A Hope for Survival

AN:

Hey there, Fan-fic-folks!

Not much happening in this one. It's mostly a transition chapter to cap off the last act and begin the main body of action in the second act. Introduces pretty much every plot point I've got for the rest of the story (bar two, I think?) and well, I do love a good table planning scene ever since "Gentleman! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!". Exquisite line.

Also, I'm moving to responding to reviews in messages unless something particularly interesting comes up that I think everyone would like answers to. My slow update schedule necessitates it. Sorry.

Thanks for reading and, as always, please review.

ANII:

I thought it might be nice to do a sort of 'Last Time on...' thing here. Just to catch up those of you who don't feel like rereading it all again. Here goes nothing. Wish me luck:

In Act I, Chloe and Max met for breakfast at the Two Whales, where they quietly talked comfortably with one another. They ran into a Unitologist friend on the way out, Kate, whom Chloe dislikes since Rachel went missing months earlier in order to join her religion/cult. She invites them to help with a ritual, which they do, and they unknowingly sneak into an EarthGov base and drop containment on a mysterious object that whispers to Max - the Marker. As they do, alarms go off and monsters called Necromorphs arise. Kate locks them in a room with one, but a well-timed explosion gives them the opportunity to escape. They run through the station, getting rescued from the Necromorphs by a Hispanic EarthGov operative named Aiden Copse, who helps them get to a ship and pilot it out of there. The ship is shot down by a Lurker (babymorph) and they're forced to flee through the station to the Tethers, a series of tubes connecting the inner sphere of the station to the outer rings. Chloe is sucked out into space and does pretty well kicking space Necromorph butt while Max and Aiden chat. They rescue some people and take them to the Haven, a hidden engineer sanctuary, getting aid from Ricky Mac to go rescue Chloe's parents. Chloe finds the stairs problematic, but they find Joyce and David. They're helped also by a mysterious person operating a set of military drones, who covers them during the retreat from the Madsen's apartment building on the way back.

*Deep Announcer Voice*

And now... the continuation.

"You're going to have to tell us your name eventually, y'know." Chloe growled, glaring in irritation back at the little floaty blue drone gliding alongside us in the Haven entry crawlspace.

The look the eye gave her in return was surprisingly wry, considering it was literally just a glowy ball metal scarab thing. "I'm really not."

Chloe's form slumped. "Come on!" She whined, "Why won't you tell us your name?"

The drone made a movement in response that somehow gave the impression of a shrug (the thing didn't even have shoulders...) and the voice said "Because introducing myself is entirely my prerogative and it's fun to annoy you. Besides, I kinda like this whole ananymous thing. It's totally like that time Jack went to Bessilon-III in the second season finale of-"

Chloe wafted a hand at the drone and cut off any further rambling with an even more angry sounding growl. "Fine then. Keep your secrets."

The little drone made a delighted little sound. "Hey, that's just like-"

"Could you two be quiet for one damn minute, please?"

I peered through the dark at David. I could almost taste the tang of his irritation on the air, stale and kind of iron-y as it was. Heh. His cane clanked against the metal floor as he dragged it, and his useless leg, along with him. His face was almost a grimace.

Chloe aimed back at him, ready to lash out, but she apparently caught just enough of his pained expression to make her look shamefacedly in any direction but his. "Sorry. We're, uh, nearly there."

We skittered the rest of the way in silence, nodding to the guards as we emerge into the Haven proper. Joyce seemed as comfortable as ever, but David eyed the complex in suspicion. Still, he followed willingly as Chloe and Mac took point on the way up to Temba's office.

Temba was leaning on a console, intent on something on one of the many, many screens there. Her expression looked... irritated, and kinda pinched. Something, somewhere had gone wrong, I knew it, and it had gone wrong badly enough to frustrate her. I was expecting to have to cough or something to get her attention, but her face flicked up as soon as we walked in and the weight of her glare rolled across all of us before landing and settling onto Mac. I resisted the urge to grin as the woman gulped.

"Do you have any idea what your damn fool devices have done? Those compressors have damaged the power circuitry for a while secant of this ring!" Mac's previous louche demeanour was entirely gone as Temba roared and raged at her. I had to bite my lip to stop grinning. "If you'd've thrown one more of those things, we'd have lost life support!"

She had the kind of furious, yet bitterly satisfied disappointment that made me half-expect her to start talking about how she'd carried an M16 while demanding to know what I wanted to do with my life.

Mac finally drew herself up and tried to stand with some dignity. No hope of that now, my inside voice crowed.

"So? We can just go out and repair it, right?"

Temba scowled. "Not any more. That idiot Jetson activated the Code Black and locked all system adjustments to the main engineering console only. We could get the circuitry functional, but without that console, we can't reset it and it won't actually function."

"Shit." Chloe helpfully summarised the feelings of everyone in the room. Aside from David, anyway. He was even less technologically minded than I was.

"So, uh. Glad I didn't make more of the compressors, I guess?" Mac awkwardly rubbed the back of her neck before retreating out of the room as Temba glared at her again.

As the door slid closed, the woman deflated and her fury dimmed. We watched quietly as she put herself back together, piece by piece, until she could draw herself up into a glare again.

Chloe - sweet, inimitable, lovable Chloe - stuck up a hand. "Hi."

I bit my lip to swallow another smile. This one fond as hell. Dog, I really, really loved my wife.

"So, you found your parents."

I wasn't a question. Chloe didn't see why that meant she couldn't answer it anyway. So she did. "Yep." She wafted a vaguely fond hand at them, the gesture as emotive as the drone's shrug with the same amount of baffling physical impossibility. Her hand expressed her emotions for her parents like a magician's expressed his pride in his craft during the reveal of the finale bunny.

Temba shrugged. "Pick a bunk. Right now, we've got other problems."

"Other than Mac nearly killing us all?" I added, cheekily.

Chloe snorted as Temba's glare moved to me.

Joyce, always the peacemaker, smiled and asked "Anything we can help with?"

Temba snorted. "Unless you've got several days worth of food in that rucksack, probably not."

"Food?" I frowned. "You're running out?"

"Yes." Temba confirmed. "We've never planned for a prolonged stay here before. it was alaways intended as a temporary refuge, but none of us had any idea this... nightmare could happen." She sighed. "So, unless you can help out with that, I need you to leave."

"Actually," Joyce offered. "We can definitely help out with that."

Temba's head shot up, her entire focus now on Joyce. "How?"

"I run the Two Whales Diner, out in the third secant. We've got a full pantry, enough food and supplies to feed a thousand people."

Chloe's mouth dropped open. "Why the fuck do you have food for a thousand people, Mom?"

"That's how many customers we get in a week." She responded, simply.

Dog. Wowzers, that's... I never knew the Two Whales was so popular. If I was actually a hipster like everyone jokes, I'd probably have to avoid the place now. If there weren't already a nightmarish, end-of-the-station apocalypse going on that meant that anyway, I guess.

"That's..." Temba seemed almost taken aback by the sheer convenience. It's not often a solution just drops into your lap like this. "Thank you. You might have just saved us all." She chuckled. "Next you'll tell me you have a way off this station."

David and Joyce shared a look. "Actually..."

Temba stared at us all in complete disbelief, muttering something under her breath that I didn't catch, but Copse clearly did from his amused chuckle. She shook her head and opened her mouth to speak, before frowning over our shoulders. "Is that a drone?"

Said drone gave that odd, pseudo-shrugging motion again. "Hi. Yep, it is. Built it myself. Cool, isn't it?"

Temba tilted her head. "It looks like you just modified the old B52."

The drone's light flickered. "Oh, you noticed! That's jut the chassis. Found a tonne of these things lying about in the old 3M dump-yard and figured they'd just go to waste if I didn't use them."

They were right, really. Our corporate overlords really weren't ones for recycling. They just tossed it out and traded it to the Planetbreakers for new material. They had us do a piece on it a year or two ago, which still amazed me even now. Honestly, you'd've expected them to want to hide something like that, but they just went with it and somehow came out with an increased stock price.

"And you haven't had issues with the grav-generator cycling improperly? Those things used to drop out of the sky all the time when we were stuck with them."

"Nope," the little drone let out a chuckle. "All the internals are a modified blend of my own design. I took the grav-gen from a Seffler Corp Explorer and returned it for the smaller size.

Temba blinked. She looked almost impressed. "That's good work. Whoever you are, you'd be more than welcome here."

"No, thanks. I'll help you get whatever that guy's way off the station is though."

Temba started, "Ah. Right. Yes. Mr Madsen, could you tell me what you meant by that?"

"I have a ship."

She blinked again. Now, she looked almost astonished. "You... have a ship?"

David nodded. "Yes."

There was a beat of silence. I could see politeness warring across her face with the obvious question. David gave off a very military man vibe - his posture was still ramrod straight, and his clothes had nary a crease even after the... drama of the last couple of hours. The injury meant retirement, and his uniform was the familiar greyish-blue of a desk-job drone. Neither career path paid well. Ships were expensive. The obvious question very quickly won out. "How in the hell do you have a ship?"

I felt a wave of sympathy. Temba really wasn't doing well with all the shocks. Considering she handled ravenous monsters chasing us around the station with unflappable aplomb, it was quite surprising.

David sighed, and I could see this cost him something to talk about. A reassuring glance from Joyce and an empathetic smirk from Chloe gave him whatever he needed to continue. "When I was drummed out of active duty due to..." He thocked his cane on the thigh of his bum leg. "this, they made me an offer. Take it quietly and they'd give me money. I told them I didn't want the money and asked for the wreck of the ship that nearly killed me. It was basically scrap, so they gave it to me."

The telltale taps of tension on his thigh felt rivets thunking into hull plating.

Chloe coughed into the quiet. "So, uh... you're talking about your project shuttle thing, right?"

David nodded again. He was definitely more willing to talk about what he'd done to the ship than what it'd done to him. "Yes. That's the one. It's almost done, I was just having trouble sourcing some of the more hard-to-get parts." He paused, his face taking on a wry, recollective look. His moustache quivered a little as he pursed his lips. "The navigation computer works, but it needs an Orrery Chip. The engine needs about a dozen little parts and the inertial regulator needs retuning. That's about it, though. It's sealed and spaceworthy."

Temba's amazement faded slightly at the repair list. "That makes things difficult. But luckily, now there's no EarthGov to keep parts from us. Come on, we should be able to work out where we can get the things we need."

The entire group of us barely surrounded half the edges of the giant map sprawled out in the centre of the room. The map, according to Chloe's adorably excited rambles, was a blend of two older methods - Lidar, commonly used on most spaceships; and something called PPI scopes. I couldn't follow her explanation of how it worked beyond 'lasers', but it was pretty impressive. The entire station lay there in immense detail, covered in swarms of little blips that floated about like angry bees.

The little cadre of engineers that David and Chloe were holding court with seemed ecstatic at the reveal of his project-ship. A solution appearing, and one that required tinkering to make work? I'd lived with Chloe long enough to know that an engineer with a solution like that was a dogdamn happy engineer indeed.

I sat, looking everyone ever, musing about how cool a picture the scene would make. It kept the screaming fears that this wouldn't work and Chloe would die at bay.

Chloe suddenly reached over the map and tapped on one of the larger building-sprawls in the inner sphere. "Here. We can make all the engine shit you could ever want in the 3M manufacturies."

Temba pondered the thought before nodding. "That solves that problem, and we can retune the regulator on-site. I've no idea where to get a compatible Orrery Chip though."

Copse stepped forward. "I can help wit that, miss. There's a stash of the things in the main base docking office."

"And you know this how..?"

Copse shrugged. "I was a pilot. The brass might not've liked me much - I'm a little too fond of the booze for their liking - but I was still on staff."

Chloe chuckled. "That explains the crash."

He responds with nothing more than a 'who, me?' grin and another relaxed shrug.

A beat of contemplative quiet later, Temba issued her orders. "Joyce, you and your group go to your diner, get what food you can, and return. We'll need supplies before anything else. We'll send a team out to the Tether to check it still works, and one to whatever dock your ship is on to secure it - Isambard, get the location from David." She gestured to one of the engineers standing around my wife and step-father-in-law. The man's moustache, equally as fine a specimen as David's, quivered as he nodded earnestly. "Everyone got their assignments? Good. Now, get out!"

Chloe threw up a sloppy salute. "Yes ma'am!"

Temba eyed her darkly.

"You got everything?" I found myself fussing over my wife as she strapped back into the suit she'd been trapped in only a short while before. Something about that just seemed... wrong.

"Yep." Chloe didn't bother to nod, just fiddled with some dial or strap on the suit that made the whole thing tighten as it assembled itself around her. She gave a little shimmy, ensuring nothing was lose or ill-fitted - and dog, there wasn't a thing on her that wasn't tight and... ahem. She gave her new gun a brief once-over - some rifle-like thing donated by the Haven - stowing it at her back with a satisfied nod.

"So. We're heading back to the Two Whales, huh?"

I nodded. "Apparently." A thought popped into my head and I gave voice to it with a mocking grin. Not really sure who I was mocking, but it's the thought that counted. "Do you think they'll let us stick around for another breakfast date?"

Chloe chuckled. "Probably not. We could probably sneak off and make-out in the bathrooms though." She waggled her eyebrows teasingly at me.

I felt red heat creep up my cheeks as her chuckles deepened. Damnit. Guess it was me being mocked. I coughed and brushed past the flirty comment. "It feels like forever since that breakfast."

Chloe shrugged. "Yeah, but it's only been, what, five hours?"

"Four, actually." Copse interjected. "If you went before going to the base, I mean."

I frowned over at him. How long had he been listening? Most people tend to switch off when they hear us flirt for too long.

Chloe and I shared a look and I could read Chloe's expression like a front-page headline. Though times like these, I really wished I couldn't. "Probably just hard up and thinks we're hella cute when we-"

I cut her off with an elbow to the side, hitting hard enough that she chokes on the rest of that damnable sentence.

...

Ahem.

Desperate for anything to distract me from the blush spreading rapidly from my face to what felt like everywhere else on my entire body, I tapped the button for my own suit assembly. The thing immediately enveloped my head like a boa constrictor. "Eeep!"

Suddenly, my vision cleared and Chloe's face was all I could see. She grinned at me. "You, uh... had this on backwards."

I groaned. "I'm a photojournalist, not a suit technician. Could you please help me with this thing?"

Chloe's only response was to drop the helmet back on my head. I may have squeaked again.

Yeah. This is gonna go great.