XIX. Firefight
The shout came from Joanna and as Lara's tendons began to react, her arms moving towards her guns and her body beginning to turn, a hail of gunfire began raining down all around her. Her guns in hand, Lara simultaneously whirled around and began sidestepping towards the nearest pillar, her guns letting loose a mad volley in the direction in which she had glimpsed Jo firing.
She barely made it to the pillar and ducked behind it as the metallic stone of the structure sparked with the ricochets of more bullets. Her leg screamed in pain at the sudden push. Her arm was also stinging with pain and she looked down to find several bleeding grazes on her outer bicep. These guys must be expert marksmen to have gotten that close.
"Blast!" Came Joanna's voice through Lara's communicator as more gunfire sounded. "I only got one of them. The other must have had some shielding."
"No, I managed to get that one." Lara replied, remembering that she had glimpsed only two men through the chaos. "And those two were carrying pistols. That's automatic gunfire coming from somewhere else."
Jo chanced a peak from her shelter and nearly got her head blown off as the edge of her pillar sparked. She pulled her head back. Fortunately she had gotten a good idea of what was out there. Unfortunately, she didn't like what she saw.
"You hit?" came Lara's voice.
"I'm fine." Jo replied. "I spot five men with A.R. Thirty-four Assault Rifles coming in at Eleven O'clock. Looks like Datadyne, alright. But where did they come from? I could have sworn this chamber was empty."
"I have a theory on that." Lara stated. "But now's not the time. You know anything about those rifles?"
"They've got about thirty rounds in a clip. But if I know these troops, they won't risk more than a few shots at a time and then only if they have a good beat on you."
"Well, prepare yourself." Lara said. There was a pause in her voice as more gunfire rang out. From the sound of it, it was Lara firing back. "We've got ten more hunkering down at Twelve O'clock." Lara continued. "Looks like they figured out we're not just your average intruders. Samus, can you see any more from your station?"
Samus did not respond.
"Samus?" Lara called through the mic. "Jo, can you see Samus? Has she been hit?"
A thought occurred to Joanna.
"I don't think she can hear us, Lara." Jo suggested, firing a few blind rounds in their adversaries' general direction. "You notice she needed the crystals to activate her suit? Something must have happened to it when we got separated. My guess is her comm link was tied into her helmet."
"Can you see if she's alright?"
Jo watched the pillars near the rubble, hoping for some sign from Samus.
"I can't see her." Jo replied.
"See if you can get closer. I'll draw their fire."
"Roger."
Lara squatted and popped out from behind her pillar, letting loose a volley of bullets as Jo made way to the cover of a pillar further back. She continued to look around but still saw no sign of Samus. She was about to report back, when she saw some movement out of the corner of her eye. Turning her head, gun raised, her mouth dropped open in shock. There, not twenty yards away was Samus impossibly locked in hand-to-hand combat with a Skedar. More amazing was the fact that she seemed to be driving the beast back!
"Jo, do you see her?" Lara's voice snapped her out of her stunned state as more gunfire sounded
"Uh…yes. But we've got trouble. She's going at it with a Skedar."
Jo heard a chuckle come through her earpiece. She wasn't quite sure what Lara found so funny, but had no time to think about it. Instead, she carefully raised her gun for a head shot on the Skedar. The two were moving in and out amongst the pillars. Jo studied the scene. She watched how they moved, watched as they ducked behind a pillar. She watched as the back end of the Skedar popped out the other side. She waited patiently for the moment to hit. A few more inches and…
The movement happened and Jo pressed down on the trigger. The gun kicked and a single bullet zipped through the air, narrowly missing several pillars, seemingly headed for nowhere but the far wall of the chamber. But just as it reached the spot where Samus and the Skedar were battling it out, the Skedar's head jerked back into the bullet's path and the steel projectile imbedded itself perfectly in the eye of the monstrous alien.
The Skedar reeled and roared in pain. Samus seized the opportunity and leaped up onto the thing's shoulders. In one quick, fluid motion, she reached down, grabbed the thing's head and twisted, snapping its neck with sickening crack! The monster collapsed on the ground. Samus wasted no time, but immediately headed for Jo's direction as the pillars behind her sparked with more gunfire. Jo tossed her gun in Samus' direction. Samus dove for the spot to where the gun was falling. In another fluid motion, she caught the weapon, sprung off her hands onto her feet, righted the gun and turned to face behind her, firing off several rounds. Jo took the opportunity and fled back towards another pillar where she could make visual contact with Lara.
She made it and saw Lara spot her.
"You alright?" she heard Lara ask as the woman peeked around the edge of her pillar and fired a few more rounds. Somewhere a man screamed.
"Fine." Jo replied. "Samus is right behind me. But she's low on ammo and I'm weaponless. Can you slide me a gun?"
"'Fraid my ammo's getting low too." Lara replied. "These guys are pretty well entrenched. We might be able to hold them off, but not for long. There's probably more Skedar about as well. Forgot to tell you that bit."
"Well we can't just sit here until we're picked off." Jo objected. "I'll have to go on the offensive while you two draw their fire."
"You're mad!" Lara said, again firing off a few rounds. "There's got to be thirty men out there plus the Skedar."
"Relax." Jo replied with a smile. "I'm used to this sort of thing, remember? Anyway, it's our only chance to come out of this alive. Not toss me a g-"
She stopped as she looked over at Lara. Her pack had been torn open, probably by catching some gunfire, and had spilled its contents onto the floor. Amongst them was a rectangular, silvery object that looked stunningly familiar to Jo's eyes.
"Lara." Jo called. "At your feet. Is that a DCX Twenty?"
"A what?" Lara called back.
"The laptop." Jo restated. "Did you pull it off a DataDyne agent?"
"Yes. What about it?"
"Kick it and a gun over to me."
"Are you mad? We don't have time for-"
"Just do it!"
Lara responded by pulling out a spare pistol and then simultaneously kicking the laptop over to Jo while tossing the spare pistol onto its surface. They both reached the edge of Jo's pillar. The young agent barely managed to snatch them up without getting shot.
"Cover me!" she shouted.
Lara and Samus who had arrived at a pillar just behind Jo, popped out and began firing as Jo made her way forward through the maze of pillars. She at first headed towards their assailants, but changed direction in order to confuse anyone eyeing her movements. A soldier popped out from behind a pillar twenty feet away and took aim. Without halting, or even slowing her pace, Joanna raised her pistol and fired off a round. The man went down without firing a shot. Jo kept moving, undaunted. She changed direction again and another soldier popped out, this one on her right about five feet from her. He hit the ground even faster than the first. She thought nothing of her action as she mentally checked another round off the count she was keeping. She again changed direction. Zig-zagging through the pillars, Jo kept watch for the structure she knew she had seen earlier as man after man appeared out of the gloom, attempting to take her down. Each fell with little more than a grunt and a thud, none being quite fast enough to out-race Joanna's deadly aim and none having any more impact on her conscience than a swatted fly. Finding a good spot near the structure, she sat down, her back to a pillar and opened the laptop. As it began to power up, Jo raised her gun and fired to her left without even looking. Another grunt and another thud…and another check off her ammo count- nothing more- as she began to work the keys.
###############
Lara stood behind her pillar, mentally taking stock of how many rounds she had left. Whatever Jo was planning she had better get going. It had only been a couple of minutes since she had taken off, but that was a couple of minutes too long.
No. she thought. If she was going to do something, she'd have done it by now.
She again took stock. Three rounds left. She still had her shotgun, but if she had counted right, Samus was almost out as well. The chamber was silent.
They're probably trying to conserve their ammo.
Between the three of them, they had managed to take out enough of the soldiers to cause them to be cautious. But they were still advancing, albeit slowly.
A rock landed at her feet and Lara looked over to see Samus pointing at her gun. Lara replied by holding up four fingers. Samus pointed at Lara, then at hole beyond the rubble of Jo's explosion, then to herself, then to their attackers. Lara smiled and shook her head. She would have signaled back the reverse, but after all she'd seen, she knew better than to ask that of Samus Aran.
Jo's dead. She thought. Just a handful of shots and two stubborn personalities between the two of us. Looks like we're both going out guns blazing.
Samus nodded at Lara's headshake, her face solid and strong. She pointed to her gun, then touched her finger between her eyes, then pointed towards their attackers. Lara saluted, getting her meaning, and saying goodbye. Samus held up three fingers and began to count down.
Three…two…one…
Lara and Samus rolled out from behind their pillars, gun's aimed in deadly marksmanship. A silver object flashed in their vision and they both looked up to see a laptop sailing high in the air on a trajectory that would cause it to impact a pillar that ran floor-to-ceiling. A whirring filled the chamber as the silvery object transformed, one surface splitting and recombining to form a tripod. The other, changing into what Lara saw to be the multi-barreled form of a gatling gun.
"Down!" Lara shouted and ducked back behind a pillar as a hail of gunfire again filled the chamber, followed quickly, and in sequence, by a series of men's screams and Skedars' feral roars. The terrible sounds seemed to last forever. Lara stood with her eyes shut, trying not to imagine the massacre that was happening as so many living beings were being cut down like grass at the mercy of a lawnmower. At last the firing stopped and, oddly, so did the cries. Lara opened her eyes and found she had been holding her breath.
"Jo, tell me that was you." She said, breathlessly.
"You didn't think I'd leave the party that early did you?" came Joanna's voice. "Stay put. The drone gun may have just run out of bullets. I'm going to have a look around."
"Roger."
Lara looked to Samus who was staring back at her, waiting for some news. Lara signaled her to stay put. Samus did so, but continued to watch their surroundings.
"All clear." Cam Jo's voice at last.
"You sure?" Lara asked.
"That's a hard one to answer." Jo replied. "Come take a look."
Lara peaked her head out, not at all ready to believe they were safe. She could see Jo standing a distance off where the group of DataDyne agents had been entrenched, just beyond the central object Lara had seen from the precipice. She seemed relaxed and was standing out in the open. Jo noticed her and waved her over. Lara glanced at Samus and then moved out from behind her cover. As she and Samus proceeded towards Joanna, Lara noted that the bodies of the two agents they had shot at the beginning of the firefight were gone. And there was no blood, no footprints, nothing to indicate they had ever even been there.
As they got closer, they could see the anxious look on Jo's face. The two of them made their way around the central object: a square, metallic-stone slab rising five feet from the floor and at least fourteen feet on a side. There were some reliefs in the top of the slab, but Lara paid them no heed for the time being. Her mind was far too focused on the fact that, except for the three women, the area was completely empty, the dust on the floor thick and undisturbed.
"The drone gun is gone too." Jo said, nodding towards where she had tossed the weapon. "What was that theory of yours?"
Lara let a long breath slide out through her nose. "Right." She said, holstering her guns and turning to Samus. "By your reckoning, how long has it been since we parted ways?"
To say Samus was confused would have been an understatement. She answered the question, nevertheless.
"Seven hours, why?"
Jo's eyes went wide. "Seven hours?" she echoed in surprise. "It's been five days for me." She then turned to Lara. "So that's why you were asking. How long has it been for you?"
Lara stood with her arms crossed, her mind having already reached the conclusion of their circumstances and what she expected to find in the center structure. She knew they would like it even less than she did.
"Forty minutes." She replied flatly.
The others stood in stunned silence.
"Right." Lara repeated. "This whole place, probably this whole planet, has different dispersions of time throughout. It even seems to have extended out into space. Samus' riddle spoke of the Chozo beginning to understand time and space. I overheard a Skedar tell one of your DataDyne friends that there were no disturbances in the central chamber. We seem to be not only encountering these different dispersions, but shifting through time itself. What really disturbs me, however, is not that it's happening, but that it's happening to all three of us and we're being…kept together.
"At any rate, if my guess is right, we'll find the cause of our coming together, this place, and this whole blooming mess-" she turned her head and nodded at the slab "-in there."
The three women stared a moment at the structure, then, one-by-one began to move towards it. The minds of all three were filled with anticipation at the prospect of at last coming to an answer as to why things had come to be as they had…and what it had to do with them.
As they approached, they observed the reliefs set into the stone. The shapes corresponded to the three items they had collected from the chozirim. In the center was a circular object, vaguely metallic, wrought of some material different from that of the slab. Lara went to retrieve her jewel, which had fallen out of her pack, while Samus handed Jo's gun back to her, took off her device and placed it in its socket. Lara came back presently and placed hers in. She then looked up at Jo who was standing there, staring at the slab.
"Jo?" she asked.
Jo opened her mouth to say something, but stopped, shaking her head. She instead blew out a breath, pulled the jewel from her belt and said, "I don't know why you're both so eager to get blown up again." as she placed it in its socket.
Immediately, the glowing runes on the pillars around them went dark and the slab lit up with a brilliant, white light. It shone like a beacon in the darkness, extending to the ceiling far above them. Its light was then pierced by a beam of blue emanating from the circular object in the center. The beam widened and changed its form. It began to take on the shape of a formless blob. Then the blob refined itself into a humanoid shape, which at last gave way to the holographic form of a Chozo in ragged robes, its avian features wrinkled and gaunt. No sooner had it appeared than its beak opened and it began to speak in a voice cracked with age.
"Greetings, Daughter Samus."
Samus could only stare up in awe, her mouth forming a name so familiar to her, it came without effort, without thought.
"Old Bird."