Vis Genitoris, Generator Virium
A Max Steel 2013 Fanfiction
"Go now! That power core isn't going to blow itself!"
The rough command sent a wave of cold dread through the youth it was aimed at even as he accepted it. The sounds of the battle were oddly muted this deep in the enemy's mothership. The frantic battle going on, the one in which his friends were fighting and dying, it felt both distant and yet far too close.
"Not a chance!" the brightly confident voice that countered the argument floated up from his chest as his blue and silver symbiote detached and hovered over the man who had raised him, who had been a father to them both. "We can get you out of here and to the medics in no time. Kat and Jefferson–"
A rough snarl cut off the protest and both the hybrid and the Ultralink moved back as the older warrior rolled over and braced his back against the metal wall. His remaining hand, burnt and seeping blood, reached across and pulled a blaster into ready position, while his prosthetic hung uselessly at his side. Dark brown eyes stared intently up at the two, searching between sky blue eyes and the bright cerulean optic.
"If that power core doesn't go down," his gaze focused on the hovering symboite and his voice dropped to a haggard whisper. "You have seen what happens firsthand Steel. I don't have to tell you," the glow of the optic dimmed and the mechanical being shivered, "and now we know that that will be only the beginning. Max, Steel –"
There was still strength in that voice, the same strength that had made him the one to run to when thunderstorms had terrified a small Maxwell McGrath. There was also weakness; physical pain and years of exhaustion. Forge Ferris was getting old, and that terrified them.
"Uncle Ferris," there was pleading in the young voice.
"Go!"
This time the commanded was snarled out in near rage and Max recoiled. He locked eyes with the older man one more time and the turned to run down the passageway. Steel lingered a moment longer, regret and anger playing across his emotive displays before following after his partner.
"Go Turbo! Speed!" the youth choked out, grateful for the helmet that hid the tears slipping down his face.
Steel darted around in front of him and initiated the Link. The familiar rush of power, the joy of joining was dampened as he faintly heard the sound of the soldier's blaster powering up over the tread of approaching elementors.
"I have the map Ven Ghan uploaded for this maze," Steel stated crisply. "Just follow the red line."
Max gave a curt nod in response as the indicator popped up on his heads up display. There was an undertone of grief in the Ultra Link's voice. The youth knew his brother regretted the tension between him and Forge. Steel had been trying to rebuild their relationship after the revelations of the past few months. Once the truth had been laid bare the alien had been far more forgiving of the adults' deceptions than Max himself had been. Now the youth desperately wished he had done more to aid the reconciliation instead of stewing in his own self-righteous discontent.
"Max Steel!" The familiar voice accosted them as they neared the final door.
"Ven Ghan!" Max cried out in relief, skidding to a stop.
The lanky purple warrior was limping, bleeding from one arm, and sporting enough lacerations to make a cheese grater envious. But their friend and ally still stood strong and carried his blade easily.
"Do you have a plan to disrupt the power core?" As always the Ultralink hunter was straight to the point.
"Not exactly," Steel admitted as he disengaged from the bond and floated over to Ghan. The symbiote activated his holo-projector, showing a string of data incomprehensible to Max but clearly meaning something to their friend. "Berto decoded most of the diagrams you gave us but it is all schematics for the power collection and dispersal array. There was actually nothing on the power source itself," the Ultralink explained.
"I see. So how do you plan to proceed?" The warrior inquired.
"We bust in, kick the snot out of anyone who gets in our way, and blast the thing to pieces," Max cut in harshly. "Come on! Time's a wasting."
Ven Ghan might have frowned under his respirator but only nodded and hefted his weapon. Steel ran a scan beam over the door control then turned and shook his core negatively.
"No easy way to crack it?" Max demanded. "Then we bust it! Go Turbo! Cannon!"
The corridor exploded with blue light as Max Steel assumed his most powerful form. He charged forward and felt the wall of the ship give way with a satisfying shredding sensation. A few blasts landed on his outer armor but by the time he had transformed into his more flexible strength mode Ven Ghan had dispatched the guards and was approaching the main control unit. Even under the circumstances Max had to take a moment to gasp at what he was seeing.
They stood on an observation platform that hovered on the edge of a cylindrical chamber. An array of medical apparatus filled the shelves where Max Steel would have expected more mechanically inclined equipment but they dismissed the oddity as they focused on what was ahead. The chrome and gold lattice that made up the walls caught the light from a glowing pillar of blue fire. It must have been a hundred yards across and stretched to the edge of their vision up and down: the core of the Alphalink.
"There!" Max was jolted out of his memorization by Ven Ghan's crisp exclamation. "I have located the power source."
The platform began to move, lowering slightly and rotating around the pulsing blue fire.
"Max?" there was something hesitant in the voice in his head. "Does this all feel…familiar to you?"
"Yeah, familiar, and good?" the human agreed in confusion.
"Max Steel," Ven Ghan had long since grown used to seeing his fellow warrior talking to himself and simply pointed to a glowing pod, barely visible at the center of the pillar of fire. "The source of Makino's power."
"Yeah, I kinda figure that," Max growled grimly. "What do ya say Steel? Turbo cannon? Turbo pulse?"
"I say take it easy there Rambo," the Ultralink snorted as he disengaged and hovered over the control consol. "We don't want to blow this thing until the N-TEK forces get to the escape pods. Wait, why in the name of the Motherboard are they feeding this thing water and organic matter? Oh, never mind. Ven Ghan can wormhole us out of here but even he has his limits. Give me a minute and I can get this thing to blow itself on a timer."
"Hurry it up then. N-TEK personnel are dying out there," the youth snapped, "and the longer we wait the more –"
"I am hurrying," Steel snarled as his phalanges danced over the control panel. "Want to see if you can do better?"
Max was about to snap back when he felt a cool hand on his shoulder. He glanced back and flinched. Ven Ghan was staring at him, radiating that quiet strength and presence the warrior always did. The Earthling slumped and took a deep breath. Somehow the Hunter always made him feel immature and yet comforted. It was weird.
"And he scores!" Steel crowed in glee suddenly.
"You've set it to blow?" Max demanded.
"Not quite," the Ultralink attacked the consol with renewed vigor. "I did however convince the mainframe to release the power source for maintenance. We pitch it directly into the collectors without the buffers in the pod…"
"And kapow! The Alphalink is dead in space," his partner finished with a grin. The pod was rotating then began to iris open revealing a nearly blinding blue light. "Time to throw a monkey wrench into Makino's –"
His voice suddenly choked off as his eyes fell on the power source. The feeling of familiarity suddenly intensified as the pod carefully extended its contents to the observation platform. A powerfully built Tachyon male, burning with Turbo energy. His body was pierced with feeding tubes and sensory wires and his flesh was bare and smooth, utterly shaved of hair and covered in a tight sleeve of opaque pearlescent material. His face was covered with a tightly woven metallic mask, a sensory mimic unit.
"Above us!" Ven Ghan's urgent cry broke the youth's shock and his head snapped over to where the Hunter was pointing his weapon.
A swarm of Ultralinks, bonded and unbounded were pouring down the chamber towards them.
"Go Turbo! Speed!" Max called out.
Steel was with him in a moment and then they were at the side of the prisoner.
"Careful there Max, we can't just yank him out or it could kill him," the symbiote warned.
"Yeah, well if we don't I'm pretty sure they will do the same to us," the youth countered.
"Or worse," the Ultralink muttered ominously. "Just a moment…"
Steel claimed control of the body and Max felt their hands dart out and over the tense captive. Before he could process what had happened the Tachyon fell into his arms and they darted over to snatch Ven Ghan from the path of a plasma blast. The warriors paused in a sheltered alcove and glanced back at their pursuers.
"There's still the problem of blowing this place sky high," Steel pointed out uneasily.
Ven Ghan gave a snort and removed one of the many devices from his person. He activated the cylinder and a dull red light began to flash. He stepped out of the small protection offered by the alcove and tossed the device into the air. It tumbled for a moment unnoticed until one of the Ultralinks shouted bomb. A small squadron broke off to pursue the device and then the invaders' view of the chamber was cut off in a purple haze.
They materialized in the cramped confines of Ven Ghan's personal spacecraft. Max fumbled awkwardly to arrange himself and the now limp Tachyon in the limited area while the Hunter signaled the all clear to the N-TEK personnel engaged on the Mothership.
"Bro-Ghan, not that I doubt your tech," Steel started once they were headed towards Earth, "but won't it be easy for the Ultralinks to find and diffuse that bomb?" He companionably dropped his phalanges over the purple shoulder and peered up at the fringed helm curiously.
"It is not a bomb," the Hunter informed him curtly, but did not refuse the friendly gesture. "It is a temporal triggered singularity generator, and it is set to build in intensity, activating at random intervals within a set sphere before creating an event-horizon."
"Oh wow!" the symbiote flashed an exclamation point on his emotive display. "That is genius!"
"Say what now?" Max squawked from his awkward position under the rescued man. Who was, he flinched to see, bleeding on him from where they had had to sever the connections to the pod.
"It'll randomly pop around the chamber before forming a black hole and warping the whole thing beyond repiar," Steel explained as he floated back to perch On his brother's shoulder. "It should work even better than our original plan."
"Hey Buddy. You okay?" Max asked as he shifted.
The Ultralink had seemed to lose concentration as he stared at the metal mask over the freed man's face.
"He just seems so familiar," the symbiote murmured hesitantly reaching out a phalange as if to touch the material.
A bright spark of blue arced between the two and Steel jerked back with a gasp. The Tachyon stiffened and the without warning struck out. His fist impacted against the bulkhead inches from Max's face, sending a wave of Turbo energy into the circuits and causing the ship to juke dangerously in the atmosphere. The youth yelped and tried to duck, only succeeding in smacking his head into the wall.
"Easy there man! We're on your side!" he called out frantically.
An indistinguishable string of words emitted from the now struggling and surprisingly strong figure, only to be cut off with a snap as the man went limp again. Max glanced over to see Ven Ghan calmly returning the stun wand to its place on his utility harness.
"That was intense," he muttered.
"And short," Steel agreed. "Thankfully. I guess it makes sense that the poor guy is traumatized. I mean being the last of his race and everything."
"What about me?" Max interjected.
"Eh, you don't count," the Ultralink waved dismissively.
"Thanks a lot," the hybrid snorted.
"Besides, he wouldn't have known about you stuck in that pod," Steel continued circling the senseless figure. "But no wonder Berto said Makino's power source rivaled your Turbo energy. It was Turbo energy."
"I wonder how Makino got ahold of him," Max pondered softly, staring at the shoulder resting against his chest.
"Probably an evacuee. Or he just snatched one of your dad's fellow warriors off the planet before the Alpha Link finished," the Ultralink offered.
The ship hummed as they came to a landing and Ven Ghan leapt out, reaching back in to take the rescued Tachyon from Max. They carried the limp form over to N-TEK's new base and handed him off to the waiting medics. Steel gave the head nurse a string of instructions; that included calling him as soon as the man showed signs of consciousness. There was no reason to assume he spoke any Earth language and Steel or Ven Ghan would be the only ones capable to translating for them.
Max scanned the sky nervously even as he listened to the comm chatter. The patient being carried away might be the only living pureblooded Tachyon in existence but he was far more concerned about the fate of the human man who had raised him. Word had come in that the tough old soldier was still alive but that could change quickly in battle. The all clear came, signaling that the last N-TEK personnel were clear of the mother ship, and moments later Ven Ghan quietly confirmed that the trap had detonated.
"So what did he say back there in the ship?" Max asked idly.
Ven Ghan gave a short bark of laughter. "It was a short and colorful description of Makino's ancestry."
"Really?" the youth asked in interest.
"Max!" the frantic voice heralded the arrival of a woman clad in dark grey body armor.
The Ultralink hunter stepped back respectfully and allowed Molly McGrath to swoop in and embrace her son.
"Are you okay?" she demanded holding him out at arm's length for examination.
"Yeah Mom," he smiled weakly as the exhaustion began to catch up. "I'm fine. Have you heard anything about Uncle Ferris?"
The woman gave a bark of laughter and pointed to where an N-TEK fighter had just landed.
"Hear for yourself," she instructed him.
The barrage of snarled and irate orders coming from a soot blackened form on the stretcher drew the attention of both brothers and they ran over to embrace the injured commander.
"Easy there you two," he winced at the contact. "I've got a few bits out of place."
"As long as they are all there it's fine," Steel assured him from where he had firmly attached to Forge's graying head with a satisfied set to his display.
The older man reached up to touch the Ultralink with a gentle smile on his face.
"Forge," Molly greeted her friend with a smile of her own before turning back to the boys. "Who was that man you brought in?" she asked.
"He was Makino's powersource," Max blurted out blue eyes widening as the implications really began to sink in. "He's a Tachyon like Dad, and Makino had him hooked up to this thing that drained his power."
"Mother of Mars," Forge cursed as they made their way to the medical ward. "If that monster had one –" but was cut off as a medical tech came running up.
"Commander Ferris, Agent McGrath! The refugee," the young woman blurted out distractedly. "We got him cleaned up, and the attachments removed. The bio-maintenance links in the face mask were especially tricky, but the Hunter technology came in handy there."
"Your point medic," Molly interrupted a bit tightly.
"There is really nothing seriously wrong with him other than some major hypertension," the younger woman quickly summarized, "but he is asking for you now."
"For me?" Forge asked with a grunt forcing himself up and off the stretcher. "I think I can manage –"
"Actually for you both," the tech informed them absently as she sorted her paperwork and headed for her next case.
The two adults glanced at each other in perplexity, then Molly shrugged and stepped up to help Forge walk, slipping under his good shoulder and brushing Steel from where he was still tightly clinging to the broad chest.
"Berto needs you two in command," she informed them. "Go, Forge and I will take care of this. But stay close."
"Yeah," Max replied with a grin. "It's not every day you get to meet your father's only surviving relative."
His mother gave him a worried smile and he turned to go as the adults began making their way towards the room that held the former captive. He and Steel were almost to the door when they heard Molly McGrath give a pained cry and Forge Ferris shout out.
"Mother of Mars! Jim!"