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Teliko faces off against the source of her mental anguish, and the true extent of her powers are tested.

"It's nothing to me! It's a bacterium! I travel in worlds you can't even imagine! You can't conceive of what I'm capable of!"

---

Otherwise, the plan was progressing exactly on schedule. With the Evil preoccupied with the Rocinante and the remaining sphere ships, Yalogalil, Nai, and the Sytis soldiers arrived at a narrow section of the Evil ship’s hull without incident. In the lead ship, Yalogalil tapped his claws nervously on his rifle. “Anything?”
The Sytis was quiet while he regarded his instruments. “No activity.”
Yalogalil raised his S-Com to his face. “Rico. Clear. Get in here.”
“One moment… the Frontier just… exploded.”
“What?! What of, er… who was aboard?”
“The cockpit ejected. I raised someone, but they didn’t tell me anything and I can’t get them to respond again. We can only hope everyone was inside.”
“Should we not proceed?”
“Uh… You better go ahead. We’re alerting the fleet, though. We’ll be by to do our part soon.”
“Luck of Denoka.”
“Uh… thanks.”
Yalogalil drew a heavy breath and nodded to the Sytis. “Go.”
The soldier pulled the ship close to the hull and held steady. The ship began to form an appendage, which extended towards the hull and suddenly produced an incredibly bright flame. Nai and Yalogalil had to look away as it made contact with the hull.

“There was a beam of some kind. I don’t know where it came from-”
“Dammit! It’s obvious where it came from! Are there survivors?!”
“I’m not sure…”
Leo pulled them away from the battle. “Fieru, signal Serleah. We’re going back.”
“I don’t think that’s a good-”
“That’s an order.”
Fieru gulped. “I’m calling Serleah…”

Serleah was occupied. “She did what?! How long ago?!”
“It might have been twenty minutes… Please, you have to get her.”
“I will- Leo! Hang on, Leena, Leo just broke off. I’ll call you back.”
She clicked her S-Com off and immediately got a call. “Serleah, I assume you were just talking to Rico?”
“No, Leo, get back here! I was just talking to Leena! They’re all fine, but Teliko left with Czyak to join the strike team! I need you back here now so I can get over there and drag her ass out of the combat zone!”
There was silence on the other side, then. “Fine… But hurry. We need everyone together for the final phase.”
“Alright. Good luck.”
Serleah slammed her S-Com shut and turned to Vaà. “Scan for Czyak’s ship.”
“No need. I can hear him.”

Lenny was biting his lip so hard blood was dribbling into his fur. He called Rico again. “Anything?”
“I just got word back, actually. Everyone’s safe over there, but Teliko decided to go rogue. Serleah’s gonna pick her up. We’re going to continue with our part of the plan.”
“Thank God!”
There was a chuckle on the other end. “Our luck seems to be holding.”
“Don’t say that, you’ll jinx it!”
“Come on, Lenny.”
Lenny grabbed his controls and shakily accelerated towards the Evil ship. They passed Yalogalil and hovered near one of the inert exhaust ports of the ship. Just as Vaà had said, there was a stream of gasses still being released from it, even though the engines were not operating. “Okay, Lenny… you take the far side. Landing grips parallel to the exhaust port.”
“Alright…”
They landed on the hull, ships back to back across the massive exhaust port. “Thrusters to 45 degrees back.”
“Done. My magnetic seal is good… you?”
“Peachy. Now we wait.”

It took only a few minutes to cut a hole into the hull. After a section was brought away, a meter-wide, perfectly circular hole stared invitingly at them. However, they could not see into the ship. A silvery film covered the opening, the same type used by the Sytis training suits. Yalogalil rubbed his arms. “Okay… Nai, how comfortable are you?”
“Uh, what?”
“With space, and… this Sytis suit.”
“I… I don’t know. Vaà tried to explain it to me, but I didn’t understand it. It seems to have a practically zero percent failure rate, though.”
“Well...”
Yalogalil stuck his hand outside. “Here goes…”
He kicked off and floated the short distance between the ships. Once he entered the Evil ship, he felt gravity pull him to a floor. He tumbled and landed on a metal object. “Ah!”
The metal object was about to effect repairs, but found Yalogalil to be a more inviting object of focus and activated a welding tool. Yalogalil was much quicker, rolling away into a crouch and blasting three holes in the outer shell of the machine. It stopped, sprang a leak of green fluid and backed away slightly. Either it was not equipped for combat or it was too damaged to switch to a weapon; either way, it did not attack Yalogalil further. Taking this as an invitation, Yalogalil placed ten more holes in the thing, at which point it fell to the ground with a clang. Nai was oblivious to any of this action, so when he tumbled into the hallway, saw Yalogalil in a combat stance and turned around, he screamed. “AH! KILL IT!”
“I have! …I believe so.”
A Sytis climbed through the hole and took up a position behind Yalogalil as he kicked the inert metal thing. He shot it again. “Yes. It is.”
“Wow… Y’know, Cain shot one. It didn’t do anything.”
“I don’t think this is a soldier. Besides, he was shooting with bullet, not beams.”
Once the remaining Sytis were in the hallway, Yalogalil turned to Nai. “So, which way do you think?”
“Uh… if I remember correctly… down there.”

A few minutes after the strike team had moved on, Teliko stuck her head timidly into the hole. “It’s clear.”
She felt gravity pull on her as she slipped inside, but righted herself with her mind before landing. Czyak landed on his back. “Yes. It’s in here. Can you feel it?”
Czyak stood and exhaled. “I can. I… I can.”
Teliko closed her eyes and felt something rough poke her brain. “This way.”
They headed in the opposite direction of Yalogalil.

~~~

After the emergency thrusters burned up, the cockpit of the Frontier floated to a stop some ways away from the battle, waiting to be rescued. Leph tried not to shake as Leena bound his injured paw. “Seventeen goddamn years…”
“Hold still.”
Zach was in the wall, checking on their emergency systems. “Oxygen tank is good. Recycler is… online. I think.”
Leph growled. “You think?!”
“Calm down!” Leena said, tying off Leph’s bandage.
Dez and Cyan sat against the wall. Cyan was cowering behind Dez’s large frame, and Dez had taken it upon himself to keep Cyan from panicking. Cyan sat up and whispered something into Dez’s ear. He leaned over a little, putting him in position to call to Zach. “So, Zach… Uh, what caused this… Catastrophic failure?”
Zach crawled out of the wall and wiped his brow. “Uh… I guess we were hit.”
“I mean… specifically.”
“Why do you wanna know?”
“Cyan was curious.”
Zach sighed and sat cross legged in front of Cyan. “Okay, well… it’s really age that’s the problem. See, this ship was built for mass production during wartime. Safeties weren’t top priority. Hell, we’re only alive because Leph and I refitted the ship.”
“Against our will.” Leph called over.
Zach coughed. “I guess. Anyway, whatever hit us must have severely damaged the coolant system. That’s a deeply integrated system and there was only so much we could do to protect it.”
He stood and laughed slightly. “If there’s one flaw on this ship that is sure to cause it to blow up, it’s that coolant system. I’m surprised it lasted this long.”
“You’re talking like the ship is still here. It exploded.”
“Yes, Leph, I know.”
Zach turned back to Cyan and smiled. “So, understand now?”
Cyan nodded quickly. “Yeah.”
Zach rubbed his head and slouched in the engineering seat. “Hey Leph?”
“What?”
“Remember the first thing I ever fixed on this ship?”
“No. I don’t.”
Zach grinned and tapped his head. “It was the coolant pipe. We’ve come full circle.”
Leph stood and jabbed an extended claw towards Zach. “I don’t get you. The Frontier was just completely destroyed! And here you are joking about it!”
“It was a fine ship! But old, too old. Certainty too old or combat.”
“If you had just-” Leph sat abruptly. “You don’t understand.”
Leena stroked his head softly. He didn’t react. “We understand, Leph. We all loved the ship. It was almost part of the family.”
“It was a part of me.”
No one spoke after that.

Serleah found the breach and told her pilot to return to the combat. She glanced at the dead robot briefly, charged her weapon, and took out her S-Com. She called Teliko. Again, there was no answer. However, down the corridor, she could hear a faint buzzing. She followed it, finding an S-Com in the middle of the hall. She glanced up at the sloping floor, and ran.

It only took Gray Fox ten minutes to figure out that someone had deleted the file he was looking for. It took him ten seconds to realize it was Polos and Cain. He checked his coat, taking out the small taser he had used on Nai. “Polos!”
Cain and Polos were standing by the time Grey Fox arrived. He crossed his arms. “You deleted the schematic.”
“Yep.”
Polos pushed Cain. “Don’t… tell him that!”
Cain just rolled his eyes. “So, we’re at a stalemate.”
Grey Fox shook his head. “No, we are not. You two tell me how to deactivate those force fields and I won’t kill you. See?”
Cain grumbled. “I’m still God’s-”
“The moment I have that field down, I’m going to activate this totally operational Oculus beam and finally complete project Raiden. We’ll get sucked back into our world and right behind us will be energy.”
“You’ll have to figure out the field by yourself.” Cain said, crossing his arms.
Grey Fox shrugged. “Fine.”
He darted forwards, throwing a punch at Cain. He hurriedly deflected the blow, but Grey Fox had gotten his taser under Cain’s guard. He jolted up, and his artificial arm contracted. Polos gasped. “Hey!”
He attacked. He managed to land a single glancing blow to Grey Fox’s jaw before he was thrown, Grey Fox levering Polos by the arm onto his back with a whoosh. “Argh! You old bast-”
Grey Fox slipped a concealed knife from his sleeve and had embedded it in Polos’ neck before he could stand. He died instantly.
Cain was supposed to be unconscious, and it sure felt like he was. However, he saw Polos die and Grey Fox spit on his corpse before walking across the bay towards the field generators. “Guh…”
Cain pushed on the floor with his arms. He fell over again. Grey Fox looked over from the first generator. “Oh? Are you still awake?”
He grinned and stuck his head inside the generator’s casing. “Aha! Not as sophisticated as I thought!”
Grey Fox stood back and kicked the generator. It went down, and so did the field. He brushed off his paws and sighed. “Good! Now… you stay put; I’ll be over to kill you in one moment. I just have to complete my life’s work.”
He strolled towards the Oculus beam. At that point Cain had mustered enough energy to stand, and was lurching across the bay. He kept his bloodshot eyes fixed on Grey Fox as the old foxhound wildly flailed at the controls. He grabbed Grey Fox’s foot and dragged him off the raised control booth. “Gotcha!”
Grey Fox sprawled on the floor, and Cain gave him a single, prosthetic punch to the jaw. Blood flew, and Cain slumped back against the Oculus beam. He thought he had knocked Grey Fox out, or even killed him, but after a few seconds Cain began to hear chuckling accompanied by a low whirring sound. “Haha… Atriea will be utopia!”
Cain glanced up. All the indicators were green. “What did you do?!”
“What do you think I did!? I activated the firing program! It’s only a matter of about forty minutes before we’re all back home!”
Cain pushed himself up and nearly fell over Grey Fox. He grabbed his muzzle. “Turn it off.”
“No. My, that was easy.”
Cain raised his fist, but Grey Fox only laughed. “I know how to turn it off. Hell, I know how to make it open a stable rout home! You can’t kill me, and you can’t do it yourself.”
Grey Fox made a stab with his knife, but Cain grabbed his arm with his prosthetic. “Fuck you, Grey Fox.”
He closed his fist, and Grey Fox screamed.

Yalogalil encountered no resistance for about five minutes. Then, around one corner, there were about a dozen of the things. Larger than the repair robot he had encountered earlier, these robots looked mean and armed. “Back!”
There was a shower of light as the robots opened fire. Yalogalil dove out of the way as the torrent hit the wall beside them and showered the party with sparks. He glanced around the corner once more and met another barrage. Luckily, the robots didn’t seem to be very good shots. Yalogalil turned to the terrified Nai and the stone-faced Sytis. “Okay. They are being dug in over there.”
He glanced back to be sure the robots weren’t charging them, then gestured at Nai. “Case.”
Nai blinked. “What?!”
“Case! Launcher!”
“Oh!”
Nai tossed it over and Yalogalil had the weapon deployed in a few seconds. “You stay…”
Nai’s eyes widened. The Sytis seemed to be watching Yalogalil, as though they were waiting to see his moves. He took one more quick glance around the corner, waited a moment, then tossed his rifle into the hall. At the same moment the robots obliterated the weapon, Yalogalil jumped into the hall, rolled, and came up with the launcher on his shoulder and sights lined up with the middle robot. He grinned as, a moment before he pulled the trigger, he could see the robots moving their weapons, locking their targets on him now. Any lock their computers had was gone as the massive plasma discharge from the launcher filled the corridor with superheated matter. He scrambled out of the way as the explosion sent a blast of air back down the hall, pushing a couple of the Sytis over and singeing Nai’s whiskers off. Yalogalil hopped up. “That Is how to be done!”
“Uh… yeah, you don’t say.”
The Sytis soldiers seemed impressed, but they did not speak. Yalogalil gestured. “C’mon, boys!”
He shouldered the launcher and charged down the corridor and over the half-melted remains of one of the robots.

The anger inside Teliko was inexplicably becoming a problem. The something in her mind had initially frightened her, but as it grew and began to create dark thoughts within her, she was mad. It was profane. She was being forced to think things she didn’t understand, forced to consider horrible false truths and circular logic ending in death. It all addled her thoughts like a cancer, and she was intent on finding the source.
Czyak was beginning to detect these thoughts in Teliko. As much as she tried to shield him from her darker, unwilling thoughts, he knew their shadows. Unlike that first time above the Frontier when he had unwittingly intercepted an angry whim of Teliko’s, this time the anger was duller, easier to digest. He was beginning to take small bits of it and incorporate it into his speech. He also hated it, but he was driven to understand his friend. Eventually, they arrived at an inconspicuous door painted a conspicuous red. Teliko grabbed her arms. “It’s here.”
“What is?”
“I don’t know.”
She pushed open the door.

God cried for the first time in his life. He had never found beauty in anything before now. His creations were nothing more than a means to an end, and now that his mind was filled with ideas of beauty and truth and love and… something called poetry, he was disgusted with himself. His appearance and creations, his ship, its walls, the carcasses of his playthings in the corner. If his species was capable of vomiting, he would have done so.
However, a radical shift occurred the second a small furry thing and her Sytis companion walked into his throne room. He felt an almost magnetic shift in the room, poles reversing and aligning together, bringing clarity. Now the prevailing thought in him was: “Finally, the source of my anguish.”

Teliko gasped as she came face to face with this pure black Sytis. Her thoughts suddenly became her own again, and she was frightened. Czyak instinctively put himself between Teliko and God, but was tossed aside. Teliko snapped her neck around, causing Czyak’s path through the air to stop. She let him down gently. God stepped towards her. “What are you, little thing?” God didn’t even notice Czyak was unharmed.
She gulped. “I am… Teliko.”
“Teliko… are you fouling up my mind?”
“I… I thought you were… I thought you were attacking me with yours.”
He swept his arm, and Teliko felt something close around her. She didn’t struggle, rather allowing herself to be lifted a couple feet from the ground. God snarled. “This is what it’s like to be attacked by a God, small thing.”
He stopped. “What?”
Teliko tilted her head slightly. “I was just… laughing. Like a Sytis.”
“I… I knew that. HOW DID I KNOW YOU WERE LAUGHING!?”
Teliko extended her arms, splaying her fingers. God twitched. “What are you doing?”
She descended, God receiving a wave of… relief. He quickly shoved this aside. It was a foreign object, a parasite. “No, no, I can’t… Sick! I’m sick! You are lucky little…”
He tried to reassert his grip, but it just wouldn’t happen. Teliko laughed again. “Sorry… God, that’s what you like to be called, right?”
“Of course!”
“Well… I’m not sure how to explain it, but… I guess I can do the same things you can. At least, that’s what the Sytis said…”
“The… AHHH!”
God looked down and realized he was in the air now. “PUT ME DOWN YOU… YOU… SUB-CLASS GENUS!”
Czyak watched as Teliko slowly circled God, getting a good look. The fear from a few seconds ago seemed to be replaced with a profound calm. There was a pain behind his eyes. The emotional intensity in the room was too much for him. Mental turbulence was making him sick. Teliko tapped her chin. “Um… I got a pretty good look inside your head, but I still can’t figure out why you’re so hell-bent on killing the Sytis. I can hear your resentment. I can hear your anger… I just can’t understand it.”
“Stop looking where you cannot fathom.”
“Actually…”
She stood before God and motioned gently with her hand. He fell to the floor, his head bent and eyes closed. He didn’t struggle. Teliko took a step forward and let her head touch his. At first, Teliko didn’t know what she was doing. When she tried looking into God’s head again, the room seemed to spin. Not the room, but something in the room that somehow seemed more real. It spun. Fast.
“Stop.” God sounded calm for the first time.
“Tell me.”
“Please…”
“Tell me!”
“No! Sytis are a blight! Cruel! Docile… STUPID! Closed-”
“Stop lying to me, I’m in your mind.”
Steeling herself against the slag in God’s mind, she dove. She dove deep, through layers of hatred that went in circles and didn’t end. That seemed to be one of the only things in there, that hate with no source but itself. It was concealing something, Teliko was sure. She thrust a paw in, and touched it.
“S-s-s-s-so… so alone. Nothing is real here, nothing is real. I’m… on the outside, looking at a web of understanding and love I can never be a part of. Please, end my suffering.”
The moment the words had spilled out of his mouth, fast and nearly unintelligible, God reached up and grabbed Teliko’s neck. “No!”
He tossed her against a wall, but Teliko stopped herself before she made contact. God drew a deep breath and roared. “NOO!”
Teliko no longer felt him. Things were snapping back together, and she was terrified again. Czyak sprang up, rushing to Teliko’s side. “We must-”
“I’m not leaving!” she said shakily.
“I do not understand!”
God was clutching his head, shaking and muttering to himself. “I can help him, Czyak. Maybe… maybe I can get him to call off his attack.”
“It is too dangerous!”
God looked up. “Help me?! I DON’T NEED HELP!”
He raised his claws. “You have soiled my mind. You have filled it with garbage. You are worse than the Sytis.”
He bared his teeth. “Come here so I may taste your flesh and see if you would make a good glove.”
Teliko shot across the room, straight towards God. She shoved the air and hurled herself over him, tumbling to the ground. “Ow! What does that even mean?!”
She waved a hand as hard as she could, flinging a ball of something at God. This time it was his turn to fly through the air, hitting the wall and falling face first into a small puddle of blood. This obviously enraged him. He stood, spitting. “You not only violate my mind but my body as well?! DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT I AM?! TRULY?!”
He grunted with exertion as he extended his will. Teliko shut her eyes and concentrated, trying to counter his grasp before it crushed her. “Yes… I know! I was in your mind, remember?!”
God didn’t answer this time. Beads of sweat rolled down his scales. Czyak, now unaffected by Teliko’s mindset, cowered in a corner. Coming face to face with his species’ most terrible enemy had seemed somewhat trivial before, but now his instincts were kicking in. The only thing keeping him from abandoning Teliko was her impressive resolve. She growled, allowing a half chuckle to slip out as well. “I think you’ve met your match, man! A little girl!”
“It is… a matter of time.”
Sensing a slight lapse in his concentration, she reached up. The ceiling cracked and groaned, then shot downwards, directly on top of God. It pinned him completely to the floor. She relaxed her grip and nearly fainted from the sudden rush of nausea. “…Czyak, are you alright?”
“No!”
Her ear twitched. The metal was creaking again. She approached. “God, are you alive in there?”
There was more movement. “Listen, you’re obviously completely mad, but I’m telling you there’s no need to carry out a genocide on these people.”
“Teliko. You cannot reason with it.”
“Sh. I touched a deep part of your mind, God. I know what’s in there. Let the Sytis help you.”
“Help help help help help. That’s all they said to me. What does help mean if I can’t understand it?”
The metal rose again, being replaced in the ceiling. Teliko took a couple steps back as God stood up and rubbed his arms. “Bones knitting back together feels nice, actually.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You know the Sytis can’t help me. They’re fools. Below me, absorbed in their little… culture of… honesty and… disgusting language. I’ll kill you, then them. Populate the new world with my own blood.”
He breathed, and the floor below Teliko moved. Recognizing her own move, Teliko tried to move herself out of the way, but was not fast enough. The edge of the floor caught her chin, cutting a gash from her lip to her ear, deep enough to scrape bone.
Czyak felt it. He saw Teliko fall, and ran at God, intent on protecting her. God didn’t see him coming, and with a grunt Czyak rammed into God with his shoulder. Czyak’s vision went dark as he fell over. However, once he opened his eyes, he found he was floating. “You… you broke my arm!”
God stumbled up and clutched his arm. “Ow! I’ll have this fixed…”
There was a glow from God’s arm, and he removed his claws. He flexed the arm. “There. Now, let’s see how you heal broken bones, eh?”
“Don’t you dare!”
Teliko was stumbling up, her paw barely covering the bleeding gash. She raised her other paw, and Czyak fell to the floor. He tried to run, but he still couldn’t move. God laughed. “What? Listen, creature, I am much more powerful than you! You can’t just… take my grasp like that!”
Teliko took her paw from her face. The wound was already knitting itself back together. She growled. “I… I think you might be right…”
She shut her eyes and concentrated. The room was laid out before her. She could see God and the energy flowing from his body. Her own energy was mixing with God’s over Czyak, who was struggling. She noticed something she’d never seen before. Czyak had his own energy. It pulsed, gray and weak, around his head. She was unable to manipulate it, even if she could still hear Czyak…
“Czyak! I… I don’t know what to do!”
“Just… leave!”
“No!”
No amount of trying would overcome God. A tear streaked down her face. “I’m sorry, Czyak…”
Continuing to hold against God, she let her mind relax. Unhindered, her rage towards God was broadcasted to Czyak, and he stopped moving. The energy around his mind exploded, and Teliko was blinded.