by Briana Ervin
I jerked and halted as my bayonet struck something solid within. Immediately I pried at the neck's shell and opened it, finding a familiar grey hull. I opened up my retrieval panel so I could grip it, then used my larger arms to help wedge it out of the shell and pull it away. The little barbs all along the inside of the neck kept me from moving Krysis easily in any direction except down it, so it was a struggle, but with several strong jerks Krysis finally broke free, tumbling out onto the ground. I let go and rolled him over, checking for damages.
He was shut down, his eye empty of light. He looked relatively fine aside from minute scratches all over his hull from being swallowed. There were short, deep cuts along his joints... most likely from Garenede. I could see wires in them with only their rubber sleeves cut, so clearly it was a pain-maximizing tactic, not a damaging one. Figures.
“Krysis,” I prompted, bracing his head with my main arms and lifting him up. “Krysis!”
Thunk. Something fell out from the mech. I backed up immediately, finding Krysis himself huddled on the ground and grimacing.
“You're okay!” I cried, tossing the mech aside. I approached, but his scales flared and he hissed at me.
“Go away!”
I paused. “Are you...?”
“Where's Garenede?! I want that filthy sack of scalestout!” he spat, standing up to maintain dignity and whipping around. He spotted the white Superiority model, still facing away, and stomped toward him. “HEY!”
Garenede turned around at the shout, looking distant. He didn't even ask what Krysis wanted. The Xinschi-uual shook with rage, pointing at him. “You.... You spineless cur! Do you realize what you've done?!”
It wasn't the smartest idea, challenging a mech over eight times his size, so I kept my distance. This wasn't my problem. Garenede just looked annoyed.
“You could have run away, you know,” Garenede said grumpily.
“You think I could have done that?!” Krysis yelled. “Why didn't you say 'no' in the first place?! Machines can feel pain too, you know! He passed out because you stabbed him! He hurt so bad I couldn't stop him from screaming!”
“I didn't have a choice!”
“That's what you think! 'Oh, I didn't have a choice! I need to obey my superiors because I don't have the balls to stand up for myself'!” he mocked in a high voice. “'I think I'll go groom my scales and give them a nice polish before someone hurts me! Oh!'”
“Shut up!” Garenede spat, clearly annoyed. “You don't understand how this works!”
“I don't understand how this works? I understand plenty! I understand that you still fall to your knees at the sight of some shiny clearance guy, because you think you still have a chance!”
“I don't know what you're talking about!”
“You don't have the guts to face punishment,” Krysis seethed, “you didn't have guts the first time, and you still don't have them!”
“You watch your mouth,” Garenede growled.
What are they talking about? What does Krysis mean by 'the first time'? I wondered. I was unpleasantly reminded of the downward spiral the ruse took, and Garenede's mention of the soldier he apparently killed. Did that really happen...?
“I'll say what I want, when I want! Something you clearly won't do, even when someone else's life depends on it!”
“Stop being such a child! You weren't even in danger!” Garenede argued, taking a step forward.
“I wasn't in danger? WASN'T?!” Krysis only yelled louder, “I trusted you! You helped me, and I thought you had a change of heart! I thought you learned from your old mistakes, but all you did was go back to your miserable old self! Shiela was wrong about you!”
In an instant Garenede had lunged forward, pinning Krysis to the ground with his claws. The Xinschi-uual didn't even fight him, just snarling and writhing. I jolted forward, wanting to get between them but also morbidly-interested in the outcome if I didn't.
“Never mention that name to me ever again,” Garenede threatened.
“Or what? You'll kill me too?” Krysis mocked, “Will you climb a whole building and kill my family? Light my home on fire?”
“That never happened!” the Superiority model roared.
“No! But I know you were thinking about it,” he hissed. The model reared, releasing Krysis, just to give him a swift kick that sent him flying over to his mech. He hit it with a clang and a yelp, before hitting the ground.
Whoa... that escalated fast.
Garenede began advancing toward him, picking up speed, but I lunged forward and clashed with him. We both skid a couple of q. He whipped around defensively and struck me across the face, but I was already a torn-up half-slate-sheet. I chose to retreat toward Krysis, defending him.
“Get away from him,” Garenede snarled coldly.
“No! I'm not interested in fighting you!” I said honestly. “Cyrii is hurt too badly for that.”
“Excuses!”
“We should leave before the drones come back,” I leveled my tone in hopes of calming him. He held his glare with me. “We can kill each other later, Garenede.”
He growled, thinking of challenging me further, but eventually he turned and stomped off toward the catwalk, growling under his breath and ascending the stairs. I watched him leave before turning back to the hole in the ceiling.
It was eerily quiet, but certainly it wouldn't stay peaceful for long.
I went back over to Krysis, studying him. I feared the worst, but he was still moving. Just shaky with emotional- and head-trauma.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah... I'm fine. Just so fine,” he said sarcastically, shaking hard.
“Will your mech work?”
“He better,” he grumbled, “otherwise... I'm personally ripping... that pathetic excuse of a Xinschi-uual... to pieces myself.”
I understood his venom. He already lost his first Sniper, and almost his second, both in one day. He's had enough of the close calls. Still, I had an inkling that he could have handled it better.
I helped position the mech so he could reenter it, then held it for several long minutes while the both of them recovered. The mech in particular need recovery, so it took a bit longer as Krysis helped him terminate pain threads. So many pain threads... What was the point of it all, anyway? Well, I understood the point, but still...?
The entry panels finally sealed off after his AI ranted about ruses going to far, and I let go of him, allowing him to get back onto his feet. We then both left the room to avoid further conflict.
I took the lead so I was a standing buffer between him and Garenede. There was no point in letting them fight any more.
----------
We took our time in catching up to the Superiority model, the entire trip suspended in a dreary, grumpy silence. Threads spun around in my head in concern of whatever that big drone was, and what happened to Sirun and Alesia, but I couldn't do anything about it; all we could do was run back and warn the others. So instead I spent most of my time mentally checking up on Cyrii and revisiting the visuals of the drone and thinking of some better tactics. When I spotted Garenede ahead of us I said nothing, purposefully keeping my distance. Krysis didn't object, but it was hard to tell if he was just agitated or actually thankful about it.
After about a minute's more of travel and tense, grim silence, Garenede suddenly stopped, the two of us halting just behind him. There was a clambering up ahead.... and then a familiar voice echoing hollowly down to us?
“Guys?! GUYS?! Come on, say something! Anything! Someooone!?”
“...Joleus?” Garenede called back. A brief silence.
“DUDE! Garenede! You're okay! Where are you?! You're alone, right? I mean, no, that's a bad thing, but like, in a good way, right?”
I looked back at Krysis. What the heck was that supposed to mean?
“Cyrii and Krysis are with me,” he answered.
“Oh, that's it? Whew! All right, keep talking!”
Now Garenede and I exchanged
bewildered looks. “Uh...”
“'Uh' it is! Right, go here... and then here... little bit over here.......” There was some more scrambling, sounding out more to the side of us. I looked out to the left, into the dark emptiness.
“What are you doing?” Garenede asked, “Aren't you on the catwalk-?”
There was a sudden clatter beside me! I abruptly backed up into the wall, turrets raised while the other two backed up.
“What the-?!”
“HEY GUYS! I found you!” Joleus jumped up, covered in some kind of... slime? There was a grate under his feet. What the heck?
“You been taking a swim?” Krysis asked. Joleus snorted at him, rubbing his eye lens to clean the slime off.
“Actually, I've been out looking for the others. The base has been breached! We got drones everywhere on top of being chased by Empire guys!” He assessed each of us, just to make sure we were all there. “I'm surprised you guys haven't been found yet!”
Garenede looked at me. “Actually, we've had some company... something big.”
“Aw, you had a big thing too?! Not good, man, not good...” He shuddered, looking at the ground, before swiveling around. “Hey, where's Alesia? And Sirun? They still down here?”
Our defeated silence was enough for him.
“Aw, man, no! No no no no no-!”
“They're alive, I think,” Garenede spoke again, “but captured.”
“Captured?” Joleus cried, “Aw no, it's the same big thing!”
“What are you babbling about?” Krysis snapped, although I had already figured it out. “What's going on?”
“It's Trista and the others! We were ambushed!”
“Then why are you back here?!” I snapped incredulously.
“Trista sent me back! I don't even know where I am, dude!”
Garenede hissed under his breath about us being constantly in danger, before taking charge of the situation. “Then let's go! We've been idling enough! Fiddles...” He cut himself short. “767, take the lead. Krysis, behind her. I'll back up Joleus.”
Krysis scowled, but kept his negative comments to himself as I pushed past the white model. He allowed the other two to pass him before taking the rear – Joleus still frantically trying to clean the slime off of himself – and I promptly picked up speed, trotting down the catwalk. Charging down it would be so much easier and a lot more fun, but who knew how stable these things were? Running sure cut our travel time in half though, and we made it to the intersection in no time!
I anticipated already running into a battle, but the intersection was lonely and quiet. Eerily quiet, as the entire factory seemed to have stopped in the event of the breach. Maintenance models simply sat around, lifeless, the machinery dead silent aside from the odd passive functions here and there humming away. Joleus came out from behind me and danced between two different routes – one of them I recalled as being one he went to investigate – before choosing the one Trista and Gilus went down. We wordlessly followed, with me silently double-checking Cyrii. I couldn't tell if she was unconscious, or just quiet... Either way, the DIAS was too damaged for me to know anything more than that she wasn't moving at all.
At least she was still alive and safe... That's all that mattered. Alive and safe.
“Cyrii watch out for the-!”
I immediately reared back at the words but inevitably fell, shouting in surprised trinary. I hit a series of parallel steel pipes, further damaging my face.
Of course I landed on my face...
“...hole,” Joleus finished. “Uh, help?”
“Dang it, we don't have time to get her out of there!” Garenede snapped impatiently. I winced at his disregardful remark. Bitter, much?
While I stood back up though, I looked up ahead, and saw that the beams followed the catwalk for a ways, the area growing brighter up there.
“I think I can keep going!” I assured him, looking up at them. Joleus, oblivious to the past tension between the three of us, simply nodded numbly.
“Okay. We'll go on ahead. But we'll come back for you if we have to!” he said. He disappeared from sight, before I heard him jump over the gap, with Krysis and Garenede close behind him, and they thundered on ahead. I stood for a moment, thinking, looking back at the path of pipes.
There was no way I could jump up normally to the catwalk, and without a doubt my power-jumping pistons would plaster me against the ceiling. Hopefully I could follow the catwalk the rest of the way.
Without wasting another second I rushed along the pipes, no longer concerned about my weight against them. I made another – much faster – double-check on Cyrii: she was still okay. Good.
The catwalk split off and veered to the right, and I heard the others going down that route. The pipes didn't follow them though, instead going straight ahead. I looked to the right, searching for any possible platforms to follow them, but there was only a vast emptiness below, some rails crisscrossing it. To the right the edge of a box jutting out from the darkness, and to the left was a sheer wall, nothing helpful. A “platform” of steel beams followed the end of the catwalk up ahead as it turned left, but there wasn't much of a way to get to it... unless...
I just had a nutty idea, and looked behind me. A solid wall. Looking up, I had enough clearance between me, the above catwalk, and the pipes... and that steel platform was lower than the pipes... but there wasn't enough room for a running start...
The idea was downright stupid, and it would be easier to risk splattering all over the ceiling trying to go back up through that hole. At the same time, I had hope for this method. If anything went wrong... I could only hope that I landed in a way that preserved Cyrii.
I backed up against the wall, then placed one leg against it to make sure I had the proper angle to do this. Placing both legs on the pipes, I positioned myself just a q away, then jumped up, legs curling under me and leaning forward...
A thought fleeted through my mind: On second thought, I should have done some calculations first.
Before I could second-guess anything though I fired the power-jumping pistons and struck the wall hard! I flew forward! I reached out for those beams, sprawling out so I wouldn't land too hard or miss. Yeah, calculations would have been reassuring!
Closer... closer... I felt I was moving too fast yet too slow at the same time. I wouldn't make it.... maybe I would!... Nope not going to...
YES!
The front of my hull slammed into the closest beam! I latched onto it right away, even opening my retrieval panel for the extra arms even though there was no way they could hold me. I hung, stunned for a moment. I made it! The wall jump worked! Except I had to move before I lost my grip... I checked on Cyrii for the fifth time... Oh good, no further damages.
I rotated my arms and heaved myself up onto the beams, feeling much safer on them, before standing up and following them under the catwalk. Very soon a familiar sound began to reach me, resounding off the walls: gunfire! Also Trista's frustrated shouting. That seemed to be pretty characteristic of her.
I picked up the pace, slid around a corner, and found... a wall. The light was coming through a doorway above! Darn it... the beams did go left though, and I saw a hint of similar light that way... maybe there would be a hole I could jump through!
Better to find out for sure than standing around thinking about it. I took the chance, following the beams. They sloped down before turning right again, and indeed, there was a hole in the right wall: an entrance! Blessed convenience. I ran right to the front of the hole and peered through.
It was a massive room. Two of the same, gel-holding drones that we first met were poised in it, one on fire and half-melting, but still clinging defiantly to the edge of a hole in the ceiling. Five of its different heads were holding it there, and it was trying to pick off enemies with its remaining two. The other drone stood in the center, in pretty good shape and fighting off many mech assailants, including ones I recognized. Surrounding the two drones – aside from the debris and p
ieces of fighting machines – were much smaller drones in their likeness, about half my size and definitely more nimble, occupying the mechs straddled about the room. The entrance hole ate up the entire back wall, the soil and light of the badlands pouring through. I saw mechs pacing in front of the hole, but not going in... What were they doing?
“Are you SPECTATING?!” Trista's roar from above. I looked up and saw her strung out between two heads, yet still blasting them full of holes.
Whoops, she spotted me. Time to join the party!
I didn't answer and jumped through the hole, landed on a scuffed, concrete floor, unreliably riddled with debris. A drone head slammed into the light above me, covering me in glass, before convulsing and hitting the ground nearby. I jumped, staring at it for a moment, before bolting out of range as it began lashing from side to side, the sharp triangle of a mech blade poking through it.
Hah! Trying to swallow us?!
I stuck out a bayonet and let the head impale itself on the end, quickly stabbing it from the other side so I had it in a pincer hold. It continued to writhe. I ripped open a big enough hole and concentrated my orbital lasers on its inner coating. At first it only sizzled, then smoked, then burst into flame! The flame took off and I let it go. I kept my distance from the flailing head as fire consumed it. Hopefully that helped the guy inside and didn't just make it uncomfortable for him.
To the next head! Or rather, three heads, struggling with a 17 Tank model, his blades out and slashing wildly at them. He wasn't doing much as his sweeps went in the wrong direction against the armored sleeves.
“Latitude!” I shouted at him, latching onto one head and wrestling with it. It retaliated, mostly by slamming me against the ground and sweeping the floor with me.
“Latitude?!” the large mech hissed. Oh, it was a girl. Funny!
“Length-wiiiiiiise!” I called as the head whipped upward, taking me with it! Something hit the head mid-rear, forcing me to let go. I flung out toward the far wall but hit some kind of giant industrial machine halfway there, bouncing off of it with a clang before crashing onto the floor. My battered body resounded with pain signals.