TE-001: Six Minutes
Originally published on telegram, 30th of March 2021. Revised for upload 22nd of August 2024.
The first actual prose written in the Twilight Era setting we'd been using to roleplay with for years, coming off of not having written prose since 2018 and a series of upheavals that ended up reforging nearly everything about who we were. We wrote this for friends, for fun.
The first of many to come.
Six minutes.
The Legionary Esper was the last of her squadron now, her drones lay in tangled heaps of fused metal behind her, somewhere in the bloodied marble hallway outside the goddamn cleaning closet she was cowering in.
Six minutes before the second squad would reach the reactor.
Maybe fifteen seconds to give herself last rites after.
She was too deep into the corporate battleship, too far from the Infinite Messenger's auspex to call for an evac channel on herself, and in the hallway beyond the dull brown metal door she was staring at were a dozen plasma-armed neuroslaved who'd taken the squadron by surprise, taken everyone but her in a hail of superheated bolts.
The inside of her skull burned, nails inside driven through her temples, though she couldn't be sure if it was stress(her Prometheus Rig, Empress bless it, warned her about cortisol spikes potentially interfering with her psionics in bright red letters on her HUD) or the psychic backlash of her drones being destroyed so utterly in so little time.
She set a timer with a whisper of impulse along the synaptic bridge between her rig and her spine.
She wondered idly if she'd have lasting neurological damage from that.
Five minutes.
Not like she'd have a chance to find out if she didn't move.
The lizardess got to her feet, checking the plating of her rig, glistening scarlet sanguine-steel marked with the crystalline amethyst spikes of a Drone Handler, feeling the reassuring weight of the warm hydraulics and armor plating encasing her body.
Deep breath.
Focus.
Ground yourself, and look inwards.
Look inwards, and let the electrons sing.
The crystalline foci in her rig hummed with malevolent intent as she kicked open the door into the hall with a war cry.
The lightning carved out from the armored claws of her gauntlets in a roaring crackle of electric wrath.
Her fear, her sorrow, and her rage fusing molten into her will as it ripped the air apart in great ionized arcs, drawing plasma channels between her and her would-be killers.
The neuroslaved were identical husks of cloned grey flesh in the vague shape of Exodites with crude AI bolts shoved into their brains, always slow to react, hardly had a chance to raise their weapons before the cold corporate marble of the hallway echoed with thunder.
It's all motion now, the Esper charging into the gunline as the storm of her will arced and rippled across the armor of her fallen squadron, bounced from walls and grounded itself in her foes.
All she has is force, all she is-motion and violence encased in steel and ceramic.
The guns failed first, the psionic storm causing fuel tanks to rupture into roiling clouds of burning gasses, igniting their wielders, who die without so much as screaming, reaching to grab her even as her shoulder plate smashed into the first, her rage at the closeness of their dead gray faces abated slightly by the momentary thrill of watching them boil away.
Four Minutes.
The HUD of her warplate warned her, though she hardly noticed, laughing wildly as she ran, manic joy in violence, in revenge, in the dark thrill of her psionics unbound.
The neuroslaved lay dead behind her, half melted husks of flesh and metal smeared across the floor, but her electric soul still crackled across her armor, the edge of death making drawing on her powers effortless.
She flew down the corridors, pounding footsteps tracing the vague memory of the path that had led her into the ambush, hoping to see the display of her rig tell her she was in evac range. The corridors of the Sol United warship were all the same, identical branching hallways of pale marble lit with flouro-bulbs in golden sconces, brown doors labeled with machine-readable glyphic text that was indecipherable to the Esper.
Three minutes.
The force of impact was the first thing to hit her senses, a javelin of will aimed at her heart throwing her back against the marble wall hard enough to crack the veneer.
She looked up through vision hazy with spots to see the shape of a tall red wolf wearing a bloodstained three-piece suit and an ornate golden foci rig over the left side of his face, a lens of glass rendered opaque with void-circuit etchings covering his eye.
She recognized him instantly as an enemy psion, a Troubleshooter.
Her Prometheus Rig chirped an alarm, its archillect's psychometric auspex reading spikes from the wolf as he prepared a killing blow to crack her armor.
Motion, Violence.
She moved before he could, throwing herself back off the wall at him in a desperate lunge, living lighting curving around her armored fist as she took a swing.
He curved the blow away with a projection of his own telekinesis, knocking her off balance, then striking her back with what felt like a freight tram as she stumbled, smashing her body into the opposite wall with a cold laugh.
Two Minutes
She didn't have time to think, knowing the deathblow was coming.
Move.
She fired the hydraulics in her greaves, hurling herself along the wall into a roll, switching her rig's focal array into a Counterpsionic alignment, a screeching thrum of negation that felt to her like moving through ice water as her will was translated into a churning absence.
The wolf stumbled back, clutching his head with one paw as he reached clumsily for something in his suit jacket with the other, just as she reached her feet again, head swimming as she kept pouring herself into the null field. A light on her HUD informed her she was now in auspex range, but she couldn't make the call with the field active.
One Minute
She lurched towards the wolf with murderous intent, grabbing his soft, rust-hued throat in her crimson gauntlets.
The Epser looked the corporate psion in his dead blue eyes as he struggled against her grip, until she shoved him back against the wall she'd been half-embedded in a minute prior.
The Troubleshooter's eyes went wide as he stared into the implacable, unreadable shell of her helmet.
Her grip tightened, and she felt bone, sinew, and cartilage crush beneath her claws.
She exhaled, releasing the field. Her knees collapsed beneath her, and staring at her bloodstained gauntlets, she mentally punched in the evac channel, the cold embrace of warped subspace pulling her to safety as her timer ran to zero.