Traitor GIT: A LitRPG Adventure (Traclaon Armageddon Book 2), page 62
Adrenaline rushed through him, but he forced himself to wait an agonizing second as he flicked the two halves of the chain off. Then he sprang forward at the door. The metal was freed enough so that it didn’t trip him, but one of the heavy pieces of metal knocked his ankle.
His gait transformed to have a limp, but he kicked off the floor with his good leg. Zero-gravity let him cross the distance with a single jump, and when he landed, his mag boots gave him stability. He brought his fist flashing downwards on the flat of the metal. An eight-centimeter Blade as thin as he could make it blinked to existence. It was like the one Ithiel had shown him and one he had practiced in secret.
Soul Blades didn’t break, so in the vast majority of cases, width was wasteful. Then the instant it passed through the lock put his shoulder against the door, relying on his magnetic boots to hold him in position.
For a moment, it didn’t move, and he was worried that somehow this was one of the liquid metal doors. Then, with a groan, it opened.
Fiona was right.
This room was better for this than his cabin. The entrance to her rooms or prison, depending on how you wanted to frame it, was down the corridor on the other side.
Once more, with his good leg, Eric pushed off, confident that the AI in the background was flicking through the five hostiles on the vessel and ensuring he would not be surprised.
He blinked to a kaleidoscope of colors to create the time to check on their physical locations.
GIT looked like he was knocked out, drooling in his jump chair.
Ithiel was awake and moving in his room.
Shrumpet and Tobias were together playing cards.
Omeka was in the sensor room, waiting patiently for the results of the jump. That was interesting. She hadn’t seemed like the type to show that level of initiative or to be curious about whether their jump was historically significant.
For now, he was safe, so he looked out at Fiona’s door, measured the angle and kicked off the door frame. His ankle protested, but once he was airborne, it was fine. A clang echoed as his magnetic boots brought him to a halt. Eric forcefully yanked open the manual lock. It hadn’t been designed to be heavy, but he was weaker than anyone else on the ship and took an agonizing second, utilizing all the leverage he could for the handle to shift.
Then the tension vanished, the lever moved, and he opened the door. Drones zipped past overhead to blind the cameras. The robot turned to look at him.
“Delivery,” Eric told it.
Then he used his Temporal Bubble active skill and propelled himself toward the robot. The cutting blade wasn’t spinning, but those two metallic hands came up to stop him, but they were too slow. The robots had two major control chips. They were deliberately placed in defensive positions, but not obvious ones. The first was in the middle of one of its legs the second in its side six centimeters underneath the metallic armor. His program showed exactly where to hit.
Eric’s right hand punched toward the side of the robot, and if you didn’t know the location of the control chip, you would never have struck. His soul Blade grew, and then plunged in like a sword into water. Hot Craauacklas flames blazed on the outer side and Eric rotated the Blade to make sure he shredded all the surrounding area which, in turn, ensured that the flames would melt the chip.
Then his left hand punched at the leg, and he did the same attack.
A metal hand grabbed a shoulder as he twisted. He jerked instantly to a stop. He went to swing the other arm to cut the robot’s appendage off, but its second hand captured his wrist.
Voidest.
Effortlessly, its metal hands tightened, and he was pinned, unable to move his arms effectively to counterattack. Then there was a whirling sound, and the hands relaxed. One arm dropped off him completely and the light in the robot’s helmet went out.
Too close, he thought while forcefully opening the hands the rest of the way in order to wriggle his way free.
When Eric looked up, his drone had taped the video feed, and he prepared to launch toward the second door and release Fiona.
“Problem,” Fiona said quietly, and he instantly shut his eyes and stoically endured the wave of light.
Feet on the concrete pillar, the AI showed what had alarmed Fiona.
Ithiel had stood up and was walking toward his cabin door. His steps had purpose, and Eric knew he was on his way somewhere. That meant he would emerge into the corridor with a clear view of the door he had just opened to Fiona’s rooms. He wouldn’t miss that it was open and Ithiel would know instantly something was wrong.
If that happened, everything was going to fall to pieces. With a curse at his luck, Eric changed his approach. Before freeing Fiona, he needed to shut the outer door to delay the time it would take Ithiel to notice the problem.
He opened his eyes in the real world with a plan. His feet kicked off the dead robot and pushed himself at the open door. Even as he flew, Eric took a moment to pull one sleeve over his hand. His soul Blade flashed, and he had separated a chunk of fabric. It would be enough to foil the locking mechanism. He hit the door frame with boots locking in place. One hand grabbed the still opening door and starting closing it while the second stuffed the fabric into the lock. The door started to shut.
Eric held his position for a moment, and then it shut fully without the telltale snick of the locking mechanism being activated.
He sighed in relief. To casual observation, this would look closed. Now he had to free Fiona as soon as possible. Eric rushed toward the second door and went to work. This time, when he got the lock open, it swung open before he even pulled on it as Fiona pushed from the inside. Though the push only had a little force, he realized the problem the instant he saw her. She didn’t have any magnetic boots, which made applying leverage in zero-G difficult unless you could brace your foot against something and there was nothing suitable near the door.
His drones negated the cameras, and he put a finger on his lips. Ithiel had left his room and was in the corridor. Eric could almost see the other man processing what he was seeing. Fiona’s doors were shut, but Eric’s cell, even though he had tried to shut it cleanly without a functioning latch, had bounced slightly, leaving an obvious edge to reveal that it was open.
Ithiel knew Eric had escaped or would in a moment.
Take my shoes.
Text to text communication was by far the fastest way of communication, and he saw Fiona think for an instant, and then nod. Eric already almost had one of his shoes off while he knew his feet were larger than hers, but standard space shoes were adjustable across a huge number of sizes.
Bubs, in the coming battle, electronically attack their shoes.
Eric read her message.
Leave it to me.
There wasn’t a single type of space shoes, but nearly all of them had variable electromagnets that used an intuitive system to predict what you wanted. Basically, they could see where nearby metal was based on the magnetic field distortion, and then internally, a variety of calculations factoring in things like relative velocity and the impact of sheer forces on human legs. Most were incredibly advanced and designed to improve the space-walk experience. A standard feature Eric liked was one that used variable magnetic fields to cushion landings. They could make it feel like you were walking on foam instead of metal. Other useful features were ‘extended grab,’ where if you were airborne, you could point your toes down and the magnetic field would ramp to maximum power in order to bring yourself back to the surface.
Unfortunately, the designers of the boots had understood the risk of such a vital item being hacked and they had tried to harden them. All but the cheapest had electronics, which didn’t work like the traditional setup where a program was loaded onto a configurable chip; instead, the instructions were hard-coded into the makeup of the chip. Basically, there was no option to re-program unless you physically replaced the circuit boards. If there were unexpected surges of electromagnetic forces within the hardened circuits themselves, then the entire functionality was shut down.
He blinked and colors smashed into him and disorientated him, even though he had experienced the effect tens of thousands of times by now. He hit the concrete hard and shapes swam across his vision.
“Quit it,” he growled, and his physical symptoms vanished like they had never been present.
A giant boot was right in front of him with the pointless outer covering stripped away to show stylized circuits.
“What am I looking at?”
“The standard AI program in your processor was tasked with mapping electronic systems. Ithiel’s boots, when he wasn’t in the cabin or sleeping, were mapped by Soul Scouting. That hologram is the schematic of the relevant systems.”
“You know I can’t read this.”
There was polite laughter. “Three remote attacks are possible.”
A screen appeared with the information already displayed.
Overload boots: Intuitive response functionality removed for two seconds. Boot defaults to applying ~ 1000 N pressure at all time.
Power rush: Engage full power for 0.2seconds to generate approximately ~5000N of force. After this period, the boot will go into an overloaded state.
Instability: Toe magnetic exerts negative force of ~500N for 0.1 seconds. Repeatable every 0.3 seconds.
Eric skimmed the information. “Translate 1000N.”
“Effectively, that’s the force of a hundred-kilogram person’s full weight at one G, sir.”
“So none of this is powerful versus someone with strength above five.”
“Intended as a distraction, sir.”
“Good point. Definitely better than nothing.”
“Yes, sir.”
He returned to the real world and Fiona had her second boot on.
Wish me luck.
Then she was off. She sprinted past him, pushed the door open with her shoulder and burst out into the corridor. With nothing having been said, he knew she had decided to kill Ithiel as quickly as possible. If they hit him two on one and eliminated him, then hopefully, they could get away before Tobias and Shrumpet responded, or failing that, hope that they could ambush those two one at a time. In a series of one versus one fights, Fiona might triumph. It was the two on one situation that gave Eric nightmares or two on two, though adding him to the equation didn’t change the odds by much.
If they came together, then Eric’s best hope would be to convince them both that he was the reborn, which sounded ridiculous when he thought about it. He gave that almost zero probability, but maybe if Guidance stirred.
By the time he reached the corridor, Fiona and Ithiel were already fighting.
Boots. He watched Ithiel carefully, and just as he was about to push off his right foot, Eric triggered Power Rush in the shoe.
For a moment, his feet gripped the ground with over five times the force that Ithiel expected. He stumbled at the surprise difficulty, and instead of attacking, his one-meter-long soul Blade was thrust through the floor as he tried to keep his balance. Full-body armor surrounded Ithiel, and to let himself possibly contribute to the fight, Eric started his active Temporal Bubble skill. Instantly, he was moving twice as fast once more, which let him follow the battle, albeit only barely.
Ithiel’s thew himself airborne, leaping up to the roof to change the angle.
Eric used Flaming Joy, encasing the other man in flames infused with Soul Fire. The boon was only at seven. He didn’t have unlimited flames, but they were hot, and they washed over Ithiel’s armor, starting at the knees and going to the man’s waist. Unexpectedly, the flames continued to burn, and he saw flickering light extend from the waist, which was the edge of Eric’s control to his shoulder.
Ithiel blanched, and a look of pain registered on his face, but that failed to distract him. His feet hit the roof, and he jack-knifed straight back at Fiona. His sword led his charge.
Fiona didn’t have the raw strength to challenge him, but stupidity was something she worked with happily. A small plate of Soul Armor formed over her heart, and the tip of Ithiel’s Blade slammed into it. The collision pushed her back, but providing the Blade didn’t land, the clash was in her favor. Even as his Blade hit her Armor, Fiona’s own weapon, which was far smaller than Ithiel’s, came in from the side and pushed his point away from her and against the frictionless surface and the extra leverage Fiona possessed because of the shorter weapon the Blade moved away from her heart.
Together with that collision, there was a flash on the other man’s armor as her flame reflection went into action. Eric had sort of expected that reflection to hit simultaneously over the enemy’s entire body, but instead, it was apparent that Fiona could direct the counterstrike because it slipped through the gap in Ithiel’s full-body armor, that Eric’s Soul Flame had apparently opened.
For a fraction of an instant, a long fiery Blade pressed into the other man’s arm. There was a brief spurt of blood before Soul Armor formed under Ithiel’s skin to stop the phantom Blade from taking off the entire arm.
The Blade aimed for Fiona’s heart was pushed fully to the side and the boon’s reflection vanished, leaving cauterized flesh and sooty black marks burned into the skin.
Then Ithiel’s body slammed into Fiona’s. He could not see the finer details of the brief wrestle, but he was sure that Fiona made the most of the contact even as she was propelled down the corridor by the collision. She would be dragging her Blade across his shield, doing maximum damage for the time of the collision.
They were beyond Eric. Ithiel pushed and Fiona was thrown away from him and toward the cargo hold they were aiming for. Eric pulled himself along, figuring that without boots he was almost silent even as he flexed his mind once more and encased Ithiel in another wave of Soul Fire.
This time, unfortunately, no secondary flames erupted. With Soul Scouting, he absently pushed Fiona down to the ground to give her back agency over her movements. For a brief moment, she had been floating free and helpless. When her feet touched the floor, she sprang forward as Ithiel engaged once more.
Just before he reached her, Ithiel faltered mid-swing, and Eric, almost directly behind him, felt the echoes of the Cower wash over him. She avoided the disrupted slash and ran her Blade across the other man’s chest.
Soul Scouting was pushing Eric in the back, accelerating him faster than what using only his arms in this state could do. The trait had helped when fighting in gravity, but within free fall, it was even more lethal.
The two fighters in front of him separated and Eric unleashed Soul Fire once more. This time, there was a rush of flames from the middle back up to the right shoulder. He was now traveling faster than the other two and Fiona saw him and lunged to engage Ithiel, forcing him to focus exclusively on her, and then Eric slammed into Ithiel’s back, his clenched fists with three finger-length claws radiating out of them hitting the exposed shoulder. The fiery claws went in and his fist hit skin, and he pulled down, twisting as he did to maximize the damage.
Soul Fire danced on the Blades, then Ithiel’s armor bubbled out wards, forcing his hand away and his Blades failed, but the reaction was slow and there was a spout of blood from the shredded wound.
Ithiel’s speed advantage had him moving right at the limit of what Eric could track, and he saw the other man spinning on the spot to respond to whatever had hit him from behind. Because of the active skill, his mind was processing things twice as fast as normal, and even so, he only saw the flicker of movement out of the corner of his eyes–an almost translucent Blade arcing for his neck.
He flinched away from it, a push from Soul Scouting completely changed his motion, and then the armor snapped into position. Instead of the Blade decapitating him, the blow missed. It struck the side of his head over his ear and was reflected by the scrap of armor that had slipped into place. He could feel his soul straining, so he let himself be pushed away, deciding that it was probably time for him to be more cautious. Ripples were going through Ithiel’s Armor, indicating it was close to the verge of collapse and Fiona should be able to finish this by herself.
Ithiel’s eyes focused on Eric. Confusion and disbelief were reflected in them as he saw the helpless Toro in the corridor fighting him. Then a Blade with fire crackling on its edges punched through Ithiel’s chest, and then raced upward in an arc that took it from the center of the chest out to the edge of the neck into a hard right that decapitated the other man.
With Soul Scouting, Eric didn’t hesitate. A hard push and the head with a dangling section of neck was dislodged from the body.
Fiona looked horrified. But there was no time for that. It wasn’t her first kill, but it was her first using a soul Blade.
He blinked and colors hit him and his feet landed on hard concrete.
Four still images were presented to him.
Tobias and Shrumpet had both reacted. The cards they were playing were going flying despite their magnetic nature because of how fast the two of them were moving.
A single label was attached to them.
Twenty seconds.
Then there was GIT struggling out of his chair. Awake, no longer drooling. His eyes focused on blaring alarms in front of him.
Sixty-eight seconds.
Then GIT’s two defensive robots were both moving.
They both had response times in the fifties.
“Tobias and Shrumpet?” Eric asked tiredly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do I need to fight?”
“No.”
He opened his eyes to the real world. His threads were already engaging, radiating out to do whatever he could to delay.
His drone army was sent to harass. The lights above them turned off, which would hopefully delay the two of them, and a single drone spun into position with its torch providing lighting.
