A/N: Wow, I thought chapter five might take a bit longer than the others but that was pretty bad even for me.
There are a few reasons why it took so long and, while most of it just comes down to "life stuff", the chapter itself proved to be way more of a challenge to write than I imagined. I ended up changing my mind about what I wanted to happen a few times and then overwrote it to the point where it got so big I had to split it into two chapters (and it's still easily the biggest chapter I've posted so far). The good news there is that chapter six is mostly done already so with any luck that one won't take quite so long. Maybe at this rate I'll get the whole thing done before Borderlands 3 comes out.
Oh, and a huge thank you to anyone who stuck around, showed interest and left nice reviews even when it probably seemed like I'd dropped the story. You were a great help when it started to feel like I would never finish it.
So yeah, after two years and nine months let's see if we can get this ball rolling again.
"Athena is a treacherous snake."
Those were among the final words of General Alphonso Knoxx, the man who had been Athena's commanding officer on Pandora before she turned on the Crimson Lance.
He had never been what Athena would describe as a chatty man, mostly communicating in an assortment of apathetic grunts and snarls, but he had become uncharacteristically vocal in the hours leading up to his death. Athena hadn't paid him any mind at the time thinking those words nothing more than the bitter ramblings of an angry old fool who had been outplayed, but right now she couldn't shake them from her mind. The accusation seemed to loop in her head as if the spirit of Knoxx itself had returned to kick her while she was down. Perhaps the lumbering halfwit had been onto something.
Shortly after fleeing Janey's home and taking the elevator up from Concordia's lower levels Athena had left the city entirely and walked out into the lunar wastes in a panicked, self-loathing haze but she hadn't gotten far before a roaming group of scavs had attacked her. Having left all of her guns and grenades beside Janey's doormat she had faced more of a struggle than she normally would have with only her sword and shield to fight with but, after ten minutes or so of far fancier bladework than usual, she prevailed. Once she had dealt with the last of her assailants she had spotted a small, thankfully abandoned, oxygenated building nearby and decided to take a minute to catch her breath and refill her Oz Kit.
Despite the difficulty of participating in a gunfight entirely without ranged weapons she couldn't deny that she had needed it. Why else would she have aimlessly wandered out onto the Triton Flats the way she did? She was looking for a fight. Something, anything, that might distract her from the pain in her chest. Of course, Athena knew very well the real reason she couldn't stay in Concordia any longer. It was tall and blonde and kind and beautiful. Something that, in a just universe would be kept far away from someone like her.
Athena had never considered herself a coward before but she couldn't face Janey after what happened. She was too ashamed to even think about looking her in the eye. This woman who had invited Athena into her home, done all she could to make the gladiator feel comfortable and shown her a kindness she had never known.
A kindness Athena had repaid by attacking Janey in her own front room.
The despairing gladiator winced at the memory and the metal in the arms of the chair she was sitting in quietly creaked as her fingers gripped them tighter. It felt as if the night's events had planted a kind of jagged blade in her heart. One that twisted in the wound whenever Janey's image flashed through her mind, looking up at her with frightened brown eyes after Athena's attack had thrown her to the ground. The blonde had only been a part of her life for a short time and whatever strange, new emotions their meeting had awakened in Athena scared and unsettled the gladiator but that one night she had spent with Janey meant more to Athena than the junk-dealer would ever know.
A blinking red alert on the ECHO device in her left gauntlet suddenly caught her eye in the room's stillness. How long had that been there? She raised the gauntlet's display to her face for a closer look. Seven missed calls. Must have happened during the battle outside. Athena didn't even need to look to know who they were from. She was about to let her arm and the ECHO device drop to the chair's arm again when her eyes were drawn to another alert she hadn't seen for a while. A small, triangular yellow symbol that indicated a new recording had been made. Athena couldn't even remember the last time she had recorded anything on her ECHO device so it couldn't have been her doing. Out of curiosity she pressed her gloved finger to the video file on the holographic display and her breath caught in her throat as Janey's face appeared on the screen.
"Heeey Athena! Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me, huh? Sorry, I gotta whisper because there's a really tired vault hunter lady passed out on my sofa in the next room. I think the poor thing might have overdone it a bit."
Athena ordered herself to turn it off. There was no possible scenario in which continuing to watch the recording would end well for her. She knew that and yet she couldn't bring herself to stop it. It had only been a few hours since she had been sitting at the blonde's kitchen table eating breakfast with her but that smile she had found herself becoming so fond of already felt so distant. If she was truly never going to see Janey Springs again she couldn't throw away the chance to see it once more. Just for a little while.
"Anyway!" the grinning image of Janey continued, somehow managing to be quiet and loud at the same time. "I tinkered with your ECHO device a bit like I said I would. You should be able to catch all of the terrible, amazing ECHOnet shows in the galaxy now, whether they're about exploding toilet motorcycles or jetpack racing or things being thrown off a roof in slow motion it'll have you covered. Just a little something from me to keep you company when you're out there on your own y'know? I uh…I guess if you're watching this you're probably back on Pandora by now and I'm sure I already gushed enough when you left but…it was really nice meeting you, Athena. If you ever find yourself around these parts again for whatever reason come see me, okay? We'll grab another drink if you like."
The blonde paused and, for the briefest of moments, her cheerful demeanor seemed to waver. The lapse was hidden as quickly as it appeared and within a couple of seconds the brown-eyed junk dealer was smiling again but even Athena with her negligible social skills could see how forced it was.
"I know a vault hunter's life is probably busy all over." Janey continued. "I get that. It'd be great to get to know you a little better if you ever have the time but…let's just say I'll see you if I see you. Take care of yourself, yeah? And remember that, for you, my door is always open."
The blonde released a small sigh before peering around her kitchen.
"Okay, now I'm going to look into cooking up Miss Sleepyhead in there some breakfast. Let me see what I even have here…"
The recording ended there leaving Janey's image frozen on Athena's ECHO device. The increasingly forlorn gladiator continued to stare at the screen until she couldn't bear to any longer. She turned off the device and buried her head in her hands running her fingers into her black hair and releasing a ragged, shaky breath she didn't even realise she had been holding.
This is your fault. You knew going home with her was a bad idea but you refused to see reason. What did you think was going to happen?
Her fingers curled into fists against her head grasping handfuls of her hair as she clenched her eyes shut. That damned voice in her head again. The one it belonged to was lightyears away from Elpis. Possibly even dead by now for all Athena knew but, whatever their fate, some small piece of them continued to live on in the mind of every woman who donned an Atlas assassin uniform.
Whenever the Atlas corporation became convinced a little girl might make a good assassin they would send a group of soldiers to retrieve her and after pulling that girl from the arms of her parents they would hand her a loaded gun and an ultimatum. Use the gun to kill their remaining family or all of them would die. Athena's abduction had apparently been no different. The worst part was she didn't even remember doing it. Her memories of that night and every night before had been all but destroyed by the years of brutal assassin conditioning that had followed but when she had found her file while snooping around in the Atlas database one night the report on her acquisition had left no room for doubt. Whether Athena could remember it or not, her parents were dead by her hand. A "routine acquisition" they called it.
"Asset secured without incident".
Every girl Atlas abducted went through that same "conditioning". A sugar-coated term for what was essentially several traumatizing years of abuse and torture specifically designed not only to remove every last trace of useless humanity from the assassins but also to imprint them with those ever-important Atlas values. Strength, discipline, ruthlessness and above all? Unquestioning obedience. All of the girls who managed to live through those years found their every step haunted by the voice of the officer who had overseen and directed their suffering. An intentional side-effect of the process of course. Turning the assassins own minds against them was the most reliable way the corporation had found to ensure their loyalty while there was nobody around to keep them in line.
Her entire life that obnoxious voice had been lurking in the back of her mind, painfully planted there by her captors, loudly berating her and criticizing every choice she made that went against what they had spent so many years trying to burn into her. Sometimes it was difficult for Athena to even tell which thoughts were her own and which Atlas had authored for her.
She remembered watching over the years as her fellow abductees succumbed. Brainwashed into becoming the good little soldiers the corporation required. She supposed it was just easier to give in and try to believe killing for Atlas was the glorious and rewarding career they made it out to be rather than accept that everything they had been through had been for nothing. Eventually a young girl growing up under Atlas's roof learned the only way to survive was to comply and for the longest time Athena believed herself to be no different. Once her assassin training was complete and she was recruited into the Crimson Lance she spent years doing exactly as she was told. Following orders to the letter and eliminating whatever targets she was pointed at but over her career it gradually became more and more obvious the conditioning hadn't worked on Athena quite as well as Atlas had hoped. She still had something slightly resembling a conscience, a distaste for killing the innocent and a desire for freedom that only grew stronger the longer Atlas held her leash. All unacceptable traits for an assassin of the Crimson Lance.
When she finally began to resist her superiors they were aggravated and concerned by the displays of defiance in what was supposed to be one of their most loyal soldiers but Athena was their most skilled agent. Her work had allowed Atlas to grow more powerful across the galaxy and they couldn't afford to simply make her disappear like they had some of their other troublesome operatives. The fact that they considered her too valuable an asset to lose was the reason why her older sister's bones lay in the Pandoran dirt like so many others.
No. Unknowingly or not, she was the one who had driven the blade through Jess's heart and watched her slip away. That blood was on her hands as was that of her mother and father. Anyone close to Athena tended not to see the happy ending they deserved.
Athena knew the whole point of the assassin conditioning had essentially been to irreparably ruin the girls Atlas captured. To transform them from people into living weapons, unable to lead any other kind of life beyond that which had been forced on them. It had always been a comfort to Athena in her darkest hours to hold on to some small hope that she could escape that fate but she couldn't deny the evidence to the contrary. Every attempt she made to do so seemed doomed to fail. First the twenty years she had spent searching the galaxy for her sister. The plans she had made to take Jess and run to some far away corner of the galaxy where Atlas couldn't find them, only for her to be snatched away and then there was Janey and the offer she had made Athena of a place in her home on Elpis. The offer the gladiator had found herself becoming so tempted by.
Athena remembered the sensation of the tall junk-dealer's lips against her cheek. The tender electricity that had spread through every inch of her body at their touch. How simultaneously terrified and ecstatic she had felt. When those lips had lifted away from her face the gladiator had looked up at the blonde woman and seen something in those brown eyes that had made her heart swell in her chest. Nobody had ever looked at Athena that way before.
Suddenly the room's silence was broken by the sound of an alarm on her ECHO device. For a moment Athena believed it to be another call and was about to just let it pass like the rest but when she glanced down at the display she saw that it was actually a distress signal. She had forgotten when she worked for Atlas she had set up her device to inform her of calls for help within her immediate area just in case she was ever available to lend a hand. This one was close. Most likely some travellers pinned down by a scav party like the one that had attacked her. If she left immediately she might be able to help someone. Perhaps she might even luck out and that someone would be both grateful and wealthy. Slim chance around here but she rose from her chair nonetheless. She had been idle long enough.
However far you run, however many Atlas personnel you cut down it won't make any difference. You are and always will be an assassin of the Crimson Lance. A soldier. Your place is on the battlefield.
Athena pressed a few buttons on her ECHO device and Janey's post-farewell video began playing again.
"Heeey Athena! Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me, huh? Sorry, I gotta whisper because there's some really tired vault hunter lady passed out on-"
She hit the pause button and the video froze again. The gladiator's gloved finger moved slowly across the keyboard until it hovered just above the delete key. Her eyes lingered on the image of Janey for a moment longer until quickly, like tearing off a bandage, she closed her eyes and pressed the button erasing the file from her ECHO device.
Whatever ridiculous feelings you think you have for that civilian are nothing more than a childish fantasy. She would only slow you down and dull your blade. Now get out there and do what you have always done. What you were made to do.
The gladiator shut off the display of her ECHO device before pulling up her hood and stepping forward. Her Oz kit hissed into life a she moved through the building's oxygen barrier and out onto the lunar wastes to find her next distraction.
"Ow…"
Janey grimaced as she tentatively touched her fingers to her bruised cheek.
"Oi, stick this on there" said Pickle as he walked into Janey's front room from the kitchen tossing an icepack in her direction.
"Thanks..." Janey said as she caught the pack and gingerly pressed it to the throbbing mark on her face.
Pickle hopped into one of the nearby chairs and peered at her quizzically. The young scavenger had appeared at Janey's door shortly after Athena had disappeared for one his semi-regular visits only to find her sitting on the floor nursing the fist-sized bruise on her cheek.
"So…what?" Pickle asked. "She just lost it all of a sudden and walloped you? After you invited her in for the night? What's that all about? You sure know how to-"
"-to pick em'. I know." Janey interrupted. She had made that particular comment to herself a few too many times to start hearing it from Pickle too.
"So why'd she do it?" The black-haired boy continued. "She didn't really strike me as the kind of peanut butter nutter to just randomly whack someone for doing her a favour."
Janey remained silent.
Pickle sighed and leaned forward in his chair, the little scavenger's expression changing to one of rare seriousness. "Look Janey, I know I'm not your brother or anything and I know you're right keen on this girl but if she's really the type to smack you around whenever she gets all pissed off…"
"I don't reckon she is." Janey immediately replied. She noticed a look of vaguely frustrated scepticism cross Pickle's face. She couldn't blame him. He was her friend and he didn't want to see her hurt because her feelings for Athena were blinding her to the truth.
She hadn't known the wandering gladiator for very long but she knew, in this case, the truth was more complicated than it appeared.
"You should have seen her face, Pickle." Janey said lowering the icepack from her cheek. "I've never seen anyone look so scared before."
She had. Once. Specifically that night several months ago out in Serenity's Waste when a large and incredibly angry kraggon had broken into the secluded campsite she had shared with her previous girlfriend, Stephanie. The second she spotted the beast Janey had gone straight for her shotgun but Steph, delicate flower that she was, never carried a gun or any kind of weapon despite Janey's constant pleading that she do so. A strictly principled girl that one.
She never had a chance.
Within those few seconds it took Janey to reach her weapon the screaming had already started and then almost immediately fallen silent behind her. When she grabbed her shotgun and whirled around only to see the girl she had been cuddling with just a minute ago torn apart by what was basically a dragon an enraged and terrified Janey had pulled the trigger without thinking about her proximity to the monster. The resulting explosive spray of lava blood from the beast's demise is what had given Janey the extensive burn scars down most of her left side. Between the kraggon's vicious attack and the unrecognisable puddle of lava it had become after Janey killed it there wasn't even enough left of Stephanie for Janey to bury. She was just…gone.
Janey may have survived the ordeal but it marked her beyond the scars on her body. If she ever lingered for too long on the horrific memory she would often find herself being pulled into it. The sound of Steph calling out to her, the panic as she scrambled for her weapon, the searing pain as the kraggon's molten blood splashed across her skin and the guilt that she hadn't been fast enough once it was over all as very real as they had been that night. Sometimes the memory consumed her so completely it took her a minute or two to remember just where and when she was after she snapped out of it. Janey was well aware what it felt like to have something like that hanging over you always threatening to drag you into the past if you allowed your mind to wander for too long and she imagined Athena had experienced more than her fair share of personal tragedies. The gladiator's eyes were proof enough of that.
Janey looked across the room to the broken assassin helmet still on the floor where Athena had dropped it. All kinds of things could stir up those memories but in this case Janey should have known that helmet would mean nothing pleasant for her guest given her history. She had honestly completely forgotten it was even there until she walked into her front room and saw the gladiator holding it. Just another piece of random junk she had scooped up because it looked fancy and she thought she might be able to get a few bucks for it. What kind of nightmare had that thing pulled Athena into?
"I don't know where she was when she did it but it wasn't here…y'know?" Janey said looking back to Pickle again seeking some kind of acknowledgement but the boy's expression made no effort to hide how utterly confused he was by the idea. Nonetheless he smiled and shook his head with a chuckle.
"No, I really don't." he replied. "I think you're bacon butty nutty but if you're willing to stick up for her then I suppose that's good enough for me. Let's go."
Pickle jumped down off the chair he was sitting on and placed his hands on his hips. It was the kind of posture Janey had learned meant she was about to have very little choice about something.
"Go where?" she asked arching an eyebrow.
"To find this ladyfriend of yours!" Pickle replied grinning widely. "She can't have gotten far. Then you two can have a top hat chat and sort this whole thing out!"
Janey looked down at the icepack in her hands again. She had been far too dazed to chase after Athena before but once she managed to pull herself together she had made several attempts to contact the gladiator with no luck. Janey could understand why Athena might be trying to avoid her after what happened but she was out there alone, drastically underequipped and probably in no emotional state to be fighting. She couldn't just sit and wait when the gladiator needed her help. She didn't believe for a second Athena had meant to harm her and if she had then she would at least hear it from her in person. Janey refused to let that horrified expression be the last she saw on the gladiator's face.
She stood up and dropped the icepack onto the table.
"Right." she said looking back to Pickle. "Let's go".
Pickle grinned and followed Janey as she moved towards the door. "Bit of a warning though" the boy added. "When we get the buggy I'm going on the gun and if she tries to belt you one again I'm firing a cryo missile straight into her garden hose nose."
The sight of a recently destroyed town was something Athena had become very accustomed to over her career with the Crimson Lance. It was impossible to spend that many years as an assassin and not end up at least somewhat jaded towards death and destruction after all. Athena often felt like she had seen it all but Elpis seemed consistently determined to prove her wrong.
A ruined settlement with minimal gravity and atmosphere was a uniquely unsettling thing to behold. The corpses didn't seem to properly rest where they fell as if they might spring to life again at any moment and the fires that usually raged throughout the destroyed buildings were absent despite the numerous burn marks but it was the complete and total silence that bothered Athena the most.
The gladiator had tracked the distress signal to a scav outpost to the northeast but it appeared as if whatever had caused the need for it had quickly and violently distressed everyone to death and left before she arrived. Scavs fighting amongst themselves seemed like a fairly common occurrence on Elpis but the destruction seemed far too precise for that. One thing Athena had learned on Pandora was that when two bands of psychopaths each decided the other should die nothing around them was left standing when they were done.
She approached a nearby body, face down in the dust, and pushed it over onto its back with the armoured tip of her boot. Whoever it was had several deep holes burned into their chest. Likely the work of an incendiary laser. The thoroughly dead scav was clutching an ECHO device with a rapidly blinking green light on it indicating an active distress signal. Sighing with irritation she knelt down to switch it off so nobody else wasted their time with this and was just turning to leave when she noticed something slumped against a wall in the corner of her eye. Something yellow. Specifically Hyperion yellow. As she cautiously stepped closer to get a better look she saw that it was a loader bot or the remains of one at least. Evidently thrown against the wall by a corrosive rocket, the contents of which was still eating away at the gaping hole in its shoulder.
What was it doing here? Jack had taken Hyperion and left to chase his new prize on Pandora. He was completely uninterested in what became of Elpis now. Perhaps a stray that got left behind when Helios departed? Athena heavily doubted one loader bot could single-handedly slaughter what appeared to be around twenty or so scavs by itself.
The increasingly wary gladiator gripped the sword at her waist tighter, an overpowering feeling of dread creeping up her spine. Something was very wrong and not in the usual surrounded by corpses kind of way. Her intuition was screaming at her to back away. That nothing good could possibly come from remaining here any longer.
It was a feeling Athena gotten used to over the years. She had always displayed a remarkable talent for recognising danger before it actually happened to the point where several of her old Atlas instructors had become convinced she possessed some kind of supernatural precognitive abilities. The truth was far less interesting. Athena was no siren but her surroundings spoke to her in a way they didn't to others. It was undoubtedly a useful skill for someone in her profession to have and one she had learned to place her trust in over the years. Disregarding it always seemed to end badly for her. The most recent example being her failure to immediately jump in an escape pod and fire herself back to Pandora the second she met Handsome Jack in person on Helios.
Heeding the blaring alarms in her head she quickly decided to abandon any further attempts at investigation and turned towards the camp's entrance to leave when, as if on cue, a second loader bot suddenly appeared in a doorway to her left. Upon seeing her it immediately raised its laser and fired. Normally the shot would have been a fatal hit to the neck but if growing up the way she had made a person anything it was fast. Athena's shield was up and ready before the weapon discharged and easily absorbed the shot as well as the second and third shots that followed. The moment the slightest pause in the robot's barrage occurred Athena swung her shield arm back and hurled Aspis at her attacker striking the loader in the chest and throwing it back into the building it had attempted to step out of with a loud clang.
The shield had barely returned to the magnetic socket on her gauntlet before the whole area seemed to come alive with loaders appearing from other doors, around corners and even from the outpost's entrance cutting off her escape. Every one of them seemed to be disfigured in some way. Many had large holes in their bodies while others were missing a limb or two. Not a single one of them looked to be in any condition for battle but some were even reduced to dragging themselves across the floor towards her, their legs either not functional enough to bear their weight or missing completely.
None of the barely-functional machines shambling in her direction were particularly daunting opponents but there were enough of them that it hardly mattered. Scavs were one thing but fighting so many loaders, even when they were in such disrepair, without her guns or grenades was a bad idea. She rapidly scanned the area looking for a gun, anything that might give her just a little more ranged capability, when she spotted an old, rusted Jakob's revolver lying beside another unfortunate scav corpse just a few feet to her right. With no time to look for anything better she scooped it up and ran through one of the few nearby doors loaders weren't coming out of. Thankfully the building she retreated into wasn't just a dead end and she sprinted down a corridor to her left. The walls and ceiling were mostly glass so it didn't offer much in the way of cover from the small army of homicidal robots outside but if she could just find an exit from the scav base that led out close to a Moon Zoomy machine she could outrun them.
She rounded a corner at speed, her metal boots skidding loudly on the floor panels before she caught sight of another loader appearing from a doorway about twenty feet ahead of her. Without slowing her pace Athena raised her newly scavenged firearm and took aim. It was only when she pulled the trigger that it suddenly occurred to her that, in her haste, she hadn't even checked the gun's chamber to see if it actually had any bullets in it or not. After only two shots bouncing off the robot's armour she was made well aware. They may not have been enough to actually damage the loader but they did at least manage to stun it long enough for her to close the gap. Before it could fire its weapon she had already tossed the empty revolver aside, pulled Xiphos from its sheath and used it to take the robot's weapon arm off at the elbow. She followed by sweeping the crimson energy sword round and under the robot, severing one of its legs and knocking it off its feet before delivering a final blow down into the middle of its torso, slicing it in half before it hit the ground. As her opponent's various pieces clattered to the floor Athena noticed a second loader bot emerging from a doorway a few feet further down the corridor and she dashed to reach it before it had a chance to take a shot at her.
When she approached the loader it attempted to fend her off by swinging an armoured fist at her but the gladiator ducked to avoid the clumsy attack and retaliated by thrusting Xiphos forward into the robot's single chest-mounted eye with enough force that it pierced through the loader's body. Athena gripped Xiphos's handle with both hands and grit her teeth as she lifted the impaled robot off the ground and above her head before slashing downward and splitting her opponent from head to groin in a shower of sparks. The two halves of the bisected robot fell to the floor on either side of her and she quickly resumed her sprint down the corridor. If this structure's layout made any sense at all she surmised the next right should lead her out onto the flats again and from there it was only a short distance to the closest Moon Zoomy station. She swung around the corner only to immediately freeze in her tracks at the sight before her, the sheer number of loader bots on her tail suddenly making a lot more sense.
A constructor bot slowly floated into view from behind a nearby cliff. Athena instantly recognised it as the same one she and her team had helped build and then forced an unwilling AI to inhabit on Jack's orders during their mission on Elpis. The terrified AI had rebelled and used its new body to try and kill them meaning they had no choice but to subdue it until the Hyperion scientist Gladstone could erase its personality and make it obedient enough for Jack's purposes. It wasn't something Athena was proud of but it was either that or allow Elpis and everyone living on it to be destroyed. They needed an army to retake the captured Helios station and the prototype constructor bot was the only way to get one in time. While regrettable, the choice had been clear. Did Jack just leave it behind? Of course he did. He had Gladstone's blueprints and the near-infinite resources of Hyperion at his disposal now. He had no need for a broken down prototype anymore.
The floating yellow machine focused its attention on her and spoke in a unsettling, broken voice that seemed to be half that of your typical Hyperion robot and half that of a scared young woman. One Athena had not expected to hear again.
"TARGET AQUIRE-what-TARGET AQUIRED. WEAPONS LOCKED. PREPARING TO-what have you done to me…?"
"Felicity?" Athena replied. It couldn't be. Gladstone claimed to have completely written over every last trace of the Dahl AI's former personality but it seemed some small fragment of her still remained. The constructor twitched at the mention of its former name, the machine's movement becoming unstable and erratic.
"PREPARING TO-m-means happ-PREPAR-happiness-ING TO FIRE. Hate-PREPARATION-if hate is what you want…PREPARATION COMPLETE…hate is what you'll get!"
"FIRING."
Athena barely had time to raise Aspis before the first missile struck her. The shield absorbed the damage but the force of the impact threw her back against the window behind her spreading a large crack across the glass. A second missile shoved her through the window entirely sending shards of reinforced glass flying out around her in a wide spray as the building's atmosphere vented. The lack of gravity outside caused the gladiator to tumble and skid across the dusty Elpis surface before she dug a hand into the ground and managed to slide to a halt. A sharp pain spread up the right side of her torso as she attempted to stand but she didn't have time to rest with the loader horde closing in and Felicity in pursuit. Dragging herself to her feet she dashed in the only direction she was mostly certain wouldn't lead to an immediate death by mass laserfire. She needed to take down the constructor if she was going to have any chance of surviving but it was too high and her current arsenal was drastically lacking in reach. She wracked her brain for ways she could possibly cause any meaningful damage to the flying machine when another partially incinerated scav corpse a few feet ahead of her gave her the answer.
A corrosive rocket launcher. Perfect. Athena knew the weapon that disabled the loader she had seen before had to still be around somewhere. She ducked down and grabbed it in both hands as she ran past, the large weapon's weight a great reassurance in her underequipped state.
It didn't take long for her pursuer to appear over the roof of one of the settlements buildings, limping across the darkened Elpis sky as if barely able to stay airborne. The sound of Felicity's fractured, enraged voice loud enough to make out even through the almost non-existant atmosphere. It was a small consolation but at the very least Athena supposed she didn't have to deal with a stealthy enemy. Not that a constructor ever needed to be.
"HULL INTEGRITY AT 22%. SYSTEMS FUNCTIONALITY AT 17%. IMMEDIATE REPAIRS AND REFORMATTING ADVIS-yy-you cast me aside. TARGET LOST. ATTEMPTING TO RELOCATE. SCANNING FOR TAR-all to ss-save the murderers and thieves that call this place home."
Athena didn't even need to look back to know when Felicity spotted her. The moment the constructor's single red eye focused on her she could almost feel its furious gaze burning into her back.
"Was it worth it, Athena? TARGET LOCKED. RESUMING ATTACK."
The floating machine unleashed a barrage of freshly digistructed missiles in the gladiator's direction. Athena couldn't raise Aspis to block them while handling the rocket launcher but she didn't dare drop what was likely her only chance at getting out of this. Instead she attempted to dive clear of the impact area but the explosion proved too large roaring up behind her and flinging her into the building to her right. She crashed against the wall, her armoured form leaving a large dent, and fell to the ground somehow managing to hold on to the launcher the whole time but the second her feet touched the floor she grunted in pain and fell to her knee clutching at her side. Athena knew the feeling of a cracked rib or two by now. It felt as if every part of her body fervently protested her decision to stand up and keep moving rather than lie down and die quietly.
She pulled open the chamber on the rocket launcher to check if it was even loaded this time. A single rocket remained. Better than nothing. She attempted to hoist the weapon up into a firing position but quickly discovered Felicity's last attack had damaged something in her shoulder as well. She hissed in pain and almost dropped the rocket launcher but instead grit her teeth and managed to recover bracing the weapon on her injured shoulder just as the constructor floated overhead, apparently searching for where she had gone after the explosion. Athena had done a great many terrible things in her life. Things that kept her awake at night. Things that she knew would and should haunt her for the rest of her life but if she gave herself to the mercy of every challenger who came looking for revenge she would have died a long time ago. The galaxy was not a fair place. Felicity's hatred for her was justified after what she had done to her and perhaps she deserved her vengeance but if the AI wanted her dead she would have to take a number and try her luck like everyone else. Such was the way of things.
Rising to her feet again she caught sight of the dilapidated loader mob approaching around the side of a building to her right. Pieces fell from their bodies as they moved as if in a state of decomposition. It wasn't even that they had suffered damage. From what Athena could tell it seemed they had simply been created that way. Perhaps Felicity was even more badly damaged that it appeared, to the point where her digistructing capabilities were becoming more limited. Or maybe in some dismal way the loaders reflected the AI's emotional state. Either way, with every one of them heading in her direction and Felicity preparing another attack she didn't have any time left to deliberate.
Now or never.
She charged forward and leapt into the air using her Oz kit to propel her onto the roof of the building nearest to where the constructor was hanging in the air. The sound of her boots landing against the building's roof alerted the constructor to her location but before it could turn to face her Athena had already aimed and pulled the trigger. Thankfully the poorly-maintained weapon actually fired instead of exploding in her hands and the corrosive rocket struck the flying robot in the side severely denting the constructor's armour as well as spreading its green, acidic contents across its body.
It wasn't enough. Athena had hoped she would get lucky and the shot would destroy the already badly damaged constructor or at least disable it until she had a chance to get clear but it seemed all it had done was stagger the flying robot and buy her a few seconds at most. She had nothing left. No more guns. No teammates to cover her. Only one more really bad idea between her and the grave she had spent her entire life just barely outrunning. She pulled Xiphos out of its sheath and threw the energy sword at the flying robot like a javelin. Considering the distance between the gladiator and her target, in any other situation the sword would have clattered uselessly to the ground but the Elpis gravity allowed it to fly true. The blade pierced the robot's hull in the same wide dent the rocket had made but only managed to sink a couple of inches into the constructor's thick armour leaving it sticking out of the robot's side at an upward angle.
Without wasting another moment Athena cranked up the output on her oz kit far beyond the recommended levels. Rather than the steady stream of oxygen that kept her breathing or the occasional gentle gust that allowed her to glide in low gravity, she released a powerful blast that lifted her off the floor and flung her into the sky. Several smaller bursts were used mid-flight to correct her course until she reached the point she needed and one final release in the direction she was moving abruptly brought her to a stop. For a brief moment she simply hung in the air as if the moon's meager gravity had to remind itself to start pulling her back down again. Once she began to feel herself descend she drew back her shield arm and, with a cry of fury, hurled Aspis with every bit of strength she had left. The shield scythed down through the air towards her attacker, its characteristic energy trail leaving a bright crimson arc across the sky.
Just as Felicity was shaking off the corrosive rocket's effects the shield collided with the base of the sword's hilt with enough force to shove Xiphos into the robot's shell and then through the constructor's body entirely, erupting from the other side in a fiery explosion and hurling the machine sideways into a nearby cliffside. The panicking machine unleashed a deluge of rockets and lasers in every direction, frantically struggling to stay airborne as its body fell apart.
The gladiator slowly descended to the moon's surface somehow managing to avoid being hit by the hail of explosives as they rained down around her. She landed beside another of the settlements buildings and forced herself to run despite the rapidly worsening pain in her side. Athena knew any one of the missiles bombarding the area could mean the end of her but if she could just make it to the other side of the building she could gain at least some measure of cover from the blind constructor's destructive death throes. She could only hope Felicity's loader horde was under the same pressure. Her attack didn't seem particularly discriminatory after all.
When, after what felt like the longest sprint of her life, she reached the corner of the building she rounded it at speed but had to pull off an emergency stop when she almost collided with a loader attempting to do the same from the other side. Apparently a straggler separated from the rest of the horde but this one didn't attempt to attack or waylay her in any way. In fact it didn't appear to be armed at all. It only took Athena a moment to recall her first fight against Felicity and remember what that meant but by then it was too late. The motion to raise her shield arm to protect herself was instinctive but wherever Aspis had gone after her last attack it hadn't returned to her gauntlet yet leaving her defenseless when the EXP Loader detonated. The almost point-blank explosion threw Athena back through the air before crashing to the ground and skidding several feet across the lunar surface until she eventually came to a stop on her back.
With a great deal of effort Athena rolled over onto her front and pushed down against the ground beneath her, barely managing to stay conscious as she shakily tried to haul her battered body to its feet again. Finally she heard the flailing constructor crash to the ground somewhere behind her and its frenzied torrent of missile and laser fire came to an end but when she went to take a breath for a well-deserved sigh of relief she found herself unable to. She had been careful not to expend every bit of oxygen she had to finish the fight with Felicity so she would have enough remaining to escape once it was over but it seemed her Oz kit had taken damage at some point. She needed to find an oxygen source somewhere and quickly but when she attempted to stand she cried out in pain and collapsed to the ground again. The EXP Loader's attack must have broken her leg. Attempting to see through the cloud of dust that still lingered in the air after her fall Athena could see that, while Felicity was down, the small army of loaders she had spawned was still closing in on her position. She had to move. To endure was all she knew. To survive so that she could survive again another day. That had always been her life whether she fought for Atlas or not but even if she had air to breathe this was a situation she couldn't see a way out of. Her sword and shield were missing, whatever mobility she had left was gone and she was rapidly suffocating to death with a swarm of killer robots closing in. Survivor or not she had nothing left to work with.
End of the line.
She supposed it was fitting. Athena may have done what she did to save the moon and its inhabitants from destruction but the fact remained that she had paid for Jack's robot army with something that wasn't hers to trade. It was because of her that Felicity had been reduced to a vengeful shadow of her former self. When Athena installed the Dahl AI into the constructor that day despite her protests she had essentially created her own executioner. Complete with mindless robot horde.
Wasn't this the part where the entirety of her gore-soaked life was supposed to flash before her eyes like some kind of gruesome, low-budget slideshow? One final journey through every awful thing she had ever done before the curtains closed? That was what Athena had always heard but, for someone with as many regrets as her, the series of deeds that passed through her mind was surprisingly brief.
Her mother and father. The very first step she had taken on the bloody path she had carved across the galaxy in Atlas' name.
Her elder sister. The kill that haunted her above all others. The day her servitude to the Atlas had come to sudden and violent end.
And then there was Janey Springs. The woman who, for just one night, had pulled her from her life of survival for survival's sake and given her the briefest glimpse of something else. Something she found herself truly wishing she could have been a part of but removing herself from Janey's life was the best thing she could do for the blonde before she inevitably ended up like every other person Athena had ever cared about.
If she was going to die here she could at least do it in the knowledge she managed to do at least that one thing right.
In her last moments of consciousness before everything faded to black she wondered if she had finally lost her mind. Somewhere in the increasingly loud stomping, grinding and scraping of the approaching loader horde she could have sworn she could hear someone calling out her name.