Still needing to sell her ‘broken spirit’, Alysa mentally prepared her responses to Dezain with care. She would first plead for her loved ones and attempt to trade the information he needed for his worthless promises to spare their li—
Alysa’s thoughts were interrupted by the high-pitched whirring of a weapon she had only heard being fired once before. She wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t remember the snub-nosed gatling-gun mounted on the shoulder of a very large Tiger Affin.
A Tiger Affin that should be far away from here right now! Her pain-sharpened mind added.
The weapon’s intense cycling was instantly followed by the nearing sound of explosions. Alysa’s battle mind correctly informed her the explosions were most likely a nearby row of attack craft she had seen stored along the adjoining wall as they went up in flames after being hit by Ishan’s plasma rounds—
“Alysa! We’re here! Hold on!” Once again, her thoughts were interrupted by—Josh’s voice... in her head!?
Sophie cheered from their space. “I told you Daddy was coming!”
The small girl’s voice rang with the certainty only a four-year-old could when talking about something that, until a micro ago, seemed impossible. The glow of Sophie’s spirit was contagious and Alysa found herself smiling through her fractures at the slowly changing expression of uncertainty on Dezain’s face.
The commander turned slightly toward the explosions and tapped his communicator. “Helmsman! Status repo—”
The room’s thick steel door was blown off its hinges, hurtling directly at him!
*****
The steel door screamed through the air at Ritoru, and his mind went into overdrive as he propagated his Space-Time Attunement’s phase skill and transformed into a noncorporeal Essence-reflection of himself. He propagated the skill with no time to spare as he felt the air from the door’s passage just before the thick metal hatch passed harmlessly through his nonunified existence. It slammed into the wall and the hatch’s corner was embedded half a meter into the room’s far wall as the reverberating gong of its impact joined the clamor of battle in the hangar bay outside.
At that moment, Ritoru was grateful for the Cultivation treasure bestowed upon him by Kyon Shi. An elixir from the powdered rapid-twitch fibers of a two-hundred thousand cycle old pride of quasar-raptors had halved his necessary instigation volume and propagation speeds for his Space-Time Attunement skills. Without the treasure’s benefits, Ritoru would have ended his walk on the Path of One, smashed under the portal’s steel.
Even with the increases in his Cultivation, the attack was so sudden Ritoru had needed to release his forced confinement of the space marine. Her body dropped to the floor in a crouch and she hobbled backward in a broken-limbed defensive stance.
Aha! You weren’t quite as broken as you had led me to believe! I’ll fix that in a moment, right after I...
Ritoru cycled Essence to his Meridians and prepared to attack whoever had crashed through the portal.
With thinned eyes, the Danshaku looked at the hatchway where a man now stood. He held a long sword with a solidity that spoke of the weapon being a natural part of him. His mouth was closed in a tight line and his eyes, hard as flints, glared upon Ritoru through narrowed lids. A transparent golden-orange shield encased him from head to toe while the orange and violet Essence of Earth and Mind Attunements swirled through his Meridians in a maelstrom.
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A fierce countenance, to be sure, but Ritoru had beaten hard men before. He would do so again. Given the recent advancements to his skills and Meridian output, the contest was all but decided, regardless of the intruder’s steely composure.
Seeing that the figure wasn’t rushing in, Ritoru limbered his neck from side to side, and a tight smile flitted upon his lips. Battling a doubly-Attuned Cultivator would be refreshing after the tedium of keeping the space marine alive for her interrogation. He’d not have to worry about such restrictions with this one, however.
The gall of interrupting him was unforgivable.
Ritoru intended to exact a price in misery for the disrespect. “I don’t know who you are, but can you not tell I am occupied at the moment—”
Wordlessly, the man flashed toward him faster than should have been possible. Only the increases to Ritoru’s already lightning-fast Force Attunement allowed him to enact his phase skill once again. Instead of getting decapitated by the attacker’s up-swinging b;ade, the still-talking Ritoru saw his attacker’s sword pass harmlessly through his nonunified atoms. Repeatedly propagating his body into Essence, however, was getting costly and Ritoru could feel the burn of his Meridians at the continued strain.
Cursing, Ritoru made quick motions with his left and right hands. Concentrated force rained down, unrestrained on his attacker’s head and shoulders in a stream thick enough that the man’s earth shield turned opaque while it shielded from the attack.
Good! A decent distraction. Ritoru’s true attack, the heavy steel hatchway door, freed itself from the wall in response to his force-command even faster than it had been blasted off its hinges and pinwheeled forward to split his attacker in two from head to groin.
Ritoru then gap-stepped behind his attacker’s right flank to finish him with a surprise horizontal force-enhanced slash that should make quick work of his shield—if it was still up. Channeling enough Essence to cut through the earth shield of a quad-Attuned master, the Kaizuko commander was certain the fight was over should his attacker somehow survive the thick steel door crushing him.
At least, that was what should have happened, but—somehow, the shielded man spun, following Ritoru’s Essence-form as it traveled through his Space-Time Attunement’s gap-step skill. He threw out a vertical block almost casually that was as solid as a stone wall to meet Ritoru’s swinging sword that jarred the battle commander from head to toe with unyielding resistance. At the same time, the man took a sidestep and deflected the flying door with nothing more than his shielded left arm. The door spun off on a diagonal vector and again was embedded in the wall—this time, however, at the front of the room.
The attacker’s left foot rose in a blur and kicked Ritoru in the chest so quickly he didn’t comprehend the move until it had shattered his sternum and smashed him back into the wall. A lungful of air escaped Ritoru as several more ribs broke in the collision.
Suddenly, the Kaizuko commander realized this was not a fight he could win.
Shaking his head to gain clarity from the steadily building pain, Ritoru looked into his attacker’s eyes and saw what had been there all along—the guarantee of his own death.
The man returned Ritoru’s gaze with the same bleak expression he had come in with and raised his sword while treading evenly across the floor.
Ritoru’s instincts took over. Flight was all he was capable of in the face of what came for him. He needed support for defense and time to cycle and heal his wounds. All his fear-rattled brain could think at the moment was, I need to get out of here before he kills me!
Ritoru gap-stepped via his Essence-form once again, less than a micro before his attacker’s sword would have cleaved his head in two. He appeared at his maximum range, two hundred meters away in the hangar bay. The squeal of his attacker’s blade cutting through the metal wall his head had just been pressed against rang through the metal structure of the ship like a gong.
Ritoru snapped his head side to side to get his bearings as he started to run to the rear hangar’s guard station. It was then he realized he was screaming incoherently for his honor guard, for the duty guard, for anyone! His allies must have retreated and would be waiting for him inside the guard station.
They must be here! They weren’t at their post... If they were, I would have gotten warning before that demon burst in!
In the few steps he had taken through the hangar, Ritoru began to realize the situation out here was just as dire as what he had left behind. A Tiger and Wolf Affin were destroying all the emplaced defensive guns, attack craft, and guard stations with practiced efficiency. All the clansmen who had responded to defend the hangar had been gunned down or hacked apart without exception. Hundreds lay dead or wounded near the hangar’s entry portals that led from the internal compartments of the Brigantine. Even the Space-Time Attuned Cultivators that had come hadn’t been able to stop the onslaught. With growing shock, Ritoru saw a small pile of familiar bodies. The members of his honor guard were hacked to pieces in a collection of limbs near the door to the room he had been in. Ritoru’s legs stopped running on their own.
There’s nowhere to go! No one to get! No one to help!
Staring with wide-eyed amazement at the widespread and utter destruction, Ritoru wasn’t even aware of the sword until it was too late. A bald Cultivator with a long topknot appeared directly in front of him and pommeled him between his eyes. A sickening crack rang through his head as the weapon shattered his skull.
Body flying backward through the air, Ritoru folded like a house made of cards as he collided into a bulkhead. His last thought before unconsciousness took him was of increasing sense of fear and unbelief. This one is even faster than the last!