Labyrinth
Chapter 14
Within eight hours of receiving the email from Rammer, the timetable for their transport was underway. Ricochet had nearly panicked at the news that the American government was going to try to devise a control-chip for Steel's augmented parts. Rammer had immediately set to work while Charley composed an answering email to the FBI agent. She took the time to explain who she was, and why she was a concerned party, even hinting to the man on the other end of the electronic conversation that there were more members of the Mouse species en route to his location. And while she wrote, the Mice prepared.
Kilkenny's pilot was kept in the dark. It was hard, but Ricochet cobbled together a quartet of cargo boxes that looked halfway legitimate. Inside each box, of course, was a motorcycle and its Mouse. The boxes were slated for delivery to a location just outside the radar-window for the Area 51 station in New Mexico. The plan, though under contention, was for the Mice to get captured, and handle things from the inside.
Even in the cargo hold of the small plane, the Mice dickered over details through their helmet coms, in a four-way conference that had Modo wanting to claw his one good eye out a few times. His memories were still hazy; he knew this Mouse with the gunmetal fur, and the silvery hair was important. He just couldn't remember why, aside from the fact that she was supposed to be dead. No resolution had been reached by the time the whine of the engines had changed to signal a descent to landing. Ricochet fell quiet first, but it was Throttle who got the sinking feeling that something wasn't right.
The engine whine was too loud, the angle of descent far too steep. Ricochet's cargo box, being the lightest was the first to slide, as the plane went nosedown into a death spiral. Four motorcycles roared to life all at the same time, busting out of boxes, and melting a hole in the hull with their lasers. Throttle gave a shout for Charley, dropping forward in the plane without a problem. He kicked the pressure door in, and recoiled from the scene. His hair whipped around his ears. Both emergency doors were caved in. Kilkenny's wheelchair was empty, tipped over on one side. And the pilot... looked like a melting pile of wax. It's features and clothes were indistinguishable, as it melted across the console and dripped onto the cockpit window.
Throttle went to climb back to his bike, only to find Modo's cybernetic hand outstretched to give him a hand up. With a gesture back to the cockpit, Throttle made a disgusted sound. "Polyoid... splattered all over the controls."
"Well, then," Modo revved Li'l Hoss' engine in reply. "Let's Rock and.."
"Get the hell outta here!" Rico cut them off, rocketing forward on her chopper to the tune of her afterburners.
Throttle looked at Vinnie, who shrugged. "She'll learn." He laughed once, before punching his own jump-jets and taking off through the hole in the hull. Out of the corner of their eyes, they spotted a pair of parachutes descending slowly into the New Mexican desert, but what concerned them more was the floating fortress before them. They'd seen it before, Limburger's personal home-away-from-home. They'd also destroyed it already on numerous occasions. Throttle was fully prepared to add this time onto the tally. "Get to ground, bros! And.. sis... or.. whatever.." He finished the order lamely, and heard the sound of warm laughter come back to him over the com. A slight adjustment of weight, and a little tweak of the accelerator, and soon the four of them had squealing-tire touchdowns on the hardpacked desert floor.
Above them, goons in flying gyrocopters began to swarm out of the fortress. One of the choppers seemed to wobble briefly in the air, and then, with a rebel yell, and a cloud of exhaust, began to barrel directly straight for Vinnie. Undeterred by the caroming copter, Vinnie skidded to a stop, and unleashed one of his pistols, laying down a barrage of fire that any sane being would have avoided. Unfortunately, the pilot was far from sane. An alien, some nut-colored species that Vinnie wasn't familiar with, ejected out of the pilot's seat, with crazed laughter, and plummeted hands out directly for Vinnie. It took a few seconds of thought, but ultimately, Vinnie just rolled his bike four feet backward, and watched the alien take a full terminal velocity faceplant into the tough dirt. Rolling forward again, he poked at it with his boot, and then shrugged to find it unresponsive.
Modo wasn't faring quite so lucky. His opponent had been dropped off by two choppers, which now peppered Modo's path with laser fire. His bike kept up the evasive maneuvers while he kept himself busy shooting projectiles out of the air. The creature that faced him was a Hexapod, six-limbed, it could use the middle pair of limbs either as extra legs for speed, or extra arms for.. well, what it was doing now: lobbing boulders at Modo from a hundred yards out. Modo probably would have been in for a world of hurt, had Throttle not sped into the scene disrupting everything.
They couldn't afford to be distracted though. Not even by the weirdest battle cry they'd ever heard.
"You ate my house!" Ricochet unleashed an unholy barrage of gunfire at a particular chopper. While it, and the goon piloting it went down in a fiery wreck, the cargo that it carried, one metal-jawed miscreant, landed safely upon the desert floor. Metal jaws clacked together, and he took one square hit to the face. Merely shaking it off, Cannibal laughed.
"You are going to be one... delectable, little morsel," the monster chuckled, slowly advancing on Ricochet's position.
Rico's bike, Sparkle, was one of the few Martian bikes without an internal weapons system; it's rider was trained to be a far deadlier weapon than anything it could ever do. So instead, the bike was primed with a defensive AI, and it knew, when an opponent advances, that it should back up. Rico kept peppering the fur-backed behemoth with weapon's fire, reloading on the fly. For the first time, she cursed having to rely on Terran tech. Bullets just seemed ineffective.
Vinnie suddenly pulled up beside her. "Hey beautiful." Even if it was out of place, the tone of his greeting made Ricochet's ears flush with heat. Only muscle-memory stopped her from dropping bullets in her attempt to reload. "Ever hear of a maneuver called A spoonful of sugar?" It took her a moment, but she recalled it, and automatically held her hand out. Vinnie placed a grenade into her palm, and winked at her. "Just follow my lead, 'kay?"
Rico tucked the grenade down her shirt and nodded, before spurring Sparkle forward, instead of retreating. For a moment, the bike protested, until Vinnie shot forward first. And then, well, it just happened so quickly. Cannibal grabbed Vinnie off his bike, getting the Mouse by a shoulder and a knee. For a split second, it looked like Vinnie would get eaten whole, suspended above the gaping metal maw as he was. That is until Ricochet popped the grenade pin, and dropped it into the waiting gullet. Cannibal reflexively shut his mouth, and swallowed. Vinnie followed the motion by igniting a fusion flare, and melting the hinges of the massive metal jaw shut. He hit the ground running, to be picked up by his own bike in a few strides. They were headed straight away from the carnage that was about to happen behind them, when they realized that wasn't such a great idea after all.
Up out of the desert seemed to rise a wall, but as the sand and dust poured off it, Vinnie realized he was staring down the barrel of a tank. The sound of cocking guns, and chambering rounds brought him and Ricochet to a complete and utter halt. Above, Limburger's fortress melted into a cloud, and his gyrocopters fled in every direction.
"Drop your weapons!" Someone shouted from the military line. "Get on the ground! Now!"
Ricochet looked at Vinnie, and he stared back helplessly. She was insane. This was what she'd wanted. The only way in was by capture. Rico dropped her pistols to either side of her bike, and slowly lowered Sparkle's kickstand. "Come on, Vin. I can't do this alone." Her voice drifted to him over the com, even though he could hear more shouting and more weapons being readied behind him. Not only would he get taken, but his bros, as well. And even the Hexapod, the lone standing super-villain left. He tossed his own laser pistol to the left, and raised his hands slowly, dismounting his own bike in one smooth motion.
And suddenly, he was swarmed, thrown to the ground, his hands wrenched around behind his back, and cuffed with what felt like zip-ties. He turned his helmeted head to one side, to watch as Ricochet was treated just as roughly. Suddenly, the human in charge grabbed her helmet and yanked it mercilessly off. And everyone retreated about five paces.
"Get me Mikalson! ASAP!"
Vinnie's shoulders got grabbed, and he was supported long enough for his own helmet to be ripped off. "Ow! Hey! Not the face!" He protested, as he was dropped back into the dirt. His words got a whole new round of surprised cursing and hasty steps taken backwards. In moments, Throttle and Modo were both dropped at their sides, while the Hexapod put up a continued fight. With the sharp, sudden report of a rifle, the bulk of the six-limbed alien hit the ground with a crash. Stunned silence rose up, until one voice broke it.
"What? They still study dead things."
Rammer raced to keep up with Mikalson as the general made a straight line for the surface. "No no! Sir, you don't understand! They come in peace! They're the good guys!" He was trying hard to dissuade Mikalson's immediate desire to put the whole lot of them under lock-and-key. "Look, they want to negotiate; we have one of their own, they have answers! Isn't that what you ultimately want? Answers!"
Mikalson was silent until the elevator doors closed around him, and then, he rounded on Rammer with a viciousness that cowed the FBI agent into silence. "And just how long have you known of this secondary element of aliens, operating on our home planet? Hm? Why wait until now to tell me? Why elect at this moment, right when the doctor, who you are supposed to be guarding, might I remind you, is currently running her first control tests on the entity Alpha? Shouldn't you be making sure that nothing happens to our only expert on these things?" Rammer drew breath as Mikalson did, but something in the elder general's eyes stopped him from speaking. Mikalson wasn't quite done. "And don't think that we don't know about your outside contact with your ex-partner, Howard Kilkenny. If you think that I don't run a tight enough ship to know when there's a breach in my hull, you are sorely mistaken, young man! Now if you excuse me, I have to bring in four living entities, and two deceased ones, while keeping an ear out for the team that went to recover the two unfortunate parachutists who landed inside our Red Zone!"
The elevator binged at the top of the tunnel, and Mikalson stormed out the door. Only when the doors began to slide shut again did Rammer jump through the opening to follow. He was probably right, though. He should have gone down to check on Haley before he ran off on this wild goose chase. But Howie had actually let someone else use his email; Howie had actually let someone else inside his house. Someone who had contact with this species before; someone who already knew a great deal about the subject that Haley was extracting from the tank even as he was running across the desert to catch up to Mikalson.
Rammer took a gamble when he caught up again, knowing full well that he wasn't military, and the only jurisdiction that Mikalson had over him was the pull he had with the FBI themselves. Sure, he might get demoted, but less work would mean more time to see Haley. He gave himself a shake out of those thoughts, because it was a dream and nothing more. Instead, he focused. Grabbing Mikalson by the shoulder, he physically hauled the general away from his commanders, and instinctively ducked the right hook that he'd barely seen coming. Rammer's right arm deflected a left uppercut almost as quickly, and it brought Rammer nose to nose with the general.
"You will listen to what they have to say. You will listen to reason." Rammer's heart hammered in his ears. He'd never balked authority before, but here he was, throwing out his neck for a group of aliens that he wasn't even sure would even know what it meant. "This is a research facility, general, not a military operation. Even I know that much. If they can answer Doctor Silver's questions, then we need to let them - Holy good God, what is that!?"
Rammer forgot what he was saying as the six-limbed furry beast was carried past him on a pair of gurneys that someone had lashed together. Before Mikalson could answer, another voice chimed in, one cool and collected and not seemingly bothered at all by the fact that it's owner was in cuffs.
"That was a Hexapod. Or a Hexapoid, depending on what system you're from." The speaker was a six-foot tall talking, tan Mouse. "They're originally from Beta Centauri, but since their official contact, they've spread like a big, bad virus."
A second Mouse, smaller and white-furred, broke away from his escort to stop beside his companion. With a smirk, he flicked his tail toward Mikalson. "He may wanna close that. Flies aren't all that great tasting."