If I resent him for knowing I can do a thing before I even realize I can do it, the feeling stays buried beneath the neuroweave.
What does bubble to the surface is joy.
Joy that my first and oldest human friend knows me well.
Joy that he’s crazy enough to push me beyond the limits I would never venture past.
Joy that the survivability ratios Bellona kept going on and on about were indeed practical certainty as long as Captain Jaeger was involved in our core plan.
Ugh, Bell’s gonna have a field day. I’m never going to hear the end of it.
“Yeah, I can get us up there. Work with the crew to secure the girls and use the hovercrafts. Then give me ETA’s on the Pernix and the Diamond.” I say, as a new plan forms in our collective minds. “Anything else?”
He nods and grins like a wolf, rattling off his ideas like he always did when we were children.
For the first time today, I really smile.
◆◆◆
Encrypted Transmission
Origin: Vector 00234
Transmission Intercepted
Intercept Location: Faldanian Planetary Monitoring System
Transcript:
Connect to receive infra-wave broadcast.
The stream… is ready to beam.
Yeah. I’m a clever boy.
Chapter Ten
“Endgame conditions updated. Omega protocol three active. Execution code: Leap Frog.” All eight of us speak in unison.
“Let’s play.” I say, as the nanites in all our systems flash bright white streaked with crimson.
Seven power cores and one beating heart synchronize, and we launch into action.
I feel several waves of delight from the team at being reunited. Together, we sprint towards the Huntsman behemoth.
Behind me, Leon, Doctor Capaldi and Bellona work with Theron and Z to right the transports and make sure they’re operational.
Iñigo, Jean Philippe and I rip into the first wave of enemy targets between us and the behemoth. Where Iñigo and I shoot and slice our way through, Jean Philippe works fast, disabling and incapacitating. He strikes quickly and precisely at the vital points of his targets, effectively taking them out of the game. It’s so good to be on the front lines with him again.
Above, ahead of and around us, Mick and Mila unleash a maelstrom of cover fire, destroying enemy forces before they can go on the offensive.
Synths, assault bots and the handful of human soldiers still loyal to the Conglomerate fall in droves as we cut a swath toward the Huntsman.
Then, we all feel it in the neuroweave. Both tanks turn their weapons toward us, while the behemoth charges once more to strike at the princesses.
A very quick attempt to hack their systems remotely proves futile. They’re on a Conglomerate closed circuit. It doesn’t take long to see that several enemy targets in this area, including the tanks, bear the Queen’s insignia, marking them as part of her special forces.
Up close and personal it is.
We split up immediately. Mick hangs behind to provide cover fire. Iñigo screens for me, while Mila screens for Jean Philippe as we charge in pairs.
As I holster my blaster and ignite my other lumenblade, Mila and Jean Philippe activate their cloaks and fade into invisibility.
I multitask with a song in my heart, observing the unseen duo wreak very visible havoc on the enemy forces standing between them and the tank they are targeting. My heart soars a bit higher as their tank loses the ability to get a lock on either of them, its turrets and guns lurching from left to right but unloading nothing.
Meanwhile, Iñigo and I change strategies, opting for speed instead of mass destruction. With Mick and Bellona connected to us, it’s easier to pick targets and disable their long-range attack capabilities. Nobody we hit can shoot at us after we get past them, leaving them open for Mick to pick off at his leisure.
Like Mila and Jean Philippe, our goal is to get to the tanks.
Unlike with Mila and Jean Philippe's tank, however, ours has no trouble targeting us. The challenge is in actually hitting us.
It doesn’t.
Nor can it. Over and over, it tries, but Iñigo and I are too nimble, dodging fire and even exchanging targets as we move evasively.
As we close the distance between us and our quarry, the behemoth remains just as indifferent to us as when we last engaged it. It charges up again and the smell of ozone displacement is so thick I can almost taste it.
It fires once more. From a distance, Leon slams back just as hard.
I see on my HUD that Jean Philippe has made contact with his tank. So have I.
It takes a few seconds to find a decent place to plant our breaching tech, but we find it. I'm just thankful we didn’t have to crawl underneath these things. With the tech planted onto our targets, we all disengage and fall back behind the behemoth.
We take a moment for me to scan its weapon systems to identify where best to strike.
Before it can fire, Iñigo and I jump up on either side of it, slicing along its arm cannons and cutting them off from the Huntsman’s power source. Mila and Jean Philippe remain hidden.
“Must you be so difficult all the time?” Octavia’s voice emanates from within the behemoth.
Iñigo and I ignore her and carve up the Huntsman’s behemoth shell, hamstringing it and severing as many of its cobbled augmentations from its main body as we can.
Octavia goes on and on. “Disappointment in…” Blah blah blah. “Your plans will not come to fruition…” Blah blah. “I’m a megalomaniacal genius and I am better than you. I’m so awesome.” Blah. “My Huntsman is invincible!” Etcetera, etcetera.
As a testimony to its superior technologies, the Huntsman heals up faster than we can inflict critical damage to it. Which is mostly fine because all of this is a lovely distraction.
“You shall be crushed under the superior power of my forces!” Octavia continues to rant.
“Force this.” I smile as Jean Philippe and I complete our hack of the two tanks. Immediately, we swivel all guns and cannons toward the Huntsman, unleashing every ounce of firepower they have at the behemoth.
“You dare!” Octavia screams. I can practically hear her facial muscles twitching.
“Child, you are outnumbered. What little advantage you have gained, you yourself have lost by your own hand.” Octavia yells as the behemoth shambles to strike at us. It's looking like a melting heap of scrap and weaponry, less mobile but certainly no less lethal. “Why must you persist in being so exasperatingly... persistent?!”
“First of all… it’s fun.” I yell back, jumping and dodging and still in control of my tank. “Second of all... you sure you have us outnumbered?”
From a distance, picking up speed and getting louder by the second, I hear the roar of sentry class robot thrusters in the very high hundreds. At least, it sounds like it’s in the high hundreds. My HUD says there are certainly much more than that.
The sentry bots we hacked into and now control descend from the sky and flood the streets of the square. Instantly, they turn the tide on Octavia’s forces.
With the mutineers now possessing the upper hand, my HUD shows a massive amount of enemy synthoids and assault bots dropping off the battlefield.
In the neuroweave, I hand control of my tank to Jean Philippe and wrap my consciousness around Bellona’s. I fall back a bit and take a turn playing puppet master to this army of sentries.
It would have been lovely... if Octavia weren’t fighting me tooth and nail for it. Whatever army of codebreakers and hackers she has on retainer are doing their best to wrest control of the sentries back.
Fortunately, Jean Philippe left a series of nasty little nested loops and redundancies that change the integrity of the source code we implanted every twenty-five seconds. Eventually they’ll get through, but not soon enough to stop us.
“You think you’re so clever, don’t you? Thwarting me at every turn this day.” The Queen seet
hes.
“Pretty much.” I say, as the sentries I control disable the last of the ground forces assembled at the town square.
Nearby, my strike team contains the behemoth.
“Your bravado means nothing. Your show of force is temporary at best. You are trapped here and I will harvest my property from your corpses soon enough.” Octavia threatens. “The wise and rational choice is to surrender now.”
I sense Bellona’s smug satisfaction before she gives me the signal that Leap Frog protocol is ready for phase two, which is actually a hack of the entire space station.
Thanks to the inroads Jean Philippe had made since breaking into the station, Bellona was able to find her way to the inner workings of the station undetected. Full interface gives her just the right amount of leverage she needs for a hack of this kind.
With much delight, I work with Bell to disable the station’s gravity generator. With the generator completely in our grasp, we deploy more of Jean Philippe’s little hacking traps so we have control over the system for as long as we need.
Smiling, we shut the gravity generator off in Sector Thirty-five.
“What… what is… Well, take control back, you fools! Move you imbec…..” I overhear the Queen yell before her voice cuts out.
As we all begin to float, I quickly reinforce my control over the sentry bot army using Bellona and Jean Philippe’s combined processing capacity. They move like a swarm, taking orders from their queen, the role of which being played tonight by yours truly.
I command cadres of them to escort both hovercrafts upward, serving as thrusters and honor guards, guiding them swiftly toward the atmo-panels we’ve earmarked as extraction points.
“E.T.A. two minutes, Yuki.” Tala broadcasts from the Diamond.
“Cloaks are gonna be toast in roughly that that time, so you gotta blitz now!” Walsh chimes in.
“Just be ready for us!” Theron replies over comms, which I am thankful for since I’m too busy controlling the sentries.
I command some of them to grab Mick and guide him to the front end of this zero-grav cavalcade, giving them instructions to get him to the atmo-panels well ahead of the rest.
Concurrently, I have another handful of sentries escort Leon up to hold the rear so he can still shield both hovercrafts properly. I see the Doctor and Bellona follow suit and keep pace, relying on their own thrusters for lift.
To absolutely nobody’s surprise, the behemoth cobbles together some sort of makeshift thrusters that gives it limited mobility in zero gravity. I send about half the sentry bots in my control to drag it as far away from our new extraction corridor as possible. I instruct them to hit all the vital spots we identified and hit them hard.
I command the remaining bots to escort me and my strike team upwards. As they lift us up, I make sure they position me facing the roiling mess of sentry bots and Huntsman nanites disappearing slowly from view.
Of the many gambles we made today, this was the one I doubted the most.
We ascend in silence, my heart hammering in my chest. A beat later, we lose our line of sight to the hulking behemoth.
Doesn't mean I can't hear it though.
The faint echoing sound of energy blasts and sentry bot laser fire reminds me that I cannot relax until we’re out of the Faldan system and back in Alliance controlled space.
Suddenly, the ruckus quiets down and a chill grips my belly. I knew there was a chance this gamble would go south, knowing what we know about this thing. But this is sooner than we'd hoped. Higher powers help us this is too soon!
A blinding flash of green light suddenly flares in the distance, followed by four concentrated bursts of energy.
All four beams slam straight into the convoy. If we weren’t linked in full interface, Leon wouldn't have managed to strengthen his shield to capital ship levels in time. And since the attack came as a surprise, we couldn’t compensate to make sure we kept our trajectory set.
On impact, both vehicles are knocked back as a very large, very lethal monstrosity roars its way toward us.
It's a horrifying sight. It has quadrupled in size, adorned with the broken shells of several hundred sentry bots. Their thrusters line its back, legs and arms, giving the behemoth the kind of maneuverability that would mean the death of us in zero-grav.
I only have a minute left before I collapse and the team knows this. We can’t fight this thing. Not in mid-air. Not like this.
It’s going to get to the girls and take us apart at its leisure.
“Mick, Bell… Help me!” I yell into the neuroweave as I get an idea. I push hard, desperation fueling my next proposed move.
I sense the slightest hint of resistance from them, Bellona especially, but I insist and give the command. With one last push, I command every sentry bot to max out their thrusters.
Mick acquiesces and blows up the atmo-panels earlier than planned, unleashing the higher end of his destructive ordnance. The shockwave knocks us back for a half second before the cold vacuum of space sucks us out of the space station.
Before I lose consciousness, I plead with Bellona to activate the emergency atmo-panels the moment the girls are out. I am too far away from the breach and the space station must be sealed before the Huntsman can get through!
With the last few seconds I have left in full interface, I see both hovercrafts clear the breach, the strike team hot on their heels.
Dread fills my heart as the behemoth speeds toward us. I yell for Bellona to shut the breach, but my voice is sounding further and further away from me.
I can only watch in silent horror as the countdown to my full interface limit clocks down to zero while the behemoth charges up for one final blast.
Darkness creeps along the side of my vision and engulfs me completely as the Huntsman overtakes me and fires.
◆◆◆
Emergency Broadcast
Destination: All Faldan Station devices and receivers
Alert. Sector Thirty-Five breach secure.
Gravity wells non-functional. Emergency tethers deployed.
Repeat. Sector Thirty-Five breach secure.
Please stand by for power grid reboot and gravity well reinstatement.
Chapter Eleven
My eyes jolt open when my tac suit deploys a shot of stimulants into my blood stream. Full interface knocks me out completely, but does nothing bad to the rest of the crew. They retain echoes of my consciousness in their systems and are extra intuitive for a few minutes more after we disconnect. I, on the other hand, am incapacitated because I’m alone in the neuroweave and need to be brought out of it slowly to prevent tissue damage.
Numbly, I float and watch the blur of activity unfold before me. Leon’s shield flares a bright silver as the behemoth Huntsman pummels it with energy blast after energy blast. Then, just as it starts charging up, it takes fire from both sides as the Winter Diamond and the Sol Pernix approach. Its colossal size has made it possible for mid-sized battle ready freighters like the Diamond and the Pernix to get a target lock.
A traction beam pulls me slowly toward my ship as the Diamond and the Pernix take the behemoth down a peg or four. Both ships pummel the behemoth hard and the tide turns quickly.
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