NOTE: This isn't finished, but I decided to upload it because I don't want to make you guys wait. I've put this on hold for my/the exam period, jtlyk.
16: Silence On The Throne Of Altus
The Titan plummeted toward the ground.
Shin Mei had tried everything to get the ship to straighten out, but to no avail. Finally, with a heavy sigh, he had decided to give the order he had saved for last.
"...Activate emergency fulgur rerouters," he groaned, almost sounding embarrassed.
"But sir, that'd mean-!" one of the bridge crew started to protest.
"Just DO it!" Shin Mei cut in massively. He knew full well the consequences of rerouting electricity to the engines (which were fitted with settings allowing them to run on electrical power should they be damaged). The electricity would be taken from other parts of the ship. Getting the two damaged engines to run again would require a large amount of it. It was likely that the electrically powered weaponry (including ballistae) and the doors allowing smaller ships in and out of the hangar would be rendered unable to function. The Battleship would be reduced to little more than a grossly oversized cargo hauler. The airships dispersed prior would now have to make their own way back to Tenkai. But it was either that or allow the ship to crash, killing everybody aboard, as well as a significant portion of Eridias' population, and probably ruining Shikimaru's plan in the process. And Shin Mei knew that that was out of the question.
Slowly, the ship righted itself, the electricity fueling the damaged engines, metalwork creaking with the strain.
"Set a course for Tenkai. We've no choice but to leave," Shin Mei commanded sternly.
"But what about the enemy Battleship? It's not just going to let us -," a crewman began.
"Nevermind that," Shin Mei interrupted smoothly, "The demolition team did their job. By the time that ship realises we're fleeing, they won't be in a position to follow anything or anyone. Trust me."
With Shin Mei's cryptic explanation in mind, the crew stayed silent, steering the Titan away from danger and back to Tenkai.
"Admiral, the enemy ship has evened out!"
The words were like needles to Admiral Lysander Hunt.
"What?! But that's-! Ah, the fulgur rerouters..." Hunt growled with contempt, then fell silent.
"...Your orders, sir?" the crewman nearest to him on the right asked, his voice grave.
"...Destroy. That. Ship. Now," the Admiral seethed. But the order was never acted upon, for seconds after Admiral Hunt had uttered it, the bridge was engulfed in a blazing heat, a blinding light and a deafening noise, and trapped in the grip of an almighty quake. The admiral was knocked off his feet and was utterly disorientated.
Slowly, the blankness that blinded him faded and allowed the world back in, but even so his vision was a tad blurred and any attempt at thinking was, like the cacophony of noises he could hear in the undertone of the chaos, drowned out by intensely loud white noise. With his vision cleared -mostly- he could see that the once pristine bridge was now awash with flames. The whole room was littered with rubble and debris and the floor was slick with blood. Only two of the bridge crew were alive. The rest were nothing but broken bodies (quite literally in some cases) scattered across what passed for a floor. The consoles that controlled the ship were battered and broken, some sparking, the mechanical equivalent of a twitching corpse.
"What...what happened?" the Admiral asked, the two officers, both of whom stood above him, his speech somewhat slurred.
"An explosion. The enemy must have somehow planted explosives on the outside of the ship. I'm assuming that these explosives came in the prom of projectiles launched by the enemy Battleship; no other form of explosive could have caused such damage. This destruction has occurred across the ship, and we are currently losing altitude as a result," one of the officers informed him with absolute neutrality. She wore the standard uniform for an officer: a knee-length skirt, a waistjacket and a beret, all red with gold trims. Her hair was blonde and tied into a neat queue that reached all the way down to her hips. Her face was small, neat and perfectly formed. Her lips were as red as her uniform and her eyes were a stunning, ethereal hazel. She offered Hunt her hand and he took it thankfully, pulling himself to his feet and dusting of his clothes.
"What's your name, officer?" he inquired.
"Corporal Amelia Jade, sir," the young woman replied. She had a surname, so clearly she was of a fairly wealthy background. Her confidence was of no surprise, then, to the Admiral.
"And yours?" Hunt asked the other crewman, a man this time, dressed in the usual red and gold trousers and waistcoat. His hair was short and brown and his eyes were such a pale blue that most would think them grey. He was young, perhaps nineteen or twenty, and seemed rather sheepish and frightened.
"P-private Adam, sir," the young man stuttered, hesitant. The Admiral laid a hand on his shoulder and put on the warmest facial expression he could.
"Relax, son. You'll get out of this okay," he said.
The Dragon's Roar was losing altitude, and fast. If the three of them didn't do something soon, the Battleship would smash into Eridias, with unimaginably catastrophic consequences. The Admiral was in charge. He had to act now. He turned to face Corporal Jade, a slight twinkle in his old eyes.
"Any idea how pilot a Battleship?"
With a less than graceful landing, the Phalanx had finally reached Szaras Dúl, the Glass Palace, dead in the centre of Eridias. They'd had to shoot...a lot...but they'd finally made it, the airship crashing through the grand silver gates and into the courtyard, ploughing through objects and earth alike. There were no civilians to be seen for miles around, not even in the city outside the low-lying circular wall that surrounded the building. The Glass Palace itself, however, wasn't made of glass at all. It was constructed entirely of virtually opaque purecrystal, and icy blue-white that caught even the slightest beam of light, which made it appear almost glasslike, hence the name. It didn't even look very palace-y. It was both wide and tall, but was very squarish, no smooth or round areas. It was grand, very, very grand. Just not glass and not a palace. Then again, if people just called it "the seat of parliament", then people from all walks of life and from all over the country wouldn't flock to see it and it wouldn't be considered the biggest tourist attraction in Altus.
On another note, while no civilians were present anywhere nearby, there were certainly plenty of Guildsmen, called to arms in the name of their Chancellor. At least three rows of them, around ten or eleven in each, all dressed in the traditional armour of a Guild Knight. They all carried rapiers, which they promptly drew as Shikimaru, along with Dante, Alexis, Aaron, Ichiro, April, Teiko, Ash, Yumi, Ruby, Irvine, Thain and Miyuki and about half a dozen Dyuragaua-armoured Tenkai soldiers stepped off of the airship.
"Pointless," Shikimaru huffed at the sight of the Guild Knights, all of them making a beeline from him and his company. He simply grunted dismissively to himself and flapped his wing a single time, fast and swift, cutting through the air like a swift swordstroke. A sinister, otherworldly substance emanated from the wingbeat, glowing a deep purple with hints of black, peppered with glittering particles of god-knows-what. As it blanketed the marauding Guildsmen, they each began to cough and splutter, then cry out sharply, clearly in some distress, before the colour drained from their skin and they topple to the floor. Each and every one of them, dead in seconds.
"Thanatoxide intoxication," Shikimaru explained without being prompted to do so. "That's what Narka dubbed the substance the Goa Magara transmits, carrying the Virus. In laymen's terms, MDV overdose. Anyhow, keep moving. We're almost there."
On swift heels, Shikimaru and the hunters headed toward the entrance to the Glass Palace.
"A Battleship?" Corporal Amelia Jade echoed Admiral Hunt. "Well, no. But I've had moderate experience in airship and sandskiff piloting," she answered honestly.
"Better than nothing. Hop to it!" Hunt replied, somewhat optimistic. Jade calmly approached one of the blocky metal control panels and scanned over it with her eyes, assessing the damage.
"Hmm...This one appears to be working. Well, just. But one of the others are, so this will have to suffice," she explained, almost like tour guide. She promptly sat down in the seat before the control panel with superfluous grace, her fingers taking to the myriad keys and buttons with lightning speed, her barely visible eyebrows furrowed with intense concentration. At last, a small beeping noise sounded from the panel and Jade sighed with relief before standing once again. "There, now the flight controls are unlocked. They went into lockdown following the explosion in accordance with Flight Protocol Zero Thirty-Two. I can pilot manually now. Please step back, Admiral."
Admiral Hunt did as Jade said, calmly taking a couple of paces back, allowing her the space to concentrate and perform at optimum efficiency. Jade's eyes lit up as they studied to set of controls before her, her slender, feminine hands gently finding their way around the various levers, what did what and the like. Suddenly, she groaned with exasperation and disappointment.
"No. No, no, no, no, no!" she grumbled with frustration. "There isn't enough power for the controls to function. I can't do anything!"
"What about the fulgur rerouters? Activate them," Hunt suggested.
"Can't, that method doesn't apply to the flight controls - it runs on a power cell of its own, but this one's dead; the only way to restore power now would be to get a new power cell from the reactor room," Jade replied. "However, that place is crazy unstable and buzzing with kilofulgurs and kilofulgurs of electricity. You'd need one of the Zinogre armour suits provided and some experience to even attempt to step inside."
"I can do that! I work in the reactor room!" Private Adam burst out, eager both to help out and to save himself and anybody else who could be alive.
"Perfect! Get down there!" Corporal Jade chirped.
"Hold on a minute," Admiral Hunt interrupted. "How long do we have until we hit the ground?" he asked.
"Uh...About..." Jade trailed off as she consulted the one control panel still working. "About ten minutes."
"And how long will it take to get from here to the reactor room?"
"...We won't have enough time!"
"How long?" Hunt pressed, unperturbed.
"Five minutes, if you run, plus five minutes back, plus however long it takes Adam there to extract the power cell. Not enough time. Not unless you can sprint," Jade answered. "Really, really fast," she added as an afterthought.
Jade let out a short, almost inaudible stutter as Private Adam produced a phial of translucent golden-yellow fluid from a pouch attached to his hip. He quickly gulped it down and checked the empty glass into a pile of rubble.
"Mega Dash Juice," he said simply, with a hesitant smile, having a feeling that those three words would sink it on their own.
"...Fantastic," Jade said, almost under her breath. She paused, seeing Adam was still here. "Well, what the hell are you waiting for?! GO, GO, GO!"
"Y-yes ma'am!" he blurted, quickly dashing away from the bridge (thankfully, the door hadn't been blocked by the rubble) and toward the reactor room.
The only thing Admiral Lysander Hunt and Corporal Amelia Jade could do now was wait.
The doors of the Glass Palace burst open with a cloud of ominous, shimmering purple smoke. Shards of crystal flew in every direction like shrapnel. A few Guild Knights drew their rapiers, poised and ready to strike at whatever emerged from the rapidly clearing smog.
But they never got the chance. They were struck dead by a wingbeat full of Thanatoxide -basically the Mad Dragon Virus it its purest form- from Emperor Shikimaru Tetsuya of the Separatist Province of Tenkai before they even had the chance to catch a glimpse of him. He strode forward confidently with his small squad of soldiers and his prisoners -Dante and friends- as if this were his palace and he hadn't seen it in years.
The Glass Palace's interior was nothing like the exterior. The walls were a regal marble white and the floor was red with gold lines running in elaborate patters, almost as if someone had carved the design of an item of expensive clothing into the floor. The tarnished gold Guild insignia had been engraved in the centre. Although, the ceiling above them was made of glass, probably the only major part of the palace that was actually glass. There were several closed doors and a couple of turns that led to other areas of the palace, but there was no need to explore them. Already sat on his throne was Chancellor Tojou, both calm and startled at the same time. He stood as Shikimaru approached the bottom of the three short steps.
Tojou was a fairly old man, perhaps in his early sixties, with ash blonde hair tied into a very tight, very neat and carefully groomed queue, tied with an intricate bronze hairclip shaped like a snake's jaw, and a long beard that reached down to his upper chest to match. He possessed a pair of deep-set, wizened eyes with a gaze that was so erudite it was almost tangible. His skin was ever so slightly tanned and had the dull gleam and luster that only came with the luxury of extensive care and good hygiene. He was dressed in an olive green robe -probably made of the finest silk, if his position was any indication- decorated with strange, almost symbolic linings of golden thread. The robe covered his entire body except for his hands, neck and head, so that he looked like he was gliding when he moved. He looked so eastern that it was almost hilarious and stereotypical.
"Many greetings, Kobayashi," Tojou greeted his enemy calmly, almost welcoming him.
"Don't use my surname, Itsuki!" Shikimaru snapped. "You know I can't stand it."
"Precisely. That's why I said it," Tojou replied.
"Enough of this inane chatter. You're coming with me, your highness" Shikimaru stated as if it were fact, adding the formal address with wry sarcasm. As Shikimaru's soldiers prepared to escort Tojou away, a dull rumbling noise stopped them. The noise reached its peak volume as at least a hundred Guildsmen, most dressed in the standard red and gold, some dressed in the black and gold of elite Guildsmen,, came stampeding into the expanse of the throne room from the plethora of passageways and doors. The delicate clinking of razor sharp rapiers being drawn filled the air for a few seconds, and after that a short silence settled before being broken when Tojou spoke again.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Shikimaru," the aged Chancellor mused. "I'm afraid I shan't be going anywhere. It would be in your very best interest to leave, now, while you still can."
"I'll leave when I've got what I came for," Shikimaru retorted. However, before he could do anything, Ichiro, who stood almost directly to the right of Shikimaru, snatched the emperor's own rapier (which had obviously been replaced since Thain snapped his previous blade at Fort Ryu) and sliced into the soft, fleshy webbing of Goa Magara wing with decisive force, as if the boy had tonnes of pent up anger that had finally boiled to the surface. Shikimaru roared with pain, stumbling forward. Chancellor Tojou sidestepped and allowed the separatist to hit the cold, hard floor. Thain, Irvine and Miyuki quickly dispatched the six Tenkai soldiers that guarded them, Miyuki and Irvine dispatching their targets with hand-to hand combat taught to all soldiers within a week of signing up, while Thain simply put his thick, stocky build to good use and smashed a couple of the soldiers with his brutish fists. As the hoard of Guildsmen surged toward him, Shikimaru produced a long and narrow white flute from his pocket and sounded it loudly, emitting a high-pitched, slightly discordant note.
Seconds afterward, the ceiling high, high above shattered as the tenebrous abomination known as the Goa Magara crashed through it with a stygian yowl. No sooner had its nimble limbs touched the ground had it set to work on the mass of Guild soldiers, clawing and snapping at them with unrivaled strength and blinding speed. The sounds of tearing flesh and anguished cries spread through the room like wildfire, the Plaguespreader -which was, ironically, not currently plague-spreading- dashing around wildly, bowling through the crowds of militants like a Bullfango in a china shop.
While the Goa Magara was busy decimating Tojou's men, Shikimaru quickly recovered from the surprise attack Ichiro had dealt him, ignoring the sharp, stinging pain in his injured wing, and quickly flapped the boy with it. Ichiro fell to the floor with a dull thud. Shikimaru's rapier was jolted out of his hand and into the air, its rightful owner quickly snatching it in midair as it reached eye level. Before any of the former prisoners could attack him, he grabbed Chancellor Tojou and shoved the ageing ruler in front his him, the separatist's keen blade pressing against his back.
"Take one more step and I'll run him through!" Shikimaru warned sternly. The hunters froze almost instantly, and slowly backed away a few steps, some sighing and cursing under their breath as they did so. Shikimaru called out to the Goa Magara. "Watashi o toru!" (Take me!)
The Goa Magara almost instantaneously abandoned its rampage, galloping over to Shikimaru, who forced Chancellor Tojou to climb onto its back. Shikimaru himself did the same after, and the moment Shikimaru settled on the Goa Magara's back, the abomination spread its eerie cape-like wings, which matched perfectly with its equally ghoulish visage, and took to the air once again, flying out through the shattered glass ceiling with the same awesome speed it had used to shatter it to begin with. Dante, Alexis and their compatriots could only look on with despair as their target made off with their protector. With hardly anybody besides themselves left alive or standing, a silence followed, which Ash eventually broke, hesitantly.
"Well...we might as well go n' get our stuff back from the Phalanx," the thirteen-year-old suggested.
"The wee lass 'as a point," Thain concurred. "Not like there's anythin' left to do here."
Frustrated, outsmarted and defeated, the disheartened band of hunters slowly trudged off to the crashed Tenkai airship.
8:00
The Dragon's Roar was still falling toward Eridias, and at no leisurely pace. It was literally falling out of the sky like a rock. It still had two of the four main engines functioning, so it was keeping itself level, but it was falling nevertheless. Corporal Jade still stood patiently beside the dead manual flight controls on the bridge with Admiral Hunt, waiting silently, patiently for Private Adam to return with the replacement power cell for the defunct console.
"It's been two minutes," Jade stated plainly. "We've got eight minutes remaining until collision." She sniffed absentmindedly and swished her head, making her tight, long and thin blonde queue whip the air stylishly. She blinked her hazel eyes shut for a split second. Her hands, which were stationary by her side, twitched ever so slightly.
"Nervous?" Admiral Hunt asked, somewhat jokingly, raising a blackish-grey eyebrow inquisitively, causing the wrinkles on his forehead -the one true sign of age- to scrunch together.
"Of course I am," Jade replies calmly, her voice wavering in such a slight degree it was almost unnoticeable. "I've stared death in the face many a time. Just...just never on a Battleship, above the heart of my country, far away from home. And this time I can't do anything to help myself. I have to rely on somebody else to survive, to see another sunrise. It's not a situation I'm comfortable with."
"That's justified; nobody wants to die far away from their loved ones with no way to prevent it. Nobody wants to have to rely on others, either. But think about the bigger picture, Corporal."
"The...bigger picture, Admiral?"
"Yes, the bigger picture. We might be relying on another individual to avoid death, but that action will save the lives of potentially thousands of innocent people. That's what our job is, Jade. It's what we signed up for."
"Yes, well..." Jade said stiffly, staring out of the window at the endless cityscape growing ever bigger, "...We won't be saving anyone if that power cell doesn't get back here in six."
6:00
Private Adam had skidded to a halt just outside the reactor room, where a line of about eight -or maybe it was nine, he wasn't very good at counting- sets of Zinogre armour were set on the wall, piece by piece, in logical order, just waiting for somebody to put them on. The turquoise and gold with tufts of white fur dotted around, along with the sharpness of the set, its asymmetry and the thoroughly intimidating, almost tribal-ish face incorporated into the helm, made it truly striking. Not that such qualities were necessary when working in a reactor room. Then again, such armour was designed for hunting, combat, not maintenance (albeit essential maintenance). The only real reason Zinogre armour was used was because of its incredibly high resistance to thunder, making it perfect for dealing the highly volatile electrical power employed in next-generation technology such as Battleships like this.
Okay, keep calm, just let the- The- Oh, what's it called? Adr...Adrena... Ugh, nevermind. Just concentrate!
He was thinking of adrenaline. That was the thing about Adam; he wasn't very smart. A practical job like reactor maintenance was nothing short of ideal for someone like him. Of course, his lack of intellect wasn't his fault. He was born in Je Bul, which was pretty much the poorest, most impoverished region in Altus, which was mostly because it was hit hardest by the recession and most neglected by the Guild. It was a simple farming region with hardly any credible exports besides the odd fish you couldn't find anywhere else, so naturally, in a country pared in two by civil war and crushed under the iron heel of a recession as a result, the Guild considered Je Bul to be the least important place in the country. The rest of the outer regions weren't too much better off, but they were still better off than poor Je Bul.
He pulled the armour off of the wall and put it on, piece by needlessly fearsome piece. As soon as he was ready, he approached the thick metal door of the reactor room, pulled the handle downward and pushed.
The reactor room was squarish and compact, glowing a deep, vibrant azure due to the copious amounts of free electricity in the room. Most of it wasn't even contained, it zapped and danced around the floors and walls constantly, and the buzzing in the room was so loud one couldn't possibly hear themself think. It was that volatile; human control over it was that rudimentary. The walls, floor and the part of the door that faced the inside of the room where plated with thick, dense plastic, so as to contain the electrical power within the confines of the reactor room.
Here we are, Adam thought, not daring to breathe a sigh of relief just yet. He managed a thin smile to himself, however.
Placed in the main space of the room were four metal, grey-silver cuboid structures, shorter than a person but tall enough that one could touch it without having to bend their elbows. On the top sat four enticingly eye-catching cylinders of...something...which glowed and even brighter shade of azure -more like sky blue, really- and were embedded so deep within their metal containers that only about a quarter of the full object could be seen. Four of these cylinders in four of these cuboid containers. These were the power cells necessary to keep the reactor, the most essential part of the ship, online. Of course, the problem was that they would die if they were kept in the same slot all the time. Each power cell required it be subjected to multiple intensities of voltage to perform at optimum efficiency. Keep it constantly at a high voltage and it'll short out; keep it constantly at a low voltage and it won't provide enough electricity. Ergo, you had to move each power cell to a different container every half an hour. The two containers on the left side (from the point of view at which you enter the room) were high voltage and the pair on the right side were low voltage, each container being labelled A (top left), B (bottom left), C (top right) and D (bottom right). Cells in A went to B, cells in C went to D and vice versa. It was a fairly boring job, but on the plus side those in charge of moving the cores only had to do just that. Nothing else for a whole hour. It didn't take very long and only needed one person per container. The other four sets of armour (or five, again, Adam couldn't really remember how to count that well) were just in case there was some kind of problem and someone else had to enter the reactor room, or just in case somebody needed to take over for somebody else. Thankfully the reactor could -under strict monitoring, of course- function pretty much without any external interference. Obviously, erring on the side of caution, the reactor could be -at considerable risk, mind- deactivated manually. But then the ship would drop out of the sky like a rock, so many wondered what the point was.
Adam walked over to container C. It was on the left, so its power cells would have a high electrical charge. He carefully, placed his left hand on the top of the cell on the bottom right of the four and lifted it out very, very slowly. Removing a power cell was delicate work, and potentially dangerous if the remover is inexperienced. Every power cell in the room was slightly different to one another. If it made contact with another power cell, it could earn one an electric shock, at the least, no matter what they were wearing. As he lifted the cell out far enough for him to be able to hold it with two hands, Adam did so, for the extra control.
Steady...Steady...Almost there...Aaaand gotcha!
Adam yanked the power cell away from the container as soon as it was away from its slot, as if he'd just freed his arm from between two walls. He held it horizontally, with both hands gripped tight around each end, as was the textbook procedure for carrying power cells. And because it was pretty darn heavy. The reactor would be okay, or at least, so Adam hoped. He'd never been specifically told that a reactor needed all eight power cells to function. It might just function slightly less efficiently. No big deal. Better to have a grazed knee than a broken neck, so to speak.
Right...Now to get this thing back to the bridge.
Dante, Alexis, April and Aaron, along with Yumi, Ruby, Teiko, Ash, Miyuki, Irvine, Ichiro (who had still said nothing literally all day) and Thain all stood in a disorganised cluster just outside the Phalanx, staring up into the sky at possibly the most terrifying thing they had ever bore witness to.
A Guild Battleship was falling out of the sky.
It was so, so huge. If it hit the ground, it would completely obliterate a small portion of Eridias. However, that wouldn't be the case; the reactor within was of such a calibre of power that if the Battleship hit the ground, it would probably wipe out a quarter of the city. It was so close to ground contact now that no matter where the hunters went, they wouldn't escape the blast in time, even by airship. Unless that ship somehow managed to right itself, they were doomed.
"Well, bugger," Thain huffed and spat onto the ground beneath him, not sounding particularly phased by the prospect of vapourisation at the hands of a nigh unfathomably large explosion.
"I don't want to die here...!" Alexis murmured, frightened. She clutched Dante in her loving embrace and he returned the gesture silently, both closing their eyes and waiting for the end. Aaron and April both said nothing, but their hands joined together slowly. Like Dante and Alexis, Ash wrapped her arms around her brother and squeezed her eyes shut in fearful prayer. Yumi, Ruby, Irvine, Miyuki and, albeit hesitantly, Ichiro, all joined hands archaically and stared the ship in the face, waiting for everything to turn to white.
They were at death's door. And they were ready to knock.
2:00
The explosion rocked the ship through and through, almost causing Corporal Amelia Jade and Admiral Lysander Hunt to lose their balance. Even when the quakes ceased, the low rumbling didn't. The ship slowly titled on its port side, with the two Guildsmen having to grip tightly onto whatever was at hand -the manual flight controls for Jade and a broken control panel for the Admiral- in order to avoid sliding across the now lopsided floor. The ship faced the ground almost directly now. It was now falling more or less straight downwards, a huge, flaming red arrow tip racing toward the ground. A hellish shard of destruction.
"What the hell's going on?!" Hunt barked, alarmed.
"A second engine just went bust! It must've been suffering from a fuel leakage or something! We're falling even faster!" Jade answered, also distressed. Just then, she screamed and thrust her body back as far as she could as a huge cluster of jagged rubble that was once piled in a heap on the floor flew past her. It made contact with the glass panel at the head of the ship. The glass was thick, strong and durable, but it was no use - the rubble smashed through the panel, shattering it with ease. The glass and the rubble seemed to be yanked away as soon as they fell away. The heavy, deafening sound of the whistling air rushed into the bridge, as did a gust of wind, herculean in strength. The fronts of the two soldiers' clothes were literally pressed against their chests, rippling madly. Jade lurched over to her left, to the one control panel that still worked, trying with all her might to withstand the gale-force wind pushing against her. With a freakishly feline yowl of determination (although most of the sound was lost in the noise) she slammed her palm down on a large, circular metal button. Moments later, a large metal panel began to slowly creep across the now-empty window pane, replacing the lost glass with heavy grey metal. With a dull, echoing thud it slammed closed, shutting out the wind. Of course, they were now blind, but at least now they could move properly.
"WHERE IS ADAM WITH THAT FUCKING POWER CELL?!" Jade screeched in her fearful ire. Admiral Hunt didn't answer, but lit another cigar, placing it in his mouth and taking a good, deep puff.
Almost as if it were his last.
"I think it's safe to say that we're not getting out of this, Corporal," he said with tired resignation. "Perhaps we should use this precious time we have left to make our peace with Altarch."
0:57
Adam clutched the power cell against his chest and tried not to scream as he slid across the almost vertical floor. The ship had lost another engine and now it was almost facing straight down, and falling faster to boot. Sure, since the young man was pressed for time at the moment, this current mode of "transport" was convenient...but it wouldn't be anything but if he didn't lose speed before he hit the bridge doors, which were growing increasingly larger before his eyes.
0:54, 0:53, 0:52...
Adam could make out the thin, black line filled by shadow, where the bridge doors would pull apart to allow one inside. If he didn't slow himself down now he was going to die. His wide eyes frantically scanned the surroundings that rushed past him in a blur, desperate for some kind of escape; a lose cord, a door handle, a box, anything. Anything that he could hold onto.
0:46, 0:45, 0:44, 0:43, 0:42, 0:41, 0:40, 0:39, 0:38, 0:37...
There it was! His lifeline, quite literally: a panel on the left side of the wall had been blown off in the colossal explosion that wrecked the ship to begin with, and it had left several thick, black cords dangling out of it, sparks almost too small to see buzzing meekly at the tips.
This was his one chance. He couldn't mess it up. He moved himself over to the left, reached out with one hand -his other was clinging onto the power cell- and...
He felt his body shake once, heavily, all his body weight falling upon the thick black cable his hand was now clenched around, so tightly his knuckles had gone white, suspending his slide-slash-fall just a couple of metres away from the bridge doors. Low enough to jump. But, despite his rather lacking intellect, he did have at least a shred of intuition. He yanked the cable as hard as he could, again and again and again. Sooner than he'd anticipated, it gave way, more of the cord tumbling out of the circuitry and the wiring in the wall. He fell fairly fast (although not nearly as fast as he had been when he was sliding along the floor) and soon reached the bridge doors, using his feet to smash them open like the doors of some outlandish saloon, whizzing toward Jade and the manual flight controls.
0:19, 0:18, 0:17, 0:15, 0:14...
With a thud, Private Adam pressed his legs against one of the defunct control panels. He crouched down and tore the open panel, used to shield the power cell, away dismissively, ripping out the dead power cell as well. He quickly shoved the fresh cell in the slot. It began to hum loudly and its bright glow returned.
"Got it! The controls are back up and running!" Jade exclaimed, snatching hold of them like a greedy Jaggi and pulling them toward her, using her torso to its limit as she arched her back, scrunching her eyes shut , gritting her teeth and groaning loudly, high-pitched, so loudly in and roughly in fact that one would have thought that, were the circumstances different, she was giving birth. Meanwhile, as Jade was determined to give herself a hernia, Private Adam and Admiral hunt clung onto the control panel before them and tightly as their hands would allow.
"You did good, son!" Hunt boomed over the rumbling of the ship and Jade's almost horrific straining. Adam nodded, smiling thinly, following which the pair of them faced forward to the thick steel window cover and waited for either a merciful brush or a woeful handshake with death.
(Unfinished)