Five and a half months of procrastinating, writers' block, oneshots, and studying for various exams later, I present to you Chapter 9 of ASCfR.
Given that nobody wants to read through a 50000 word backlog to figure out what's going on so far, I have some notes for you.
The Ankiel family consists of Eric, Laura, Callix/Kax (15) and Tera (17). Tera's two important and plot-relevant friends are Anzl (18) and Alisa (19). They are traveling with four Soldier-class robots: Nine-00 (Nine), Six-02 (Canti), Two-07 (Cylon), and Six-14 (Boss). Back at the Gladiator arena, when she became trapped in the basement, Tera made the acquaintance of three Gladiators: Shawn (Rigel), Chris Rainer (callsign not yet given), and Derek Foreman (callsign not yet given). Chris was injured when he tripped over Tera, and has been frozen in a cryogenic stasis box to stave off infection. Derek's slave bracelet incinerated him, and he is deceased. A very minor character is the Ankiel family's Personal Household Assistant Droid (abbreviated to PHAD), Nemo.
All of those are real names - yes, Callix is a name. It's pronounced KAY-lix or KYE-lix. His last name Ankiel is pronounced ANG-keel or ANG-kale. Anzl is pronounced ON-zle. Like Hansel, except different :P
To conclude my notes, I will be doing some minor rewrites of the first three chapters, as they are of a markedly inferior quality to the newer ones. I also have several plotholes to fill in or amend.
Extensive thanks go out to cheatscanner, M. Magpie, and especially Cedric Bale, who has stuck with this overly-wordy ramble for a while. Every bit of incentive helps. Without further ado...
A Second Chance for Redemption
by Fusionmix
Chapter 9: Not Gonna Get Us
†††
We're gonna run, nothing can stop us,
Not even the night that falls all around us.
Soon there will be laughter and voices
Beyond the clouds, over the mountains…
Harshly the air thrust itself from her lungs, leaving her ribs to clench around a lungful of nothing as a splayed hand slammed into the small of her back and a red haze mingled with slashes of pained light. She acutely became aware of a strained grunt as ragged, heavy breathing dusted against her ear. "Grab on," hissed the voice of Shawn, and she could feel his arm shaking wildly as he prevented her falling further. "Grab! There!"
She couldn't breath. The pressure of his digging fingers and the inexplicably crushing weight of the corpse on her chest squeezed her diaphragm until it felt like she was trying to inflate a balloon. She helplessly swallowed instead of inhaling. With a revolting hollow slithering sound as he ground through the gravel, the dead boy shifted when she writhed to grip the rock face. Shawn's grip inadvertently slid up her back along with her shirt as she gulped in a massive gust of air and lunged to latch on to the grip the Gladiator had pointed out, not even feeling the protest of her skinned hands. She had to hold on. Falling off a cliff was not an option after surviving a brawl with alien zombie monsters in a basement.
"Tera!" shouted Eric, a few seconds late, because now the heavy body was propped between his daughter and the cliff and thus ceased to impinge her breathing. He commenced half-climbing, half-sliding towards her.
Shawn slowly withdrew his hand, hesitating, (probably, she thought deprecatingly, in order to make sure she wasn't about to swoon or do something else stupid or useless). Now that she was no longer in imminent danger of dying, Tera blushed. "Uh, sorry," she tried to say, but it caught in her throat behind a bubble. Not the time. Not the time, dumbass damsel in distress. Not the time. Repeating this mantra to herself, she focused on the cold corpse resting against her hips. The eyes were completely dead; glassy black orbs stared somewhat crookedly ahead above a small nose and soft mouth all set in the round Asian face rimmed with tufty black hair, skin far too pale and rubbery and bordering on white. "There's a dead guy in my lap." It was little more than a hoarse whisper.
Still breathing roughly, the black-haired man carefully moved around her and motioned her to bow outwards a little for him to fit an arm between her and the cliff and wrap it around the body. He gasped suddenly with the weight of it as the corpse proceeded to slip right out of his grasp and tumble down with a horrible rushing series of dull thuds, only to be stopped by Canti, who effectively copied Shawn's earlier maneuver with Tera and caught it with one broad, blocky hand.
"Are you all right?" Eric now, right next to her, brushing hair out of her face and looking as though he would throttle the mountain. "Thanks…Shawn, right? Thank you."
The Gladiator nodded mutely, politely, and rested his forehead against the cool cliff face for a few moments before he huffed a sigh and clambered up to where a wide-eyed Kax and an open-mouthed (obviously worried) Laura and impassive Nine regarded Tera. She wanted to cry. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to not keep getting people worried or hurt because of her universal incompetence. Despite herself, she half laughed, half bit back a sob, and forced a too-bright smile. "I'm okay. Sorry about that."
"Don't say sorry, your hands make it hard to climb. Do you need help? And what's this with somebody dead? Eric's piercing brown eyes were too sharp to look into.
Tera replied haltingly. "I don't know; Canti—the robot with the wide visor face panel thing—has him. He's got no eyes, Dad, and now he got ants on me—" she broke off quickly as her voice wobbled, threatening to crack, and brushed a few straggling ands off her arm; she faced away from him into the gentle Arizona night breeze. It smelled musty and sweet, of dirt and cactus and dusk, and after a few deep breaths of it she was able to focus again on her position and on the muscle strain of holding herself there. "I'm fine," she grunted.
Her left hand shifted, lancing fire through all the nerves on that side of her body, and the moment she recommenced her ascent; her legs reminded her that they were not in shape and that sufficient sleep had not been something on her agenda for the last few days. Like some spiny weed, a tendril of pain sprouted in her Achilles' tendons, lethargically worming its way up her calves and sinking one thorn after another into the muscles until it reached the backs of her knees and blossomed into a numb, stabbing ache. She could actually smell the blood from her hands now, its scent muddy and metallic in her nostrils as sweat trickled into a scrape on her cheek and proceeded to spread an acidic burn beneath her eye. "No, I'm not." She sighed in frustration. "I'm sorry…"
Eric had slowly accompanied her labored steps. "Shh, you don't have to be sorry. I should be sorry for…eh, never mind. We can talk later." Her dad spared her a small smile, and then furrowed his brow as he cast about the mountain face for some way to assist his daughter.
In the end it was Cylon who remedied the dilemma, leaving his place by Nine's side on the oh-so-close plateau to ponderously clank down level with her at a speed surprising for his heavy frame. Compressing himself to the vertical surface, he motioned her to climb onto his back. "Do not hesitate," he ordered, modulated voice a tremulous bass. "I am capable of transporting more than 634.79 lbs in this manner." And with that he clattered back up.
It was not, Tera mused, unlike riding a horse. Or perhaps it was like getting a piggy-back ride, though it had been so many years since she had last indulged in one as a child that she couldn't pull the various memories together in her sleepy brain cogently enough to verify. "Bye, Dad!" she sang out softly, hoping to add some levity to the situation as he brought up the rear of the group, his jacket fluttering awkwardly in the breeze.
"We have reached the plateau." A more vehement gust of wind virtually snapped Cylon's stilted Captain Obvious words away, and Tera shuddered suddenly when it wicked away the dampness across her back and tossed her greasily snarled hair into her eyes as she peered up. The stated destination silhouetted itself picturesquely against the velvet, star-speckled indigo above; she heaved a gargantuan breath of relief once she finally stood on the robot's head, rested her upper body over the lip, and rolled herself onto flat-ish ground before any of the others could move to assist. After the idiocy of nearly falling off, she felt the need to redeem her actions at least slightly, though her arms wobbled limply as she did.
Shrugging off her parents, she proceeding to crook her elbow around a securely planted tree (she testing this before taking hold) and lean out over the drop a tiny bit. Slightly taken aback, she stepped out of the way hastily with a mumble of apology as Boss leveraged herself onto the plateau and roughly deposited a folded Nemo next to the startled girl. "Six-02 cannot climb while detaining a package." And then she vanished back down the cliff in order to free up Canti's arms from the corpse.
"You're gushing vital fluids." Kax pointed out matter-of-factly, jabbing a finger at her crimson hands and the filthy, dirt-adulterated liquid slowly pooling at the tips. "Ouch. That's less than optimal for taking up rock climbing, huh."
Well, there was Kax's attempt at sympathy. Upon second thought, it was superior to Laura's; as she promptly whipped off her socks and made Tera wear them like gloves. "And don't say anything about foot germs. You probably have much worse from rolling around in an Arena basement and sleeping in scummy motels."
"I…" was all Tera managed, waving her sock-clad digits bewilderedly, before her mother limped smartly to the edge and assisted Eric in gaining his footing with the others. The girl sighed yet again and shivered, looking off into the night. Thankfully the sun had only just set, or the climb would have been rendered unfeasible in the gloom. Six-02 Canti, demonstrating a use for his oversized face plate, flickered once or twice before a soft electric buzz whirred around his head and the plate snapped to a bright blue-white luminescence. He dumped his burden and roughly rolled it over with a lurching shove from his foot.
Everyone pressed in around the body. For a brief moment Tera was reminded of when Shawn's lookalike died. Then she pushed the mental image away and asked, "What's wrong with his eyes?"
Cylon answered. "It is deactivated. The spinal column has been fractured, and neural links terminated. Fall impact has led to a power leak. It cannot be reactivated."
"Wait, it's a robot?" That was Anzl's incredulous rumble.
Alisa shivered quickly and latched onto her boyfriend's arm. "How do you tell? He could just have been—sitting there—for a few days. Ugh."
Six-14 Boss shoved a goggle-eyed Kax out of the way and gathered the corpse's black tank top in her claws before she jerkily ripped it away with one harsh movement. And there, like a damning tattoo, was an oversized bar-code emblazoned on the abraded rubber and plastic synthetic skin, where white components and a shimmer of steel peeked through and winked in the dancing beam of Canti's headlamp as it narrowed, reddened, and vanished over the bar-code. The Soldiers remained still for scant seconds as Tera estimated that the light ray was scanning the code, before Canti's light snapped back into visible spectrum brilliance. Kax rubbed his chin, where neglected teenage fuzz blossomed skuzzily, and grinned daftly at the dead robot boy.
"So, Callix," Tera used his full name to annoy him, "What are you going to name this one?" Tera wearily jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow to signify the rhetorical question, and winced when the motion jarred her hand. Relief at the general situation prevented it from hurting much; words could not describe just how glad she was that nobody else had decided to die.
The shock of Canti suddenly switching off his headlamp completely prevented Kax from answering, plunging the group into abject blackness as their eyes struggled to adjust. Boss straightened up with a dull metallic whine from where she loomed over the robot boy, and imperiously brushed everybody back. "The helicopter is on its way." She intoned snappishly. Tera found herself reminded of Kiara in a bad mood, which in turn brought on a fit of mildly nausea-inducing panic regarding a certain trashed black convertible. As though recognizing her lapse in attention, the big white Soldier clanked two of her fingers together next to the girl's ear in an awkward mockery of a snap before she continued to address everybody in a louder and more obnoxious voice, "Do not use electronic devices! Do not speak! You will not be harmed! Any questions you may have will be answered once we reach our destination!" And then as if apologizing for the onslaught of high-decibel information, satisfied with the pained expressions on her human audience's faces, she placidly finished with, "We are sorry for the inconvenience."
Kax mumbled morosely, "Her name is all wrong."
His sister snorted in response. "Fits just fine to me." It was easy to be cocky with Callix, especially when she didn't understand what he meant.
"Remember I told you about that old game with the...eh, never mind. Think she'd let me change her name now?"
Had the Soldier been in possession of actual eyes instead of blank, faintly phosphorescent slits imbedded in the—leering? Glaring? Whatever it was, it wasn't friendly—angular expanse of her/its face, she would have rolled them. "Do not speak!" she half-shrieked, and convulsed abruptly, neck snapping to the left so hard the side of her helmet-like skull caromed off a bulky shoulder plate and jarred itself upright again. "SPRECHEN SIE NICHT!" she continued in badly garbled German, eventually shifting into something that could have been Japanese, Russian, Chinese, or a combination of all three.
Anzl and Eric pulled their Protective Men acts and edged in front of the others, while the normally functioning Soldiers regarded Boss with something akin to impassive disdain. "Close your eyes." Nine warned nonchalantly as his left arm expanded, parts shuffled about like crazed monorails, and then locked into place with a cheerful click as he rammed what looked like an oversized tuning fork into the malfunctioning droid's face. The resulting arc of lightning rang in Tera's senses; she had not shut her eyes quickly enough.
Every human present slammed hands over their ears when Boss screamed, a wrenching, ululating note like a blend of distortion from somebody shouting too loudly into an overly sensitive microphone mingled with the earsplitting shriek of audio feedback. Tera could actually feel the sound frequency stab into her gut as her eyes swam with black spots and an echo of Boss's wail bounced around in her hollow-feeling skull. Already her temples burned with the dreadful telltale signs of an oncoming headache of epic proportions.
"I apologize for the disturbance," the robot ground out to Alisa, preventing protest of his actions. "Six-14 will come around quickly."
Perhaps sharing his son's tendency to accidentally defuse the mood of a situation, Eric wrinkled up his nose comically. "Is something rotting?"
"It smells like our garden after a freeze." Kax pointed out, quietly, just in case Nine decided to uphold Boss's 'make no sound' policy. But judging from the robot leader's reaction, sound was okay as long as it was not particularly loud.
Considering this, Tera took a deep breath, and then regretted it as a cloying stench slithered its way up her nasal passages and settled uneasily in her lungs. The air held a faintly stagnant, ripe aroma; a chilly stink identical to the noxious qualities of rotting summer flowers after winter's first heavy-handed blow. "It can't have frozen recently."
"No duh, it's Arizona in the middle of frickin' summer." Alisa scowled. "Smells a little like when we had a dead raccoon in our attic. Makes you get light-headed, it's so nasty."
"The scintillating sensation of sniffing Sharpies." Kax amended her elementary phrase in an admirable imitation English accent which would have been funny, except it only served to remind Tera of Chris. Hopefully he was all right.
What was this, anyway? Was it fate that all inevitably led to self-condemnation? Or was she simply becoming existential due to lack of sleep and proper hygiene and the fact that all of the food she had eaten in the last three days had involved sodium and grease and crackly plastic packaging?
"There you are." He says it out loud.
She was not expecting this from where she hovered, half-dozing, in a bubble over the Throne. "Are you sure, my lord?" There is shock in her voice, mingled with slightly apprehensive anticipation.
"I should hope I am not yet entirely useless, Misery. For a moment, I had found him. Already the beacon fades."
"The mimigas have been retrieved."
"The distance will make it impossible to hold them together in their state. Three days are not enough to heal them. Bring me others from the Cage."
She nods her eager assent. Now, in the moments when he and the object which she is bound to channel the same desires, she can feel at ease. In these moments, he and the Crown are one and the same being, and that makes everything so much simpler.
The air hums, she is gone; the air hisses, she returns. "They are less than ten, my lord."
"Ho ho ho…" and now he holds the Crown "…is that so? I suppose the others will require more extensive reanimation, but these will do."
"And it will not be a strain?"
"You think me so weak?"
"No, my lord."
"Tend to Balrog. Ensure he is prepared to carry out the plan."
"Yes, my lord." Every time, it becomes easier to say.
She does linger for a while, half-expecting him in his new-found confidence to rise from the Throne and enthusiastically piece the dingy messes of desecrated fur and stained bone together by hand, but leaves when he merely lifts the Crown to his brow and allows the red motes of chemical-scented light to complete the job for him. Or she could see it another way, see the Crown latching itself to his quivering hands, drawing them upwards to crawl ponderously from them to his head and bite down around his skull and wear him. There, there come the phantom tentacles and limbs and twisting protuberances and empty black sclera of empty black eyes that defy the space of a mortal psyche, and thus only flicker in the edges of her immortal periphery.
Not that this is a novelty; she saw this with Miakid, with Annachponae, as each hunted down his predecessor in order to claim the power and the horror as his birthright, and in turn was betrayed. Had they learned nothing from stories?
Each as genre-blind as the next.
She goes to check on Balrog, but also because she does not want to see the shades of what her master should have become had not…
A beat.
A pause.
She goes to check on Balrog.
Interrupting the growing silliness, Nine cast his narrow red 'eye' over the plateau in a cursory inspection. "There is sufficient room for the helicopter to land here."
Anzl and Alisa let out a pair of tired whoops, and the former tried a half-hearted fist pump. "Stop it," said Alisa. "You're being too energetic."
"We can't keep up," added Kax with a direly straight face.
His father snorted out a laugh, and Shawn smiled goofily, but the ex-Gladiator was otherwise preoccupied with slowly dragging his line of vision around like a cat in a hail of autumn leaves, unsure of what to look at while still maintaining a sort of stoic dignity.
Tera watched the young man surreptitiously. It was a little like peering through the bleary glass of a store window at the lingering price tag and display stand of an item which was no longer on the shelves. Here in the gloom she could let her confused little self have its confused little fantasies which defied coherency, and wish that somehow she could simply ask him how he died the first time. If that even had been his first death, judging from the unnerving post-fight ramble at the arena when Derek and Chris had sent her to find him. How had Derek not noticed him sprawled out on that crappy cot in his undershirt and ill-fitting black pants anyway?
Sprawled out on a cot. Hmm. And yes, those black pants could certainly be defined as roguish with their baggy fit. It would be very hard not to notice, though…
Yikes. What was this? He wasn't even that good-looking.
From the neck up. Though mentally photoshopping her Dead Fantasy Gladiator of the Gorgeous Ebony Locks over his own face would certainly…
Crap. What time of the month was it, anyway? Leaping at the opportunity of a distraction from the unconventional nature of her thoughts, the girl fumbled her mother's phone out of her pocket and checked the date. August 7th, 2082. Ok then. She was eternally thankful for not having to worry about ladies' hormonal cycles on top of everything, she wished that Shawn would suddenly do something so absolutely repulsive that whatever latent attraction her repressed brain felt for him would fade. After all, Dead Fantasy Gladiator—DFG would make for an acceptable, if unpronounceable, acronym—certainly was nothing like what Shawn had turned out to be. This was creepily reminiscent of the time Kiara had launched into a drooling rant over a computer-generated character in yet another of her old films, except this time the logical side of Tera was nattering with herself as the target rather than a starry-eyed friend. DFG was fictional.
Grasp at air and hold nothing.
"Are you sure you're all right? Staring into space like that; sure you don't have a concussion?" Perhaps Eric felt guilt for the desperate lecture he had blasted into her face on that chilly balcony of the first musty hotel. His daughter shook her head, first slowly, then more emphatically to drive the point home that she certainly was fully conscious despite lack of sleep.
Guilt again, cue dramatic synthesized organ. Were they all guilty? Anzl had apologized, in his blunt sort of way, for his accusations. Alisa probably agreed with the sentiment, but Tera found herself more than worthy of their claims. Bask in the ruefulness for now. She got Chris injured and her entire family and two sort-of-friends caught up in a ridiculous science fiction movie plot involving robots with transforming gun arms who stole cars and blew up public roads and climbed mountains. Of course she was licensed to feel guilty. And now her mother, over-extended Achilles tendon at all, had loaned her socks and was ambling around barefoot, sensible tennis shoes dangling from their ties grasped in one hand.
Tera let the disgust at herself well in the hollow of her stomach, envisioning a gaping pit. Rather a tornado, to scream down walls and emotions and pick up anything left unattached to a foundation. It could take away DFG, her incompetence, and the pain in her stupid, useless hands and her soft, out-of-shape body and weak legs, and leave behind nothing. Resolve, in this case, would be preferable, but it was easier to live with nothing than with something that hurt. God, she sounded as stupid as the grating retro emo music Kiara occasionally favored. The memory of riding to the Gladiator arena while that angst-soaked screamo abused her ears brought a lump into her chest, too low to cry over and too small to be noticed by anyone around her when her eyes went glassy.
The socks had faded from dull grey-white to a blotchy red, and adhered scabbily to her palms.
And then, she heard it. A low thrum beat at the horizon, both a muted whine and a steady thump merging into a familiar sound of a…
"Whoa, Matsushita-38H!" Kax, had he been a rabbit, would have adopted a rigid stance, ears pricked skyward towards the noise. "Am I right? Most popular Japanese cargo helicopter a few decades back?"
Cylon rotated one of his wrist joints experimentally, dislodging a miniscule tidbit of debris. "Correct."
Anzl's expression held a much more noticeable degree of impressed incredulousness. "Damn," he whistled. "You can tell all the way from here?"
With almost apologetic grin, the younger boy replied, "Yeah, but it's only for that project I had to do on early 21st century warfare. All the other people in my class used our textbook and researched the United Republic forces, but I went East and did Japan. And in recognition of my daring and brilliance, the teacher gave me an extra five points."
"Then she got fired." Tera put in.
Alisa nodded understandingly. "Well, duh. She should have been; it's not fair at all to the other students."
The youngest of the Ankiel family snorted and adjusted the gritty fabric of his T-shirt where it had ridden up the back of his jeans. "Just because I did so much more work, I naturally didn't deserve it at all."
"Yes, but the assignment never included researching 60-year-old helicopters," said Tera.
"Silence thy complaints and rebuttals, O Sister of Mine. Thou art merely jealous of my stunning intellectual prowess."
"Stunning whatever, my face." She knew it was stupid, but reacted too slowly to stop herself.
"Your mom." Kax sneered melodramatically.
Tera, whose weary brain had actually begun to take the argument seriously, cracked a smile, tension defused. It returned when she caught Alisa's eye-roll in the edge of her vision, and immediately found herself preoccupied with fighting off the nagging prod of embarrassment. Hoping to forge another distraction, she commented stiltedly, "It really stinks, huh?"
Nobody answered, because at that precise moment, a labored groan of metal wafted up from the stifling darkness at the base of the cliff. Tera was reminded of the sound Nine had elicited from Kiara's poor convertible when he converted it into a makeshift turret base; she paled when she realized why.
"Who's moving the cars?" Eric demanded of the robots in his 'authoritative executive' voice that his children had heard him use on various Take Your Kid to Work days. "Are there any more of you?"
"No." Cylon rumbled, and looked to Canti, whose headlamp flickered on once more, albeit with less intensity than before. "Nothing is registering on bio-scanners either."
With a small grunt, Shawn un-leaned himself from the boulder he had been reclining against and strode forward, dropping into a crouch in order to look down. His eyes narrowed. "The undead wouldn't show up on those, would they?"
Canti's light faded to red, then out of the visible spectrum again. Not a second passed before it snapped back to white and he sprang upright with more grace than could be expected of such a blocky figure, gesturing madly towards the higher reaches of the mountain.
"Run," said Nine. "We must climb higher."
"Mimigas?" Tera whispered, the word spoken from somewhere so low in her that she felt the vibrations of the utterance more than heard it leave her lips.
Somehow, Cylon heard her. "Three," he said simply.
"What?" Eric inquired cluelessly, leaning over her shoulder.
In the brief moments between his question and her answer, Tera felt tired. Not sleepy, not worn-down, just sick. She never really had considered what it was like for those stupid heroines who went on adventures like this in crappy movies and worse books, but even though she suddenly had a massive amount of sympathy for their plight, she could not bring herself to break down. Certainly, sitting in a corner sobbing 'I want to go home' over and over might be dramatic, but right now, it would accomplish nothing. Ok. She'd be tough. Alisa the Part-Time Ditz was being stoic enough. "Remember those undead rabbit bear things I told Kax about, Dad?" she said roughly, not quite able to keep the sadistically gleeful edge out of her tone. "The Mimigas? Yeah, those. I wasn't lying." She shoved him slightly, for good measure, as she made for the cliff, ripping away the socks from her hands.
The defiance of the moment was pathetically novel to her, but she had over-extended herself. How long could the wall stand?
"Hey!" Eric said belatedly. "You can't climb like that! Let one of the big PHADs carry you again, or…"
"Shut up!" she screamed, half at herself, and immediately regretted it when she back to see the impassive whiteness of his face in the gloom. He did have a point.
Her shirt and jeans were now stained beyond repair, as the blood from her hands managed to migrate down her arms faster than it had ever bled before. She grimaced; breaking the scabs like that had been stupid. A streak below her right eye, smear down her cheek, attempting to shake it off yielded only a spray of misty red droplets that didn't stop.
She put her hand back to the mountain, and the tiny red particles of something darker than light continued to swarm around the plateau; the same particles which had heralded the arrival of the Mimigas back in the Arena basement. Pushing herself away from the rocky surface, she ducked out of the cloud as it solidified. With her feet scrabbling for purchase, she scuttled away as Alisa shrieked and a fourth Mimiga materialized where she had stood before. What would have happened if she hadn't moved? Ok, skip that thought.
"What the hell is that?" said somebody, followed closely by "Get of the way so they can shoot it!" Tera couldn't tell if it was Anzl, Shawn, or her dad over the sound of the beast's enraged roar, which was cut short in a burst of automatic weapons fire, courtesy of Cylon.
Why did monsters always roar, she pondered existentially as the stink of its decaying self washed over her. Here they went again. Morbidly, she wondered whose way she would get in this time. Would it be Shawn? Perhaps her father.
She felt guilty imagining it. She loved him, of course. He was her daddy, who cracked lame jokes and rambled about nerdy things and fixed the computer when Kax's lofty explanations of how he had screwed it up (upgraded, he would protest, upgraded!) made no sense. And now they would probably all die. Joy.
The gradually mounting rhythm of the helicopter roared to a crescendo far overhead, and the Matsushita-38H began to descend to a second plateau. A real destination this time. Not Nine's stupid deferring. The robot in question continued to wave everyone upwards. Tera squeaked when Canti caught her about the middle and slung her onto his back on top of the cryobox containing Chris. "How much? Isn't this too heavy?" Her frantically shouted questions were drowned out by the sound of the helicopter.
He climbed blazingly fast, bulky limbs working at a speed which belied their awkward shape and girth. She began to slip, and locked her elbows around his skinny neck, injured hands spitting fire and blood with each minute jolt.
Already, a Mimiga had crested the lower plateau. Looking down uncomfortably, and leaning back as much as possible without relinquishing her hold, Tera took in Cylon strapping the corpse-boy-robot-thing to his back and making a mad dash for the cliff. "Bingo," she whispered when Nine's transforming arm slugged the audacious beast with a bone-crunching uppercut that sent it reeling backwards into its partner. Both vanished over the lip of the precipice in a shower of rocks and frustrated howls. Why was the Soldiers' leader staying behind?
Then she noticed the still-prone, dimly-gleaming white chassis of Boss crumpled in the dirt. He was waiting for her to wake up. Wasn't there a way for him to reboot her? Tera guessed not, and then realized that with the crabby malfunctioning Soldier out of commission, Nemo had nobody to carry him up the mountain. Though it was a horrible thing to think, the little Personal Household Assistant Droid could be replaced with little fanfare thanks to Eric's job as a chief roboticist. Somehow, she could not summon any guilt over this notion, and gave up trying after the latest jolt from Canti's climbing efforts.
"Does he need any help?" That was Anzl. Good old lanky-armed Anzl of the two-toned hair and over-abundant piercings. "'Lisa, what's that look?"
"That's a 'shut up and let's get to the helicopter' look! If the robot breaks, somebody can buy a new one! I can't buy a new you!" Only Alisa's desperately crazed screaming prevented the line from being atrociously sappy, Tera noted detachedly as her sort-of-friend continued even more loudly, "Just climb, people! Shut up and climb."
An even angrier Mimiga roar ripped Tera's eyes from Anzl's half-panicked girlfriend back to the fray below. All three assaulted Nine now, but in the interim he had managed to affix Boss to his back. With a concluding vengeful hook punch from his elongated arm—Tera thought its shape vaguely familiar somehow—the authoritative robot sprang for the cliff. He climbed three-legged, bounding upwards with huge thrusts of his legs and blindly clutching at any grip with his available hand.
He was approximately thirty feet from the ground when Tera recognized the massive gun his limb had reconfigured itself into, and smiled.
A second later the railgun bucked against its owner and the gleaming beam of spiraling blue light sliced wide, ripping open one of the beasts, which had no chance even to splatter before its cauterized halves cascaded in light thumps down the mountain. The other monsters crested the first plateau and lunged towards the second stretch of cliff and Nine. The Soldier's shot had been poorly calibrated due to his unfortunate position. He prepared a second shot.
"I have sufficient battery supply to fire three rail gun shots, after which my weapon systems will go offline to conserve power…"
Once more, Nine raised his arm and took aim at the charging Mimigas. Tera held her breath as the whirring helicopter beckoned the humans and their robotic escorts upwards like an inexorable siren song.
A warm, deceptively gentle sound as the cannon fired for the last time, and the entire mountain shook. The robot had fired low, across the plateau instead of aiming for the monsters. For a brief moment of mindless terror Tera was convinced they were all going to escape death-by-Mimiga and instead face death-by-landslide, which would be a fine end to the story now, wouldn't it?
The entire side of the cliff occupied by the Mimigas slid away gracefully, and if Tera strained she imagined she heard the disgruntled smash of the two hapless vehicles abandoned below. A fantastic cover-up on the part of Nine. Actually, Kiara would probably need an even more fantastic excuse to tell her dad. At least she was somewhere else.
The land did not slide.
Reaching the second plateau was uneventful. It was much larger, and not, in fact, a plateau, as Tera found when she achingly rolled off Canti, laboriously straightened up against the vehement protestations of every muscle in her back, and looked about her. They were really, properly in the low edges of the mountains now, though it was too dark to see much more than jagged black silhouettes against a jagged indigo sky mottled with indistinct blotchy clouds. With the scent of barbecued alien zombie monster content to lay low, everyone was privy to the erratic-but-gentle night breeze.
Said night breeze became more insistent as the chopping beat of the Matsushita rapidly gained intensity. Just on cue, as everyone below turned their eyes up, a pair of spotlights decided to do a Canti impression and blinded the onlookers with twin glaring beams of illumination, completely blotting out any clear view of what the flying machine looked like. "Hey!" called a distorted masculine voice, amplified by a megaphone. "Can somebody move that rock over there? Thanks!"
Before the 'thanks' was even fully uttered, Canti clumped over and deftly sent the sizeable boulder careering off the nearest precipice, before once again moving out of the way.
I get it, Tera thought, proud of herself for coming to a conclusion. The robots can communicate with data, like telepathy, but the helicopter can't. It's old, though, if what Kax was saying is anything to go by. She was half-hoping for a fancy sci-fi ornithopter like the experimental winged drones used by the army, but had not expected such a jarring clash of dated technology.
"Okay, everybody move to the perimeter. Nine-00, can you make sure nobody gets beheaded?"
Nine, still with Boss strapped to his back, herded everyone to the side as the spotlights scanned the landing area and the helicopter began its descent. It bore thick cowling in the front and back, and a heavy fin-like nub protruded from its forward underside in place of landing skids. It had no tail boom, instead sporting two massive rotors, the larger directly over the pilot's cabin and the smaller on the rear of the vehicle. As it neared the ground, the humans brought arms or hands over their faces to shield from the whipping dust. Tera made out the fact that it did have skids, but only in the back.
Its landing was dainty for such a behemoth. The motor wound down its intensity, dropping to a lower hum along with the thumping of the blades. As soon as it was stabile, the pilot shouted again, "I'm opening the doors. Everyone get in and find a seat, and buckle up. We need to move out as soon as possible, so grab everything you need and come on."
A wide cargo door slid open with a rumble, and Tera was surprised at how orderly the rush to get in was. Hanging back behind Anzl and Alisa, she caught a glimpse of Shawn's face, and stopped. He wore an expression of piercing suspicion towards the invisible pilot in the tinted cabin. Consumed with staring at the Matsushita, Kax ran into his sister's back, snapping her out of her trance.
Now suspicious as well, Tera filed onboard.
The pilot sighed through the loudspeaker. "Look, nobody is allowed to stay behind, get in." And Tera looked out in shock to see that Shawn remained outside.
The young man's face suddenly morphed into a grin. "Long time no see, Krieger," he shouted.
There came a burst of static as the pilot dropped the intercom, and then a lot of indignant spluttering. "It's Kruger," blurted the voice hastily, as though its owner wanted to say something else and couldn't think of anything. "I don't have time for this. Get in." But there was an underlying note of joy in the tone.
Shawn, still smiling, obliged, and the doors rumbled shut. Anzl asked, "You know him?"
Laughing, the ex-Gladiator leaned back. "You can still hear us, right?"
"Sure I can. Hold on a second." A panel between the passenger section and the pilot's cabin shifted, allowing a view into the cockpit. Tera's stomach lurched at the helicopter's beating whine rose in frequency and it began its ascent. "Everyone is tied down, right?"
A chorus of affirmatives and a few seatbelt clicks.
"Good," the pilot said, and peered behind through the new opening. His face, ensconced by a pilot's mask, glowed eerily in the red lights. "Hi there. Nine-00, what happened to Six-14?" As soon as he asked this, he turned back to a small screen where Tera could make out lines of text forming. "Oh. Well, I guess we can do some more home robot repairs." Eric and Callix Ankiel perked up at that, but neither said anything.
A curious beeping interrupted the conversation. "Hold on," said the pilot, tapping a few switches. "I've got a call. Don't say anything, please."
"Have you got them yet?" said a clearly female voice on the other line.
"Yep, safe and sound except for a busted Six-14, a broken robot that Six-02 couldn't scan properly, some nasty-looking hands, and a limp, none of which affect me. How are you?"
"We're all fine here. I just got off work, so I'm going to go pick up Peyton. Be careful, all right?"
The pilot's voice was warmer than before. "I'm always careful. Usually." A beat, and then it became uncomfortable. "And, uh, tell Peyton I love him, okay?"
"You can tell him." It was said mildly.
Any warmth whatsoever was usurped by awkwardness as the pilot blatantly changed the subject. "Huh. You won't believe who I found. Remember, uh, Nail?"
There was a moment of silence, before the woman said flatly, "You're kidding."
"Nope. Look, there's something on radar, I have to go. Take care. See you soon." And he flipped another switch, took a deep breath, and turned full attention back to the controls.
"What do you mean by 'something on radar'?" queried Laura.
He hesitated before calling back, "I'm not sure. Just sit tight. Wait a moment, there's a third. No, now they're falling off. Two…one…okay, just a glitch. False alarm." With a final switch-flick that must have activated some automatic control mechanism, the pilot stretched languorously, slipped expertly through the small door space, and emerged into the passenger section, standing just under six feet in the bulky, dated flight-suit. "Well now. Your names."
Eric scooted over to place an arm each around Tera and Laura, gesturing with a nod of his head towards Kax, who seemed to be dissecting the piloting mask with his eyes. "We're the Ankiels. I'm Eric, this is my partner Laura, and our kids, Tera and Callix."
"Call me Kax," said the boy offhandedly, in a tone that suggested he was trying to show off for the benefit of the pilot. The man nodded as the others finished their introductions, traded a few stilted pleasantries interspersed with nervous little laughs, and excused himself with a few meaningful glances toward the cockpit.
"Or call me unimpressed," Kax supplemented in a whisper to his sibling. "That works too. Definitely notmilitary."
"Ugh, you're so gay; he's preoccupied with flying the helicopter. You know, the one that's kind of saving out lives right now?" Her sleep-harsh voice cracked a little as she tried to raise it at the end, yielding an embarrassing mini-yodel. Kax shrugged in response, all of his body sagging with his shoulders once they fell.
There was a great deal of silence, during which nobody did much of anything. In the interim, the pilot again extricated himself from the cockpit—Tera wished she could think of another word for it (cab? Driving-area-thing?)—but her brain was all dead and she wanted to sleep and the helicopter was loud and she didn't get how her mother was managing the whole slumbering dealie against her father's shoulder. Irritated, the girl slid away from both of them and lazily watched the pilot move about the vehicle.
Said individual hovered in front of Shawn for a few indecisive seconds before jarring the black-haired man from his doze with a light-but-friendly clap on the shoulder, almost hesitant. "How you doing, man?"
Shawn remained seated, knees apart with elbows propped on them as he leaned over. He half-smiled. "Pretty good. Pretty good."
The pilot took a swinging step back, hand falling from the ex-Gladiator's shoulder, yielding no reaction. "You die any more?"
"Not since last year." Shawn continued to stay straight ahead.
"I'm surprised they let you back on the rosters after that. Or what were you called this year?"
"Rigel. I liked Nail better, but hey."
Kax, suddenly flicked his gaze up. "Nail?"
Shawn's expression finally took off its metaphorical burqa and revealed itself as 'strained'. The pilot intervened animatedly, his whole body moving like he was conducting his words to an orchestra (or, as Tera's sleepy brain supplemented, selling a Sham-Wow Neo Plus; those commercials were just bizarre). "We have plenty of talking to do once we're home; Sue's going to be ecstatic to meet you all. Everyone just keep to yourself for now and try to get a little sleep. I'm really sorry for all the destination delays on the way here; you seriously wouldn't believe how many roadblocks were set up for you guys."
"I didn't see anything," Tera wondered out loud as Kax cast poorly-veiled glances loaded with something at her.
The young man laughed delightedly, a strange sound in the helmet, and clapped his gloved hands together. "Good. That's what we wanted you to see. Oh, Force Nine?" Nine snapped bolt upright with a salute, as did Canti and Cylon. "You did excellent work."
"Thank you," the robots' leader grated.
With that exchange, the pilot began making his way back to the cockpit, but stopped halfway through the hatch when Shawn called, "It's good to see you again, Herr Kruger." There was a hint of amusement in the title.
The helicopter's master paused, then nodded and slid back into his seat. "You too, Fuyahiko-chan," he called in a sing-song as he adjusted something complicated next to what might have been the throttle.
The panel slid shut, and the Matsushita-38H beat on into the night.
Several kilometers away, two police-force helicopters began their final approach to a particular now-nonexistent plateau, and appeared on a certain extended-range radar. Shortly after, their own detection equipment picked up an object moving on a direct course towards them.
"Robinson, did you say something just now?"
"No sir," answered the pilot of the second craft, a bulky vessel with ample room for apprehended prisoners. "What did you hear me say, sir?"
"Sounded kinda like 'Huzzah'," admitted his officer in the attack chopper.
Several kilometers away, the operator of a certain extended-range radar mounted in an aged Matsushita cargo helicopter frowned as a third blip appeared, sighed in exasperation when all three blobs faded from the display, and chalked it up to a glitch.
Word Count: 7148
Longest chapter yet as our dear pilot Kruger inadvertently drops a pair of plot bombs in our laps. Also the chapter I've had planned from the very beginning, which marks the halfway point in this story.
Thanks for reading so far. I'll make no promises on the timeliness of the next update, but I promise it will come. Until next time.
