Misbegotten Memories

Chapter 297

War Barge Kevin drifted slightly towards his secondary position without leaving the cube of space assigned to his exclusive use.  He wasn’t the only one of his peers to make subtle moves indicating a lack of faith in the first salvo finishing the job.  The public messaging may be incredibly optimistic, but the obsession the generals had with perfecting the troop deployments revealed their nerves.  The fact that this massive trap was deemed necessary indicated those in charge were not confident of victory.

For his part, Kevin felt certain that the claims of the new Foresight should be heeded.  Their first conversation still struck him as a magical moment.  They’d made a call using a digital clone of Hector Thoreaux’s communication device, which should have appeared to be from that man.  Yet the young Arahant greeted him and Caroline Echo without a word being said.  She’d proceeded to rapidly turn the Sage of Persuasion into her greatest supporter.  That had made quite an impression on him.

The prevailing opinion of the Jinn vessels seemed to be that the Arahant Sage was overly anxious.  That struck Kevin as foolish pride.  The Jinn were incredibly powerful and growing more so all the time, leveraging every scientific advancement to magnify their capabilities.  Yet he did not believe for one millisecond that Foresight had not taken into account their full strength when viewing potential futures.

So as the minutes ticked down to the start of their offensive, he found himself struggling to stick with his role in the plan.  He was supposed to stay out of the way for the first salvo.  Only if the Dragon threatened to break the containment of the Arahant ritual would he be tasked with taking action – not to attack, but to grapple the fell beast with his gravitonic field, preventing its escape.

At the predicted time, the air at the center of The Snare darkened and grew transparent, displaying a vast line of horrid void that moved with ill intent.  With every second that passed, the darkness intensified.  Then all at once, miasmic steam gushed free in every direction.  Reality groaned as something pierced the dimensional boundary and entered the world of Terra.

Kevin felt the new presence in his realm.  The resonance he relied upon to stay aloft had never failed him.  In that moment, however, it slipped.  Not enough for him to fall from the sky.  Not even enough for him to dip more than a couple centimeters.  But it was an unprecedented denial of his supremacy over gravity.  All at once, his doubts grew into a tsunami of concern bordering on panic.

The Arahant ritual of containment flickered into existence.

“All Defense, this is Command.  Containment is in effect.  Repeat.  Containment is in effect.  First salvo may commence.”

Three lines of blinding brilliance fired upward at precisely calculated angles.  Kevin knew that white light was nothing more than a byproduct of the schism beams.  Spin a line of space fast enough and virtual particles of every wavelength burst into existence.  What human eyes saw as full-spectrum visual light was far more than that.  Everything from gamma radiation to radio was spewing forth.  While schism beams were often perceived as precision weapons, the radiation exposure they caused placed them firmly in the category of area of effect weaponry.

Fortunately, the Jinn didn’t rely on radio to communicate with allies.  Kevin’s communications officer had a conceptual realm built around quantum entanglement that granted them a secure, uninterruptible connection with Command.  The firing of multiple schism beams wouldn’t create a communication blackout for them.

A massive tree of light descended from clear sky.  The lightning bolt had to be ten meters wide as it fell towards the dark serpent, though its brilliance paled in comparison to the schism beams rising from below.  An arrow streaked forward as well, growing rapidly in size as if physics didn’t apply, swelling until its wooden length was no smaller than a gunboat.

With impeccable timing, the initial salvo intersected with the unsuspecting target.

Brilliant beams dimmed to the level of civilian laser pointers.  The bolt of lightning shattered into a weak static discharge.  An arrow larger than many buildings crumbled and disintegrated.  Just as it seemed that everything humanity could throw had failed, a massive purple conduit appeared – a chaos bolt capable of destroying an entire city.

That chaos bolt exploded into incredible violence, unleashing the primordial upon existence.

The Dragon didn’t budge.  Indeed, the only response it made to the barrage of ultimate strikes was to emit a wave of miasma.  “All Defense, this is Command.  Be aware that the ritual of containment is consuming far more illusory energy than anticipated.  We have an estimated five minutes to finish this.  Assume secondary positions and attack with haste.”

Kevin extended his gravitonic field towards the Dragon… and dropped half a meter before his conceptual realm could recover from the collapse of resonance.  Crew throughout his entire length screamed in panic.  Had he a biological body, Kevin suspected he would have joined them.  Never had his conceptual realm been contested in such a way.  He hadn’t even known such a thing was possible.

“Communications, give me Command.”

“You’re connected.”

“Command, this is War Barge Kevin Actual.  I am unable to grapple with my gravitonic field.  The Dragon disrupts the resonance of my realm when I attempt to influence the space around it.”

“Understood, War Barge Kevin.  Other designated grapplers report the same.  Switch to tertiary battle plan.  Avoid damage to the four aerostats, but otherwise your orders now are to attack without regard for the safety of allies.  Repeat.  Do not damage the aerostats.  All other concerns are immaterial.  Attack the target.”

Kevin didn’t hesitate.  With only a slight pause to request more from the generators, he began spinning up his schism beam.  The magnetic mono poles in his nose turret spun with manic energy, three nested cylinders moving at relative velocities precisely calculated for a specific effect.

Space twisted faster and faster until it ripped, causing a line of bright devastation to lance forth from Kevin towards the Dragon.  More schism beams jumped from his peers.  It was a free-for-all now.  They’d jumped straight from the initial salvo of their primary plan to the tertiary plan, skipping right over the secondary as the full might of their foe became known.  Every schism beam powerful enough to pierce the shroud of miasma died on contact with the skin of the Dragon without leaving a mark.

Like every other member of the Mercom military below a certain age, Kevin had grown up watching video of the first Dragon to be killed by humanity.  The War Barge Elliott, the Lord Annihilator, and the Sage of Severing had teamed up for that great feat.  And a schism beam landed the killing blow, cutting the Dragon in half.  That had been over ten generations of weaponry in the past.  Modern schism beams were far more potent.

But not against this opponent.  The schism beams, ultimate weapon of the Jinn, were rendered impotent.  Kevin noticed War Barge Maria closing in on the Dragon from above.  She opened her bay directly to the air, allowing squat cylinders on spider legs to leap free.  Fifty antimatter containment units dropped towards the ultimate predator of humanity.  Each one held the uploaded consciousness of a true patriot willing to self sacrifice for the greater good.

Kevin cut off his schism beam to avoid interfering with the suicide attack.  Other beams winked out of existence as well.  No one within the Mercom military held anything but the utmost respect for their Antimatter Corps.  This attack may not have the punch of a schism beam, but that didn’t mean anyone would dare interfere with the execution of their sacred duty.

Three quarters of the antimatter containment units failed to detonate, victims of the miasma.

The remainder erupted into small explosions no mightier than conventional munitions.

Before the schism beams could resume, a world-shaking force came from the Dragon.  Its will struck at the fabric of reality as an evil counter-resonance that momentarily degraded Kevin’s capabilities to the point his vast mind could barely focus.

When the conceptual attack ended, Kevin’s communications officer sounded an alarm.  Their quantum entanglement had been severed.  They were out of touch with Command.  That almost didn’t matter, though.  Because based on the movement of the dark serpent, the containment ritual had been broken.

Indeed, the external walls of the four aerostats were shredded to reveal grisly scenes of blood and entrails.  As Kevin watched the nearest one, a distant Arahant man clutched his head while he screamed, then his entire body exploded into viscera.

Kevin knew there was nothing Command could tell him now, other than to keep attacking and hope for a miracle.  Unfortunately, Kevin didn’t believe in miracles.  Their odds of surviving this encounter were minuscule.  But the odds never went to zero until the very end.  He’d just keep firing his schism beam until he couldn’t.