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: Yay! The big entrance! I know I said Lock was fun to write, but if he's fun then Sparks is just damn right cool to write…

Part 6- Ship Spotting

The next day Dena received a flying visit from Link on his way to the dock, wishing her luck as the Neb was about to leave. Then he told her where Zee lived.

'Her and Cas- I told you about Cas, right?- they told me to say any time you're feeling lonely, just you hop on down there. Invite to dinner, whatever. And believe me, you don't want to pass up one of Zee's stews!' He grinned at her. 'Don't forget it, all right?'

'Thanks, Link. I appreciate it.'

'Hey, no problem. See you round, next time we're in dock, okay?'

'Be careful out there.'

'Be careful in here!' With a final grin and a wave, he was gone. Since she'd been given her freedom of movement back (and told she was to consider herself attached directly to Commander Lock's staff, whatever the heck that meant in real terms) she went up to the dock. Gossip apparently spread like wildfire in Zion, although living in one another's pockets as everyone was that was understandable, and more than one of the deck crews waved at her like she was an old friend. Wandering up to the nearest parked hovercraft, she walked underneath to examine the repulsor-pads more closely.

'Whoa, careful there- oh, it's you.' Turning, she found a leaner and younger version of Morpheus looking at her. After a moment she realised they weren't related, but the similarly shaved head threw her for a moment. 'Picked out this old girl for number one on the flight improvement list, huh?'

'Actually I was just getting a closer look at the pads,' she replied. 'Mister…?'

'Thadeus. Captain of the Osiris.' He extended a hand and she shook. 'One of the best in the fleet. She'll stand up to any amount of tinkering.'

'Since she's your ship I'll take that with a pinch of salt,' Dena said dryly. He threw his head back and laughed outright at her.

'Oh, you're genuine all right. Spoken like a true fellow captain! Mind you, if you want to look at her on paper I imagine you can get hold of the prints no problem, the way Deadbolt's got everyone hopping around those doodads of yours.'

'I'll bear it in mind.'

'So they different where you're from?' he asked, accompanying her as she continued to traverse the underside of the Osiris' hull.

'Very different. Say, what's the top speed you get on these hoverships?'

'Depends on the ship. They got characters all their own.' He reached up and gave the nearest panel an affectionate slap. 'Best I got out of this baby is something like three hundred kph. Zero to that in ooh…about fifteen seconds or so.'

'Not bad,' she admitted grudgingly. 'For a surface craft.'

'Well what's your maximum then?' he asked, bristling slightly.

'FTL,' she replied blithely.

'What's FTL?'

'Faster Than Light. An indeterminate speed qualified as anything over three hundred thousand kilometres per second, by which stage you're into folding space and dimensional boundary crossings. Fleet ships equipped with FTL drives are used to make the journey between solar systems. Plot the course right and you can get from Jupiter to Proximita Centuri in about fifty seconds. Same time for Jupiter to Betelgeuse, or any other star you care to name. Plot the course wrong and you'll probably end up crushed to a micron of your original mass when you stumble into a black hole.' Ceasing her idle examination of the pad above her head, she glanced at him.

'You're shitting me!'

'I shit you not, Captain.'

'Holy shit,' he said, shaking his head in disbelief. 'Well, I'll see you round. I'm going to go feel inadequate in some corner somewhere.'

She laughed but cut herself off when another ship caught her eye.

'You all right?' he asked her, sobering abruptly. 'You look like someone just walked over your grave.'

'That ship there-' she jerked her head to indicate '-whose ship is that?'

'That one? That's the Logos, Niobe's ship. Smallest in the fleet, since you ask. She'll tell you it's the fastest but we still all reckon she puts it through a dishwasher when it needs cleaning.'

'It's the perfect size,' Dena murmured. Thadeus looked at her.

'You prefer small? You know, you women just confuse me sometimes-'

'That's not what I mean.' Forgetting him, she hurried across the bay to look at the other ship. It was half, even a quarter of the size of every other ship in the dock, compact and tidy, suspensor-pads close to the hull, more streamlined in appearance. But it was the size that attracted her and made a plan leap into her mind. If she could just get a proper look inside, see the engine space, perhaps get hold of the specs and the blueprints…without thinking she strode right up, ducked underneath and ran her hands along the underside to feel the bulkhead integrity. Pretty good. She'd need a sonic reading, but she could modify her pocket scanner to handle that easily enough, and if she could find a way to manufacture some version of the hull sealant used on the smallest hopper ships…

'Hey! You under there with the itchy palms!'

She whirled to find blue-eyes from the Council room glaring at her with barely concealed fury. It faded to mild irritation when he caught sight of her face.

'Oh, it's you. What in hell are you doing under here?'

Since she didn't want to remain in a stoop to talk to him she came out, although it didn't make much of a difference as he topped her by a full head. He had his sleeves rolled up and from the lack of plugs anywhere she supposed he was one of the freeborn- a 'child of Zion' as Link had put it. Now that she was beginning to acclimatise she could see that the freeborn tended to be stockier and generally bigger people than ex-pods, the occasional variances like Morpheus not withstanding.

'Just being nosy,' she said. 'She's the only one I've seen with the pads this close together.'

'Just the way she's built.' Then his eyes narrowed. 'Hey, don't you go planning any fiddling about with her. She's fine just as she is, you hear me?'

'You this overprotective of all the women you know?' she asked, amused by his defensive attitude, then jerked her head at the hatchway. 'Mind if I look inside?'

He glared at her for a moment and then relented.

'All right. But don't touch anything.'

'I'll restrain myself,' she said, now very amused, and followed him up the ramp. On the main deck, she took out her scanner and started logging readings, including sonics for hull integrity.

'Hey- what are you doing with that thing?' he demanded.

'Just sizing her up, that's all.' Dena couldn't stop a delighted smile at the readings she was getting. 'Damn but she's perfect. Almost made to measure.'

'To measure what, exactly?'

'Energy cells. Thrusters. And you know, I think if you ripped that assemblage there out you'd get some compressed air tanks in.' She ducked down behind a chair to examine a floor coupling.

'That assemblage happens to be my station,' he snapped. 'You know I might get in trouble for this, which really doesn't bother me, but I think I'm actually going to tell you to piss off.'

Kneeling up to look at him over the seat of the chair, Dena raised an eyebrow.

'I think I owe the place an apology. Up till now I thought the denizens of this city were friendly, helpful and polite people.' With an exaggerated shrug, she stood and continued scanning. 'Guess I was wrong.'

'Yeah well you're the one poking around my ship,' he said with a measured amount of scorn. 'And to answer your next question no, Niobe wouldn't like it either.'

'What's her top speed?' Dena asked him.

'Why the hell should I tell you that?'

'Well if you don't I'll just climb down into the engine room and start taking readings to work it out for myself,' she said amiably. He folded his arms and scowled.

'Five hundred kph flat out at full power with all pads running. We got five fifty out of her once but it blew half the power relays.'

'Five's pretty good. Any more like her?'

'Fastest in the fleet,' he confirmed, this time with a hint of pride. 'Best pilot, too.'

'Niobe?'

'Lost count of the number of times I lost my lunch the first few months. But you get used to it after a while. And once again I'm going to tell you to piss off, because believe it or not I actually have real work to do on the software systems right now.'

'What's her mass?'

'About five point two tonnes. Why do you want to know this shit anyway? You've got the look of a revolutionary engineer about you and I might have to physically throw you down that ramp in a second if you don't stop pissing me off.'

'Just a second…' but before she could finish her last sweep he strode across and snatched the scanner from her grasp. Her hand immediately shot out like lightning, closing around his wrist dead on a pressure point and eliciting a loud curse as he dropped the scanner. She deftly caught it with her other hand and then let go of him, whereupon he backed off and rubbed his wrist reproachfully.

'Fleet training does happen to include a full repertoire of unarmed combat skills such as physical pressure points,' she said mildly as the scan cycle finished, flipping the device closed and stowing it on her belt.

'Fine, if you put it like that.' He extended a hand towards the front of the ship with exaggerated courtesy. 'Pray continue to ogle the Logos like some common wheelbarrow.'

'Actually I'm done. Thanks for your help,' she added sarcastically, but received only a bored look laced with deepest irony in response. Just then the coding screens, with their endlessly falling columns of eerie green lettering, caught her eye and she nodded towards them. 'So that's what you do?'

'I'm the operator,' he confirmed.

'You can read that stuff?'

'Yeah.' His tone indicated that this wasn't a particularly remarkable ability and was accompanied by a shrug. She strode over and waved a hand at the displays.

'So what's going on? Anything special? A parade, perhaps? Fireworks?'

He gave her a completely unreadable look and then a resigned sigh, crossing to sit in the heavy chair set before the screens and jabbing one finger at code lines as he spoke.

'Okay…these slow falling lines are mainly scenery, fixed programs, stationary objects. Colour of the walls, type of flooring, textures and stuff. Displays all the relevant appearance algorithms for whatever area I'm currently looking at which is…an alleyway outside some club. Nothing special. The more rapid lines are mobile programs; birds, insects, some dog crapping on the sidewalk, and then these things whizzing about here are humans who're plugged in, along with high-level programs like- see that one there?' He tapped a command into the console and the screen refocused on a different line which didn't seem very extraordinary to Dena. 'That's an Agent. Did someone tell you about Agents?' She nodded. 'Well, that's the closest you or I are likely to come to one, thank hell. Bastards, they are. Now all this stuff on the far right is background programming- things like gravity, air resistance, centrifugal force, all the laws of physics and that shit. We got a light wind blowing here, some loose paper flying about, young couple with their tongues down each other's throats against a door, that dog- man, that's one sick dog-'

Unable to help herself, Dena started laughing. He stopped and stared at her.

'I really was serious about having stuff to do, you know.'

'Then I'll let you get on with it.' She clapped him on the shoulder and left, going straight back to her quarters and taking out her scratchpad to begin making some calculations. By the time her chrono, adjusted to Zion time, hit 1700, she was sure, and made straight for Commander Lock's office.