Chapter Text
Tachyon sprints across the floor of the Clavius crater. The dust of the crater crunches under her feet with every single stride. At her current velocity, she will clear the two hundred and thirty one kilometers in less than twelve minutes. Tachyon doesn’t know how she knows that. She doesn’t know how any of this is happening.
All she knows is that she cannot, under any circumstances, stop.
Laser fire rips into the ground behind her as she runs. She begins to zigzag, taking a winding path through the crater to confuse the targeting systems of the QX5 Mordengradi hover tanks following her. Her new estimate at leaving Clavius is fourteen minutes and eleven seconds.
It shouldn’t be this hard to think. Everything compared to her is moving so slowly. She has all the time in the world to think. Why is everything so bright, so loud? If she could only get a moment to clear her head.
A group of Blade Battalion Lunar Marines burst out from a concealed bunker, firing wildly. One of them yells something at her. She hears the word Stinson. The word is like a dagger between her eyes, searing something important. Between them and the hover tanks, pinning her in, Tachyon’s odds of survival are plummeting too fast to calculate. She accelerates, a tremendous thundercrack announces her speed and rapidly vanishes in her wake. Sonic Boom. Which We/I/You Outrun Tachyon thinks. Or thinks she thinks. Everything hurts. Too bright, too much. No longer too loud. Silent. Just need a minute. I just need to clear my head.
She slams into the man ahead of her, on the left flank of the group of Lunar Marines. She holds her arms in front of her face as she runs, and the man is no longer in her way. She doesn’t even register the impact. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the burly man go careening into one of his companions. He’s screaming. Why is he screaming?
She doesn’t have time to help him stop screaming. She doesn’t have time. No time. No time. The hover tank is still following. She has to go faster. Faster and faster, till it can’t keep up with her. In lunar conditions, a QX5 has a top speed of Mach Two. WEIYou must double velocity. Tachyon tries to focus. Not on thoughts, not on words, but on fast. Focus on fast. Double fast. Run. The buzzing of numbers burns the inside of her skull, scorching, gnawing, melting away the thoughts, like something else is using them. All that matters is fast. All that matters is escape.
Escape means slowing down. Escape means she can think clearly. So faster. Thoughts can go. She runs. She runs and she runs, lunar dust pulverised in her wake, but the Hover tank pursues. For a brief moment she seems to be leaving it behind as her vision starts to darken and she tumbles.
Pain.
She’s staggering upward. Broken. Bruised. But the pain is vanishing. Maybe she’s healing. Maybe she’s suffering from rapid onset nerve damage. Unclear. The hover tank is catching her. It’s going to catch her. It’s going to kill her.
Tachyon is going to die.
The thought is like a bucket of cold water dumped over her. For a brief shining moment, clarity and sanity reigns in Tachyon’s mind.
I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.
The mantra thumps through her brain with every step, a hundred thousand times a second.
Running isn’t working. Can’t go fast enough. Not yet. One day. Not yet. Speed is energy. Energy imparts force. Force a change to the situation. Just like she taught me. Just like… Tachyon’s mind burns again, like something is hiding from her from within in her own brain.
She clears the rim of Clavius, her speed and momentum carrying her upwards as she exits. For the first time in days? Weeks? Millenia? She sees Earth, risen over the moon. Full Earth, bright and shining, blue and huge in the air. As her leap carries her through an extended arc, the slow lunar gravity extending it so far longer than her terrestrial sensibilities are prepared for, Tachyon formulates a plan.
She lands, she’s running. The hover tank is so close now. Even zigzagging, the lasers are so close now. She rolls, careening across the rocky dust. It’s going everywhere, dust everywhere.
Her hands catch in the rocks, gathering them into a small pile. The Hover Tank is up on her.
Tachyon’s hands an impossibly fast blur, even to herself. They move at a speed faster than thought, faster than impulse. And the greatest scientific mind of all time throws rocks at a problem.
The first rock strikes the Hover Tank’s forward laser emplacement. A second rock strikes its ventral thrust array. A third strikes its port stabilising thruster. The three impacts send the Hover Tank careening away. Tachyon did not wait to see it crash.
Running again. As fast as she could without the darkness bringing her down. As long as she could, till her brain feels like scorched taffy. Staggering, slowing, Tachyon comes to rest in a small cave.
In the dark of the cave, her mind slowly comes back to life. For the first time over eight hours, Tachyon is not running or thinking at speeds beyond human comprehension. Which means for the first time in eight hours, Tachyon is thinking. The white energy that protects her and shields her from the stresses of motion fades, leaving her once more in the tattered, labcoat and slacks. Her shoes have disintegrated entirely, left in the lunar dust an epoch ago.
Tachyon is at rest, and for the first time since the accident, Krystal Lee remembers.