Chapter 7: Careful Planning (Patreon)

“Anybody bring a light?” Jeb asked into the void.

The response was the chittering of insects and a whoosh of air as something big went right past his face.

“Hit the deck!” Corporal Stevens shouted, and Jeb complied. His FMO shields were magic, but he didn’t wanna test how magic. Jeb knew his telekinesis had limits, and it took several shields to stop a single nine-milimeter. A Browning might tear him in half.

The kid lit up the enclosed tunnel, metaphorically and literally, each muzzle-flare providing Jeb a strobe-like effect, allowing him to see what was going on.

The kid was currently tearing off the giant creature’s front leg, sending spatters of blue blood everywhere as the heavy machine gun outperformed the creature’s natural armor.

Jeb glanced up and spotted a thousand angry maws descending on them from above.

That’s a problem. Jeb searched the room through the flashes of light and spotted Cecil, holding the big bad in place from his position at the side wall. Jeb lunged for him.

“Reloading!” Corporal Stevens shouted at the end of the hail of bullets.

“Can you keep them off of us?” Jeb shouted, sliding through the mud to shout into Cecil’s ear.

Yeah, we’re all getting hearing loss after this.

“Which ones?” Cecil asked.

“The ones blocking out the light! Which ones did you think!?” Jeb shouted.

“What about that one?” Jeb couldn’t see which one he was pointing at, but he knew exactly what he was talking about. The big one.

“I’ll handle it!”

“Alright!” Jeb could feel Cecil shift beside him, and he knew the man was making his black strings grow from the walls, creating a net above them. Jeb could hear the frustrated hissing from above and hoped the black stuff would hold.

Now the big one was unrestrained, which was a bit of a problem.

“Firing!” Stevens shouted and Jeb hit the deck. He wasn’t very close to the last field of fire, but people got turned around in better circumstances than these, and Jeb wasn’t feeling like becoming swiss cheese.

When the hail of bullets opened up again, Jeb spotted the creature with its shields pressed up against the wall, a pale human hand sticking out from behind it. Jeb didn’t have time to process guilt before Stevens quickly walked the shots over to the new location and started aiming for the creature’s center mass while its side was turned, which grabbed its attention.

The creature turned its shields back to Stevens and started rushing him.

Jumping into the path of a charging tank which was currently receiving M2 fire was way on the bottom of Jeb’s list of ‘Life goals’, and way up on the list of ‘things that’ll get you killed’, but if he didn’t, Stevens was going to be the next one squished, and that would just make getting out even harder.

Where the hell is General Ma’am? Jeb thought as he picked himself up and flew the twenty feet in the blink of an eye.

Jeb flanked the insect and thrust his palm out toward the thing’s side. Or, where he thought the side would be in the flashing lights.

“Alpha strike.” Jeb muttered the instant he felt his palm make contact with hairy chiton.

A blender-like eruption of hundreds of spears and blades of telekinetic force burst out of Jeb’s palm. Jeb could feel that a few of his creations penetrated the creature’s side, but most of them were absorbed by huge thing’s armor. The ones that did get in, though, they drew jagged spirals, shredding the creature’s vital organs and causing a mortal wound that would surely kill the beast.

Which pissed it off.

The insect let out a thrumming that rattled Jeb’s bones before it backhanded him with one of its shield-arms. Jeb’s head and torso Armor traps popped the moment he sustained light damage, attempting to fling away the offending limb before it could do more than bruise him. The monster bulled right through the resisting force and sent Jeb flying across the chamber until he smacked into the wall, burying himself halfway into it.

Am I upside down? Jeb couldn’t tell right away because of the lack of light. Then the blood started rushing to Jeb’s head, confirming his suspicion.

In the flashing light of the M2, Jeb saw the creature charging toward him, and he desperately tried to pull himself out of the sticky mud of the wall before it pancaked him.

A blast of silver Myst erupted above the creature as General Ma’am landed on its back, snatching up the Core and slamming it into the thick plate of gold.

The creature thrummed again and tried to spin and knock the woman out of the air, but she was too quick for it, flitting around its bulk evasively, all while manhandling the soft gold into a pouch for the core to rest in.

Eyes on the prize, this one, Jeb thought, peeling himself out of the wall with telekinesis. He could see the flow of Myst into the core rapidly dwindle, but they still had to deal with all the Army ants currently trying to kill them.

“Make us an exit!” She shouted from above them.

Corporal Stevens started shooting straight up, massacring the bugs packed tight into Cecil’s nets and drenching them with a shower of blood. The corpses stopped moving, but they were still held in place by Cecil’s nets, keeping them trapped in the lightless abyss.

In the flashing light of the muzzle flare, Jeb found Cecil and grabbed him by the arm, hauling him over to Stevens. If they were going to get out, they needed to pick a side and stick  to it.

“Cecil, drop the net!” Jeb shouted over the gunfire, practically into the man’s ear.

“That’ll bury us!”

“Do you have another way out!?” Jeb demanded. “I’ll handle it!”

Cecil nodded, and Jeb tapped the heavy gunner on the shoulder, letting him know they were about to make a move. Stevens nodded and stopped firing.

“Now!” Jeb shouted, reaching into his Myst core and channeling out as much as he safely could to create a slanting surface above them. In the darkness, Jeb felt a huge amount of dead weight slam into his shield testing the limit of his Myst before sliding off it and raining down on the other side of the chamber.

Jeb saw a glimmer of light above them. He grabbed Cecil and Stevens and drew them in close enough to smell their lunch before forming a bullet-shaped shell around the three of them and launching.

Cecil screamed and Corporal Stevens laughed directly into each ear as they plowed through the tiny opening above them, shoving various limbs out of the way as they moved. A sharp limb cut through Jeb’s shell, but Corporal Stevens made for excellent body armor.

“Fuck!” he shouted into Jeb’s ear, clapping a hand over the cut in his shoulder.

A second later they were out, rising up into the sky. Jeb tilted their Wonka Elevator away to get some clearance from the murder-hole. He glanced over his shoulder as they went, almost hoping General Ma’am stayed there and got ganked.

It would make things a lot simpler for him, as far as preventing a city from getting torched.

With a magnificent burst of silver Myst, General Ma’am erupted from the bug hole, carrying the core like a football player, tucked in tight against her chest. From what Jeb could see, the Myst around it was calm.

Silver linings. Sucks about the two guys she brought with her.

“Stevens!” She said, flying up to their little pod in the sky.

“Ma’am?”

“Take the core somewhere safe and take the rest of the day off, you look like shit!” She said, holding out the gold volleyball out to him. Jeb dropped the shield so the kid could take it.

“Yes, ma’am.” He said, still holding the wound in his shoulder. Jeb took the hint and steered the three of them outside Ant territory and dropped them off.

“The rest of the mopping up we can handle by ourselves.” She said as they touched down, giving Jeb a sidelong glance. “Jeb, I’d like you to return to your room now and await further instructions. I appreciate the help, but not you flying the coop like that.”

“Understood.”

“I really hope you don’t make me do something drastic, young man.” She said, and a small part of Jeb had a suspicion that she might prefer something drastic. “And if it turns out you were the one behind this little distraction,” She shook her head. “Your stay here will become less pleasant.

“Me? It’s probably some guy working alone with access to alien tech on a time-crunch…”

“Indeed.”

Jeb stopped and thought about how accurately that defined him. “Oh, I see where you’re coming from. I’ll go back to my room.”

“Cecil, keep an eye on him until we find another Specialist to relieve you.”

“C’mon buddy,” Cecil said, steering Jeb to the south.

“Aw, man,” Jeb groaned. Terrorists think I’m untrustworthy right after I saved their lives. What kind of world am I living in?

****

True to her word, two days later, Jeb’s living conditions were much less comfortable. They hadn’t outright accused him of stealing the two missing nukes, but they had pressured him pretty hard, trying to trick him into admitting he’d taken them, or revealing the existence of his ‘accomplice’ who set the dungeon bomb.

So far, Jeb had done pretty well, given that he was totally innocent, and had a fair amount of practice at telling the truth creatively recently.

Still, no more VIP room. He’d been downgraded to the specialist bunkbeds with a Chatty Cathy who was most likely wearing a wire.

Jeb understood the reasoning behind it: He was a Myst user, which they called a specialist out of a misguided attempt at rebranding an alien weapon. The only people who could tell if a specialist was up to something was another specialist. And Jeb had broken their only Myst restraining collar.

So they set him up with a room-mate who was equal parts interrogator and watchdog, with a penchant for discussing things at length.

“So, general Ma’am,” Jeb asked, turning over on his bunk. “What’s her story?”

“General Ma’am?” Terry scoffed as he shook dust out of his pants. “You don’t know her name?”

“Apparently not.” Jeb said. “She didn’t have a plaque in front of her desk or anything.”

“Well you’re in luck,” Terry said with an annoying grin. “Because I was stationed at this base before the Tutorial. Now, most guys broke and went for their families when the world fell apart, but not me, I was determined to serve my country, so I stayed at my post and just kept trucking.” He made a straight chopping motion with his hand.

“Fancy way of saying you were single.”

“Shaddap. So anyway, after the Stitching, the base commander blew his head off, which kinda made things a bit…hectic for a while. I remember unloading an entire semi-truck full of rotting fish and some kid was talking about how fermented food were good for you, and the idiot tried to eat some of it, and spent the next week in bed with the shits.”

Terry paused. “Actually come to think of it, I don’t think Nate survived that…So anyway, the place was just crumbling around us. People were going hungry, and monsters were coming in from the desert, attracted by all the people living here. I knew we needed more effective leadership, and I could’ve taken command for myself, but when colonel Meyers stepped in and gave herself a field promotion, I figured I didn’t wanna rock the boat, yah know? I’m a team player.

“Mmhmm,” Jeb nodded noncommittally. At least I got a name out of that stream of word-vomit.

“So it’s Brigadier General Meyers, then?” Jeb asked.

“No, she promoted herself to General of the Air force, and acting President of the United States.”

Jeb blinked. “Does that count?” He asked with a frown.

“Of course it counts. In a situation where all the politicians are dead, control reverts to the military.” Terry said. “Right?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s both inaccurate and oversimplified.”

“Meh,” Terry shrugged before throwing on his shirt. “She’s only wrong if she doesn’t cut a slice of America out of those E.T.’s claws.”

“History written by the winners, huh?” Jeb asked.

“Exactly.” Terry grabbed his gun and motioned for Jeb to follow. “C’mon, we’re cleaning the runway today, and I need my Telekinesis buddy to make the job easier.”

Jeb sighed and levered himself out of bed, getting dressed.

******

“She used to be a fighter pilot, you know, until she got too old for it and they grounded her. I hear she kicked major ass in the eighties. Like, killed a lot of people. I heard the base commander was actually afraid of her. Guy never killed someone in his life…except himself I guess.”

“So that’s the reason for the…” Jeb spun his finger and made a whooshing noise.

“The jet engines she makes out of Myst?” Terry asked. “Oh yeah, I never thought about that.”

I’m fairly sure you don’t think about a lot of things. Jeb wasn’t sure if they were expecting him to get more information out of Terry or Terry to get more out of him. It could be a mask. There were some very smart people out there since Nerve became freely available to the public.

Jeb still wondered how she was using Myst. It was some kind of air manipulation that allowed her to project her voice over vast distances, listen in on people at range, fly, make telescopes out of air, and use sonic vibrations to turn people’s innards into snot.

It was a well thought-out power, the kind Jeb expected from someone intelligent who understood the value of flight and instant communication and a fair bit of the technology that supported it.

Terry on the other hand, could only use his Myst to dull all sound except for his own voice, meaning he could talk over anyone he wanted to, anytime he wanted to…and that was it.

What an idiot. Well, he might make a good negotiator.

Jeb didn’t have a lot of time left, and now he was cleaning the runway Meyers was going to use to deliver the nuke to all those ‘Fucking E.T.s’. It was strange. Jeb could be walking along beside them talking about pop culture and wondering if any of their favorite celebrities were still alive like normal people, then Bam! Jeb would hit the subject of melas, keegan or kitri, and the vitriol that poured off of them was palpable.

Jeb was sweeping off the runway with dozens of brooms at once by running a single string of Myst through all of them, when Terry dropped the bomb…metaphorically speaking.

“There’s the plane,” Terry said, leaning on his brush and staring at a hangar. “The one the general’s gonna use tomorrow to wipe that fuckin’ infestation off the map.”

Surprised, Jeb raised his eyes and spotted a B-2 resting in a hangar. The plane was black in the dim light, the sleek whole-wing design making it look like some kind of ambush predator, waiting for him to step closer.

“Neat.” Jeb said, his mind racing.

He was currently standing a couple hundred feet away from the plane they were going to use on Solmnath…Scratch that. The plane they say they’re going to use. The more Jeb thought about it, the more he was sure it was another ruse to get him to try to make a move.

They’d walked Jeb up to an attractive distractor. Jeb wouldn’t be surprised if there was going to be a team of specialists waiting for him to show up all night.

I’m not that simple, Jeb thought, shaking his head.

Still, I’d like a little more insurance than just , Jeb thought, burying a packet of Myst in the tarmac, where he gave it If/then instructions to poke a hole in the fuel tank of any plane that was carrying uranium, then reset itself.

Terry didn’t see shit because Jeb moved the string through his leg and hid it about a foot under the asphalt. Jeb didn’t see punching holes in fuel tanks as ‘stopping’ the bombs, more like delaying them, since the pilot should be able to push the plane across the desert…in theory.

That’s a stretch, Jeb thought to himself as he walked along the runway and dotted it with landmines. Oh, I’ve got it, I’m not stopping the bombs, My traps are stopping them.

“I mean…I say that, but I can’t stop thinking about all the people in L.A.” Terry said. “I wish there was something I could do about it.”

Jeb cocked an eyebrow. Really? Terry was confiding in him a desire to stop the general as bait to get Jeb to admit he wanted to do the same. Jeb had even studied this exact technique in a POW preparedness seminar.

If Jeb hadn’t been on high alert for that kind of fuckery constantly, it might have worked.

“Yeah, it’s a bummer, but you gotta remember, most of the people living there now are getting along with their alien overlords. Real Americans moved out of the city months ago.” Jeb rested his palms on the broom handle.

The second statement implied the ones who stayed were not ‘real Americans’, but it did not outright say it, which made it perfectly okay for Jeb to say. The first statement was true. Most people were obeying the law and just interested in getting by. They didn’t really care who was in charge as long as their basic needs were met.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Terry said, nodding. “Cmon, let’s go watch some of the new recruits dig holes.”

Jeb nodded, and the two of them hopped in Jeb’s Jeep and drove out to the west of the base. Jeb gave Terry a sour look as he started the engine and pulled away from the hangars. He was distracted momentarily when the blue spire came into view.

“What’s that?” Jeb asked, pointing at it as it peeked out from between buildings.

“Huh?” Terry glanced over, missing it.

“Blue thing, looks a bit like a railroad tie, except twenty feet tall. I saw it when I was flying above the base earlier.”

“Oh that. That’s top secret. Need to know only.”

“Ah.”

“But…the boys think it’s what prevents The Roil from paying us a visit. It just kinda showed up one day and General Meyers discourages questions about it.”

Hmm… Jeb thought, frowning. That might not be a bad guess. Faradan stone was what they used to make the walls of cities to resist The Roil, after all. I wonder how a giant stake in the ground works, though?

“But man, flying? You and the General are the only ones who can do that, as far as I know. That’s gotta be tight. What’s it like.”

“Imagine you’re in one of those old cartoons where you can pick yourself up to move out of the way of something. It’s kind of like that.”

“Cool.” Terry chuckled as they approached a line of men, all of them between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. ‘patriot age’, when you can’t quite grasp the concept of becoming a statistic. They were shoveling the gritty dirt of the desert over their shoulders, sweating like crazy as they dug a trough.

The reason for it became clear as they approached. A dark lump resolved into a pile of keegan bodies, about fifty of them. They all sported gunshot wounds of various sizes, and lay limp in their pile. Their pale skin was even paler than usual, ghost white in the overbearing sun.

Jeb found himself staring at one in particular. It was about five-foot ten. An adolescent, by Jeb’s reckoning. Their jaw hung open, and their tube-like keegan tongue rested in the sand. The Myst around them felt…wrong.

“Yeah, these boneys tried to raid our fort on the Colorado river. We showed them why that was a bad idea.” he nudged Jeb on the shoulder, breaking him out of his stupor.

Jeb blinked, then gave Terry the half-hearted chuckle the man was looking for, trying not to stare at the pile of bodies. The Myst-based life around the bodies, the spirits and little buglike creatures that formed a whole ecosystem around the ever-present Myst…they didn’t go anywhere near the pile. Like it was poisonous, from a magical standpoint.

Jeb took the hint, and never went closer than twenty feet. His Myst instincts had never failed him thus far, and currently it was telling him to steer clear.

Raiders my ass. Jeb thought, picking out a few more children here and there. It was pretty obvious by their demographics they’d been trying to settle somewhere nearby, been murdered, then posthumously labeled ‘raiders’.

Raiders don’t bring children. Jeb choked back a wave of visceral disgust that swirled through his stomach. He couldn’t afford to appear sympathetic to the ‘E.T.s’. Not without getting killed himself.

The surrounding soldiers didn’t seem to notice the discrepancy. Soldiers were not generally taught to think critically, and these boys were likely nursing grudges against the aliens that made it even harder. Dead loved ones made it really easy to join the army. Jeb knew that from experience.

Once the trough was dug to Terry’s liking, the soldiers started unceremoniously grabbing bodies and tossing them into the hole, folding the extra tall keegan in places to make sure they fit.

Jeb spotted an oily residue that seemed to stick to these men as they moved the bodies, some kind of clinging film of Myst…As far as jeb was aware, Myst only had three states of matter. Ray, thread and Myst. It’s closest to thread, but it’s not connected to anyone or anything…

“You wanna help, Mr. Forklift?” Terry asked, glancing his way.

“I’m afraid I’ll catch something,” Jeb said, watching the strange residue sink into the men’s skin and vanish.

“You heard the specialist!” Terry shouted. “Catching E.T. germs is grunt-work! Get to it!” Terry walked back over to the Jeep and started blaring Eye of the Tiger over the speakers. The guys groaned as the iconic riff began.

Terry took the opportunity to speak to Jeb, their conversation hidden by the music.

“Were you serious about that? Do bonies actually have something catchable?”

“Myst-based. It’s probably not serious, but you might wanna keep them under observation for a couple days.” Jeb said with a shrug.

“Why didn’t I see it?”

“Because I’m stronger than you?” Jeb asked with a cocked brow.

Terry groaned and slammed his forehead against the jeep.

“Fine,” Terry said, making a note in his pocketbook before they hopped back in the jeep. “We’ll drop your recommendation off at Command, then it’s picking out what’s for dinner.

“I wanna drive,” Jeb said.

“You’re still under observation, too, bucko, that means I drive.” Terry said with a shit-eating grin.

The rest of the day went smoothly, with Terry taking advantage of Jeb’s telekinesis to complete his normal jobs in a fraction of the time. It was like a kid standing on top of a corvette to reach something on a high shelf. A total misuse of his power.

Jeb didn’t mind being taken advantage of, though. It wasn’t a permanent situation, and it gave him an opportunity to tour the base and get more familiar with it, in case he had to engage in some light urban combat.

You never know.

The day ended peacefully, with Jeb hitting the sack damn-near exhausted. He was so tired, he almost forgot about the bombs. Which was the point, I suppose. Jeb folded his arms behind his head as he stared up at the bunk above, where Terry was snoring.

If Jeb was an idiot, this was where he’d sneak out to begin his secret mission to sabotage the bomber in a desperate, last minute bid to prevent the destruction of Solmnath. Instead he closed his eyes and went to sleep. Tried to, anyway.

It took a long time to finally relax enough to fall asleep. It felt like the night before a Final, crammed with so much nervous energy that you couldn’t sleep if you wanted to. Jeb focused on slowing his heart and relaxing. At least he had the bottom bunk, so when the ceiling inevitably crashed down on them, he would be shielded by the blabbermouth above him.

Jeb had a thing about getting crushed by ceilings.

Finally Jeb was able to fall asleep, sinking into an interesting dream where Vresh was wearing a dress made out of fire.

Jeb woke up with a gun in his mouth.