Chapter 12, Gambit For Freedom
Hours before the unexpected collision between universes, on a floating continent above Planet 9.
Ena tentacles were snaking and seeping into every opening on Nagate's Type 17 Custom Tsugumori, from blown panels to the cockpit hatch. The visceral red, white and pink growth solidified before his eyes, forming a featureless humanoid, growing the face he had pledged to stop recognizing in combat anymore: Hoshijiro Shizuka.
Gauna are incomprehensible by nature; the object shaped like Shizuka that invaded his machine could be a 100% talking, responsive copy of herself, but it would still be an unthinking appendage connected to Benisuzume's core outside. The devil with a human face was purely driven by the endless hunger for Hyggs particles, empty of all earthly emotions...
That was the official word known by all pilots since the appearance of its first iteration, which looked like an... Infected, overgrown Type 18 instead of the unnervingly sleek porcelain skeleton outside. However, Nagate made his observations on what actually powered this avatar of destruction: Spite.
She... It, treated combat not as feeding, but as a display of superiority to be enjoyed. It didn't fight Sidonian pilots, it tortured them to death while giggling all the time. He dreaded that the only human concept truly understood by the eldritch Gauna mind from her assimilation was evil. How else would Benisuzume took its time to drain Tsumugi's energy reserve and then fill her armor with needle-shaped simulated Kabi? This thing's existence could be summarized as an expression of hate against all life, and all who valued life. Forming the humanoid Ena from tumorous tentacles decorated with fleshy growths that looked like bloody, wilted flowers was an insult to humanity's expertise in creating beauty.
Warning: Structural temperature rising
Benisuzume's core was right in front of his cockpit, just within range of his artificial Kabi blade, but the Type 17 was physically bound too tight by Ena tentacles. The red devil drained Tsumugi's energy, and it was attempting to directly convert it to heat and sink all of it into his otherwise well protected Guardian.
"Nagate, can you hear me? Seal the neck airlock! It will block the Ena from going deeper!" He heard Izana evaluate the situation from their emergency passenger compartment, voice straining under heat, "You need to eject the head!"
Warning: Structural heat critical
He reached for the head parts ejection button, but the humanoid leaned over and seized his shoulders, pristine human arms melting into amorphous Ena to form a tight shackle. And then, power went off. The Guardian's components were assimilation-proof, though far from physically indestructible. A few pieces of Ena snaking in would wreck its internal wiring.
"Stop... Imitating Hoshijiro, Gauna!"
Tentacles crawled from its... Her mouth, and she pressed her face to his.
BLIP!
Izana reconnected the Guardian's backup power capacitor. Nagate only needed to reach his finger a few centimeters further... From the remaining cockpit screens not blocked by the simulated Shizuka, a realization dawned on him. It was an additional level of cruelty he hadn't expected Gauna to possess, a humanly capacity to inflict emotional pain:
He could eject the head right now, or the passenger compartment instead, which was reaching its maximum heat exchange tolerance. Izana and their squad commander would be roasted inside before he could deal with Benisuzume's core. If he did so, then the high temperature invasive Ena inside the Guardian would undergo foaming disintegration following the core's destruction, causing superheated, displaced structure to compress and implode. He could be caught in the compression or just killed by the disintegration itself.
He knew which choice the devil was forcing him to make. Was this an aspect of it having some morsels of her human identity? He selected the button for separating cargo attachment, dropping his passengers at a manageable height - Tsumugi or the main force would come back for them later.
"You can't make me run!"
"No..."
Then he thrusted the Type 17's left arm pile bunker forward, punching artificial Kabi into the core.
Warning: Extreme high energy reaction detected
A flash of black with red trim, shorter than a second.
Unlike any of his estimated outcomes, the Shizuka-shaped Ena appendage remained, while the visceral growth peeled off her. She began to float into the air, to his confusion. He pushed her aside with subconscious gentleness, looking away from her fully human naked torso. The screens indicated they were in uncharted space, far from the battlefield a blink ago.
Warning: Gravity not found
Warning: Zero atmosphere environment
The emergency passenger compartment landed on its side. Minutes following landing felt like an eternity to Izana, who only heard the planet's storms and debris, no signs of the duel at all. They opened the hatch and looked up; the skeleton has disappeared with the Guardian's torso, while three ripped off limbs landed around the site.
A familiar blue ring of ignited Guardian thrusters lit up above, descending on the floating continent.
"Tanikaze?" Sidonia defense corps commander Samari called.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
"How can these two vanish?" Takumi, a fellow Benisuzume encounter survivor, asked, "Did we just see the end of them?"
Tsumugi finally arrived, staring at the emptiness like a statue. Izana hurried to ground zero and waved, calming her down.
////
Visions from the cockpit flashed in front of Nagate as he made his way towards the wrecked Guardian on Ishimura. He saw other versions of Shizuka there, some smiling in her old Sidonian uniform, some wearing the white mask and swiping at him with red ceramic claws.
ALL ONLY EXIST WITHIN THE HOLY BOUNDARY OF DEATH
MAKE US WHOLE
A Puker was dangerously close as an image of Shizuka, in a black suit sitting on the floor, faded from the corner of his eye. He activated stasis on his spear as it launched its acid projectile, then rolled to a side. The Necromorph continued on its path by inertia, colliding with the acid. As its upper body recoiled and fizzled, Nagate cut off all three of its legs in a clean sweep.
Half a hangar behind him, Benisuzume fought the tag team of Mercer and cyborg Brant.
Shizuka was running low on fuel; propulsion, armor, ammo, they all consumed the same Hyggs reserve. Since her awakening, she had been luckily able to siphon a moderate stream of energy off the Marker, until it - or its two underlings capable of higher brain function - caught on. Now, any attempt to absorb from it would meet a passive defense mechanism of emotionally contaminated data. To her demi-human brain they meant subliminal messages, while her Gauna firmware had to waste precious bandwidth to filter the primordial information. Even moving around in close proximity felt like flying downwind of tiny shrapnel.
Previously, the last ditch option for more Hyggs energy would be to restructure her physical form down to the core and simply weaponize every last particle outside. Now, the firmware and operating system seem to be hardwired against doing so, claiming it was non-negotiable for her to be completely humanoid.
Ishimura Computer: Entering Zero Gravity
Propulsion became much easier, although the hangar entering zero gravity mode also meant the clock began ticking for the Marker to board its shuttle ride to Earth.
Worse, people were shooting at each other and missing near the cargo control panels; whether it was unlucky souls disoriented by hallucinations or security fighting Mercer's followers, the fact alarmed her residual humanity. She broke up the fight with a beam cannon blast melting the industrial strength computer panel above the flight lounge, scattering the humans struggling for its control. Let them run, she thought, they'll figure out how to fix it after we deal with the...
The Marker has risen with the cargo lift platform, emerging within her view! A mind piercing shape made of molten glass or obsidian, red energy pulsating within, forming an alien script she couldn't understand yet couldn't dismiss. The world of fear and panic was it's domain. The icon of death and unity demands to drag its way across the disordered world, where she thought she had power within.
Shizuka blinked behind her Ena mask, focusing energy into her Hyggs particle cannon for a tentative shot to see how its energy emission would react. Then, Brant's thin orange beam seeped across her and began to intensify, forcing her to drop altitude and dodge. She cut off propulsion just in time, lying back, floating in zero gravity, letting the fully powered beam pass above her. This blast was much stronger than before thanks to the Marker in much closer proximity.
"No!" She heard Nicole gasp on the radio. Then, she felt herself caught by a stasis field. Mercer has came out of hiding at the worst moment possible for her, and took a lucky potshot.
Stasis tore at her Ena armor and invaded her skin, sending the feel of scorching static electricity across her body. If she dared to charge the Hyggs particle cannon or thruster ring before it was over, energy interference could tear off more than her helmet. Even her vision was distorted within the field, photons slowed down their movement just like anything else.
////
Warning: Critical system(s) not found, continue startup?
A torrent of error screens greeted Nagate in the Type 17's cockpit. The century-old machine was missing most of its vital parts, suffering multiple cases of kinetic, electric and thermal damage on top. Still, its battery was still usable and connected, while one remaining arm could be used to shift the torso around, slowly crawling towards victory. The head-mounted Hyggs cannon was functional too, Toha Heavy Industries be praised.
The cockpit felt like the safest place in the universe, this one or the one he came from. He was born for piloting, and spent most of his childhood training for the Type 17; now he finally had his extended body back.
ONE STEP CLOSER AND YOU WILL BE WHOLE.
A message flashed on his communication screen, he wiped off some dregs of wilted Ena to catch a last glimpse of it. It sounded... Alright.
He inched out to the cargo transporting interchange near the air stasis field, getting an eye full of the Marker. All he openings on the hangar's wall, made by Brant's particle cannon, were filled by Necromorph growth, some with entire bioluminescent, pulsating tentacles extending from them. The thing that plagued hydroponics must have made its way over here, its arrival prepared by the cyborg!
Nagate disengaged the safety on the head-mounted cannon and aimed at the Marker. Bright cyan targeting light kicked to life, air crackling with energy leaking from damaged power lines. The biomass took notice.
A mass of colossal tentacles covered the Marker's transport frame, then an additional one pulled in front, holding a humanoid object: Benisuzume frozen in stasis. Her iconic red armor was fractured and dilapidated, large pieces missing revealing the unprotected uniform beneath. Helpless like the two times she drifted away into unforgiving space, right?
"Same devil, different choice." He told himself and pulled the trigger.
BANG!
A deafening explosion shook the Type 17 to its frame. It was resonance explosion triggered by the cyborg he failed to notice, who stood in plain sight, operating the cargo rail system with his remaining human hand.
Warning: Hyggs power line damage critical
"Shit, shit!"
From the outside, it looked like the dismembered metal giant was bowing down to the vortex of reanimated organic matter.
"This isn't the end..." He told himself and anyone who could be listening, and let the Guardian reach out its hand. The hand slammed down, cutting into the tentacles. He felt solid construction underneath - it was the transport frame outside the Marker.
Warning: Weapon startup failed
The Type 17's arm pulled the frame close to its torso.
"I'm sorry, Nagate. If all fails, make sure no one can take the Marker to Earth." Kyne told him before he and Shizuka set off hours ago.
"I'll see it as an option." The truth was he suspected it would be the only path. The belief kept growing stronger when the security team's efforts kept falling short. He proceeded to set the Hyggs reactor to detonate...
CRASH!
The hand that held the Marker was severed by another particle blast from the cyborg, an insult to the degraded Type 17. Tentacles rushed by its cockpit to pull open the metal fingers, freeing its frame and pulling it towards the Kellion. A pulse of darkness then flashed across the cockpit's screens, locking Nagate out from detonation.
YOU WILL DIE SOON.
For the first time since he arrived in the new universe, he felt alone and abandoned. Everything fell out of reach in his mind. There were nobody waiting for him to return to, no mission he could fight to complete, even the red-colored devil played no part in the current miserable situation he was stranded in. He was solitary, swept by a wave of wholeness he barely understood.
KNEEL. PRAY. YOU WILL BE MADE WHOLE AND SATISFIED. CONVERGENCE IS NEAR.
At the center of his vision, stasis energy and red porcelain Ena receded from the object that resembled Shizuka; first her broken katar blades and armor, then her white expressionless mask, all dissolving into glowing particles. She was alive, and he knew her power was spite. She had a mind of her own, one that sharply contrasted with the Marker's oppressive, invasive presence. She had always been his beacon of hope, even when she was the devil.
SUMUS HIC IN MORTE -
The burning chants and scripts began to dissipate.
He tracked her movement on the Type 17's remaining auxiliary cameras. Benisuzume darted towards Mercer, who shot at her with his nailgun as his stasis was freshly depleted. The cyborg fired scattered weak blasts behind her, fearing for hitting his master in collateral damage.
Nagate opened the cockpit hatch and grabbed his spear, remembering he still haven't tried if artificial Kabi would scratch the Marker's unspeakable substance.
"Weak." His landing was greeted by Leapers and Brant's stuttered voice, "Die. Stop."
He replied with activating stasis on the hulking artificial Necromorph, buying time for the devil he knew... For Shizuka. She reached Mercer in a flying leap, and her first move after making contact was tearing into his arm wearing the stasis module. Red claw blades materialized on her fingers, sharper than the artificial Kabi blade, carving into the doctor's fully mortal organic flesh.
She tore through his ribcage in a blink, ripping him open like a disposable cornstarch grocery bag, forming a cold explosion of blood where she stood. Her fingers shredded the doctor's stasis recharge pack, absorbing all of it.
The blood on her previously white CEC uniform was suddenly scorched and evaporated by a stream of orange energy: Brant has escaped his stasis too, his fury instantly unleashing at the killer of his master.
SNIKT!
Nagate flipped his spear's blade upwards, and made a rising swipe cut into the cyborg's Ena-formed particle cannon, silencing it. He activated stasis again after pulling back, then shouted into his helmet:
"Hoshijiro! Take my Guardian's energy reserve. Assimilate the head, kill the Marker!"
Her answer was a supersonic boom towards the Type 17. Jousting with Brant's armored bone blades, he heard the familiar metallic sound of Hyggs reaction behind them. A tsunami of red particles flew overhead; as he was blinded by the scorching light, he felt resistance from the Necromorph giant suddenly dematerialize.