Enter the Siren – Part 11
Lilith was the only one of them who had an idea what to expect, but even she only knew what Athena had told them about the part of the moonbase they arrived in. They looked at the pipelines, cables and the no longer dust-laden supply crates that would have told them it was once all abandoned.
"Hm. Not what I expected. Thought it would be more...veiny. I guess the pipes and cables are the main attraction." Vian commented.
"It's an unfinished part of the moonbase. Or was, anyway." Lilith replied. "Some space hurps disease, or whatever, infected the workers and turned them into cannibals. It's what we got from Athena. They got rid of 'em, when they came through here."
"Eww. Good." Gaige shuddered. "I don't wanna run into space zombies." Gaige commented.
"Then, this is some sort of maintenance tunnel." Maya guessed.
"The entire place is. It should lead to a bay with platforms for loading cargo. Athena said they could only reach this part of the moonbase from the Hub. There wasn't any fast travel station, when they were here." Lilith recalled.
"Maybe they put it here for faster access for engineers." Maya shrugged.
"It's still good, though, isn't it?" Vian asked. "If it's just for maintenance, we shouldn't run into anyone."
"If." Gaige repeated, folding her arms and sounding less convinced.
"And if it they are loading cargo, we can get a shuttle." Maya said.
"But, we don't even need one, anymore." Gaige replied and they all looked at Lilith, who turned and took a few steps back to check the fast travel station.
"Nope. We can go to Concordia and even if they lock us out, we can hitch a ride from there." Lilith told them as she confirmed the network still extended to locations on the moon.
"Let's do some damage, first." Gaige balled a metallic fist.
"That was the plan." Vian agreed and looked at Maya, who nodded to them with a smile.
"We should rig the place with explosives." Gaige suggested, rubbing her palms together.
"There's still plenty of stuff we can blow up." Lilith assured her and went ahead of them.
"I feel lighter. Neat." Gaige noted the weaker gravity, as did the others. "Hope the place is finished, though. I don't wanna get spaced and end up as a floating corpse-sickle." Gaige commented as they started moving through the corridor.
"People getting thrown out into the vacuum of space and instantly freezing to death is mostly a misconception. Depending on one's distance from the system's sun, they could burn to death, rather than freeze. And one doesn't instantly freeze, anyway. It takes minutes. And if they have an oxygen supply and shields, they can survive. Athena and the others wouldn't have made it, otherwise." Maya explained to Gaige on her left, as they took an immediate left turn, then, a right.
"I know all of that, Ms. Books. My high school wasn't bad. And it could happen!" She pointed a metallic finger at Maya, nearly poking her in the chest, who held up her hands apologetically, for assuming the girl did not possess adequate knowledge. Before Gaige could pull her hand back, Vian, on Maya's right, grabbed her wrist with her left hand and tugged, making Gaige stumble in front of Maya and she was close to Vian's face, as the latter leaned in.
"Hey, watch them hands, missy! That's my stuff!" Vian told her, thumbing at Maya with her other hand, pretending to be overly possessive and took hold of the brim on Gaige's cap and pulled it down, over her eyes. She growled, bearing her teeth from under her cap and clawed after a giggling Vian, while Maya merely observed the antics happening right in front of her, with amusement. The almost sisterly teasing quickly turned less as Vian added "Hey, if you start floating around and turn the right way I might see..." Her mind was at it, again, but she was cut off, before she could finish her predictable thought.
"Shh...!" Lilith hushed them and they took cover as they heard voices coming from up ahead. Two soldiers, decked out in Hyperion Yellow, casually walked along, their weapons dangling from holsters on their backs and they were in mid-conversation.
"Heard from Yvette at Requisitions it happened so fast they couldn't even get eyes on who it was, at first. But, those bandits stuck around to get the shipment. Some people wanted to moonshot 'em, but management said they don't even wanna touch the planet. Go figure." One of them spoke of recent events.
"Maybe they think those bandits aren't even worth shooting loaders at. Or just empty containers." The other one replied, derisively. "But, they sure as hell giving our guys trouble."
"If they were even bandits." The other was questioning reports.
"Who else?" The other asked, then one other very likely possibility occurred to him and his voice faded out of earshot as he said. "Damn, you don't think...?" The Vault Hunters were clearly suspect.
"We're making Hyperion headlines." Gaige commented.
"I don't think it made it to the press." Lilith replied.
"They seem proficient in distorting accounts of events to keep up their image." Maya observed.
"They don't seem too proud of losing troops to a couple of kick-ass women." Vian said.
"Then, they're really not gonna like what's gonna happen up here!" Lilith exclaimed in excitement, only barely keeping her voice down.
"That's the spirit, Ms. Gloomy in Pink!" Vian told her and Lilith had to react to that nickname.
"I'm not gloomy!" she objected.
"Not anymore, anyway." Gaige commented and Lilith briefly looked at her.
"And what's wrong with pink? I like that color." Lilith let it slip.
"Tch. Aww. You're such a girl." Vian told her, acting like it was a valid complaint. Lilith could only furrow her brows at that, but part of her was appreciative that they saw her enthusiasm as a sign of her recovering from her near meltdown.
"Let's do this." she said with a sigh and they came out of cover to continue along, not getting very far, when they came to a section where containers were being moved above their heads, vanishing into dark shafts to end up they knew not where. They could see the outside through a forcefield that also kept the maintenance tunnels pressurized.
"Are those jump pads?" Gaige squinted at the pedestals emitting green light that looked like partially opened blinders turned sideways and laid on the ground.
"Looks like they were busy repairing the place." Lilith commented as she observed what had become of the destroyed sections Athena had described to them. "It's still not finished."
"I can barely see what's ahead from all these damn pipes." Vian whispered and looked up at the top of the pipeline. Taking advantage of the weaker gravity, she jumped as high as she could, grabbed onto the top most pipe, pulling and pushing herself up the rest of the way and waved down to the others to move, after taking a look around. They meandered through the needlessly zig-zagging path, between the pipes and machines, while Vian followed them above, until they arrived at the end of the section and ducked back and into cover as they saw six guards through thick windows, inside what must have been a security checkpoint. Opposite from the entrance were two vending machines for ammo and medicine, respectively.
"Huh? I don't see one of Marcus' there. Maybe they threw his machines out after he joined us." Lilith commented.
"Who knew being associated with vault hunters can be bad business for a weapons dealer." Maya said.
"Vault hunters who took down Jack and kicked Hyperion off the planet." Gaige added, boastfully. They heard voices coming from behind them and Vian moved back to see it was the same two guards from before. She could not hesitate, as they would have happened upon the others, after two more turns, so she leapt and landed, pushing their heads down into the cold metal surface, knocking them unconscious. She told them to keep an eye out as she dragged the incapacitated men out of sight and got back up top.
"What now?" Gaige asked them as they assessed the situation and put their heads together, occasionally poking them out to look. The guards were sitting around a table, with a small device in front of all them and they appeared to be playing a game with one another, while they were eating. Some of them laughed out loud, yet, no sound escaped the room as it was blocked by the glass.
"Sound-proof, huh? I have an idea." Gaige smirked. "Just gotta get to the-..." She stopped and stared with the two Sirens as Vian landed right in front of the door. Getting her grenade out, she strolled up to the panel, slammed a fist on it to open it and tossed the Storm Front inside. The guards barely had time to turn towards the door and they did not even see who opened it, as Vian stepped to the side and hit the panel, again, closing it, as soon as she released the package. All six men glanced at each other and as they were about to shrug it all off, they noticed an item in the middle of their table that was not there before. The longbow grenade teleported itself in between them and realization did not even hit them, but the voltage did, as they were electrocuted, their screams of agony muted, reaching nobody. The others watched as all of the guards spasmed and fell, seeing the thin trails of smoke rising from their fried electronic equipment. As they walked over, Vian briefly opened the door and caught a whiff of her work and said "Ugh...guess who else is not a good cook." and she closed the door, fanning in front of her nose with her hand.
"Hey, I was about to do that." Gaige folded her arms and Vian mockingly pursed her lips and lightly shook her head to her, teasing her that she did not act fast enough.
"At least you didn't waste a corrosive grenade on human adversaries. It might be more useful, later, if we have to fight a bunch of loaders." Maya reasoned.
"Yeah." Gaige conceded, but gave Vian a small glare that clearly was not meant to be serious.
"Listen to your big sister!" Vian lectured her, teasingly. Gaige raised a brow, along with Maya, before she had an idea how to mess with Vian. She stepped close to Maya and hugged the surprised woman tight, laying her head on Maya's chest and she gave Vian a mischievous smile, who obviously got amused, rather than angry.
"Oh, you little..." Vian's eyes gleamed as she took a few steps towards her and Gaige skipped a few paces, making a run for it, but slowed to a halt in front of a doorway that had a blue forcefield and they could see the platforms of the still unfinished segments of the station, as well as the blackness that was space through a hole that was still under construction, but unlike the time Athena was there, it was near completion.
"They must have used loaders to clear the infestation out and regained control." Maya said.
"Robots can't get sick and die of a disease." Lilith shrugged.
"And they're on less than minimum wage. None." Vian added.
"They're even cheaper than cheap labor." Gaige spoke. "If they had more brains they could totally revolt and run this place to the ground. Or just run it. Period."
"Just don't start a robot revolution. We already had one." Lilith was mostly joking, but she was legitimately concerned the girl with the thing for robots, robotic prosthetics and intelligent killing machines with personalities, might actually start something.
"Really? Some evil AI got too smart and built an army of robots or something?" Vian asked, incredulously.
"It was actually a militarized Claptrap unit that amassed an armed other Claptrap units." Maya explained, recalling what those with first-hand experience had told her about it.
"Clap-...uh…you mean that little one-wheeled bot that was dub-stepping around Sanctuary?" Vian was even less mentally prepared to believe that.
"The poor guy is actually the last of his product line. Jack destroyed the rest, when he used Athena and the first vault hunters to extract a source-code from his mind and caused all of them to self-destruct." Maya added.
"He's making it really hard to feel sorry for him, sometimes." Gaige commented and Maya gave a knowing, uneasy smile.
"He didn't spill motor-oil on either of you, from excitement, yet." Lilith muttered from the side, telling them they had nothing to complain about, yet, as she seemed to be gathering some equipment.
"Excitement?" Vian repeated.
"He's kinda like you." Gaige told her, hands on her hips and Maya had to stifle a laugh, which got Vian suspicious.
"He's a relentless pursuer of women?" Vian raised her head and stood with a proud smile as she asked.
"And kinda pervy." Gaige added, looking pointedly at her and Vian brightened even more.
"Viva la revolution...in my pants." Vian exclaimed, thinking she might find a partner in crime in Claptrap.
"Keep it in your pants. And put these on, all of you." Lilith returned and handed them each a device that could be mounted on the back of their heads, as Lilith was in the middle of demonstrating it to them.
"Oz kits! Cool." Gaige was familiar with them and snickered as she looked at Maya, who was giving hers a look-over, turning it around in her hands to inspect it. She snatched it from her and stepped behind her to attach it to her with the harness it came with.
"I know what to do." Maya protested, but Gaige's answer was to pull on the straps until Maya let out a groan from the tightness. "Oohf...Hey!" Maya exclaimed and Gaige shuffled in front of her.
"Schoolgirl - Bookworm, 2 - 0." Gaige gave the score and Maya made a face.
"1 - 1. And we're even." she stated.
"For now." Gaige replied, smugly.
"Can't I just hold my breath?" Vian asked as she already put hers on and was reaching behind to feel the device with her hands.
"Sure. But, if you wanna get in there with Maya, you'll wanna stay warm and not freeze and suffocate. And she wouldn't want those eyes to explode" Gaige told her smugly, but matter-of-factly.
"Good point." Vian said and they both looked at Maya for her input.
"It...would be shame." she said with a coy smile and turned away, towards the exit. Vian swiped Gaige's cap off, put her in a head-lock to give her a noogie, then kissed the top of her head, thanking her and put her cap back on her head. Gaige's impulse to slug her with a fist disappeared and she adjusted her cap with a growl, nursing a light blush.
"We shouldn't stay for long. Just find some machines and set 'em up to blow. Then, meet back here and get to the fast travel." Lilith suggested.
"So how do these things work, again?" Vian prodded the Oz kit on Gaige.
"If the kit detects a drop in air pressure, like it will soon, when we'll go space-walking, it generates an air-retention forcefield around your head to keep you breathing...for about a minute and a half, if you move around much." Gaige explained.
"Air bubbles?" Gaige slightly snorted.
"I can't imagine her saying bubbles." Maya shook her head with a light smile.
"It's how I'm saying it." Lilith defended her own vocabulary. "Anyway, even if those things are still around, we don't have time to use one without being seen by someone. We should make the most with one run, but if you can recharge your air without those, then keep at it and stay on the ECHO." she instructed them. "Looks like there is more ground than what Athena remembered." she added.
"We'll have more cover." Maya commented as they surveyed all the metal platforms that would become rooms, halls and more maintenance tunnels.
"They're pretty slow on construction." Gaige commented.
"Jack spent all their money on finding the vault." Lilith said.
"And building his ego, literally." Maya added, taking what they saw in Opportunity as an example.
"Let's do this!" Lilith exclaimed. "Pair up and move out!"
They stepped through the forcefield in the doorway and their own one activated, almost immediately as they carefully walked on the platform, getting used to nearly zero gravity. Gaige and Lilith descended to a lower platform running under them, while Maya and Vian continued along to a cargo area with containers and an atmosphere-generator. The locks on a nearby hatch opened as they were studying the machine with its oxygen tank and they took cover behind a container, peeking between the rails on it to see a single engineer walking up to the device, muttering something about having to take inventory. He walked over to the generator and gave it a kick, activating the machine and it deployed itself, creating a spherical field of breathable air with a retention field akin to the one on their Oz kits.
"Attention! Atmosphere detected!" Came the status report from the man's kit and to his alarm, he heard someone else's, as well and moved closer to the container. Crouched behind it, Maya and Vian stared at each other in surprise and the latter mouthed a curse in disbelief that the thing was talking. She could believe it even less that Maya, despite their situation, clearly had to press her lips tightly together to keep herself from laughing at her reaction, which was more severe than Maya's, given her recent experience with talking equipment. Lilith and Gaige stopped further down on the platform they were on, when they saw the field go up and Lilith looked annoyed as Gaige got on the ECHO.
"Hey, what the heck, you guys!" She yelled into it, not knowing it was not just them who could hear it. On the other end, Maya and Vian cringed as Gaige kept talking loud enough for the man to notice. "We said no generators!" She added and Maya gaped in shock as Vian answered back.
"It wasn't us!" she told her. "It was this guy!" she added and the other two had no idea who she meant.
"What guy?" Gaige asked and they heard some noises through the communicator. That of a brawl. After a few seconds they saw an engineer floating out, with his Oz kit ripped off, from the upper platform, further back and they heard Vian answer.
"That one." she stated and Gaige followed it with her eyes as she raised a brow. "I got two tube things off of him. What are these?"
There was a pause, before Gaige replied. "Those are oxygen canisters. You can fill up the kits if you get low on air."
"Cool." Vain replied. "As you were." she told them smoothly and they continued along the lower platform, while Vian gave Maya one of the canisters.
"Someone's going to see that." she told Vian, looking at the floating body.
"From what you guys told me, they won't get too excited over a dead employee." Vian shrugged.
"True." Maya admitted and they made it to the end of the platform, where they found different kinds of canisters, much larger than what they had seen.
"These look like they could blow a hole in something." Vian commented. Under them, the others found beams and other metal frames stacked and secured to the surface.
"I don't see any welding tools." Gaige observed.
"It's the new Hyperion. They have bots with those, I guess." Lilith said and they saw what they thought was a surveyor flying in their direction. Both pairs hid behind what cover they could find and they watched as the maintenance bot seemingly casually hauled the corpse away, without any sign of alarm, as if it was some daily routine for it. Vian looked at Maya, having told her there was no cause for worry and they saw the others move along a beam connecting to platform that had a structure stretching several levels below them.
"This place looks important." Lilith commented as they huddled around a forcefield protected hole on the top, from where they spied some computers and other machinery, powered by reactors.
"Those over there are begging for me to overload 'em." Gaige pointed them out.
"How do we get down there?" Lilith asked.
"The gravity is even lower than normal in there, we can make the kit purge itself. That should give us a boost to slow us down enough." Gaige said.
"Should?" Lilith asked, wanting more assurance.
"It will." Gaige told her.
"Oxygen at half." Came the update from their kits.
"Fine." Lilith accepted as Gaige already went ahead and the Oz kit behaved as she said it would. Lilith landed next to her and they turned on their comms. "We found some things to wreck. You two got anything?" she asked, quietly.
"We have lots of canisters here we could set off. But, we're not sure how. We don't want to use guns. Or a grenade." Maya told them.
"You got Tediore guns, too, don't you?" Gaige whispered.
"Well, yes. But..." Maya felt it was not necessary.
"Yeah. We shouldn't waste the ammo." Gaige changed her mind.
"Won't a sniper rifle do?" Vian suggested. "Just have to mask the sound with something louder. Like an explosion."
"Yeah. Okay." Gaige agreed.
"We'll get back to the door. I'll find some more targets and if we get more bangs I can set 'em off." Vian told her and began walking back with Maya as Gaige figured out the control, while Lilith stood guard, pacing around.
"Got a jump pad, out here. Looks like it should take us to that spot in the middle." Lilith told Gaige.
"Good. 'Cause we'll only have a few seconds." Gaige replied. "I'm ready here, by the way."
"Maya, you two are ready?" Lilith ECHO-ed them.
"In position. Vian located another pack of canisters on a platform on the other side. Two drones are working there, at the moment." Maya replied.
"They can make ten more in a second." Lilith commented. Knowing that destroying a few bots will not be a setback for Hyperion. "But, they will be busy repairing the place." she added. Destroying an entire power-station and connecting platforms should cost the corporation time and money.
"Ready when you are, schoolgirl!" Vian said over the comm.
"Aaand...total system failure!" Gaige exclaimed as the blue light shining on her face from the displays turned red. "Run!" she yelled, not too loudly. They ran out into the vacuum, through a forcefield and stepped on the jump pad, which accelerated them. They soared over the large empty space, not looking back, nor hearing the screams, as the bright light of the explosion briefly lit up and reflected off of the metal surfaces. They did not even hear Vian's shot, but a second smaller explosion told them she made it. As they landed, a third explosion came from their left on a far-off platform and they saw robotic body parts flung in every direction. They glanced around and conveniently enough there was a jump pad oriented towards the entrance of the maintenance area. At the edge of the platform, Vian was picking herself up from the metal ground as Maya waved at them. They flew over and Gaige got alarmed when Vian stood in her path, with her arms spread, wanting to catch her. She did not give her the satisfaction, as she released a burst of air, before she got too close and floated down in front of her, smiling smugly. Vian put her hands on her hips and made a face at her. "Snubbed!" Gaige exclaimed.
"Critical system failure detected!" Came the seemingly excited familiar female voice of the announcer. "Everyone, please take a deep breath!" she added, cheerily. Not because she was asking the crew to calm down, but because certain sections were venting atmosphere.
"Let's get out of her!" Lilith said and they sprinted inside, through the meandering path up to an access point and down into the tunnels. They took only a few steps in, when they heard commotion coming from the direction of the fast travel station and heard orders being issued.
"Seal the tunnels! Turn this station off and search the place!" A gruff voice shouted. They heard a hiss, the familiar noises the fast travel station made and several boots on the ground, coming towards them. The four women took cover, as before, but they knew it would not suffice and they prepared to take the squad down. They saw flashlights as the soldiers got closer and as one of them turned and moved further down the short dead-end, a flash of white and glowing blue light came from the corner of his eye, before the butt of a weapon connected with his jaw. He was knocked on his back and before he could lift his head, the sole of a boot came down, pushing his head into the cold metal floor with enough force that he lost consciousness. Vian leapt from his head and the reinforced heels of her boot smashed in the visor on the soldier's helmet, sending him flying back into a pipe that knocked him out. The third soldier had enough time to even aim his weapons, but he was only paying attention to a single target and did not anticipate a glowing fist in the face, from the side, from a second one, or another glowing fist from a third intruder. Maya and Lilith looked ahead as Vian blurred past them, covering the longer distance between them and pair of soldier with the aid of her ability, but as she bowled them over, one of them managed to pull the trigger and squeeze out a burst of bullets before his head rattled violently and painfully inside his helmet. For the half a second he was still conscious and able to see through it, he saw the other soldier next to him suffer the same fate. Apparently their helmets were not designed to keep their heads entirely safe when being smashed into thick metal by a nearly six feet tall, power-house, further beefed by super powers.
They moved along, without a word and rounded the corner to the station where a single soldier was on the alert from the weapons fire. They all trained their guns at him and he knew the situation was hopeless as he held up his hands in the hope he may live. He watched with curiosity as the youngest of the four women walked up to him and he barely had time to notice her metal arm as it swung his way. He briefly felt weightless, coupled with an unbelievable pain in the side of his face, where his helmet was dented, before everything went dark.
Lilith tried to start up the fast travel station, but it was not responding. "Damn it! They turned it off." she told them and took a deep breath, trying to remember where they could go. "Alright. As far as I know the closest station is the hub, where this tunnel leads. There are two stations, actually. One is in Jack's old office, right in the middle. And the other is at the end of the Hub. We'll try Jack's office, first. If it's too well guarded, we'll have to use the other one. They shouldn't know where here, yet." she explained to them. After a small issue with a retina-scanner, they dragged the soldier Gaige knocked out to prop him up long enough to pull his eyelids open and scan them to open the door, leaving destruction behind and having a feeling there would be more.