by Vowron Prime
The sun looked to be about a half-mile in diameter, surrounded by dozens of rings that all rotated on different axes, another half-mile out.
“Those are similar to what you humans call Dyson rings, though far, far more advanced. They absorb the vast majority of thermal energy emitted by the star, which is the only reason you are not melting right now.”
“Not quite,” the suit showed the ambient temperature at 130 degrees F. Hot, but well within the M37’s operating range.
“It’s almost a shame to destroy something so beautiful.”
Suspended at the center of the massive space, it looked like some form of cosmic-scale modern art. Two gargantuan pyramids of black metal protruded from the top and the bottom of the spherical room, pointing inwards at the sun. Attached to them were several thousand massive antennae, all pointed at the miniature star.
“Those triangular structures conduct power to the space-time anchor. Most of the energy captured by the rings is fed directly into them, but their placement also means that the rings’ meltdown will guarantee the destruction of the anchor itself.”
“Magnus, you sure you don’t want to ditch Sanctuary and make this station your home base instead? This is pretty fucking rad.”
He chuckled as he teleported toward the rings. “It’s just a bit too big for one guy. Maybe if it were around... half the size.”
While the rotating objects appeared to move slowly from two miles away, that was a deception. Their rotational speed was incredible, so he got only as close as he had to. Still, placing himself even fifty yards away from such gargantuan machinery made him hesitate more than once.
“All right, I’m in position. Exactly how much do I need to take out?”
“I have run the calculations, and if you stretch your ability to its maximal volume, you will have around six hours if you damage one ring. I recommend you sabotage four of them, which should give you just over ten minutes. Any longer and we might risk my people coming up with solutions to prevent the meltdown.”
“Not a whole hell of a lot of time to pop some heads before escaping. Still, it’s better than the alternative. Four it is.”
“Good. Removing a piece of the ring will cause it to eventually destabilize. Once that happens, it will break up, allowing the sun’s energy to superheat the station.”
The only problem was that they moved too fast for his relocator to lock on and suck them into a wormhole. They’d predicted this, so Nova already had a solution.
She fired the suit’s thrusters on a pre-calculated program, making the massive chamber seem like it was spinning rapidly around him. He could’ve sworn he heard Nina retch at the dizzying display. Thankfully, he’d never been prone to motion sickness, or he’d be having a really bad day.
Soon, he was rotating synchronously with one of the rings. Their velocities were so perfectly matched that the ring almost seemed stationary to him. He relocated as big of a chunk as he could—about the size of a small apartment—moving the piece directly onto the surface of the sun, where it quickly vaporized into nothingness.
The suit’s thrusters immediately fired again, pressing his body as the G-forces built. Soon, he was mirroring the orbit of another ring. Seconds later, another ring was missing a chunk.
They repeated this sequence for each ring in turn.
“Magnus, I recommend you leave the area immediately. My tampering bought you time enough to sabotage the rings, but their sensors will have detected you by now. Forces should already be en route.”
“Copy that. On my way out.”
Several teleports later, he was back at his ingress point, though teleporting himself back through would require Midar given that his destination was a narrow and easy-to-miss corridor. The last thing he needed was to end up inside a wall.
So he opened a hole in the stealth field and reached out. Touching the wall with his cybernetic left, he sent a ground-penetrating Midar ping that gave him an image through the metal.
“Coordinates locked. Initiating teleport.”
The energy dampener’s hole closed as soon as he was through. If there was even the smallest chance in hell that he could sabotage the station without revealing his identity to the Dyn, he’d take it.
Sure enough, alien crews swarmed the hallways, though they seemed to consist mostly of noncom techs. He spied no Ultimators among them, though his next stop would have plenty of those.
“Nine minutes until meltdown.”
“Thanks, Nova. Nothing like a little pressure to keep me motivated.”
With the little time he had left, he couldn’t afford to take the same precautions as on the way in. Instead of avoiding oncoming Dyn, he ran straight at—and through—them, teleporting just before they crashed into each other. Weaving his way through the corridors, he had almost made it back to the grand central shaft when he rounded a corner—right into an Ultimator.
The next instant, he was dangling in midair, his neck firmly within the Ultimator’s grasp.
Nina screamed over the comms.
Almost subconsciously, he molded his cybernetic left into a four-foot-long blade, raking it vertically to slice the Ultimator’s arm in half. By the time MC had fallen back to the ground, the Ultimator had already been fused into a nearby wall, instantly extinguishing its pitiful existence.
He pried the juggernaut’s oversized mechanical fingers from his neck before disposing the dangling arm in a similar manner.
“Shit!” his sister exclaimed.
“Yeah, that was downright reckless. Shit.” It was a mistake he could not afford to make again.
After giving himself a once-over and finding nothing especially wrong, he departed the area with haste. When he was just one floor below the central shaft, he did a blind jump to teleport himself directly into the expanse, bypassing several minutes of frustration.
The area was now a hive of activity as dozens of elevator trams ran down the length of the station, all heading for the power plant.
“How long until they realize it’s futile and start evacuating?”
“They have already begun. Nonessential personnel are always evacuated first, as a precaution.”
“Guess that means I gotta jimmy to my last stop.” His mental reserves still felt pretty good, so he initiated several consecutive teleports, building speed with each one. His destination was the other end where the hemispherical biodome sat—an area that also happened to contain the habitation modules of all of the personnel stationed on-base.
“Seven minutes.”
There was no way in hell he’d get there in time if he navigated the maze of hallways as he’d done to get to the generator. This time, he wouldn’t have to; he’d play the game on his own terms.
MC directed the suit to approach the outer wall of the central shaft, where he initiated a teleport a good thousand feet outside, clearing the station and putting him back into outer space.
“Nova, mind doing the honors?”
“With pleasure,” she replied, actuating the thrusters to have him accelerate toward the geodesic dome miles away at the end of the station. MC supplemented the rockets by teleporting himself and add a bit of velocity, and just a couple of minutes later, the opposing retrograde rockets fired to kill his momentum.
The suit came to a gentle stop right outside the transparent dome, the lush alien forest visible underneath.
“Let’s go pop some heads. Important, military heads.”
Twenty-Two
The Arboretum’s geodesic dome approached at an astonishing rate. The M37’s retros fired, slamming him with several Gs of force. Not bothering to come to a complete stop, MC teleported through the clear dome into the forest below, where the artificial gravity sucked him down to the soft dirt floor.
Blaring sirens announced the station’s impending doom.
“It appears that my people have given up on repairing the star,” Nova chimed.
An automated voice rang out on the station-wide intercom in a loop: “EVACUATION P
ROTOCOLS ARE NOW IN EFFECT. ALL NONESSENTIAL PERSONNEL SHOULD PROCEED TO THEIR ASSIGNED EMERGENCY SHUTTLE. EVACUATION PROTOCOLS ARE NOW IN EFFECT…”
Winding walkways and hidden illumination thwarted the natural facade that the Dyn had curated in this jungle-like environment, yet MC had neither the time nor the desire to appreciate the surroundings. He was in motion the instant he hit the ground, staying invisible, the stealth field active all the while.
The ability had proven to be surprisingly effective thus far, allowing him to move with near impunity—his earlier Ultimator encounter aside. He couldn’t even begin to imagine the havoc these abilities would wreak back on Earth; it was no exaggeration to say that countries would gladly commit genocide for a chance to obtain what he had.
Autodoors opened and out stormed three Ultimators surrounding an immaculately dressed Zevan-type Dyn. MC just fused one of the mechanized aliens into another. The third opened up with its microwave emitter, somehow locating MC despite his invisibility. It blasted MC’s shield with an onslaught of energy, but only for an instant.
One heartbeat later, the cybernetic juggernaut joined its friends in a wreckage of deformed metal, arms, and far too many legs.
The Dyn official started to scream, right before he too joined the hideous artwork, adding his own pair of limbs to the scene. Once finished, MC relocated the entire mass deep into the thick soil beneath the trees, eliminating any evidence.
“Can anything hurt him?” Nina asked in wonder. “I mean, I thought you aliens would at least stand a chance.”
Nova coughed awkwardly. “Yes, he does seem quite capable, doesn’t he? Perhaps even capable enough to rescue a good friend’s family.”
“Can you girls prep those unconscious Harvesters we pulled through? I’m gonna dump them here. This area should be high-traffic enough for your people to find them. And if not? Well, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”
Soon, several bodies appeared through the portal, one after another. MC unceremoniously dumped them on the ground before exiting the biodome into a series of long, dark corridors.
As with everywhere else, there was hardly enough lighting to navigate. The aquamarine traces cast an eerie hue on the surroundings, their light sucked into the matte-black walls, ceiling, and floor.
“Five minutes until meltdown.”
The blueprint projected onto his HUD showed him moving toward the habitation ring. His destination was past that—at the military side of the operation where the Dyn staged their Ultimators and maintained their own Central Command Bridge.
“You are entering the area with the highest density of military personnel on the station. Please, do be careful.”
“For the record, I’m going to consider anyone I see in there an enemy. Is that understood?”
He glanced at the girls’ vidfeeds for a second. The two nodded solemnly in response, albeit with strained expressions.
Good enough.
Opening up a small hole in the stealth field, he deployed enough Midar pings through his cybernetic arm to get an image of the room beyond. Thirty entities. Ten larger ones—likely Ultimators—and twenty others.
“Magnus, please wait. It would be good to eavesdrop on their conversation, if at all possible. I assume you were planning to kill them from out here, but can you teleport inside first?”
“Roger that.”
He initiated a teleport to an empty corner of the spacious room. A handful of stairs led down to a hologlobe much like Sanctuary’s, though on a much larger scale. The projection currently displayed a two-story blowup of the station, replete with red and green areas and dozens of blue lines snaking through the various corridors.
“—containment breach in five minutes. We cannot afford to remain here any longer!” a Qephyx Dyn grated with its modulated voice.
“All personnel have already been evacuated, we are among the last. I’ve purged our databases, in case the terrorists had a hand here.”
“What of the Legatus? Has he made it off the station yet?”
Now that piqued MC’s interest. Very much.
“No. We asked him to leave first, yet he insisted on staying to monitor the evacuation personally. His entourage is currently en route to his personal shuttle; we expect him to be off the station within two minutes.”
“Nova, I need to know where that shuttle is. Now.”
“I do not have that information, Magnus! You would have to connect to the command center’s systems, and even then I am unsure if we could get to him in time.”
MC didn’t miss a beat. Four Ultimators had clustered around what appeared to be a military commander, yet all found themselves missing their upper bodies. The Ultimators’ legs fell to the ground, while the Zevan-type Dyn’s legs geysered blood high into the air, decorating the surroundings with crimson and fuchsia.
Before anyone had a chance to react, MC had already given two more groups of Ultimators the same treatment, leaving just two of the oversized assholes—the guards for the entrances located at either end of the room. He relocated one into the other before throwing them into space, and that was that.
Then it was simply a matter of fusing the commanders into one another—Zevan-type, Qephyx, and the hoverchair Apoadeid alike. They all scrambled around the room trying to escape but to no avail.
To their credit, few screamed despite MC’s efforts to inflict as much pain as possible. Some even sighted their sidearms, yet not one took a shot. They had no target, and military professionals would never blindly fire on a whim.
Twenty seconds. That was all it had taken to extinguish the twenty-nine aliens’ lives, yet it was still insufficient.
He teleported to the last one, scooping the Dyn up with his cybernetic arm, pinning him against a wall by the neck.
“Which bay did the Legatus dock at? Tell me now!” he roared through the M37’s speakers.
“Resistance scum,” the Dyn commander spat. “You will burn. You will all misera—” His speech warped into a series of gurgles and bubbles as MC ripped out his neck.
“Should’ve known that’d be a waste of time. Nova, help?”
Only shocked silence greeted him on the other end. Shit. He’d completely forgotten that Nina was watching the brutal display.
“Nina, I—” The words didn’t come. An awkward silence fell between them.
“Magnus, I have it,” Nova called out, a long fifteen seconds later. It may as well have been an eternity.
“I analyzed your suit’s footage from your approach, and there were only two vessels docked at the station.”
“How’d you know which one was his?”
“I… Please trust me on this, Magnus. I am uploading a marker onto your HUD now.”
“Copy that, Nova. Get me the most optimal route to him, and remember, I can teleport.”
“Calculating…”
It took her another ten excruciating seconds before his HUD updated with a path that took him through walls. He kept a hole open in the stealth field, continuously firing Midar pings through his arm as he teleported through walls into rooms into corridors, warping his way across the station as he scrambled to catch the Legatus.
“You will not make it!” Nova shouted.
It soon became apparent that she was right. Realizing that his current approach was untenable, he did a blind teleport directly into space just outside the station, hoping to relocate a chunk of it into the escaping craft.
But the Legatus’s ship had already left and was already well beyond Midar’s half-mile range. Forget about spotting the tiny vessel via sight—a total lost cause.
So he did the next best thing—he teleported to try to chase after the Legatus’s shuttle, already deep into space.
“Motherfucker!”
“You are too late, Magnus! You cannot hope to match the shuttle’s speed!”
“Nova, fire the suit’s thrusters, maximum burn. I don’t care what it takes, we need to take that asshole down.”
Four Gs of acceleration k
icked his ass, sending him barreling towards the craft. He supplemented by teleporting as far as he could—about a half-mile at a time in quick succession. The headache hit him like a hovertram. Blood trickled out of his nose after the fourth jump. By the eighth, his face was dyed red.
Yet while he’d been able to initially close in on the craft, its acceleration continued to mount until it was long gone.
“Magnus, I think you should give up,” came Nina’s voice, more reserved than before as she eyed his projected vital readouts. “You’ve accomplished your mission, so please, don’t hurt yourself?”
Godammit! He really wanted to slam something right now, though sadly, all that surrounded him was the bleak blackness of space.
What a missed opportunity this was. Taking out the head of the snake would’ve been such a crippling blow to the enemy. Not to mention both he and Nova had a personal stake in seeing that son of a bitch burn.
“Magnus, you have succeeded in destroying both the space-time anchor as well as the Insights Satellite Network. Without support from the rest of the Dyn, the Legatus will be forced to work with the resources available on the planet, which pale next to anything that the Dyn could have brought here. Moreover, his military presence in this system is quite small.”
“Yeah. All right. Aborting pursuit.”
Nova fired the retrograde thrusters to bring him to a stop, spinning him around to face the station, now many miles away.
“I’m going to hang out here for a bit, just to make sure that thing blows.”
“I will set the thrusters to keep you from falling back to the planet—Or! Actually, I have a better idea. I am guiding your suit to the nearest disabled Insights satellite. I would like to try something. Your fuel reserves are running low, but should be sufficient to get you there.”
“Copy that.”
The suit’s thrusters burst several times in quick succession to put him on course, which incidentally gave him a good view of the station and the planet alike.
He didn’t have to wait long. The miniature sun soon melted through the station walls, shining brilliantly for a flash then winking out. Residual heat melted the rest of the station in silence. Minutes later, the once-impressive technological marvel was nothing more than scrap metal.
