Codename: Freedom - Book 5 - Chapter 22

The very next day, the news was released. Several more people including the Real Major Jeff Wright had unlocked rank D psionics. And by several, I mean dozens. The Forefathers, Brendon Black’s battalion, could now put together a full squad of rank D users. Lethal Accord was behind in numbers by just a few as were The Burden Bearers.

It was just like our time back in Freedom. Once people started unlocking their psionics, it happened in mass. Destiny reassured me that this wouldn’t be the same. Only the most talented would unlock rank D psionics this quickly. For others that might still end up at the level of Krato after a few decades of training, it could take weeks, months or even years before they unlocked rank D.

Any relief I might’ve felt after the event details were released had been squelched. The strategy Destiny and I’d come up with was still feasible. However, even if we captured a flag and killed the most manticores, I didn’t see how two points would be enough. The one thing we had going for us was our base’s psionic barrier that also reinforced our walls. Thanks to Victoria’s planning, we had arguably the most impenetrable base defense in Vanguard. If we could capture a flag, at least we should be able to keep it.

It was the most desperate I’d felt in a long time when I showed up in front of Aeneus Raptis. As he’d taught in his early training, I took a knee on my round platform to salute my superior. It was something he very rarely required of me.

Seeing it, he let out a sigh of annoyance. “No ice cream?”

I clenched my jaw and inwardly rebuked myself for not bringing more. “The details for the next event have been released.

He let out a grunt which was as close to a laugh as it got for him. “I have seen the footage. They’ve used dirt floors to try and limit your ability to use your hover ability without making it obvious. It will still be more than enough for you to hover, and your speed shouldn’t be limited too severely.”

Wrapping his arms over his chest, he studied me from where he hovered on his opposing platform. “I’ve seen the footage from your last event. The event developers had your ability in mind when they designed the central stage of the next event as an open arena. They know what every soldier has known since the dawn of warfare. An inferior force that makes use of geographic advantages can defeat a superior opponent.”

With a swipe of his hand, he brought up the sim’s management panel and made some adjustments. An instant later, the landscape changed.

What I saw took my breath away. We weren’t on the ground level, but I was currently kneeling on top of the half mile high wall that loomed over the first stage of the coming event. Close enough to look over the edge, my stomach did cartwheels as I looked down at what looked like a narrow canyon.

Then Krato continued his lecture. “As a soldier with limited access to psionic abilities, most Ekseliksi believed it impossible for me ever earn the rank of Krato. As I told you before, my psionics comes with advantages and disadvantages. But in the right environment, there isn’t a Krato alive that can compete with me. As you’ve repeatedly begged, I will now show you the limits I’ve reached with Push and my rank D psionics.”

Without another word, Krato didn’t dive into the canyon-like tunnel, but launched himself upward with a full-powered psionic push. I’d felt it too many times in the recent weeks as he’d attacked me to miss it now.

My neck twitched when he climbed even higher than we already were. Destiny rarely appeared during my time with Krato, but she was always present. I didn’t even have on a headset in this simulation, but she appeared in the upper corner of my vision as if I did. I saw her narrow gaze.

“Lucius, this…” she whispered, but didn’t finish her sentence.

Then Aeneus Raptis shot from the sky. Even if the dirt floor wasn’t that great for psionics, the stone wall was exceptional. From little less than a mile above the earth, he propelled himself downward. He had never relied on terminal velocity, or the top speed one could reach while free falling. Now only did he use a streamlined posture, but he was pushing psionic energy out of the air and full blast to cause as much thrust as he could manage.

He was fast. I’d more or less been fighting a peregrine falcon, the fasted animal in existence, over the last couple of weeks as we trained. But as he blurred past me into the canyon, I stood and watched him go.

“This…” Destiny said under her breath.

Between the two walls, he was gaining speed. Even I could tell without an AI’s confirmation. But then it happened. A sonic boom blasted from the tunnel beneath before he reached the ground. However, he wasn’t headed for a direct collision. His angle was uncomfortably sharp, but somehow, he swooped forward until he was skirting over the earth’s surface like some superhero.

He must have lost speed, for an instant later there was a second sonic boom. Then he was gone. Not literally, but we were near the beginning of the tunnel canyon, so he had close to a mile of tunnel to go and he was only getting faster. It was hard to see him with the human eye from where I stood.

Destiny was kind enough to light up his form in my vision. “He’s using the wall,” she muttered. “Which narrows…”

She didn’t have to say more. The further away the Ekseliksi got the narrower the tunnel became, and the faster he went until—louder than the first sonic booms despite now being a mile away, thunder roared from the tunnel just before he shot out the other side in a slight upward angle.

Gasping, Destiny exclaimed, “Mach two. This shouldn’t be possible. The amount of thrust it would require. He just reached a speed of over 1,534 miles per hour.”

And then he flew.

She was quick to bring up a free-floating panel so that I could watch from a different angle. From the side, I watched as he flew over the shorter walls of the next layer before reaching the central arena and soaring right over it in a matter of seconds. He began to descend toward the tops of the shorter walled maze on the other side when he became like the flat rock thrown across a calm water’s surface while skipping stones.

Then he dove headfirst into the tunnel directly across from the one I was standing on many miles away. Again he picked up speed until a moment later he flew upward. His momentum carried him even higher than his psionic push had before he’d first started this insanity.

We heard the sonic booms again. Seconds was all it took for him to travel the miles between one side of the event grounds and the other.

It didn’t have to be said because I was already thinking it, but Destiny took that opportunity to put voice to what we were thinking. “This is what your real enemy is capable of, Lucius. The Vasileia you’ll fight for Victoria’s hand will be even more powerful. And can you imaging if an entity like this went after your parents instead of some incompetent terrorists? And the damage he could do in a city where he could take advantage of the buildings?”

She was right, but there was something else that Aeneus Raptis had said before the Gathering of Guilds. “Variables.”

“What?”

This is what he had meant. I was now convinced more than ever that my fighting with a squad was the wrong decision. “The possibilities are endless.”

Krato broke the sound barrier one more time once he reentered the tunnel I stood above, but he didn’t reach Mach 2 this time. Instead, he slowed as he drew near only to come to a stop in the center of the tunnel to just hover there on nothing.

I felt the psionic energy he was putting off. This wasn’t just the master of psionic push through his hands and feet, but he could use the ability from any part of his body with ease.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he looked down his nose at me from several yards above and about twenty yards away. He’d just treated our future battlefield like his own personal skatepark.

It almost made me laugh. The only reason we’d had a smidgen of a chance against him during Vanguard’s first event was because the battle ground was a grassy field. And even then, he’d been toying with us. Only Prodos’s energy weapon had made our victory possible.

Then Krato spoke, “When we first met, I labeled you néos, because even now, that’s what you are. You and your men are children floundering around blindly, but you above all are starting to see. In large part, that’s because I’ve done as you asked. I’m no longer limiting myself to give your mind room to adapt. So now that your eyes are open, néos, do you have the courage to continue what you’ve only started?”

Making a fist, I took a knee and put knuckles to stone. “Yes, Krato.”

I felt a surge of psionic energy as he floated toward me slowly, uncrossing his arms from his chest. “Then let’s begin. You do not have the psionic strength for your Push to reach the far side of this wall. Even while standing between the two at its widest, it will be difficult for you to hold yourself off the ground without also pushing downward.

“As the passageway narrows,” he said, pointing toward the second layer where the walls fall from half a mile high to a few stories. “Your control will improve. However, despite your limitations, on this battlefield the advantage belongs to you. Potentially.”

He flew forward until he was nearly standing on my head from where he hovered above. I even began to feel the downward pressure his psionics were giving off. “There is a month and some weeks until you’ll be call upon to use what I’m about to teach you. At no time in my past would I have been foolish enough to try to train someone as inexperienced as you. I don’t believe it’s possible in the time we have to achieve anything of note, but neither have I met another néos as manic as you are.”

From where I was kneeling, I would’ve had to lean back to even look up at him, so he didn’t see my constipated look. I kept my sarcastic remarks to myself.

“There is a single course of action we can take as far as I can tell. You will spend every available moment off the grounds. This battlefield will become your second home. It’s time you learned to fly.”

Without warning, Krato appeared behind me and blasted me with a psionic push.

I found myself falling into the canyon that was certain death if I didn’t do something. Néos I may be, but I wasn’t entirely without experience.

A psionic push against the air like a giant wind walk sent my hurling toward the wall. Pushing through my hands, I cushioned my approach as I got my body under control. I launched myself toward the opposite wall with every intention of using them to manage my descent. As I was halfway there, a gust sent me spinning in an unknown direction.

“You’re trying to survive,” Krato demanded. “This is your domain. You are king. Now make it so.”

I didn’t know what he wanted from me, but I knew him well enough by now to know how he might react. If I continued as I was, trying to control my descent, he was going to make life hard for me. So instead, I regained my bearings and dived straight toward the ground.

There was no way I would survive a collision from this height even with my psionic’s help, but I needed to know exactly where my limits were. So I tried. I used wind walk in a way I never had. I didn’t try to direct it through my limbs, but my body as a whole. I might not be able to put out the same force as he could. It was possible for me to put out far more than I normally did by expelling it from a larger surface area.

It started to work. I tried to imitate the angle that he used in order to swoop across the ground. The g-force I felt pulled at my entire body, but I surprisingly released push evenly enough that I didn’t start spinning or summersaulting. There was something instinctive about this that I never would’ve discovered without trying it. And who was that crazy?

The moment I felt my fall turn into something more, an elation flooded my system. It was as intense as my first good experience in virtual reality gaming.

As soon as the moment came, so did the ground. I’d waited too long. Cut it too close. One moment I was for all practical purposes flying. The next I was dead.

I respawned at the top of the wall from where I’d been pushed. I was playing back what I’d just experienced in my mind when I felt my body go airborne.

A voice sounded from above, “You took too long. When I say every available moment. I mean it.”

As much as I wanted to take offense, this wasn’t the first time I’d experienced this type of training. Achilles had tossed me into the bandit sim, and I did nothing else for a week. Of course, that time I’d agreed to undergo his training. This time? I also agreed.

Refocusing, I did a quick calculation and tried to improve on the timing from last time. Even though I was doing something similar to what the Kratos had shown me, it wasn’t the same. He’d been using his psionics to increase his speed as he descended. He’d broken the sound barrier before even reaching the ground. I was just freefalling, traveling a fraction of the speed that he had.

Part of me believe it was impossible for someone with only rank E psionics. The rest of me scoffed. I had no idea what was possible. Who on planet Earth had even considered such a thing? Besides a few hidden Ekseliksi that is.

And so, my dying began anew. Also known as training.