Mistrunner 4 - Chapter 49 - Think Happy Thoughts (Patreon)

We don’t really know where the Mist came from. Even those of us who claim to understand it are really just repeating something someone else told us. It has always been there, and it always will be.

Frederick Connoly

I leaped high into the air and shoved against the Mist behind me. And I shot upward, but for only twenty feet, and then I started to fall. I repeated the action, throwing as much power as I could behind it, but it only threw me up a few extra feet. Frustrated, I scrambled for an answer, and I settled on the nanite cluster in my core that had once included Double Jump. With a couple of threads of my [Multi-Mind], I examined the inert ability, and I quickly found a structure that I thought would work. So, I embraced it, quickly manipulating the Mist to create a tiny platform from which I could leap.

Like that, I progressed for a few hundred more feet until one thread of my mind found a different method that would more accurately meet my expectations. After all, I wanted to fly, not jump from one platform to the next. For that, I found my oft-forgotten Disengage ability. Upon inspection, I realized that it worked by manipulating the Mist of my aura to drag me in a specific direction. It took me a few moments to figure out how to reverse the polarity, but when I did, I felt things click together.

Suddenly, I was soaring upward.

For a few seconds, at least. And then, my Mist ran dry and I started to fall again. Slightly panicked, I grabbed at the ambient Mist, shoving them into the adjusted ability until I stabilized. Like that, I hovered in mid-air, transferring the ambient Mist into flight.

Closing my eyes, I focused on the manipulation of the nanites and, slowly, I figured out how to move left and right, backwards and forward. Up and down. Without [Multi-Mind], there was no way I could have managed it, but with that skill, which I’d completely unlocked weeks before, I had enough mental power to make quick work of any calculations associated with flight.

Still, it took me a few minutes before I was comfortable with it.

That’s when it hit me. I was flying. Certainly, I knew about the existence of jet packs, but they were both clunky and difficult to use. Never mind that they used even more Rift shards than the Leviathan. For so long, I’d thought of personal flight as a distant dream. Yet, here I was, soaring through the air.

Despite everything that had happened – or maybe because of it – I couldn’t stop myself from giggling in pure happiness. As I flew through the air, building speed all the while, I let out an excited whoop.

But it was over far before I had my fill, and I sailed over the lip of the shaft before landing with a splash. That’s when, far below, the facility exploded, sending a column of dense fire to erupt from the hole and flood the area where I had just landed. At the last moment, I solidified the aura around my body, but I could do nothing to mitigate the shockwave of force that swept me from my feet and sent me flying down the tunnel.

I couldn’t stop myself, but I could certainly harness the momentum for my own use. So, using the ability I had just learned, I subtly adjusted my trajectory, controlling my flight even as I soared to ever greater speeds. Without my man advantages, I would have splattered against one of a hundred different walls or obstacles, but with my new abilities in flight, I managed to narrowly avoid that fate.

And when I finally erupted from one of the entrances, trailing a stream of fire, I was going hundreds of miles an hour. I sailed high into the air, gasping for breath as I tried to take stock of the situation.

The drill wasn’t my fault. I’d tried to keep it from exploding. Yet, it had, suggesting that the trap had been multi-tiered. They’d known I would come, and when their ambush failed, they had decided to sacrifice the entire operation in the hopes I’d be caught in the blast. It was a callous use of their equipment and people, but I had to admire their dedication.

Humans would probably never make that sort of sacrifice. Not willingly, at least.

Perhaps that was the difference between victory and defeat.

In any case, as I slowed to a stop, I wasn’t surprised to see a dozen ships in the area. I was surprised to see the Leviathan dancing between them, peppering them with curiously effective cannon fire. It was much smaller than any of the other ships, to the point where it looked like a bug attacking a flock of birds, and yet, it was holding its own.

“Patrick!” I screamed through Secure Connection.

“Kind of busy here!” he yelled back, obviously strained. “I thought you weren’t planning to blow anything up this time!”

“It wasn’t me!”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! I’d know if I blew something up,” I spat.

“Because you sometimes blow things up on accident.”

“The explosions are never the accident. It’s the size of the explosions that sometimes surprises me,” I muttered.

“Sure. Where are you?” he asked. “I’ll swing by and pick you up. I can’t…wait…are you flying?”

“Uh…maybe?”

“How are you flying?” he demanded. “And can you teach me? Hold on.”

After that, I saw the Leviathan swoop around one of the large ships, narrowly avoiding returning cannon fire, as he sprayed it with the ship’s cannons.

“It’s a…mystic thing? I mean, I’m not a mystic. But…”

“So, that’s a no.”

“That’s a no,” I agreed apologetically. “But you’re doing great.”

“I can’t get through their shields or armor,” he said, annoyed. He let out a grunt as the Leviathan made a hairpin turn, then added, “This ship isn’t built for this kind of thing.”

“Do you want help?” I asked.

“What are you going to do?”

“Yes or no?”

“Go ahead. But where’s the other team?” he asked.

“Didn’t make it,” I said. “I’ll explain it later. I’m going in.”

“Going in?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I shot forward, pushing myself as quickly as possible. The wind whipped against my face, making me wish I had worn some goggles. But in my defense, I’d never expected to learn to fly, so it was an understandable oversight. In any event, I quickly accelerated to the sort of speeds usually reserved for my Cutter, only slowing when I approached the closest ship.

It was enormous, at least two-hundred yards long and half as wide. But when I got close, I quickly surmised that its Mist shield was nothing special. So, using a tendril of Mist, I ripped through it and infiltrated its system.

But instead of simply deactivating it, I found the controls, overrode them, then aimed the thing at the ground. As I did, I forced it to accelerate to top speed, where it quickly crashed. Then, I yanked my BMAP from my arsenal implant, took aim, and buried the thing beneath a barrage of explosive shells. The first few did very little damage, but the ship had been built to rely on its Mist shield, which I’d just deactivated, so it wasn’t long before the thing erupted into a truly impressive explosion.

Then, I shot off toward the next ship. This one was a little more difficult to infiltrate, and when I did, I found that I was locked out of the controls. Obviously, they knew I was there, and they weren’t messing around. Whatever the case, they seemed to have missed the system meant to operate the cannons, which I took hold of, aimed at the next closest ship, and let loose.

After the first shot landed, the targeted ship attempted a maneuver that was probably supposed to mitigate some of the damage, but its pilots clearly hadn’t expected to be subjected to friendly fire. As a result, their shields were soon overwhelmed, and it went down just like the first.

That was when a hatch opened nearby, and a dozen Adjudicators as well as a few mystics came flooding out. I wasted no time in responding to their presence, swooping in with my Interdiction Blade out. With flight on my side, I could move incredibly quickly, though I still didn’t quite have the control I would have preferred. So, I confined my maneuvers to simply charges.

But I was fast.

And fast meant deadly, especially when it came with an incredibly sharp blade aimed at an Adjudicator’s neck. The first few soldiers had no chance to respond before their heads rolled free, but even when their comrades knew what to expect, they were almost powerless to combat my efforts. I was moving too quickly for them to adequately track, much less stop.

The mystics were a different story, but they were relatively weak in comparison to the others I’d fought. So, it wasn’t difficult for me to slam tendrils of Mist into their cores and destabilize their abilities. After that, they went down even easier than the Adjudicators. Soon enough, they were all dead.

And they’d conveniently left the hatch open.

That led me to think that Earth’s forces could certainly use a nice combat ship. I said as much to Patrick before turning the ship’s cannons on the other ships in the area, and to great effect. They fired back, and my thoughts of hijacking a ship for our use were squandered by the damage it picked up.

So, to make sure that the crew didn’t survive, I tossed a couple of my strongest charges into the open hatch, then flew away. It exploded a moment later, and the resulting shockwave sent me tumbling through the air until I crashed through the window of an ancient building. I quickly recovered my wits and took stock of the situation.

“I’m guessing you meant to do that,” Patrick said.

“I wanted to blow it up, yes.”

“That was a large explosion.”

“I meant it to be,” I lied. Indeed, the resulting explosion had been at least five times the size I’d expected. But Patrick didn’t need to know that.

So, I gathered the Mist and pushed myself back the way I had come. It wasn’t long before I’d infiltrated the next ship, though the response was much the same. I ended up having to kill a dozen more Adjudicators when I tried to hijack the cannons, and by the time I finished, they’d locked me out. I wasn’t sure precisely how they’d managed that, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get in.

Not via the Mist, at least.

Physically, I had no trouble ripping the hatch open and descending into the depths of the ship. After that, I swept through the ship like a deadly wind. I didn’t bother doing anything fancy. The Adjudicators proved to be the toughest to kill, largely because I couldn’t reach them inside their armor. However, even that couldn’t hold up to my Interdiction Blade. The mystics, oddly enough, were much easier to slaughter.

As I killed them, I couldn’t help but wonder if all the rejects had been sent to Earth. Given how easily I could kill most of them, that was the only thing that made any sense. But in the back of my mind, I had to acknowledge that it probably had something to do with my growing power. It hadn’t been that long since I’d absorbed my Nexus Implant, and even in that short amount of time, my abilities had grown significantly.

I didn’t know why, either. On the surface, it was easy to assume that it had something to do with the Tier-7 Nexus Implant. It was special, and I knew that mattered. Yet, I felt that there was something else there, too. Maybe the strange alchemy of my specific skills, combined with the Tier -7 Nexus Implant, and with a little bit of talent thrown in was responsible. Or perhaps it was the rigorous training I’d undergone.

I had no idea.

But the results spoke for themselves as I tore through the ship’s crew and defenders before reaching the bridge. A four-armed and reptilian alien I took to be the captain tried to plead for their life, but I ignored them. Instead, I slaughtered everyone inside, then found the controls.

“Uh…Patrick? Do you know how to pilot a ship like this?” I asked.

“Sure. Let me – wait a second – dammit. Just find the control console and jack in,” he said.

“I can fly it normal.”

“No. You can’t. Just trust me. Jack in and use your Mist powers to fly it. Otherwise, you’re going to –”

At that moment, the ship hit one of the many skyscraper ruins in the area, tearing through the structure. The building didn’t immediately fall, which was a testament to its architecture, but that didn’t last more than a few more moments before it started to collapse.

“Try not to run into any more buildings!” Patrick scolded.

“I didn’t do that! I hadn’t even taken control yet!”

“Then maybe you should do that.”

“Whatever,” I muttered as I retrieved my personal link from the Hand of God. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but I’d found that using a hard connection made it easier to concentrate on something specific. Once I made the connection, I quickly took control of the ship and guided it to the ground. I did a little more damage to the surrounding buildings, but that was inevitable, given the size of the ship. Still, I made it more or less intact. “There. Told you I could pilot the ship.”

“First of all, you really shouldn’t point to this as a success,” he stated. “Second, you did it the way I told you to.”

“You don’t know that. Plus, what was wrong with how I landed?” I demanded, already running to the nearest hatch. After all, there were still quite a few ships out there. As I did, I reengaged the Mist shield, just in case the others tried to attack my new prize.

Before Patrick could answer – he was still flying around as a distraction, which required quite a lot of his attention – I stepped outside and saw the corridor of damage I’d left behind. “Oh,” I said. Obviously, my passage hadn’t been quite as clean as I’d thought, considering that two of the skyscrapers had already fallen, leaving the entire area clouded with thick dust. I wouldn’t have been able to see at all without a combination of Observation and my Mist senses.

Coughing, I mounted the Mist and shot into the sky, partially for clear air but mostly so I could continue the battle.

Annoyed, I didn’t bother with anything special with the next ship. Instead, I simply threw myself at it like a bullet, leading the way with my indestructible Hand of God. When I hit, I felt it in my bones, but due to the sheer durability of my body, it didn’t do any real damage. The ship certainly couldn’t say the same – if inanimate objects could speak – because I tore through the Mist shield and the fuselage like they were made of paper. And just like that, I was on the bridge and killing aliens.

Before I finished, Patrick’s voice came over the Secure Connection, saying, “They’re retreating.”

“To where?” I asked. “They can’t get through the blockade, can they?”

“I don’t know. Do you want to chase them?” he asked.

I sighed. “No. We won’t catch them,” I answered, finishing the last alien off. I continued, “This whole mission has been one long screw-up. It was a trap.”

As I spoke, I took control of the ship, using whatever piloting skills I possessed – which weren’t very well developed – to guide it down to the ground. After I landed, I continued, “They set up us up, Pick. When I got down there, the prisoners were already dead, and there were a bunch of mystics waiting on me.”

“So it wasn’t a real dig?”

“No – it was real,” I answered. “That just wasn’t its main purpose. If we had ignored it, I’m sure it would have been disastrous. But the real goal was to corner me.”

“They know who you are?”

“They’d have to,” I stated. “I’ve killed a lot of aliens recently. I’m sure that made waves.”

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

Despite the fact that he couldn’t see me, I shrugged as I responded, “I don’t know. I think the first step is to get Alistaris involved. He needs to send some people this way because I don’t think we want to rely on my piloting skills to get these back home. Plus, I’m sure there are a hundred ways ships like these can be tracked. And –”

“Mira! Watch out!” Patrick yelled.

Then, everything went white, and I felt like my entire body was being ripped apart, cell by cell.