Fiction Snippet - Counterattack (Paying Patreon Exclusive) (Patreon)

This leaped into my head nearly fully formed a few years ago when I had a pretty bad fever. I have never shared it before. It's a perfect example of one kind of fairly common writing I have -- the fiction snippet. I like it too much to forget it, but it didn't come with anything like a full story plot or even a setting. there's a lot of background HINTED at, but beyond that your guess as to what is going on and why is as good as mine.

There's definitely SOMETHING there for me... but I don't know what yet. I'm not sure what I'll do with it in the long run... if anything.

But it's a Paying Patreon exclusive look into the far reaches of my mind.

Marta didn't even realize she was being shot at until Aretê grabbed her and spun, placing Marta on the far side of Aretê's body as the long lines of bright tracer fire sliced in all around them. This was NOT small arms fire, but spent uranium rounds from fully automatic antimaterial weapons--tank killers. Multiple streams of it literally chewed up the street and walls around Marta, but Aretê had physically interposed herself to absorb the closest attacks. The bullets splattered off of Aretê like water spraying across steel. The skin on the left side of her body was flayed away instantly, but her matte gray subdermal armor held... undented.

Two remote hoverpods charged them, diving down out of the sky and splitting up to bring their three-meter revolving cannons to bear on flanking angles of attack. Marta screamed, the sound of the autofire hurting her ears. Aretê stood her ground, calmly, and raised her left arm. Her hand split open, forming a gap down to her wrist. The crevice then ran to her elbow, becoming nearly 15 centimeters wide, and from that divide came a pulsing glow and a hum that made Marta's teeth ache.

Then, an impossibly bright white line leaped from Aretê's arm and sliced through the night. Aretê swung it in wide loops, immediately cutting both hoverpods from the sky. But the beam did not stop upon hitting the drones, nor when it hit anything behind them. The power of the energy weapon was insane, the ravening line of destruction continuing for long cataclysmic seconds. Aretê swept it down and dragged the far end of it along the street, like the apocalyptic finger of an angry god.

Trucks were carved in half. Buildings exploded. Sections of highway fell like children's toys kicked over. It was the most devastating thing Marta had ever seen, even in footage from the Proxy Wars. Aretê pulled the thrumming line of complete annihilation across the city, until she sliced it through a massive hotel and into a huge power transformer station behind it. There was an explosion... and Marta felt a small EMP hit her cybernetics. Her hardened, life-critical implants flashed warning signs into her vision and murmured notices into her ears, but continued to function. Nearly everything else froze. No activity from her now-locked right hand. No links to the Dataweave. No analysis of anything the saw.

No option to suppress the brain chemicals newly arrived to drive her to near panic.

As smoke and debris geysered from the area of Aretê's attack, a dull realization sunk into Marta's awareness. That was not a weapon any cyber-solider had ever had. That wasn't a weapon anything able to move within a gravity field had ever had. Aretê had the firepower of a fucking space battleship. And she had just killed thousands... maybe tens of thousands of people as collateral damage. To destroy two hoverpods and create an expanding cloud of smoke and confusion to cover their escape.

All in one 5-second beam attack. 

As the ruinous line of blinding light flickered out, steam rose from the still-open gap in Aretê's left arm. Aretê turned to face Marta, showing no expression at all. Of course, half of the skin of Aretê's face had been blown off, revealing a dull gray, leering skull of subdermal armor.

"That will take roughly fifteen minutes to recharge," Aretê said matter-of-factly. "We should leave, before your enemies reacquire your position. I'm only equipped with two beam weapons, and I'd rather not have to use the big one."