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: Heheh, you know we couldn't get rid of her that easily, right? Prepare to go OHMYGOODNESS-

Part 29- A Fair Exchange

'MARK!'

The sudden lack of mass on the Riot was a tangible thing as Dena swerved her violently into a vertical climb towards the black cloud layer above them. At the last second she spun to port and directed the ship straight along underneath the clouds, pushing the throttle to maximum. The gs pushed her back violently into her chair, compensators not withstanding, but by the time the flash of blinding white light went off to the rear they were well out of range of it.

'Lu, you still with me?'

'Live and kicking, Captain. Woo-hoo! That showed those bastards who rules this solar system!'

'That it did,' Dena agreed with considerably less feeling, trying not to think about how many human lives they'd just wiped out. Billions, Morpheus had said, billions in the power plants, plugged into the Matrix, stuck in a dream world, enslaved without knowing it…

She hadn't liked that part. One didn't often get express orders from HQ, especially if one was the captain of a mere fighter squadron, but when she did…her mind drifted back unconsciously to the sealed datacard handed to her by an unknowing Captain Estalla just before the drop from the Voltaire. It had been keyed to her thumbprint and DNA scan. It had wiped itself clean after she'd read it exactly three times. After evacuation of last Terran city, machine power source is to be destroyed. That was it. Period.

The order was signed by the highest ranking officer in the Coalition, Fleet Admiral Peter Greys. Straight from HQ and the Congress. Never mind the humans plugged in. Never mind the homicide she'd just committed. It didn't make her feel any better, the hour or so they'd spent weaving in and out of the gargantuan towers, trying to lose enough of their pursuit that they could slow enough to drop the damn nuke, seeing the fluid-filled pods with their captive occupants. Was that really living? Had she, in fact, killed those people or done them a favour? Shaking her head to try in vain to clear it, Dena plotted a course straight up, off the Earth and away from the machines, back towards the Gormenghast.

Towards home.

Her debriefing, unsurprisingly, was conducted privately in Commander Pryce's officer without so much as a recording yeoman present.

'The Congress and the Admiralty believe that without a power source as abundant as the human animal the machines will be stranded and may very likely in fact die out, if that's the word, given enough time,' Pryce was saying matter-of-factly. 'Certainly they no longer have the resources to leave Terra, even if they do continue to survive after a fashion using nuclear fission or some other means of providing power for themselves. That one nuke, Captain, from what data we can gather, wiped out ninety percent of their entire army of sentinels, the power plant, the so-called 'growing fields', and also rendered a quite substantial tract of land highly radioactive, which admittedly doesn't affect the machines all that much directly but it will certainly prevent all possibility of them salvaging any of the organic material from the blast zone. If any survived, which I very much doubt. Fifty megatons is, after all, fifty megatons.'

'Yes, Commander.'

'Captain-' he stopped and sighed. 'Sit down, Dena.' When she did so he went to the dispenser and brought back two cups of strong black coffee, handing her one and taking a sip from the other.

'Sir?'

'Dena, drop that for a moment, will you? That last part may have been classified but as far as the record is concerned you walked out of here after I said the word megatons. Understood?'

She nodded, taking a mouthful of the coffee and swallowing with a light sigh.

'Now when we cruise back to Phobos to finish loading up for Capella, which will probably take a week at least, we'll have access to their high-grade neurology unit as well as Psi HQ. They, needless to say, know about the whole thing but are acting with their usual discretion by being totally close-mouthed about it.'

'Naturally.'

'Dena, will you stop giving me that implacable look and think? Davis had no idea what was in that power plant but you did. You gave that order- you as good as pushed that button. And that's a lot of blood to carry around on your hands.'

'You're telling me, Wesley?' she snapped, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

'What I'm trying to tell you is that Psi neurology have already agreed to…assist the officer who carried out the power plant operation on Earth. They can't take the memory out, Dena, but they can dampen it to just a blur and give you an overlay story for people who ask about those eighty-three minutes. That'll at least be enough to prevent you blasting yourself out of the nearest airlock up on fighter deck.' He reached across the table and lightly touched her hand where it was curled so tightly around the cup that he knuckles were white. 'The procedure isn't compulsory, Dena. But I strongly recommend you take it. And whether you do or you don't, think how many trillions upon trillions in the colonies would have suffered or perished if those machines, having discovered there was something up here worth having, decided to go orbital and beyond. Billions for trillions, Dena. One for ten. At least in numbers, that sounds like a fair exchange to me.'

Draining her cup although the taste was suddenly sour in her mouth, Dena rose, a trifle shakily.

'Tell them to expect me, Commander.'

'I'll have Alyss call ahead, and not on the com.' He stood and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. 'Now go and get some rest, Captain Reese. You've earned it.

The temptation offered by a bath was almost impossible to resist, but as the last stimulant tablet began to wear off and the adrenalin that had powered her for the last nineteen hours since the last rest shift faded, Dena instead settled for a quick shower in almost scalding hot water after gulping down a liquid formula meal. All her limbs ached, her head was pounding in a rhythm strangely not unlike that of the Riot's gun cannons firing on all barrels and her eyelids seemed to weigh somewhere around fifty kilos each, judging by the effort it was taking to hold them open. Pulling a vest and some loose-fitting trousers onto her weary body, she left the bathroom but stopped halfway across the main room in her quarters to do a double-take.

'Sparks? What in the name of the Omega Nebula- and how did you get in here, anyway?'

'Maloney,' he said quietly. 'Did something to the lock.'

'ETK,' Dena muttered. 'That son of a bitch.' She ran her hands through her hair before summoning the energy to lift her chin and actually look at her impromptu visitor.

'I thought you were dead,' he said in half a whisper.

'Huh?'

'They said- they said they'd lost your ship. That it was down.'

'We ended up dodging sentinels around the power plant,' she said, which after all was technically true. 'There's a hell of an energy signature around there. Must've masked us from the scanners.'

'I- I just-' He stopped and threw up his arms in frustration. 'Dena, I thought you were dead! Doesn't that mean anything to you? For the better part of two hours I've just been sitting in my room staring at the wall because as far as I was concerned you were gone- and- and-'

She felt a smile begin to edge its way onto her face despite her exhaustion and walked forwards to take hold of his hands, lacing her fingers through his. He felt warmer than she'd ever known him to before, what with the temperature maintenance systems in Zion having been a lower priority for power consumption than most others.

'But I'm not dead, Sparks. I'm right here.' Tilting her head back to look up at him, she brought his hands to settle on her waist and lifted hers to his face. 'I told you I wasn't going to die down there. Before we launched the Logos. D'you remember?'

He nodded, then shook his head ruefully.

'All I could think about was the last thing I said to you. Some shit about going down in a blaze of glory…it was so stupid. I just- I wish I'd said something else. Something that meant something.' Pulling her closer, he wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin lightly on the top of her head. 'I should've wished you good luck, or thanked you for showing me the sky, or- or told you how much I love you. Anything but what I did say.'

'Well you've said it now,' she murmured. 'So it's okay.'

'No, it's not okay, I mean-' he stopped and peered down at her as she yawned, then raised his eyebrows. 'Am I boring you?'

'No- no, I just- I've been piloting a Makauly fighter around sentinels for the past nineteen hours and I-I-' she tried unsuccessfully to stifle another yawn '-I'm bit beat.'

'Nineteen- holy shit. No wonder you're dead on your feet.' Before she could protest he had swung her up and carried her bodily into the far room, depositing her without ceremony on the bed. She felt like laughing but the energy deserted her and the best she could do was a vaguely insane-sounding chuckle as he pulled off his boots before stretching out beside her. He was good to lay against, she had to admit, and definitely a lot warmer than she remembered him being. Or was it just that she'd become accustomed to the way everything was colder in Zion and now she had to readjust to normal temperatures? Either way, she was more than happy to bury herself in his embrace as he leaned over her to examine the touchpanel on the wall.

'That one, right?' The lights went out. 'All right, that one. Hurray my memory.' Laying his head back down on the pillow beside hers, he sighed. 'At least you get a window. All we've got downstairs are those plasma screens.'

'Rank has its privileges,' she mumbled, finally letting her eyes slide closed and welcome oblivion take her.