered in reply, stepping backward.

"Earthborer!" Voke yelled, his voice edged with panic. "It's coming at us fast as hell!"

A chill shot up Betelgeuse' spine. He squinted down the tunnel.

From his vantage it looked like a small light glowing in the darkness. It rather reminded him of the lures used by anglerfish, long extinct from Earth's polluted seas.

It was becoming larger and more distinct. The ground was rumbling.

He turned back to Von and Thete. They looked like they were struggling frantically with the engine.

There wouldn't be enough time. The Earthborer would crush all of them before they could get the engine out on the ground.

"We need to get it against the wall!" Betelgeuse roared, side-slinging his carbine.

He pointed at the APC, then the mound of concrete rubble, then the far wall.

No one argued.

Good old Entuban was the first to move, bounding forward to the backside of the APC within the second, latching onto the bottom edge of the blacksteel chassis with his massive hands. Betelgeuse stepped forward to the vehicle's side, and at the other end—the front of the APC—Von and Thete had abandoned whatever they were trying to do with the engine.

As one, they strained against the weight of the APC and its full cargo (plus the weight of Edith, who was still in the troop compartment). Slowly but surely, its treaded tires scratched across the uneven granite surface.

Douglas, Voke and Misha joined their efforts shortly. As they strained, Betelgeuse felt the chassis start to move more quickly. He could hear the servos in Douglas' prosthetic arm whining, Entuban grunting and grumbling, Thete and Misha groaning—

The ground was starting to shake violently. The sound of crumbling rock filled Betelgeuse' ears.

Betelgeuse turned. Filippov was sitting mutely upon the ground, in complete acceptance of his death.

Far in the distance, the Earthborer was dragging toward them like an ancient, megalithic centipede left over from bygone days.

'It fills the entire tunnel,' Betelgeuse thought, releasing his grip on the side of the APC with a grunt of disgust. Even if they managed to push the APC to the side of the wall, the Earthborer would still crush them.

I have to stop it somehow or we're dead.

Think. We have Tenzhian's nitroglycerin canisters.

Too small.

We have a ton of hypergolic fuel…

The explosion won't even make a dent on that fucking thing!

But Betelgeuse wasn't going to just roll over and die.

Leaving the others straining against the weight of the APC, Betelgeuse jumped into the vehicle through the hull door. Edith was there, semi-conscious and clutching at her Incunabulum and covered by a bunch of jerry cans that had topped over her body.

Betelgeuse grabbed as many as he had the strength to carry. One, two—a total of ten: four in one hand and four in the other, with two jerry cans held between his forearms. At 20 liters each this made 200 kilograms of fuel-weight.

By now, the ground was quaking violently.

He sprang out the hull doors, landing upon the granite surface with a grunt and a stumble. A jerry can fell from the stack between his forearms and thumped down upon the ground beside Filippov, raising a tuft of dust and causing Filippov to jerk in his direction.

There was no time to pick it up.

Plan: get the payload as far down as I can and see if I can't derail the Earthborer like a train—

Betelgeuse knew that the chance of it working was close to nil. He didn't care. It was the only thing he could think of.

He blasted past Filippov, his thigh muscles bunching and straining. He ground his teeth together, hard enough that his gums started to bleed.

"—hundred meters!" someone yelled behind him. "Structural weakness—"

Betelgeuse couldn't really hear. He focused on running.

"Three hundred! Three hundred meters! Left, go left—"

It must have been Filippov. He had some kind of affinity for divining structural weaknesses.

Three hundred meters. Left side of the tunnel.

Betelgeuse sprinted toward the advancing behemoth.

The Chimera Earthborer was tipped with a multitude of concentric circles revolving at impossible speeds. Its circular crown must have been edged with teeth, for Betelgeuse could see now that the granite walls were being shaved down to accommodate the full girth of that mechanical monstrosity.

Curtains of rock fell from the ceiling, crushing into boulders all around him. The sound drowned out all thought, all pretensions to power, all sense of self.

Only the will remained.

His will, pitted against the Earthborer's brute momentum.

—About here!

With a titanic heave, Betelgeuse hurled the jerry cans—all nine of them—toward the left edge of the tunnelway. The cans thunked weightily onto granite.

The Earthborer was upon him. The tang of death was thick in his nostrils.

He turned, putting every ounce of augmented strength into his legs. He felt his Incunabula pulse against his chest, or perhaps that was his heartbeat.

He willed himself toward the patch of light. No sense in worrying whether he would escape.

Just run.

If the Earthborer caught up with him, he would be dead before he realized it. In that case, there would be nothing to worry about.

One of his comrades—Voke, by his slender proportions—raised a carbine in his direction.

Its muzzle spit a stream of lead. Tetra-flash.

Smoke, wisping up through the shafts of light.

Betelgeuse half-expected to be riddled with bullets. Instead, the bullets whizzed past his head to ignite the hypergolic fuel, raising a cacophonous explosion behind him.

Earthquake.

Betelgeuse fought to keep his balance. The tunnel seemed intent on shaking itself to pieces.

He was almost there. Entuban was running toward him, tall and broad-shouldered and massive as an elephant.

Then, the ground fell away below Betelgeuse. He stumbled, his foot pushing down on nothing.

He reached out with hid hand.

Entuban caught him, his long and tubular arm stretching out to its limit, his hand gripping Betelgeuse' forearm.

"—Got you!" Entuban thundered.

Betelgeuse dangled over the precipice, allowing himself to exhale.

He looked back. The ceiling of the tunnel was falling away into the abyss, chasing after the receding roar of the Earthborer. The Chimerae's machine tunneled deeper and deeper, until it finally disappeared.

And then they were left in relative silence.

Entuban hefted Betelgeuse up onto the surface.

"—That was frikkin' close," Douglas said, thumping over to the edge and leaning over.

"I've had enough of near-death experiences for one day," Betelgeuse groused, squatting down on his haunches and regarding the scene of destruction.

The explosion had collapsed the entire tunnel, causing further subsidence that forced the Earthborer further into the crust of Desert.

Filippov had led him true.

Further down the length of the tunnel, the ceiling was still collapsing, exposing them to the gray light of Saltilla proper. Whole apartment complexes were spilling over into the bottomless chasm.

"You are being the most craziest of people, Sakar. Don't blink, don't blink indeed!" Entuban chortled, regarding Betelgeuse with an expression of unadulterated admiration.

Entuban had fought many battles and witnessed much death. Enough death to last him a lifetime. In their last moments, people showed who they really were. Cowards, heroes and everything in between. He had seen it all.

But Entuban had yet to see someone with as much self-mastery as Betelgeuse Sakar.

Yes, led by this man, escape was surely possible!