Title: Rescue Run

Author: Lady Rheena

Genres: Alternate Universe, Action/Adventure, Romance

Rating: R

Disclaimer: If you recognise it from a fandom, I probably don't own it. That includes the world of The Matrix, all its characters and the concepts it entails. The idea of the Fleet and the Planetary Coalition are technically my own, but you'll probably recognise bits and pieces from various sci-fi media.

Chapter notes: Doubtless my estimate of how many kilometres one can travel in a day, even abseiling continuously almost straight downwards, is way off. Put it down to Dena's Fleet gizmos. And since no data is given about how far down Zion is, well, let's just call it poetic licence, shall we?

Part 2- Tunnels

The low, insistent blare of the alarm wakened Dena some two hours later by her portable chronometer. Shaking herself to, she blinked her eyes open, wiped the mingled dampness of blood and sweat from her forehead and struggled up, unstrapping herself from the chair. It was the work of moments to shut down the main engines- what was left of them- and assess the rest of the damage. It took slightly longer for her to fully realise the extent of her situation. She was alone, without a ship, smack bang on old Terra with goodness knew what else, and above all less than about five klicks away from those glowing towers and mysterious picking things. Abandoning the cockpit with its now dead readouts, she moved into the rear of the ship and found the medkit, injecting herself with the most powerful stimulant she could find and then attaching an all-purpose portable scanner to her wrist in order to better assess her surroundings. By hooking itself automatically into what was left of the Mariposa's scanning equipment, the scanner detected five high energy readings moving towards her fast, but no signs of life whatsoever. A chill ran through Dena as her school and Academy history lessons floated back to her, and it took all her training not to break into an outright hysterical panic. Firmly summoning the focus of Fleet discipline, she opened one of the storage lockers and pulled out a survival pack, then added a few other items from the weapons rack including some EMP flash grenades. After a moment's thought she turned to the other locker, strapped on two hip holsters and put a lasgun in each one along with a full complement of charge cells. The communications equipment on the Mari was both trashed from the landing and fried by passage through that screwed-up cloud layer, so there was no point in taking the transponder plate with her, but she did pause by the hatch and lay a hand on the hull name plate, absently reading the inscription; LHS Mariposa Built Phobos Orbital Shipyard Launched September 18th 2956. The Mari had been a good little ship. Dena had flown in her at least a dozen times before, and she didn't think the hopper deserved such an ignoble death as this one.

'Sorry old girl,' she muttered, and privately swore to hunt down and rip to shreds the deck crew that had let the ship take off with three faulty power intake valves. Then, pushing aside sentimentality, she popped the back hatch and climbed out.

The air tasted acrid and had a sharp metallic tang to it that made her throat dry out quickly. Grimacing, Dena glanced in the direction of those fast-approaching energy readings and squinted enough to make out five long, gleaming objects arrowed straight for her current position. She clambered quickly away from the Mari over the twisted ground, almost turning her ankle more than once, and found a crevice to hide in. There, she took one of the scan-scattering beacons from her pack and activated it, strapping it firmly onto her belt. The tiny device would disperse the heat emanating from her body, automatically recalibrating the level as she moved so that, to sensors if not the naked eye, she appeared to be just another part of the scenery. Holding motionless, she let one hand rest on the gun in her right hip holster, one eye on the scanner and one on the wreck of the Mari. Only when the energy signatures were right on top of her did she flatten herself to the ground and actually draw the pistol, aiming just in front of her own nose.

Her aim wavered when she caught sight of the- the things crawling over the Mari. They were like old Terran squids, all waving appendages and tentacles, moving like predators in anticipation of a kill. But at the same time the waving limbs on the underside reminded her more of an insectoid, as did the clicks and clacks they made. One of them turned, the multiple red 'eyes' on the head piece making her freeze to the spot, rooted in terror, but the myriad of sensor scopes and radar dishes that emerged from the head- CPU, she forcefully corrected herself- turned away from her position quickly. A few more click-clacks and the entire entourage moved off. The Mari was obviously of no interest to them without her pilot. However Dena waited a good few minutes until her nerves had recovered and the scanner showed those squid things to be a good twenty klicks gone. When she finally emerged from her hiding place she was trembling all over.

So the AI machine race was still alive, if that was the term to use, and apparently dominant on the planet. And there the PTB had thought Terra to be a barren wasteland of big ol' nothing. With shaking fingers Dena consulted her scanner again, shivering slightly despite the thermal adaptive jumpsuit she was wearing. Scans showed that the temperature increased to more tolerable levels below ground, and there were plenty of access points to the apparent network of tunnels under the surface. They seemed to extend for hundreds, perhaps thousands of kilometres underground. Old service and way systems perhaps, from those long bombed-out cities that had once dominated the now ashen landscape.

Hefting the carisac onto two shoulders and fastening the chest strap, Dena took a deep breath and started towards the nearest of the underground access points.

It was nearly three days of steady downward progress later when physical exhaustion finally prompted her to stop and properly assess her situation. Immediately she was furious with herself. Here she was, a trained Fleet officer, a captain no less, and she'd panicked and jumped down a hole the minute she was faced with anything out of the ordinary. She'd been going hard for seventy two hours almost non-stop, without so much as a bite of a ration bar, barely the occasional sip of a rehydration fluid, and this while carbon-lining down rock faces and possibly being pursued by Maker knew what unholies. It was the work of moments to locate a relatively secure nook in the endless klicks of piping and conduits, whereupon she extracted the medkit from her carisac and injected herself with a quick-release stimulant, followed by a standard anti-shock treatment. Letting her head fall back against the cold steel that formed the wall of her impromptu shelter, she took several deep breaths. Next was a full ration bar, and an entire pipe of rehydration fluid. She consulted her scanner again and had to check that it wasn't malfunctioning.

She'd lined down more than one steep rock face with the retractable carbon rope line on her belt, but she hadn't suspected she'd covered anything like the distance she had. In three days she was more than two hundred klicks below surface level. With something like detached amusement, she realised she'd gone into what the psyche teams liked to call Default Survival Mode. No com unit, no means to scrounge one together, no chance of contact or rescue since she would be presumed dead the minute the Mari's ill-fated final flight trajectory was traced, and yet she'd automatically taken the measures necessary to preserve her own life for as long as possible by leaving the surface and the vulnerable crash site. She'd have possibly been better off announcing her presence to the squid things and asking if she could borrow a comline, pretty please? Hideous as they were, those machines were undoubtedly the remnants of the AI civilisation- or whatever one would call it- and in the thousand-odd years since any human had set foot on Terra they might have found her an interesting enough oddity not to just blow to atoms. Maybe.

On the other hand, maybe machines were real good at holding grudges. Sighing, Dena adjusted her position slightly and, setting the scanner to an audio alert if it detected any energy signatures coming her way, let her eyes slide closed as the stimulant, designed to provide an energy boost for a very limited time only, wore off. The heebie-jeebies, however (as Commander Pryce might have called her innate nervousness in the bizarre environment), let her sleep for only a few hours. After that she kept a firm grip on mind and body, travelling in short bursts and with greater attention to her surroundings. Abseiling down another three seemingly bottomless vertical shafts soon brought her to a depth of nearly six hundred klicks. And it had only turned out to be point two of a bloody degree warmer, too.

It was on the sixth day that she noticed an energy blip making its way rather ponderously- compared to those squids, anyway, although the thing still packed a couple of hundred kph- along one of the tunnels adjoining her current passage. Zoning the scan in as best she could with the limited range on the portable, she noted the difference in the energy signature being given off. A different brand of machine, maybe? Plucking up what remained of her courage, she took the next narrow side alcove which led into the next major tunnel and again consulted the scanner. Now this bogey was coming almost straight for her. But without a rock wall and a ton of metallic debris in the way the scanner was now telling her something else- something that made her heart skip a beat. Bio signs. Yep, all there. Thermals, bio-energy signatures, kinetic activity, the works. But of who- or what? Surely, surely it couldn't be humans. After all this time? How had any survived in this freakish Hades?

'Organic,' she muttered to herself. 'That's good enough for me.'

And with that, she deactivated her scattering beacon. After a moment's more thought, she recalibrated it to send out a small localised homing signal, which took less of her energy than the traditional arm waving or perhaps a hitchhiker's thumb. By now her bio-carrier was in sight; it was maybe a hundred metres long, covered in energy pads which apparently made it some kind of hovercraft, and identified by a cackle of bluish energy that made the walls vibrate just before and after its passage. As it drew closer she could have sworn she saw a transparent cockpit and even a figure moving about in it. A humanoid figure.

Abandoning all propriety, she lifted her arms and waved them in the air, shouting. 'Hey! Hey you!'

Incredibly, the ship- as she decided to identify it- slowed down. Even more incredibly, just before her it started to lower down to the ground, landing feet extended and then the thing settled to the uneven floor with a creak and groan of mild protest. A ramp came down and two figures descended, both carrying flashlights and some kind of heavy firearm. But, and Dena felt tears of relief spring to her eyes at the realisation, they were beyond all shadow of a doubt human figures. Both were men; one stocky and chocolate skinned, the other lean and pale with a shock of jet black hair. The flashlights shone in her eyes and she battled with the overwhelming sensation of joy at knowing she was not the only living thing on the Maker forsaken planet to keep her thoughts coherent. It had been well over a millennia. Would they even know what she was saying to them?

Raising her hands and hoping that so-called universal sign hadn't been lost in the mists of time, she came slowly towards them, trying not to squint in the glare. The guns dropped slightly from a firing position but remained cautiously raised.

'Holy shit,' the pale-skinned man muttered, quite distinctly.

'He- hello?' she tried. 'Do you understand what I'm saying?'

'What the-' he began again, but was cut off by the other man, whom Dena guessed was senior in some way. He looked older, and carried himself like one who bore responsibility, or even a command.

'We understand you. Do you understand us?'

'Yes, yes I do.' Chancing another step, she took a deep breath. 'I'm Captain Dena Reese of the haulier supership Gormenghast. I crashed here- well, on the surface actually- and I came down here to try and avoid those- those squid machine things.' That sounded inadequate, but she couldn't think what else to say. 'I don't plan to attack you, you know.'

The guns dropped completely, but neither man offered an apology. The dark skinned one gestured up the ramp.

'Come. Quickly. This is not a secure spot to set down for long.'

Interpreting that as an invitation to follow them back inside, Dena quickly took it. Inside was brightly lit although not much prettier than the exterior. Exposed pipes, circuitry and exhaust conduits abounded, and she kept a careful eye on her feet to avoid an untimely trip over some piece of hardware.

'Tell Link to get us moving,' the dark-skinned man said. His companion nodded and walked past Dena to a ladder, stowing gun and flashlight in a locker beside it. He gave her one last look of sheer intrigue before starting for the upper deck, so she returned her attention to the other man as he replaced his own light and weapon in another locker. His clothing was rough; apparently homespun from something or other, yet it looked like it had been a hand-me-down for the past five or six generations. His head was completely hairless and smooth as a boiled egg, yet once again she felt an unmistakeable air of authority about him as well as complete ease in his current surroundings. It was an impression she recognised as sometimes giving out herself, and drew a not inaccurate conclusion as a result.

'This your ship?'

He nodded neutrally.

'The Nebuchadnezzar. My name is Morpheus.'

Before he could get any further, she threw him a crisp Fleet salute, which prompted a rather shocked look.

'Then I formally request permission to come aboard, Captain Morpheus.'

The shock faded and a hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

'Permission granted…captain.' He motioned to the ladder and she obediently began to climb, hearing him not a few rungs behind her. 'I have never heard of any ship called the Gormenghast. And certainly not a…haulier supership, as you labelled her.'

At the top of the ladder Dena turned in the direction he indicated, pausing only to take note of the name plate engraved on a bulkhead. Nebuchadnezzar, United States, 2069. By golly but she was ancient.

'That doesn't surprise me,' she said. 'You know we thought this entire planet was a graveyard. Are there many more of you?'

When she glanced back he had halted mid-stride and was staring at her with mixed wariness and disbelief on his face. Cursing inwardly, she dropped her eyes in apology.

'Sorry. Too fast. But this is complicated, and it could take a while.'

He impressed her by keeping his voice remarkably level and mild in tone.

'By many I assume you are referring to the human population of the Earth. In that case I would estimate it to be in the billions, perhaps more.'

'Billions?' Now it was her turn to gawk in shock. 'How in hell does a population of billions just disappear into the woodwork with nary a soul in sight on the surface?'

'That is also complicated.' His dark eyes bored into her but she looked right back at him. His gaze abruptly flicked over her shoulder and he spoke again, in a firmer tone. 'Trinity, I need you to run a test for VDTs on this woman.' To Dena he added, 'Your pack?'

'If you don't mind, I'd rather hang onto it,' she said, testing the water. He hesitated for a moment, than gave a small nod. She returned it and then turned to find a skinny young woman with very obvious collarbones and a hawklike stare regarding her.

'Well, lead the way.'