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: Again, totally useless made-up technical jargon. My apologies to those of you with flight qualifications.

Part 17- Hit it!

The dock looked the same as it always had, but then after fourteen days any minor damage the sentinels had caused would have long been repaired. The Logos still stood on her props on the same pad, but now without the cluster of technicians and flight mechanics constantly checking and rechecking her systems and hull integrity. Dena could see she hadn't been touched at all, in fact, and so she was ready. As ready as she'd ever be, in fact.

'Dena! Dena!' She glanced back in time to see Sparks racing down the walkway towards her. 'My god, you're awake, you're- what the hell are you doing?' He skidded to a halt as she climbed into the cockpit and slammed the chrono up where the ignition charged had once been, then climbed back down and went to the uplink station, recalling the finalised flight program and slamming the download control. The timer read for six minutes. Then she strode across and flipped the heavy power transfer switch, studying the readout before turning back to him.

'Sparks, you've got exactly seven minutes to find Niobe and Ghost and get them up here ready to fly.'

'What?' He grabbed her wrist to prevent her checking a display. 'Dena, that's crazy! The window's gone, it's finished. Don't think I'm sorry, I am, but that's it. We're done.'

'No we're not.' She pointed at the chrono where it sat ticking in the cockpit. 'We've got just over nine hours to get out of the tunnels and in the air. I've got an appointment with that Prospector mission, Sparks, and I'm damned if I'm missing it now.'

'Dena-' he began, but she whirled and grabbed his wrist instead when he let go of hers.

'I am not going to die down here.'

'You're serious,' he said quietly.

'You bet I'm damned serious.' She let go of him. 'We're going to need a crew if we're going orbital in this heap.'

He stared at her for a long moment. Then, amazingly, he gave a single sharp nod and jogged towards the control tower. Dena took a deep breath and returned her attention to the gauges. Air tanks were at maximum capacity. Final software download was complete and the storage cells were at forty percent charge and rising steadily with nary a glitch in sight. When she next looked around she found Mifune standing there with an amazed looking tech crew hovering behind him.

'I hear you're preparing to launch, Captain Reese.'

'That I am, Captain Mifune.'

He nodded and then glanced back to see Niobe and Ghost racing along the walkway, joined by Sparks at a cross section from the control tower.

'And there's your crew.' He levelled his gaze at her again. 'I hope you make it.'

'So do I, sir.' She turned away to look at Niobe as the trio arrived on the pad. 'Ready?'

'As ready as I'll ever be,' she replied with quiet determination. Dena jerked her head at the cockpit and the other captain nodded, jogging towards it and climbing up the ladder to find her chair, followed by the two men.

'Good luck,' Mifune added, reaching out to give Dena's shoulder a squeeze. His voice dropped. 'Find me those green lands, Captain.'

She responded by gripping his shoulder tightly, then stepped back and threw him a smart salute. To her surprise he returned it and then glanced back at the still-hovering technicians, his tone shifting to a commanding bark as she made her way to the cockpit.

'What the shit are you waiting for, you idiots? Get that cockpit sealed or this ship ain't going anywhere, let alone into orbit!'

'If I didn't know better I'd say he thought we were going to make it,' Niobe said, pulling off her overtunic to reveal a thinner vest underneath and then fastening the seat straps across herself. She glanced at Dena. 'How long do we have?'

Dena reached up and plucked the chrono from the ceiling, replacing it on the dashboard instead.

'Nine hours, three minutes as of now. How fast can you get us to the surface?'

'Fast enough.' When she was given a wary look Niobe gave a surprisingly confident grin. 'I'll handle the tunnels, Dena. You just worry about getting us off this rock afterwards.'

'Agreed.' Dena held out a hand, palm up. Niobe regarded it for a moment and then slapped her own palm on top. They gripped hands for a moment and then let go to put on the headsets as the tech crew moved away from sealing the cockpit to let them launch.

'Zion Control, this is the Logos requesting immediate clearance for takeoff through Gate Three,' Niobe said once they were gone. The reply filtered through, the steady voice of a dock operator.

'Logos, this is Zion Control. Gate three now opening, please stand by.'

'Come on, come on,' Dena muttered, painfully aware that every precious second that ticked away put the Prospector IV further and further out of scanning range. Finally the voice appeared again, but it was not the voice of the operator. It was Lock.

'Logos you are cleared for takeoff through Gate Three. Good luck.'

'Acknowledged, Control. Logos out.' Niobe gave Dena a tight smile and then reached for the controls. The deck beneath them started up a steady thrumming noise as the power cells came online.

'Atmospheric thrusters at full power,' Sparks intoned. 'Good to go, Captain.'

'All right baby, let's go,' Niobe muttered, more to the Logos than to him. With a surge of speed the little ship seemed to spring from the pad and hurtle towards the beckoning gloom of the tunnels. 'Holy shit, but she's full of beans.'

'Welcome to the year 3422, Captain,' Dena replied calmly as the slit of light from the gates of Zion receded gradually on the rear monitors until it became a distant speck and then vanished altogether.

'I hadn't really appreciate just how far down Zion is,' Ghost remarked some time later. 'You hear the numbers in kilometres and it doesn't mean anything until you try drawing a straight line from the dock to the surface.'

'We should be out in a couple more minutes,' Niobe said. 'How long on the clock, Dena?'

'Five hours and twenty-three minutes,' Dena replied, inwardly wincing. 'How're the engines holding, Sparks?'

'Looking great, actually. Heat dissipation normal, power flow at full strength, the works. But we're generating one hell of a hot signal. Once we get to the surface and stop all this acrobatic stuff every sentinel on the planet's going to be swarming our way.'

'Don't worry,' Dena told him. 'Once we get to the surface we fire up the launch engines and there isn't a junk bucket on this planet that'll be able to catch us then.'

'Let's hope you're right, since we don't have any guns any more,' Ghost said, then sat up. 'Temperature's dropping. Surface readings coming up on scope. We're almost there.'

Dena took a breath and needlessly checked her seat straps.

'All right, Sparks, start warming up the launch engines. Let's get her nice and souped up before we start hitting any accelerator coils.'

'Blue on that.' His casual use of the Zion equivalent to affirmative made her smile despite herself. 'Okay, main power feed is online. Looking good, except for the aforementioned squiddy magnetism.'

'I told you, don't worry about it.' Dena felt the Logos shudder slightly as Niobe throttled back, adjusting their course slightly to take the ship almost vertically upwards between two towering metal walls in some ancient artificial canyon. Then they were clear and the bleak, featureless grey landscape stretched away in every direction as far as Dena cared to look.

'Scope?' she asked.

'Clear for now,' Ghost said.

'Good. Sparks?'

'Everything's hot and ready for action. Power flow at one hundred percent, coolant pressure steady, coil integrity normal.' He exhaled. 'We're ready to go.'

'Transferring primary navigation control to your station,' Niobe intoned, having halted the ship to hover some three hundred metres above the surface. She looked at Dena and gave a small, almost sad smile. 'Okay Captain, she's all yours.'

Dena smiled back as reassuringly as she could and settled her hands on the controls just as an alert went off.

'We've got company,' Ghost barked.

'Shit,' Niobe muttered. 'How many?'

'Fift- no- my god. There are hundreds of them.'

'With the field we're generating I'm not damn surprised,' Sparks said. 'Can we outrun them?'

'We're just about to,' Dena said firmly, programming in the exit trajectory to point the nose of the Logos skywards, filling the windshield with a view of the black, crackling clouds.

'That's one steep angle,' Niobe remarked, and Dena caught an edge of nervousness in her tone.

'This time, Niobe, what goes up is definitely not coming down. Sparks?'

'Yeah?'

'Hit it!'

He punched the controls for the primary engine feed and she shoved the accelerator forwards, feeling the Gs push her back hard into the scantly-padded seat. The clouds came rocketing towards them at incredible speeds and she had to grin to herself- exit velocity never seemed so damned fast before.

'Speed?' she barked.

'Eight hundred kph and rising!' Sparks yelled back over the roar of the engines as the power feed reached its peak. Dena gave a whoop of delight as the cloud layer engulfed them, causing the Logos to start shuddering and shaking like a mad dog.

'Structural integrity down to ninety percent!' she heard Ghost shout, followed by Niobe's dim mutter.

'Come on baby, don't let me down now.'

'Eighty percent!' Ghost shouted again.

Then the billows of black fog gave way and they all squinted as the cockpit was assaulted by a blaze of sunlight and the glare of bright blue sky dotted with wisps of whiter cloud. Dena gripped the controls to keep the Logos on course and tried in vain to ignore the astonished gasps of her companions. Then it occurred to her that none of them- especially Sparks, who hadn't even beheld a mockery of it inside the Matrix- had ever seen blue sky or sunlight before.

'My god,' Niobe whispered in awe. 'It's so beautiful…'

'It's about to get a whole lot bigger,' Dena told her. However at that moment the howl of the engines died abruptly and she could feel their momentum slowing. 'What the-'

'Full engine stall in progress,' Ghost announced, unflappable as always.

'Con- confirmed,' Niobe managed. 'Overtax on the fourth converter valve.'

'Power cut-off in progress,' Sparks said in a remarkably calm voice before anyone could give the order. 'Flow down to fifteen percent…six percent…flow off.'

There was a second of terrifying silence while Dena felt the Logos slowing more and more…

'Temperature down to neutral,' Ghost said at last.

'Power on,' Sparks responded immediately. 'Forty percent…fifty…eighty…power flow at one hundred percent.'

'Hit it!' Dena yelled.

Niobe reached up and punched the igniter just as they started to go nose down into a fall back towards the sooty blanket below. Blessedly the engines snarled to life again and Dena hauled the Logos back up almost to a full ninety degrees. This time the gallant little ship didn't falter, pushing on further and further until the blue sky began to darken and then gave way entirely to a field of infinite ebony dotted with stars. Dena didn't pause, firing the manoeuvring thrusters in sequence until the Logos had settled into orbit with the starfield on the port side, darkened by the looming hulk of the Moon, and the grey, mist-shrouded planet to starboard. Then she tapped up the appropriate set of controls on her main screen and brought the jury-rigged environmental systems online, bleeding the heat from the engines into the cockpit and activating the air flow from the storage tanks. Only once that was done did she dare to look at Niobe. The other woman's face was radiant, her eyes shining in wonder at the panorama before her. A glance back revealed Sparks and Ghost to be in a similar state and brought a sad, bitter smile to Dena's face. How she cursed those long-dead so-called leaders of humanity who'd scorched their sky and left such a legacy for their descendents. Damn them, for eternity!

'Welcome to the sky, Captain,' she said softly. Niobe tore her eyes away from the stars and smiled at her- a real smile of pure happiness that almost brought tears to Dena's eyes.

'My god,' she whispered. 'Even if I die now I think I've lived just long enough. To see this…'

'Don't write yourself off just yet, Niobe,' Dena forced herself to say. 'You got a garden to grow, remember? And now's the hard part. Ghost, can you give me the estimate on air yet?'

She heard him stir and tap his screen.

'Consumption gives approximately four hours remaining.'

'Okay.' She settled back. 'Nobody undo their straps. You guys haven't had any zero-g training and the last thing I need you doing is spinning round the place and hurling your guts out.'

'Feels weird,' Niobe agreed. 'Like I left half my stomach back on Earth.'

'Back on Earth…' Dena heard Sparks echo softly, and glanced back at him. His gaze briefly flicked to meet hers and she caught the merest hint of an elated smile on his lips before he returned his attention to the vista that surrounded them.

'The planet doesn't look like it did in the Matrix,' Ghost observed.

'No it doesn't,' Niobe agreed. 'I remember it being…bluer. Less dead looking.' She shook her head and turned grim again. 'It's like a goddamned burnt out cinder.'

'You wait until you see Mars,' Dena assured her. 'That's anything but burnt-out.'

'I look forward to it.' The smile returned.

'What do we do now?' Sparks asked.

'Now we wait.' Dena closed her eyes, saying a silent prayer to whatever higher powers were listening that after coming this far their work would not be in vain.

'Wait?' he echoed.

'Wait,' Niobe confirmed. Her voice turned wistful. 'And hope.'