Cosmosis

She scowled.

Our gunners were the ones laying down the most ranged pressure, but growth Adepts like this were tough. It wasn’t just size and mass they were adding to themselves. Strictly speaking, that was a byproduct of elective augmentations. Bodies liked being a certain density, Adept powers could only fudge that figure so far.

The point was for an Adept to make themselves stronger and more durable, which these suckers were.

Mavriste and I charged for the closest one. Where he went low, I went high. The pirate chose wrong and tracked me.

All I had for an opening gambit was jetting into the air and trying to kick their head. Easily blocked considering the Adept was ten feet long nose to tail, but I flared my jets to bounce myself back to safety.

Mavriste, on the other hand, blew out one of the rak’s kneecap. I didn’t even get a good look at the blow. Mavriste just darted low and made a quick chop before diving between the pirate’s legs and dashing toward his next target.

Blood oozed out to fill the wound, and the rak crumpled to the floor, but I’d seen what I’d seen, even if only for a split second. Where Mavriste’s plasma-clad claw had touched, flesh simply seemed to have been carved away. Like ice cream.

Mavriste announced, engaging the melee-rak.

I ordered, leaving the knee capped giant for them.

Meanwhile I squared up with the third giant Vorak—the one that had been protecting their fellow giants from our gunfire. In addition to standing nine feet tall, they were bound up tightly in armor.

I prompted.

she answered.

I followed.

Textbook.

My opening flashbang wasn’t as effective as I’d like in the open sea air, but it was still enough to make the giant rak flinch. I jetted close, materializing my pistol under their jaw in an attempt to find the quick win.

“Look o—!” Vo shouted, but I was already throwing myself to the floor, avoiding the retaliating claw that stabbed toward me. To throw their arm straight down like that, they’d twisted their head and shoulders out of the way of my gun before I could pull the trigger.

Augmented musculature was right. They were fast. Far faster than their size belied. The motions were twitchy too.

I could move fast too though, and even lying flat on the ground, I twisted myself out of the way as the otter dragged their claw through the container steel.

Dancing out of range, I reassessed our options.

Mavriste was making steady progress against his foe who’d wisely resorted to defense seeing how easily harm had come to their friend. That same friend had patched their knee wound, but not so much that Jordan and the Casti couldn’t keep out of arm’s reach.

Both giant Vorak would lose, but not quickly enough that I could call for support from their opponents.

I said, sizing up my backup.

they said. There was a note of sadness they couldn’t quite hide.

I asked.

Vo reported. Attack, defense, and ‘extra’.

I said.

They were a consummate professional and barely blinked when I claimed to max out the ‘extra’ category.

An opponent like this was a bad matchup for me. My forte was in setting a pace faster than my opponent could keep up, switching between trick after trick, forcing mistakes, and creating openings.

After just one exchange with me, this rak had picked up on my style and adjusted for it.

It was subtle differences, but they were closing the gaps in their armor—likely limiting their range of motion a few degrees. Plates thickened and it gave the impression that the otter had grown another couple inches.

I would be doing minimal damage to them, if anything at all, even with my best attacks. They, on the other hand, could deal me a lethal blow if they caught me just once.

‘Sucker’s bet’. The words had to be entirely in my imagination, but Nai was probably watching this fight while she defended the boat and the Vorak who’d brought us here.

I smiled. Time to do my friend and teacher proud.

Smoke was my preferred opening move, but the Vorak moved before I could, sweeping an arm and creating a wave of grounds spikes lancing toward us.

The spikes were alarmingly big, the length of telephone poles with reach to match. Their mass limit was huge! They were already doubling or tripling their body mass, plus a few hundred kilograms in spikes placed them firmly in the L2 ranges—specifically M2, in the Vorak nomenclature.

Not just big, they were fast…but not so fast I couldn’t dodge. It was close, and if I didn’t see it coming when I got closer, they’d skewer me.

I couldn’t let that deter me though. Circling our foe ensured that they couldn’t easily keep both Vo and I in sight, and the Vorak made the predictable mistake of choosing to follow me.

Jetting forward saw them create a new burst of ground spikes, angled low to jut forward from the containers rather than straight up.

A burst from my maneuvering jets took me lateral of the spikes, but I spilled over and tumbled across the steel. The containers we were standing on were getting shredded by the spikes. Most ground spikes were ‘rooted’ in the ground some way, they didn’t just sit gently on top.

The change in surface threw me off balance.

But I could compensate for it.

I rolled out of the way of the next spikes, and launched for the rak’s head. I contorted my body to avoid the slash from their claws, and I got a palm on their helmet.

The face was one of the few places that remained seemingly unarmored, but as I made contact, there was only a transparent solid plate. Barely visible, even up close. At a distance it had been entirely invisible.

Vo had materialized a stave weapon with a mean looking green glowing tip, and the moment they realized my contact had failed, they launched an attack.

The green glowing point on the end flashed, stretching into a hot jagged bolt that scored across the pirate’s armor.

Vo was covering me, giving me a chance to build distance. I appreciated their wherewithal, but I didn’t need it, and they were tipping our hand.

A burst of smoke around the Vorak’s head completely blinded them. I kicked off their own shoulder before they could try grabbing me again, but they were going to launch ground spikes wherever their cascade sensed me land.

I made my first gamble and launched a psionic javelin at their mind at the same moment my feet touched down. Then I dove aside.

Sure enough, the same ground spikes came ripping out of the smoke cloud right for me.

But the timing was wrong. Not just too slow to catch me landing, but too slow to try catching the direction I dodged too.

I breathed.

Vo said.

I nodded.

Their stave was one interesting piece of Adeptry. This close to it, I could see it was embedded with some not-insignificant psionics, and the jagged beam-lighting that had flashed out of it was too geometric to be natural.

Maybe the staff was fitted with psionic control surfaces, to decide how the beam would fire and zig-zag.

It was easy to let my mind wander. The more I saw of the pirate Vorak, the less impressed I was. They stumbled out of the smoke cloud rather than creating a neutralizing agent—smoke was an extremely useful trick, but not rare. And learning to counter it wasn’t particularly difficult.

Taking the free moment to glance at Jordan’s progress further reassured me. Jordan was waylaying her giant otter with glue. The pirate was more than big and strong enough to just tear themselves free, but not actually from the glue. They were tearing the steel up from the containers, and it was only making them more clumsy and even less mobile than before.

Nemuleki and our Casti gunners were just going to keep pumping lead into the pirate until they couldn’t patch the wounds anymore. That would be soon.

As our giant Vorak made it clear of the smoke, I dropped another cloud of it between us.

The pirates weren’t hopeless, because our enemy didn’t charge through blindly, instead redoubling their cascade coverage and using more ground spikes to try hemming us in.

It was a correct move in concept, but we weren’t running.

Radar said they were moving around the smoke cloud, trying to catch Vo while they pivoted to keep distance—they’d correctly identified who’s offense was more of a threat.

But if the pirate didn’t want to charge through the smoke, then I would.

I was punching above my weight class here, but if a nineteen-year-old human male propelled by a mini jetpack crashed into you? Hell, even an elephant would at least stumble.

My tackled caught the gargantuan pirate in the shoulder, and it was their turn to take a tumble across the containers. I took the chance to materialize my gun and probe the armor with some specialized bullets.

None of them made it through—even the ones that hit the joints—but they did leave some nasty marks.

I think I had a move.

The pirate’s ground spikes were getting sharper as the fight went on. They were lancing out faster and more accurately as the pirate adjusted to my speed and tactics.

Unfortunately for them, I still wasn’t pressing my psionic advantage.

They unleashed a wave of spikes in all directions, trying to keep us at bay, but I was ready to disrupt their timing. This time, I aimed the psionic javelin to not just rattle their constructs, but to punch clean through their firewall and slag the Spellbook behind it.

Suddenly bereft of psionic assistance, the wave of spikes fizzled. They still formed into the right shape with speed, but the material was ruined. Instead of dense heavy plaster, stone, or metal, half of them crumbled like clay just from their own weight.

I blew them apart with a kinetic bomb and jetted to their head again. I’d gotten a sense of their armor’s shape and material the first time I touched it, and now I was ready to positively ruin their day.

In terms of cascade, theirs was superior. Both in size and presence, they could completely crowd mine out. But if I narrowed mine, condensed the effect to a tiny area, I could push mine through theirs for a second or two.

And that was enough.

Forcing my cascade through the one they kept suffusing their armor, I materialized a thin film of goo on the inside of their visor.

In an instant, the custom fluid I created did its job; it boiled.

It wasn’t even hot. The fluid just depressurized into smoke. But this was special smoke. It was completely black across the entire visible spectrum. Equally important was the fact that it blocked psionic signals just as effectively as electromagnetic ones.

To completely the illusion, I materialized a little pile of sand for me to stand on and fool their cascade. Tactile cascades couldn’t push through particulate matter. They lost too much fidelity trying to spread from grain to grain.

Vo followed my example.

In an instant, the Vorak had been completely cut off.

I said.

The reaction was reflexive. The pirate panicked for a split second. It was the flaw of relying too much on your cascade and armor. If those turned against you, you really only had one recourse.

Their visor dematerialized.

It was a smart move. They even covered the vulnerability by ducking their head under their still heavily armored arm.

But both Vo and I were ready to punish the opening.

They heard my jets before the smoke cleared from their face, half turning toward me to brace for my blow, but I wasn’t coming in from the side.

I went for altitude, blasting myself twenty or thirty feet into the air before coming down heavy on their shoulder.

Their guard was torn open and they were forced to a knee. But in that split second, Vo got a clean angle on the rak’s face.

Another green bolt flashed in a zig-zag under the pirate’s arm and then up below their chin.

Their limbs went limp like a puppet with cut strings.

“Jeez,” I muttered. That beam was brutal.

Vo and I checked on Jordan’s progress. We won only a few seconds before they did. Lorel, Wurshken, and Corphica were all following Nemuleki’s example and keeping their weapons trained on the now slumped over Vorak. Their body was slowly shrinking back to normal size, but they seemed to be still breathing.

Passed out from blood loss? Patching covered the wound itself but couldn’t usually replace lost blood.

Turning to look at Mavriste’s progress…

He was sitting atop his opponent, watching us. I wasn’t surprised to see the pirate was still breathing. They were wrapped up like baby in flickering black chains that resembled the cloak of plasma Mavriste wore.

I narrowed my eyes on it. Vo’s beam stave seemed to use similar plasma. It seemed the Missionary Marines had a signature trick.

“How long have you been done?” I asked.

“This? Took ten seconds,” Mavriste shrugged. “What about you? Think you’ll be finished any time soon?”

“What do—”

I glanced down at our fallen opponent only to see that their eyes were still open and cogent.

The ripple of a cascade underfoot was the only warning we got for the ground spikes to erupt again.

Even as I dove aside, I felt them scrape against my invisible armor.

Too close.

“” I shouted. I rose to my feet with a gun in hand, ready to fire…

But the pirate was still lying on the ground. They’d made spikes, but hadn’t moved their body an inch. What? They’d had a laser bore a hole through their neck. But somehow they were still…alive…

“[Oh jeez,]” I said, short on words.

They were paralyzed from the neck down.

The beam must have punched clean through the flesh only to be stopped by the armor still wrapped around the back of their head and neck.

I gave Vo an awkward glance and confirmed they were as shocked by the development as I was. What was correct here? Render first aid? They’d already tried to skewer us again, but if we did nothing, there was a serious chance they would drown in their own blood from the neck wound seeping into their throat.

As my radar petered out, I sensed Nai and Mashoj drawing closer in the boat. Macoru must have handled the submarine.

“So, uh…” I floundered.

“Huh,” Mavriste grunted. “I suppose I did say to back him up.”

“I was aiming to kill,” Vo said honestly.

“Because?”

“The Lightbringer was assuming the risk. They might have been hurt if I tried to be merciful.”

“You didn’t try to be merciful, and he still almost got skewered,” Mavriste pointed out.

“…”

Vo lacked the words too.

“But, decision-wise, between the pirate’s life and the Human’s, you picked the Human?”

“Yes.” In that, at least, Vo didn’t hesitate to answer.

Felt good to hear.

“Well, let that be one dark lesson for us all then,” Mavriste said. “And that is?”

Vo wasn’t sure.

Mavriste glanced toward me.

“Do you know, Human?”

“…Sometimes you fail,” I said. “Whether you’re acting intentionally or not.”

“More or less,” Mavriste nodded. “I can’t say I like it, but then I don’t get to decide how these pirates try to fight, do I?”

“What do we do with them?” I asked.

“Leave them for now,” Mavriste said. “All three are too injured to be a threat, and they’ll attack more if we render aid. That’s their choice. Besides, there’s still more boat to secure, isn’t there?”

Technically true, but it wouldn’t be much of a fight even if we got there in time. Mavriste had come aboard with three more Adepts and they were sweeping through the rest of the pirates below deck before my radar fizzled.

I was glad we had their backup. We were prepared to clear the ship ourselves, but it would have been very messy.

·····

Mavriste saw what I’d done with my kinetic bomb earlier. He eyed the bowed out windows, buckled piping, and the crumpled Vorak. My kinetic bomb had been at full blast, and in the enclosed space? The shockwave had been lethal.

I didn’t want to know if it had been instant or not. If not, the two pirates would have died from small blood vessels rupturing in their lungs. Or possibly bleeding in their brain.

Either way, I had enough nightmares already.

“You really don’t mess around,” Mavriste said, inspecting the carnage.

“Not when people are shooting at me, no,” I agreed.

“I bet you could take a bullet,” he said, bouncing a speck off my still-invisible helmet.

“Is that a note of judgement I hear?” I asked.

“No, no,” he said. “Sorry if it seemed that way. Given your numbers, I think your approach was correct. I just have a bad habit of poking at decisions after action. If it makes you feel any better, I do it to myself too.”

“You didn’t strike me as the self-flagellating type,” I said.

He gave a nod with his head and beckoned me to follow him toward the bridge. Fine by me. I’d rather pore over records and manifests than look at my own grizzly handiwork anymore.

“It’s something to keep in balance,” he said. “But one of the things I don’t think combat ethics brings up enough is what kinds of situations one places themselves into.”

“You mean like how I picked this ship to chase and attack?” I asked.

“No. Well, somewhat. Not this scenario specifically. Just comes to mind when I ask myself ‘what brought me to this point with bodies at my feet?’.”

“Well I don’t know what brought you here, but funnily enough a corpse brought me here.”

That got his attention.

“Oh? Doing some work on behest of the Pudiligsto authorities?”

“No actually,” I said. “Or, yes, but this is because I helped them. Not the other way around."

“Maybe you should just explain the whole story,” the Vorak said. “Because you caught our attention with the psionic communication you were doing with the coast guard before you left the state’s waters.”

We made our way to the top of the bridge tower, and I explained about Korbanok and the silly complex network of discoveries that had led us to track one of the last unrecovered corpses to this corner of Kraknor to this particular boat.

“Huh. Didn’t know the corpses were such a priority for your Flotilla,” Mavriste mused while he began absorbing the bridge’s records. Psionics were so cheating.

“They’re not,” I said. “They’re a priority for me, specifically. But I wouldn’t have come here looking for the corpse if there wasn’t a living abductee to help along the way.”

“Oh yes, how did things go with [Miss] Ingrid?”

“They didn’t,” I said. “She’s basically shut out contact, and I don’t like the possible explanations why she might.”

“Coercion?”

“Of some kind,” I nodded. “Or she’s being manipulated. Or…there’s a lot of possibilities, almost all of them disastrous.”

“Well Macoru is already talking to your Agent Mashoj about how the Missionary Marines can help the city with the storm.”

“Early weather models say it’s going to hit Pudiligsto again,” I said.

“We helped survey some of those models,” Mavriste nodded. “First time it came in directly west to east. It’s sweeping north for now in a circle, but it’s going to turn south as it blows east into the coast again.”

“You sure about that?” I asked. “The first models seemed pretty sure it was going to land three hundred miles south.”

Mavriste grimaced.

“Nothing’s perfect…but yes, the models were badly off. It might be worst misprediction in the last fifty years. Couldn’t have come during a worse storm too.”

“Well if you’re going to be in town, I’d appreciate it if you or Macoru tried to contact Ingrid, just to see if she’ll take your call instead of mine.”

“Easily,” he nodded.

“Thanks,” I said. “Besides, you owe me for waiting so long to jump in. What, were you going to wait until one of us was shot?”

“We would have intervened before that point,” he said, “but I’ll admit we were a bit more hesitant than usual with the Pudiligsto authorities involved. We’re not on the best of terms with the city.”

Hmm. I expected him to bring up my attempt on Itun. Both conflicts had ended without any of us getting hurt, so they more or less evened out. But I was surprised when he didn’t.

“You did make quite the case for the place,” I recalled.

The otter didn’t say anything for a moment, and I glanced his way.

“You awake?”

“Yes,” he said. “Here.”

He tossed me a psionic copy of the information he’d just read off the ship’s—I swear—eight bit computer.

It was the manifest, one entry had been highlighted.

‘Alien sarcophagus’, hold 227- Kue.

I immediately called.