Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 25 - Maximum Violence

Episode 25

Linuka Omga saw the deep blue sky above, then the opening closed, and the vengeful world Green Wave swallowed her whole.

The suit provided air to breathe, but the tightness of the aggressive flora, vines slithering around her body like tentacles of a predator, made her gasp. A shrill shriek turned into an unheard whimper. Was this what happened to the Võmémééř explorers 1,200 orbits ago?

She was ready to let her body go, pull her consciousness inward, allow the Uurmi to flood her body with potent panspermic chemicals, feel the irresistible strength flash through her muscle tissues, pump her fist through the green surface, finding something solid to pull herself out of the death trap.

Nothing.

The symbiont lay dormant inside her gut, oblivious to her struggle. Linuka wondered if Oonzu’s silicate body had suffered the same fate.

Oonzu.

Could she reach him at all through her uncooperative Uurmi?

Tswa sni sni.

The nano replicons had no allegiance, no loyalty to betray, no choice but to connect her mind with the tutor’s matrix. I need to breathe. I have to… The pain.

Multi-awareness is a state of mind.

Her father.

You should be able to reach it while hanging upside down over a fire pit.

She hated his teachings. She missed him. Her restricted windpipe produced a deathly wheeze when she drew her last breath before the realities split.

Dying on Green Wave was a silent affair. A few moments of horror, followed by a long dissolution of the body, joining the restless plant carpet spanning the world’s illuminated hemisphere. Quiet scenarios unfolded, alluring in their transcending peacefulness. Peace. She gazed at her father’s face, so close she could touch it. He had dedicated himself to creating a peaceful galaxy. But he tore another one apart when he had to.

Fight, he said.

There was no sadness in his eyes, no doubt. On the fringes of existence was chaos, extreme destruction. Linuka fought a planet. But they brought a planet killer. She saw the reality, and it was frightening. But it was survivable. Maximum violence.

She chose it.

The plant life got ripped away from her suit so fast she feared it had taken the suit fabric with it. Acceleration pushed her blood into her legs. Black bands ribboned through a drastic field of vision. Her father, gone. The surface, gone. Blinding walls of light surrounded her body, tumbling upwards.

The Remnants had fired their strip beams. Not at the precise low-energy pace to create a ramp, carefully opening the ancient ship hull. No, the weapons did what their original creators intended them for: mining planets. A maelstrom of elemental energy the extra-galactics had harnessed ripped everything upward.

The Võmémééř shuttle lifted out of its grave, limp vines no longer able to claim it theirs, a city block-sized chunk of Green Wave surface cut, the living fabric turned into ash as deep as it had grown undisturbed for eons.

Until Linuka brought the Remnants. Unflinching machines unwilling to sacrifice half their crew, and even less inclined to forgo their precious loot. Few realities existed in which the plants had to suffer their wrath, but in this one the AIs did not hold back.

She spotted the Hikshuur inside the upward cylinder of chaos, spinning uncontrolled by her owner, who was forced to ride the firestorm on the dead shuttle. The freighter looking undamaged, the sturdy Traaz would be alright. If anyone survived the next passes, it was going to be him.

The marines on board the breached shuttle were not quite as immortal. If they had survived the vicious vines, they could only tolerate high altitudes with their suits intact. As Linuka’s mind settled into this reality, the vertigo of the skyward suction became unbearable.

Cha Dzeeny.

He had to be out there. Or was he? She had panicked, picked this deets-deets reality based on survival, not caring about the details.

The world lines of each individual within the glaring beam entangled into one fated helix. THEY would survive!

That sounded great, but ‘they’ was a loaded word. ‘They’ had also survived the galacticide. Except the trillions who didn’t.

She hoped Cha was not one of those who an uncaring multiverse thought expendable, an acceptable sacrifice for the greater good.

A shadow was cast on her helmet visor. The motion froze, and for a moment her surroundings turned into a surreal still image of floating plant matter shreds, two hovering spacecrafts, and one girl drifting out of consciousness. The Chéé.

She had descended into the planet’s atmosphere, hangar gates open, scooping up who and what they set out to rescue straight from the circle of destruction formed by the strip beams into the safety of her bowels.

Few could beat natural fliers like Oonzu with intuition, but no one could beat the Isonomih with precision. The raw power of the beam weapon turned minimal, the mighty ship enveloping the narrowly escaped with care, gravity fields adjusting to set down masses as big as freighters and as small as young priestesses with equal elegance. It was beautiful to behold.

She was still quite fast when she fell onto the hangar floor. The thud of her body ended all sound. And turned off the lights, too.

***

She felt a sliding motion. No. No!

Did the reality not fully manifest? Was she back on the planet again? Nothing pulled her, but she slid along the floor anyway.

Dark masses in motion. When her vision cleared, she saw the Hikshuur turned over on the hangar floor, and the shuttle sliding in the same direction as her. She flailed her arms around, yet again searching for a solid grip, elusive on the flat metal plating.

Using her boots’ soles, she could slow the motion at the expense of her broken legs sending red-hot needles through her body. She slammed into the hangar wall, feet first, her mangled legs barely cushioning the impact. A piercing torment in her left leg, a reddish bulge appearing under her knee, an open fracture no doubt, the gore covered by the fabric. Her mind stayed clear, though, with no pain distorting vision, no black tunnel closing her awareness. The familiar flush of strength, grit, and confidence was back.

Her Uurmi. The puygo magiimuus! Back on the Chéé, my old friend? Can’t just shed my skin anymore and leave me to rot, hoping to join your new plant friends?

Movement in her peripheral vision.

A late-comer entering through the hangar locks? Cha Dzeeny? Oh no. Why are the Remnants closing the gates now? Wait!

Linuka froze. She understood why. Like gigantic fangs of a deep space terror, thick vines clawed over the edge of the wide hangar opening. The Chéé had intercepted them high in the atmosphere. The plants could not have possibly reached them, not grown that fast, that high. Did they get pulled closer to the surface? Had the Remnants miscalculated?

A screech chilled her spine. Did the hangar gate servos struggle to shut out the growth reaching up from the planet surface, dangling their tips around the hangar, like Linuka trying to find anything to hold on to?

Or was it the shuttle, fallen to its side, now joining the Hikshuur in her uncontrolled side-ways slide. She saw the metal hull plating approaching, about to slam into the same wall Linuka had just reached moments before. On board the ancient craft, she could sense an angry Traaz and many humans, struggling, but alive. THEY would survive!

She… was running out of realities.

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