How strange is it, he thought, to forget how to walk.
He almost had, it wasn't too far from truth. Every time he shrugged off the chronopack from his back, and placed the displacer in its locker, he would have to brace himself and make a conscious effort to walk to his bunk.
And as he'd lay in bed, staring at pictures of friends, family, and warm places far away from here, he could still feel the flesh-crawling sensation of time travel, the goosebumps that would never go away. No matter how concentrated the effort, he could not escape the feeling, that constant metallic tang in his mouth, of flirting with death.
"Prepare for transition shift, t-minus thirty seconds." The troopers next to him shifted uneasily, shivering under the driving rain. Towering pines above them swayed in the violent winds, and the chill bit through the poncho garments and dug into your body, like ice cold needles.
He looked around, panning nervously, keeping a sharp eye out. Their transition zones were kept random, varying with the hour and known only to the regional commander. The legionaries were too valuable to loose, and thus received the utmost consideration when it came to security.
But who was to say a squad of conscripts, clad in rain-soaked battle trenchcoats, wouldn't stumble upon this cadre of soldiers and open fire? They wouldn't last long, either. The shifter was a fragile piece of equipment, and if damaged, you might find yourself recovering from a shift hundreds of miles away, or even worse – it wouldn't work at all, and you'd be left to the mercy of your foes.
"Ten seconds. Fire em up, boys."
Beneath his poncho, he felt at his shifter for two buttons. One had two raised bumps, and he pressed it. A low buzz tickled his spine, as an escalating whine accompanied those of the men around him.
The legionnaire's attack consisted of two stages. First there was the transition shift: the soldier would warp into the enemy's territory, in an unoccupied and concealed area. When the shift was complete, they would make the second jump, which would be directly to the target.
He hefted his displacer, the three talon-like emitter prongs shrugging off the poncho folds. Rainwater streaked down polished chrome, sliding down luminescent blue power cells. His right thumb drifted over the firing stud, caressing the treaded surface that gave him, a mere man, the power to bend space-time...
"Five seconds..."
He reached to his back, and this time, felt for the second button at the trembling pack.
"Three..."
Please, guide me, God...
"Shift, shift, SHIFT!"
On the last command, he pressed the button.
The world before him, for a second, froze, existing like a perfect stillframe, before dimming into the reverse spectrum of a photo negative, shimmering, then melting away into a slur of color.
There was no feeling, no existence, just his mind. His soul, consciousness, whatever you called it. He could not feel his body below him, or the shudder of the shifter at his back. His eyes did not see, his lungs did not breathe. The raw horror of unexistance, negative reality, made him want to scream. But he had no mouth.
As soon as it had begun, or perhaps even before, it ended. His reality became another forest, though one beneath a towering sandstone escarpment. It was still raining; harder over here. As color melted in, like an artist painting with watercolors, sound came too, and he could hear a low, distant rumbling that had to be war miners.
A flash in his mind, and he was there. He felt the hair on his head again, soaked and cold, sticking to his scalp. His squadmates stood before him.
"Ok, you know the drill. Squad one takes miner number one, squad two had miner two, we unexist them and shift back for a cold one."
He nodded, not knowing why. His body was covered in gooseflesh, head to toe.
Turning behind him, he saw through a sparse layer of conifer two of the burly miners, a smog of disturbed earth rising round them. Atop the boxy ore tanks, conscripts manned their .50 caliber automatics.
"Ready, ready, break!"
It might have felt like jumping, actually, but all he knew was in a split second, less that that maybe, he stood in front of one of the monstrosities, displacer pointed towards the driver, who now gaped shamelessly.
He mashed the firing stud. A sky-blue lance, joined by three others beside him, bolted to the miner, which froze immediately. The conscript, who was trying to bring the chaingun to bear, was frozen in time, as his image slowly became transparent, fading out of reality.
He began to shake, and fought to calm himself. This isn't right, he raged. Since when did man gain this power to bend what we don't understand? Like a kid playing with daddy's time/space gun cabinet...
Another rumble. Startled, he looked up, to see two soviet tanks shamble over a hill.
Panic. He tried to wrench himself from the target, but couldn't, for he was only partially existent. Existent enough to be killed, he knew.
So he waited, in grim surrender, as the soviet tanks calmly rolled up to the men. Their turrets grind, as the barrels came to bear upon the men.
The trap, the snare, so cleverly planned...the calm that consumed him before the fire was worth it all.