Mistrunner 4 - Chapter 30 - A Rigid Defense (Patreon)

There is so much more to this universe than I can ever understand. Rings within rings, plots inside plots, and all of it built out of people lying to one another. Nobody has the whole picture. Anyone who says they do is lying.

Alistaris Kargat

“Are you okay?” I asked, my hand resting on the arm of Patrick’s mech suit. It was warm to the touch, which was evidence of just how hard he’d been pushing.

“I’m alright,” he said, his voice strained. “Just a little low on Mist is all. That guy was tough.”

“That’s understating it,” I said in agreement. The mystics had far outstripped my expectations. From a physical standpoint, I was fairly sure that I was stronger and faster than them. However, with the way they could use Mist, it didn’t really matter. It was like they had access to every skill, all at once. Meanwhile, I was stuck using the only tools I had available – which were good tools, but against the mystics, seemed inadequate.

Still, there was hope. We had put them down, albeit with Freddy’s help. Yet, if I’d have been able to focus on just one of them, I felt certain I could have eventually won. Of course, that was assuming that they didn’t have other abilities up their sleeves, which was quite the assumption, given what I had seen. Even so, I’d learned quite a lot from the encounter, and my chief takeaway was that the woman seemed far stronger than the man.

I took a few minutes to reload all my weapons, during which time, Freddy simply stood facing the direction where the ship had crashed. His posture suggested that he didn’t have a care in the world, but his bloody wounds said otherwise. He’d been pushed to his limits as well, though he didn’t seem the least bit troubled by that fact.

I could also see that his wounds were healing a visible rate. It wasn’t quite on the same level of the female mystic’s regeneration, but it was faster than I could manage without using the healing associated with [Mist-Infused Body].

“How strong are you?” I asked, still reloading the HIRC’s massive magazine. It was a process of minutes, but it felt like it was taking forever.

“Strong enough,” Freddy said without looking back.

“Were you stronger than the woman?” I persisted.

“No,” he admitted. “That was their coryphaeus. She was the most powerful combatant in this cohort. The male was her second, though a powerful one. There will be more, but they will be much weaker. They will make up for it in numbers.”

“How many?” I asked, finishing with the HIRC and starting in on the Stinger.

“After what we have already killed?” he sighed, looking back at me. “At least ten more mystics. More than a thousand Adjudicators. Perhaps twice that in crew. Do not think to give them mercy. The presence of the Adjudicators and mystics suggests that the ship belonged to the Arbiters of Orion, a mercenary group known for their effectiveness and dedication. They will not surrender, and each member will fight to the death. They will give no quarter, nor expect none in return.”

“That’s pretty hardcore for mercenaries,” I said. In my experience, the sorts of people that fought solely for money tended to have the weakest wills. The moment things got tough, or they saw a more advantageous situation, they broke. I said as much to Freddy, then added, “What makes these so different?”

“Commitment. They don’t work for credits,” he stated. “They work for progression. For access to Rifts. That gets them closer to the peak.”

“The peak?” I asked, starting to reload my ADS.

“You are there,” Freddy answered. “The moment you became capable of manipulating Mist directly, you were nearing the summit. You stand atop the tallest mountain, but the journey is not over. Now, you must learn to fly.”

“Figuratively or literally?”

“There is no difference.”

“Huh.”

I didn’t know if he was telling me that I could, perhaps, one day fly without the benefit of a ship, but if so, I was definitely onboard with the idea. The notion of soaring through the air was enough to put a smile on my face. However, it faded only a second later when I realized that I had a long way to go before something like that was even possible. Still, one thread of thought was already going through the mechanics of how to manipulate the Mist to get to that point, and the initial results were that it was theoretically possible. After all, I knew how Double-Jump had worked, which gave me some hints as to how to accomplish the feat Freddy had mentioned.

But I knew I couldn’t afford even one thread of thought for that at the moment. I’d need everything I had for the coming battle. So, after one last acknowledgement of how cool the idea was, I pushed it aside and focused everything on the task at hand. Once I had my weapons fully reloaded and Patrick had recovered enough of his Mist to be effective, we let Freddy lead us away from the village.

As we went, I couldn’t ignore the sheer destruction the battle had caused. Hundreds of people had died, and that was just from what I could see. The collapsed buildings surely concealed many more casualties.

“How many got to the Bulwark?” I asked via the Secure Connection I shared with Patrick.

“A little more than a hundred,” he answered. “Not enough. Not nearly enough.”

His statement mirrored my own thoughts, and as I beheld the destruction the Arbiters of Orion had caused, my fury began to mount. I had killed plenty of people in my life, many of them innocent. However, I’d never set out to slaughter a bunch of civilians. That was an important distinction. Sure, the results were similar, but the intention was what mattered.

Or perhaps I was simply trying to excuse my own actions, which were similar enough to the destruction all around me that the mere thought that there wasn’t much separating me from the people I chose to fight made me a little nauseous.

Soon enough, we left the remnants of the terraced village behind and entered the wilderness. The forest had been pruned and cultivated, making it feel more like a walk in a park than a trek through the wilds, but I paid that no real mind. Instead, I was wholly focused on what we would find when we reached the crash site.

And sooner than I expected, we arrived to a new battlefield.

On the ground, the ship seemed so much larger than it had in the air. Part of that was perspective, but some of it was simply the incongruity inherent in seeing such a behemoth half buried in a crater of its own making.

Churned earth stretched for half a mile in every direction, the result of the ship’s unplanned and uncontrolled impact. Fallen trees and lush turf dotted the mounds of black dirt, and amidst it all were hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Huge clumps had already congregated, where they were listening to their surviving leaders, but there were still some stragglers clambering free of the wreckage.

Most of those were obviously wounded and had been disoriented by the crash. But I didn’t feel pity for any of them. Non-combatants or not, they’d come to Earth to conquer my people. To kill me. To slaughter the innocents who lived in the village behind us. Those thoughts, as well as many more like it, shoved aside any pity that might’ve been hiding in the depths of my heart.

They needed to die.

As Freddy had said, those aliens around the wreckage of their warship would offer no quarter, and they deserved none in return. I steeled my heart and sharpened my mind on the whetstone of that reality. It wasn’t the first time I’d had to adopt such an attitude, and I knew that if Earth was going to win the coming war, it would not be the last. That was the sacrifice I would have to make so that my species – my home – could remain free.

With that in mind, I drew my BMAP from my arsenal implant. I’d already loaded it with a drum of the most destructive shells I could find. So, I said, “You two better stay back. I’m not sure how big this is going to be.”

Freddy and Patrick both drew back into the trees. We still hadn’t been seen, so I took a knee and used Stealth. Once I felt the ability envelop me, I used both Explosive Shot, then Execute. I normally didn’t bother with either when using the BMAP, but I wanted to make a statement. I knew others were watching. They had to be. And I wanted them to know what would happen to aliens who meant humanity harm.

Finally, I used Empowered Shot, waited a second, then fired. The weapon discharged with a thump, and even as it arced through the air, I used Vanish, then cycled my other abilities again. By the time the first shell began its descent, another was on its way.

Just before the first shell hit, one of the mystics who’d survived the crash raised her hands. A summoned Mist shield not dissimilar from the one used by the staff-wielder, bloomed into being. But she was not nearly as powerful as he was, and though the shield managed to protect the other aliens in the immediate vicinity, it shattered under the sheer weight of the explosion that enveloped the area.

It was a glorious thing, and the resultant fireball encompassed the entire crash site for almost a half-mile radius. Even from my position so far away, I could feel the heat, and the shockwave that arrived an instant later nearly knocked me from my feet.

And then the second shell hit. This time, there was no Mist shield to block it, and the result was an even more massive eruption of fire and force. The third followed soon after. And a fourth. A fifth as well. I emptied all twelve shells from the BMAP’s drum, bathing the crash site in utter destruction. I felt an influx of Mist that announced hundreds – if not thousands – of deaths, but I knew it was only the beginning.

Plenty had managed to shelter behind hastily raised Mist shields, and as a result, they’d managed to survive. Even as I exchanged the BMAP for the reloaded HIRC, I aimed to change that. By that point, Patrick and Freddy had joined me, and both had begun their advance.

Patrick used the Dragon, cutting a bloody swathe through the survivors. The Adjudicators who’d survived fired back, and the crew members added their own efforts to the mix, but his armor proved up to the task of protecting him. Meanwhile, Freddy strode forward as if he hadn’t a care in the world. When bullets came close to hitting him, they were redirected into the ground or off to the side by subtle manipulations of Mist that I could barely even see. At the same time, he thrust his hand out, sending darts of pure Mist to take out crew members. He didn’t bother targeting the black-armored Adjudicators because he knew his Mist manipulation attacks would do no good.

So, he had to be creative with how he attacked them, which was why, when he got close enough, he started picking up boulders with sheer Mist manipulation and tossing them at the armored Adjudicators. It was something I’d never even thought possible, but it seemed that the more I learned about mystics, the more I was coming to realize how much I didn’t know.

However, watching Patrick and Freddy only took up two threads of my Split Mind. The others were all focused on the battle that had begun. The HIRC spat dozens of rounds with every passing second, and it was so powerful that even the Adjudicators’ vaunted armor couldn’t stand up to the steady stream of deadly rounds. However, the mystics among them were a different story altogether.

They managed to block the barrage of bullets coming their way, though I could see the power of their hastily summoned Mist shields weakening with every passing moment. Still, I wanted to do something to change things up and keep them on their back feet.

Which was why, when I got close, I started tossing grenades as well.

They reacted, but without the benefit of something like [Multi-Mind], that split focus was enough to give me an opening. Even as the grenades exploded – high in the air, where the mystics had used Mist manipulation to throw them away – I used Teleport. Suddenly, I was among them.

I had exchanged the HIRC for the trusty ADS, and I fired with wanton abandon, peppering them with draining pellets of norcite. They tried to summon more shields, but they were already so drained by my previous efforts that the new manifestations were too weak to stop the point-blank shots. The norcite pellets passed through Mist shields like they weren’t even there, burying themselves in the mystics’ flesh.

Then, suddenly, I launched myself forward, dragging the Interdiction Blade free of the sheath at my back along the way. I attacked, moving far too quickly for them to react, and the results were predictably bloody. Body parts flew, and mystics screamed in pain as I showed them none of the mercy they would have denied us. In seconds, they were dead.

Yet, there were still more to kill. So, I set my sights on another clump of mystics who were only a few dozen yards away. They saw me coming, and yet, they had no new tactics to deal with my assault. They fell just like the others before them. By the time I moved to the third group, the fear began to set in among their ranks, and they tried to flee before I had a chance to throw myself into their slaughter.

That’s when Freddy showed up, his spear flashing with brutal efficiency as he tore them apart with well-practiced ease. We pincered the group, attacking them from both directions. Panicked, they tried to scatter, but Patrick was there as well, using his massive shield of Mist to block their path.

Just like that, the battle became a slaughter.

The crew members tried to escape, to flee into the wilderness, but by that point, I was more than capable of running them down. So, once the last of the mystics and Adjudicators fell, I followed them into the wilderness, using Mist Authority to both find and rip the energy from their bodies. I didn’t even have to break stride as I reached out with tendrils of Mist, killing them before they even knew what had happened.

It wasn’t painless, though. Not for me, and certainly not for them. I took more than a few hits, but my upgraded subdermal sheath, combined with the passive effects of [Shielding] as well as my Infiltration Suit kept me from taking any serious wounds. It still hurt, but I was more than used to pushing through much worse.

The routed crew members were decidedly much worse off, and their screams of agony filled my ears. I didn’t precisely revel in them, but I wouldn’t let myself pity the invaders, either. After all, they had come to my planet to do much worse to the entire population, so I regarded it as just punishment for their intended sins.

So, even if I found it distasteful, I forced myself to hear every scream. I made myself focus on every cry of agony. Every contorted expression of anguish. Every ounce of panic. I knew they were pitiful. I knew I was killing people that a better person than me would have spared.

But I hadn’t come to take prisoners.

I had come to exterminate the pests who wanted to infest my planet and bring it to its knees. I couldn’t afford to shy away from the grim realities of that endeavor. So, I didn’t fool myself into believing I was doing good. Those sorts of thoughts didn’t belong in a war. Instead, I kept telling myself that what I did was necessary for victory.

And I killed them all.

Patrick and Freddy helped. They did what they had to do as well, and with grim determination that I well understood. But by virtue of my gifts, the bulk of the responsibility fell on my head. I embraced it because, at the end of the day, I was the only one capable of doing so.

When the dust settled, I’d once again committed a massacre. Thousands of alien invaders lay dead. I stood over the latest batch – maybe twenty or thirty who’d taken shelter in a cave – just staring at their corpses. Outwardly, they bore no signs of what had killed them, but with the senses I’d gained from the {Mist Warden} class, I could vividly the see the damage I had wrought. They were just empty husks. I’d torn every nanite from their bodies, leaving them completely devoid of energy.

It was brutal.

But it was also necessary.

Or that was what I told myself. Perhaps that was the only way I would ever be able to sleep at night.

“It’s over,” came the sound of Patrick’s voice. I turned to see him standing behind me. He’d put his armor away, a signal that the last of the aliens were dead. Freddy remained behind him, an inscrutable expression on his face as he beheld my handiwork.

“No, it’s not, Pick. It’s just beginning,” I said.

“Do you think they deserved it?” he asked.

I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. They came here intent on killing us,” I stated. “Mercy is the prerogative of the powerful. That’s not Earth, right now. We can’t afford to hold back.”

Even as I said those words, I wondered how true they were. I knew I wasn’t a hero. I’d never claimed to be, and I certainly hadn’t lived up to that standard. But increasingly, I felt like I was the only thing standing between the aliens and Earth’s unmitigated destruction.

Perhaps that was my fate.

Maybe that was why my uncle – or whoever was manipulating him – gave me the Tier-7 implant in the first place.

I sighed. Or maybe not. I had no idea what any of those people were thinking. Their intentions were a mystery. But I did know one thing – anyone who came to Earth thinking they were going to enslave or destroy humanity would have to go through me before they could ever hope to accomplish those goals.

Hopefully, that would be enough.