by David Aries
“What the feck are ya doing?!” Sylvetty snapped as she held onto the wall.
“I’m trying, okay?!” Trez replied as she jerked the controls back and forth. “Flying toward open space is one thing. When you’re aiming for a set point, there ain’t much room to manoeuv—”
A red glow filled the cockpit.
Mercifully, it wasn’t some new diabolical attack aimed our way. It was, however, a familiar one reserved for our friends below: the orbital cannon.
The massive laser stabbed into the planet’s surface, causing an explosion we could see all the way from space.
“Dammit!” I yelled for two reasons. One, they’d seriously fired another shot.
I hope everyone is okay.
As for the other…
“Cannon discharging,” DD said. “You have approximately forty-five seconds to complete the infiltration.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Trez snarled as she continued dancing forward around our enemies.
I squeezed the back of her seat. “Can you make it?”
“I fucking hope so! If we don’t…”
“Shields at twenty percent!” Casella said.
“Ohh,” Akko squealed, head lost behind her arms and tentacles. “We’re going to die, we’re going to die, we’re going to die, we’re going to die…”
I growled and thumped my other hand on Trez’s shoulder. “You’ve got this. Get us in there… and forget a month of massages. I’ll give you a year. Two. Five. Ten. Whatever you want.”
“You sure know how to convince a girl,” she replied. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this. I ain’t dying yet.”
We were close—so close. The space station was looming above us like the boot of a giant preparing to crush us beneath its toes.
As we zagged around the lasers, Trez’s eyes bulged. “There!”
Pointing toward the planet was a small hole surrounded by steam. In size, it couldn’t be much bigger than our shuttle. Maybe two or three times bigger?
Sure, that didn’t sound too bad, except we were approaching it at a speed faster than human comprehension and couldn’t afford to break.
“Fifteen seconds left,” DD said.
“Fifteen percent left,” Casella said. “Make that twelve.”
I curled my fingers as I ground my teeth into dust.
Come on, Trez, you can do this…
You have to do this!
Trez gave up dodging the lasers. There wasn’t time. She made a beeline straight for the minuscule entrance.
“Seven seconds,” DD said.
“Six percent!” Casella warned.
“Five.”
“Four!”
“Three.”
“Two!”
“One.”
The hatch slammed shut… just as we crashed inside, striking off the rim.
Our shuttle skidded onward, spinning in circles through the ship’s innards to a symphony of screams and squealing metal. We surged on and on and on and on before everything came to a sudden halt, courtesy of the room’s rear. Our ship hit the wall, hard, shattering the windows and crumbling our tin can like an accordion.
We’d arrived, we’d made it inside… but at what cost?
I groaned as I awoke from a nanoscopic nap, head throbbing like I’d just come down from a three-day drinking sesh.
What happened?
I remember spinning. Lots and lots of spinning…
What my recovering eyes revealed was a mass of bodies piled on top of each other, with me firmly in the middle.
My heart jumped, as did I. “Girls! Wake up! Please!”
We’d beaten the clock and made it into the ship, but that wouldn’t mean a thing if I’d lost a single one of them.
Please, everyone, be okay!
Somebody groaned, sending my heart launching into orbit.
Casella sat up, both hands clutching the back of her head. “Ouchies…”
I breathed out a sigh of relief, but she was just one. It wouldn’t mean anything unless—
“Ow, feck!” Sylvetty said, jerking up. “It feels like someone used me back as an anvil.”
“Tell me about it,” Faris replied, growling under her breath.
“Where am I?” Akko groaned, eyes half open. “Am I dead? Is this the other side?”
Vay scoffed as she pulled herself out of the wreckage. “You think I’d go over there so easily?”
“I can confirm this to be the realm of the living,” DD said, springing into a sitting position.
Bit by bit, my anxiety ebbed away. They were all okay, except…
“Trez?” I said, turning toward her seat.
All I could see was her back, but she was slumped forward.
I pushed through the packed cabin and grabbed the back of her chair. “Trez!”
She didn’t answer… she was too busy trying to drag herself out of an airbag so big it could have been repurposed as a bean bag chair. The padding had eaten her head, and her soft pushes weren’t strong enough to get it back out.
A single tug from me, on the other hand, was more than enough.
Trez gasped the moment she got her freedom. “Thanks for the save, Muscles. Now that’s what I call an airbag.”
I breathed out. “You’re safe…”
She shrugged. “Well, duh. Heroic sacrifices ain’t my style. What good’s saving the day if you can’t enjoy the praise and rewards?” She tapped me on the chest. “I’ll be expecting you to make good on those ‘massages’.”
My lips curled into a grin. “Can do.”
“Save that for later,” Faris said. “Getting here safely means little.”
“We still need to find where that forcefield is coming from and stop it, yes?” Casella said.
“That is indeed the case, Lady Casella,” DD replied. “I shall do everything I can to assist.”
Vay stood up and stretched her back. “You took the words right from my mouth, little one.” Next, she threw open the crumpled locker Faris had dumped her breathing gear into and grabbed her sword. “Let’s finish this!”
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Chapter 23
I kicked the spacecraft’s warped door of its hinges and poked my head outside. “The coast’s clear.”
There wasn’t a robot to be seen in the colossal hall where we’d made our arrival. In fact, there wasn’t much at all bar the giant cannon splitting the room in half.
“What, no welcoming party?” Vay said as she jumped outside. “Where are all the sentries?”
“We have infiltrated this station through such an unusual avenue that I suspect our presence is currently undetected,” DD said from inside the shuttle. “With this location rarely staffed unless the orbital cannon is in need of repairs, it should take some time before our location is discovered.”
Vay chuckled. “You sure know your stuff, little android.”
“It is but a calculated hypothesis. Think nothing of it.”
A little peace and quiet was fine with me. After what we’d just been through, I could do with a moment of calm.
Seriously, did we have to cut it so close?
With less than a second to spare. It was like Trez had been trying to give me a heart attack.
Either way, she’d got us here, and in one piece. Well… mainly one piece. My mates and I fit that criteria, as did our equipment. Our shuttle on the other hand? It had seen better days. The whole thing was totaled. It was a crumpled wreckage even Trez didn’t have any hope of fixing.
“How aren’t we dead?” I said.
“You can thank my excellent driving for that,” Trez replied as she hopped onto stable ground.
“And the shuttle’s shield,” Faris said, following close behind. “And it’s anti-collision deflectors.”
“Don’t let what happened down below skew your perception, stud,” Vay said. “Ships have all manner of safety functions meant to protect from crashes… when they’re not powerless, that is.”
&nbs
p; Trez crossed her arms and pouted. “Hey, don’t spoil my moment.”
The corner of my mouth twitched into a smile. “Either way, it looks like we’re going to need a new ship.”
Casella clapped her hands together. “But first we must stop that nasty forcefield, yes?”
“Allow me, Lady Casella,” DD said before she skated across the hall to a terminal located nearby, on the back of the orbital cannon. Once there, she opened her right index finger and hooked herself into the computer.
I rushed after her, mates by my side. “Any luck?”
“I am afraid not, Master Brandon,” she replied. “What I am able to do from this location is highly limited. It seems this station’s main functions have been segregated into separate networks that can only be accessed from specific locations.”
“That’s bad, right?” Sylvetty said, scratching the back of her head.
“It was to be expected. Limiting access strictly to physical locations is viewed as the only true defense against unauthorized usage.”
“Ya what?”
“Basically, hackers can’t do shit if they’ve gotta access the terminals in person,” Trez said.
Sylvetty stared blankly.
“Never mind,” I said, turning back to DD. “Just tell me we’ve come to the right place.”
“Indeed we have,” DD replied, eyes locked on the monitor. “The force field controls are on board this station. If we reach the correct location, I should have no problem deactivating the barrier permanently.”
Casella applauded. “Really and truly?”
“D-don’t sound too excited, sweetie,” Akko replied while fidgeting away. “This is starting to sound strangely familiar…”
“I was thinking the same thing,” I said.
“Where is this terminal?” Faris asked.
“Allow me,” DD said, bringing up a 3D, spherical map on the screen. “This is a projection of this station. We are currently located by the orbital cannon, here.” A marker appeared on the map, pointing to a location near the station’s edge, around three-quarters of the way down. “The central terminal, which will give us full access to this station’s functions, is located here.” Another marker spawned, almost directly up from the cannon. It looked to be a bit above the halfway point.
“That’s not as bad as I was expecting, actually,” I confessed. “I was worried we’d be heading to the far side of this place.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy!” Akko squeaked. “I bet this place is filled with sentry bots. Right? Right?!”
“I can confirm the presence of security units within this station,” DD said.
“See! And I bet they’re crawling all over the central terminal. It’s going to be like The Core all over again.”
“And that’s supposed to be a bad thing?” Vay asked.
“Quiet! I want to get through this without being shot at…”
“I am afraid there is no other alternative, Lady Akko,” DD said. “Accessing the central terminal is the only way.”
“There’s not a physical shield generator we could destroy?” Faris asked.
DD jolted. “E-excuse me?”
“Surely the force field must have a generator aboard. Wouldn’t destroying that be an option?” Faris continued before tapping a claw on the screen over a room in the map’s center. “And what about the central generator? Would deactivating that not suffice?”
DD gawped, seemingly lost for words for the first time since we’d met.
“I can see where you’re coming from with the shield gen,” Trez said, “but are you seriously suggesting we go for the big boy and power down this whole place? You forget we’re relying on life support functions?”
“I’m sure there’s a backup generator to keep them online,” Faris replied.
“And you wanna risk that? No thanks. I kinda like being able to breathe.”
Faris scrunched her nose and dragged her hand away from the screen. “I wasn’t saying we should do it… I was just wondering if we could.”
DD curtsied, with one hand on her dress and the other still in the terminal. “Please allow me to apologize for being misleading. There are indeed other options available to us, but they are so inferior to my suggestion I did not find them worthy of mention. Accessing the central terminal is the only option that makes sense. Not only will it allow us to deactivate the force field, but it will also give us complete control of the station’s security functions, as well as the means to call for external assistance, circumventing the need to acquire a new shuttle.”
“That’s quite the sale’s pitch,” I said.
“Only because she didn’t mention all the things that will try to stop us,” Akko said as she wrapped herself around my arm.
“I am afraid I cannot find any details about the central terminal’s security functions,” DD replied while disconnecting herself from the terminal. “However, I shall do everything in my power to avoid us being discovered. I have already calculated the route with the lowest chance of detection, if you shall be so kind as to allow me to be your guide.”
“Of course, we will,” I said. “You’ve not let us down yet.”
Casella bowed her head. “We will be relying on you once again.”
DD giggled and replied with a curtsy of her own. “You are too kind, Lady Casella. Now let us make haste before our location is discovered.” Without waiting for us to reply, she skated off on her in-built heelys.
After we’d loaded ourselves down with a full arsenal of weapons I prayed we wouldn’t need to use, we chased after our runaway android.
It became immediately apparent how she was planning on keeping us from being detected. Rather than entering the ship’s main hallways, DD instead sought to exploit the utility tunnels connected to our personal hangar.
In design, they were closer to the slaver ship I’d once rampaged through rather than the pristine sci-fi style that decorated The Core. I had to duck under exposed pipe after pipe as my feet clanked against the metal-grating walkway underfoot.
“This is one handy path,” I commented, taking the lead, shield ready on the off-chance something went wrong.
“Disagreed,” Vay said as she shuffled after me like a hunchback.
An incredibly beautiful hunchback, mind you.
Faris glanced at the ceiling. “No cameras?”
“That is indeed correct, Lady Faris,” DD replied. “These corridors are only meant to be accessed by robots. I imagine equipping them with cameras was viewed as a waste of resources. The same goes for the room containing the orbital cannon.”
I scoffed. “Haven’t they ever played a stealth game? Snake loves vents for a reason.”
It was an important lesson to remember for if I ever became a super villain with his own secret lair: no matter what, don’t skimp on the cameras.
True to DD’s claims, we didn’t run into any robots as we journeyed through the floor’s compact service tunnels—she claimed she’d taken the robot workforce’s schedule into account when plotting our path. After what couldn’t have been five minutes, we arrived at our means for reaching the upper floors.
Casella gasped. “A grav lift! You never told us about this.”
Sure enough, there was an elevator ahead, identical to the one leading into The Core.
“I thought you were expecting us to climb,” Akko said.
“Ya mean I stretched me wings out for nothing?” Sylvetty complained.
DD giggled as she squeezed past me. “Of course not, Lady Akko. Now please allow me to…” She accessed a side panel using her finger-trick, changing the lift’s direction so it was heading up instead of down.
I grinned.
Seriously, we need to think of a way to keep her around after this is over.
Android or not, DD had earned her place by our side. I wasn’t going to let anyone, be they friend or foe, take her away.
The grav lift carried us up the ship in the same manner we’d become accustomed t
o, with the exception of having to jump off at the right floor. From there, it was another short journey through the station’s desolate utility tunnels before DD brought us to a halt.
“This hatch should bring us out near the chamber we seek,” she explained. “I apologize for not being able to take you any further; I am afraid it is impossible to access our target from these tunnels.”
“That’s alright. You’ve done plenty,” I assured her, even though I wasn’t completely sure how close she’d brought us.
For all I knew, there were miles to go.
“I’m guessing there will be cameras outside,” I continued.
“That is indeed the case, Master Brandon. However, if we hurry, we may be able to reach the terminal before anyone notices our presence.”
May…
I placed a hand on my trusty axe. “Prepare yourselves. Get ready for anything.”
“Can do, stud!” Vay replied.
“And try not to get too excited…”
After cracking the hatch open, I led my mate’s into a hallway almost the complete opposite of the utility tunnels. Rather than busy and somewhat dated, the corridor came across as slick and futuristic… to me.
To everyone else, bar Sylvetty, it was likely just a normal uninteresting passage.
“Still no security,” I whispered as I peeked, not a soul to be seen.
Akko exhaled. “Let’s hope that doesn’t change…”
“Which way?” Faris asked.
“We must follow the path to our right until we reach a door located on that same side,” DD replied.
“Then let’s hurry,” I said, taking off.
I progressed at more of a skip than a sprint as I attempted to combine speed and light-footedness. My hope was it would quieten my steps, lessening the chance of anyone nearby catching wind of us.
Because seven pairs of metal-clad feet pounding down a hallway was the pinnacle of stealth.
While the wall to our right remained just that, our left side kept opening into tunnels I made sure to spy down each time before passing.
Over and over, there was nothing to be seen, allowing us to rush on in secret.
“Are we nearly there yet?” Casella whispered after we’d passed several empty offshoots.
“I believe so, Lady Casella,” DD replied, the only one of us not making a racket. “There should be one more passage before we reach the chamber’s entrance.”