(Rewritten) Ch. 87 – Xenocide Act VII; The Dance’s Development

"There's this part of the brain, apparently; it's called the nucleus accumbens, and it does stuff like anticipating outcomes. It works with other regions in the brain.

There's the prefrontal cortex and superior parietal lobule, which help with cognitive control and executive attention. You know how people experience displeasure around violence? Those things in the brain's responsible for that outcome.

But you know, it can also be the other way around.

If the nucleus accumbens works with things called the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insular cortex—which do, like, positive feelings and visceral somatic stuff—then you get pleasure instead of displeasure. Extreme pleasure, even.

I've heard of some who've literally orgasmed during combat. Like, not exactly sexually. Just…so much pleasure it shorts out some other circuits. Or at least that's how they describe it."

– Anonymous posting on online forum Fight-Kill-Survive, 2042

***

Mad laughter spilled from my lips as I twirled through the air, pulled—almost ripped—from a twisting dive into a bladed pirouette by the engines of the javelin, teetering along the very edge of control through the levering of my weight.

I landed on my traction claws, and anticipation shivered through me at the slowly building rumble beneath my soles.

A Four tried to catch me, but I waltzed right past its tentacles. My spear's shaft lay against my waist, and as it followed my circling steps and sped up to whirl even faster around me, its edges bit into the alien, and I kept moving.

I was surrounded by Threes and Fours. Dead meat, I giggled. I'm surrounded by dead meat.

One foot hooked into something wooden as I slid backwards. Roots. The Twenty-Two's roots. It was nesting when I came and disturbed it. The rear blade's point stabbed through the skull of another Four behind me and I set the anchor with anticipatory relish.

I chuckled as I pushed off, ducking low, sliding on the smooth plates of my battle skirt while the rear head of my spear traveled upwards in an arc to bisect a jumping Three.

I rose from the low position as my foot kicked out to claw at the eyes of a beastie ready to lunge.

The little hop left me overextended, none of my limbs placed to extract more momentum, but I wanted, needed, to keep moving.

A giggling moan escaped me when I felt the tether snap shut, and held on as the shunted mass's impact sent my tensed body rotating and whirling around my core, knives shredding through Antithesis on both sides.

I am become blender, I laughed hysterically.

Still spinning, I pushed hard off the ground, tumbling in a long, low arc across the ground, grinning as my weapon's edges cut through the spines of a dozen Threes. The plasma torch on my tail flickered on and a double stream of high-pressure oxygen and water fed past it, misting into a dense fog, hiding me from alien eyes while my antennae instinctively mapped my surroundings.

I barely got a foot on the ground before I was surrounded by Threes again, and I lashed out with my tail.

The torch cut deep grooves through Antithesis plant matter, igniting oxygen inside and outside alien wood-bones, scorching the wounds into brittleness. Water jets cut into green flesh and injected themselves, where the water was heated by the brightly burning oxygen until I smelled steamed mold.

I can do better than that, can't I?

I added hydrogen to the oxygen, and the mixture exploded instead. The water boiled instantly, converting into steam so hot it wasn't visible to the eye. Dull pops thudded against my chest as Antithesis bodies bloated into round balls, only to break open and invert their organs as they flash-dried and their skin ruptured.

Popcorn, I cackled, completely unhinged. I'm fucking making popcorn. Where's the salt? Have some salt!

I waved my tail above my head to dust raw magnesium and the other stuff from the chaff mix all over the popcorn around me. Another flick of the torch, and it all flashed to thousands of degrees for a split second.

It was so hot that—despite the actinic flash disappearing faster than it appeared—my hair frizzed and my sensilla got painfully singed. I barely even noticed, with the mad joy pumping chemicals through my brain from the pressure waves racing past me in all directions. I whooped as I was tossed around like a leaf.

I tumbled to a stop against a trunk not far from the single open space around, and mud and ash clogged up my antennae and made my eyes blur until I blasted myself with a pressure-shower.

The underground tremors intensified and I saw trees start to sway. The ground of the clearing rose very slowly as the last few Antithesis, all of them Fours, found their feet and turned towards me again.

I giggled at their half-cooked, half-burnt, and entirely grilled appearance, jumped to my feet, and flipped the javelin around into a proper throwing form.

I tossed it hard at an Antithesis separated from the others. The dream training kicked in, guiding my feet into the perfect stance. My hips pushed and set the pace and low fulcrum, and my torso followed, rotating and whipping forwards like the first limb of a trebuchet.

The arm holding the javelin followed the shoulder like the string of that trebuchet, accelerated around the high fulcrum by muscle and by leverage. My hand flashed forward and my fingers loosed the flying spear at the point of maximum velocity in the arc, just before the apex. The weapon whizzed across the distance like a crossbow bolt.

The alien monster was barely fifty meters away; the arc was so short that its rise was almost imperceptible. The javelin's head smoothly parted the skin and bone of the Four's forehead and penetrated beneath its spine, past its neck, into its torso, where it impaled the heart.

By the time the javelin's engines engaged to broil their way out of the alien cadaver and carry the weapon up into the sky, I was already checking over the rifle and tightening the silk bandages around the badly cracked stock.

Four Fours, I giggled as the rumbling under my feet got worse and the first cracks broke the ground, from the heaving of the monster beneath. Four Fours, and four HSRP left.

I lined up my first shot, at the one closest to me, and felt how the rifle's muzzle shifted unsteadily. But the Sentinel's scope adjusted in real time, so I sank into the motion, found the weave, joined the pattern.

My finger's tip tightened on the trigger with a soft exhalation. There was the tiniest bit of resistance, and then the front half of the Four disintegrated with the whistling crack of a hypersonic projectile.

The Sentinel's robotic paw cycled the bolt, and I aimed at the next one. I missed its head, but it just popped off like a bottlecap when the torso supporting it exploded, making me grin.

I felt the divot with my finger's tip while I killed the third, and found the bandages only sort of worked.

When I shot the fourth and last Four, the last alien above ground, the rifle's stock and receiver cracked with an ugly metallic screech.

Before I even realized what I was doing I'd disengaged the Sentinel with one hand, and the other was clenched around the old rifle together with my forcefield, forcing everything to stay aligned.

"Tynea!"

Yes!

Unlocked:

Total cost: 75 ptsRemaining points: 6701

Purchased:

Total cost: 45Remaining points: 6656

A steel ring appeared around the muzzle of the rifle, and radial struts with some kind of rollers for feet clamped onto the barrel. The ring was twenty centimeters across and had two metal rails welded around its curve. I watched sleek 3D printing heads travel along them, orienting inwards to point at the barrel.

A red scanning laser played over the weapon in split seconds, and the rhythmic vibrations of a deep sound-based scan thumped through my hands.

Then the ring rushed up the barrel on its rollers, and the printers went to work painting tight rings of silvery metallic bands around it, even wheedling them underneath my hand with smooth seesaw motions.

They bound the entire receiver and stock, until even the ejection port and magazine well were covered up. Only the trigger and bolt, protected by the trigger guard and a handy lip respectively, remained free.

I looked at the bound weapon I was holding, my hand still clenched down, and considered the inaccessible port.

One final round to fire, huh? Can't even eject the cartridge anymore. A particular rough pulse shook the clearing. Well, then!

"Tynea, I'm gonna need something special, I think. Something particularly fun."

Might I suggest upgrading your munitions catalog to Class II?

My head tilted slowly. Hmmm…?

"Yeah… Sure," I said with an absolutely evil grin. "I'm gonna get a new token from this anyway, right?"

Yes.

"Then, go ahead."

Unlocked:

Total cost: 1600 pts, 1 tknRemaining points: 5056Remaining tokens: 0

Purchased:

Total cost: 100 Remaining points: 4956

A very long cartridge dropped into my free hand, the bullet alone longer than my palm, and quite heavy. The brass case at the rear looked unremarkable, but the projectile itself was something else entirely.

The tip was made of something so hard—and possessed such internal tension—that I could sense it vibrating and singing, simply from being touched by molecules in the air.

The rest of it was etched with incredibly fine lines of sparking electricity, glinting diodes, and a whole bunch of tiny lenses and other stuff I couldn't identify.

This… This was high technology. This was so far beyond anything Earth could produce, we wouldn't see it inside hundreds of years.

This is fucking samurai tech, I thought as my lips split with greedy joy.

Once triggered, the projectile will gate a very small amount of matter from your local sun to its location, which will naturally expand explosively. We may choose the shape of the discharge.

The triggering must be done manually for reasons of safety, either by you, or by me, and there are additional interlocking safeties. The round must have been fired. It must have traveled through at least one meter of empty air. A one-second timer for disarmament will be initiated as the charge is being primed. Proof of your mental sanity will be required. Proof of my good condition will be required, should I effect the triggering.

These must be submitted to the warhead within zero-point-zero-zero-one seconds of firing. Should any of these procedures, or their result, be non-satisfactory, the warhead will teleport itself into the sun instead, thereby rendering itself unusable.

May I take care of satisfying the safeties, as well as directing the explosion for your protection?

"Yes."

Please note that the gunpowder charge is too powerful for the rifle, and the round itself too dense to engage the rifling. The gun will not survive this shot.

I chuckled as I stroked the barrel with my free hand. "Understood."

Suddenly, mud and earth fountained into the air with a mighty shove, as the biggest Antithesis I'd yet seen rose from beneath.

Clumps of soggy dirt rained around me, and I hurriedly grabbed the loose Sentinel before I jumped backwards out of range. I glued the thing out of the way while I watched alien roots strain and break all over the fifteen-meter-wide body.

I studied it, grin widening with epic exhilaration. Armor plates everywhere, and it had unripe growth sacks on its sides, next to openings that disgorged a few equally unfinished Threes. Threes that looked a lot like the ones I'd fought on my very first day as a Vanguard, small and structurally weak.

Tinea, you can let go of the receiver now. It's been stabilized. Please remove the bolt and insert the cartridge, then replace the bolt.

I released my hand from the rifle carefully, saw that the repair held, and giggled again.

Not quite time to go yet, old friend. One last meal for you. My eyes met those of the monster above me. Look, dinner's up!

***