The Monolith was nearing the Saint Nazaire. Oslo stood on the bridge, his eyes closed. "I'm beginning to feel the Seijin children," he said, the slightest smile playing at his lips. "Adjust our course."
----
"Cortes, the Monolith has slightly changed course, and it's accelerating," said Cheng.
"They must know where the orphanage is…" said Wayan. "They'll get there before us!"
Cortes scowled. It was true. And if the Monolith got there before the Saint Nazaire, there would be nothing they could do.
"Sir, do you want us to go faster?" Dahlia asked. "Wayan and I can manage it…"
"No," Cortes shook his head. "We'll never beat them there. Adjust our course; take us to the Monolith."
"What?" the two pilots said in unison.
"The Monolith… are you sure?" Wayan asked.
"Captain, the Saint Nazaire is no match for the Sphere flagships…" said Dahlia. "Are you sure this is a good idea? We won't even be able to dent it."
"I know that, Dahlia. But we don't have much choice. We don't have to take it down or dent it… we just have to slow them down…"
"How're we going to do that?" Wayan asked.
Cortes frowned. "We're going to play a game of cat and mouse…" He added under his breath: "And hope the cat doesn't catch up…"
----
Outside the orphanage, Po stood on the bloc's edge.
Two S22s were heading right towards him.
"Hey!" he said, waving his arms above his head. "Welcome to our bloc! If you come peacefully, we'll do you no harm… we'll even share our pie! But if you don't come in peace, we'll be forced to attack…"
He trailed off. The two ships had paused, appearing to just look at him. Then the underside of one's nose started glowing blue.
"That's it!" Po shouted. "We're going to take you…"
A blast impacted the side of the bloc about twenty feet down from the boy. Po's eyes widened. He wanted to run, but suddenly he couldn't move. The second blast hit right at his feet, and Po was tossed to the ground in a flurry of rocks and dirt. He lay there unmoving.
The S22s began docking against the side of the orphanage, ignoring Po's crumpled body.
----
"These are your weapons?" Lena asked, looking at the array of toys and sticks on the table in front of them.
"Well… they are just play weapons…" Lukas shrugged.
"Right," said Mahad. "We have toy weapons…"
"When I said we had weapons… I thought you'd made up the Sphere…" Lukas started to explain, but then just trailed off.
"Never mind," said Mahad. He picked up an arrow with a suction cup on the end, and examined it. "We'll just have to make do with what we have…"
----
"I've never seen a ship so big…" said Wayan. He started wide-eyed out the forward windows of the Saint Nazaire. Ahead of them was the Monolith, appearing to slice its way through the blocs ahead of it.
"We don't stand a chance…" muttered Dahlia.
"Engines to full power!" Cortes growled, ignoring his crew's misgivings. He knew they trusted him enough to follow his orders even if they doubted them. He just hoped they weren't perfectly justified to doubt.
The Saint Nazaire ran at the Monolith, coming at the larger ship from behind. As they approached it was obvious the Monolith completely dwarfed the pirates' ship. The Saint Nazaire came in close, swooping low over the Monolith's hull.
The radio activated. "Cortes… just what are you trying to prove?" Oslo's voice came over the communications, the hint of a laugh behind it.
Cortes gritted his teeth. "Says the man with the giant ship shaped liked that," he muttered. He ignored the radio, and kept staring straight ahead. "Get us out of here! Full power!" he shouted to his crew.
"Captain… the engines are in the red…" Wayan warned.
"I understand, Wayan, but keep going!"
Behind the fleeing pirates' ship, the Monolith turned to attack. Tendrils of electricity stretched from its forward weaponry, reaching for the Saint Nazaire.
The smaller ship was fleeing fast though, and instead the electricity became attracted to the nearby blocs and debris. When they hit, the blocs smashed and crumbled, spreading themselves across the path of the Monolith.
----
"Stop firing you trigger happy fools!" Oslo snarled, pounding his fist upon the console. "We can't hit the Saint Nazaire, and now it will take even longer to reach the orphanage through all this debris!"
He turned to the holographic image of Diwan that had appeared upon his console. "You'd better hope those scouts find those children, Diwan!" he shouted. "Or I will hold you personally responsible!"
----
"Alright, we showed them!" Dahlia grinned at Wayan.
"Hell, yeah!" Wayan grinned back.
"That'll just slow them down," said Cortes, not joining in his crew's celebration. "But hopefully it'll give us enough time to get to the orphanage well before them. Take us there, full speed."
"Aye, sir," Dahlia and Wayan responded.
----
In the orphanage, two Brigs stomped through the halls. They were part of the scouting party, which had recently landed by the orphanage. They were armed, and though their mission was to find and capture the children alive, they wouldn't hesitate to use force if they were attacked.
One stomped around a corner, and came across a small wooden train moving across the floor, glowing blue. It watched the moving toy, appearing strangely curious as it watched it move across the floor.
It was distracted, and all of a sudden, Mahad jumped around the corner and cleaved its head off with his boomerang. "Got ya!"
The second Brig was poking its head down the next hallway, when it noticed a whole lot of small red marbles spill out by its feet. It took a step, trying to see where they had come from, and slipped, smashing its circuitry.
Two other Brigs were exploring another part of the orphanage. Suddenly, a man sized figure appeared around the corner, attracting the two Brigs' attention. It was in fact a conglomerate of toys held together by Seijin energy. It had a basketball for a head, and the Seijin energy glowing all over it helped it to walk.
Two of the Seijin children hid around a corner, controlling the life sized doll.
It fooled the two Brigs, and one of them lifted its weapons arm, and shot the glowing stack of toys in the 'chest'. It fell apart, bits and pieces clattering to the ground.
But it distracted the Brigs long enough for one of the children to step out and shoot an arrow with a suction cup head straight in the eye of one of the Brigs.
Unable to see, the Brig stumbled around, panicked about as much as a machine could panic, and shot its companion in the chest.
"Yay!" said the small child that had shot it.
The remaining Brig heard him, and turned towards the voice.
"Ah!" said the boy, and ran off down the hallway.
The Brig followed the noise but was suddenly hit by a glowing, spinning slinky. The slinky wrapped around its neck, confusing it further.
Lukas stepped around a corner, following the slinky up with a blast of Seijin light.
The Brig exploded, and fell to the floor.
"You alright?" he asked the boy who had dashed to his side.
The boy nodded, and looked at the falling Brig. "We'll never be able to untangle that slinky, you know…"
"Come on…" said Mahad, sticking his head around the corner. "That's the last of the Brigs. We've got to get out of here!"
Lukas nodded, and chased the boy ahead of him.
They collected children on the way, and headed up and out of the orphanage.
"There's Cortes and the Saint Nazaire!" Mahad shouted, pointing as they exited the orphanage.
"But the Monolith is right behind them!" said Lena.
The Saint Nazaire was speeding towards the orphanage. But barely a few kilometres behind the pirate ship the far larger flagship of the Sphere seemed to push its way through the bits of bloc, bearing down on the smaller ship and the orphanage in front of it.
"There's Brigs out here!" Lukas shouted from behind them. He'd just come out behind Mahad and Lena, and spotted a couple of the machines standing out on the bloc.
The Brigs turned, spotting the children.
"Stay back until we get rid of them!" Lukas shouted back to the other children.
He and Lena blasted the first Brig then started picking off the other half dozen that were milling around outside the orphanage.
----
"The Monolith got out of all that debris far faster than I'd hoped," Cortes scowled, looking over his shoulder apprehensively. He was almost bouncing on the spot, and his hands were gripping the Saint Nazaire's wheel so tightly his knuckles had turned white. If the Monolith caught up, they'd stand no chance. And then there were the children.
"If the Monolith holds its present speed… we should be able to get them out…" said Cheng. He sounded unsure.
"Alright, alright…" said Cortes. "Wayan, Dahlia, bring us down as fast as you possibly can…"
"Yes, sir," Wayan replied. The two pilots were concentrating intently on the task. Docking was easy, but not quite so when you were attempting to do it at almost full speed.
Cortes looked ahead and out the forward windows, scanning the bloc for any sign of Mahad and Lena and the children. Suddenly, his eyes caught on something on the bloc's surface. "Bring the Saint Nazaire down here!" he shouted. "Right on this outcropping."
The Saint Nazaire banked sharply, coming into the bloc's side, and extending a ramp.
Cortes wasted no time in disembarking the Saint Nazaire; he was on the ramp before it even hit the side of the bloc.
----
"That's the last one!" shouted Mahad. He's just cleaved the head from the final Brig. It was boring letting Lukas and Lena take care of them all.
"The Saint Nazaire's just down there!" Lena shouted back to the children. "You have to get aboard as fast as you can!"
"Go on!" said Lukas, urging the first child ahead of himself.
The children ran down the side of the bloc, heading towards the red and black ship.
"It looks like a pirate ship…" observed a little girl.
"It's a good pirate ship," said Lena.
They finally made it down the bloc, careful not to leave any of the younger ones behind.
A couple of the children suddenly stopped at the front of the group.
"A pirate…!"
"An adult…!"
Cortes stood at the base of the Saint Nazaire's ramp. In his arms he held the crumpled form of Po. "Come on children, you need to get on the Saint Nazaire right away. You're all in great danger."
Lukas crashed his way to the front of the group. "What did you do to Po!?" he shouted.
Mahad grabbed him by the collar. "It's okay! Cortes didn't hurt him!"
"I think the Sphere shot him. He'll be alright, I promise you. But right now you have to get on the Saint Nazaire."
"Come on," said Lena, ushering the children ahead of her and up the ramp to the Saint Nazaire.
Lukas stayed staring at Cortes for a second more, as the other children filed past.
"Go on…" Mahad gave Lukas a gentle shove, coaxing him up the ramp.
Mahad and Cortes followed behind.
----
"No!" Oslo snarled, pounding a fist on the console in front of him. "This is all your fault Diwan! We'll never get the children before the Saint Nazaire now!" He paused for a moment, seething. "The last thing we want to give the resistance is Seijin children. Well, if we can't have them, then no one can. Destroy the orphanage!"
----
The Monolith sent a blast from its lightning canons across the sky. The orphanage was hit, and was instantly turned into a smouldering heap.
The Saint Nazaire was already pulling away. The children were all on board, and the Monolith would be unable to easily pursue through the high density blocs.
The lightning canons let off a few more blasts, but were unable to hit the Saint Nazaire.
The rescue had succeeded.
----
Two weeks later, the children had been settled into life on Puerto Angel. The Vector had been helping them catch up on schoolwork, much to the annoyance of most of the children.
Right now, they were all on break, sitting in Puerto Angel's tavern, and making a right lot of noise. A few paper aeroplanes were flying around the place, but apart from the noise they were mostly behaving themselves.
Lukas was sitting on the end of the one of the benches when Cortes slipped in to sit beside him.
"Ah, hi sir…" said Lukas. He wasn't as wary of adults as he'd been when he'd first arrived. Still, he found that the Captain still unnerved him just a little bit.
"Lukas… I heard you talking to Mahad about your parents yesterday…"
"Yeah…"
"Look, I know it must've been very hard having them leave you on that bloc. Believe me; they didn't have any other choice. Back then it was safer for you there."
"I get that…"
"They didn't desert you, lad. And we didn't mean to leave you for so long. They would have come back for you if they could have; and we would've come back if we knew where you were…"
"But the Sphere killed them…" said Lukas. "So you couldn't."
"Yeah." Cortes paused for a moment. "I knew your parents, Lukas. They loved you very much."
Lukas nodded, chewing his lip and looking down at the surface of the table. "Thanks, Captain…"
"Who wants to hear a story!" said Lena, bouncing in amongst some of the children. "I think you'll like this one…" She opened the book she held in her hands, and began to read. "Then the evil Captain Hook pushed Peter Pan over the edge. He peered over the edge… and saw Peter float up into the air. Tinkerbell had sprinkled him with pixie dust and rescued him!"
"Yay!" said one of the children. "I always knew Peter wasn't supposed to die!"
"Yeah," said another, "that'll show those evil mean pirates!"
Cortes sighed, shaking his head, and stood up from the table.
The Vector had just returned, and reaching over Lena he pulled the book from her hands. "I think we'll read something else today," he said with a smile. "Time to start work again."
"Aw, no!" all the children said in unison.