So, time to start writing stuff again. I really should get on with SaC, but I've just had so many other ideas rattling around in my head. I guess it's short story time for now... 
I am going somewhere with this one - it's just the first part. I think there's enough confusing stuff that needs to be explained later on
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It wasn't always like this.
The air shimmered with heat, the telltale, traitorous sign of a harmonic forming. It was the one warning the enemy got. If they stayed, they would die. With a hiss like a snake about to strike, the air exploded. Trees, the dense forest, ignited, not even catching fire before they burst into shoals of led light and fire. The grass withered for a thousand years, died, evaporated, and the soil melted, all in an instant. Tiny creatures, thousands of them, busy with their tiny existences, burned into purgatory. A rabbit, burrowing near the surface, writhed in pain before its flesh was charred off the bone. The protection of the earth had granted it a moment longer to live - only for it to suffer.
This was too real.
The harmonic disappeared. The ripples in the air were no longer artificial, the product of cunning manipulation of energy; they were the blood and tears of the forest, whose heart had been pierced, reduced to wind and ash. But the destruction continued. A gale rushed outwards, blowing a breath of hell through the foliage. Plants combusted, tree-trunks charred and smoke started to curl from their bark. Fire spread outwards from the wound, a glowing corona, but then the wind reversed, extinguishing all but the largest flames.
In the centre of the wound, the enemy crouched. It was not dead. It was a blasphemy, that it still lived - as if it did not appreciate the sacrifice that had been made. The forest wept, sending heat into the sky. Around the enemy, an impossible bubble of sanity remained. Untouched grass, unspoiled air. The bubble reflected invisible colours of the sun, twisting the light as it passed through the barrier in the air. It had foiled the harmonic; the enemy was untouched.
Now we know where it is, we can kill it.
It barely deserved the name missile. It was a tiny black bulb, with a fluted body and bloated head. It was smaller than the rabbit that had died paving the way for this most deadly of weapons. The missile hung in the air, slow and inefficient. The enemy saw it, and started. What it started did not matter. It could have done anything, but nothing would save it. It ceased to exist as soon as the missile was fired. The perfect parabola paused. The missile looked down at the forest, at the black burn which had been made for it, like an animal's hair is shaved before surgery. It fired.
In the forest, a new firestorm erupted. The blossom started in front of the enemy, and expanded into a flower of pure light, purple and mostly white, glowing brighter than the sun. Shadows leaped away from it, ignoring the far-off star for now. The blossom expanded, drilling into the ground, reaching deeper than the harmonic ever could, burning. It reached into the enemy, peeling off layers of armour that the planets themselves coveted. The air was scoured painfully, every impurity burned away. Blue and green lights flickered in the blossom, gas in the air igniting, sizzling away like air trapped in old firewood. The blossom ended, exhausted itself. Fire retreated into the forest, taking care to pass around the husks of trees that were still destroying themselves. In an instant, the blossom was gone. The shadows returned. The trees finished disintegrating. The storm of wooden shards in the air burned from the new heat, fireflies dispersing into the dark, and vanished.
The enemy was dead. Its body was dispersed in the air; it had become the air. The perfect bubble of protection was gone, too.
Now we know where it is, we can kill it.
The vital links to the world of knowledge, that expanded universe, were cut off by means civilised and humane, and the knowledge receded like the tide as Mathias unplugged the armour's elink from the back of his neck.
Though the link never came inside him - the contact was made by magnets and wireless signals - he somehow felt invaded whenever he was connected to the armour. It put him in the mind of some ancient and evil spirit. But he mostly ignored the feeling. Quite apart from his squadmates' ridicule, feeling that your own armour, your livelihood, was going to suck the soul from your corpse was never a good mentality in a combat situation. They were trained to trust the armour, nurtured to succumb to its power and the amazing sensory extrapolation that its elink provided.
The armour disappeared back into its berth, a flayed black outline. Dormant, it was nothing more vicious-looking than a black body suit, tight-fitting, but with bulges in odd locations - the shoulders and shoulder blades, the small of the back, fronts of the thighs and shins, rear of the head. Its soles were toughened and thick, ready to provide traction on every surface. But active, it was transformed into the deadliest killer. Jagged protuberances grew from its hide, designed with only efficiency in mind but still evoking terror. Dark wings, the focusing equipment for the harmonic weapon, gave the armour the appearance of an ungodly apparition; the defensive flip-side of the same technology distorted the air around the wearer, forcing the viewer to question whether this hellish vision was really a thing of the world, not an escaped nightmare. Unreal muscles flowed artificially beneath the surface, and the movements of even the most ungraceful wearers were coaxed and coerced into becoming lithe and fluent.
Mathias called it the devil-incarnate-suit, mostly jokingly. Awesome story man.. Just love the way you have managed it.. Have you written more storries? |
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