Author's note: Thanks to M for setting the fanfiction madness into motion! There is a certain borrowed phrase here as a homage!
- IronForce
World 3-3
Rayna, Kris and Anatoli still advanced through the battlecruiser's corridor maze. It had been quiet so far … disturbingly quiet.
Kris gave a hand sign for stop. Ahead, the hallway opened into what appeared to be a cargo loading area, with large metal boxes moving slowly on conveyors, and walkways suspended high above.
Standing within were huge bipedal guardian robots, equipped with jetpacks so that they could hover in the air. Rayna was not sure how much Turrican firepower one of those would take. Possibly, they could be taken down, but done in the sight of all the other enemies, including box-shaped worker robots and auto-forklifts, plus a few organic / metal hybrid workers moving in between the machinery, would be a sure way to trigger an alarm.
"Better to not be seen by those large ones," Kris said. Through the suit helmet, the low, almost whispering voice was a bit unsettling.
"But we can't stay here either. No telling when some assholes come from behind," Anatoli replied.
Rayna scanned the room, trying to come up with something.
Surely, they could not hop onto the conveyors, but –
There appeared to be some sort of maintenance gutters in the floor, crossing the whole room in a grid pattern. They were high enough that if they reached them unseen, they could crawl forward, through the room, or into any direction they desired. Of course, Rayna could not help them decide which; any of them seemed equally valid to her.
"Hey. That trench. Or whatever you call it," she whispered.
"It's a possibility. Will just be hairy to get into it. Have to make sure no-one is looking," Kris said.
The huge robots patrolled in an apparent regular pattern, utilizing their jetpacks at times to verify that nothing out of order was happening on the walkways either.
One of them just turned its head away, and began its walk toward the center of the room.
"Now!" Kris hissed sharply.
It was just a few meters they needed to cover. Rayna wondered: could the Turrican suit actually move quietly enough? Stumbling on anything now would be catastrophic.
Keeping low, they almost crawled the distance. Kris and Anatoli certainly had to be extremely focused with their movements, but they managed. Finally, they could slip down to the gutter.
Rayna was the last to enter it, and just as she did, the same robot turned its large trapezoidal head back to their direction. She thought their eyes locked for a moment.
It made an unsettling metallic growl, almost like it was speaking.
She had been detected!
Or –
Rayna flattened herself to the bottom of the gutter. The line of sight had been broken. No further growls appeared, and the robot's loud footsteps were going away again.
She let the breath out finally. It had been extreme luck. But now they could crawl out of this room, completely out of sight.
Kris pointed to the left of their original direction.
"That way is the shortest out. Anyone have other ideas?"
Rayna did not have a better idea. Anatoli did nothing to protest either, and so they were on the move.
The gutter gave way to a cramped crawlspace, leading further into the ship, and angling upward. It was almost devoid of light. Rayna flicked on the helmet's amplified vision again, to make sure it was empty.
Nothing, so far.
"Going up. It could be the way to the ship's control quarters," Kris said.
Rayna did not necessarily think of it as a good idea. It would surely indicate heightened security. They would have to think twice before popping their heads out.
If she thought of her situation honestly, it would be an invitation to insanity. So again, it was better not to think too much. This was certainly not what an Intelligence officer was trained for. Though maybe they should be.
Crawling on their bellies, the journey seemed to last almost for an hour. Though Rayna was sure it was not that long in reality.
Finally there appeared to be light ahead. They came to a grille, behind which there were banks of consoles with lights on, looking both alien and familiar at the same time. Huge windows gave a view of the stars ahead, and a black sphere against them. A planet.
Rayna knew this had to be the battlecruiser's bridge. They had hit the jackpot! Kris had chosen the correct way by blind guesswork.
But the bridge was occupied.
On the sides, there were huge, imposing, horned sentinel robots clad in dark gray metal, brandishing oversized twin rifles bolted right into their arms. And standing at the center console was an even taller figure, a robot wearing a blue cape. Had to be the commander of the ship. Or even of the whole machine force. Even when standing completely still, it appeared to radiate authority; the sentinels on its sides were also standing still, possibly out of reverence.
Rayna was shocked when the caped robot spoke in a low, sinister, distorted voice, in a language she could well understand.
"I know what they are planning. To build a new machine … a new intelligence ... to overthrow me. But they don't understand I've seized control of the core. I have their life-force in my hands."
The sentinels nodded in silence, not responding audibly.
Rayna did not understand what this was about. Surely it could not be about them, humans? They had only recently discovered this machine threat. Unless the UPFF was running some deep-black operation she had no idea of, it had to be referring to the actions of some completely unknown third party.
But it sounded almost comforting, to know someone or something else was opposing the machines too.
"I … also … detect –"
This was when Rayna thought her blood would freeze. The robot-emperor had detected them!
They had crawled too close, unaware of being watched, possibly for some time already. Anything, like their heat signatures or heartbeats could have given them away to the robot sensors.
The caped robot turned around, and the grille in front of them just flew open, A metal glove in its right hand was glowing blue. Gravity manipulation...?
In the very next instant, they were plucked out of the crawlspace into the middle of the room, landing extremely ungracefully at the emperor's feet.
"Intruders. I am the Machine. It's an insult you've managed to come this far. That insult ends now."
The sentinels' dual arm-rifles were all trained on them. Rayna knew there was no hope of fighting back. Hopefully the execution would happen by quick bursts of energy fire, instead of any prolonged torture.
So, this was the end.
Rayna could almost be proud of herself, to have come this far inside an enemy battlecruiser. Though it had been all pointless in the sense that they would not be able to transmit any intel back to the UPFF forces.
She closed her eyes for second. She certainly did not wish to go yet, hoping life to have more in store for her. Yet risk was always part of UPFF duties, she knew that. And death could already have taken her back at the Academy. Like it had taken many of the Starport citizens.
Should she say something in defiance –
Before she could decide, she saw Kris and Anatoli exchange glances. Anatoli gave a silent thumbs-up. Were they going to do something?
With a huge blast of noise, Anatoli transformed into Turrican wheel form, firing all of his weapons chaotically. Sparks flew from the consoles, and the Machine roared in anger. The two sentinel robots opened fire, trying to track the chaotically bouncing wheel, which had taken to flight now.
Kris opened up with a wide, rapid-fire crescent-shaped shot – had to be plasma – aiming for the Machine's gravity glove before it could take control of them again. It began to glow red hot and the robot-emperor was forced to discard it, howling at an extremely high level that had to be over a hundred decibels. Thankfully the helmet muffled it to a degree.
Enboldened with this sudden display of power, Rayna too fired the phaser rifle at the sentinels, trying to duck behind Kris for cover, and shouting –
"Rhaaaaaaa!"
"That's the superweapon! It doesn't last long! We have to go now!" Kris shouted, lifting Rayna on her feet.
"What about him?"
"He'll join us when it's finished!"
Just as chaotically as the gunfire itself, Rayna and Kris scrambled out of the bridge, Kris shielding her with the suit. Rayna fired behind as she ran, but she knew she was not really hitting anything. Furthermore, the phaser bolts would probably not even do anything to the sentinels or the Machine.
Finally Anatoli's burst of power ran out and he transformed back into bipedal form, landing in the middle of the bridge, almost at the Machine's feet again.
Kris was looking behind too.
And Rayna understood that the top Berzerker was not going to join them. Caught momentarily defenseless, the Machine picked him up like a rag doll, and began swinging and pounding him into the floor repeatedly, until the suit's release controls were triggered by accident (or possibly by excess damage), and Anatoli came out.
Then the Machine's huge metal boot zeroed on his exposed skull and stomped down with full force. Rayna thought she heard the crunch even over the gunfire.
She looked away, to look at Kris instead, but could not see his expression from behind the Turrican helmet. So they just ran forward, with no words exchanged, out into a corridor leading away from the bridge.
Just for a moment, they were out of danger, as the bridge door closed behind them. But the whole battlecruiser had to be on high alert now.
"He gave his life for us," Rayna said. It was not something she had wanted on her conscience, though she had to admit that being on some more borrowed time beat being dead already. The adrenaline was running full blast now, almost causing her to shake.
"He knew the risk and made the choice. Exactly like a soldier. Or a Turrican," Kris replied, the somber voice distorted by the helmet.
Ahead, there was a four-way intersection. Rayna saw enemies of several kinds closing in from at least two branches. Some of them she had already seen, like the spheres, the large bipedal floaters, and the flesh-metal hybrids, that reminded her of Alterra experiments. And some she had not yet seen, like levitating squid-like monstrosities, even rotor-equipped walker robots –
It certainly looked like too much for the two of them.
"We can't fight them all. Not with you without a Turrican suit. But we may be able to outrun them," Kris said, appearing disproportionately calm.
"Wait. I don't think I can go much faster."
"You just need to shoot. I'll try to shield you."
Rayna did not quite understand what Kris was aiming at. Until he picked her up into his arms like she weighed nothing.
"I hope you don't mind. Now, hang on."
It was certainly unexpected. But to tell the truth, Rayna did not mind. Behind the helmet, she almost smiled. From this position, she could fire one-armed, but accuracy was not going to be the best. Hopefully all that truly mattered now was outrunning the horde.
Kris picked up speed, and the corridor was zooming by at an unbelievable speed. He swerved right, into the fork with the least enemies coming from, then turned his back on them.
Rayna did not need to be told what to do. Pointing the phaser rifle over Kris's shoulder, she fired at full auto, watching the heat indicator rise rapidly.
But even before it filled up, the rifle stopped firing. And Rayna understood: the power cell had ran out.
"Take this instead!" Kris shouted, apparently meaning the Turrican rifle on its back holster. It was attached to the suit with its power cable, so there was no possibility to lose it. That was good.
This was probably not how the Turrican weapon was meant to be used, by a passenger. But if it worked –
Rayna let the phaser rifle clatter to the floor behind, while Kris still ran at near full speed. She had to reach out for the Turrican weapon bit awkwardly. But at last she had it. Much heavier than the rifle. Hopefully the firepower would make up for it.
"Operator identity check disabled! The trigger should work now!" Kris shouted. "But be careful with it. I've selected the Multiple!"
She aimed at the pack of rotor-walkers following them, while Kris let the Turrican suit legs pump for all of their worth. Five streams of full-auto fire fanned out from the barrel, and two of the flyers went down almost instantly, exploding against the wall.
This was true power. Though Rayna knew she should not get overjoyed too early. Like her, Kris probably had no idea where to head to.
The rotor-walkers fired back, and Rayna felt an impact on the side of her helmet. It was holding so far. But at some point luck would run out. She adjusted her aim, hoping to take out the rest.
Bren looked out into the black space from the Avalon 1's bridge windows. It was odd to have a huge starship basically all to themselves.
Juko was on a terminal to the left of him, looking through the system logs for something she had possibly missed.
Vadim was still in the medical bay, keeping company to Ardon. The Colonel was semi-conscious now, but not really up to speed to advise them on tactics yet.
The Avalon was cruising forward at a nominal speed, slow enough that the maintenance craft would have it easy enough to get back. But they had heard nothing from the R-9. It was not reachable over the FTL comm channels.
"What if they got attacked too?" Bren mused.
Juko stayed silent for a moment, apparently thinking through.
"We could look at its last transmitted location. See if we can spot anything unusual."
Fuck. That was of course what they should have done long ago. Valuable time had been wasted. But if they had met the battlecruiser too ... it could not have been pretty. Bren felt suddenly cold.
"Let me see," Juko said, and tapped the terminal touchscreen. Bren came closer to look; it was a display showing transmitted data from the R-9.
"This is curious … the transmission ends abruptly, but before that, there's sudden acceleration. Like they're being –"
"Sucked in?" Bren guessed. Meaning, by the Machine's battlecruiser. Certainly not a pleasant fate.
"Yes. Precisely."
"Can we calculate anything from the data we have?"
"It's not going to be reliable. The enemy ship could have changed direction at will."
"Maybe if we calculate an average. From the direction we were heading originally. The data on the insect-craft. And the direction the R-9 was sucked in. See if there's anything that way. Like a planet or something."
Bren knew he was mostly just rambling. He was certainly no expert on space navigation.
"We can try that. Of course, we could just end up getting ourselves lost. I'd like to wait for the Colonel, what he's got to say," Juko replied.
"Well, in any case, it's safe to say the tech crew is not going to join us now, right? So we could boost the engine speed back to original, while we wait."
"Could do that."
Fuck. Bren certainly would not have wanted to captain a starship, with a full crew to be responsible of. But with just the four of them here, it was a bit more manageable. It was only them that would be getting lost. And if they did, and perished to the void of space, they would not be around to witness their pay deduction from losing a UPFF vessel.
Bren got back to the pilot's chair, looking at the master controls terminal. He selected "autopilot reset" and thought he sensed acceleration, even if gentle, and an increase in the background hum. Not much of starship piloting skills yet, but everyone had to start from somewhere, Bren thought.
Rayna was back on her feet now. Utilizing the Turrican suit's speed, they had finally lost all of the pursuers. Now they were in a quiet, dark hangar, with a row of bulky automated transport craft, roughly ten meters long each, standing by. Apparently they would depart for the planet they had seen from the bridge windows. Like in the cargo hall they had first met the levitating robots in, conveyor belts led into the transports for automated loading.
There was a steady, unnerving hiss of air that repeated, but it appeared to have no significance.
Kris kept watch, while Rayna tried frantically to come up with a course of action. Would hitching a ride on one of them be an improvement? They could be entering a potential extremely unforgiving and life-hostile environment. The technician's suit would not necessarily be enough to survive. But here they would also be hunted down endlessly, until their luck ran out.
"If we manage to get in, it's possibly going to be logged. Then they know what craft to look inside. Or to blow up in mid-air," Kris said cynically.
After the adrenaline of the escape had dissipated, his spirits were low. As he understood there was likely not going to be getting away, or survival, in any case. The loss of Anatoli also had to be weighing down on him, though he had shrugged it off initially.
Rayna wanted to say something to lift his spirits, but she knew plotting their next step needed to take priority.
Suddenly one of the conveyor belts came to life. This could be their chance, if they wanted in. No failed hacking attempts, just slipping in unnoticed.
A hatch opened on the opposite wall, and an unremarkable, roughly one meter high metal container rolled in.
"Decision time. Do we go in when the craft's door opens?" Rayna asked.
Kris shook his head slowly. "We don't know what the planet's like. I know I will survive in the suit, while your chances are worse. Do you want to risk that?"
Rayna made the final decision purely on the fact that she had had enough of running and fighting. The ride would mean an opportunity to rest, at last. And she would get to see the planet … even if it would be the last thing she saw.
It was not exactly rational. Not exactly how an Intelligence officer should be thinking. But ninety-nine percent of the time they were operating from the comfort of an office chair, not being hunted down on a machine warship!
Rayna got the word out barely.
"Yes."
"We go then. I'll check it out first."
The crate reached the transport craft, and its rear door opened just like Rayna had imagined. Leading with the Turrican rifle, Kris went in.
"It's clear. No maintenance robots. There's just a loading system. Watch out for it."
Rayna followed, emerging into an almost pitch-black cargo hold. She switched on the light amplification, and saw stacks of the boxes, as well as the robotic loading arms moving the last arrived box into place. They were easy enough to dodge, and there appeared to be no sentience, or at least, no malevolence, on their part.
The door closed behind them just as quickly.
Running so long on adrenaline, Rayna only knew she was very tired now. If this was to become their floating coffin, then so be it.
She sat down in the front corner, as far away from the door as possible, and Kris joined her, the Turrican suit making some noise when he sat. If the cargo hold was wired for sound, the Machine would certainly know of their presence.
Rayna looked around, trying to see if there was a camera lens somewhere. Appeared to be none, though it could well be miniaturized.
Now they could only wait.
"If I'm honest, I thought it was going to be the end of the road for me," Ardon said. "But thanks for proving me wrong."
The Colonel was still lying on the auto-surgeon bed, but was now fully conscious. His stomach was covered in bandages, and there was an IV line going in to keep his body in balance. The actual synthetic blood transfusions had already completed.
"Was glad to be of service, sir," Bren said. "Now, we'd have a tactical, or navigational question. There's this maintenance craft that didn't come back. We suspect it was hit by the same battlecruiser as us."
"And you would want to track the cruiser?"
Bren nodded. "Is there any way that would be possible?"
Ardon ran fingers through his beard several times.
"FTL engines, if they are of the same design as us, will leave a faint trail of fuel exhaust. If we know where it has last been, we may be able to follow it."
That sounded much better than just taking the average of two directions. Following the trail, there would be no guesswork.
"Excellent. Yes, we have a quite good idea."
"Give me a moment or two, and I'll see if I can wheel myself to the bridge."
Bren thought Ardon had already done more than enough to help. Though, if he felt like he could be moving already, even if by robot-wheelchair, even better.
"No hurry, Colonel."
The cargo transport was now in flight. The rocket engine noise in the hold was almost painfully loud; it certainly had not been designed for humans to ride along. Maybe that was better, to keep them alert until they reached the planet. There could be a hell of a reception party once they landed. Or the environment could also be lethal enough on its own.
The hold was pressurized though, apparently used for the transport of organic beings too. Rayna had not needed to use the air tank yet, and had her helmet off.
She knew she should say something to Kris. If the words would only come. They had made it this far, but it was unlikely they would come out of this alive. The Avalon 1 had gone dark too. It was just as unlikely it would come to their aid at the last minute. But she did not want to remind Kris of any of that.
In the end, it was Kris who opened up first.
"You probably don't even want to hear this. But I can't help feeling I failed. I had no plan for escape, besides running away. And I let Anatoli get himself killed. He shouldn't have had to make that choice."
Kris had removed his Turrican helmet too, and his face was a frown of regret. Rayna forced her voice as calm as she managed, though she was still feeling somewhat jumpy.
"I – want to hear. Remember, you managed to keep me alive. That wasn't a given. Not much of a scratch even. And … that part of the escape made me smile."
Kris smiled at her, and Rayna thought she had managed to do at least something right. It was not right for Kris to be blaming himself, while they were still breathing.
She also wanted to add something. It was a bit of a threshold again, something she could not take back any more, if she went for it. But she had hesitated enough. Here, in the bowels of this automated cargo ship, out in machine-controlled space, she thought it was finally time to forget the proper behavior between a higher- and lower-ranked UPFF officer.
"I wouldn't mind that happening again. Like, maybe even without the gun."
Kris looked at her in mock puzzlement.
"Now, is that a Captain of the UPFF flirting with me?"
Rayna had to stop for a moment. What was the proper response?
"Yes, that might be."
"And using your position as a superior officer in an improper manner?"
Now Rayna could not help smiling in turn. She imagined a board of officers giving her a serious reprimand, or possibly even a dishonorary discharge. It would be much of an improvement over being stranded in machine space.
"Yes, definitely."
"Then I should say, carry on."
For a moment Rayna had to close her eyes. This was almost too much. Though it was probably what she had wanted to happen, even for a while.
"I should also say that you look very pretty when you do that."
Shut up already, Rayna thought.
Just briefly she had to consider that Kris was probably of the type that had said the same to many before her. But they had probably not fired his Turrican gun. Or been locked in a machine cargo hold with him.
To make him shut up, she just needed to close the distance. Rayna felt her heart pounding now, a bit painfully even. Their lips almost touched; only a little more to go.
Then, all of a sudden Kris pulled her in the rest of the way. With the Turrican arms and gloves on, it felt rough, machine-like. But his kiss was very much human. It did not really ease her heart, if anything the rush of emotion made it even worse, but in a way Rayna was relieved. One less regret, in the extremely likely case that the fatal end of their journey was getting close. And amused, too. Of totally acting like an Intelligence officer was expected to.
