1
Exultationist–Gestaltist Disputed Territory
Outside the village of Horváth, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén Republic
(Formerly Northeastern Hungary)
July 18, 2216
Three years before the Event
There had been twelve soldiers in the squad three days ago. Now there were seven.
In good formation, they cautiously made their way up the footpath between meadows and vineyards, toward the village. Here and there locals tended the vineyards, showing little interest in the newcomers. A cursory scan revealed no hostility. The mountainous landscape was green and lush, as if unchanged for centuries—aside from a trio of boxy robot shepherds tending a flock of sheep.
Sergeant Myfanwy Cochrane breathed in the crisp fresh air, admiring the view, trying hard not to think of all the burnt-out cityscapes she had marched through over the years. In places like this, however, the forgotten nooks and crannies of the world, she could almost believe they had found an oasis from the decades of endless world war.
A deserter’s dream, she thought, careful to mask it from her subordinates.
“Sarge, we have contact.”
An incoming thought from Peters, their point man, interrupted her reverie. At the top of the rise, where an ancient tavern stood and the cobblestone streets of the hamlet began, a quartet of village elders awaited their arrival. Cochrane halted the squad and signaled Peters to hold up. She turned to her comm specialist, Silva, who was also her best diplomat.
“Silva, go talk to them,” she sent. “Bradley, go with him.”
The two soldiers cradled their carbines, attempting a less confrontational manner, and approached the elders. Bradley, one of the squad’s two sweepers, was a talented esper. He’d already be telepathically scanning the four villagers.
“Jó reggelt kívánok!” Silva greeted them with a friendly wave. He spoke very little of the local dialect, but had made a point of learning a few basic pleasantries. It was polite to speak aloud before initiating a telepathic conversation with a stranger.
After a few minutes, Silva and Bradley shook hands with the locals, and the comm specialist stepped away, waving down to the squad.
“What’s the story, Silva?” Cochrane asked.
“Outstanding,” Silva replied. “We have good, better, and best news, Sarge. This place is called Horváth, and they say they’re unaffiliated with any factions. We and any other Gestaltist troops are welcome to stay here as their guests.
Exultationist main force left here two days ago, headed over the border, to which they say good riddance.”
She nodded in approval. In this case “the border” meant the border with the Mátra-Slanec Federation, formerly a chunk of southern Slovakia.
For the last one hundred and fifty years Europe, like the rest of the world, had dissolved from nation-states into a patchwork of petty fiefdoms. No, Cochrane corrected herself. Patchwork was the wrong word—that would imply there were still large centralized territories left. The world was now a mosaic of tiny local authorities. Various psionic factions had taken up the mantle of governing—or at least raising armies.
Not surprising that the locals didn’t take to the Exultationists. That faction was one of the most notorious of the PsiPremicists—to them, the non-psychic minority weren’t just second-class citizens, they were outright chattel. Evolutionary has-beens no better than animals.
The only factions that treated the non-psionic worse were the Vorax, psychic vampires that happily fed on them, and the Ouroboros, the psionic hive mind spreading across Asia like a pandemic. Their Gestaltist PreCogs had warned that the Ouroboros sought to absorb the mind and personality of every person on Earth. These people in Horváth didn’t know how lucky they were.
“Sarge…”
She glanced at her second sweeper specialist. He was staring intently down at the villagers tending to the vineyards on the hillside below.
“What is it, Dee?”
He turned to her, fear in his eyes.
“Sarge, I scanned again for hostility, deeper, just in case, and— I’m not readinganything. They’ve been hollowed!”
The field hands had been brainwiped.
Cochrane whirled and sent to the entire squad.
“Ambush! Shields up!”
Not a millisecond too soon. Automatic weapon fire erupted from the upper windows of the tavern and the closest buildings. The spray of bullets ricocheted off their telekinetic shields, illuminating them with a ghostly glare.
Silva and Bradley turned to take cover, but the four villagers—or whatever they were—dropped their psychic masks and went on the attack. Both soldiers stiffened, faces locked in a rictus, and then crumpled.
Hitting the ground, the squad opened up with their spindle-fed TK assault carbines, but the ambushers had raised their telekinetic shields. Peters, still on point, low-crawled closer to the outlying buildings, but didn’t bother trying to blast through their shields. A highly rated pyrokinetic, he just focused his attention on first one roof, then the other, igniting a blaze on both.
The rest of the squad focused their fire on the quartet, but their shields held, disk shapes glowing bright with every impact. The four turned to face them. Suddenly Peters grabbed his head and writhed in pain, dropping and curling into a fetal position.
Then Cochrane was hit.
///the sun exploded
ripping the skin of the shrieking
sky apart in a violent, pulsating
nightmare///monstrous
disembodied human eyeballs bubbled up
through the leprous ground
and began devouring
Kwame their heavy gunner///his screams
echoed and reverberated infinitely
in her ears///while his body went twisting
and stretching into impossible
shapes until his torso
burst open///torn inside out like a pulpy
fruit mangled by a raging lunatic god///
Cochrane fought to regain control of her hijacked senses, but the sensory onslaught was overpowering—
///the sky plunged
into a crushing hopeless black
night///abandoned by stars///the
haunted moon
a howling death’s head
staring down on the ring
of grinning corpses
surrounding her///their faces
melting into grave rot///they
reach for her
stretching forth horrid
grasping hungry cadaverous
clawed hands///covetous
of her naked warmth///
Her resistance slipped as the telepaths reached down into the amygdala region of her brain, triggering the emotional center. Forcing herself to remain calm, 1
Exultationist–Gestaltist Disputed Territory
Outside the village of Horváth, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén Republic
(Formerly Northeastern Hungary)
July 18, 2216
Three years before the Event
There had been twelve soldiers in the squad three days ago. Now there were seven.
In good formation, they cautiously made their way up the footpath between meadows and vineyards, toward the village. Here and there locals tended the vineyards, showing little interest in the newcomers. A cursory scan revealed no hostility. The mountainous landscape was green and lush, as if unchanged for centuries—aside from a trio of boxy robot shepherds tending a flock of sheep.
Sergeant Myfanwy Cochrane breathed in the crisp fresh air, admiring the view, trying hard not to think of all the burnt-out cityscapes she had marched through over the years. In places like this, however, the forgotten nooks and crannies of the world, she could almost believe they had found an oasis from the decades of endless world war.
A deserter’s dream, she thought, careful to mask it from her subordinates.
“Sarge, we have contact.”
An incoming thought from Peters, their point man, interrupted her reverie. At the top of the rise, where an ancient tavern stood and the cobblestone streets of the hamlet began, a quartet of village elders awaited their arrival. Cochrane halted the squad and signaled Peters to hold up. She turned to her comm specialist, Silva, who was also her best diplomat.
“Silva, go talk to them,” she sent. “Bradley, go with him.”
The two soldiers cradled their carbines, attempting a less confrontational manner, and approached the elders. Bradley, one of the squad’s two sweepers, was a talented esper. He’d already be telepathically scanning the four villagers.
“Jó reggelt kívánok!” Silva greeted them with a friendly wave. He spoke very little of the local dialect, but had made a point of learning a few basic pleasantries. It was polite to speak aloud before initiating a telepathic conversation with a stranger.
After a few minutes, Silva and Bradley shook hands with the locals, and the comm specialist stepped away, waving down to the squad.
“What’s the story, Silva?” Cochrane asked.
“Outstanding,” Silva replied. “We have good, better, and best news, Sarge. This place is called Horváth, and they say they’re unaffiliated with any factions. We and any other Gestaltist troops are welcome to stay here as their guests. They also told us theExultationist main force left here two days ago, headed over the border, to which they say good riddance.”
She nodded in approval. In this case “the border” meant the border with the Mátra-Slanec Federation, formerly a chunk of southern Slovakia.
For the last one hundred and fifty years Europe, like the rest of the world, had dissolved from nation-states into a patchwork of petty fiefdoms. No, Cochrane corrected herself. Patchwork was the wrong word—that would imply there were still large centralized territories left. The world was now a mosaic of tiny local authorities. Various psionic factions had taken up the mantle of governing—or at least raising armies.
Not surprising that the locals didn’t take to the Exultationists. That faction was one of the most notorious of the PsiPremicists—to them, the non-psychic minority weren’t just second-class citizens, they were outright chattel. Evolutionary has-beens no better than animals.
The only factions that treated the non-psionic worse were the Vorax, psychic vampires that happily fed on them, and the Ouroboros, the psionic hive mind spreading across Asia like a pandemic. Their Gestaltist PreCogs had warned that the Ouroboros sought to absorb the mind and personality of every person on Earth. These people in Horváth didn’t know how lucky they were.
“Sarge…”
She glanced at her second sweeper specialist. He was staring intently down at the villagers tending to the vineyards on the hillside below.
“What is it, Dee?”
He turned to her, fear in his eyes.
“Sarge, I scanned again for hostility, deeper, just in case, and— I’m not readinganything. They’ve been hollowed!”
The field hands had been brainwiped.
Cochrane whirled and sent to the entire squad.
“Ambush! Shields up!”
Not a millisecond too soon. Automatic weapon fire erupted from the upper windows of the tavern and the closest buildings. The spray of bullets ricocheted off their telekinetic shields, illuminating them with a ghostly glare.
Silva and Bradley turned to take cover, but the four villagers—or whatever they were—dropped their psychic masks and went on the attack. Both soldiers stiffened, faces locked in a rictus, and then crumpled.
Hitting the ground, the squad opened up with their spindle-fed TK assault carbines, but the ambushers had raised their telekinetic shields. Peters, still on point, low-crawled closer to the outlying buildings, but didn’t bother trying to blast through their shields. A highly rated pyrokinetic, he just focused his attention on first one roof, then the other, igniting a blaze on both.
The rest of the squad focused their fire on the quartet, but their shields held, disk shapes glowing bright with every impact. The four turned to face them. Suddenly Peters grabbed his head and writhed in pain, dropping and curling into a fetal position.
Then Cochrane was hit.
///the sun exploded
ripping the skin of the shrieking
sky apart in a violent, pulsating
nightmare///monstrous
disembodied human eyeballs bubbled up
through the leprous ground
and began devouring
Kwame their heavy gunner///his screams
echoed and reverberated infinitely
in her ears///while his body went twisting
and stretching into impossible
shapes until his torso
burst open///torn inside out like a pulpy
fruit mangled by a raging lunatic god///
Cochrane fought to regain control of her hijacked senses, but the sensory onslaught was overpowering—
///the sky plunged
into a crushing hopeless black
night///abandoned by stars///the
haunted moon
a howling death’s head
staring down on the ring
of grinning corpses
surrounding her///their faces
melting into grave rot///they
reach for her
stretching forth horrid
grasping hungry cadaverous
clawed hands///covetous
of her naked warmth///
Her resistance slipped as the telepaths reached down into the amygdala region of her brain, triggering the emotional center. Forcing herself to remain calm, she tried to concentrate on the location of her four opponents, even as she felt them twisting the knife in her mind—
///a cyclone of a million
fractaling razor blades flailing
through banshee winds///
ripping through her flesh
///face///stomach///fingers///
everywhere merciless
and unstoppable///
slicing her body
in a universe of pure pain///ten
thousand bloody
wounds made of her///
Cochrane screamed in agony. She struggled to stay alive long enough to pour all her mindfulness into one last telekinetic burst—if only she could—
///she was falling///
///she was on fire///
///she was a newborn baby
being eaten alive
by her own mother///
A sudden violent wrenching. The ground gave a single, quick, booming jolt, and then the pain vanished.
So did the flashing hellscapes.
The sergeant found herself on her knees, fingers dug deep into the turf, limbs shaking, body covered in sweat. She looked at the enemy. Her telekinetic attack had succeeded. She had reached around their line of protective shields and pulled apart the wall of the burning
tavern—it had smashed them like a giant flyswatter.
Behind the smoldering slab the two closest buildings were engulfed in flames. Inside them, shooters screamed as the fire took them. Then the sounds stopped. No other hostiles in sight. It was a quiet day in the beautiful countryside again, save for the crackling of burning wood and the heavy breathing of her soldiers.
Meyers, their squad medic, ran up. Cochrane waved her away.
“I’m fine,” she said in her crisp British accent. “Check Peters and Kwame.” She turned to Dee. He was kneeling on the grass, his face slick with tears. The barrel of his pistol was in his mouth.
“Dee?” she called to him. After a few heartbeats, he slowly pulled the gun away.
“How long?” he croaked.
“Dee? Are you okay?”
He stared blankly. “How many years was I gone?”
“Fight’s all over. Only lasted a few seconds.”
He shook his head. “No, it was decades… I grew old and feeble in there…”
Meyers went over to the esper and crouched beside him, touching her fingers to his temple, talking to him gently while she mentally ran diagnostics. After a minute or two, she returned to Cochrane.
“He’ll be alright. It’ll just take a little time to shake off the effects.”
“How are the others?”
“Silva and Bradley are dead—hostiles crushed their hearts before they could get their blocks up. Peters is shaken, but I
think he’ll be okay.” She looked over at Kwame, their heavy gunner. He was standing stock still, his spindle-fed cannon dangling from its straps and his blank eyes rolled back. Turning back to the sergeant, she shook her head.
“Kwame’s left the building. I can put some suggestions into his lizard brain to keep him marching with us, but he’s hollowed.” Meyers handed over three dog tags.
Sergeant Cochrane nodded. Walking killed in action.
“All right,” she sent out to what remained of her squad. “We still have three klicks to go to get to the bunker. Quick sweep up top to secure the area, and then we’re on the move again. Dee, you back with us?”
He wiped his face with the back of his hand, nodded.
“Good. You’re on double duty now—comms and sweeper. Stay sharp, everyone.”
The squad’s survivors moved out. Below, the villagers continued tending to the vines, industrious as bees, oblivious to the world.
* * *
When they finally reached the hatch of the spindle bunker, Cochrane breathed a silent prayer of thanks to the Corps of Engineers. It was right where the map indicated it would be, freshly planted and camouflaged. Bending down, she uncovered the square slab of nanowoven ferroconcrete, and mentally asked Dee for the combination.
“Cerulean Lemniscate Anticlockwise,” he responded.
Cochrane pictured a deep blue infinity symbol and set it gently in motion, spinning right over left as it hovered above the hatch.
“Zinnober Triangle Inverted.”
She set the image of an upside-down chrome green triangle next to the little spinning blue propeller.
“Topaz Pentagon Clockwise.”
Last, she added a yellowish-brown gem-toned pentagon, spinning opposite to the infinity sign. She held all three shapes in her mind’s eye.
The hatch made a sharp clack, unlocked, and began to sink. It descended fifteen centimeters before halting with a second clack, and slid away into a recess, revealing a narrow stone ramp. A line of tiny pale blue fluorescent lights, like helpful fireflies, showed the way. The remnants of the squad trudged down, exhausted and grateful.
At the bottom of the ramp lay the recharge chamber, dominated by the bunker’s spindle—its psionic power generator—hovering silently in the air between floor and ceiling. It was a black, elongated diamond structure with a hexagonal cross-section about sixty centimeters wide in the middle, tapering to a tiny flat hexagon at either end.
As the spindle sensed their approach, it activated with an almost imperceptible hum, slowly beginning to spin and flickering to life. Pale traces of lightning began to dance in its smoky crystalline interior, growing to an incandescence that suffused the entire generator with light.
The squad’s assault carbines and powered equipment operated on psionic
batteries as well. Each soldier unclipped their weapon’s smaller spindles and spares, placing them close to the mother spindle. They hung in the air like crystal ornaments, orbiting the generator as they recharged.
Activating the spindle’s communications array, Cochrane spoke aloud. “Sergeant Myfanwy Cochrane, 138th Kinetic Infantry, Lima one-one-oh-niner.” While she reported in, the rest inflated their cots and dug into their rations. At Meyers’ instruction Kwame sat, back to the wall, remaining motionless.
“Dee, you’ve got mail,” Cochrane said. After a moment, she added quietly, “… it’s from a PreCog.”
The whole team looked up at that, forkfuls of food halted midway to their mouths. Mail was rare enough. Private channel messages, sent from HQ to a grunt, were unheard of. A private message from Military Intelligence?
Unimaginable.
“Probably just foreseeing a dear John letter,” Peters cracked. “Or maybe they forecasted you buying the farm.” Meyers kicked him and shot him a reproachful glare.
“Sorry, Dee,” he mumbled. The sweeper swallowed, then got up and cautiously approached the spindle array, wiping his hands on his fatigues.
“Specialist John DeMetta, 138th Kinetic Infantry, Delta one-two-two-six.”
The rest of the squad waited in hushed silence while he telepathically received his message. When he finally turned around and walked back to his cot, he said nothing. Peters and Meyers exchanged worried glances.
“Well, what is it already?” Peters burst out.
“Cut the chatter, Peters,” the sergeant snapped. “The message is for him, nobody else. Got it?”
“It’s okay, Sarge,” DeMetta said. “It’s not classified. Honestly, I don’t know what the hell to make of it.” He frowned and shook his head. “It didn’t make any sense… just something about a… a girl. Amber.”
No one said anything.
“Dear John,” Peters sent to Meyers.
She nodded.
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