Chapter 26
Apate 3
Artemis
She wasn't feeling too happy as the airlock cycled around her, she understood everything that Gaige had said, but she didn't have to like it. Some part of her suspected that Gaige was simply pawning off the job that she didn't want so that she could go play with her robots. Why couldn't they have gone into the remodeling area together? She'd said something about not having a lot of time, but wouldn't two of them speed it up? Sure, she didn't know what she was doing, at least not compared to an actual expert like Gaige, but that didn't mean she couldn't help. Plus wasn't it a bad idea to split up if you were expecting the alarm to go off? Shouldn't you stick together to try and watch each other's back?
She didn't think that Gaige was trying to get rid of her, though the thought had crossed her mind, but even so, she couldn't help but think this was a bad idea and that she was getting the business end of the buzz-ax again.
But she had a job to do, and she'd do it as best she could, not to try and prove her use to Gaige so that she wouldn't leave, though that was part of it, but because she wanted to show Gaige she could do it, though that did lead her to an uncomfortable thought, if she did a good job on this, she'd get more tasks pawned off on her, forcing her to do things like this again, which she didn't want. But if she failed or screwed up, she'd disappoint Gaige, who wouldn't trust her as much in the future. And since neither one of the outcomes was good, she'd rather Gaige be pleased with her.
The door cycled open and her Oz bubble formed around her head, it's readings indicated that the air outside was mostly breathable, but that the Oz kit was still required to not asphyxiate, but that the kit's usage would be diminished since it could draw some of the oxygen from the surrounding environment.
Still, she didn't want to waste any time, so she headed out as soon as the door was clear, bouncing lightly in the reduced gravity. She hadn't really noticed, but the interior of the buildings and walkways had about twice as much gravity as outside. She'd still been able to move with a floaty motion, but it hadn't been that bad, but out here she was able to bounce along with almost no effort, though it was a bit strange feeling.
She quickly orientated herself and headed towards her goal. It wasn't hard, without the buildings and walkways in the way, she could pick out the building she needed, even from the distance. Her only real worry was that she might run out of oxygen before she got back inside. She'd need to keep an eye on her consumption on the way over to see about how much she needed to keep in reserve to make her way back if she couldn't get in.
The ground crunched lightly as she landed, sending out small puffs of dust. She bounced high up, not quite enough to clear one of the walkways, but it was still high enough that she could see around. The outer wall was high, comprised of both energy barriers and solid walls, with a few outposts intermingled. Some of the posts had walkways leading to them, but most of them must have been accessed by either traveling like she was or else there were underground tunnels. She wondered about that, there must have been something underground, some means of getting power to the different buildings. They might have some way to generate their own oxygen, most likely for emergencies, but the power systems that would be required for a complex like this would have to be massive. Not to mention that the oxygen scrubbers and such would have to be somewhere.
She supposed that they might be in one of the buildings that she hadn't seen yet, but she didn't think that felt right. She should've asked Gaige about it earlier, but now wasn't the time to bother her with such thoughts, after all, Artemis was only entertaining such things to distract her from the fact that she was only a twenty-year old or so Oz kit away from death, which didn't make very good traveling company, so she continued speculating about things.
She supposed there would be some kind of underground tubing, she could see some of the pipes and such emerging from the ground around some of the buildings, but that didn't mean they were all connected, just that it was likely. She wasn't an expert on any of this stuff, so all she could do was guess the best she could with what limited knowledge she had.
Bouncing around one of the buildings that was between her and her goal, she looked at the exterior, trying to figure out if she could even climb one of them, but thankfully, she saw that the pipes that were crawling up its side would be climbable, provided of course that they weren't superheated or electrified, but that wasn't something she could do anything about, so she decided not to worry on it needlessly.
It wasn't like she didn't have enough stuff to worry about already. Besides such immediate concerns like running out of air and whether she could actually get in or not and even if she did, whether she could get through the computer, she had her usual long running worries, like what kind of bad luck she'd inflict on Gaige, what she was going to do with her life, what Gaige would want from her.
But for right now, she was trying to push those worries aside and focus on the task at hand, so she went back to wondering about the layout of the place, since if, or rather, when something went wrong, she'd be as prepared as she could be for it.
It wasn't like she could formulate escape plans or anything like that, she didn't have the knowledge of the area, nor the skill at making those kinds of plans to do something like that, but that didn't mean she should just wing it. That had worked fine for most of her life, but she wasn't sure that she could keep going like that for much longer. Plus, even when she was winging it, she found that the more information she had on her surroundings, the intelligence of the creature she was hunting, even something as small as somethings like the way it smelled, could have a major impact on how well she was able to come up with something on the fly. But here, in this place, she had nothing. No information on her surroundings and environment. No idea of how intelligent her opponents would be, she couldn't use any of her previous encounters as a baseline, the bots here would've been reprogrammed, which meant that they might have been upgraded with a more combat intelligent A.I., so she couldn't even calculate how they'd act.
So, she resigned herself to picking up anything she could, even if it was just speculating on the underground facilities that the place may or may not have.
As she mulled these things, the management office came into view.
The building was more imposing on this side of the glass, looming over her with a sense of weighty purpose, which she figured must have been designed into it. It wasn't all that tall of a building, not compared to some of the ones towering off to the side, but it seemed to be better built, like most of the aesthetic care of the compound had been placed into it, though she couldn't put her finger on why.
She supposed Gaige could've instantly identified what she was trying to figure out, she was good with those kinds of things. Well, she figured she shouldn't stop there, the list of things Gaige was good at that she wasn't was longer than she was tall, not that that was saying much.
Once again, she felt down, Gaige should've been the one doing this, but like she'd said, she was the only one that could handle the bots, which meant that it fell onto Artemis's inept shoulders to see this through. She couldn't help but feel that things would've been much smoother if there'd been two Gaige's instead of having her tag along, but she knew that there was no way for that to happen, so she was the best Gaige had at the moment.
Suppressing another sigh, she continued towards the building, examining it as she went. From her side, it seemed impenetrable. The wall was smooth, with only the minimal pipes running up its side, arranged in a more geometric pattern, compared to the more organic looking ones on the rest of the buildings. Other than that, there was nothing of note. At the far end, away from the walkway, she could see what seemed like shelves sticking out ever so slightly and as she continued towards the building, trying to angle herself to go around, she realized they were windows, the first she'd seen since they'd got to the base.
It wasn't that she didn't think there were any others, she knew that there must be, for security reasons if for no other, but these were different, they were there for pure narcissistic reasons, a statement to all the other workers that the boss was better than you, they got to waste a bunch of resources to have a window installed in their office so they could look out over the moon.
Looking at them closer as she went past, she could see the emergency shutters that would slam into place should anything breach one of them, which made sense, but cut that approach off, not that she'd given it any serious thought. Still, it was a nice fantasy, to smash the glass all over the fancy room, but like so many other things like that, she would never really do it, so she tucked it away and kept going.
The final side of the building came into view and looked remarkably similar to the side she'd first approached, with the same pipe work crawling up the side. The main difference was the single door set into the side of the building, an emergency airlock, she guessed.
She approached it cautiously, wary of any alarms that might be attached to it. She examined the control panel for a few seconds and checked her air. She'd gone through about a third of it or more so far, meaning she'd have to head back before too long, but she had enough time to try at least a few ways in before then, so she nervously reached out and pressed the button.
An instant later the screen turned red and an error sound chimed. It seemed to be locked, but it also seemed that she hadn't set off any alarms by touching it.
Letting out a sigh, she looked at the pipes. If she worked at it, she could climb them all the way to the roof, which she supposed she'd have to do cause it was either that or she'd have to try and bypass the door.
Hopping over to the pipe, she reached out and tapped it with her left hand, making sure that it wasn't scorching hot, freezing, electrified or dangerous in any other way. When nothing happened, she nodded and backed away a number of paces.
Once she was in position, she dashed forward as best she could in the lowered gravity and jumped as high as she could, catching the pipes near the middle of the second floor. She was surprised with how much height she'd managed to get, but still had a ways to go, so she started pulling herself up as fast as she could.
It didn't really take all that long to scale the outside of the building, the lowered gravity making each pull so much easier that she felt she could've climbed the outside of the factory without having to rest, but thankfully, she didn't have to do that. Instead, she lightly hopped over the edge of the building and found herself standing on the roof.
After a quick once over to make sure there weren't any armed turrets or other security measures waiting for her, she got to work searching for any way in.
Her first scan turned up nothing. There were a few machines sitting on the roof, but she could clearly see that the pipes and tubes running from them to the inside of the building were as big as her wrist, at best, so there was no way she'd fit through them.
Eventually on her second pass she found a hatch.
Crouching down next to it, she did a basic examination of it to determine the feasibility of opening it, and found to her dismay that it was even worse than the airlock door.
It didn't have any handles on the outside to start with, which meant that it wasn't designed to be opened from here, it was likely only accessible from the inside. That was backed up by the fact that there wasn't any kind of control panel around it, even though she did a thorough check, even going so far as to check the machinery for a hidden panel, but she still turned up nothing.
Going back, she checked the hatch one last time and determined that if she wanted in this way, she'd either need someone on the inside to open it, or some industrial strength cutting tools and since she had neither, she gave up on it.
Checking her air, she saw that she'd need to start heading back in another minute or two, so if she was going to try anything, she'd have to be quick, so she stepped to the edge and hopped off, letting the lowered gravity do the work for her.
Landing in a puff of dust, she turned to the airlock and pulled out her ECHO. She knew that it was dangerous to contact Gaige right then, she had no way of knowing what kind of situation the other girl was in, but if she was going to do this, she'd at least need to give her a heads up, if not try and extract another option from her. Without time to spare, she keyed in the call.
"What?" Came the curt answer after a few moments of buzzing.
"You got a moment?"
"I guess." Came the reply, sounding a bit off, but Artemis just chalked it up to Gaige being caught in the middle of working and her being leery of why Artemis had chosen to call her at all.
"Good, cause I need a bit of advice."
"Ulp." Came the strange sound from the other end of the line.
"Uh, see, I don't have a lot of time here, so I'm gonna get right into it, if you don't have any reason I shouldn't." She paused for a second, then continued "See, I got to the building, but the airlock is closed, no surprise there, so that means I can't exactly get in that way without hacking it or something, so I went to the roof, but the hatch up there doesn't have any controls, at least not external ones, so I came back down and was wondering if you had a better idea then hacking the controls to the airlock and if not to warn you that I was about to do that."
There was silence from the other end of the line, but Artemis didn't worry, she knew that Gaige would be thinking about what to do, so she waited.
After a bit, Gaige came back "Right, so if you don't think you can get through the roof access, then you're gonna have to try the airlock. Get ready, I'll walk you through this."
Artemis followed Gaige's instructions and soon enough the light on the panel turned green. They both held their breath, waiting for the alarm to start blaring, but after a number of nerve-wracking moments, nothing happened except the airlock cycled open, allowing Artemis to infiltrate the office.
Gaige
She'd watched as the airlock cycled closed behind Artemis, feeling the weight of guilt on her mind, she knew that it should be her out there, that the other girl had been right, everything she'd said had been on the mark and even the stuff she'd forgotten or didn't think of had all indicated that Gaige should be the one going outside. That was the more important mission, the one that they needed to do, but she couldn't help it, she needed to examine the bots.
It wasn't some kind of obsessive thing, it wasn't that she just wanted to poke around and see what kind of changes that jerk Holloway had done to her design, she legitimately knew that she'd need to see what was inside the bots, how they were accomplishing the changes in them to be able to counteract them in the future.
But that didn't make her feel any better about it.
If anything, it made her feel worse for some reason. It might have been that she'd wanted Artemis to argue with her, not because she wanted to fight with her, but because if she did, Gaige might be able to think of another reason for why she needed to stay, one that would convince herself that it was really the right thing to do, but instead, the other girl had asked a number of fair questions and had pointed out all the things that Gaige had already thought of and then left.
She knew that Deathtrap was hovering behind her, shaking his head in disappointment, but there was nothing she could do about it, they both knew this had to be done, even if they didn't like it.
"It has to be this way, doesn't it?" She muttered aloud, trying to assuage the guilt in her chest.
Predictably no answer came, so she shook her head and muttered "Well, let's get this over with."
She made her way back to the other door and walked though, displaying a confidence that she didn't feel. She felt that she had to show Holloway that she wasn't afraid of him, that she could take him on by herself, despite the fact that she really doubted it.
Descending the stairs, she found herself faced with the mess that the workers had left behind. Part of her mind idly wondered if any of the stuff left would be of any help. It had been her greatest worry when sending Artemis off, that anything Gaige would find would've been left there on purpose, just to throw them off.
She put nothing past Holloway. He'd do anything to get her, she knew that, but she couldn't help but feel that this was legitimate, that the room looked right. She'd been in enough rooms like this to spot it when things looked planted, and nothing here did. That didn't mean that they hadn't set the room up to feel that way, it was entirely possible, but it would've taken a great deal of effort and time, something that it didn't seem that they'd had. To be fair, that might have also been part of the trap, but she didn't think so. Or rather, she hoped it wasn't, otherwise this would all end in disaster and not just for her, but Deathtrap and Artemis as well.
She did a once over of the room, checking the boxes and leftover bots, all while trying not to think about anything else. Something about sending Artemis off alone was still weighing on her mind and it wasn't that she owed the girl an answer, but since she didn't want to distract herself at this important moment, she continued to shove it down and try to focus on the matter at hand.
Once she'd finished her initial search, she went back to a few points that had caught her interest. She started by reexamining the cases that were tossed against the wall. They'd emptied them all, so whatever had been in them, must have been either valuable or important, probably both. Judging by the size of the indent in the packing foam, she guessed it was the EMP device, the explosives or some kind of weapon. She considered that it might be the radio or whatever had allowed them to detonate the bots, but dismissed it, she'd already seen something else that seemed more likely to be related to that.
Deep down, she felt that it was the EMP, so much so that she wrote it on her mental blueprint of the room, but she did end up putting a question mark by it, in parentheses.
Moving on, she checked the next spot and like she'd thought, it was the method that they'd used to signal the bomb, it seemed that the EMP shielding that Holloway had developed also prevented the bots from receiving most kinds of signals from outside, which meant that they would have to get their orders from either verbal commands or from there A.I., so the same would apply to the bomb inside them, unless there was another method of giving them orders, or rather, a different way to use one of the existing methods.
She picked up one of the receivers that were in the pile and examined it, it wasn't special, nowhere near top of the line, in fact, it was way outdated tech, the kind they only used on really backwater planets, which is what made it work.
It worked by picking up sound and converting it to signals, the same way as an audio receiver generally did, but it was able to pick up different frequencies, including ones that wouldn't be affected by the electromagnetic pulse, the tradeoff was range. But that was fine if someone nearby had a device set to the same frequency, say a person in a tree a short ways away that was carrying a disposable communication device.
She hadn't thought to check the frequency that the device had been set to, mostly cause it was smashed up pretty bad, but also, because she hadn't thought about it. But now that she had an idea, she regretted it.
Her idea wasn't a hundred percent, but it was a fairly solid working theory, enough so that she went on searching the room till she got to the last thing she wanted to examine, the thing that would take the most time, but probably yield the best information, one of the remaining bots.
She knew that it hadn't been worked on, that they hadn't cracked its case open, but it had been modified, so she had to hope that it had the same things done to it that the rest of the bots they would face from here on out had done to them, though if the bots on Jaka had been anything to go by, the answer would be, not much.
Still, something about it told her that this was a more advanced model then those ones had been, so it would pay to be thorough.
She got to work, dragging the bot up and laying it on the table. She wished Deathtrap could help, but with him staying invisible, he couldn't do much. She also wished Artemis was there, not just for the extra pair of hands either.
Since she was so good with robots, dismantling the one in front of her took almost none of her attention, just enough to make sure that it wasn't booby-trapped, which she quickly found out it wasn't, so her mind had enough capacity to spare, allowing her thoughts to drift to a matter that had been pressing on her for some time, namely what she wanted from Artemis.
It had been some time since she'd had anything resembling a friend, let alone anyone that she actually cared for, so she wasn't sure anymore what she was feeling. When she thought about it, she'd never really been in love with anyone, in lust, sure, but never really in love. She loved her family, but that was different, that was platonic, she was thinking of real, romantic love, and the more she thought about it, the less sure she was.
What did she feel for Artemis? Was it just a friendship? She liked to believe so, she'd told herself that was all there was to it, that she hadn't had a friend before, at least not since she'd been a Vault Hunter and even then, while she'd been friends with them, she was sure of that, it had been a different sort of camaraderie that had held them together, so she wasn't sure that she could use that as her basis. Besides, what she felt now was different from how she remembered that, but she could just chalk that up to being older.
She was now twenty-six, a completely different person then she'd been eight years ago and that thought depressed her for some reason. She didn't think she had changed that much, but thinking back on how she'd acted, she wasn't embarrassed, but she couldn't imagine acting like that anymore. She wondered what had changed, had she matured? Was it that she'd had all those different jobs and could now see things from angles she couldn't have then? Or was it something simpler, that she had changed. She knew that Artemis was always telling her things like, do what you want and just be yourself, but Gaige still had trouble figuring out who that really was. Was she an Ex-Vault Hunter? A mechanical engineer? An Ex-wedding planner? A bringer of trouble? Or was she just another lost soul drifting through the universe, like so many others.
She knew that if she couldn't even figure that out, there was almost no chance she'd be able to figure out what she wanted, not from herself and certainly not from Artemis.
She removed another part from the bot and sighed, she knew that she was avoiding the issue. The real reason that she was lost in thought. For some reason, whenever she tried to think about it, she quickly shifted away. She knew why, or at least part of the reason, she couldn't come up with an answer. Usually that would make her dig at the problem all the harder, it was one of the things that had always defined her, her ability to stick with a problem until she'd worked out a solution, sure she'd sometimes shelve a problem for a little while to try and gain some different perspective, but this one was different, for some reason she seemed to not want to find her solution.
The reason for that was simple, once she knew what she wanted, she'd have to act on it. No matter the choice she made, things would change, regardless of what Artemis responded to her with, something fundamental would change in their relationship, and she didn't want that. She was comfortable with how things were, so why intentionally shake things up? She had enough problems doing that by accident.
But she knew the reason she had to press on as well, things would change. No matter how much they both wanted them not to, things would change. And if they weren't careful, they could change for the worse. It might be something simple, like one of them getting a job that took them away for a while, or it might be something more serious, like one of them deciding that they didn't want to be around the other anymore. It could even be that one of them fell in love with someone.
For some reason, Gaige didn't want to think about that. She could go through ways that the others might play out, things she could do to try and keep them together despite that, or ways to part with the intent of staying in contact at least. But the thought of Artemis with someone else bothered her. It didn't even have to be a romantic situation, she'd realized that when A.I. ngel had lived on the ship briefly. She simply didn't like it.
Anyone else would've easily called it for what it was, but Gaige refused to acknowledge that she was simply jealous of them, A.I. ngel and any imaginary person that she could see Artemis going with. It wasn't that she wanted to be in their place, but that she didn't want to lose her, at least that's what she kept telling herself, and it certainly wasn't that she was jealous of the imaginary girlfriend. Why would she be? It wasn't like she thought of her that way, was it? Of course not, she just didn't think that they were right for her.
If she were to say that to anyone else, they would easily point out the fact that if she didn't know who they were, how could she be so sure that they weren't good for Artemis, but since she refused to acknowledge that flaw in her plan, she kept telling herself that was all there was to it.
But each time she got that far, she asked herself why? Why was she so hung up on this? And she couldn't find an answer. She knew that she needed to figure out what she wanted, but she kept falling into the loop of self-denial so that she didn't need to find an answer.
During all of her jobs, one thing that she'd learned helped was to attack a difficult problem from a new angle, often that would yield surprising results, so while she continued working, she thought about the issues she had and chose one, the one that she figured would be the easiest to address from a new angle.
Whether she liked girls or not.
She separated Artemis from the problem and thought about it, tried to imagine herself on a date with a girl, sitting across the table, looking into each other's eyes. She tried to place a woman into the scene, someone different from Artemis, as different as she could, but found that she was having trouble thinking of one. Her mind first went to Maya, but that just depressed her, losing her still hurt too much to think of her, so she moved on. Ellie wasn't her type, even if she had been into girls, though she was about as opposite from Artemis as she could think of and Tina was just way too awkward, she kept picturing the ten-year old she'd first met, which was seriously uncomfortable. She flipped through some of the rest of the women that she'd know Athena, Lilith, Tannis, but found them to be too strange to think of that way, so she tried some of the more recent ones but Moze, while she liked her, just kept going wrong. She could see her that way, but she kept running off with her mech in Gaige's mind. Amara wasn't much better, Gaige had less in common with her so she didn't really feel like she could picture her in a restaurant. She tried some of the other women she'd met, but while she could picture Alex or Caz there, they seemed to not work with Gaige as well as each other, in fact, when she tried to picture them at the table, they wound up leaving together.
Even A.I. ngel didn't work, whenever Gaige tried to think of her across the table, she found Artemis sitting next to her, which defeated the entire exercise.
Frustrated, she glared down at the disassembled bot lying in front of her and decided to shelve the entire thing for the moment, when her ECHO alerted her of an incoming call, causing her to jump in surprise. Calming herself as best she could she wiped her hands and picked it up, nearly dropping it when she saw who was calling her.
For a second she wondered if Artemis had known what she'd been thinking, but quickly realized that the other girl must have some legit reason for calling so she hit the answer button and tried to sound as casual as she could.
"What?"
"You got a moment?" Came the reply.
'She knows.' Flashed through Gaige's mind, but she squashed it down and trying to smile answered as nonchalantly as she could "I guess."
"Good," Came the reply, "I need a bit of advice."
'Oh crap, I can't even give myself advice, what do I do, what do I do?' She thought as she tried to respond, only succeeding in making a strange sound.
Artemis must have taken it as a sign to continue, because she said "Uh, see, I don't have a lot of time here, so I'm gonna get right into it, if you don't have any reason I shouldn't." She paused for a second, then continued "See, I got to the building, but the airlock is closed, no surprise there, so that means I can't exactly get in that way without hacking it or something, so I went to the roof, but the hatch up there doesn't have any controls, at least not external ones, so I came back down and was wondering if you had a better idea then hacking the controls to the airlock and if not to warn you that I was about to do that."
'Oh, is that all?' Flashed through Gaige's mind, immediately followed by a chastisement, that was a plenty big problem, big enough that Artemis had called her about it, which had been the right choice. Pushing all other thoughts out of her head, Gaige focused on the problem, if she couldn't get in through the roof, then that meant that the airlock was the only route left, other than searching out the security office, which was an absolute last resort. Which left having her hack her way in and from the sound of it, she didn't have much air left, so she'd have to be quick about it.
Taking a breath, Gaige nodded to herself, they could do this "Right, so if you don't think you can get through the roof access, then you're gonna have to try the airlock. Get ready, I'll walk you through this."
She spent the next little bit walking her through the procedure, while at the same time checking to make sure her own guns were ready in case something went wrong.
After a tense minute, she heard the sounds of the airlock control chime and no alarms started blaring, so it seemed like they'd passed another hurdle, which caused Gaige to let out a shaky breath she hadn't been aware she'd been holding and leaned against the table in relief.
Still, if Artemis was inside, she'd have to pick up the pace on her end as well, since it was only a matter of time till she got to the office and sprung whatever trap was waiting, and Gaige needed to be ready to help her escape it.
