Dimension

by Shay Zana

  At the summon from their squad leader, the others progress in his footsteps, moving along to a shallow wall surrounding the platform that forces them into low cover.

  “It’s fucking freezing,” Boone whines out pale fumes as he sidles up, Genesis in hand.

  “Shut up,” Deo growls back, covering their rear and peering over the top of the waist-height wall. Below he can see the quivering city stretch on beyond the ability of the eye. He cannot see any sign of an actual alien, much to his disappointment, but there are more than enough machines to quell the emptiness.

  Kitera crawls into the wall like a hunting animal, crouching deftly, heavy pistol in hand, watching Altair. Its cyan entity is rumbling beneath its leathery hide, symbols igniting. The globe has already begun responding by sizzling in whispers of rising temperatures.

  “Kitera?” Mazayus calls on her for guidance.

  She scans her eyes across the circular platform in search for the command access point. “There,” she eventually answers, gun barrel indicating to a small entrance alongside the throbbing entity globe. It appears to lead beneath the platform, and when the Paragons observe more, they spot a parallel entrance on the other side of the globe. A perfectly defendable position, but with the potential of becoming a tomb.

  “Move it,” Mazayus orders and begins the train toward the tunnel, Kitera closely in tow with the others following warily. Once down the narrow passage, they enter a small cube of a space, alien technology furnishing the central pedestal. To the warriors, atop the pedestal is access to a deep bowl of what appears to be transparent paste, reflecting off the streams of entity that flicker around the room like electrical currents. To the enhanced senses of the woman, however, the pedestal contains an organic sensory paste that will allow direct connection of her nervous system to the network of the sphere. She glides up to it and lifts her hand before her eyes to ponder her course of action.

  “What is it?” Mazayus asks after directing the others to secure each entrance.

  “A thought processor. Commands are issued through a neural interface, not greatly more advanced than our own technology. It may take me a moment to adapt, but the Zodiacs are making a stand for connection.”

  “Doesn’t sound very secure,” Boone comments while taking up position at the previous entrance. “Won’t it detect that you don’t have authority?”

  “For the Tovako, yes. But for a Nefnala, no.”

  Mazayus gives a wordless nod, giving permission to proceed. Taking a gathering breath, she flexes her fingers and gets set to plunge her hand in.

  “Be careful,” the words from Deo halt her before she is able to initiate. Her eyes shine a message of assurance to him, and she waits for him to nod and turn his attention back to guarding the entrance before her hand enters the liquid.

  She gasps at its frigid touch, prickles of it stabbing through to the bone where its sensory fibres pass through her suit and connect to her nervous system. A thrill of a sudden bustle enters her blood as she begins to unravel the network, the Zodiacs translating and highlighting pavements through an otherwise foreign engagement. The data load is edging her toward an overload, her mind only just adapting to the tempo before another package requires attention.

  As the Paragons wait, huddled in defensive stances, an alarm shrieks throughout the city, followed by a choir of mechanical screams that chill them to the core. They exchange glances.

  Deo edges up to peek over the wall of the passage, seeing millions of combat machines in disarray, falling out from their formations and rocketing inbound, though he cannot identify any source of lift, no visible thrusters of any kind. Their black plating shines highly, casting glares in his eyes as they head their way. “We might have a problem, here.” A single streak of aerial disturbance tears through the air above him and heads straight for the stationary Altair. Some type of concentrated energy projectile, he gathers with the quick catch of sight.

  “Altair!” Deo alerts the others in a gravelly shout.

  The four Paragons all charge from the control room and communicate with telepathy within seconds to co-ordinate their entities in a long range, conjoined effort, placing an amber shield over Altair right before the stream of energy impacts its hull. The contact causes a mesh of disturbance around the vessel, flaring out in a screech of feuding particles. Instantly, they hear the city echo in discontent, right before a colossal threat smacks in to a landing on the platform, sending a violent shockwave shifting the tides of the ground and knocking them over.

  They find themselves looking up at a four metre tall synthetic drone, with pitch black armour plating and well shielded joints. Its armour is ridged with what could only be liquid nikita, flowing through deep grooves like snakes reinforcing any weaknesses, and beneath the armour, its mass is completely constructed of liquid nikita, the biological material somehow moulded into a desired state without falling to freeform. It is bipedal and stands upright on two legs, which are slightly bowed, and armed gauntlets are wielded on each of its forearms. It has hands that are almost human-like, except two thumbs to each hand, one on either side, flexing as it scans its prey. It sports shoulder-mounted cannons that exude heat, and extending out from behind the bowed knee joints are what appear to be matching cannons. The robot’s torso is robust, and its head is elongated into some form of snout, with strange jutting spines of rigid nikita running up the length of its jaw line. It has no visible eyes or any other facial features.

  For a moment, the synthetic stares down at the small organics before fixing its main attention on the closest, Mazayus. Before he can recover, the machine’s oddly humanoid hand moves with fluidity to retrieve the man by the leg and dangle him upside to examine. Mazayus remains docile, staring back with narrowed eyes in equal curiosity.

  Below, the others move with painstaking slowness, not daring to stand, but positioning themselves upright in preparation, hands swaying for weaponry.

  The machine makes a gurgled sound, and it takes Mazayus a moment to realise it has spoken in an alien language. Suddenly, it gives an eardrum-bursting scream as its core structure flares, like bones igniting in amber transparency. Following the scream comes the bone-rattling of its cannons powering to life, sending alarms through Mazayus’ head as he reaches for his handguns. Upon firing pellets at the faceless machine, he is flung away like a ragdoll and tracked up for following shots to finish him, which in response, drags his entity out for defence.

  The others move in and open fire to cover the landing Mazayus, pounding the machine, only to discover it has an entity of its own. It swallows their fire effortlessly as it stomps in and takes a swoop at the Paragons, who dodge and counter.

  While his team have it busy, Mazayus rushes back down the passage to Kitera, seeing her leaning forward into the bowl, hand still pushed into its depths, but the toll on her visible. “Kitera!” he coerces.

  “Almost,” she responds in a whisper, the cold seeping out her lips in fumes, eyes firmly closed.

  A unanimous shriek bursts open their ear canals, machines populating the sphere creating a ruckus of defiance. Mazayus races up top again to assist his men, seeing Boone go flying in the aftermath of a strike and Deo already on the ground, pulling himself back up. Natheus keeps at a distance from their foe, his bow issuing rivers of arrows that curve around to impact the machine’s rear, keeping it distracted. Mazayus picks a moment to charge in, covering the downed with rapid snaps from his SMG’s.

  The machine decides a change of tactics is in order, opting for its shoulder mounted cannons and training in on Natheus and Mazayus. The two barely have time to dash away before a great pound of black energy impacts the platform and digs fissures through the material in its wake.

  As the survivors gather their bearings to return again, Deo and Boone move in, automatic rifle blaring and heavy launcher slapping at the machine’s entity. Its shoulder cannons remain on Mazayus and Natheus while its forearm gauntlets dedicate themselves to the two advancing threats, tearing at their posi
tions with rapidly firing black bolts. The two bear it all with their entities, Deo charging in with sword in hand, stabbing at a knee joint in hopes for a stumble, only to smack into a flexing wall of entity. Boone, however, ravages the monster’s entity with a continuous pummelling of his Genesis’ chain gun variant, whittling it down as it begins to pulsate with brightness, like a star on the verge of entering a supernova phase.

  The machine is not having any of it. Kicking Deo away and keeping Mazayus and Natheus off it with ruthless rounds of its cannons, it angles in on Boone, now its primary threat. Seeing the change, Boone amps it up by morphing his Genesis for a fusion round, the heavy weapon breaking apart dramatically in his grasp.

  “Going nuclear!” he roars, sending off the gleaming heavy round as the machine returns fire on him with both cannons.

  A monumental event rips through the city, burning away all darkness in a purgatory of power. As the essence of light shrinks and clarity returns, Paragons arise anew to the view of a hulking machine, still operating, and limping over to an endangered Boone. He clings on to the edge of the platform, struggling to haul himself up, his Genesis nowhere to be seen.

  The synthetic warrior takes no mercy, taking one last step in before wielding a giant fist in motion to hammer down on Boone. But it freezes in the wake of a single snap of gunfire, its featureless face lacerated from the rear, motes of entity stuttering before it crumbles on all fours, toppling off the platform in pursuit of a lengthy death.

  Kitera slots her pistol back to her suit’s holster and rushes for Boone, crashing to her knees and reaching for his arms. “Hold on,” she breathes out, attempting to heave him up. They struggle before the others hurry to help, hefting him up and over where he rolls on his back and sighs out a curse.

  “I’m tired, sore all over, and have a giant concussion. I wanna retire.”

  “I have initiated the stellar sequence,” Kitera informs. “We must go. There are minutes only.”

  Before any reply can be made, electro screams invade the airs once more, drawing their attention out of their immediate vicinity. All throughout the city, the warfare blossoms in furious mayhem. The farmed ikamanu battle the machines, defending the humans in throngs of sacrifice, covering both them and Altair with bouts of entity fields and kamikaze runs. An inbound drone is blasted to smithereens after an ikamanu collides side-on to prevent it reaching the platform, and streams of black energy are blocked and rebounded.

  But not all is blocked.

  Disruptions of the platform occur after the landings of several combat drones, shooting down defensive ikamanu before charging in for the humans.

  “Run!” Mazayus barks.

  As the machines lumber after them, the entire platform beneath them shudders in a cascade, and they can hear the powering up of multiple cannons. They fire, hitting entities and succeeding in destroying a wide gap in the platform behind them. The giants have no issue leaping the distance to continue their pursuit. The entire platform begins to splinter and crumble beneath their feet as they run, flakes of metallic material oddly floating as if caught in a field of zero gravity before coming free and plummeting deep down into the city’s depths.

  “Can they override the sequence?” Mazayus yells to Kitera as they sprint for Altair.

  “Not remotely. I destroyed the pedestal!”

  Suddenly, before they can bound for the dock, one of the machines gives a voltaic blare and stomps its thick leg to the already crumbling ground. Gravity reverses. The humans flail upward in a slow, tumbling aerial shockwave, the ground beneath them shattering from the force. They are left floating, disorientated, while the machines charge in, cannons spewing energy.

  A wall of cyan shields them, black rounds ricocheting off and back at the machines, flaring up their entities. The dark shape of Altair hovers over them with a narrow girth, airlock open enticingly. It continues to block out enemy attacks as the Paragons utilize their thrusters and escape the gravity weaponry clutching them, pulling toward their vessel and slumping through the airlock with a sudden return of gravity.

  Without directions, Altair automatically descends down through the city alongside alien structures buzzing with chaos. The platform above them completely succumbs under the strain, but the machines engage their gravity technology and dive straight after them, creating their own gravitational pull.

  Light fractures in combustions from the globular cortex, Altair slipping out of range just as a flare ignites the city. Soon, all is a slick of liquid nikita before they emerge from the sphere’s core, shooting out from its atmosphere. The rich panorama of the night sky disappears behind the colossal blue supergiant star as it breaks from its set orbit and glides through space at an alarming rate, forced on by an invisible force-field of alien technology, its power consumption almost unfathomable to the humans watching the spectacle. They watch in fascination as the other six stars move in unison. This weapon, a device that can meld both physical reality with transcendent reality in some type of supernatural quantum event, is far beyond their comprehension, and as it commences before their eyes, they can only stare on. They realise the sphere and all other spheres in the system are also relocating from their original orbits, rotating evenly around the conjoining stars. The auroras accumulate into lateral lines extending around the system, interlinking the spheres together, spreading the energy of the initiation process.

  It appears the process will take some time, a star’s mass no small issue to mess with. In the observatory, Deo balls his fists and thinks of his deceased father, the honour he never gained, the Sacrifice he never made. He gained honour by taking the challenge of risking the battlefield, but lost that honour when the battlefield took his life. The battlefield beat him. If his son can regain that honour, his service would have meant something.

  “Has this thing ever been put to test?” Boone suddenly asks. “Or is this device just experimental tech...”

  Nobody answers as the blue supergiant swallows a star into its hulking mass, an eruption of light sluicing out through the system.

  “There’s a reason those cities were built underground,” Deo turns to them, features grim. “You won’t survive the radiation of this thing.”

  Kitera reaches out to his arm, instantly understanding the underlying meaning of the careful use of his words, but the Paragons stare at him for a moment before understanding.

  “Once I’ve gone, get out of this dimension,” he tells them sternly, starting for the airlock.

  “Deo-” Mazayus begins to protest, but he cuts him off.

  “Make sure you stop the distortions before they spread, do whatever it takes.” He continues for the airlock, but Kitera grasps at his arm again, a vice grip holding him in place.

  “No!” She shakes her head, voice cracking, eyes shining with moisture. “There must be another way, let me find it.”

  “There’s no time. One more Sacrifice, that’s all it’s gonna take.” He pries her hands off his arm and holds them in his, tightly. “Look, I’m sorry, Kiya. But it’s for the best.” Her gaze drifts downward to concentrate on their conjoined hands, but he lifts her chin up softly with a finger. “And you know that.” He wants to say more, express just how sorry he is, how much she means to him, but he dare not reveal their treason to the others. Even if they kept their secret, her people could still dig it from her, which would only expose all involved. He needs to erase himself from the equation, lower the risks of her guilt and further rebellion, for her sake.

  Her face contorts as the truth spears through her heart, but she looks him right in the eyes, never wanting to lose the memory of their depth and warmth as they bore into her. She cannot even answer, instead her throat releasing a small sob. This cannot be happening. This cannot be happening. Why does this have to happen? But deep down, the moment she knew only one Sacrifice was needed, she knew he would do it. Her whole world rotates, her core frozen as she searches for an alternative. None reveal themselves to her.

  Deo fights all impulses
to kiss her, instead just absorbing the presence of her to cherish as his final moments with her. Finally, he releases her, the notion striking the final note.

  “I will find you in the stars,” she whispers, tears flowing freely though her face retains its stone cold mask.

  Deo’s eyes lock to hers even deeper, her last words hitting him hard. He backs away from her regretfully, and without another word, turns and steps inside Altair’s awaiting airlock. Altair will release him inside the unified stars, and flee the Demon Dimension before he goes supernova with his entity, boosting the seven stars into one. Hopefully it will be enough to create this new breed of star.

  Hopefully his Sacrifice will save the galaxy.

  THE SACRIFICE

  Enroute toward the forming stars, Mazayus, Natheus, and Boone snap their hands upward in salutes, and Deo returns the gesture strongly, clenching his jaw to hide any emotion.

  “May your Sacrifice be honoured,” Mazayus says, his face flat and emotionless. It was his duty to watch over Deo and guide him down the right path, and he thinks, prays, that he has achieved that. Lucien would be proud of such a son. Mazayus is.

  “Meet you in the Underworld, someday,” Boone says with nostalgia filling his tone, the phrase commonly said before a Paragon’s Sacrifice.