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LOCKDOWN

Episode 6: Belly of the Beast

TOM didn't think it was possible to feel claustrophobic in space, yet here he was floating out in the vacuum, surrounded by death, destruction, and deterioration, with that exact feeling worming its way into his head. As he waited, he kept his gaze fixed on the trash compactor, trying to imagine how he would get in there and handle this. He wasn't sure if his first-person shooter gaming experience was applicable to exchanging fire with a giant metal boss in real life, but he would soon find out. Besides, under the present circumstances, it was his only option. All or nothing.

Clyde finally arrived with a Keifer A-1 rifle slung underneath its eyeball-shaped body. Despite the ticking clock, TOM spared a minute to examine all three of its settings. He didn't want it running low or conking out on him in a critical situation. That was at least one thing he had learned from FPS games.

Once everything checked out, he dove back into the galactic junkyard, giving the star cruiser a wide berth to avoid setting off its proximity lasers again.

Then he was immersed in chaos again, flying full-tilt through the husks of long-dead starcraft. The universe tilted and lurched around him as he navigated the city-sized scrap field. Everything was so crowded that it took a minute before he could finally see the heart of all this destruction. The wickedly-designed ship grew steadily in his vision. It took a ridiculously long time to reach, but by the time it was looming over him, he wasn't surprised. It was a ship for giants ...

... And directly below him was the giant's maw: the tooth-lined entry point for all the scrap metal that was pulled in.

"Tom, we're down to forty-one DOKs," Sara updated him, her voice as cool as ever. "Please hurry."

"The quickest way into the belly of the beast," he said, working up his nerve and shoving his apprehension aside, "is straight down its throat!" He dove headfirst between two giant metal corkscrews.

Almost immediately, he decided that this act of courage had been a bad idea.

When the DOKs had made their way in, they had entered through the breached hull of the trash compactor and plotted a course back here to the deconstruction bay. That had been the smart route to take, because, as TOM discovered, all it took was one physical body passing through the mouth of that bay to activate its machinery.

No sooner was he inside than a dozen more blades, saws, and drills lumbered into motion. He dodged wildly back and forth to avoid a pair of jabbing, saw-toothed spikes meant to further tenderize the metal that was drawn in (in this case, him), then swooped back up as a set of circular saws nearly sliced him in half.

The machinery giving motion to these giant cutting instruments was so impossibly fast and powerful that the steel walls of the bay were shuddering. Had there been air to carry vibration, he was certain he'd be deaf by now. But the vibration in the walls alone was nonetheless overwhelming. He didn't technically have a heart, but if he did, it was jumping outside his chest right now.

Averting another pair of circular saws, he blasted toward the bottom of the pit while they swished behind/above him like spinning pendulums. Staying close to the wall provided safety, so he skimmed it the rest of the way down. He darted around protrusions and openings from which tools of destruction could spring until he was directly across the bay from his target: the tractor beam chamber. He pulled up away from the wall and shot into it.

Sara saw him enter via the Clyde that was hovering in the access tunnel. "Don't barge in recklessly," she warned. "It's dangerous inside."

TOM's mind was so full of panic and relief that he barely heard what she said. Having enormous blades lunging at him from every angle had drained him so much that when he came in for a landing, his legs completely gave out on him. He collapsed in a cloud of dust. Clyde drifted up to make sure he was alive and in one piece (something TOM himself wasn't sure about). After several groups of DOKs had flown by to get slaughtered, he managed to reply, "I don't reckon you gotta worry about me being overconfident, Sara ... Not one bit."

"Well, good."

Rising shakily to his feet and struggling to keep his knees from wobbling, he took up a position just outside the doorway. "Dangerous in there, you say?" He peeked inside to get a look at the security robot. As wave after wave of DOKs hurled past him to engage it, he decided he had been wise to be not quite as confident as they were. Matter of fact, he was actually slightly put off by the unstoppable, homicidal ferocity with which it slaughtered their ranks. One team unloaded high-power lasers into its armor, and were quickly dispatched by a rapid blast from its machine gun turret. Another DOK swept in, pinging away with two handheld plasma pistols. It was impaled on a scalpel and shucked aside. TOM fell back behind the doorframe and steadied his trembling nerves again.

"Okay, here we go," he murmured to Sara with far more courage than he felt. "While they've got it distracted, I'll shoot it."

Sara decided that telling him to be careful would sound ridiculous. "Good luck."

TOM jumped out, ready to blast his enemy with the Kiefer's electro-beam, but hesitated. The sentry robot had a massive electro-beam cannon on its shoulder, so it stood to reason that it would be fairly well guarded against the much skinnier one fired from his diminutive rifle.

His hesitation lasted long enough for the sentry robot to wipe up the attackers it was currently engaged with and find a new target. Pivoting its machine gun to face the new intruder, it unleashed a salvo. The deadly slugs pinged and zipped off scorched metal while TOM took cover again.

"Tom, quit fooling around!"

"I'm not fooling around!" TOM shot back as he pumped the Kiefer to its next setting. "I'm just ... figuring out how to do this the best way."

"I know this is more intense than an FPS game, but you should at least remember how to shoot," Sara retorted.

"Yeah, well ... it's more than I expected. Don't worry, I got this." He began charging the weapon.

Sara shifted her attention to the DOKs; twenty remained. "You'd better get it quick, because we're running out of time. Pretty soon, you'll be facing that thing alone."

By now, his gun was blazing and shuddering with power that struggled to be let loose. "Let's hope I can stay on my feet this time," he muttered, recalling the last time he'd used the Kiefer on this setting. He stepped through the doorway, took aim, and was promptly thrown back into the access tunnel from the recoil. The DOKs made a path for the photon grenade as it shot across the chamber, lighting the place up like a disco ball.

For an insane killing-machine, the sentry robot was programmed with craftier combat techniques than he'd expected. It turned and tilted its shoulder down slightly, putting its electro-beam cannon into the grenade's path. The explosion that followed rippled the walls more furiously than the cutting machinery outside. But even before the smoke had time to clear, there were more bullets punching out of the debris cloud.

The bullets were coming at TOM, who was just rising to his feet with barely enough time to realize he was being shot at. He dove behind one of the heavy control banks for cover. The sentry robot switched tactics and began pouring lead into the bank while continuing to slash away at the DOKs. TOM's cover was quickly being eaten up.

"Sara, you're my eyes!" he yelled, continuously flinching from the bullets that were punching through the metal all around his head.

Between TOM's peril, the plummeting number of DOKs, and the constant knowledge of what the trash compactor was capable of doing, Sara was becoming slightly frantic. She quickly compartmentalized her thoughts so she could process the situation without her emotions becoming inhibitions. Using one of the Clydes, she glanced about and spied an opportunity: in the middle of the floor, rising from the carpet of burnt-out, chopped-up DOKs, one was pushing itself back up by its arm. The other arm was leveling a rocket launcher at the trigger-happy security droid.

"Start charging, now," Sara ordered.

As TOM obeyed, the wounded DOK fired its rocket and scored a direct hit. Very little damage was done, but it accomplished what Sara had hoped: to draw the armored monster's fire away from TOM's flimsy cover.

"Now, Tom!"

A split-second later, TOM was on his feet with his rifle raised while armor-piercing rounds were tearing up the stubborn DOK. He lowered himself into a crouch, but the recoil still sent him sliding backward across the gritty floor. His skid became an awkward tumble until he reached the back of the chamber, tripped, and crashed into a heap of dead DOKs. The terrific explosion occurred at the same moment.

At last, the heat of battle dissipated and stillness settled into the chamber. The Absolution's robotic army took up a defensive formation, hovering around the dying remains of the security robot. They watched as its scalpel-tipped arms drooped, the red light of its optic receptor faded, and its anti-gravity power cell cut off and died. It crashed to the floor in an upright position. A curious Clyde failed to get out of the way as the droid's massive shell tilted forward and smashed the floating eyeball.

From the far corner, TOM grunted out, "Did I get it this time?" He shoved a limp metal arm out of his face to get a look at the aftermath. Even from its face-down position, he could see that the fallen sentry's armor had been blasted open and that at least one cubic meter of its insides were disintegrated.

"Looks like," Sara confirmed.

"Sweet!" TOM pushed his way out of the burnt robot corpses and crossed the littered chamber, stepping over the sentry's remains to get to the generator. With the few surviving DOKs and their last Clyde gathered around him in the next room, he lowered the setting on his gun and drilled into the generator. Its internal systems ruptured and spat sparks until the machine shut down permanently. It was the most satisfying target he had ever fired at.

"We're free from the tractor beam. All systems are coming back online," Sara informed him.

"Then collect the DOKs and let's blow this joint."

"Affirmative."

Moments later, TOM had left the DOKs behind in the cargo bay and was making a beeline for the bridge. "Alright, time to make ourselves scarce," he said, planting himself in his chair before Sara's holographic image. "Let's not hang around here any longer than we have to."

"Agreed," Sara replied. "Engines and hyperspace drive are online. And what a relief that is."

"Uh-huh ... tell me about it." TOM was watching the transparent canopy over the bridge, anticipating hyperspace entry, when he abruptly remembered something. "D'oh, wait, what about that distress signal? Did you ever break the code?"

"Yes," Sara said factually. "It reads, 'Do not attempt to enter this area. Please help. We are caught in a tractor beam and are being pulled in'."

He felt sheepish all of a sudden. "Heh ... Well, I guess we figured that one out a little late. Where are they now?"

"The ship appears to be firing its engines and is heading away."

Peering out through the shell-shaped canopy, TOM could see that was exactly what the star cruiser was doing.

"Wonder who was in there ..." he thought aloud. He watched it turn and fly off into the cosmos, not really caring much that they hadn't received a "so long", a "thanks-a-lot", or even an "it's-about-damn-time". Whatever the case, it appeared to have enough power to get wherever it was going.

"Hyperspace entry in five ... four ... three ... two ... one ..."

TOM took one last look at the lifeless, powerless, defeated trash compactor. Turning his back on it, he relaxed into his chair as Sara's voice washed over him. Now that the threat was neutralized and they could move through the galaxy under their own power, both the automaton and the AI were coming away from the situation with a refreshed sense of freedom.

"... Mark."

A glowing, churning, rainbow-patterned hyperspace tunnel burst into existence from the black nothingness. With a flash, the Absolution disappeared.

~fin~

Post Script: My apologies for the shortness of all these chapters. If you have seen the episodes on Youtube, you may notice that there wasn't a great deal of content to expand upon. It's actually amazing I managed to build up to more than four chapters.

Thanks for checking out my fourth Toonami fanfiction. I hope you enjoyed it. Remember, the revolution has been televised.