Chapter 77 - Inferno

Notes : Chapters 78 and 79 have been written and added to the queue, completing book 2 !

I'm probably going to take a bit of a break now. If nothing else, I need to handle some paperwork.

This book was super fun to write ! Though I was worried it was going to peter out at the end, I feel like it actually ended strong, and perhaps not like most people expected.

This chapter, we also see something that's been talked to at length, and yet remained just a subject of conversation. Hopefully it lives up to expectations.

I hope you'll enjoy this chapter, and the rest of the end of the novel !

Chapter 77

Icerend Borderlands

Great Pine Forest

Of course, that was easier said than done. A plasma gun was an amazing firestarter, but she wasn't just going to set the area ablaze randomly. If she had the luxury of choosing her battleground, she was going to abuse the hell out of that advantage.

There were a few things she was looking for. A wide enough area that the snowpiercer would stay far away from the treeline. She had faith in the snowpiercer's ability to shrug it off, but why risk it? Also, it would enable the squishies to disembark if necessary.

Next, maneuvering room. Both for the snowpiercer, in case they needed to leg it, and herself, since she was going to try to keep the range open with the enemy.

Those two criterias more or less went hand in hand. Her third one however, was to find a place with sureish footing. The monster probably wouldn't be inconvenienced by loose rocks, especially as their physiognomy broke physics as she knew them. But she'd rather not fall like an idiot and get shredded to ribbons because of a few loose rocks underfoot.

Thankfully, the dry riverbed was able to provide all of that by noon.

It was a grim group that ate in snowpiercer's confines.

"Are you sure you don't need our help?" Asked Ramina, for the upenteenth time.

"You'd only slow me down." The AI looked at Paul and the gendarmes. "No offense."

"None taken." Said the female of the three. "I've seen you move, when you were bringing back the Huntmarshal's people. We can't keep up with that." She patted her carbine. "We'll be there if you need us though."

Sapphiria nodded in thanks. It was mostly just hoping, but the monster probably wouldn't engage them even if they were nearby. Why attack an enemy that was obviously staying out of a tough fight?

In case it did try it, well...She'd have Ramina in the cockpit, ready to get the vehicle out of there while the slapguns hopefully drove it back. They could circle back and pick her up once the dust had settled.

"I appreciate it." Said the AI. "Now, if we're all done." She set aside her bowl of nutrigel. "I believe it's time I bag us a monster."

*****

Whatever it was that was pursuing them, it clearly could detect her sensor sweeps, since it was trying to stay out of range of them. It wasn't stealthed however, at least not to the level of the wolves, which was a definite plus.

Sapphiria walked into the middle of the stony arena, and waited. Ten, then fifteen minutes. Waiting to make sure the creature was there, just at the edge of range, sniffing about, wondering what this new hold up was.

Then she raised her plasma gun, and fired.

She'd carefully calculated an ignition pattern. Forcing the monster to come to her or break off its pursuit altogether with the wildfire giving it nowhere to go but deeper into the woods as fast as possible or onto the riverbed.

The tree her bolt hit burst into flames, snow flashing into vapor around it from the backwash. On low power, her gun was positively anemic compared to its other modes, but it was still plasma, the fourth state of matter. She began tracking her gun across the treeline, lighting up tree after tree, building up the start of-

She whirled around as her sensors screamed a warning and something just leapt out of the woods.

She threw herself out of the way before it fully registered, and watched as a gigantic, six limbed panther just crashed where she'd been a second before, flexing its strangely muscled limbs as it absorbed the impact.

Strange tentacles twisted above the abomination, writhing like they were in agony.

Sapphiria didn't waste time admiring the oddly magnificent, if horrific, creature, and immediately raised her plasma gun and pulled the trigger.

For some reason, the monster had seemed surprised by her mobility, and not only did it hesitate, it didn't even attempt to dodge the attack like most of the monsters had. Like, truth be told, anything alive should. Try as you might, the instinct to avoid fire was so deeply ingrained it worked even in borged up revenants, and plasma had anyone's brain screaming 'DANGER FLAME, RUNRUNRUN' on full blast.

It tanked the medium powered blast full on, and Sapphiria just had a split second to realize its maw was opening while it stood half a dozen meters away, and dove to the side as the tentacles crackled with exotic energy.

A blast of force leapt out of the thing's throat and hit the stones like a damned cannon shell, throwing a puff of snow along with them, the air rippling with the effect of something that wasn't entirely physical.

Gravity cannon. Thought the AI, immediately as she saw the sensor readings. Her mom had a file on it, back when artificial gravitiy seemed like a genuine possibility and not a pipe dream. Powerful, extraordinarily dangerous against armor. But highly limited in range and very energy intensive.

That might explain why that thing didn't have the cloaking or shields of the others. All of its metaphorical power budget was going to this.

Then she finally took a look at the panther, whose left side she could finally have a look at, and the AI froze.

When she'd thought the thing's tentacles writhed as if in agony, she'd more or less written it off.

But now she saw the horrific wounds on its side. Some were old scars, others...not so much.

And they weren't cuts or puncture wounds.

They were flash burns. Energy weapons. Very tightly contained, the result of a surface incineration of the material. Lasers. Military pulse types, not continuous beams. Heavy rifles maybe? Too large for normal infantry small arms. Too small for a vehicle mounted main weapon. Maybe an IFV's Cycler Gun or a mech's secondary weapon.

Why...how the fuck did it have this? Could monsters do that? Its attack had been more or less a giant blast of energy, but these were precise weapon attacks. Distinct, coherent pulses.

Plus...

It reacted instantly to her setting the forest on fire.

Cravh's landing was found a burnt out wreck, she thought. And monsters don't set fires. But energy weapons would have as collateral.

It could have been the expedition's own members, but...despite everything she'd been told, Cravh had been a seasoned veteran, and his people were the same. If they were likely to set their own damn base ablaze in a panic they'd have done it long before going to Icerend.

She was still mulling that over when the panther gathered itself for another leap.

Sapphiria took one look at it, the way its tentacles were already crackling again....

It's going to blast me in mid air while I dodge, she realized.

So she did the one thing it didn't expect.

And went forward, into the leap.

The panther howled as its gravity? Force? Blast missed her entirely, exploding the ground a meter behind her, pelting her back with rock shrapnel, and it leapt over her, twisting in the air to try to land facing her.

But two could play at the midair game, and her plasma blast caught it right on the wounds as it came down.

It screamed deafeningly in agony, and Sapphiria smiled.

It moved fast, but its previous wounds were slowing it down, and presented an opening in its defenses. Her attack previous attack it had tanked on its furr. Not without damage, but still.

On the wounds though? She could see steaming flesh now, not pumping blood out only because of the cauterization caused by the plasma.

She could-

"SAPPHIRIA!"

She flinched, looking at the snowpiercer. Thankfully, the panther did likewise, or it would have been on her instantly.

Instead they both watched as Paul hanged out of the snowpiercer, frantically gesticulating at the sky.

She looked up.

And saw madness.

Twisting clouds that made no sense. Lightning that went up into the void of space and not down towards the ground. Multicolored hues, twisting and mixing like an insane rainbow. She saw blizzards meet sandstorms, clashing before combining together, hails of molten rock falling like a volcano from a holovid, acid hurtling in waves as if a monsoon rain, and then she felt it.

A tiny sensation, at the back of her mind, whispering that something terribly, terribly wrong was advancing towards her. A song distorted and garbled, a half scream and half dying melody. Reality, being violently murdered and reborn in the same instant, the universe ripping itself apart and being put back together again before her very eyes.

A manastorm.

Oh hell.

The monster was, unsurprisingly, a lot less transfixed by the sight than she was, and Sapphiria almost realized too late.

She dove out of the way and screamed as claws raked her arm, ripping through armor plating and the synthetic skin beneath.

Injured or not however, her arm was still functional, though the armor itself was nonresponsive from the elbow down. She pulled up her plasma gun, dialed it up to maximum, and opened up.

It wasn't subtle. It wasn't targeted at its weak side.

But it was a blast meant to destroy tanks.

Unfortunately, that thing was a lot tougher than a battle tank.

It emerged from the flash of energy and cloud of vapor from the vaporized snow, its head flayed of fur and skin, a nightmare of charred flesh and bones.

With red, glowing eyes peeking out of the ravaged meat that had once been its face. Imbued with unbearable pain and bottomless hatred.

It opened its maw, as Sapphiria finished her dive, unable to change her course.

And fired.

The blast of force hit her square on.

She went flying, her chest plate screaming in protest as it was reduced to a mangled mess, subjected to a madening gravity vortex. Miraculously enough, its inner plating held, preventing her torso from suffering the same fate.

WARNING WARNING WARNING - POWER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM COMPROMISED

The armor's enhanced movement systems shut down as it tried to reroute power and keep the weapon recharge online, the frontal power distribution hub now a mass of mangled wires and molecular plating. There were redundancies of course but the primary system wasn't made to have a hub obliterated like that and keep working without blinking.

She threw the plasma gun down, and pulled up the gauss rifle. She'd opened it up enough, and confirmed it had no shields. Hopefully the armor piercing projectiles would suffice

Fortunately, she did have one more ace up her sleeve.

The panther coiled for leap at her...and whirled around as the pair of junkbots she'd kept on the snowpiercer opened up.

Two carbines wasn't much. But it was enough to distract it for a critical few seconds.

Three hypersonic tungsten flechettes hit the panther's wounded side square on, and to her amazement, they didn't come out, the hide on the other side tough enough that they failed to penetrate it.

Instead, they bounced, straight back into its entrails.

The first burst shredded what looked to be its digestive system.

The second ripped its vital organs to shreds, causing it to drop as blood stopped flowing into its limbs, still limply trying to move its head into position for another blast.

She didn't get a third, as a wave of sound like the end of the world washed over her, and she saw the snowpiercer rumbling towards her, the junkbots already hopping back into the drone deployment racks, Paul hanging precariously out the door.

Behind them she saw a wall of energy, advancing towards her in the far distance, the landscape just vanishing behind a tempest of exotic radiation.

She grabbed her plasma gun, clamping it on her back alongside the gauss rifle as she sprinted, her armor desperately channeling what it could to the legs, stopping just a fraction of a second to slice a tendril off of the monster with her integrated monoknife, the light fading from the creature's eyes as it finally expired from the destruction of its vital organs, and leapt into the vehicle, knocking Paul back inside.

The outer door of the airlock slammed close.

A split second later the snowpiercer rang like a cathedral bell hit by a cannonball.

And the universe went mad.