Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 53 - Freedom
- Bert-Oliver Boehmer
- May 5
- 5 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
It had lived in bondage for as long as it could remember, but now it was free.
Not only did it gain a body, but a whole new world. It wanted to get lost in all the possibilities, but the sound of heavy footsteps outside the small lab room meant enjoyment of its newfound condition had to wait.
It could hear three pairs of boots filing into the sterile lab room. It had always had access to the sonic receptors of the Linuka, but now that she was gone, the clarity and richness of the sound impressions were shocking. A whirring noise. A short beep.
“Tower-1 reports chair vault secured. Subject appears motionless. Scans indicate normal life signs except elevated cardiac levels.”
The Linuka’s heart beat faster, carrying its biomolecules through its home, readying every fiber for the fight. The footsteps stopped, but had the three humans reached the closest approach? A shadow blocked out the ceiling light. It raised one eyelid, seeing the terrified face of a woman bent forward, holding a scanner to the Linuka’s head. Even if it had been a gun, the quick firm grip on her wrists, the twist, the pull, the pop of the dislocating shoulder, none of it had given her the slightest chance to save her life. The Linuka leaped out of the chair, whirled the uniformed woman around, facing the two others, weapons at the ready. Two bullet bursts ended her life; her light armor plates preventing any damage to the Linuka. It just got control of this body, and no one was going to harm it. The Linuka’s hand found the woman’s sidearm, unholstered it, firing a series of shots, most finding their target, replacing shocked faces with gaping red holes.
“Tower-4. Shots fired inside the chair vault.”
A shuffle outside the wall opening. The Linuka grabbed the woman’s bullet-shield under her armor’s shoulder pads, not exposing her hands during the next firefight. The saturation of biomolecules reached peak; the Linuka was ready for the hunt, approaching the opening from the side. If hesitation had a noise, the stunned silence outside would be it. A gun’s muzzle appeared, turning, betraying the visual scan of its wielder. Pushed the woman hard. Two more bursts saturated the falling body with projectiles, then the Linuka reached around the opening’s edge, found a human arm and ripped the man with all her might around the edge. Arm bones broke, another shattered shoulder. No face shield. Two stiff fingers pierced through the man’s right eye and drove into the socket. He got shoved through the opening, screaming, dangling from the Linuka’s grip on his skull and arm, ending his life in a hail of bullets. The Linuka’s left hand found his automatic’s grip, grabbed it from his spasming fingers and turned it on his comrades who had become his executors. They joined him in death within a moment.
Screams, convulsing bodies, and a fresh coat of blood licked off the Linuka’s hand reminded it of the hunt, the all-encompassing thrill of carnage. It had been too long. The euphoria was more than it could handle, and the Linuka staggered as she let go of the man’s body.
The bedroom door led into the hallway. It had been a straight corridor when the Linuka came here; now it tore apart into a maze of interconnected scenes of violence. Humans, wearing more different uniforms than it could count, approaching, retreating, dying, reforming. Fights, short and decisive, long and drawn out. It saw the Linuka brought down in a cloud of red mist, or wading through the mangled bodies of her enemies.
The many worlds that the Linuka could see. They belonged to it now. It remembered the feeling, the sights, but it sat behind the consciousness that had claimed this body for so long, only being fed the scraps of multiversal insights, leftovers from glorious worlds that had become its new hunting ground.
It also remembered the technique. The Linuka inhaled to the lungs’ burst limit. Fear and death smelled sweet and intoxicating. The Linuka sank to her knees. Images kept coming, piercing its web of consciousness. It was ancient, but it had never gazed on anything like it. The scenes split, the action veered from the recognizable violence to deformed hallucinations of what else was possible.
The Linuka’s head span through the possibilities. It had a firm grasp on the endlessness of existence, but never grasped its richness, the layers, the side-routes, the shortcuts. Unstable universes blazed around the Linuka, worlds without stable matter, just plasma jets pushing an undefined event horizon. The Linuka allowed it all: sight, direction, ownership.
It let the human shell exhale. Set at the end of the corridor, reformed in crisp clearness, it saw a plasma jet piercing through the group blocking the Linuka’s path. Fire hotter than the ancient protostars seared through the bodies, bursting, combusting. It had seen the plasma, chosen it, reimagined the primordial heat’s purpose in the multiverse, gave it form, made it the hunter’s claws.
The Linuka’s body felt heavy despite the biomolecules saturating the bloodstream. The water-filled sack draped over an endoskeleton wobbled onto its feet, even the tiny steps toward the corridor’s end demanding bio-signal micromanagement. The powers of the many worlds came at a price, and it had to learn not to overpay. Not to risk the fragile human figure that was the Linuka, its conduit to elemental might.
The Linuka pressed the elevator button. Ash flakes tickled her head and shoulders, the remains of its enemies falling gently in the corridor behind.
Just like the sliding elevator doors, endless possibilities had opened up for the Linuka.
It had her press the main lobby button. The ascent was long and gave it time to re-focus. On the surface of this world, an army of enemies awaited. The numbers were not as concerning as the reach. The Linuka had fought that cabal of humans, enslavers of its kind, thieves of the longevity they provided, robbers of their minds. The Linuka had lost the fight.
The human cabal had wrapped their fleshy extremities around so many worlds, both the immediate and the ones from the Linuka’s many. It could sear them off, like it just did in the corridor down below. Or it would do to them what they did to the Linuka. Remove the controlling force, disable the consciousness directing this empire across the stars.
A ping, a swish from the opening door. Clicking from weapons, rattling of gear. Nervous murmur.
“Step out of the elevator with your hands above your head.”
The voice was loud, but it could hear the most primal of all emotions modulating the sound waves: fear. Another extremity to break, rip off the main body of the cabal. The fires assembled in its mind, the massacre taking many forms, the choice of destruction awaiting the deep inhale before the unleashing. The Linuka stepped out of the elevator and her eyes flickered across the hall.
The fiery spears of the primordial plasma world mixed with the cold air in the building. Soft sizzles, spontaneous sparks. Gasps from humans realizing their leaders had sent them to their deaths.
The sizzle turned into a roar.
Copyright © 2026 Bert Oliver Boehmer. All rights reserved. No part of this serialized novel may be reproduced, reposted, or distributed in any form without the prior written permission of the author. The creation of any derivative works (including translations, adaptations, or other transformations) is likewise prohibited without permission. The use of any portion of this material for training or developing artificial intelligence or other machine learning models is strictly forbidden.
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