Mistrunner 4 - Chapter 34 - A Campaign of Destruction (Patreon)

I think about death a lot. About everything just ending. I know there are people out there who believe something comes next. Something better as a reward for a life well-lived. But I don’t know. That’s always felt a little too convenient to me. In my experience, good deeds are punished, not rewarded. So, why should live and death be any different?

Patrick Ward

I watched from the ship as the explosion enveloped the entire canyon. We were far enough away that I felt certain that we wouldn’t be affected, and yet, Patrick had raised the Leviathan’s Mist shields anyway. He’d even used one of his abilities to augment their power, which I thought was overkill.

It wasn’t.

The shockwave rocked the ship, knocking it backwards a few hundred yards before Patrick managed to stabilize it. The gnomes in the cockpit were fine because they’d been strapped into their seats, but the ones in the back probably hadn’t enjoyed the ship’s bucking.

I glanced over to see Patrick smirking at me.

“What?” I asked innocently.

“Told you so.”

“It wasn’t that bad!”

“Do you want to see the numbers? By my calculations, that explosion was –”

“Not listening!”

It wasn’t my fault that my bombs were often far more powerful than they really should have been. The problem was that they were affected by so many of my modifiers that trying to predict the payload of any given charge was little better than a vague estimate. I could do the math well enough, but there were far too many variables for my calculations to be completely accurate. As a result, I often underestimated just how much of a punch I could pack into a single explosion.

Still, I wasn’t going to admit that to Patrick, especially when he was wearing that smug expression. I refused to give him the satisfaction.

“I think it’s safe to say that site is out of commission,” he said.

“Any word from the other teams?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. But they should be trickling in soon,” he stated. “I just hope the Templars can take care of any mystics that might be present.”

I nodded. Kalar Syphos had been far more powerful than I had expected. They weren’t as strong as the coryphaeus we’d fought back in the Templar stronghold, yet they weren’t that far off. And I’d had to fight them alone. If the other dig sites had a similar presence, I suspected that the Templars would experience some losses.

But I couldn’t worry about the overall strategy. I had my role to play, and that was enough to occupy my minds. I needed to trust that Alistaris, now that he was completely committed, would take care of the overarching plan.

Still, I was aware of how quickly things could go wrong.

It had happened often enough to me, after all.

So, I was on pins and needles as I saw the giant fireball of the explosion I had caused engulf the dig site as well as the canyon. It spread much further in the ravine than it did on the surface, but it still managed to impact the environment for miles around. As a result, I couldn’t help but wonder what I could do with something like the bomb that had created the irradiated crater where I’d once almost been killed by a horde of mutated wildlings.

That kind of bomb had been devastating even before the incorporation of Mist. With my modifiers and perhaps some modern materials, it wasn’t implausible that such a weapon could destroy a whole planet.

“At least it wasn’t the moon this time,” Patrick said, making me feel like he was reading my mind. “We can call that progress.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t. You love me.”

“God knows why…”

“It’s my rugged good looks and manliness,” he said, tapping the metallic side of his face.

I couldn’t help but laugh. The two Dingyts behind us just looked at us like we’d gone a little crazy, and perhaps the were at least partially right. By all accounts, I should have been thinking about all the people I’d just killed. The facility hadn’t been teeming with personnel, but it wasn’t empty, either. As a result, the bomb I’d just set off had taken at least a few hundred – maybe as many as a thousand – people with it.

But the reality was that, even if they were mostly innocent, I couldn’t bring myself to regret killing them. The aliens were invaders, one and all, and the moment they’d chosen to set foot on my planet, they’d established themselves as my enemy. On top of that, the ones in the dig site were actively working toward the destruction of Earth, so, in my mind, they deserved what they’d gotten.

Pointedly, I ignored the possibility that those workers might not have had a choice in their fate. There was every chance that, like humanity, they had been manipulated and forced into their current circumstances. Looking at it like that, they could have been classified as victims as much as the people from Earth.

Yet, I didn’t give credence to that, largely because such philosophical questions weren’t designed for answers. It was easy to get wrapped up in morality when your people weren’t being killed and enslaved. Peace gave that luxury. But I was at war, and that meant discarding notions of right and wrong for the realities of pragmatism. If we wanted to survive, we had to do terrible things. That was the simple truth of it, and no amount of pearl-clutching or navel-gazing would change that.

In the war I was fighting, there was no such thing as innocents.

Those thoughts occupied my mind as Patrick regained control of the ship and, once the devastation had settled, piloted the ship close to the dig site to ensure that everything had been destroyed. To my relief, there was nothing but wreckage, and even that had been twisted all out of shape. Most of the structure had been scattered across the desert, and according to our scans, no one had survived.

“Should we salvage what we can?” I asked, glancing at Patrick.

One of the Dingyts said, “A team has already been dispatched. We will add whatever we find to the war effort.”

“Which means we’ll never see any of it,” I reasoned. “So? You want to pick it over, Pick?”

“Only you could make that terrible of a joke after what just happened,” he muttered, shaking his head. “But no. Anything worthwhile will take days to find. We have other things to occupy our time.”

That much was true. We still had another dig site to hit before we returned to our base, and that was if everything else went well. I knew it wouldn’t, though. Time was not on our side, and I could recognize that some of Alistaris’ teams were less capable than others. Because of that, I expected a few failures.

And we couldn’t afford to leave even one dig site intact, either. While getting most of them would undoubtedly save the planet, the result of one site’s survival could still be catastrophic for life on Earth. No – if we wanted to save the planet, we needed to get them all. Then, we needed to take out the satellites that would facilitate the alien’s blockade. Only then would the planet be safe.

After confirming that the job was done, Patrick guided the Leviathan away. However, we didn’t return to the base Alistaris had established. Instead, we zipped across the landscape until we reached another target. Not for the first time, I wished we could just drop a series of bombs and be done with it, but I knew that wasn’t possible. Any fortification worth anything would be equipped with a durable Mist shield, but in addition to that, they were built with Mist-infused materials that were incredibly durable. Because of that, the only way to reliably destroy them – without using ordnance so powerful that would leave the surface of the planet in ruins – was to attack them from the inside.

And that wasn’t even considering the passive defenses that would destroy any projectiles before they even reached the structure.

So, with that in mind, our options were limited. Fortunately, the second target wasn’t nearly as well-defended. That fortune, however, was mitigated by the fact that they were ready for us. After all, the destruction of the previous site hadn’t happened in a vacuum, so the occupants of the second fortification were on high alert.

Too bad for them that they were ill-equipped to deal with me.

After landing, Patrick and the Dingyts headed off to disrupt the auxiliary energy source of the Mist shield while I, once again, prepared to infiltrate the facility. And unlike before, it went off without a hitch. I wasn’t immediately attacked by an mystics, and soon enough, I’d set off an equally enormous explosion, which I watched with some degree of satisfaction as we flew away.

That’s when we started getting reports from the other teams. To my surprise, most of them had met resounding success. However, there were more than a few that had failed their tasks. Someone would have to pick up that slack, and I suspected it would be me. After all, I was the best person for the job.

Yet, I was more concerned with two other reports.

“Do you want to save him?” Patrick asked.

“Huh?”

“You saw the same thing I did,” he said. “Rex and his team are pinned down and trapped. Someone needs to go in and get them.”

“He already set the charges. The missions is all but accomplished,” I argued.

“But you like him. Or at least you’ll tolerate him. I know you want to swoop in and rescue him and his team,” Patrick stated.

“I mean…”

“I knew it! You like him, don’t you? Should I get a cowboy hat, too?”

“This.”

“What?”

“This is why I didn’t want to say anything,” I stated.

“You would let him die just so I wouldn’t tease you?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

It was a lie, of course. The moment I had seen that Rex and his team had been cornered and needed rescuing, I had decided to go. However, I wasn’t going to tell Patrick that. So, I said, “Let’s just go. We can be there in thirty minutes, right?”

“A lot sooner. I’ve made some upgrades to the Leviathan,” he stated.

“Upgrades? What kind?”

“The kind that make her a lot faster,” he answered. “I added a condensed Mist intake and a –”

“Never mine,” I said. “Just knowing that it’ll go faster is enough.”

“But I really wanted to talk about the Mist ratios and burn rates.”

“Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes.

Then, for the next ten minutes, I had to endure what felt like a lecture on the inner workings of the Leviathan’s Mist reactor. It was a little adorable how excited he got about those sorts of things, but that didn’t make what he was saying any more interesting. But I suppose that wasn’t any different than when I subjected him to long explanations on all the different grenade types I’d constructed over the past few months.

Except that explosions were inherently more interesting than engines. That he couldn’t understand that was probably Patrick’s greatest flaw.

The moment we flew over the site, I saw the issue. There were four mystics down there, identifiable by their tightly controlled auras. In addition, I saw almost a hundred other aliens, all surrounding a giant cylinder. The facility was a little different than the other two we’d attacked in that it was comprised of a perfectly circle outer ring which surrounded a pillar that, in turn, housed the drill that was intended to make its way to the Earth’s core, depositing devastating charges along the way.

However, according to Rex’s messages, the pillar was locked up tight, preventing the aliens from reclaiming it. He’d already planted his charges when the alarm had been raised, eliciting a reaction from the aliens. So, his completion of the mission as assured; the only question was whether or not he would make it out alive. Alone, he stood no chance, but fortunately for him, he was no longer alone.

As I unbuckled my safety harness, I said, “Get us within a mile, then hover in place. Over that lake will do, I think.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked, already following my orders. He knew better than to question them when someone’s life was on the line. I wasn’t always right, and he knew that better than most, but even the wrong course of action was better than getting caught up in an argument.

“Going to find the biggest, baddest alien down there and pick a fight. Just keep it steady.”

With that, he left the cockpit and headed through the ship and into the cargo bay. Once there, I got a few curious looks from the squad of Dingyts, but thankfully, they were content to leave me to my business. Or maybe they were already aware of what was going on. Either way, I gave the leader – a blue-haired gnome who was a bit stockier than the rest – a nod before planting myself at the opening cargo doors.

Then, I summoned the Emperor.

As much as I enjoyed explosions and hand-to-hand fighting, there would always be a special place in my heart for long-range sniping. It was how my uncle had carved out his place in the world, and I’d always felt the urge to live up to the standard he’d set. Of course, I was nearly certain that I’d long since surpassed his abilities, but raw power had never been the point. Instead, it was about doing justice to all the training he’d put me through.

So, with that in mind, I dropped to one knee and took aim. As I did, I embraced Stealth, then used Explosive Shot, Execute, then Empowered Shot before finally squeezing the trigger. My target was the mystic with the most tightly controlled aura. Even with Observation, I couldn’t really make out more than an ill-defined smudge, but I still trusted my aim.

The resultant shot took them center mass, sending them sprawling forward. It wasn’t enough to kill them. I’d known that from the very beginning. However, that was what the other six shots in the Emperor’s magazine were for.

And two of them were already on the way by the time the first hit. The mystic never even had a chance to react before they hit them, and I saw bits of something fly away upon impact. I thought it was an arm, but I couldn’t be sure. So, I continued to fire, shouldering the strain of using the Emperor as best I could. By the fifth shot, the surrounding aliens were affected, with many of them being thrown away by the sheer force of the shockwave.

The sixth shot slammed into the alien mystic, and I saw their aura fluctuate as they tried to activate whatever their version of skills were. Still, they weren’t prepared for the seventh shot, which hit with the force of an exploding bomb – and not a small one, either – obliterating them completely. I felt the influx of energy that confirmed the kill, and I shifted my sights to the next target, but the Emperor wouldn’t be ready for a repeat performance for some time yet, so I put it away after I’d surveyed the scene of the attack.

“Get me within a few hundred yards,” I told Patrick through Secure Connection. “Wait ten seconds, then put me right on top of them.”

Patrick confirmed my instructions, then swooped in. Once we were close enough, I took out the BMAP, loading it with a special cannister before letting loose. I probably could have blown everyone up, but then, the pillar would have been destroyed – with Rex and his team inside – so I used something different.

The gas cannisters exploded upon impact, bathing the entire area in thick, green smoke. Then, I slapped my respirator on, switched to my Stinger, and readied myself to leap into action the moment Patrick guided the Leviathan close enough. On cue, he did just that, and I jumped from the cargo bay, spraying the aliens with a steady barrage of concentrated gunfire.

Most of them couldn’t see through the smoke, and even if they could, it was designed to incapacitate anyone who breathed it. So, I cut through them with ease, right up until I had to face off against the enemy mystics.

They hadn’t escaped my previous attacks unscathed, and as a result, they were far weaker than they probably should have been. As a result, I only had to pepper them with a few norcite pellets from the ADS, and the fight was basically won.

Of course, that was understating it. The battle was tense and there were a couple of close calls. However, that was true of any battle against those sorts of opponents. Fortunately, I held them at bay long enough for the Dingyts to arrive and turn the tide. In the end, we won without incurring any losses.

“Open up, idiot,” I said, standing before the barricaded door. The Mist shield was thick and active, and the pillar had been built like a bunker. I could have ripped through it, but probably not without killing everyone inside. “We’re here to rescue you.”

“Rescue? We don’t need rescuin’,” he insisted. “But I guess since you’re already here…may as well open up, s’pose.”

With that, he did just that. When I saw him, I was a little alarmed to see that his cybernetic arm had been ripped clean off, and he’d lost a good portion of his hat at some point. But he was alive, which I found strangely comforting.

“I ‘preciate it,” he said, tipping what was left of his hat. “Them mystics is somethin’ else. ‘Course, I don’t need to tell you that, huh?”

“I think I’ve got a good handle on them,” I stated. “Now, let’s get going so you can blow this thing up.”

“Now you’re speakin’ my language,” he said with a grin. I couldn’t help but return it with one of my own.