“You are fucking nuts for this crazy shit.”

  “Talk to me when one of your ‘reasonable’ ideas works then!”

  There is certainly one strategic advantage in this unusual case in having these older, outdated Ulminhan ships. They harken from a day and age in which the extrastellar gateway one may be familiar with in the modern era is but only a concept on paper. Back in those days, superliminal travel was a far riskier and more dangerous endeavor, and the standardized infrastructure the gateways brought hadn’t yet become a luxury, let alone, commonplace. As such, the ships would often have to make the calculations and perform the jump themselves.

  Slowly, much of the crew had moved to be packed onto two carriers and the research vessel. The remaining vessels, largely damaged, were slowly and quietly moved into position in widely varying directions. All were made to face World Ritus.

  On the condemned ship’s bridge, calculations and preparations were made. A simple, straight route forward for its flight path, programmed to track these exact spatial coordinates, making sure neither Lym nor her gunship’s locations were in the way. The warning for planetary obstruction was overridden by administrators’ authority. Finally, a set time was scheduled for the jump. Only a small fraction of the speed of light would be needed. Remote control would risk their signal being detected and traced.

  “Superliminal jump scheduled for T-1:00:00. All personnel prepare accordingly,” the overhead speakers announced.

  Any personal belongings that could be retrieved are then taken with them to the carrier, quietly waiting directly adjacent to the sacrificial vessel. A small pod carries the crew back over, and the carrier tacitly moves on, leaving behind its sister ship. The process would be repeated in gripping anxiety until all of the remaining, empty vessels are scheduled for their respective jumps, each of their clocks ticking.

  Against the black void, four missiles the size of city blocks are now prepared to slam into the planet at several dozen kilometers per second.

  *****

  “You are weak and pathetic!” General Hiau shouted back. “To think that taking on such a form will garner any sympathy—!”

  “My name is Lym Alzie-Rugen!” Lym cried out painfully. “I am only all that I am—!”

  “You believe that I will fall for your tricks?! That after all our work and sacrifice to refine your untamed blood, that we would simply—”

  Suddenly, Lym let out a chuckle. And then a giggle. In spite of the agony, she found a way to laugh. General Hiau found herself in denial over the fact that she was slightly unsettled.

  “Refine the untamed?” she finally chuckles. “Is that so?”

  “Your raw power, left unchecked, would bring unspeakable danger to—” Hiau began.

  “Would? Look at have! The people you claim to serve and protect rot on the streets of your worlds! Your empires still have yet to conquer our single planet after so long. What is there to refine? Look at yourself, in your unnatural form, and unnatural skin. You look like an experiment!”

  General Hiau had stood back up by this point, and with a thunderous stride, immediately appeared before Lym, grabbing her by the jaw again.

  “In a disciplined and lawful world, we must make sacrifices!” she began. “You dare—?!”

  “I do,” cuts Lym with an unexpected coldness. “You on the other hand, wouldn’t. You are so submissive that you believe giving your body to these robbers makes you superior.”

  For a fraction of a moment, General Hiau’s eyes widened, ever so slightly, at the deeply personal insult. How was this wretched demon able to deduce such confidential details? Would a demon be able to come up with such an answer?

  Would that, thus, suggest that it is not one?

  Angrily, General Hiau lands a blow across Lym’s face, causing her to bleed. To her shock and insult, Hiau found her knuckles on that arm to have also begun bleeding from the impact, dripping dark blood. Lym on the other hand, immediately began healing back up, and soon, her open wound had completely closed, leaving only a scar.

  “So much for the superior civilization,” Lym continued, grinning with an unsettling menace. “For their wealth to be derived from stealing!”

  *****

  Standing outside on patrol, a guard lights a cigarette out of boredom. It was another quiet day on the surface. Nothing ever happens out here, and he isn’t authorized to see any of the hidden, more exciting parts of World Ritus of which he’s heard rumors of existing.

  A part of him would like to be elsewhere, but a part of him also tried to remind himself of how technically desirable it was. It’s peaceful out here. The view isn’t all that bad, either. It was a nice reprieve, preferable from having to deal with the chaotic stresses back home. The military covered his healthcare while he was out here. Both of his parents had already passed away long ago due to bad credit.

  So, smoked away, he did. May as well take advantage of it. For a moment, he thought of the oddity of it, how easily that modern technology could make it so that smoking a cigarette should no longer afflict the lungs. But then the hospitals, doctors, drug companies, insurance companies, and so on and so forth endlessly wouldn’t make as much money as they would. Hell, even the other industries that popped up around curtailing lung diseases with their services likely wouldn’t be so prevalent. It’s not even a matter of going out of business; just making less money.

  How ridiculous.

  In the distance, something strange flashes across the sky. Why would a shooting star fly so vertically, nearly perpendicular to the horizon—?

  Mountains of upheaval immediately launch through the stratosphere. The subsequent shockwave, though arriving later, sent the earth rippling in waves, and even with the base’s projected shields, he still found himself suddenly on the ground, his ears ringing, and every part of his body in pain.

  Alarms ring out.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  *****

  “Holy shit.”

  “Well, that was the first one.”

  “My God, look at that. It just punched a hole right through. What have we done?”

  “Look closely right over there—see? Look at all that infrastructure from underneath the planet coming out.”

  “Looks like almost the whole thing is like that.”

  “Just as I had suspected. Typical of them to do so.”

  “That’s so much damage already, do we really need the other three ships to do the same?”

  “Do you really want to go back out and try to cancel them in time?”

  A second impact, faster than the blink of an eye, pierces through the planet, sending out another enormous amount of upheaval on both the side of which it entered and exited. The ship making the jump is vaporized in its entirety in the process.

  “How are Lym and the gunship?” Vertan asks the suit.

  “Alive,” its synthetic voice responds.

  “Boy, this plan better work, or I will kill you,” Gahn muttered under his breath.

  Moving in, the two carriers and the research vessel took careful measures to approach the planet, in order to stay away from the haphazard debris. After a certain point, the research vessel remained at a distance in orbit, as makeshift reconnaissance. The carrier carrying Vertan began to head for the location of the gunship, while the carrier captained by Gahn headed for Lym.

  *****

  Underneath the deep chamber, the ground rumbles, almost throwing General Hiau off of her feet. Something was clearly wrong. The planet had been engineered to remove all major fault lines. This has to be an attack. But how? How were their superior defenses breached? And by who?

  There’s no way it would be those Ulminhan rats, right?

  Gathering herself, she attempted to check the status of the surrounding facilities, all for it to come up as null. Communications were likewise spotty or dead. Something indeed was very, very wrong.

  Another thunderous rumble sends a power surge into the room, and Lym screams in agony for a moment, before the room goes dark. Backup lights turn on, revealing the woman to be lying on the floor, motionless.

  “No,” General Hiau muttered. “No, no, no, no!”

  The subject needs to be alive. Alive! They were so close to completing replication of the genetic code, and a live subject has been their best shot yet. Having it dead would mean being set back by another several years. The war is so close to being won, it can’t—

  Lym coughs.

  Struggling to stand back up, Lym preemptively holds out her hand, as if to push away Hiau. The organic mechanical bits underneath her skin squirmed around like worms, constantly readjusting itself in a great painful fervor, in an attempt to adapt to the overwhelming circumstances.

  Sensing an impending danger, General Hiau steps out of the way, just as Lym’s hand begins to brighten.

  Suddenly, her palm opens up in an almost unnatural and unforeseen manner. And then, as though the body had found a way to internalize and replicate the beams and shockwaves that had constantly battered Lym, all of this energy suddenly came back out in a bright streak of destructive energy. The wavelengths of the light and sound emitted continually brightened, all the way up until it was a nearly invisible thin and impossibly bright thread of light of a high pitched squeal.

  The room was soon engulfed in flames, and a trench had been dug out from the streak, with an endless tunnel of destruction now in its direction. As though barely able to restrain the sheer backwards force, Lym’s arm was slowly moved up by the recoil, carving up, until, almost vertical, she began to be pushed down into the earth of the planet.

  Suddenly, her palm closes and stops, and the sudden, final release of energy sends a cascade of explosions and shockwaves upwards, now revealing a gigantic hole up to the surface, miles above.

  Lym fell back down to her knees, clutching her scorched arm as it emanated smoke. Now with the choir of ruination gone, General Hiau can hear that Lym had been screaming out in torment the entirety of the time.

  Ripping off her chains and binds, with some tubes spilling drops of her blood and other fluids, Lym began looking up towards the open surface, her face still contorted and twisted in raw pain.

  And with a final glance at General Hiau, she leapt upwards, clearing the gap in a single bound.

  *****

  “Holy fuck! Did you see that?”

  “What the fuck was that? We almost got cut in half by it!”

  Gahn surveys the incredible display of ruin on the ground below. He found it hard to believe that there could be any amount of survivors coming out of that. A mysterious beam of energy had erupted from underground, cutting open the planet’s surface like butter.

  “Wait! Look! Over there!”

  Peering through one of the ship’s teloptics, Gahn could see a familiar figure suddenly leap out of a cavernous hole punched through the planet’s surface.

  “Subject has been spotted!” he called out to the rest of the crew. “We’re moving in!”

  The massive ship soon roars its way through the sky in the midst of the chaos, the weakened defense systems proving no match for the massive vessel. Somewhere beyond the sky however, pale blips of incoming reinforcement ships became increasingly visible.

  Hovering closer to the ground but still far above, the carrier came into clear view over Lym.

  Immediately recognizing the ship and without any further hesitation, Lym makes a break for it, sprinting at an incredible speed, leaping bounds up and over various launched debris before making a final jump in the air and making it onto one of the ship’s open decks. She is immediately rushed inside by those awaiting her, and the carrier soon scrambles back towards orbit, as quickly as it had come.

  “No way,” one of them exclaims. “She’s alive!”

  A round of cheers and celebration momentarily breaks out amongst the remaining troops surrounding the dazzled Lym. It turned out to be an almost perfect execution.

  “Lym!” Aolia calls out, rushing to clothe her. “Lym! Are you alright? What did they do?”

  “I’m alright,” Lym lied, accepting the new attire. “Where is Vertan? Is he alright?”

  “We’re heading over to him right now,” Aolia responds. “We’re trying to find your gunship on the other side of the planet. Hopefully—”

  The third ship jumps into superliminal travel as scheduled, and slams into the battered and brutalized planet. Even as far as it was from them, Gahn and the others on the bridge had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid debris flying towards them. For a moment, they were pushed back down towards the atmosphere.

  Eyeing the distant destruction, Gahn began nervously cursing at himself, repeating mental prayers. He hoped that somehow, Vertan had managed to pull out by now, but he has yet to hear any message from him. Vertan had taken the suit in the hopes that it could activate the gunship somehow, but then, would they be so lucky? Lym only seemed to be able to get out by wrecking the place to begin with—

  A ghastly sight falls before him.

  Down below on the surface, up ahead, the other carrier was being battered by overwhelming firepower. Somehow, this corner of the planet managed to hold up. On the ground, Vertan and some of his troops are more or less exactly on top of the designated coordinates. But a hard battle was being fought, and they were dug in and completely outnumbered.

  In a moment’s calculation, Gahn reasoned that there was no winning that fight. Reinforcements were already on the way as well, likely to be focused on the occurring skirmish. Losses had to be cut.

  As he aimed the carrier to fly back up out of the atmosphere, he gritted his teeth, hating himself for the decision.

  Vertan would have to be sacrificed.