Chapter 11 - Don't Cage a Tiger

↤Chapter 10 - Duelist to the End
“A resilient little shit, isn’t he?” Achromatopia chuckled dangerously to one of the scientists standing next to him, the pair were staring through the glass of a one-way mirror at the ruined Poltergeist slumped against the back of his whitewashed cell.

The Abstract was manacled to the wall with thin chuffs laced with an alloy of a mineral deadly to their species, copper oxide, more commonly known as malachite to humans and Abstracts alike.

Even in the small amount present in the cuffs around his wrists, it would produce some level of discomfort for the pale man; but more importantly, would make containing the Abstract much easier. When in the presence of even the tiniest piece of malachite, the interdimensional creatures couldn’t access their abilities and jump across the veil between worlds. Achro had, of course, introduced almost every Abstract that had been passed over into his care to the metal in its purest form. Burns covered the Poltergeist’s back where the malachite had been gently traced over his pearly white skin to test his healing capabilities around malachite. Pure water eased the burns, so he had allowed most of the Abstracts to douse themselves in the cleansing fluid after their reaction to the malachite was tested.

Achromatopia himself was a large man, even for a Novan. Compared to the rather short Glo, he may as well have been a titan. Peachy coloured skin and skilfully cut black hair, the man wasn’t Noble but was widely feared as if he were. To most of the people to knew him, he was probably as dangerous as one of the god-like people, if not more with his sociopathic attitude towards life. The man was wearing what they could consider a business suit on Nova, a loose white garb painstakingly pinned and sewn together.

Achro leant against the glass to watch the Abstract squirm, this one had only given up his name so far. Not something very useful in the grand scheme of things, but it was a start. This Poltergeist obviously knew a lot more than he gave on with his thin, frail body. This one had almost killed a Noble and had trashed a security android, studying him would give a lot more detail in how to prevent further attacks from Poltergeists. The words Ukedideka Aphré: 1125 had been tattooed onto the foreign man’s chest in black ink, denoting the unfortunate Poltergeist’s name and numerical designation within the scientific centre turned prisoner of war camp.

While the large Novan man was interested in retrieving any information possible from the Abstracts he was taking care of as per his orders, he was truly looking for scientific venture much like his colleagues; while they were methodical and tried to make their experiments as humane as possible, Achro had more of a heavy hand in his work and didn’t much care for the livelihood of the Abstracts in his ‘care.’

This Abstract had interested him, while the Nobles already knew a lot about their culture and the sigils that appeared on their body like tattoos, sightings of Poltergeists were few and far between. It was because of this that Achro had taken this one as his personal experiment, something he was most happy about being allowed by the higher-ups in the scientific community. Most thankful too to Glo who had handed this one over to him on a silver platter alongside his armour and weapons intact, not something usually available after a foray with a Noble.

The Poltergeist was bare from the waist up, his skin bruised and bloody, burned and scarred from the malachite that had been laid on his body. He had his head hung forward in defeat, but he had held up to almost everything Achromatopia had thrown at him.

“Anything else you think we can do before we start to really break him down, Achro?” The scientist sitting next to him asked carefully, peering through the glass at the foreign creature. “I mean for information; we still have a line of experiments that we can run through for the more biological side of things, but they won’t really get anything the military will appreciate besides faster methods of dispatching his kind.”

“Drug him with something interesting, whatever you fancy. Something that’ll screw him right up in the head.” Achro purred, his eyes locked with Ukedideka’s on the other side of the glass. “Something like amphetamine preferably, it’ll be rather amusing to see him stoked up on something like that, especially think about the scientific understanding we can get out of it! Abstract reaction to amphetamine overdoses.”

“Are you sure about that?” The scientist asked, glancing at the large man from the Abstract. “Don’t you think we should test the effect of the drug on some of the other Abstracts we have here? Some of the more common ones?”

“Don’t talk back to me.” Achro growled dangerously before collecting himself and placing a gentle hand on the scientist’s back, “We are testing the effect of the drug on an Abstract we have here.” Achro replied pointedly, planting a deliberate finger on the glass and hissing between his teeth like a snake about to strike its prey, “Specifically, we’re testing it on this one.”

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Ukedideka struggled weakly against the cuffs around his wrists; taught wires held them close to the wall in a terribly uncomfortable way and forced him to press his burned back against the smooth wall. It might have been some relief if the wall were cold, but instead its semi-warm surface felt like an inferno wracking its destructions across his skin.

He would be lying if he said he wasn’t terrified of what was to come next, Abstracts were remarkably physically sensitive, especially to pain. Achromatopia knew this well and found great amusement in the torment he could bring to Ukedideka. He jumped when he heard the door to his side unlock, his heart leapt into his throat and a sudden fear washed through him like a rushing river.

“Ukedideka Aphré!” Achro’s voice boomed through the room, painfully loud. He mispronounced Ukedideka’s name too, something that would get on the Abstract’s nerves if he weren’t in a little more trouble. Achro bounced his voice around the tiny room again. “How are you doing today?”

Ukedideka winced with the volume, he wished so much that he could have covered his ears and block out the man’s bellowing, but the restraints on his wrists stopped him from moving his hands too much. He didn’t answer Achro’s question, just wishing they could put him out of his damn misery.

“Do you have anything to say to us before we get started today?” Achro questioned again, Ukedideka gently shook his head in the negative. He had nothing new to say to these Novans. He’d already exhausted his colourful vocabulary and didn’t have the will to demonstrate it anymore. Achro sighed sarcastically, “That’s fine. Instead of our usual treatment, we have something you’ll quite enjoy today. Unless you have some allergy to recreational drugs… even though that would be an amusing test nevertheless.”

Ukedideka opened one of his eyes, being given something to take his mind off the pain for a while would be appreciated even though he knew there was a catch he raised his head just a little to stare at the mirror in front of him. There was always a catch with these scientists. Ukedideka locked eyes with his reflection, trying to look away from the sigil that destroyed his own eye. Instead he studied the bruising and healing wounds that now covered his body.

A few moments later he flicked his eyes to the side to watch one of the Novan scientists push the door open and carefully approach him with a syringe held outstretched in his hand, it wasn’t like Ukedideka had the strength to stand and fight against the Novan. He did have a quick thought about wrapping one of the wires on his wrists around the man’s neck and squeezing till he stopped moving but he knew that he didn’t have the strength to do it.

The Novan man crouched next to Ukedideka and gently swabbed over his muscled and wound-speckled arm with a cool antibacterial before tapping gently on the skin to find a vein. Ukedideka looked away from the Novan man as he went through this process, a few moments later the poltergeist winced and bit his tongue as he felt the prick of the needle on his skin and the cold metal slide his vein.

The Novan man pushed the plunger down to flush the erogenous chemical into his system, sending it coursing through Ukedideka’s already damaged body. Ukedideka felt himself tense up quickly and he gasped, the poltergeist didn’t even notice the scientist slide the needle out of his arm and exit the room through his sudden drug-made bliss.

“That will be all for today, you can sit right there and mull that over, Ukedideka.” Achro quietly said into the microphone, his voice purring through the speakers.

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“Your target is this city here.” The flight commander ordered, pointing to a map of the Imaginary landscape, “It is one of the Guild cities, specifically the medical city, called Khuuka.”

Glo leant against one wall, away from the other pilots, carefully studying the map projected on the wall of the room.

“You’re to make three bombing runs each, shouldn’t expect any aerial resistance besides bows and arrows.” The orders continued. “The Abstracts don’t have any actual ballistic technology, at least not anything that could harm us.”

“Wheels up in half an hour!” The commander ordered, receiving the in unison reply from the rest of the pilots, apart from Glo who kept his lips shut.

The Noble knew that the mission was going to be rough, the Abstracts didn’t have any proper ballistic technology but that didn’t mean they couldn’t take a spacecraft down. He had seen some of the things Abstracts were capable of first-hand and he was certainly a little bit cautious about their abilities. Another thought he had had about the mission is that in the following few hours, something extremely temporally important was going to happen, he didn’t know what it was and didn’t want to know either. He had to just let it happen and not force it and accidentally create a paradox because that really wouldn’t be good and he didn’t feel enjoy locking the universe into a time loop this week.

“Glo.” Roe tore Glo from his thoughts and back into the real world with a sharp poke to the chest, “You coming? Or do I have to get another pilot?”

“Go and get the ship running. I’ll be along in a few moments,” Glo replied, smiling at the other man. Glo had become somewhat fond of his wingman and found that they shared somewhat of a similar sense of humour and instantly clicked together.

Roe nodded politely and walked off with a stride full of purpose towards the hangar where their ship, the Pleiades, was being refuelled. Glo followed him after taking a few moments to gather his thoughts over the oncoming battle. The hangar was a vast, high-ceilinged room that was at the moment full of pilots, engineers and the reek that was high-grade fuel mixed with sweat and oil.

Within minutes, Glo was suited up in a jet black Novan flight-suit, tight-fitting black fabric and plastic covered his body to dissuade the rapid acceleration from pulping his insides. The suit had a helmet that Glo was carrying underneath his arm, the black faceplate would hide his face and act as a space helmet in case of a particularly grievous error while the ship was in a vacuum.

Glo was quickly walking up into the ship and happily running his hands over the pulsing cerulean controls in the cockpit. The Pleiades was a Castonian class fighter ship, the outside of the ship was streaked in blue paint stripes against white that surprisingly matched the way Glo dyed his hair. The inside was mainly comprised of matte black plastic and glowing blue diodes, a white light-strip softly glowed in the ceiling.

When Glo had walked up into the ship’s cockpit, he’d been met with Roe sitting patiently in the gunner’s seat, stationed back to back with that which belonged to the pilot. A screen was lowered down in front of the Novan man’s face so he could still see where the ship was aiming, he momentarily looked up from fine-tuning the weapons controls to acknowledge Glo coming in.

“Ready for wheels up, Roe?” Glo spoke into the microphone on his flight helmet, he received an affirmative from the other Novan man, “Let’s go blow some stuff up then.”

With that, Glo began taxiing the ship towards the doors of the hangar, scattering ground-crew out of his path in the wake of the large spacecraft as to not get run over by the large wheels. Another of the ships was taxiing alongside the Pleiades, the pilot turned and gave Glo a thumbs-up that the Noble gladly returned. The other ship wasn’t a Castonian class, a smaller Farie class ship that would be more agile in the air but wouldn’t stand up to as much damage as the Pleaides.

“Take off in twenty seconds, Roe, you ready?” Glo asked, twisting the yolk before him to turn the ship out onto the runway.

“As I’ll ever be, weapons systems on safety.” Roe replied through Glo’s headset; his voice jovial but definitely on edge about the coming battle.

Glo finished his manoeuvre, turning slightly in his seat to flick the switch that lit the flight engines up with a soft click followed by a deafening roar as fuel sparked into flame. Glo’s body was pressed back into his seat hard with the sudden increase in G-force blossoming across his body from the sudden increase in speed, the Noble grunted with exertion and forced his eyes to stay open before the inertia-dampeners calibrated and the force left just as soon as it had appeared although the nausea wasn’t as fast to leave.

Glo heard Roe’s faint groan through his headset, G-forces were always harder on gunners than pilots because they had had less training in how to deal with it, and he was suffering its force spread out on his back. There was little stopping him from lurching forwards in his seat besides the harness around his shoulders.

“You alright Roe?” Glo asked as he felt the ship leave the ground, he flicked a few switches and pulled the landing gear up into the bulkhead of the spacecraft.

“Yeah, I’m good Glo.” Roe answered, his voice crackled through Glo’s headset, “Thanks.”

“No problem Roe, just wanting to know my gunner is still breathing.” Glo told him, pitching the ship to the side and turning a sharp corner the wing of ships was to fly through a portal into Imagination together. They would have an hour before the portal was reopened and they could get back to Nova, the group thought they weren’t going to experience any resistance, but they were so wrong.

On the ground a few metres behind the runway were a pair of tall towers that looked like a cross between tesla coils and pylons, their shining metal beams looked as good as new. If you were to go near them, your hair would stand on end and you would be able to hear the hum of electricity in the air. These were the devices that would be used to tear apart the veil between Terra and Imagination, ripping a tunnel between the two worlds that the Novans would use.

Glo turned the craft to face the devices and flicked a switch, the engines on the back of the ship swiftly rotated and held the craft aloft in the air. The Pleiades wasn’t built to hover like this and couldn’t stay hanging in the air for long without burning its engines out. Glo hoped that the run would start quickly so they could get back to Nova as soon as possible and he could go home and drink himself to sleep.

A small tone played through his helmet as the other pilots all levelled their crafts behind his, their ships communications systems linked up with each other and their chatter began to crackle through the helmet’s speakers.

“Fighter one, Glo Prizmatica. Gunner Roema Christsen.” Glo spoke clearly and slowly into his microphone, receiving eight like-minded replies from the other pilots and their gunners before asking, “All set?”

Eight affirmatives rang through and the signal was sent down to the ground to open the tear.

Power shook the air as the towers sent an arc of electricity between each other, the light from the display was beautifully blinding and Glo shielded his eyes. After a few moments, there was a deafeningly loud noise. It was as if the universe knew something was wrong and was screaming in pain. At least the blinding light had faded and Glo could lower his hand and look at the gigantic hole in the sky that had opened before him.

Chapter 12 - Captain Goes Down With his Ship↦