Kataclysma

Warning
May contain offensive content

She craned her neck over the armrest to puff in his direction. “Next level?”

The vapor cleared around the boy’s smirk. “You know what I mean.”

She blinked innocently and not dishonestly. The question had other connotations to her, but she doubted he meant it the same way.

“I like these ones, thank you,” she changed the subject, swinging herself off the couch and grabbing the new cartridges off the table.

“Going home already?”

“I have to,” she stuffed them in her bag and stood up.

The boy rolled his eyes. “You don’t *have* to,” he retorted, “you’re just stubborn. Stay with me.”

“I have things to do,” she reiterated. People to please.

“You’re really stubborn for an adult,” he continued. “If you’re really how old you say you are.”

“That’s why I have things to do,” she shrugged. “See you next week.”

“Remember you still owe me for last week,” he minded. “No more samples ‘til you pay up, K.”

“I won’t forget,” she waved and skipped out of the flat, down the stairway, and into downtown Jericho.

He knew her as K, she knew him as J, as he’d been introduced to her by their mutual acquaintance M, who she also knew as Mads, since she was her classmate at the Ponsford-Stand Academy of Secondary Education, and already top ten in their first year. Herself, on the other hand…

Her first conversation with Mads went like this.

“You *want* to know my secret,” the taller, darker, curly-haired girl emphasized, slowly unnarrowing her eyes. “I thought you said you *knew* my secret. You’re Katherine, right?”

“Just Kate,” she’d replied after a moment.

“Let me guess, you want help with your grades,” Mads deduced.

Kate nodded meekly.

Mads leaned in close. “Alright, I’ll help you out. I’ve got these, shall we say, stash that help me focus, works wonders for takehomes and evals.”

“You’ll share?” Kate breathed.

“No, but I know a guy who can set you up with them,” Mads told her. “Meet me at dismissal. But keep the hits moderated, or you’ll get hooked, and believe me you don’t want that.”

With that, Kate was introduced to J and his stash. With Mads’s guidance, she started on them as study aids, to mixed effect. Breathing in the cartridges’ vapors and letting them seep through her bloodstream did ease tension in her muscles and cool her mind, that effect was instantaneous, but even two weeks later her academic performance still hadn’t improved. By then, she should have thanked Mads and J and called it quits, but something kept her going back.

Needless to say, the hits had her hooked, only contrary to Mads’s warning, she didn’t unwant it. If anything, it helped her escape the pressures of life, including that which loomed, until J posed his question. Next level sounded an awful lot general, recenterable to questions such as “What are you going to do with your life?” often followed with “You’d better figure it out soon, or else.”

So far, everyday seemed to bring her closer to else.

### 2

“Good morning, Kate,” her sister mumbled in response. Morgan’s head rested on her interlocked hands, forming a protective tent over her toast, still unbuttered.

She’d been like that two minutes so far since Kate’s descent to the dinette. “Whacha doin?” Kate tried again.

“Shush, I’m thinking.”

Kate slunk away obligingly. Thinking took a lot of Morgan’s time lately that she’d started her internship. Thinking also delayed a lot of basic functions, like timely breakfast and grooming. Leaving the older girl to brood, Kate dug into her cereal. Getting things done doing was better than wasting time thinking.

*You need to think about after secondary.*

*If only you showed some ambition*.

*And improve your curricular stats.*

She stowed the cereal bowl and headed out into uptown Jericho.

Money. Kate needed money. Her debt to J made that clear enough.

*Wouldn’t you like some spending money?*

*You should get a job.*

This park’s trashed, Kate noted after the vapor cleared. She rocked the cartridge irritably, not hearing anything left to slush around or puff, and left it into the bushes, or so she intended.

“You’ll pick that up, girlie,” a male voice ordered.

If she’d seen the janitor sneak up on her, she’d have tossed it somewhere else, but now she hadn’t a choice. “Yes sir,” she said, retrieving the empty cartridge.

The janitor tilted his head. “All of it.”

Kate looked back. “That’s not mine-”

“Clean it up or I’ll call your parents,” the janitor warned, “or the authorities, if you prefer.”

Grudgingly, Kate picked up the loose printed scrap that he had to be complaining about.

“Kids these days,” the janitor shook his head. “Your life is far too important to waste on this rubbish. Probably more than you know, at your current stage of development.”

Quickly surveying that there was nothing else he could want her to retrieve, Kate scurried away, leaving him to talk to himself.

At a trash bin, she unfolded the scrap and in the absence of anything better to do, read it before tossing it.

A moment later, she pulled it back out.

### 3

“This is you?”

The male recruiter flipped the identity card back at Kate.

“That’s me,” she lied.

He took off his sunglasses to inspect the card, complete with Morgan’s picture and details, closer. “It’s a legit card,” he admitted, “it’s just you… look a lot younger in person, for a seventeen year old.”

His blonde companion sidled over as he said that and plucked the card from his hands. “Give her a break, Wisecracker,” the girl said over her own sunglasses. “We need all the help we can get right now.”

“Think Strongheart’s gonna put a sword, no less a gun in this kid’s hands?” he protested back. “And it’s Firecracker, not whatever you keep calling me instead.”

The girl checked her wristwatch before handing the card back to Firecracker. “Look, she’ll be eighteen in a month, so she gets a gun soon enough. If she wants to join us, let her in.” She slid her shades down her nose to give Kate a pointed grin. “You still on?”

Not seeing a point in turning back, Kate nodded.

“Come on, then.” The girl grabbed her hand and took her past Firecracker’s desk to the short hallway extending beyond. “You should get a callsign, we can make you a new passport based on that.”

They rounded a corner into a room with a ring light and camera setup facing a simple chair, which the girl seated Kate in before manning the viewfinder.

“Face up a little,” the girl instructed, before the light flashed. “Good. That’ll develop while you get your callsign in the next room. Let’s go.”

Against this girl’s enthusiasm, there was definitely no going back, so Kate followed her.

“You can really name yourself anything,” her guide went on. “There’s the three-part structure, too, if you want to follow convention. I think it’s boring, though.”

“What did you choose?” Kate worked up the courage to ask.

The girl looked momentarily surprised as she held the next door open, but quickly transformed it into a photogenic beam. “Aha, sorry for not introducing myself yet. I chose Stardust. That’s my Nexus Force callsign, but it’s more than that now, it’s my name.”

“I like it,” Kate said.

“You better, I can’t change it for another six months,” Stardust exclaimed, “not that I would. Too much paperwork, and besides, I like the name too. Now come on.”

Inside this room was a stack of thin, square plates of some lightweight material, which Kate learned after Stardust handed her the top one. In her hands, its gray opaque surface suddenly illuminated to display an orange box with three cycling columns of words contained within.

At Kate’s hesitation, Stardust tapped a button and a randomized permutation appeared. “You can try this a few times,” she suggested, moving to tap it again.

“Wait!” Kate clutched the plaque. “This is fine.”

“Not gonna do a custom one?” Stardust looked dejected enough to give Kate a start, before figuring she was teasing. Or was she? It didn’t really matter, Kate wasn’t in the mood for creative thinking. She shook her head and tapped the confirmation button, before handing the plaque back for Stardust’s inspection.

The girl pursed her lips before signing off on the form. “Keen Carefree Brouhaha it is, then. In lieu of a custom name request, this name will appear on your official passport, terms and conditions apply, blabity blabla. Welcome to the Nexus Force.”

### 4

“Our first stop is Avant Gardens, around three thousand lightyears from here,” Stardust described, “but we can get there in seconds.”

scrambled to catch up with the girl as she unlocked the gate at the end of the hall. “In seconds?” she repeated.

“Yeah, using the Mythran tech that the industry here helped us develop,” Stardust looked at her funny. “I’m surprised you didn’t already know that, Keen.”

Kate shook her head.

“No matter, the Jumpgate is right past here,” Stardust led her through. An elevator emptied them into a spacious hanger. In one of its bays, a small starship had been dismantled, with a few critical parts remaining, such as its power drive and relevant control systems.

“*Valeant*’s been repurposed,” Stardust explained, following a bundle of shielded cords to a pedestaled structure, a circular ring of three meters height and around nine meters circumference. “Her core now powers this.”

“Some sort of teleporter?” Kate deduced.

“Exactly.” Stardust reached a hand back. “Now come with me.”

Kate took it, and as Stardust stepped them onto the platform, the structure of the ring began to glow. The space within itself began to desaturate and distort, filling as if with static, before fading into the outdoors, a naturally green, hilly, and mountainously rocky zone with rays of sunlight painting the sky.

“There be Avant Gardens,” Stardust breathed. “You ready?” Then she stepped through, taking Kate with her, and the moment she passed through the threshold her entire surroundings transformed.

Instead of the meadowy greenery, an interior space materialized around them, compact, plain, and clearly lived in.

“These don’t look like gardens,” Kate expressed as Stardust pulled out the sole chair at a corner table, before waving her hand over a wall sensor so a few simple lights turned on, illuminating that they were in an apartment.

“We are on Avant Gardens,” Stardust said, offering the chair for Kate to sit. She shook her head as the older girl went on. “I know what you’re trying to do, because I’ve been there too, so I helped you do it. Escape. You’re halfway across the galactic core, in the Nexus Force, in the middle of a civil war.”

Stardust sighed and crossed the dinette to open the curtains, letting some of the natural light enter the space. “You’re safe here, in my flat. Come look.”

Kate stepped beside her and looked out. As previewed, the sunlit plains and hills of the garden world lay beyond, stretching vastly under a deep blue sky into an indiscernible horizon mixed with mountaintops and fog, under sparkling morning stars.

“I got the nice side of the complex,” Stardust said, taking Kate’s hand and leading her to the door. After looking both ways down the corridor, she took Kate down one direction. At the landing, this side’s windows showed the other side of the story.

A grungy street ran below, narrowly little more than a line spanning their vantage point from that of an opposing apartment complex, its plain gray siding in due need of a power wash. Smoke wafted upwards, steady streams from firepits and sporadic puffs from substance users, spread apart from each other and unmingling.

“It’s a neglected world,” Stardust said softly. “The Maelstrom situation is still confined to the lab zone, and there’s little to no civil unrest, none relative to the other worlds, so the Force directs its efforts there. But we’re not making progress like this. We’re spread too thin. We can’t win two wars without help.”

“I want to help,” Kate said.

“Do you really?” Stardust sighed. “Do you even know what’s going on here, and what’s going on at Jirdia?”

Not wanting to look ignorant, Kate resigned to herself a moment to form a response. When she did, she stared Stardust in the eye. “Those are different things to me,” she asserted. “I want nothing to do with Jirdia, its industries, its wealth and power. My *family’s* wealth and power. I’m done with the safe and secure upbringing, cause it leads to what? Sitting in an office, making decisions for other people, not caring what effect it has on them? That’s not for me. I can’t reinvent it from the inside out, I need to break out of it if I want to *help*.”

She turned back to the window and the scene below. There were vendors, as well. Weaponsmiths, armorers, healers. Front line workers, and idling around them were the soldiers, fighters for the Nexus Force, the people making the difference. Kate knew this was where she belonged.

Stardust’s hand rested on Kate’s shoulder. “You’re not the dumb rich kid I thought you were,” she said quietly.

“I try not to be,” Kate responded.

She felt Stardust’s approval. “I honestly had ideas of my own, for, you know, reinventing things from the inside out, as far as Jirdia’s involvement and your potential influencing were concerned. But I’m an outsider while you’ve lived it, so I defer to you. And like I said before, I knew you were trying to escape, because I’ve been there too. But maybe you’re the more genuine of us.”

She turned them both around back to her apartment. “I’ll take you to meet Commander Strongheart in the morning.”

“Morning?” Kate echoed.

“We still operate on a twenty-four hour clock,” Stardust said, “even in worlds under permanent daylight like this one. It’s eleven at night and the Commander’s guaranteed to be sleeping, as we should be. Your choice between air mattress and couch.”

“Couch,” Kate accepted. “One question, though.”

“Shoot.”

“Got any vapor kits?”

### 5

The voices stopped and the apartment door shut. “Go back to sleep, Keen,” Stardust said, turning the lights back off. “It’s nothing.”

From the couch, Kate stared groggily at where the older girl had been illuminated. The curtains had been shut and sun shades activated, coating the flat in a still darkness. “What was he saying?”

Stardust seemed paused. “You don’t still have to stay, you know,” she said finally. Not just from the tiredness of the hour, she seemed uncharacteristically rattled. “The Jumpgate was one way, but there’s flights back to Jirdia from Nimbus Station.”

Kate was too taken aback to interrupt.

“You’re obviously still a kid,” Stardust went on, “and this war out here is not… neither of them are good for people like you. I shouldn’t have let you come.”

Kate swung off the couch. “I can go my own way, then, if you’re kicking me out.”

“I’m not,” Stardust started, but Kate was already to the door and undoing the deadbolt. She slipped out faster than the tired girl could chase.

Under perpetual daylight, Kate stepped into the bright field surveyed before and rounded the complex to the street. Pedestrians remained in transit and street shops open, despite the ‘late’ hour.

“What’ve you got?” she asked the first vendor who was at present.

“All the necessities you’ll ever need out here,” the fellow replied. “Basic weapons, armor, the stuff to polish them, and rations.”

From under the stall, he produced a short black spear for Kate’s inspection.

“A hundred coins,” he announced.

Kate frowned, not immediately wanting to reveal her lack of funds… was that a card in her pocket? She withdrew Morgan’s identity card, which doubled as a credit card.

“Sorry kid,” the vendor sighed. “I can’t take credit. Come back when you’re a little richer.”

Pouting, Kate turned away and almost bumped into a helmeted fellow of indeterminate features behind her. “Sorry,” she mouthed and sidestepped out of the way, but instead the person followed her.

She spun around and they stopped. “Looking for something?” she called, before darting behind the stalls and bolting. She was lightfooted and rapidly covered distance before returning to the street. Taking a quick peak behind, the strange person was no longer in sight.

“Strange dude that was,” said a ginger girl manning the nearest stall.

“You saw that?” Kate yelped a little louder and higher pitched than desired. She stamped a few times to regain her nerves.

“Yea I saw,” the girl replied obviously. “I also saw you bout’a get scammed by Hans up there, his loot’s worth no more than what the rest of us sell it for.” She hovered the back of her hand over her own array of items. “Same gear, a fraction of the price. A *fair* price.”

“Where do you get this stuff?” Kate asked.

The girl popped a bubble. “The battlefield. It’s not even two miles that way. If you ain’t buying anything, I’ll show you.”

“No money,” Kate admitted.

The girl pulled an industrial curtain down over the stall and locked out. “Come on then. Team for some kills and I’ll share the proceeds. What do they call you?”

“Keen,” Kate responded.

“I’m Shrill,” the girl replied. “Let’s leave it at that.”

### 6

“New here, huh?” Shrill asked. “I can tell.”

“Just joined,” Kate explained.

“Same,” Shrill groaned. “Wanna know why I’m selling trash here? I need enough coins to get off this stupid rock. The guy I’m looking for isn’t here.”

After a few silent moments traveling on the roadside, Shrill retorted, “You’re supposed to say, ‘that’s interesting,’ or ‘who’s the guy?’”

“Oh,” Kate apologized.

“You’re a shy one,” Shrill said. “Actually, that’s perfect, since you can keep listening. So the guy’s my deadbeat uncle, who just up and left last month, leaving everything very irresponsibly behind. Apparently he joined the Nexus Force, which is why I’m here to drag his butt back to where it belongs, Elistra… if I can get off this rock myself, of course.”

The road entered a steep downturn before it abruptly ended. The downturn was the result of a bridge collapse, as the road had transitioned into a bridge that had since fallen into the multilevel valley below.

“Here we are,” Shrill waved grandly at the overlooked valley before backtracking a few paces to an obscure metal stairwell that clanked and weaved disturbingly as they descended.

“The battlefield?” Kate guessed.

“One of them,” Shrill partially acknowledged. “This one’s on the eastside of the mine, and a little more obscure. There’s rarely any ventures out here, or Ventures, for that matter. Haha, I made a punny. That’s right, you’re shy. It’s a good grinding spot since that mineshaft over there,” she pointed out a hole low in the opposing cliff face about a mile off, “goes directly to the mine. Which is a Maelstrom mine, bee tee double you, eff why eye, whatever.”

Kate blinked in confusion.

“You can speak up if you’re confused by anything I’m saying,” Shrill suggested offhandedly.

“Grinding?” Kate echoed.

“Collecting loot,” Shrill defined. “Stromlings are based on people, so sometimes they form with useful belongings. And since these guys are literally out of a mine, they sometimes carry precious metals too. Kill them and they’re all yours.”

Kate decided now was as good a time as any to reveal that she didn’t know the slightest about fighting. “I can’t fight,” she said.

“Excuse me, but double you tee eff are you doing in the Nexus Force if you can’t fight?” Shrill whirled.

“I don’t know how,” Kate amended.

Shrill sighed and reached behind her back, returning with a gun as if it had materialized out of thin air. “You know how to shoot stuff?”

Kate nodded.

“I’ll point you some targets,” Shrill said, leading them to an old tree with a large bell hanging off it, “and you shoot them.” Then she rang the bell.

Coincidental to the gong’s reverberation around the valley, the wind seemed to pick up and the skies seemed to darken both shiveringly so. A few tall grass patches began to rustle, and small rocks clattered down the cliff.

“There,” Shrill pointed to the left and Kate’s eyes darted to follow. Staggering down one of the valley’s slopes, a couple fields’ lengths away but closing, was a person. No, a Stromling. The purple smoke misting from the exposed bones on its left side, if not the exposed bones themselves, basically gave it away. And of course the glowing red eyes, too.

“Yo Keen,” Shrill said, “shoot him. Or her. No, definitely a him.” She sideglanced Kate. “What, do you not know how to shoot stuff?”

“I’m trying,” Kate grit her teeth. She’d aimed and pulled the weapon’s trigger a fifth time now to no effect.

“For fuck’s sake,” Shrill grabbed the gun and dropped the Stromling before it could get any closer. “What, did nobody unlock your imagination?”

“Are you calling me dumb?” Kate demanded.

“Girl, chill,” Shrill exclaimed. “It’s- you know what, nah, fuck it. You stay close while I make the kills.”

“No,” Kate aimed back towards the stairwell.

“Or you can leave,” Shrill said nonchalantly, or at least pretendingly so, more likely the latter as she ran up to follow. “Great, now I gotta escort your ass back to civilization so you don’t get dragged off and infected or something. Serious question,” she popped.

Kate rolled her eyes while glaring back at the ginger girl.

“Do *you* even *know* what you’re doing out here?” Shrill asked. “Cuz you seem totally braindead.”

“I don’t need you,” Kate scoffed.

“Au contraire,” Shrill shrugged.

“You can do without insulting me,” Kate scolded.

“It gets you to talk,” Shrill defended.

“I don’t care,” Kate kicked the ground, before a wave of compressed air knocked them both forward a couple of feet off theirs, followed by an ear and earth shattering explosion.

Rocks and debris clattered to the shaking ground around them then they looked back to see orange and purple flames billowing out of what had been the cliff that had contained the mineshaft, now massively hollowed out like a volcanic corona. Even through the smoke, channels of a glistening black goo oozed out of the destroyed mountain. Even at a distance, arms and heads could be discerned surfacing, forming from the liquid.

“They did it,” Shrill gaped. “They actually fucking did it.”

“Who did what?” Kate repeated.

“It was just a rumor,” Shrill sounded despondent. “This ruins everything. Fuuuuu-”

She yelped as Kate slapped her. “The fuck are you talking about?!” Kate yelled.

Scowling, Shrill got to her feet, then grabbed Kate’s hand and with surprising pull ran her along their previous trajectory, back to the stairs, and escape. “The stupid rogues,” Shrill huffed, “just actually bombed, the maelstrom mine.”

“Okay,” Kate said, not really knowing or understanding any of the explicit or implicit meanings of that statement.

“Not okay!” Shrill shouted. “It’s like, how do I say this, knocking down a beehive. Know what happens when you do that? You get bees. But instead of bees coming out of the black honey back there, we get Stromlings- oh, of course.”

A platoon of Stromlings stood blocking the stairwell. They began to charge.

### 7

Shrill’s slender torso was unexpectedly bulked by a suit of armor that Kate swore she wasn’t wearing before. “Take this,” she handed a shield to Kate, which nearly pulled her to the ground as soon as she assumed its weight.

A bluish tint then fell over Kate’s vision, from a sparkling bubble centered on the shield in her hands.

“Stick close, since I’m powering that,” Shrill grunted, before a large sword appeared in her own hand, which she fluidly and expertly sliced through the charging Stromlings. “If I seem distracted, it’s cuz I’m reading something.”

Kate nodded silently, trying not to feel insane by the lack of any visible reading material in front of Shrill, whose alleged multitasking while discharging the Stromlings did the inverse of instilling confidence in her abilities. She looked away instead, into a swath of more Stromlings.

“Shrill!” she alerted.

The other girl glanced back. “Almost done with these ones,” she reported. “Alright, that’s it, up the stairs!”

They scrambled for them, Kate first with Shrill behind, swinging her sword at the following Stromlings, cutting off arms and severing necks. A rushing Stromling made it past the crumpled bodies only to be kicked back down, scattering the others below it.

Something shrieked below them and both girls screamed as the stairs began to shake, its center of mass distorted by the large multilegged creature climbing up the side. It was almost level with them when Kate heaved the shield at the monster. On contact with the energy projection, its legs convulsed and the creature squealed while falling to the ground.

“Nice move there,” Shrill complimented, yet the stairs continued to shake.

“There’s more,” Kate breathed.

“Just keep moving,” Shrill urged.

They were nearly there when the staircase tipped without warning, teetering down and throwing both girls into the horde below. Pointed legs with sharp claws fell around Kate, who held up the shield, but they grabbed it tighter and yanked, exposing the bloated head of the creature, a disgusting mass of orange pus filled eyes and several clicking fangs, dripping to the tips with gleaming black venom, the beads reflecting Kate’s terror back at her, before they descended.

### 8

“I’m with you,” Stardust’s voice was soothing.

When Kate’s eyes opened, the lights in the room sparked, catching Stardust’s attention while Kate’s mind went back to- nothing. Nothing. Just a white flash. Then there was something. A landing craft. Soldiers disembarking, surveying, rescuing, Stardust among them.

Stardust’s gaze returned to Kate who was trying to push out of the gantry. “Take it easy Keen, it’s time to rest up,” the older girl encouraged.

“It’s Kate,” Kate sighed, and the lights surged again as she did so.

“Your name is Kate,” Stardust repeated. “So that’s who you are. Do you still feel tired?”

Kate didn’t know what she felt. Electrified, maybe. “Broken,” she expressed.

“It’s normal to feel wonky just after having your imagination unlocked,” Stardust informed. “You apparently had a forced unlocking, corroborated by Shrill Failed Brick’s testimony, from back in the valley.” Stardust shook her head. “I should never have let you go.”

“I won’t go back,” Kate stated.

“To the valley? I don’t blame you,” Stardust agreed.

“Back home,” Kate clarified with resolution and the lights surged as she spoke, catching both their attentions.

“I don’t know why they’re doing that,” Stardust said suspiciously. “They weren’t before.”

As they watched the lights closely for a few paces, Kate grew keenly aware of a periodic pulsation to their output, seemingly concurrent to the beating of her heart… in time, the strange behavior stopped altogether.

Stardust flipped her head. “I suppose that’s all you had left to do,” she returned to the previous subject. “You’ve got your callsign, be it what it may; your Imagination’s unlocked; you’re here on the front lines; evidently you know how to fight.”

Kate’s brow furrowed as she, for once, thought back. It was hard enough to remember the white flash, as for what happened before… she couldn’t. But after it, during the rescue, she’d seen their surroundings, the valley full of fallen Stromlings… she’d done that?

“Where is this?” Kate asked of their surroundings.

“A ship,” Stardust said. “We’re fasttracking you to Nimbus Station on Strongheart’s orders. Someone with your ability doesn’t need his training. The Factions need your ability, now more than ever, with the civil war and all.”

It may have been her imagination that the lights blipped again as Kate’s excitement picked up. Because she wasn’t braindead, joining the Nexus Force and all. It wasn’t a mindless decision, as her newfound introspection began to put together. She was useful here, if recent events were evidence, and the people here believed in her.

Maybe she could believe in herself too.