Chapter 15 - 99 Red Balloons
"That'll have to do for now." Gwen said, over the distorted com channel. "Any more, and we won't have enough fuel left to make it back out."
She was about to engage breaking thrusters, when Ben suddenly reached a decision.
"We're not taking them with us, Gwen." He blurted out. "Not this time." Ben raised his head from a control panel he was working on, peering out the front windows at his cousin, who seemed quite taken aback by this rushed statement.
"What? " She asked, confused.
"No. I'm through depending on these things, this situation is just too dangerous take the risk." Ben replied seriously, then added "This time, the only defence I'm using is the one that's never failed me. You got any suits in that AG?"
Gwen hesitated for a moment, gathering her thoughts. "Uh, yes… Just a sec' and I'll send one over."
A moment later, one conditioned, high-mobility space suit emerged form the end of the transfer arm bay. Ben bent down, grabbed the suit, and began putting it on.
"You should do the same." Ben said, his voice muffled beneath the layers of material. "We have no chance of pulling this off alone. Give Max a call, explain what's going on. Tell him to round up anyone who might be of some help and get up here as soon as possible."
"Shouldn't we wait for-" Gwen began, but Ben interrupted.
"No time." He said. "Point of no return is in exactly one hour, thirty-six minutes. If we don't bring them down by then, we've lost it. All of it. I need you to work out a manual jump trajectory from here to the nearest missile. They know there are spacecraft out here. It should be much harder to pick up just one person."
"But what about stealth-mode? And one person, what do you mean?" Gwen asked, worried.
"Won't work." Ben replied, impatiently. "I'm going first. You and Dev follow once you've contacted Max. Got the trajectory and speed yet?"
"Fine. Your trajectory, um. It's…" Gwen said, becoming unusually stressed. "Oh never mind, I've sent it to your suit's HUD. You'd best get going then. Still, I was kind of looking forward to the flight experience..."
"If we ever get out of this mess, you can keep one of these." He said, grimly.
Ben leaned forward and ran a quick system integrity check on the suit. This time, he could not afford to have his own impatience destroy his only lifeline. He sifted through every last operating system, before doubling back on them. When all components appeared to be functioning correctly, he nodded to Gwen, cut off all power to the craft and disengaged atmospheric control.
"I'd like to see them detect it now." Ben muttered.
Finally, bracing himself for what must now be done, he carefully but decisively kicked out the right-side airlock with one attempt. The gravity plating creaked ominously under the strain. Ben tightly gripped the supports around the doorway, as what remained of the interior atmosphere surged out past him. It took only moments for what little pressure was left to leave the ship in a soundless rush of damaged fragments of technology and tools. Once the swarming mass of debris left the cabin, it continued on its journey, out into the darkness. Ben became aware that he was now standing in a total vacuum. It was much more eerie than he had ever expected. He could hear every breath, every heartbeat. It was very disturbing. Wrenching his thoughts from this unsettling feeling, he tried to focus on the task at hand. To perform a jump, he would need to be on the outside of the vessel, lest take the risk of missing the target. There was only one chance, and it had to go perfectly. He exerted a miniscule amount of pressure on the deck plating with his foot. Not used to a zero-gravity environment, he was propelled forwards through the opening in the hull at an alarming rate, heading in the same direction as the debris. With absolutely no time to spare, he managed to snatch at the exterior of the ship, just barely pulling himself back to a relatively safe position. The silent, dead Exceeder, weightless as it was, began to roll under the sudden pull on its side. Ben had to force himself to look away from the earth and stars, which were now unusually clear. This left little else to satisfy his attention, so he instead directed his gaze to the hull of the large spacecraft on which he was standing. This was not really an ideal time for nausea.
After mounting himself in a reasonably stable position, he brought up the suit's HUD. It was a simple two-dimensional projection of light onto the multi-surface, supposedly indestructible glass in front of his face. Even so, it was a most intuitive system, controlled entirely by a non-invasive ECG reader built into the head-section of the suit. Once locating the coordination file, he ran the application, and crouched closer to the hull. Inside the suit, a green light appeared somewhere below Ben's HUD. Knowing that this was it, he used all possible force to leap from the scorched hull. Ben yelled as he was propelled out in the direction of the missiles, a lone drifter in the endless sea of the universe.
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Inevitably, Ben was fast growing bored of watching the Earth. Reminding himself that it may be the last time he would ever see it so alive did little to alleviate his tension. It was going to seem like a long wait. Already, about half an hour had passed, and he saw not the slightest change in the distance of either the moon or his blue home-world. He had always so underestimated how just how long it would take to reach the nearest star, let alone the nearest planet-killing missile. Another problem, was that his course was not perfectly straight. True, he was heading in precisely the right direction, though he was also revolving quite fast. Every so often, he would have to close his ever for a moment, unwilling to face the alternative of being sick.
About twice the previous time had passed, and Ben took notice of a dark, panelled something moving closer beneath him, or was it above him? He watched it grow larger, more detailed. With a sudden jerk of realization, he recognised the surface as the edge of the bio-missile's hull. He must have been off course by a minute amount, which translated into several miles over this distance. He tilted himself carefully, so that his feet would hit the hull first. This must have been the first real success all day, as he landed smoothly on the darkened vessel. There was no time left for curiosity. He broke into a kind of half-run, making sure the mag-locks of his feet always came in contact with the plating below. It did not take long before he was standing on the outside of a crude airlock, which looked to be on the verge of a blow-out. Though it could just be by design to keep away unwanted visitors such as himself. Deciding it this this or nothing, he pushed through the unlocked compressor door, stepping into the inner airlock. Finally entering a hallway of the vessel, he removed the suit, left it beside the airlock, and etched a symbol into the wall, just to the area to make it easier to find later if he needed. He then turned to investigate this strange new environment, and stopped dead.
"Oh, shi-" His shouts of grief were quickly interrupted, as a perfectly placed and extremely powerful electrostatic charge was fired, blowing him backward into a wall. He got unsteadily to his feet glaring in absolute shock and anger at the object responsible. It was a small sphere-shaped drone, not unlike those he had seen soar overhead back at the city. But those weren't armed. This particular model seemed more expertly designed, and less roughly assembled than the others. He dived clumsily out of sight as the drone moved into position for another shot. Without conscious thought, he reached for the Omnitrix. "Which to choose…" he thought quickly. Another, more intense shot ripped through the metallic bar behind which he had taken shelter. A freezing, white gas poured from it, clouding his vision. He had made a selection without realizing it, willing for it to be something useful. The normally blind flash of light was almost totally obscured by thick gas layer which was slowly dissipating.
A moment later, the familiar form of XLR8 emerged from the clearing haze, looking somewhat relieved that his first choice was the result. Ben ran forward, swiping at the attacking drone. At the last second, he missed though retained stability. The drone seemed able to adapt to the change of pace, as it began firing rapidly and changing position at great speed. One shot missed, the next hit him squarely in the back, the following shot missed yet again. The stalemate continued for minutes at a time, neither opponent quite capable of defeating the other. After what seemed like at least ten minutes of avoiding hits and hurling nearby objects at the converging drone, it malicious machine suddenly became completely still in midair. Its surface was internally illuminated by a dim red light. As Ben moved out from his next shelter, still very cautious and alert, he inspected the appearance of the drone. It appeared to be in some kind of recharge state. He hesitated for almost a full minute before moving in, suspicious that it may be some kind of trick, that it would wait until he was totally defenceless before dealing a crippling blow. At last, Ben decided the opportunity was a safe one. He stood directly in front of the machine, and brought his hand down hard. About half way through this process, however, the drone seemed to reach full power once more. Ben cursed himself for his own lengthy hesitation as yet another powerful blast of electrostatic energy knocked him backwards. Unlike the others, this shot was excruciatingly painful. It seemed to surge throughout him for moments before subsiding. Ben fell back to his original position to give the matter some thought. Had the drone detected his presence and reacted accordingly, or had its reactivation just been a coincidence as it reached full power? There was only one way to find out. He must wear it down once more.
As time went on, Ben began to suspect that it may actually have attacked as it had finish a recharge cycle. Where it was getting its power from was another good question, though best left for another time when he was not in life-threatening danger. The shots fired slowly decreased in intensity. The final shot merely knocked him off balance slightly. On this occasion, when the drone powered down, Ben wasted no time. He snatched up the nearest chunk of flooring he could find and ran toward the machine. It took nine heavy hits with this even heavier piece of metal before the crumpled drone finally fell to the floor.
Ben jumped as the sound of an opening airlock was heard from behind. He turned sharply, expecting to see more drones, or enemies. Instead, Gwen, Devoras, and Kevin trouped through the inner lock triumphantly.
The Omnitrix disengaged, and he observed each of them.
"Got some good news." Gwen said, cheerily. "Max is on his way. Turns out, there were operatives all over the world who've been hearing about this for days. They're planning a last stand in orbit, if worst comes to worst."
Ben nodded in appreciation, but his attention was fixed solely on Kevin.
"You bastard!" He shouted loudly. Ben gave him a look that could melt duranium. "Have you no shame!? Just got out of the void, did you? Thought you'd come crawling back for forgiveness!? After what you put us through all those years ago, I can't believe you would even show your face!"
Without warning, he ran at Kevin and hit him with a massive blow to the lower jaw. He dropped to the floor, groaning slightly from the force of the impact but wasted no time in pulling himself back upright. He in turn slammed Ben up against the wall. The fight continued to escalate for minutes before Gwen and Devoras unwillingly stepped in to salvage the situation.
"This isn't the time, guys!" Gwen called over the ensuing chaos. "This isn't going to get us anywhere!"
"He started it!" Kevin shouted. "It's not my fault that-"
Kevin paused, considering what he was about to say.
"Well, actually, it is my fault, but still!"
After it became clear that the two would never give in on their own, Gwen was forced to separate them forcibly with two bright projections of red energy. "Come on" She said. "We need to stop these missiles. You can sort this out later, but for now, you have to concentrate on what really important. We only get one shot at this, and we can't afford to make a mess of it."