Salia Slitt was observing the Venian base from a distance. She wasn’t sure how many VMRs were in it, but none of them were a match for hers, of that she was sure. She assumed all five members of the Venian Foray would be there, but hopefully someone had died already, or at the least, was sleeping and wouldn’t be able to join the fight. One on one, she was unstoppable. She was the best VMR Pilot Venia had. Besides, the VMR Mark VI, as she called her own unit, was an order of magnitude stronger than whatever they were using. Her ordinance alone was enough to take out half of Venia, much less a small Venian base. She couldn’t just start dropping nukes though, she needed things from there.
The Venian team had been carefully selected for some of the best pilot on the planet. Doing this the hard way wasn’t going to be hard, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
Those were Venians she’d trained.
Venians she’d trained with.
Venians who had betrayed her.
It was no concern. That was for another time. What’s done is done. Venia betrayed her and she had decided to take the admittedly petulant stance of betraying them right back.
Technically, she reminded herself, she hadn’t betrayed them. Not yet. Not really. Of course they hadn’t let her on the Mana gathering team after she explained what she wanted to do, but simply joining another team wasn’t really betraying Venia. While using VMR tech without authorization was against Venian law, Venia would’ve reaped its fair share and she could make the argument it was just more benefit.
But they wouldn’t like that she stole the tech she needed.
And they wouldn’t like that she had upgraded her own VMR well past any reasonable specifications and without permission or dispensation of the underlying tech.
And they wouldn’t like that she had plans of her own, Fleon the fuckwit of the moronic Filary be damned.
But she hadn’t killed any Venians. Not yet. She’d killed for Venia, of course. Hundreds. Thousands. She had no problem doing it again. Killing was nothing to her now. Sure, the first time was hard, but the second time was less so, and the third time was nothing.
Then Emla died. She’d lost her love.
Now killing was all she thought about. Killing anyone and everyone who was at fault. Wiping Saldez off the map and then sending Venia with it if they wouldn’t back her. There wasn’t going to be mercy for the Saldez while she was still alive. Not now. Not ever. If that meant taking out a few Venians first, then so be it.
Power at 378% of 100%. Recommend reducing output by 278%. Please confirm.
Salia mentally clicked the button for “No.”
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Increasing the range and power of the heavy metal flechette system was simple, it just required bracing. The prior system she worked on used a bracketing system that stuck into the ground. It effectively made the VMR a tripod. The amount of force that you could produce this way was incredible, but ultimately limited by physics. The VMR weighed a substantial amount, but the amount of kick on shooting a heavy metal flechette at several thousand meters per second was substantial. Eventually the VMR would just flip head over heels and rip the bracing right out of the ground. The key was giving two opposite sources of thrust without crushing the thing in between. Once she got the timing down, it was simple. The flechette gives a positive force, thrusters provide a negative force. Where does the kinetic energy go from those two smashing into each other? Right back into the VMR’s power core of course! Why waste good physics. The reaction actually created enough energy to power itself. An almost fully contained system. Venian engineering at its finest. It would have crushed most creatures, but most creatures weren’t metal alloy exoskeletons encompassing a tiny creature.
The flechette itself was simply a one foot long spiraled rod with an augured tip. Its weight on Earth would’ve been about ten kilos. It would’ve taken a machine embedded into a cliff wall to fire the same amount of material on Earth at high speed.
Salia could fire one herself.
Thrusters charged to 400% safe levels of power. Flechette system aligned. Prepare for impact.
Salia initiated firing and waited. Nothing happened. It was perfect engineering. Her own beautiful work. She mentally clicked the button and millions upon millions of joules of energy all countered one another just perfectly, and were captured with eloquent efficiency, soaked right back into the VMR’s Power Unit.
She couldn’t really say “nothing” happened though, as one thing definitely happened.
A ten kilo metal rod hurtled through the air until it eventually went through the head of the VMR piloted by her old friend Resna Callow a few miles away. Salia magnified her vision right after she shot, but she couldn’t get focused in time to see the actual blow hit. Instead, by the time she got focused, there was a defunct VMR on the ground and a tiny spec of blood in the middle of it. The flechette round had gone entirely through the VMR and embedded in the cave wall behind her. Salia was concerned it would be louder than it was when it hit the wall, but it stuck so hard that it didn’t cause any further damage and embedded with a thwapt.
One down. A few more to go.
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It was a mine, but not typical. That meant naming the contraption was pretty easy, it was an atypical mine. She had worked on a number of what she called atypical mines that functioned through some other mechanism than high explosives. The whole point of a mine was to keep someone away from something you were interested in. It hardly made sense to Salia to have it make some thundering boom and wake you up. So much easier to just silently clean up the mess.
The mine produced a two phase reaction that was triggered by proximity. The first phase of the reaction was mixing of two chemicals native to Venia that were scarce in most other places. Oxozone was simply a four membered oxygen structure analogous to molecular oxygen that exists in a highly excited state. When mixed with liquid tetranitrocyanogen, and then set aflame in the second phase, the ensuing highly controlled reaction produced a thick liquid vapor of around 2,200 degrees Kelvin without more than a whisper. This was hot enough to melt basically anything, including titanium/Venetium alloys. As long as the mixture stayed separate in the mine itself, it was completely stable. Any activation of one mine would result in activation of all other local mines though. The end result was an extremely deadly mist that could be extended as far as you had mines.
If there was one thing Salia had, it was mines. They were small, compact, and simple to store inside her VMR. She had already mined the area around Resna’s body extensively. She wasn’t sure who would show up first, but she was very sure of the result if they did.
The VMR was an immensely powerful device. Her people had become reliant on it and had forgotten life without it after only a few short years. Venians didn’t know fear. They didn’t think about danger. They’d fought and won a war where the entire population lost six warriors. Six. Six against thousands of Saldez. The Venian Engineering Council called it an outstanding success. A nearly flawless victory. Only six casualties.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
It was six, but all Salia ever thought of was five and Emla.
She was counting on the fact that all of Venia thought that six was ok. Six was good enough. Six meant they were invincible. As soon as Resna’s emergency beacon went off, the Venians would come running because nothing could hurt them. Salia was counting on that.
Most VMRs were nearly identical minus the small insignias present on the upper right of the chest. Salia didn’t actually see who triggered the first mine, and she was quite sure she would never know. Her mines didn’t have a trip-noise or any other warning. If you got close enough, they just all went off and you died. Boom. Melted.
The VMR blasted into existence at top speed and was promptly disintegrated just as fast. The mines all went off nearly simultaneously. Whoever was in the VMR was dead in seconds. Salia watched as the VMR thrusted forward down the cavern tunnel to presumably see what had gone wrong with their partner. They tried briefly to stop before the first mine went off. From there, it was like watching ice melt on a hot stove. The vapor fog disintegrated the VMR in seconds. Bits of metal and wire and a tiny spat of blood was all that was left. Salia, again now watching from afar tried again to find the insignia through her telescopic vision, but the corpse was too far gone almost instantly.
No matter. Two down. A few more to go.
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Klar Srix was walking down the tunnels towards his Foray’s Mana array. It was part of his duty. They weren’t deep enough to start worrying about thieves yet, but you never really knew. They also weren’t deep enough to get to the point where teams would really start fighting for what was left, but they also weren’t shallow enough that a few of the weaker teams might try to poach and Exit. It was an age-old strategy that was always a possibility. Leaving something totally unguarded was always a risk.
He rounded the metal hallways that lined their makeshift base. One of the major advantages the Venian Foray had was the new pop-up technology they had created. While most Forays would be stuck inside whatever passed for an Inn in whatever passed for a town, Venians were exceptionally good at rapidly turning nearly anything into a well-designed fort. In this case, it had largely been a function of blasting a few cavern walls and setting up the engineering systems they needed. Venian miniaturization technology was amongst the best in the galaxy, and since they were tiny as a species, putting together something that could fit inside a VMR but used outside of the VMR was a simple task.
Klar popped out of his VMR and fluttered over to their systems array. A glass container appeared around him before he could blink. The container appeared to be attached to nothing, but Klar quickly realized the iridescence in front of him could only be one thing. He shouted “Hello, Salia,” but was muted by the glass.
Salia Slitt’s VMR popped back into view, removing her cloaking. “I can’t hear a word you are saying Klar. That is you isn’t it? I’d remember those purple legs anywhere. I have some bad news old friend. I’m here to kill you.”
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Salia plucked another wing from Klar’s body as he let loose a tiny screech of pain. She had carefully pinned him down with tiny needles onto a piece of nearby wood through his hands and feet. She imagined it was extremely painful. She wondered how Emla felt before she died. The more she thought about it, the more she empathized. She could feel the bullet inside her. She could feel it tear through her organs and rip her apart. She wondered what Emla’s last thought were. If she had thought of Salia in those last few moments when she was being torn to pieces.
Then she remembered Klar, and wondered what he might think about it.
“Please. Please don’t kill me,” Klar said.
“I thought that loss of lives was acceptable. That’s what you said isn’t it? You said that losing six Venians in a war where we killed millions shouldn’t justify further action against the Saldez. You said that by any standard that we had won the war with overwhelming force, and that we should take mercy upon our opponents. You said that, right? When we were at Emla’s funeral, you said you were sorry for my loss. You said I’d find others, that Emla was wonderful, but there was many Venians who would do anything to be with me. Is that what you thought I needed at that time Klar? A good fuck? You thought insinuating yourself into my bed would solve all my problems. It wasn’t that the love of my life had died and I was devastated emotionally, it was just that I needed a good mating session and then I’d feel all better right?”
She plucked another wing from his body and he screamed another tiny scream in pain.
“Let me tell you about my standard. I could care less how many Venians we lost. Losing six Venians means shit to me. I wouldn’t have cared if we lost six hundred. The other five casualties combined mean less to me than the shit dribbling from your pathetic mewling mouth at this minute. We lost Emla. We lost her. That is my standard. If you think that any number of Saldez makes up for that you are wrong. I have no interest in stopping this war. Ever. There is no way to replace the unreplaceable. There will be no mercy. I am not interested in justice. I am not interested in fairness. I am not interested in making things even. I will destroy their planets, I will find their leaders, and I will eliminate their species. My standard is revenge. Complete and utter revenge. Permanency. I will do whatever it takes to make this happen, and not you, nor the Venian Engineering Council, nor any other entity will stand in my way. I built the VMR. It is my technology. I say how it gets used, not you and not the VEC.”
Klar seized against the pins, “If you are here for the… the Mana array, then just… just take it. You can have all the Mana Nodes.”
“You think I am here for a Mana array? After all I just said you think this is about a fucking Mana array? For what? And why? I am still pledged to Venia. There is no difference between you holding it and me. No, I am not here for any Mana array. I am here for what was taken from me. I want my schematics back.”
Klar winced in pain, “What you propose is genocide.”
“Correct. That’s what I said. If you think that you are insulting me or going to dissuade me with that comment you are incorrect. I am proposing genocide. Openly and proudly. You will give me back my schematics and then I will happily commit genocide in the name of the one that I lost. I will eliminate the Saldez indefinitely and forever, and then happily travel the galaxy finding any of them that weren’t destroyed in my first effort and use them as my personal entertainment device for as long as they can withstand the torture I have extensively planned.”
Klar spat up tiny speckles of blood onto his thorax. “You’re a monster. Venia was a peaceful society for 10,000 years, and now you propose open war. Extinction. Eralia said you’d gone mad. She’ll find you. She’ll kill you.”
Salia smiled, “Possibly. Possibly. Eralia always was quite good. Maybe she gets the jump and she wins. Maybe not.”
The large metal door to the hallway clanked hard against its hinges.
Salia Slitt smiled, “Speak of the devil. Just the lady we’ve been looking for if I had to guess.”
A VMR bearing the emblem of Eralia Smar smashed the door open. “Hi Salia. We’ve been looking for you too.”
Salia Slitt slammed her fist down and crushed Klar’s tiny body, then set her thrusters to maximum and flew straight past her old friend.
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Eralia was chasing her down the hallway at high speed. The tunnels through the base were tight with 90 degree turns every twenty or so feet. It was identical to most other Venian forts, with the small exceptions that Eralia’s Foray had made. Salia would blast at top acceleration towards a wall and then pivot and bounce off of it towards the next. She was searching for something, and this wasn’t going to work. She needed time to look, and she couldn’t do it with her old friend peppering her ass with 5mm rounds.
It’s not like they hadn’t done this before. They’d done similar activities in training a thousand times. Eralia was one of the oldest and most successful pilots in the system. She was the only one Salia considered a peer in that regard. They twisted and turned through the tunnels at as hide a speed as Salia could maintain. Eralia continued to gain ground. It made Salia feel old and useless. She had the superior machine and she could barely outpace Eralia anymore.
She did have one advantage. Eralia would want to capture her alive. Eralia would try to minimize damage. Eralia wouldn’t put her comrades lives at risk. Salia had no such issue.
She dropped a cluster of munitions behind her as she made the next turn. There is no way Eralia would be dumb enough to fly into them, but she was fairly sure it was enough firepower to bury everything behind her. Eralia would live but she’d take a while to make her way out of the wreckage.
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The explosion went off just as expected. Sarl had been out of his VMR which made things that much easier. His tiny form was vaporized in the explosion. She flew down to where Sarl’s body had been before the bomb went off and desperately searched for the box with the schematics. She did a quick 360 degree scan and found the box underneath a nearby corpse. She walked over to the corpse and flipped it over and grabbed the box. The corpse began to move around so Salia pointed the gun on the right arm of her VMR in the body’s direction, ready to finish the job, before she noticed something.
“Oh, it’s you.”
Boyd rolled over and saw Salia Slitt standing over him.