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radioactive-metal · 2 months ago

Text

half of a fic. Or so

hello again good people of #Auroracycle. I bequeath unto thee a fan fic. Not quite finished but it’s a start. As always, comments and criticism is welcome.

AL Personnel Debrief.

Authorized eyes only

Interviewer: [Classified]

Interviewee: Finian DeKarren DeSeel

It was meant to be a normal supply run. Not that the squad had a good history with such things. We were issued a new longbow, and a few thousand pounds of food, fuel, and meds to deliver to some ass backwards planet ruined by the Rahaam.

It went fine, actually. We got there, we dropped off the supplies, and we headed out. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, the systems fold gate was critically damaged. The fucking thing had been keeping itself together by pure chance. And our little longbow was the…. What is that thing you dirt children say? The straw that broke the…. What is it. Hairy, lumpy, long neck. Lives in a desert.

Whatever. You know what I mean.

Yeah, so it turns out that the thing that rips a hole in reality breaking apart around you is bad. Shocking I know.

Our poor ‘bow was hurled into the fold doing about a million incredibly dangerous things. Power was gone, we were spinning, and were hurtling towards…. Something.

I don’t know what it was. Imagine space time itself as a piece of paper. And we are the little drawings on it. Then some dirt for brains glue sniffing basket case punches his hand through it.

*interview is paused for 15 minutes as subject becomes unresponsive*

Did you know that spacetime…. Screams? I didn’t. But I have to live with it now: the ungodly shriek, audible from everywhere at once that is telling every single mote of dust that makes up my body to fucking run, hide, or chuck myself out the nearest airlock. It is the breaking of the most primal laws of the universe, and I saw it with my own two eyes.

Whatever happened there…. Whatever unholy things the Eshvaren hid in the depths of the fold… they are still there. And our bow… it was headed straight for it.

Everyone else was unconscious. I just so happened to be in the engineering deck when we entered the deck, so I was shielded from. God knows whatever they saw up there…

By the time I’d made it to the bridge everyone was slumped over, each with a thin line of blood leaking out of their nose. Tyler had blood weeping from his eye. I don’t know what the fuck happened up there.

And that’s when we made contact with……

With it.

Flashback:

Aurora screamed and banged on the loading door of the shuttle. Desperate to get back. To save Kal.

The chimp had come from nowhere, and Kal instinctively blocked it with his forearm.

He had been infected almost immediately. No matter what anyone tried.

I was slumped forwards in the ancient net seating along one side of the bay, my mind refusing to accept what it had seen.

Kal was gone. Our tank, the surly pixie boy who had saved our hides over and over. Gone. Lost to an enemy as ancient as life itself, one that we didn’t, couldn’t understand.

AL Personnel Debrief.

Authorized eyes only

Interviewer: [Classified]

Interviewee: Kaliis Idrieban Gilwraith

We were on a humanitarian mission to a colony world in the neutral territories. Simple aid delivery.

We completed our mission with no notable occurrence, until we were translating into the fold on our way back to base.

I have heard stories of what happens when the gates fail, of the ghost ships and the specters.

To be inside one when it fails is a fate I would not wish upon anyone. To be stuck between two dimensions is a fate worse than death. We were lucky. Our ship made it through just in time to avoid being smeared like a bug across the fold. The fold light flash knocked everyone on the bridge unconscious.

My people have ancient stories of the fold. They warn of venturing too deep into its depths. The ancients, the Eshvaren, they made things they could not destroy, and so they hid them.

That is why fold travel is so dangerous. Those… things…. They are a cancer upon sentience. That is why the fold drives some mad.

I believe that is what our longbow encountered. When that gate failed, we were tossed into its depths. I do not know what Finian saw, but…..

Let me put it this way.

I would rather face down every single member of the unbroken, with no weapons nor armor, than see what Finian saw.

That is something only the strongest can withstand.

By the time I had been roused from my unconsciousness, Finian was curled into the fetal position, unconscious or otherwise indisposed. He had scratched deep bloody gouges in his face. It was though he was fighting himself.

It was a mere few seconds before the others began to stir.

Flashback:

I looked down and saw the wound. The railgun spall from the Belephoron had got me.

“Hey… guys…” I hacked and wheezed, pale pink droplets floating away from me in the engineering deck “I…. I’m hit”

“SHIT! FINIAN STAY AWAKE ZILA AND SCARLETT ARE ON THEIR WAY NOW!”

I had never heard Tyler Jones swear. That was the thought that swam to the front of my mind.

“S….sorry g-g-golden boy, b-but I think I’ve j-j-just cashed out…..”

“FIN!”

Scarlett had just hurtled through the open engineering hatchway, followed closely by Zila, who scanned me with her uniglass.

“I am sorry legionaire DeSeel, but the wound is fatal.”

“I-I-I figured….”

“Fin…. Please no…. Don’t go.”

“I-I-it’s o….k scar……”

I felt my limbs go numb, my organs succumbing to the damage they had sustained.

Scarlett leaned down and kissed me.

“I love you fin….”

That was last thing I heard before the darkness took me. 19 years of life ended by a chunk of metal and a kiss.

AL Personnel Debrief.

Authorized eyes only

Interviewer: [Classified]

Interviewee: Finian DeKarren DeSeel

So anyways. We passed into the fucking…. I need a name for it. Calling it “the thing” isn’t doing it for me. The dimensional anomaly. We passed into the dimensional anomaly. The ‘bow was warped around me. The fucking keel bent itself to a 15 degree angle. The fact that I’m alive is a credit to the grease monkeys down at Aurora yards. Space outside went pure white, and the nav computer exploded. Not sparked, not broke, exploded, panels buried themselves in the bulkhead. And th….. and the…..

*interviewees nose begins bleeding*

Hey. Really quick. Can you give me the list of my currently alive squad mates? I need to orient myself.

[Audio Redacted]

Why? Well, the funny thing about trans universal objects is that, by nature, they exist in across every universe they inhabit simultaneously in the same state. Imagine, if you will, a series of plastic plates, stacked on top of each other. The gals between them are the universe. Now, run a shaft though every plate. If you turn it in any one universe, it turns in all universes. That’s roughly how what I encountered works.

So, each Finian across every universe that interacts with it imparts their own spin onto it, which means I am the sum total of Finian DeKarren DeSeel. I am every Finian spread across the universes compiled into one mind. I have seen every outcome of squad 312. I close my eyes and I feel myself be gutted by a railgun. I see Kal get his throat ripped out on Octavia. I dream of the infinite agony of being atomized by an oxygen fire and I listen to the death cries of a universe.

I have seen every permutation of every choice of my life. I have known worlds where the plague claimed my eyes, I have died in the fighting pits of the unbroken.

For the love of the maker I have slept with every member of squad 312.

I am a man spread across every choice I have ever made. Do you know what that does to me? To be tortured by every death? To grieve every squad mate simultaneously, to lose who lives and who dies under the sea of memories?

Of course you fucking don’t. How could you?

Flashback:

I watched the disruptor slam into Zila’s back, energy crackling as the discharge cooked the flesh on her back to char, she stumbles and falls, and does not stand back up. Nari turned and was cut down moments later. Black fire burned across our skin, but we did not return from the dead. The universe rewrote itself to halt the paradox, and killed us in the process.

AL Personnel Debrief.

Authorized eyes only

Interviewer: [Classified]

Interviewee: Tyler Jones

I had been blinded when I regained consciousness, my artificial eye was not responding and my natural one was a sea of red. I could feel the sticky tightness of dry blood on my face, the lacerations from what I later learned was floating glass. It took me multiple attempts of fumbling with the seat restraints to get them off, and as I did so I called out to the bridge “Status Report!”

Only Kal responded, “unknown sir. All primary systems non functional, emergency damage control reports severe damage to engineering, weapons, and sensors. Location unknown. The EPIRB is on but there’s no telling how long it’s going to take for us to get out of here. I have all repairs focused on Comms to see if we can get a fix on the nearest gate but we may not have time to reach it. Finian has sustained severe injuries from an unknown source. To put it in simple terms sir, we are in deep shit.”

It took all of my self control to not loose off a string of expletives that would make a sailor blush. We were a dead duck hurtling through the fold to destination unknown. “Hrnnngh. Get over here, I need you to reset my eye, I cannot see a maker damned thing.”

“On it sir.”

I heard a rustle of a flight suit and a hand on my shoulder, the other pressing gently into the skin at my temple, depressing the reset button in my eye. It took a few moments, but the logo of the legion lit up and then faded into normal, if monochrome, vision.

It was a catastrophe. The outer glass of the bridge was cracked and pitted, most of the screens on the consoles were smoking and shattered, my squad mates were floating like puppets with their strings cut as grey orbs of blood floated through the room. I saw the battered face of Kal, genuine fear etched into it.

“What happened? What did we hit?”

“I don’t know sir. The fold gate failed and something knocked us unconscious. Something happened to Finian in the intervening time, so I presume he remained awake after the rest of us.”

I turned to find Finian, curled into a ball, exo scorched and cracked covering torn overalls and pale flesh beneath. His face was a ruin on bruises and scratches, blood beading on his face like sweat.

“Is the medbay operational?”

“In some capacity sir”

“Better than nothing. Help me get him down there”

We half dragged, half shoved fin through the bridge doors and into the medbay. A pouch of synthblood had burst at some point and smeared its contents across the walls and floor, making the whole room look like a scene out of a horror movie.

Once he was on the one remaining functional autogurney I sent kal back to the bridge to check on scar and auri while I activated the emergency medbay power. The fluorescent lights stuttered and one died, casting the whole room into an odd half light, not helped by the monochrome fold light. The autogurney scanned fin, and after stating the obvious that he had severe lacerations, began to detail multiple counts of internal bleeding, three cracked ribs, a slipped disk and intracranial swelling.

By some miracle the robo surgeon was operating, and the autogurney wheeled itself to the theatre. In the meantime I headed down to engineering to see if I could get some sort of power out of the reactor.

Flashback:

The first thing I noticed was the rumble. Unseen mechanisms in the floor grinding and clanking as a massive hatch in the floor opened. The leathery crest of a fully grown Drakkan appeared, followed by the rest of its head and body. Even with the knife in my hand, I realized that his wasn’t a test, it wasn’t sport…

It was an execution.

My damaged exo was barely able to hold a light jog, much less a full out sprint, so my only option was to stand and fight. I reached over my shoulder to grab the hidden disrupter built into the power back, and slotted it onto the mount at my left forearm. It wasn’t much, but it gave me a chance.

I let off a three round burst at its eye, scoring a lucky hit that cooked it to soup, much to the apparent indignation of the crowd, now shouting unintelligible phrases at me in syldrathi. The beast screeched and charged, crossing the 100 meter arena in a few seconds. I had a chance to loose off two more bursts, both scoring ineffective hits on its armored torso.

And then it hit me. A two hundred pound claw slamming into me with all the grace and finesse of a hovertrain, hurling me into the far wall. The damaged leg of my servo crapped out completely, so even if the other leg wasn’t broke I couldn’t have stood if my life depended on it. Which it did.

I tried to fire off another burst but the disruptor had been crushed, all I had left was the IED Tyler had me make back on Octavia. It was wired into my exos power cell, and if it went off it should have the same yield as an anti ship torpedo warhead. It was the only choice I had left. Not a noble victory or a valiant defeat, a suicide bomb, set off in the vain hope I kill the blood crazed bastards around me.

And so I set it off. And so the world ended in a flash of light and a roaring heat.

AL Personnel Debrief.

Authorized eyes only

Interviewer: [Classified]

Interviewee: Finian DeKarren DeSeel

*15 minutes 37 seconds of silence*

I know about [Expunged].

[Audio Removed]

Don’t fucking play coy with me

*subject stands*

I know where the money is going you craven little bastard. I know you told [Expunged] about the situation at [Expunged]. Lighting a civil war under Syldras ass for what?

[Audio Removed]

Oh all hail the good and glorious [Expunged], nobly and honourably selling weapons to terrorists for what? To stop some greater evil?

[Audio Removed]

You people are worse than [Expunged] in his room of corpses. You’re barely even legion, just [Redacted]s rabid little pet, a gaggle of informants, mobsters and ex-[redacted] sociopaths playing intelligence agency.

[Audio Removed]

Aw, did I hurt the war criminal’s feelings? The only difference between you and the [Expunged] is that at least they had no control over it. You monsters do it willingly.

*subjects eyes glaze over briefly*

*subjects looks at interview camera*

Hello Mr. Censer. [4 lines expunged]

A/N:

I will personally write a one shot for anyone who can correctly guess three of the [Expunged] words

#aurora burning #aurora cycle #aurora rising #auroras end #the aurora cycle

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