by David Aries
That wasn’t a surprise; we were talking about smuggling one of the most feared entities in the universe off this planet. If it was as simple as hiding her in the trunk, we wouldn’t have been having this discussion.
Our conversation came to a stark halt when we reached the hangar. Within, DD waited for us with a smile that both reinforced my belief and triggered my guilt.
“It is a pleasure to see you all again,” she said, performing another underwater curtsy. “The shuttle is now fully operational.”
I forced my lips upward. “Great work! You’re a lifesaver.”
“I am glad I could be of assistance. The wheel is yours whenever you desire it, Lady Faris.”
“On it,” Faris replied as she rushed into the waterlogged ship.
DD could repair it all she wanted, but there was no drying it out until we reached the surface.
As the shuttle powered up and showed off its thrusters, DD turned back to me. “Now it is your turn to help me, Master Brandon.”
My heart pulsed. “It is?”
“I am afraid so.” She pointed at the large hatch partially separating the ship from the world outside. It had been damaged, likely on impact, allowing the lake’s contents to seep inside. “The door seems to be jammed. Would you be so kind as to use your strength?”
Another problem?
Why am I not surprised?
“Sure, I’ll see what I can do,” I said while internally cursing the hatch for daring to get in my way.
If it thought it was going to stop us after we’d come so far, it had another thing coming.
At first, I tried to drag the huge double door open, but the damn thing made good on its promise of being stuck.
It didn’t help that the water seriously nerfed my strength.
However, I wasn’t losing against an inanimate object. I snapped a metal pole from a docking station and used it like a crowbar.
The door continued its act of stubborn disobedience, but, this time, there was some give.
“Hey, Akko,” I said to the only one besides myself still lingering outside the ship. “Give me a hand.”
“Me?”
“Of course! We all know you’re like a Wonder Woman when you’re in water.” Which made me more like Steve Trevor.
“I-I’ll try,” she said… before throwing her hip into the pipe with the intensity of a torpedo.
The door burst open.
I looked into the now gaping hole to the inside and fist bumped. “Alri—”
My senses ignited.
Before I could react, a leviathan shot inside and tackled me to the back of the room.
I gasped as my spine thudded against hard metal, giving me a big mouthful of water.
There went my bubble.
“Brandon!” Akko screamed.
I shut my trap and sunk my fingers into the massive mouth pinning me down. It was a few inches too small to swallow me completely, yet that didn’t mean my bacon had been saved. The leviathan was eager to eat me up, and my muffled power wasn’t enough to wrestle it off.
You bastard! Have you been waiting for us all this time?!
If that was the case, it meant…
Akko drilled the leviathan with a hip bump, smashing it into one of the totaled shuttles. “Are you okay, sweetie?”
“For—” I began before the lake flooded my lungs.
Dammit!
I hate being underwater.
There was a metallic groan as the second baby rushed into the room and latched onto the shuttle.
My adrenaline surged. I pushed my feet into the wall and kicked off with all the force I could, propelling me into the leviathan. When I arrived, I gave it a taste of what I’d done to its sibling, courtesy of my axe.
The beast squealed, releasing the shuttle.
Before it could take another bite, in came Akko with another haymaker of a tackle. Almost in the same movement, she produced a bubble she dunked on my head.
My lungs tried to empty themselves and breathe in at once. As I spluttered, I said, “The ship?”
“No breaches,” Faris said through a speaker.
The first leviathan lunged toward us, hoping to change that.
I went to hack it down, but Akko caught it first with an uppercut of a kick.
“Sweetie, let’s get inside!” she said, reaching for my hand.
The second leviathan lunged between us.
I chopped its back as it soared past us. “There’s no time.” Not to mention our new shuttle wasn’t as fancy as Bogdan’s. It didn’t come with any turrets, which meant no fighting back. I turned to it and said, “Faris, go! We’ll catch up.”
“Understood,” she replied after a momentary pause.
The shuttle’s thrusters ignited, propelling the vessel outside.
As it passed through the hatch, the leviathans charged.
So did Akko and I. We flung ourselves across the room and took out the leviathans before they could take a bite out of our ship.
Of course, it didn’t stop the monsters from trying. They fought to get through the door we barricaded with our bodies.
I smacked them back with my axe while Akko whacked them with strength she couldn’t hope to muster outside of her underwater domain.
It was enough to give the oversized eels a beating, but it didn’t break their resolve. They wanted the shuttle making a slow escape, and they wanted it bad.
That didn’t mean they could break through; I had no intention of letting these fishy fiends hunt down my Faris. If it meant staying here until she’d reached the surface, so be it.
An ear-splitting roar disagreed.
Mommy was coming.
I snarled. Because of course she was. When did that bloated bitch ever make it easy for us?
“Dammit,” I said as I gave one of the babies another hit. “We’ve not got time for this.”
If those runts wouldn’t stop coming, I had to stop them myself.
When the chance presented itself, I grabbed one of the doors we’d forced open and prised it across like a metal shutter.
The leviathan smashed its face into the other side, but the hatch held.
While Akko fended the leviathans off, I repeated with the other side, trapping the pair within the room.
They clubbed their heads into the door, hammering on the ready-made hole in the center, but it would take some time before they managed to bust through. More than enough for us to get out of lake… as long as we dealt with mommy.
“Sweetie!” Akko said, pointing at the gargantuan sea snake heading for our shuttle.
Dammit, why is Faris going so slow?
I expected her to whizz out of the water, but she was going at the speed of a ninety-year-old driver.
Is the shuttle not good with water?
The exact reason didn’t matter; I was already on the move… but not half as fast as Akko was. She was the only one capable of stopping the shuttle from becoming a leviathan chew toy.
“Go, Akko!” I yelled. “You can do it!”
The leviathan and my lightning-fast interceptor of a mate raced to see who would reach their target first. Would the leviathan get its teeth into our chariot or would Akko save the day?
Please, Akko!
It was close. The leviathan’s jaws were hovering over the ship. One bite and it would all be ov—
Akko struck first, drilling her shoulder into the leviathan’s flank.
The huge queen swung to the side, propelling the shuttle the other way.
Yes!
That was my Akko: the destroyer of leviathans.
Well… not quite ‘destroyer’. The leviathan wasn’t the sort to die from a body slam, no matter how much speed was behind the hit. It also wasn’t the kind of monster willing to let a moving tin of grub escape, as it proved by ignoring Akko in favor of continuing after the ship.
What? No!
I gritted my teeth and powered forward to help Akko.
She was doing her best to stop the levi
athan, but her blows weren’t the same without a swim-up. They lacked the power needed to truly drive the leviathan away.
The huge beast pushed forward and snapped.
Fortunately, it got nothing but water. Faris managed to turn the ship upside down and use the lower thrusters to hop downward, beneath the leviathan’s jaw. It saved the shuttle from destruction with the tradeoff of taking it further from the surface.
With the tradeoff of keeping it in leviathan territory.
The queen recovered fast. She turned on a dime, all too ready to make her third attack count.
Not if I can help it!
At last, I arrived. I slammed into the side of the monster’s face with all the propulsion I could.
It was nowhere near enough to knock the leviathan off-balance. If Akko’s strikes were like those of a heavyweight boxer, I was a child with stuffed animals taped to his knuckles.
Luckily, I didn’t come here to punch.
I grabbed hold of the leviathan’s scales and swung my axe, burying it into the monster’s eyes.
The queen stopped in her tracks with a brain-rattling scream.
I tensed down as I feared the shockwave-causing intensity would turn my brain to soup.
Instead, it popped the bubble Akko had given me to replace the last.
I didn’t take that as a reason to back off; it was too early to call it quits. Someone had to buy Faris time to escape, and I was all too happy to volunteer. While trapping all the air I could in my lungs, I pulled my axe out so I could strike again and again.
Each forced more cries from the lake’s tyrant. She tried to shake me off.
It didn’t work; I shoved my arm into the gooey remains of the monster’s eye and grabbed onto whatever grossness lurked inside.
Nice try, but I’m not going anywhere until Faris is out of here!
At last, she was making progress. The shuttle was slowly, agonizingly slowly, moving toward the surface.
As long as I kept doing what I was doing, that was fine. I twisted my arm, mangling some stuff that felt pretty important to a one-eyed leviathan.
She answered my actions with her shrieks.
Akko swam around the leviathan, her tentacles pressed flat against the sides of her head, covering her ears. “There you are, sweetie. Oh, your bubble!”
I gurgled, trying to tell her to ignore me and focus on distracting the leviathan. However, in doing so, I took my eye off the prize.
Unlike the leviathan.
It only had one peeper left, but it remained on the ship. When I stopped tugging at its innards, it took the chance to continue the charge.
Akko squeaked and grabbed a hold of me before the leviathan took me away.
I continued squeezing on its insides while smacking its face.
Dammit, stop!
The leviathan didn’t listen; it wanted the ship.
Faris was just reaching the surface. The shuttle’s thrusters were vanishing from the water as it took off into the air.
Queenie didn’t care; she was hungry for metal. Up she raced at full pelt, no longer letting me hold her back.
All I could do was… well, hold on.
The mega leviathan crashed into the surface and leapt into the air in pursuit of the ship.
Her jaws were close, unbearably close, yet a burst of fire from the ship’s rear jerked it out of the way in unison with the tidal explosion caused by the emerging giant.
Up the leviathan rose, yet its prey was gone. The queen of the deep had failed, and all that remained was an embarrassing fall back into the lake.
With us going along for the ride.
Akko squealed and clung to me as we rose so high the sky almost turned blue.
I gritted my teeth as we approached the apex. Something told me being flattened between a leviathan and the lake’s surface wasn’t a good idea.
Which means…
“Akko, hold on,” I said, pulling my goop-stained arm from the leviathan’s bloody socket.
“S-sweetie! What are you—”
There wasn’t time to explain. As the leviathan reached the peak of its leap, I let her momentum launch us forward and through the air.
Her Highness dropped like an anvil and crashed into the lake with such force it was a surprise she didn’t empty it. We, on the other hand, soared in an arch through the swamp’s yellow smog clouds.
Akko screamed her throat sore as she held onto me with her arms, legs, and every tendril that made up her barnet.
I focused on keeping us steady… not that there was much I could do. Being mated to Sylvetty made it so I could jump high, not fall gracefully. There was a long way to go until we hit the floor, and there wasn’t much I could do but pray.
Come on…
I believe in you!
As we dipped and began the long descent down to our doom, a chunky green vessel darted toward us.
I wrapped an arm around Akko and leant in so I was the one who took the brunt of the fall—an impact so unlike what could have been. Sure, landing on a bed of metal wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was better than falling a hundred meters and testing how soft the swamp really was.
As soon as I realized we were safe, I breathed out… not that it did anything to quell the perilous beat of my heart.
The fact the air was toxic and I was bubbleless didn’t help.
This was the point Akko usually jumped in to help, but she was a little preoccupied. “Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts,” she said, shivering as she clung to me.
She’d probably realize we were safe sooner or later.
I knew Faris wouldn’t let me down.
Even though I hadn’t exactly warned her what I was going to do.
Faris opened the shuttle’s upper hatch and poked her head out of its waterlogged insides. “What were you thinking?”
I responded by pointing at my pursed lips and bloated cheeks.
With a sigh, she swapped her mask with her hand, pushing the breathing tool into my mouth. “You could have been kill—”
I stole a firm kiss… or, at least, I tried to. Really, I just pressed the mask against the back of her hand while making a smooching noise.
Her eyes still widened.
“Thanks for the save, beautiful,” I said once I’d had my fill of playing lovers.
Whatever she was about to say—like I wasn’t fully aware—was lost behind a warm blush.
“Is the ship okay?” I continued.
“Beep boop,” DD said, as she emerged from the hatch and shook the water from her artificial hair. “There is no damage to report, Master Brandon. Once we have emptied the ship, we shall be ready to leave.”
I grinned. If swamp water was the only opponent we had left, I felt it was safe to say we’d succeeded with our mission.
We’d secured ourselves a working shuttle. That meant all that was left was to get off this fractured planet.
Chapter 22
As quickly as we could, we left the poisonous swamp, called the others to tell them the good news, and set about emptying the ship of the ridiculous amount of water weighing it down.
It’s no wonder it moved so slowly.
If anything, it was a surprise it moved at all.
After plenty of barrel rolls and some makeshift bucketing, we squeezed Rocket inside and rushed back to The Core.
Atop my favorite mount, it had taken us days to travel from A to B. In the ship, it felt closer to minutes.
I hadn’t seen such a difference in speed since I first upgraded from a HDD to an SSD.
Sorry, Rocket. I still love you.
But there was no denying we’d gotten our mitts on the game changer to end all others.
By the time we arrived back at the old Ji base, a small crowd had gathered to see the grand arrival of the vessel that was getting us out of this dump. My mates, plenty of herixes, and some of my closest friends on this planet stood gawping at the green shuttle Faris touched down in the pit’s center.
I
kicked the hatch open and saluted. “Hey, everyone. Miss us?”
“My Brandon!” Casella said, leading the cavalry charge… although she was the only one who finished it in my arms.
Trez rubbed her hands over the shuttle. “It’s a ship… it’s seriously a ship.”
“Obviously,” Faris said as she left the vessel. “What did you think we were bringing?”
“Would you shut up? Let a girl have a moment.” Trez hugged the shuttle, proof she hadn’t cost us a means off this planet.
“How is it?” Demi asked as she inspected it from the outside.
“All systems are online,” DD replied as she poked her head out of the ship.
“Is that yer way of saying this bird is good to go?” Sylvetty asked.
“That it is, Lady Sylvetty. We may leave whenever we please.”
A cheer rose into the sky.
“Fuck yeah!” Keith said, picking up Millith and twirling her around.
Eret held his chest and exhaled. “It’s finally happening.”
“It’s… we’re…” Aya began, but a storm of tears put an end to her eloquence and pushed her into Eret’s arms.
She wasn’t the only one to succumb to their emotions. Plenty of the herixes, not to mention Joobee, started to get teary eyed.
“Ohh,” Akko said, holding her cheeks as she came outside. “What’s everyone crying for? Don’t they know they’re going to set me…” As predicated, beads developed in the corners of her eyes.
She was swiftly snatched off her feet by a mood-surpassing xioth with a cheery laugh. “Come now, little one! Should the hero of the hour really be crying?” Vay said. “You did it, just as promised.” Her reward was a hug to end all others.
“A-ah,” Akko squeaked. “Y-you’re hurting me…”
I muffled a small laugh before combing some of Casella’s stray pink locks back in place. “How have things been here? Okay, I hope.”
“They have,” she said with a giggle. “As good as to be expected, anyway. There’s been no signs of any nasty robots, but that didn’t mean we let our guard down. We spent all the time we could preparing for the worst—look!” Casella moved back and showed off her outfit.
It hadn’t been lost on me that she was wearing a suit of armor, but it wasn’t of herix design. Rather than orange, the metal was a standard gray and was nowhere near as refined as the outfit I had on. It was more like someone had tried to build their own from scratch.