The First Technomancer

by G Aliaksei C

  “That’s the first time anyone called me large!” In my time, two meters and ten centimeters was a below-average height. But I realized my size wasn’t… standard here, in a world where Humans were so… short.

  “That’s because no one would dare say such a thing to a Corporate, unless they were the ones keeping them from being carried off by the wind!”

  I realized how much of a burden I was being, and in a rapid motion pulled myself up, latching onto handles in a way that would hold me down better. Pessi let go of me, dedicating all his limbs to keeping himself grounded on the tank.

  It took twenty minutes, but I managed to slowly, carefully climb all the way up to the turret. At some point my legs slipped, and I was lifted by the wind like a flag, holding onto a hatch with my hands, feet dangling downwind. I finally settled down atop the tank, in a comfortable position of extreme danger, working constantly to keep all limbs secured in the handlebars.

  From atop the turret I carefully gazed around, trying to spot something interesting in the storm, but seeing only the lights of the convoy. A particularly angry gust of wind tried to lift me up, and I decided to retreat down.

  The trip only lasted half an hour, and Rarus’s voice over the radio was a bringer of relief to the shaken crews. “Transport, stop. Everyone out and off the tanks, take positions on the hills ahead.”

  Normally troops move behind tanks in a way that shields them from enemy fire. Now, however, we moved to the side of the armor column, using the machines as a protection against the wind. I advanced like that to the hill, where the column broke and spread out. All around powered armor whined as the thirty Humans, Cockroaches, Slime, and honest-to-void robots scaled the slope to the top. Crawling the last few meters I passed the tank, pressing myself into the ground to reduce air resistance, and extended the bipod of my minigun. I carefully peeked over, scanning the valley below. The raging storm provided more of a view than I hoped for.

  Through the dust I could see a lake of light moving towards us. Inhuman noises filled the valley, originating from a lake of creatures huddled around a single massive bug. If Rarus was an insect with a complete exoskeleton and a general look that didn’t stimulate disgust in me, then this swarm was all flesh and shifting form, with countless limbs and eyes, causing nothing but loathing.

  “Great void,” I whispered, and Pessi, rapidly crawling up into position next to me, chuckled in his growling manner. Fun fact, while a Cockroach can walk on hind legs, it can move just as fast on all six, and looks entirely graceful while doing it. I shifted my gun and looked through the scoped hologram. Huge crawling things, glowing with Gems, moved among a mix of equally bright smaller creatures. These were nightmares, quite literally. I had dreams with creatures slightly less terrifying than these and could only assume they were designed to cause distaste in most sentient species. One of these wouldn’t be out of place in your closet at night, or in your walls when only you can hear them move. At the center of this mess a towering, fat, eyeless centipede tanked ahead, oblivious to the wind.

  “Set up the Whistle, Drake.” Pessi tapped at the tube on my back.

  I let go of my minigun, its sheer mass anchoring it to the ground, and took the tube and ammo off my back. Assisted by the power of my armor I slammed the stock spike into the ground and chambered a shell into the firing mechanism, angling the business-end up like one would a mortar. Looking at the Cockroach for help, and receiving none, I estimated the distance to the army at a kilometer, only guessing what the marking on the barrel’s sights meant and prepared to fire.

  “Drake. You can have the honor. Fire when ready.”

  I pressed in the firing switch.

  Several mistakes were made that day, but the mistakes of that minute were the most colorful. Certainly, they were the most embarrassing. In my defense, it’s hard to set up a mortar laying down.

  First, I failed to stick the base spike into the ground deep enough for the plate over it to absorb the shock, and the weapon sunk down, smashing the plate into dirt and sending a shockwave of sand in all directions.

  Second, the ‘Star Whistle’, the weapon I was so professionally firing, was a lot more powerful than I thought. The shell traveled like a streak of light, disappearing into the storm above. My earlier failure angled the barrel higher than before, which helped somewhat.

  I watched in awe as the brilliant star-like shell, barely visible through the sand, traveled several kilometers into the air, vanishing in the storm for several minutes. The deafening, whistling noise that accompanied the charge disappeared with it.

  “50 CC for one thousand meters off.”

  “50 CC for five hundred meters off.”

  “100 CC for a hit.”

  “50 CC for one thousand.”

  “200 CC for over two thousand meters.”

  The calls between our ranks went on, and I realized the whole army was making bets on my failure. I growled through my teeth, loading another shell.

  As I did so, a miniature version of the bubble that shielded the Gate towns grew over our five-being gunner team. I saw a Cockroach at the edge of my vision setting up the compact generator, anchoring it into the ground. I realized immediately why this shield was not used earlier - it had to be anchored into the ground, and it was very obvious, glowing against the wind like a bubble in sunlight.

  The warhead fell behind and to the left of the formation, over two kilometers off the mark. The blast was incredible, forming a five-hundred-meter fireball, bright but useless to our cause.

  In the sudden calm and safety of the energy dome I quickly reloaded the tube. Ripping the mortar out of the ground I stood at the ridge, holding the weapon like a bazooka, and aimed straight at the core of the enemy. They, of course, spotted the explosion in the distance, and began to spread out, but there was still a large central chunk at the core, huddled around the biggest bug.

  I pressed the trigger switch again, holding onto the mortar with my enhanced strength. The ridge I was standing on disappeared in front of me, the recoil flinging me into the storm, through the environmental shield and two dozen meters back. The incredible impulse of the shot nearly knocked me out - I was pressed into the skeleton of my suit, muscles and bone struggling to stay together. Something flashed in the corner of my eye, and four arms grabbed me mid-air. Together, the Inson and I crashed and slid to a stop. I held onto the weapon still, refusing to let the valuable tube of violence go.

  “I feel like a void-damned princess,” I said, not hearing my own words.

  Rarus set me down, said something into my deafened ear, clapped me on the shoulder, and blurred back on top of the ridge, towards the line of glowing bubbles. I followed at a rapid crawl, scaling the slope once more, struggling against the wind without cover.

  By now, both tanks and all the weaponeers were firing. A row of melee fighters was sitting behind them, waiting. I passed the fighters and crawled into our bubble. Setting the damn mortar down and grabbing my minigun, I looked through the sights.

  The huge Centipede at the core of the formation had a hole in its face. Cracks decorated it armored shell. Smoke seemed to plume from every opening in the armor, and I got the distinct feeling the Beast was cooking from within. Dozens of smaller bugs lay dead in the fire around it. The rest of the swarm was moving up, preparing a counterassault against our line.

  The weapons fired from our side were… unconventional. Recounting the events later, I realized that several weaponeers fired their guns after the munitions struck the target. A certain beam-projector to my right blasted a continuous stream of something glowing and roaring at a larger tank-spider, but meters before striking the beam ended, instead appearing for fractions of a second from other spots around the target, striking it at random angles, making its vast frontal shell significantly less useful.

  I grinned and shifted towards the giant advancing Centipede, spread my legs to stabilize myself, and glared through the targeting hologram at a zoomed-in picture of where my barrels were poin
ting. Locking on the mass, I pulled the trigger.

  Mine was an amazing weapon to fire. It felt right, like wielding a sledgehammer after years of using a four-inch hammer to put nails into wood - completely overkill, impractical, and epic. The sheer knockback of the heavy munitions, fired ten times per second, made me slide back in the sand. Some module within the gun hummed with power, drawing power and lighting the Runes engraved across the upgraded parts and locking the weapon’s direction, keeping it pointed at the same spot despite vast knockback.

  Even at this vast distance my munitions began hitting and exploding faster than I remembered any bullet traveling. My gun was one of the loudest weapons on either side - perks of kinetic slugs ripping through the dust. An awesome flow of bullets curved across the landscape, my shells driving explosions into the exposed flesh, ripping up the monster’s insides. After a full minute of firing into the breach the thing slowed down, dying a hundred meters from our hill.

  Best. Hunting trip. Ever.

  Switching targets, I began laying down withering fire onto other large, immobile targets. A particularly tempting target was the group of towering spider-like bears with cannons in their guts. The spiders stood tall, jaws opening to reveal a roaring fire that lanced at us across the distance. The fire splashed across our defense bubbles, and one of the gunner teams was washed off the ridge.

  However, the enemy was already scaling up our ridge. Melee specialists, led by Rarus, climbed over us weaponeers, and charged down.

  Standing tall now and letting my Class 2 belt and chestplate deflectors work in unison to bounce away shrapnel and chunks of burning flesh as I showered the charging enemy with suppressing fire, using the stream of burning tracer rounds as a flashlight. But the survivors of the initial massacre were tougher Class 4s and had matching shields and speed to keep them safe.

  Failing to take down more than a few dodging and weaving targets before they engaged our ranks, and not finding any large, unwieldy survivors, I slid back and set the gun down behind the ridge. The enemy still numbered in the hundreds and packed tightly to approach our line. Grabbing grenades out of pouches I ran through the fire, down the hill ridge, sprinting from one defensive bubble to another, giving out the explosives to weaponeers with similar trouble to mine. Explosions began ripping up the horde almost immediately - the grenades they had given me in the transport were Class 3, not the Class 1 firecrackers I got at Monument Town. Enough of them were able to take some of the smaller fry down, while stunning and damaging the larger.

  The battle was fun. I had fought in real battles, where my life and the life of my comrades was on the line, and this wasn’t it. My mind barely registered the combat, choosing not to waste energy employing any real Corporate training. I felt as I did in a training VR - composed, considerate, relaxed, and enjoying the experience of bashing in countless thoughtless targets. There was little at stake, the enemy was not terrible and all-powerful, and the result of the fight could only be profit.

  It was, by all means, a hunt.

  To my sides sounded the choir of tank-mounted autoguns, emphasized by a twin thump every few seconds as the main cannons knocked out the bigger of the Beasts.

  Then, a Shadow dashed up the ridge.

  I barely noticed the creature at first, thinking only that it was awfully similar to a shadow without any body to cast it. The thing was clearly Human-shaped but had a swarming dark mist for a body rather than a tangible mass, moving about as if cast by a jumping spotlight. Its right arm grew into a long blade, and a Cockroach was cut in two.

  The thing was a distance down the ridge, so at first I assumed some melee-capable soldier would deal with it. But when two more aliens died without resistance, I gave the creature my full attention.

  The defense bubble the Shadow charged into collapsed. Through the sudden storm there I saw flashes of helpless gunfire and motion. This didn’t last. The sand hid the view well, but I could guess the outcome of the fight anyway. My worst estimates were proven when the shimmering enemy formed in the fog, dashing into the bubble I was in. In a smooth, single attack, it decapitated Pessi.

  Like a switch, my brain changed gears.

  Corporate don’t feel grief or loss - we convert it into compressed, weaponized hate. Grief in The War would weaken a mind, but hate could make our resolve stronger. I should have felt grief at seeing Pessi die, too absorbed in the battle to realize he would be revived, but instead my blood flooded with adrenaline.

  Everything around the Shadow was frozen, as if pressed into the ground by an invisible hand. Beast and hunter alike stood unmoving, staring at the Shadow.

  “It’s a Shade!” Yelled a weaponeer with a tone I did not recognize, unloading a pistol into the thing. The thing charged in, undamaged, stabbing effortlessly through the chestpiece.

  I guessed the pistol was Class 5, by the way it moved and the powerful bolts it shot. My gun, I thought, would deal a fraction of the damage, and was larger and heavier at the same time.

  Something rattled around my mind as I looked at the frozen battlefield, trailing the Shadow as it killed one hunter after another. I focused, trying to catch the alien emotion passing through me.

  Something I wasn’t programmed to feel.

  Something that would never have an effect on me.

  I realized what I heard in the dying weaponeer’s tone.

  My laughter echoed across the frozen wasteland, overruling the cracking fires and suppressed breathing, resonating through the howling dust storm.

  The Shade canceled its charge at another helpless weaponeer and turned to me. I drew my sword, standing tall and straight, shoulders spread. My now-empty pouches allowed me to move with comfort.

  I felt a surge, as a chain linked fence would feel a wind of incredible force passing through it - detecting, but far from caring. It was an emotion that no Corporate knew, a part of Humanity that was deemed useless by Fall.

  “You think you can stop me with fear, Shadow?”

  The artificial wave became like a lance, striking me with a nearly physical force. I relaxed, catching the exact sensation, learning it, and focused on it.

  Like a ray of light striking a prism the lance of hate resonated within me, lighting up the landscape all around. In that moment of resonance I could see everything the fear struck, a perfect snapshot of every creature on the ridge. Terrified eyes shifted from the Shadow to me, while the Shade itself stepped back, halting its ineffective assault.

  Psionic aliens, I thought. Lovely.

  “One can’t scare a Corporate, Beast.” My words seemed like the only artificial sounds on the frozen battlefield.

  But you can stab one, especially if said Corporate lacks his usual augmentations and implants.

  With unlikely speed and strength the being dashed, trying to pierce my neck with its arm-spike. I felt slow and sluggish in comparison, barely managing to shift out of the spike’s path. It withdrew, striking again in the same moment. My sword was there, though, and I struck the spike, pushing it away from my neck once more.

  The effectiveness of the attack forced me to instantly reconsider my casual approach to this fight. Recalling combat subroutines and engaging my Fall Coefficient forced my awareness to rise, and my eyes to ignite with gold.

  For six seconds I deflected and dodged the spike, alternating, seeking for a chance to attack. Like a machine I dodged and deflected the attacks, reacting without thinking. I would be able to hold out…

  Then the Shadow began to change targets and speed many times my own proved impossible to compete with. The spike poked a large, clean tear in my left shoulder.

  I leaned into the stab, grasping the creature’s neck, sinking my adrenaline-fueled strength into the crushing motion. The Shade let out an inhuman screech. It was more physical than it looked, and the pressure of my fingers was clearly hurting it. I kept marching into the smaller creature, pushing it out of the energy dome and crashing out myself.

  In a surge the Shade forced its spike-hand up, t
hrough my shoulder, ripping off my arm. No longer able to maintain the pressure I stepped back and tripped. Falling on my ass and slamming my back against a rock I had time to draw my pistol and, in a moment of intense deja vu, sank two bolts into the Shadow’s head. The ineffective slugs passed through, harmless to the creature.

  I watched through agony as the Shadow leapt back, forgetting about me and resuming the slaughter of our revived, but still helpless weaponeers. One by one, the gunners fell.

  A purple blur of motion impacted the Shadow, throwing it back. Rarus fell from somewhere above, striking down with both massive swords. The Shade managed to pounce away, only to be assaulted by the immense blades again.

  In a glorious show of strength and speed the Inson forced the Shadow back. A deadly dance of attack, a continuous combination of motion that a Human could never replicate. Bit by bit the Shadow was chopped down, only able to back away from the raging Inson until nothing was left standing.

  I saw three more large wolf-like creatures leap at Rarus, and get cleanly decapitated, just as the Shadow had killed our gunners. Again and again the surviving creatures charged the Inson, creating a scene most similar to a swarm of deformed, growling, mutated mice charging an exposed blender.

  A minute later the sounds of combat stopped. By then I had managed to reach my amputated limb and press it back into the stump, letting nanites make repairs.

  Sitting up through the pain I looked around, trying to see what was happening, and why three hostiles got through our line.

  Not a single defense bubble remained standing.

  Everyone was dead.

  “Reinforcements never came…” I sang, shifting to get a better view.

  Hundreds of enemy corpses littered the slope of the hill. Dozens more were thrown about on top. All our fighters lay ripped apart among them. Only the Inson, moving with slow grace between the bodies, was alive.

  She looked around, spotted me and ran up to my rock. “You lived! The previous time this rare but unfortunate situation happened, I was the only being left standing.” She stared pointedly at my shoulder. “You Corporate are truly astounding.”