She turned to see the bulkhead just below the row of turrets as it raced toward her. She had several moments to adjust and get her feet in front of her to prepare for the impact. Her left arm crossed awkwardly across her body, the line pulling painfully tight.
The armor plating rushed upon her, filling her view, the turrets falling from her vision.
She braced herself.
The impact sent a wave of agony up her legs to coalesce into her kneecaps as her limbs collapsed beneath her. Her knees pounded into the bulkhead and a moment later her right hand slapped the surface. Her muscles locked and she resisted the force to prevent her faceplate from cracking into the surface. Her body rolled and she splayed out on her back.
But she took only a moment to collect herself before turning and attempting to gain some slack on the line, now connected a couple hundred meters behind her. Scrolling through menus on her arm, she detached the magnetic grapple and directed it to return. She stood for several long moments, her boots clamped decisively on the surface, and waited for the grapple to retract. The tiny drone navigated back as its thin nanotube line retracted into the compartment on her wrist.
It popped back into place and Floreina turned to take a long, shuddering sigh, and began walking again, upward, toward the Tachyon weapons jutting threateningly from the landscape before her.
She pushed herself forward at a rapid pace, like a stressful businessman at a spaceport, and felt the sweat causing her uniform to cling uncomfortably to her back. Her pants bunched between her legs, grating against her wounds, but the nanite’s waste product provided a strangely comforting, if utterly disgusting lubricant.
Her limp had subsided and the pain in her leg seemed to be easing, though a stiffness was spreading downward to her shin and ankle and upward toward her stomach. As she walked, she checked the datapad for her route, and checked the spare oxygen tank and her two weapons attached haphazardly to her suit. She checked her main oxygen supply, finding that it had recalculated her store to less than fifteen minutes based on her current rate of use. Still, she forced herself rapidly onward.
Her mind drifted as she walked, though she continued checking for drones. A song began playing in her un-tethered mind; an unrecognizable children’s tune set to a hard-core dance theme with no lyrics. It popped and pounded incessantly in her mind, and she saw herself dancing a jarring, grotesque and unprofessional display on an empty dance floor.
From the corner of her eye she saw movement, and turned, but caught nothing. She began nearing the third of the turrets, and looked up for a moment, intimidated, as though they had the ability turn and point down at her. Before reaching the turret well, Floreina began preparing her grapple device again for another, shorter leap. She stopped at the edge of the plating and looked over the opening that contained the eight high-slot turret hardpoints. She aimed the grapple, locked onto a point on the opposite edge of the turret well, and fired. She looked back and saw several more drones, now darting from the shadows in her direction, no doubt having waited to attack until she was distracted by the grappling process.
But they were too slow this time and Floreina released the magnetism of her boots and began retracting the line to pull herself quickly to the other side of the turret well. The drones reached her site and immediately began driving downward, into the darkness of the hardpoint opening, no doubt intending to come up on the other side in pursuit.
Floreina reached the other side and gripped the end of the line, her legs floating awkwardly above her. It took several long moments to coax her feet back down to what seemed like ground level. While the size of the craft seemed to give it a subtle gravitational pull, it was not enough to actually draw her legs down to the surface. Instead, she curled and forced her boot to the surface and quickly snapped her hand to the input pad to lock switch it on.
She stood, released the grapple and continued, now looking upward to the round, majestic, top portion of the craft, the pod command center and bridge rising from the peak just beyond the sloping contour.
Marching rapidly and breathing heavily, the pounding rhythm came back to her mind, seemingly inescapable, like a pop song stuck in her head, except this wasn’t a song exactly; just an irritating rhythm.
Again, Floreina saw movement from the corner of her vision and saw a drone slipping into the gap between armor plates. She pulled both weapons from her belt and did a complete turn to check for more tailing drones, seeing one more slip behind the lip of an armor plate. She continued walking, holding back a deep whine and forced herself onward. The thumping of her heart seemed to echo through the pressure suit.
Repeatedly she saw the drones from the corner of her eye, occasionally catching them in full view, but usually seeing them just barely slipping out of her line of vision. The sweat continued accumulating, grating uncomfortably against her skin. And every time she saw a drone, the ugly song in her head became just a little louder, and the visions of her humiliating dance became just a little bit clearer.
But she tried to focus, glancing this way and that, envisioning the drones suddenly darting out, hundreds of them closing in on her, and the first one would torch a suit rupture in seconds.
Beyond that, she saw herself somehow surviving the drones, only to come to the pod command center to find that the surgeons had no means to repair her implant.
She turned again, trying to find the drones hiding on the horizon, her weapons extended outward in both hands, but found none open enough to attempt a shot. She returned to her course and a drop of sweat fell into her eye. She shook within the helmet.
Floreina gave one final look around and began running toward the upper edge of the extended bulkhead, where eight plates, each nearly fifty meters wide, extended before her like massive castle crenellations. She awkwardly stowed the weapon from her left hand, grunting with frustration in her attempt to snap it back to the strap on her suit. Once connected, she looked around to see drones pulling from their hiding places behind plate gaps and power hubs.
Her faceplate began to fog as she pushed onward, a tortured, pleading whine cycling uncontrollably from the back of her throat. She fired her weapon nearly blindly to her sides as she approached the upper edge of the extended bulkhead. She transferred her weapon to her left hand, so that she could key in the commands for the grappling magnet that would carry her to the upper reaches of the Abaddon.
She pointed, the laser site seeming to disappear in the distance as she directed it upward toward the great rolling hill of the officer decks. It jittered randomly as she ran, and vibrated angrily with its inability to get a target lock.
Reaching the tip of the fourth armor crenellation she stopped and turned to see the drones now racing toward her from all angles. She attempted to hold her left arm steady to allow the grapple to lock onto a specific location while turning frantically to see dozens of drones now racing toward her from numerous angles.
She began firing shots, one after another, from the pistol in her right hand, the majority sailing harmlessly into space or disintegrating into the ship plating. Clenching her fingers and muscles in an attempt to hold her left hand steady, she felt her trembling throw off the grapple’s targeting system.
Her shots occasionally hit their target, but already she could sense the miniature capacitor in the weapon draining rapidly. Finally, she pulled her weapon away long enough to fire the grapple, praying that it would find a spot somewhere near her targeted area.
The weapon ran out of power with no notice beyond a subtle flashing light.
And still the drones charged. Their torches lit, one by one, the light distorting nearly incoherently through the fog of her faceplate. She released the weapon and it floated before her as she struggled for her backup.
But the drones were too close and there were too many of them. The grapple would take another fifteen seconds to reach its destination, even if it managed to attach to something.
So Floreina, through a cry of defeat, knelt and clicked the switches to power down her boots
, and leapt from the surface of the ship. She snatched for her floating sidearm, her heavily gloved fingers slapping against the handle and failing to gain a grip, sending the weapon sailing off toward the upper reaches of the ship. The drones glided to her position and tilted their torches upward and flared. She pulled in her feet and the flames dissipated safely as she floated outward.
Turning her attention toward the drone at the end of the line, she could barely make out the tiny robot as a dot against the massive surface of the battleship. The grapple drone continued flying diligently toward its destination, but was lost from sight beyond the haze of the faceplate.
Everything seemed to be liquid inside the helmet and pressure suit. Globules of moisture clung to her skin and soaked into her uniform, sweat seeming to form from the interior of the helmet to rain down upon her.
And suddenly she felt the familiar, pleasant vibration letting her know that the grapple had found an attachment. She looked at the keypad on her arm and began flipping through menus, calming herself. The faceplate began to clear as she adjusted the air flow. She checked the air supply, but barely registered the added depression as she noticed she had less than nine minutes left on this tank.
That was barely enough time to get to the airlock near the pod command center before connecting her backup tank.
But as Floreina opened the menu for the grapple drone, the device flashed an ugly red warning, notifying her of a disconnected line.
The revolving began anyway, and the line drew inward to the device on her wrist, but still she sailed outward, away from her home and into the blackness. The line wound slowly, and she watched it pull into its spool in her wrist, the end pulling inside the opening. She sighed and looked out on the Abaddon, and blinked rapidly, as though it could somehow alter the vision of the space between her and her home, and the knowledge that her suit was out of maneuvering fuel.
She prayed for some kind of corporeal object to cling to, to walk on, or grab hold of, to climb back to her home. She had the strength, she knew; more than enough; but lacked such a simple necessity as a physical connection.
She watched herself drift away.
The air circulation seemed to be performing a better job, the faceplate slowly clearing to reveal the beautiful and terrorizing sight of the turrets and armor plates becoming steadily smaller and her Angel coming into full view.
And she wondered if she would ever return.
She knew this should be an emotional time, but somehow she simply looked out on the scene with a blank comfort, despite the damp soreness throughout her body and the mild stench of the cleansed burn flesh. The frantic frustration seemed to fade into the back of her soul to be replaced with a welcome emptiness.
She leaned her head back and sighed. Was this truly what the Lord had intended for her when He had guided her on this journey?
Somehow it didn’t matter anymore… as though this were God’s great joke… to build her up like a queen for years, then for the last few hours, tear her down like an animal.
But she could see the joke… and part of her found it funny…
One way or the other, whatever He wanted would be okay with her.
______ ______ ______
Floreina focused on her breathing and relaxation as she watched the air gauge tick down to zero. The moment the counting ceased, her hands were underway releasing the clamps and air valve. She pulled the empty tank from its slot on her back and released it, then quickly unhooked her reserve from its makeshift attachment just above her hip. She closed her eyes and breathed through her nose, feeling the air becoming less satisfying with every breath. Holding the reserve tank behind her back she carefully fit it into its slot, her heart seeming to slow to reduce vibrations that could knock the tank from its threading as she began screwing it into place.
And she felt a sense of relief, as though her entire body sank deeper into her suit as the tank valve snapped securely into place and she began flipping the latches to secure the lower sections. Finally she opened the valve and felt the refreshing mixture balance back to a proper air quality.
And now she had another fifteen minutes of life left to experience.
So she simply stared back at The Angel.
Her anger began to build, and she turned to look out on the Minmatar abolitionists as they waited to march in on her home and slaughter her people.
And they would do it for no reason. They would “rescue” her slaves… The Angel’s babies… and they would release them, offering them no protection, no guidance, no spiritual purpose, and little more than a vague explanation of “freedom” and then demand that they believe that they are better off…
…it would be tragic… these were good, loyal Minmatar aboard The Angel, and they didn’t deserve to be torn from their path to salvation…
Her fellow Amarrian crewmen would be fine, and somehow, she wasn’t worried about them, even knowing the brutal slaughter the abolitionists would exercise upon them. But somehow, it was the slaves—the ones who would survive—that worried her. They were the ones who would truly suffer… for all eternity.
And the thought of the age-old question of Amarrian philosophy came to her mind, and somehow the other side made a little more sense now… these abolitionists would invade her home and brainwash their subjects and tear them from the arms of God and from their chance at eternal bliss… and they would go on doing it, on and on, until they had eradicated her Lord from all of New Eden.
…all the joy she had felt over the years, the peace, the passion… the love… the abolitionist heathens would spit on all of it and doom humanity to eternal damnation and suffering…
…perhaps… she thought…
Eradication suddenly didn’t seem like such a horrifying prospect… Floreina and the majority of Amarrian society had always opposed outright cleansing… but now… recognizing how her friends—her family—were about to be slaughtered because of what they believe… because of how they choose to live their lives…
Somehow, this must be stopped.
It suddenly seemed compassionate. If the Amarrians didn’t take charge in the name of the Lord, all those trillions of individuals, spitting in the face of God, would feel eternal torment that would make religious cleansing feel like a trip to the candy store… and they would only spread their depravity, teaching it to their children, forcing and coercing others to reject the Lord, and cause so much more pain and suffering… eternal suffering.
Eternity… but not just eternity… eternity multiplied by every man woman and child in New Eden…
That’s more than enough justification to do whatever is necessary to bring the population toward the light.
More than enough…
But as she looked over her shoulder to see an approaching ship, she suddenly changed, as though the Lord had stripped the logic from her mind and reminded her of His true form, and her thoughts from a moment earlier seemed distant and twisted.
The first of the Blackbird cruisers bore down on her, the polygonal docking bay sticking out in front of the drab grey, boxy vessel like a giant symmetrical nose on a drunken, misguided starship. The hideous alien vessel was somehow a bastion of hope she hadn’t thought possible. It grew larger and larger, but seemed to be approaching at a steadily slower rate.
It seemed unlikely that they wouldn’t have seen her at this range, and if they wanted her dead, they had enough small, rapid tracking turrets on the frigates to take her out so it would have happened already.
Floreina checked her air supply. Just over eight minutes left… just enough time to feel the air run out moments before being rescued… by the enemy. And the difficult thoughts washed away, and the thought of these heathens and their blasphemous ways seemed strangely comforting now… even they, in their own way, were God’s little creatures…
It was all too confusing…
And time dragged on as she watched the docking bay draw closer, finally surrounding her. The cruiser, though only about a sixth of the size of h
er Abaddon, seemed somehow just as massive. Finally she saw a hatch open near the bay doors as the oxygen readout in the corner of her eye ticked down to four minutes.
A small drone on a line, similar to her grappler, emerged from the opening. The tiny robot propelled itself toward her and within a few seconds she reached out to catch it, clutching it to her chest like a football. Within seconds she found herself pulled toward the hatch.
She felt the gravity crossing up her body, first her head hanging heavy, nearly dropping to the floor as she caught herself with her hands. She crawled inward, feeling the invigorating yet sickening sense of her top half weighted down and secured to a floor, while her legs hung weightless. But she dragged herself inward and pulled the hatch shut, then laid on the floor and waited for the airlock.
Floreina had imagined her tank running dry, gasping for air, ripping her helmet off as the airlock filled with oxygen and gasping for a life saving breath. But the airlock filled before her timer hit two minutes, and she pulled her helmet off casually, as though it didn’t even matter, and felt the refreshment of the newly recycled air. Despite its distinct Caldari and Minmatar scent, it smelled significantly better than her own nanite-decomposed flesh.
The internal airlock opened and immediately a Minmatar soldier ran into the chamber, brandishing a projectile pistol. He ran to Floreina, the weapon pointed with a rigid arm toward her face. He knelt rapidly, reached to her side and took hold of the pistol tied to her suit. He ripped it from her side and tossed it back to another soldier just outside the airlock.
Floreina put her hands up in a condescending shrug. “What are we doing here?” she asked.
She looked up at the Minmatar and was struck with the realization of the wrongfulness… to have gone through all this in the name of God, only to be humiliated on the floor by a Minmatar.
Her body slumped in a distracting motion as her hand shot outward in a maneuver taught to her many times by her tactical implant. Her fingers surrounded the barrel and clamped down, pulling outward, pointing the barrel up as a shot rang out, pinging against the far wall. The weapon flipped naturally around in her hand to point back at the soldier.
Against A Rock Page 23