Location: Terra Colony Andromeda
North Sector - Training Field Septa
Group Gamma - Altitude 2,000 Meter
Time: 1015
January 31, 2050
Breathing was starting to become a problem. Over 2 kilometers up in altitude, it was normal for the chemical density of the ambient air to change. While this wouldn’t be a problem for Itsuki and his group, it was a minor issue that compounded with the true issue that was rearing its ugly head, its musky gray plumage was all around them.
What they were referring to was the smoke screen they had put up. It was made for the purpose of dropping their opponent’s ability to detect them. Composed of a mix of heavy particularized metals and other chemical compounds, it messed with almost any kind of sensory equipment, refracting and scrambling all electronic attempts, sound or otherwise, from getting a read. The downside was that the clouds were replacing too much of the air.
Inhaling it would be as bad as getting tear gassed and sand in your eyes at the same time, so sticking around in it wasn’t advised.
The trainees of Group Gamma heaved a cough and their eyes began to itch, though not as bad as one would think. They came prepared, their standard kit of gear came with mini rebreathers and eye protection in case of emergencies. These lessened the smoke’s debilitating effects, to a degree.
A collective this sucks was definitely shared between everyone but there was no other choice. Breaking out from the smoke screen would leave them sitting ducks in front of Arielle. She could snipe them or home her attacks in on them. Right now, she was firing blind.. Or that’s what they hoped.
Either way, they had to stick it out. The smoke wouldn’t kill them or have any long term effects on their health. It only felt incredibly uncomfortable.
The sentiment was shared with even Itsuki. As stoic and unfeeling as he normally was, and how he was supposedly sealed in his DICTATA Augment suit, that should’ve been all the protection he needed, that wasn’t the case. It was getting stuffy inside the thing and not only that, the suit’s systems were failing.
He frowned as a round of passive system checks came up red in his HUD. The suit’s secondary mini power source was fried and he was sure his primary source was on its last legs. This wasn’t from natural wear and tear or battle damage, it was his abuse of enhancing his strength and speed by disengaging the suit’s default safety limiters. The toll it took was beyond the normal conventions of damage.
On top of that, his imbuement of his core energy into the suit’s power source had accelerated its deterioration. While what he did was similar to Arielle’s instantaneous modification by Cyberkinesis which was more like magic and sorcery, his was less detailed and had its drawbacks.
By funneling his core energy into an inanimate object, like any regular explorer would do to their own muscles and body parts to enhance them, the parameters of the imbued object would increase. Higher tolerances to stress, torsion, compression, or shearing, it was a matter of the explorer’s intent.
In the case of his Augment Suit it toughened it uped in all aspects to handle the extreme maneuvers and several G’s of force he subjected it to. This gave him greater capabilities at the cost of slowly destroying his equipment.
This wasn’t an issue when enhancing your own body though. The major difference between the imbuement of core energy into inanimate objects and the human body was that the human body had its limiter while objects did not. You could push a machine to its breaking point but not a person, not unless you were a rare kind of crazy.
Itsuki knew a few who could, Ikki was one of them, and he wondered if.. No, now’s not the time to think about that. He shook his head and scanned the area with his helmet’s infrared. Seeing streaks of red indicators darting about, he sent out a ping over the closed comm channel he had set up with Group Gamma.
Text scrolled across Bravo 1’s and Alpha 1’s HUD.
[Radio Silence, Follow Protocol Silent Fox, Orders - Suppressive fire, due south west, 40 degree south. 12 Incoming. Sending Data Now.]
To a T, the orders were followed. In slow movement, the trainees nearest in the general direction Itsuki had marked began tracking the incoming projectiles.
The crackle and hiss of a group of Arielle’s discharged energy cards were slithering through the smoke, getting close but still blind. With only their eyes the trainees couldn’t see it coming, the smoke was too thick so they used the sensory data from Itsuki’s higher spec gear and aligned their sights.
Other trainees snapped to, as orders were given out from Itsuki. Watching the incoming indicators disappear, Itsuki let out a breath. Good, now I just have to hold on. He pulled up a clock in his HUD and he set it into a default position in his top left view.
Suddenly, an alarm rang in his ears and a line of red text flashed on his screen. More of them!? Itsuki inhaled sharply and tracked the new targets. Using the HUD’s manual sensory system, he calculated the incoming attack trajectories in split seconds. The margin of error that was automatically calculated by his onboard computer was enormous but Itsuki ran the calculations in his head, offsetting and predicting the lines of attack from Arielle.
With a rapid thought he then delegated intercepting responsibilities to Group Gamma. Holding their formation, their tight spherical alignment allowed them to lay down covering fire in a complete three hundred and sixty three dimensional manner.
Being in the smoke helped though was not desirable, and for other reasons than the choking air. As good as cover went when dogfighting in the open sky, they were still getting picked off one by one. It was at a sluggish pace, so that was the bright side.
Unless Arielle wanted to end the fight quicker, she’d have to risk getting up close and personal. They weren’t counting on that, so for now, they held on, or.. Held on for as long as their ammo would let them.
Keeping the attacks up on her end, Arielle found herself in a conundrum and mentally asked herself. What is his game?
According to her map, she was on the outer edge of the persisting smoke screen. The level of influence it had on her equipment was great and her line of sight was obscured. Usually she could detect enemies from a distance that they couldn’t see her. Doing that now was impossible.
Seeing through the smoke with her tactical contact lenses limited infrared, while not as accurate as her other means or providing crucial trajectory data, her current means were enough for a stationary target. But that was the issue, and the conundrum she faced. Itsuki and his group were holding position, and Itsuki never went on the defense unless something was up.
“What are you planning?” She mumbled quietly to herself. “Come on, take the bait, you said you’d do this the hard way.. Well? Come on. I’m waiting.” It looked like she was talking to the air, but in reality she knew they were listening.
Itsuki’s silence was proof enough and she could already see that he had a plan coming together. This tactic of his to hide in the smoke and fend her off from a point of passive aggression wasn’t his style.
He was always the guns blazing kind of sort, implacable and unrelenting. Was he baiting her? Yes. Trying to get her to attack at close range? Yes. Close combat wasn’t Arielle’s strong suit. The viable option was to keep up her attacks going, yet taking that line of action meant possibly falling into Itsuki’s plan.. whatever it was.
He was a tricky sort, he had a plan for a plan when a plan failed. He could be betting on her to stay back, though nothing seemed abnormal when it should’ve been.
She threw another handful of discharging cards of energy. They flew in sharp and jagged arcs through the gray smoke. She cranked up the pressure and launched consecutive waves of her conjured attacks.
Placing some of them where the smoke was denser, she could send an ever sporadic and delayed volley every other minute. The level of firepower she had at range was her greatest weapon as a Mystic type Explorer, so she was doing well. Throwing Itsuki’s group off guard, their red infrared figures had to break formation and scramble, yet they didn’t leave the confines of the smoke that was shielding them.
These weren’t the results she was expecting. One by one the red outlines of her opponents fell away. From the initial 13, they were down to 9 and the mark she had specifically put on Itsuki hadn’t fallen yet. Her latest attempts downed only one and she was surmising their tactics, piece by piece.
They're on guard, and they’re getting used to my attacks. Maybe trying to read my patterns. They know I can’t set off larger attacks without giving my position away. From what I can pick up from the EM wave emission, it must mean Itsuki has switched over to a support role. That external pack of his is a bother, gotta get rid of it.
As long as Itsuki was her opponent, Arielle would have to keep reminding herself to be careful.
I gotta take this seriously. Can’t beat him if I don’t think it through. I need to know more.
She knew Itsuki was running low on ammo and his options were draining fast. She had been keeping tabs on him throughout today’s training exercise. Wirelessly hooked up to the local academy master network, Arielle had data at the snap of a finger and the recent figures showed what she wanted.
Pulling itself up in the corner of her view, the last status report on Itsuki’s armaments listed themselves. Her last hack into his communication earpiece system had unearthed a good chunk of data.
So he has grenades, chaingun ammo, C4, plenty of explosives, more explosives, and.. Huh more explosives? Guess he’s really gone through his ammo.
In a sudden spark that lit the gray screen of smoke with branching lights, another one of her attacks crackled and fizzled away, likely repelled by gun fire. From the acoustic reading, Itsuki’s chainguns must be ripping through her energy cards. At his rate of consumption, he’d be out of bullets in minutes, good to know.
Not only that, his external pack was failing. Arielle was relieved to know that as well. More and more of his toys were getting reduced to scrap.
Missile pods, shields, enhanced sensors, and an almost limitless supply of energy. That thing on his back makes him a flying fortress, and it's a disaster if that guy can resupply. This will be easier when all his toys are broken.
As she reviewed the data again, a few items in Itsuki’s status screen caught her eye.
Melee weapons? Training gear? Hmmm.. Makes sense, he only brought the basics. But there has to be more to it.
As great and as accurate the information was, Arielle wasn’t going to take it at face value. She remembered her training, to always expect the unexpected, because as an explorer, the stardepths and its horrors never relented in trying to kill you. Jumping at the chance of the advantage she held, she’d test the waters first on a hunch of hers before making any drastic actions going forward.
“Let’s see how you react to this.” Arielle muttered, producing a discharge of white and blue energy from each of her palms. Slamming her hands together, a fist sized, pale blue ball of pulsating plasma coalesced.
Reeling back she chucked it where her infrared indicated where Itsuki was. The ball of light disappeared into the gray plume and seconds later a sharp pulse of energy wreaked havoc, ripping the air. Arielle’s long blonde hair stood on end for a second as the air pulsed with a wave of electricity.
From the epicenter of the smokescreen, a flash engulfed her sight as jolting lightning strikes streaked out. Following the bright flash, the momentary silence crashed down and turned into a subsequent cascade of thunderous echoing booms.
Her eyes squinted as the infrared view automatically turned off before her HUD was overloaded and blinded in white. Rushing herself out of the smoke, Arielle drew to a safer distance and waited, her hands at the ready to pick off anyone who was smoked out. Surely someone would’ve tried to escape.
A second passed and then another and then another. When a minute drew to a close Arielle cocked a brow.
Don’t tell me that didn’t work. I must’ve hit one of them at least. Or are they calling my bluff? Do they really think they can take another one of those?
She got her answer as the sensory systems in her contact lens were booted back up and were now unobscured by the smoke’s jamming. Her eyes grew concerned.
To her horror, multiple contacts rocketed out of the smoke and they weren’t people. Before they could close in on her, she booked it and energized her gravitational heels. Propelling herself as fast as she could through the air, the ominous whistling of whatever was on her tail followed her.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Glancing over her shoulder she saw twenty flaring contacts hot on her tail, they were missiles. She banked right but the missiles adjusted, using what looked like rocket propulsion to stay locked on to her.
I get the feeling that I’m getting a taste of my own medicine.
Arielle smirked. Itsuki’s bag of tricks never ceased to both amaze and annoy. The guy had every piece of military hardware under the sun and always had something new to use with every fight he gets into. A gun nut wouldn’t even be close in describing him, more like a fanatic.
Throwing out a shot of energy to counter, the chasing missiles bursted mid air, spreading yet another cloud of that gray jamming smoke. That answered that.
So his game is to draw me away, fine by me.
Arielle rounded and dove into the smoke while spreading a scattering of electrical homing energy cards through the air. She kept her distance and approximated her approach.
Switching back to infrared as her other sophisticated sensory equipment was blocked, 9 red figures were left. They were moving to get into a position above and below her. 5 above and 4 below. She couldn’t tell which group Itsuki was in, all the heat signatures had similar builds, so it meant Itsuki’s external pack was kaput. Good.
Before she could choose, gunfire rained from above and she had her target set for her. Focusing her attention on the group above, Arielle rushed up and out of the jamming smoke. Bullseye. She smiled as her starry blue eyes trained themselves on her mark.
Itsuki was there and it truly seemed that he abandoned his external pack. Now was the moment to take him out.
“Hello Itsuki, care to fight me now?”
In response his 4 other teammates scattered and laid down fire on her. Their bullets did little but their smoke grenades played havoc with the sensors of her equipment.
“Pests.” She hissed. Her HUD flickered with static as readings errored and turned null. Switching some of her HUD’s features off, she trained her focus on Itsuki. Weaving past the lines of fire, she threw a roar of plasmic energy from each hand.
The air cracked and shook as her energy combusted into pure plasmic fire. It tore through the physical shield Itsuki put up, its ceramic and carbon fiber edges melting and slopping off like soft caramel.
“Come on Itsuki!” Arielle yelled. “Fight me already! Get serious!”
In the face of her taunts, Itsuki ignored them and unloaded the last of the ammunition he had in his core rifle. In a twisting path through the sky, the two exchanged fire. The pieces of Itsuki’s augment suit sheared off as Arielle’s bolts grazed and sliced past him.
Arielle on the other hand didn’t suffer a scratch. Itsuki’s bullets had no effect since her core energy aura was keeping strong and she was sure none of them had anything strong enough to punch through it.
Just as she closed in, Itsuki swung his fist straight at her. She flipped back in the air and kicked his arm away from good measure. Her quick reaction and choice proved to be right since a bursting shotgun blast from Itsuki’s wrist mounted shotblast was redirected in time.
Not missing a beat, Arielle struck Itsuki in the chest with an electrically charged palm strike. His augment suit sparked and the whirring it made died down. She could hear him cursing as he was thrown back.
“Shit, Reboot! Reboot! Shit!” Itsuki desperately called out, but nothing came back as a reply from his suit’s systems.
“I have you now!” Arielle tore through the air and raised her hand into a knife hand strike. The tips of her perfectly manicured fingers hummed and sparked as she brought it down.
Itsuki was helpless, or so she thought. In a sudden reversal, Arielle’s hand hovered inches from the top of Itsuki’s helmet. Itsuki’s armored hand gripped her wrist and they strained to overcome each other.
Arielle’s hand was the first to falter. Wincing from his iron grip she kicked him away and flew up, evading the incoming smoke grenades from the other trainees. Itsuki did the same but withdrew behind his allies.
Annoyed, Arielle hacked his comms again and laughed into his ear, forcibly turning up the volume.
“I almost had you, you know. Are you getting soft Itsuki? I expected you to come at me one on one.”
[As if I would try that.] Itsuki scoffed. [I’m emotionally blunt, not stupid.]
“More like stubborn, ya damn robot.” Arielle narrowed her eyes as she conjured up a number of electromagnetic barriers around herself. “But I can be stubborn too. Let’s see if your teammates can be as well.”
With a crack, she launched herself at the trainees. Their bullets and grenades deflected and bent around her. In a second she’d be on them.
But before that could come to pass, a sudden proximity alarm alerted her. By the skin of her teeth, a mini missile grazed her side as it shot up from below. Rolling out of the way, she weaved through the sudden jungle of missiles that sprang up from the gray clouds of smoke under her. She hadn’t noticed that the sight below her was a vast obscuring sea of gray.
Her infrared and sensory equipment kicked in and tracked each projectile that emerged. It was only then that she noticed what Itsuki had planned. New readings and enemy contacts emerged from the man made sea of clouds right under her nose.
Likely using it as cover when her attention was drawn away, additional forces joined the fight and were intercepting her. What was only a group of nine had turned into an army. The number of readings kept increasing, there were too many of them, a hundred maybe. Arielle’s voice grew disturbed.
“So that was your game. You weren’t using the smoke screen to draw me in, you used it as cover.” Confronted by this turn of events, she balled her fist to keep a cool facade. There was a plan B should take, she just needed to keep Itsuki’s attention. “Clever.” She said mockingly at him. “Very clever. You never fail to be a pain in the ass.”
[I appreciate the comment, and you’re right.] Itsuki replied. [But you were doing well. As always, your eyes never fail in reading people, though you still need some work in controlling yourself. Your pitch tells me you’re angry.]
Arielle clicked her tongue. “Oh shut up, I’m grown up Itsuki, you're not my instructor anymore, so give that whole teaching shtick a rest.” She banked hard pass missile after missile. “Also,” She continued, “Aren’t you a student now?”
[I am, but that doesn’t mean you’re my superior as an explorer, this is only temporary. Plus, even without all my equipment, I can beat one of you.]
“Yeah right! I’m the one who's going to take you down.”
[Good luck then.] Itsuki said curtly as he dashed away while motioning to his allies. [All units! Weapons free! Full Spread! Don’t let her out of your sight! I want her crashing and burning!]
[Yes! Sir!]
Immediately, Arielle found herself under fire from a hundred different guns. Saying she was being pressured was an understatement. This amount of saturated fire was overwhelming and draining her reserves of energy. Her protective aura had its limits.
And the electromagnetic barrier she had put up had their threshold and this was definitely it. The shoe was now on the other foot and she had stepped right into it.
Itsuki was playing her from the start, using her focused attention on him to draw her away from the approaching main force that would take her out. Well played, well played indeed, but that didn’t mean she was out yet. These guys are trainees, so how hard could it be to take’em out?
The answer was that it was harder than she thought. The hundred or so trainees flew in groups of 3 and 4, spreading out and switching out with other groups to reload as a set number of them kept firing on her from all sides.
An untold number of rockets she didn’t want to count swarmed her like moths to a flame, all while the explosive cracks of heavy rifles haunted her as their soda can sized bullets whistled past her. Some hit their mark and threw her off course, knocking not only the wind but what felt like her brain out of her. Thankfully, she was quick to recover. She hadn’t gone through 5 years of the academy here for nothing.
Returning fire when she could, Itsuki broke out the grenade launcher and made the air around her implode with fire. This was quickly turning into a nightmare. Running wasn’t an option, evading was the only way, but the more she struggled the more mistakes she would make in the heat of the moment.
This was it, she needed to take a stand, go in hard and use the cards she had.
Grabbing and throwing a capsule from her belt, the thumb sized device disassembled into hovering bits. Using her Cyber Kinesis the bits energized and put up a number of triangular shaped mobile electromagnetic barriers.
Moving on their own, they hovered around her, forming a morphing shell of defense. It took the burden off her protective aura but it ran through a chunk of her reserves of core energy. This was good though. Activating more of her defensive devices, she had room to put up a resistance.
Incoming red tracer fire was met and melted against burning blue plasmic shot from her hands. The air heated and cries went up from the distressed trainees.
[Adjust altitude!]
[Incoming on the left!]
[Down! Get Down!]
With all the shouting they were making, Arielle calmed as she kept the pressure on. She used the time to think. There was nowhere to hide or run. They'd follow her. Touching down and bringing the fight to the ground seemed viable. Other constructs could take the heat off of her.
No. Arielle shook her head. That won’t work, they have the same deal as well, their ground forces would close in on me. She checked the map to make sure. Luckily, she was in her team's air space and while there was an opposing battlegroup nearby they were currently tied up in a fight of their own. Landing nearby now sounded like a plausible idea.
She reconsidered her options. She had time, she had..
Boom!
Rocked out of her thoughts, Arielle’s attention drew to what was happening around her. The mobile barriers should’ve been enough to fend the trainees off. They were still hammering her shields with gun fire but their weapons shouldn’t be able to have any real effect, unless..
Realizing what was happening, she spun to evade as a trainee came into view in the blindspot on her right. The punch went through a part of her barrier that the trainee slipped through to then close in on her with a knife. The barrier he broke dissipated as it lost its integrity. The only way to get through it was with substantial force or a core energy imbued attack.
Itsuki should’ve been the only one able to get through it but her sensors would have picked up on a sudden spike of core energy. In the second she had left before needing to react she checked her HUD again, Itsuki was nowhere near her. She got a good look at the trainee who was attacking her and she redirected and grappled his knife away with ease.
He wasn’t Itsuki, that was for sure, but she felt the presence of the kid’s core energy being focused. It seems her assumptions of these trainees were wrong.
Arielle hadn’t thought any of them could even touch her, they were too young and inexperienced. Itsuki was only using them to get her off of him so he could resupply. Yet from all sides they dove at her, with a firm warrior like determination in their eyes.
Two new trainees got through a pair of her electromagnetic shields, each landing a punch and kick on her. She blocked and knocked them away, their attacks were light but could bruise. Slowly they were closing in and a hundred pairs of eyes stared at her, coordinating as they sprung at her like a pouncing wolf pack.
They were playing off her weakness in close combat and overwhelming her with numbers. Worst of all, the pace of their attacks increased.
But Arielle wouldn’t be beaten yet. She was an explorer, a full fledged one and she told herself that hundred trainees were nothing! Focusing and remembering her training, Arielle stirred her core energy inside of herself.
A rainbow colored aura flaked away from her attire as her twin long blonde locks began to glow with even brighter and pronounced highlights of iridescent colors. The trainees felt a pressure drop to the pit of their guts and they trembled.
Many recoiled, their senses telling them to run. Before they had a chance to decide the tables were turned. Conjured from the air itself, plasmic bolts tore into the trainees, their propulsion gear dying out as they lost consciousness and fell from the sky.
“Go! Keep Going!”
“Knock her out!”
Some trainees resolved themselves and flung themselves at her. Their fists were blocked by barriers and were then paralyzed as a sudden shock not only knocked their equipment out but their minds out as well.
Arielle commended these trainees for their grit, they’d make great explorers in the future.
Now.. where did Itsuki go. Arielle eyed the surroundings as her equipment scanned for him. A reading came back and her eyes widened.
“What the! Gah!”
Before she could react to her proximity sensor, she screamed as Itsuki dove headlong into one of her closest barriers. He had been hidden among the trainees, waiting patiently for the right time to strike, and now was that time. The trainees scattered as he flew at her with an ominous new weapon in hand.
On his left arm was a device Arielle hadn’t seen before. It was pressing back her barrier and was getting dangerously close, it strained her focus and was putting a mental pressure on her. The pointed tip of Itsuki’s weapon sparked flecks of shining yellow and the air burned and smelt of ash.
It had a rod like construction that was indicative of a piece of mining equipment she recalled. A pile driver, though the name was different as it popped up in her HUD.
It’s a Pilebunker!?
Suddenly she sensed an amount of core energy building in the weapon and she moved away. As soon as she tried, his pilebunker shattered her barrier, ripping through it as violently as a jackhammer would through rock. He drove it home and the head of the three meter long pilebunker slammed against Arielle’s raised guard.
Silver lines of energy creeped along the tip of the weapon, and Arielle felt the weight of it dig deeper into her arms. The screech of metal rang in her ears as her muscles in her arm began to ache.
It died down but then a hiss of air from the pilebunker’s rear exhaust ports engaged and she heard the sound of a pressure mechanism releasing. The pointed rod of solid material spun and thunderously extended from the casing it was sheathed in.
The pilebunker knocked her guard away and slammed itself into her gut. Only her core energy aura was protecting her now, but this was it.. Right? She could counter.
But she couldn’t, not fast enough that is. Before Arielle could ever catch her breath, Itsuki grabbed her neck with his other hand and engaged the thruster pack of his augment suit, driving himself and weapon deeper against her aura. His suit was failing yet surprisingly still had many of its basic functions intact, a testament to its reliability.
A jet of silver fire roared behind him and he pressed Arielle back. Arielle was losing control and her gravitation heels weren’t able to compensate to help hold her ground.
Imbuing his augment suit to its final limits, Itsuki angled his trajectory down. Rechecking the map in his HUD he looked at the time.
Time: 1029. Perfect. He thought. I’m right on schedule.
In desperation, Arielle reached her hand out and tried to use her CyberKinesis on Itsuki’s pilebunker. Coughing up a suffocating breath as she touched the exterior of the device, her perception of time slowed as she attempted to manipulate the weapon’s inner workings to sabotage it. Whether it was through its hardware or software, she could make it break. She found her in and then, wham!
That wasn’t supposed to happen. Her perception sped back up and paralyzing pain contorted her face as a counter shock discharged from Itsuki’s weapon.
“Damnit!”
Arielle screamed as she tried to pull Itsuki away from her, then she finally noticed the ground coming closer and what exactly Itsuki had in store for her.
“You’re insane! You know that! Insane!” She yelled and cursed at Itsuki, but he didn’t flinch, not even when he slammed and crashed them both into the ground.