Chapter XII: Executive Override

AN:

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"This is never going to work." Chloe muttered.

I grinned back at her, leaving my work at the hastily scavenged targeting lens to clasp her hand reassuringly. "Come on, Chlo'. You were so optimistic about this twenty minutes ago."

"Yeah," She raised her hand to look at me. "That was before he told me I'd be the one the whole plan depended on." She looked away again, shook her head. "Crazy fucker."

"Crazy like a fox." Copse wiggled his fingers weirdly in Chloe's direction. If we could see his face, it might've been charmingly quirky, but given his entire body was crammed underneath the console and all we could see was his wiggling fingers and half an arm, it was entirely and unavoidably weird. "Trust me, Pricey. You don't need to be an expert sniper to make this happen. This beastie," The disembodied arm bent back to tap the console. "will do all the hard bit. All you've got to do is point and push a button or two."

"So, why aren't you or David doing this bit? You two actually have the training here."

"Well, if you don't want anyone watching your back, then sure we can swap. You be the one shooting the monsters that a plan this noisy will draw in, and I'll take the nice cushy job pushing buttons. That okay with you?"

Chloe glared at him. "No," She admitted begrudgingly.

"Well," Copse beamed - though how I got that impression from only a frenetically gesturing arm, I have no idea. "I guess you answered your own question. Go forth and shoot shit, with my blessing!"

I chuckled and went back to the scope. Chloe stood around for a few seconds before getting back to work herself.

We could do this!

Chloe, steely gaze and clamped jaw, peered down the scope I'd calibrated towards the building ahead. Last checks, to make sure she knew where her payload was supposed to be going. Copse's voice called in from outside. "You ready?"

"I was born ready." Chloe yelled back.

"Must've been hell on your Mom. Fire on three!"

Chloe settled herself over the scope and button, then listened to Copse count down. Three. Two. Then... one.

Chloe slammed her hand down on the appropriately big and red button. The moment she did, three more explosions rang out as the detpacks we'd placed did what they were supposed to do and damaged the auto-seals keeping a large, steel door shut. Above us, a loud whirring sounded and three lasers lit on, out in three different directions. They quickly spiralled inward, a ballet of light with a deadly and destructive ending. Dog. This was going to be loud.

The very second the three lasers aligned, triangulating the targeting matrix we'd hastily set up onto the side of the Manufacturies, there was a screaming rumble like metallic-rattling thunder overhead and a half-dozen tonnage haulers from the auto-lane going at full speed stampeded overhead and rammed into the building, destroying the turrets on that side and leaving a massive hole in the wall.

The two of us stared at the sheer size of the devastation our plan had wrought. "Wowzers..."

Chloe began to laugh. She turned and gave me an incredulous look. "Wowzers? We do that and all you can say is wowzers?" She grinned, broad and lecherous. "Fuck I hella love you."

"Love you too, dear." I matched her grin with one of my own. "You were the one who did all that damage, after all."

"I was, wasn't I..."

"If you two are done being cute, we should probably get moving! That was noisy as hell, we're going to have company soon!" Even as Copse was speaking, the howls started. Above us, below us, all around us. They were everywhere.

We ran for the gap.

The turrets began to whirr, driving us on to run faster. If we'd missed something, if they could still get an angle on us... we didn't want to be out here. In seconds, we cleared a third of the open area, then half, and then the guns roared into action. The sound... we could feel it far better than we could hear it, the deep, bassy, rumbling cracks of the constant hail of bullets sending a rumble through each of us; my diaphragm rattled like a cart over cobblestones being pelted by hail and even my heart felt like it was shaking inside my body.

The running became almost automatic, unthinking, even as my legs began to wobble with the strain. All my focus, strangely, wasn't on my feet, but all went onto the glow of the turret barrels. Not the sounds of the howls behind us, the roars of the gunshots, or the actual end of the gun that shot bullets at us. That dull amber glow, slowly brightening more and more as the heat of the shots got to the turrets. But despite that, they kept firing. It was, quite honestly, impressive as hell.

Also, terrifying. Completely and utterly terrifying.

Finally getting inside was a relief as I came down from the adrenaline. Everything ached, and I mean everything. I thought my legs were going to drop off. Part of me wished they would.

"Bloody." Gasp for air. "Fucking." Gasp again. "Hell." Chloe slumped down the wall beside me, gulping in air like a drowning person. "Let's not do that shit again, huh?"

I chuckled numbly and seconded that. I blinked and looked over at David. His expression was one of utter agony. His teeth were clenched and he was breathing deeply as his hand, clamped to his injured leg, massaged at it. "You..." Woooooah. Light-headed. "You okay, David?"

He nodded, but didn't say shit. He just gritted his teeth and continued pawing at his leg. Chloe and I shared concerned looks. "You wanna try that again, but make it convincing this time?"

"I'm... fine!" He practically had to force the words out. Yep. He's not fine.

It took me a couple of tries, but I managed to steady my hands enough to pull one of the healthpacks I'd found with Joyce in the dock and tossed it in Copse's vague direction. Somehow, the guy managed to catch it. "Give that to him. If he's failing that badly to cover it up, he must be in agony."

"I'm not a damn child, Max. I think I know-"

Copse rammed the needle into the man's RIG and David's entire body relaxed. He grumbled under his breath for a moment before offering a reluctant "Thanks."

Copse beamed. "Don't mention it, big guy."

Since he was okay, I let my head drop into my hands and just stuck to breathing.

"Uh..."

We all turned to Chloe with whatever the smallest movements we could make were - I just raised my head an inch or two until she was in my eyeline. Her own eyes were almost comically wide. "What?"

She just pointed behind us.

We turned to look.

About a dozen suited men and women were standing around, frozen in various positions mid-getting-the-hell-out-of-here as they stared at us. They all had that same deer-in-the-headlights look. We blinked first. "Hi!"

They screamed.

"Look, hey!" Chloe yelled over the terrified babbling of the executives that were almost scrambling over each other in their desperation to get out of the room.

"Hey!" She tried again - half of them had made it out and the others were doing what looked like a frantic, yet still politely restrained version of those dodge-the-oncoming-obstacle games Chloe was always playing on the arcades - getting just as ignored for her trouble.

Copse, with some blatant irritation, pulled his sidearm and shot twice. One round went into the wall outside, the other into an overhead light fitting that sent sparks showering over the executives. All of them immediately stopped and went near-foetal. I think a couple of them might even have been crying. "We don't want to hurt you!" Chloe shouted.

After a beat, one of them yelled back "But you just shot at us!"

"Only after you ran away!"

"You blew up our wall!"

...

"Fair point."

A couple of the braver suits poked their heads out from where they'd cowered beneath their hands. One of them, not the one that'd shouted back to Chloe, asked frightfully and slightly disbelievingly "You're really not going to kill us?"

"No!"

The yelling turned the reassuring intent into intimidating reality and the suit cowered back into their shell again. Joyce stepped up and put a hand on Chloe's shoulder - one that said to let her handle this. "I'm sorry, y'all. We're just a little frazzled after what we had to do to get in here. It's scary out there, ain't it?"

Joyce's friendly, amiable tone seemed to reassure them and one or two heads poked back in, eyes full of wary curiosity. Like children. Or badgers. One of them, a pale-skinned brunet man with a large nose and strong jaw, nodded distrustfully. "It is. For everyone except those Unitologist crazies."

Joyce gave a customer-service perfect smile. She walked forward and took a seat, hands clasped together and resting on the messy table in front of her. That's what seemed to relax them most. That little veneer of familiarity amidst the insanity of this awful, fucked up day.

After a little more chit and a whole lot more chat, she managed to convince the executives that we meant no harm and that they should take us to some more secure, less architecturally-faulty meeting room. As we convened, one of the more well-kept ones, a tall, sandy-haired man with a pearly-white smile that dazzled despite his tired eyes, asked us "Just what the hell do you want, anyway?"

Joyce leant forward in the well-upholstered chair. "We want to survive, just like you."

"You can survive anywhere." He pointed out, quite inaccurately. "Why the hell did you come here, then?"

"We need to use the manufacturies. Our shelter is out in the rings and we're in need of some parts that we just don't have. We brought our own supplies, so we don't even need to use your materials. Just the machines." She laid one hand over his and kept his eye. "Please. You'll be helping a lot of people avoid becoming monsters."

He shook his head suddenly, blinking and breaking the slight hypnotic air that Joyce'd draped over the room. Dog she was good. "Those beasts are... people?"

Joyce breathed deeply in, like she was trying to steady herself, and nodded. "Yes. We've seen them transform. People we know, just... gone. Replaced by those things."

He openly shuddered. "That's... oh god..." His hand went to his chin and he started to rub anxiously at it as he stared off into nothing. "You're sure?"

Joyce just nodded, said nothing. There wasn't really much you could say to a line like that about a topic like that, in my opinion. Not that I'd know if there was, considering my whole... 'awkward chic' vibe. Victoria's line, not mine. I didn't even know what chic meant until she'd rattled it off like another fact about the fall lines or some model's tragic backstory. Dog, I hoped she was okay. Taylor too. And their... and their... nope. I swiftly buried that concern back in the deepest, darkest corner of my brain, and dumped a bank vault on top for good measure.

He stayed quiet too for a moment before standing and meeting Joyce's eye. "You can use what you need to. Free of charge. We need to support each other, keep each other alive, right?"

Joyce smiled sadly. "Thank you."

The machines were like looming gargoyles: huge, dark, and all weird angles and gurning expressions. The factory floor was dominated by these huge monstrosities, the smaller support systems barely registering beside their monolithic bulk. "Damn. That's hella impressive." Chloe drawled as we walked in, accompanied by the sandy-haired executive I still hadn't gotten the name of. "Where's the one we need?"

The man frowned, thought for a second, then guided us to one of the middling-range machines in the centre of the room. "This should be sufficient for your needs. The specs show it's scaled to the part sizes you need."

Chloe skittered over and... she started fangirling over the machine. "Oh fuck, this is hella awesome. Max, you gotta come see this! It's got the Trigon Corp compensators! And the stabilisers!"

I leaned back and looked the executive in the eye. "We'll, uh, try to make sure she doesn't steal the machine."

He frowned at me. "You actually think she could get it out of here?"

I looked at my entirely excited wife, then back to the sceptical businessman. "Oh yes. She's very capable when she's motivated."

We both looked back over to Chloe who, to the amusement of everyone, seemed to be hugging a part of the machine in ecstatic joy and spinning around it like she was back on the school play area. "Man, Corporations might be evil, but they sure make some hella awesome shit!"

That one pulled a chuckle out of both David and Copse. Damn. I was joking, but she really seems to like this assembler-printer-thing. I might actually have to stop her loading this into one of those haulers before we leave.

Copse walked up to the two of us, smirked at the executive "As fun as it is down here, I should probably get to uploading the schematics. Where's your control room?"

The man smiled back, "Come on. I'll show you up there." The two of them vanished up onto a catwalk and behind some bloodied glass doors. I turned to watch Chloe, now given up on the being excited at the machine and instead working on it. She was in her element; beads of sweat ran down her brow, her eyes had narrowed in focus and her jaw was tight with determination. In short: she was hot as hell.

So, I found something to lean back on and watched her work her magic. Since again, it might as well be to me. Any sufficiently advanced technology, right? I blinked in mild interest as she literally ripped a part out of the machine and looked over it in disgust before chucking it to two executives who appeared to believe they were going through a mild case of severe psychosis, if the disbelieving looks they were alternating between Chloe and the device in their hands were any indication.

About ten minutes past before Copse poked his head back through those glass doors. "Any problems?"

"Nope! I mean, they added in a regulator circuit AND an inhibitor just to slow down workflow" (and at this she gave the dirtiest look ever to those two executives, who ignored it in favour of finally freaking out about the crazy woman ripping bits out of their machine. She ignored them just as easily.) "AND-"

Copse cut her off. "Right! Go to stage one!"

A thought occurred to me. I turned to the executives, "Shouldn't there be some sort of communication intercom thingy between the office and here? It seems really freaking inefficient to have to walk back and forth all the time."

One of them took a deep breath, turning to me with an irritated look. Seems like Chloe's efforts are spilling over to me. "There is. I assume your friend just didn't know how to use it."

"Ah," I noted distantly, watching with some amusement as the other executive's continued ranting finally drew Chloe's attention. She, uh, wasn't calm in her response. The executive quickly looked more scared of her than he had when the monster reveal had happened.

Midway through the rant, the giant, hulking machine began to whirr and one of those accordion-looking pump things began to move, apparently kicking the whole operation thing off as the cogs, pistons, capacitors and other techy words all started doing what I guessed they were supposed to afterward. Chloe seemed pleased, beaming over the machine like a proud poppa just hearing his kids' first babbles. "Are we running green, Chloe?"

She turned and raised an eyebrow at me. After a few seconds of mildly amused quiet, I started to blush. "Is that not right? I heard it on the vids. I swear that's what they say when they're asking if things're going okay, right?"

She reached over and patted me on the head, then wrapped her arms around me - one around my neck and the other around my middle - and gave me my first noogie since high school. "Aww! Isn't she adorable? Like a tiny pocket tech!"

I elbowed her in the side, "No height jokes, Chloe. You know the rules - you make jokes about my height and I tell everyone what really happened that one time on Ressik."

She chuckled and let go, more of her own accord than any leverage from my elbow or embarrassment from my threat. Chloe had no shame. "Touche, little Maxie. Woops. Sorry. I mean Maxie of no notable vertical measurement. Nosirree, nothing height-related to joke about here."

I shook my head, smiling despite myself before I turned back to the machine. "So? Are we?"

She nodded, then tilted her head to look at me with a familiar shit-eating grin. "Yeah. Running green and all systems are a go, Maxie."

I gave her a withering look. She just chuckled again.

Chloe lifted another weirdly shaped hunk of metal from the machine and added it to the pile. I groaned as the whirring and mechanical stuff started again. "How much longer?"

Chloe shrugged. "Another five minutes?"

I groaned again.

After another two parts were added to our load, I decided it was about time to ask again.

"How much longer now?"

"Uh, two minutes?"

Chloe Price was a tall, gorgeous liar. A full twenty five minutes later, she finally took the last part off the machine and added it to our little stack. She immediately sauntered over to me, reached down, and poked me in the face. Hard. I growled at her. "Chloeee!"

Okay, maybe it was more of a whine, but it was still a threatening one.

With another far-too-amused-with-herself chuckle, she reached her arms around me and pulled me to my feet. "Sorry, Maxie. Engineers wait for no naps! We breathe caffeine and fart stims!"

The two suits who'd remained in the room - both just as bored as I was - looked at her askance. I could see the unspoken, but very much felt 'ew, but yes that's probably true' in their expressions.

Chloe wafted a hand and the whole mass sprang up, hovering in the bluish-white glow of her kinesis module. "Right. Got-" The mass of parts shook slightly. Chloe's eyes bulged and she swore lightly as she fumbled desperately to keep it all from falling over. "Phew. Okay, right. Got the stuff, let's get moving."

The two executives exchanged looks of blatant relief. I guess minding us while we worked was more hassle than they were willing to go through in this End-of-the-Station situation. Well, they wouldn't have to put up with guests for much longer - we were heading right for the hole we'd made to get in, and then we could go straight back to the Tether, and then-

The room was bathed in red light as alarms began to wail. We all froze, aside from David who went right for his weapon. "Shit, what's-"

The two doors Copse had vanished through burst open and he appeared, the other executive hot on his heels, yelling "The monsters are attacking the perimeter!"

I felt my heart drop. "Well, crap."