Hello again everyone. I've had a chance to proof the next chapter a bit more, and so here it is. I do hope that it's good enough to be worth the wait, and that everyone enjoys it. Bit nervous as usual, because again, I'm not sure if space combat's really something I'm all that good at (though calling it 'combat' might be stretching it a bit, for reasons that will become evident upon reading).
Special thanks as always to Swordsman289, Boondock Jake, Atlan, Orsai, and everyone else who has helped me with this story. I really appreciate your assistance guys. And your help means a lot to me.
With that said, here's chapter number nine.
Chapter Nine: Picking up the Pieces
Ratchet glanced around as he maneuvered Aphelion through the buildings and ruins of Arcadia City, the capital of the planet. Not the most original of names and the Lombax half-wondered if the government might rename it once all this was over with in some sort of attempt to distance themselves from this.
It had been two days since the attack, but in many ways the battle still raged. Crackling, white and orange flames still burned at some of the military bases in the distance. Fighters, ground vehicles, and munitions dumps still blazed as the local fire control networks gave up any hope of ever being able to contain the fires. Coming back from his last run up to the orbital platforms, the flames and smoke had been so large and intense that they could be seen from orbit, and they looked like great, gaping wounds in the flank of some mighty beast. How appropriate, Ratchet thought to himself as he looked out of the side viewing screen, making certain that he had enough clearance as he towed away a five hundred ton hunk of what had once been the exterior of a skyscraper.
The massive block of metal and composite material hung underneath his ship, connected to it by an energy tether. Their destination was a semi-portable "repurposing" unit that had been set up outside the city, and as he rounded the corner of one of the still partially intact buildings, he could see it. Smoke of a different sort rose from the two square kilometer facility.
"Aphelion, you're green for approach, maintain current heading and decrease speed to one-hundred-twenty KPH," the voice of the traffic controller on the other end of the line said.
"Roger that, decreasing speed," he said, and he eased back on the throttle until the spacefighter slowed to acceptable parameters. He pressed a few buttons on the control console and nodded to himself. "Aphelion, make sure that we're not about to hit anything with this load. I don't want to complicate matters."
"Affirmative, I'll be sure to warn you if you suddenly fall asleep at the stick," the A.I. said, and Ratchet swore he could hear a somewhat cheeky tone to the ship's voice.
The Lombax rolled his eyes and kept his head on a swivel as he closed in, following the "path" that was being projected onto his viewing screen. He slowed the ship even further as he started to move over the facility, bringing it into a virtual hover as he approached one of the massive smelting vats.
"Aphelion to ground control, double checking that you're ready to receive the drop off," he said.
"We read you, Aphelion. You're good to release your tether." The voice on the other end of the line said.
The Lombax did as he was instructed and flipped a switch on the control console. The energy tether faded and the massive hunk of building material dropped into the smelter. There, it would be broken down, its component elements separated, and it would eventually be reforged into material to be used rebuilding the metropolis. Out with the old, in with the new, in a very literal sense.
He turned back towards the city and punched in a communication number. It beeped for a few seconds and then Clank's face appeared. His green photoceptors widened momentarily as he stopped fiddling with the battered and sparking supercomputer that he was sitting in front of, salvaging what data he could from the damaged machine.
"Ratchet, I was wondering when I'd hear from you next. How's the demolition going?" the diminutive robot asked.
"So far so good. This is going to take a while, though. Hope they can get a relief effort here soon. We need some proper cargo haulers for this job," he said, shaking his head, a hidden frown on his face. "Honestly, I'm more worried about those guys showing up at another planet," he said as he reentered the city and banked towards the sector that he'd been working in. "I can't figure out what they were doing. Why attack and invade an entire planet for just a handful of city-scale AM generators?"
"Perhaps if we encounter them again you might have a chance to ask them," Clank said with a shrug of his shoulders. "An equally pressing question is what are we going to do if more of them do show up."
"Probably the same thing we did with Tachyon and Nefarious," the Lombax said quietly. "Blow them to the Huron Abyss and back. Their ships aren't invincible, and their ground forces sure aren't that much different from Tyrannoids or Drophyeds." His voice was a growl as he spoke. Granted, the organized, combined-arms fighting forces that he'd encountered had far more in common with the Drophyeds than the stupid, brutish Tyrannoids. But even then, superior firepower and cunning had enabled him to take care of most of them with relative ease.
"I was thinking more long term and larger scale, actually," Clank said, tapping a finger to his chin. "We cannot be everywhere at once, and the Aphelion cannot fight an entire fleet on her own. I suspect that we will have to do some ally gathering once we are no longer required here."
"Exactly what are you recommending? I know Sasha is going to be trying to get support mobilized back in Solona, and Fizzwidget still owes us for saving his hide over here…"
"Yes," Clank nodded his head. "But it may take some time for Admiral Phyornix to mobilize enough support to make a difference and Megacorp's influence and forces are rather small compared to an entire galaxy's resources. We may need to consider seeking another ally…" Clank trailed off, and Ratchet frowned again.
"You can't possibly mean," he shook his head as he spoke.
"While it may not be the most ideal form of support, Qwark is a Galactic President, and for all his lack of cognitive ability and his deep rooted cowardice, he is nothing if not predictable. He also does value you as a friend, and while Admiral Phyornix is sending him information, having a personal request coming from you might have a greater impact," Clank shrugged and let out a sigh. "A new foe for him to test his 'mettle' against, something that his 'sidekick' cannot handle alone, may be too great a temptation. And on top of that, there were some of those tears reported in the Polaris Galaxy."
"You're suggesting that we actually try to and appeal to his ego? As if it needs to get any bigger," Ratchet shook his head. "I cannot believe that we are even discussing this matter seriously."
"Like it or not, Ratchet, it is an option that we need to at least consider," Clank said, shaking his head.
"A last resort, nothing more," Ratchet said, his glare hidden behind his visor. He maneuvered the Aphelion into position and quickly tethered up another large piece of building debris, pivoting the ship around and carrying it away. "Knowing our luck, he'd try to lead from the front, get himself captured, and blab away all the secrets of the Polaris military forces in an effort to save his own hide." The Lombax shook his head.
"I am sure if he attempts to lead from the front, his advisors will attempt to dissuade him from doing so," Clank said, and then his photoceptors brightened a little. "Should that fail, we could always try to distract him; maybe convince him that his shoelaces are untied."
"You really think that would work?" Ratchet muttered as he eased his ship between a few buildings.
"I think that by the time that he realizes his boots do not actually have laces, any battle would probably be over." Clank giggled impishly, a smile in his voice.
Ratchet couldn't help it. He laughed for the first time in what felt like weeks. It was bad humor, true, but surrounded by the devastated city, the fire and the smoke, anything to take his mind off it was a welcome thing.
"I should probably get back to work now," Clank said quietly, gesturing over his shoulder towards the computer.
"Okay. Good luck," Ratchet said.
"The same to you, Ratchet," his friend said, before the Lombax killed the link. There was a burst of static and then Ratchet returned his full attention to this job as well, skillfully turning his ship back out towards the repurposing facility.
As he cleared the buildings and entered the open area outside the capital, Ratchet sighed and thought about the future for the moment. Every time, every single time, he thought to himself. Every time he tried to take some time off, to do something for himself, some crisis or other seemed to crop up. He tried not to feel irritated or frustrated at the fact that his chance to spend some time with a friend, with the last living member of his own species in this dimension, had been ruined by some aliens deciding that it was a good time to come and pick a fight. Try as he might, though, there was still that small, tiny voice, the voice that just wanted everything to go back to being normal, the voice that wanted him to shrug and go "someone else's problem" and just live for himself for a change, never quite went away. It was the voice that was tired of fighting, tired of the pain and the seeming futility of it all, tired of losing people he cared about in a fight, only for some other threat to crop up and force him through the cycle all over again.
He tried to suppress it, much as he suppressed his urge to cower and fear and run whenever a blaster fight started, but no matter how many times he did, it always came back. Just going to have to ignore it again, the Lombax thought to himself. He looked outside of the canopy once again and saw the craters of blackened glass and the shattered buildings along the skyline. Millions had just had their lives shattered, and hundreds of thousands were dead. What right did he have to complain about being mildly inconvenienced?
Ratchet moved into approach vector one more time and his ears drooped a bit behind his helmet. He could meet with Angela later, on Yeedil. For now, the Arcadians needed help.
Ratchet might have worried about still other things if he'd known what one of his many enemies had been up to at that moment in time. Doctor Nefarious reclined in a padded command chair, specially designed to be able to take the weight of his robotic body. His hands were crossed in his lap, his fingers twitching from time to time as he contemplated the scene before him. His probes continued to monitor the alien fleet. It had been a couple of days since they'd assaulted the planet of Arcadia, and right now, the fleet was in transition to another sector of the Bogon galaxy. The probe was moving along at a frighteningly slow pace, and Nefarious glowered as the sight brought to mind the image of someone attempting to tip-toe in pursuit of an opponent.
"If these newcomers take any longer to get where they're going, I swear I'm going to start to rust!" he shouted, slamming his fists against the armrests of his chair. He noticed the small dents that he'd left, and the robotic scientist let out a frustrated sigh. He tapped his fingers to his forehead and wondered what he should do, how he might be able to go about doing this.
"Lawrence!" he shouted, and a moment later a blue tinted hologram of his butler appeared.
"You bellowed, Sir?" the other robot stated, and for a moment Nefarious stared at him and was tempted to groan as he realized that his second in command was wearing that ridiculous looking wig once again.
"Lawrence… are you practicing for your band, rather than doing your job duties?" Nefarious' crimson eyes narrowed as he leaned in towards the hologram.
"Oh, don't worry, Sir. Unlike certain other people I could name, I'm quite capable of multitasking." Lawrence said. "What is it that you require?"
"I need you to put a brainstorming committee together, we need to discuss a first contact approach to these beings." He gestured towards the command screen in front of him.
"Another one, Sir?" Lawrence raised a mechanized eyelid. "May I remind you that you had the last one rounded up and executed because they thought that your plan to take over the Solona Galaxy by running for president was a bit too far-fetched to work?"
"It would have worked, blast it all!" Nefarious leaped to his feet and shook his fist at the hologram. "Do you realize how many supervillains have managed to enter politics and then use that position to grind the people who put them in charge underfoot? Damnation, Lawrence, we almost pulled it off with the Fongoids!"
"Yes, Sir, but the problem is that unlike the Fongoids, most Solonians have an IQ above that of room temperature," Lawrence said and then shook his head. Nefarious turned around, and missed the fact that his butler placed his forehead into the palm of his hand. "But you were saying Sir, about this committee? I was half expecting you to go up to them, announce who you were, and then expect them to fall over themselves in reverent worship of you."
"I was tempted to do that for a little while, Lawrence, but then I remembered that these newcomers would have no idea who and what I am." Nefarious shrugged his shoulders as he turned a back around. "We need a way to convince them to enter into an alliance with us, and to let me have a look at those targeting computers that they're using. A way to win enough of their trust to where they won't expect the knife until I've buried it in their backs."
"Well sir, you might want to try the radical solution of offering them something they can't refuse." Lawrence said. "Our probes have detected other splinter fleets, as well as those of other factions. Initial data seems to indicate that they have quite the vendetta against one another, given the way they'll go out of their way to turn and attack another faction's splinter fleets. It is logical to assume as well that these aliens have no real way to replace their combat losses, and once the news spreads of their incident on Arcadia, they are unlikely to get a warm reception anywhere in the civilized tri-galactic area."
Nefarious paused his pacing, looking at his second in command and then bringing a hand to his chin. He tapped his fingers against it a few times and nodded to himself. "We'd be their only source of potential reinforcements… their only hope of repairing their ships." Ideas and schemes began to formulate inside of the robotic scientist's head, and Doctor Nefarious felt a smile start to come to his lips. "We could make them completely dependent upon us."
"Precisely, Sir," Lawrence said. "Presented in that light, even a drooling moron would be able to convince them to join his cause."
"Very good, very good." The Doctor nodded to himself. "Now… we just have to figure out a good time and place for this meeting. That, and I suspect there's a small problem of a language barrier. Still, that's not an insurmountable obstacle."
Nefarious moved back over to his chair and leaned back in it, nodding softly to himself a few times. "Continue to monitor the other two factions as well. I want detailed information on how they operate and how they react to one another. It may yet be possible for us to play more than one side in this game."
"As you wish, Sir." Lawrence said with a slight nod of his head. "Shall I cancel the brainstorming committee?"
"For now, yes," Nefarious said, a pleased smile coming to his face. "For the time being, I think a celebration may be in order. I feel like rehearsing 'Night of the Living Squishies' again."
"I see. I shall take the liberty of gathering the straws for the selection process," Lawrence said as his hologram faded out of existence.
Nefarious looked back at the screen for a moment, his eyes focusing on the massive alien flagship. Yes, yes, this could work, he could warp these newcomers into his unwitting pawns. He'd have to be cautious, though. They had demonstrated that they were quite capable of handling themselves in a fight, and he didn't want to get them angry at him. It would be much more difficult to get what he wanted if he had to pry it from their cold, dead hands. And there was the fact that they'd also demonstrated a willingness to destroy their own ships to avoid potential capture. Any attempt to take what he wanted by brute force could result in massive losses among his troops with nothing to show for it.
Still, he'd manipulated others into working for him before, and while he might be going up against an unknown factor in this instance, Nefarious had every confidence that he would once again succeed. The trick would be how to turn the advantages that those targeting computers might give him to their fullest advantage. The initial applications were obvious, being able to blast any Galactic Federation cruiser that opposed him into space dust long before it could ever get close enough to fire a return shot. But there had to be other applications to these technologies than just raw, brute force.
There might be a way to make his biobliterator work at a longer range, for one thing. Perhaps a way to use it without actually having to deploy it onto the planet in question. Yes, yes, he thought to himself, tapping his fingers together. That would work beautifully.
And then there were the other two powers. While they seemed to suffer the same problem of having FTL speeds comparable to a terratrope on a treadmill, there were still some things that they might be able to teach him. He'd just have to wait and see what they did when they got into a scrap. In the meantime, he needed to strategize. There was always the chance that the Federation had been brought up to speed on these new aliens, and Nefarious had little doubt that if that was indeed the case, that Admiral Phyornix would waste little time in attempting to formulate some new strategies and tactics to negate the massive combat range advantage that their opponents had.
He'd have to come up with a way to pull the rug out from under her feet, so to speak.
Ratchet removed his helmet as he stepped into the prefab that had been set up for him, shaking his head and sighing. His eyelids felt like lead weights, and he swore that if he kept them shut for too long, he was going to pass out. He looked over at himself in the one mirror that had been provided, his mouth agape slightly at he stared at his own reflection. There were bags under his eyes, just barely visible through his tawny colored fur. His tail and ears drooped, as if they were unable to support their own weight, and his eyes ached. He looked over to the far side of the room where Clank was sitting. The small robot had already deactivated himself for the time being, allowing his internal capacitors to charge back up.
"Not a bad idea." He said, ignoring a sudden, rumbling protest from his stomach.
Without even bothering to remove the rest of his armor, the Lombax threw himself onto the bed. It creaked nosily in protest at the added weight of his body, but Ratchet didn't care. He crawled forward a bit and nestled his head onto the pillow. The cushion wasn't the softest one that he'd ever placed his head against, being one that was mass produced for these sorts of shelters. He didn't care. He pulled it in, turned his head to the side, and within seconds, his eyes had closed and his breathing had become deep and rhythmic.
Within the depth so his dreams, Ratchet screamed, hurling a plasma grenade at General Alister Azimuth. The elder Lombax activated his hoverboots and hurtled himself out of the way, countering with an energy blast from his modified omni-wrench. It slammed into Ratchet, blasting him off his feet. His armor held up, blackened and scorched though it had been by the shot.
"This isn't how it was supposed to be!" Alister roared, his face a mask of pain. "You were supposed to be here at my side, helping me bring our people back!"
All the while, the Orvus Chamber rumbled and shook, blasting itself to pieces as time itself warped around them.
This dream again, Ratchet realized. It was strange, like seeing himself from a third person perspective. He was there, he was shooting at his friend and mentor, trying to stop the General from tearing the universe apart in his quest to restore their people, the General's quest to undo his greatest mistake. At the same time, he was floating above the carnage, watching as bits and pieces of the Orvus Chamber fell and smashed against the floor.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Ratchet suspected that Emperor Tachyon was laughing his pint-sized head off. Two of the last three Lombaxes in the universe, the one that had unwittingly made his conquest possible, and the one that had defeated him and cast him into the abyss. Two people that had met almost by accident, allied together in a quest to try and stop the Emperor before his reign could even begin, now tearing each other apart in a battle that would likely only end when one of them was dead. The irony would have been delicious.
Down below, he watched himself hurl another grenade and follow it up with a series of rapid bursts from his shard reaper. Alister jetted out of the way of the grenade, but caught a burst of flechettes. One of them tore across his unprotected face and tore a gash in his grey furred cheek. Clank followed up as well, morphing one of his arms into a laser cannon and sticking it up over Ratchet's shoulder. The three shot burst caught the General square in the chest, melting some of his armor and filling the room with acrid smoke.
"Infernal little contraption!" the elder Lombax roared.
"I am sorry, General, but while I empathize with your mission, I cannot allow you to destroy my father's work, or the universe itself, for that matter." Clank responded, his voice neutral.
"There are no more dimensionators! This is the only way that I can save them!" Allister's features were barely recognizable behind the twisted snarl that they'd morphed into. There was an insane glint to his eyes, a feral determination to see his mission through, the consequences be damned. "Is it too much to ask for the Zoni to bend their precious rules to correct one of the greatest tragedies in history?" He shouted as he lunged forward, swinging his weapon like a polearm. Ratchet was certain that, armor or no, the amount of force behind the blow would have broken his jaw if he hadn't managed to leap to the side.
He rolled up and fired his shard reaper once again, catching the general center mass. Alister was knocked down by the force of the impact, but quickly jumped back up and unleashed a barrage of plasma blasts from his ceremonial weapon.
Up above, Ratchet watched his past self duel with the General. He knew how this would end, just as it always did. Allister would realize his mistake too late, and while he would undo the damage, his attempt to stop the universe from literally coming apart at the seams would cost him his life. Such a waste, Ratchet couldn't help but think. But then, would he have done any differently? He tried to put himself in Allister's shoes. To realize that your attempts to better protect the galaxy through the alliance with Tachyon had turned out to do anything but, had led to the destruction of everything you held dear, forced your people to retreat into an alternate dimension, with the survivors leaving you behind as punishment for your mistake. Years in isolation with that kind of guilt hanging on his shoulders… the signs had been there, Ratchet supposed, that Allister's obsessive desire to atone and undo his past mistakes, to stop Tachyon literally before he could start, had unhinged him and driven him over the brink.
Was there some way that he could have stopped it? Ratchet distantly wondered. Some sign that he should have picked up on sooner, something he could have done to pull the General back?
Before he could dwell on that thought any more, he heard a loud beeping noise. He blinked from his vantage point as it continued, loud and insistent. The dream seemed to come apart, disappearing into a spiral of blackness as Ratchet found himself catapulted awake. Instinctively, he activated his storage deck as he rolled up out of bed, summoning his lancer pistol to his hand. He panted, his eyes wide as he realized that it was just his holo-comm. He reached over to the nightstand and pressed a button on it, and to his surprise, Angela's face appeared in front of him.
"Sorry, did I wake you?" she asked.
"Usually that's my line," the other Lombax said with a weak chuckle, trying to hide the fact that he'd drawn a blaster pistol as he cocked his head to the side. "What's up?"
"Aside from my blood pressure?" Angela said with a tired grin. There was a level of fatigue to her voice Ratchet noticed, something that made him cock an eyebrow.
"Angela, something wrong? Everything okay over there?" She should have been on Ichar-III, right? Waiting for everything to get brought together for the trip to Yeedil?
"Everything about the convoy organization's gone fine. We'll be setting out tomorrow." She said, moving back away from the projector on her side of the line. She was in her working clothes and there was a slump to her shoulders, while her movements seemed sluggish. "I'm in one of the lounges on the Arcturus. It's just been… been a long past couple of days."
"Angela, what's wrong? You're worrying me," Ratchet said, sitting down on the bed as a frown crossed his face and his ears drooped slightly.
"I…" the other Lombax sighed and then shook her head, her ears drooping. "We did find something else in that wasteland. I.. I can't say too much about it, but we found something alive."
"Angela…" Ratchet trailed off, leaning in closer to the hologram in front of him.
"It snuck into my prefab, we're not sure why it chose me. Not even sure what it was after. It was right after you and I got done talking the other day." She sat down in one of the chairs in the longue, picking her legs up and tucking them against her chest. "I woke up, saw your message playing again, and knew something was wrong. Pulled my gun, confronted the thing… it was cloaked, some sort of optical camouflage. But it showed itself… and then... it said something… not sure what it was, the translator couldn't decipher it. Then it… I felt it inside of my head, probing around in there."
"Are you okay?" Ratchet's eyes were wide, his breathing quickened.
"I'm fine. Think I am at any rate. Can't tell if the thing put something in my head or not." She shook her head back and forth. "I shot at it and it fled. That was the last we heard of it. With any luck, we left the damn thing back in the deserts on Argus-IV." She said.
Ratchet got up off the bed and started to head towards where he kept the few supplies he'd brought with him.
"What are you doing?" Angela asked.
"I'm coming to Ichar," he said as he started to gather things up.
"No." Angela's voice was soft but the tone made Ratchet stop what he was doing and turn towards her. "You stay where you are. Arcadia needs you a lot more than I do, Ratchet. I'm fine… I'm going to have some the therapists and psionics back at Headquarters check me out once I get there. If that…thing left anything inside of my brain, they'll find it and scrub it."
"But," he said.
"But nothing, Ratchet. You're helping people over there that need you. You're saving lives. Plural." Her blue eyes narrowed and her ears perked up. "I need to get this off my chest, I need someone that I can talk to, someone to vent to, a friend to listen," she gestured about with her hands, "but what I don't need is people getting hurt because you left them to come look after me." A tired smile appeared on her face. "What I need is a confidant right now."
Ratchet nodded and went back to the bed. He sat down on it and leaned forward a bit. For a moment he thought about what he would do in her place, if he could even imagine it. He'd been captured before, and the instinctive fear of being in a cage awaiting death or worse had been difficult to keep in check. How must it have felt, then to have had your very mind, the one place of sanctity that a person was supposed to have, invaded by some otherworldly entity? To know that there was something rooting around inside of it that wasn't you? The paranoia of wondering if something had been planted there, or something taken. His eyes narrowed and his fur stood on end, and it was all that he could do to suppress a growl. If he ever found this thing, he'd break it in half with his bare hands for daring to do that to one of his friends.
Then he put that thought aside. Angela needed a confidant, someone to talk to that she could trust to keep this quiet. Well, time for him to be that then.
"You know, you've never told me very much about the time that you spent on the run," he said, leaning forward again. "With Max."
"Apogee?" Angela's eyes brightened a bit as she smiled. "Well, you've met his daughter, right?"
"Yeah," Ratchet said with a nod of his head.
"He's a lot like her." Her eyes seemed to get a faraway look to them and Ratchet could practically see the memories flashing before her. "Smart, kind, and willing to go out of his way to help someone who was down…" she trailed off.
Serna Re'Tan cursed as her ship shuddered under another close impact and she fought the urge to glance back instinctively over her shoulder. It wouldn't have done any good, she thought, as she jerked the control yoke of her Talon. The maneuvering thrusters kicked in, shooting the ship down underneath yet another rock floating in the void. Behind her, another pulsar detonated. Damn these Imperials and their point defense weapons!
Behind the small three-man ship, a Broadsword Class Imperial destroyer came at them, an element of that scattered fleet that had battled with them above the Alkathar ruins of Tassiron Prime. Her carrier fleet and the Imperial splinter element had stumbled across each other, and as they usually did, immediately opened fire. They'd had the MSE ships outnumbered, but not by enough. She heard a scream over the radio and glanced at her readouts. Halo Seven vanished from it a moment later. Serna winced but kept going, her navigational officer frantically running his hands over the controls of the ECM suite, trying to get enough jamming out there to break the sensor lock the Imperial capital ship had on them.
She watched the ship, fifty thousand kilometers astern of them, as it came on like a relentless juggernaut. A four hundred meter wide, nickel-iron asteroid that Serna had steered her Talon around half a minute ago disappeared as the Imperial ship just plowed through it. Serna resisted the urge to swallow, finding that her throat had suddenly gone dry as she pulled power away from her weapon systems and fed them into the engines in a desperate bid to get more G's out of the thrusters.
Memories flashed in front of her eyes before she could stop them, memories of childhood and youth, visions and dreams. She had done her duty to the Quaten, joined her clan's armed forces and prepared herself for the glory of combat.
And yet here she was, running like a whipped pup, her tail tucked between her legs as she tried to flee from a foe she could not possibly best.
"Warning, power surge detected, incoming enemy weapons fire," the computer droned, before the subroutines of the A.I. kicked her Talon onto a new course.
"Gaking hell!" she swore as Halo Six and Eight were obliterated in an instant as the Empire's alien, eldritch weaponry lasheh. "Boost that ECM!"
"I'm working on it, ma'am," Eltes, her comm. operator, shouted back. The much smaller male Quaten continued to pound away at his controls as more point defense fire came in, trying to work alongside the ship's second A.I.
For a moment, she felt a searing burst of envy and hatred directed at her foes. Pulsar cannons. The weapons of the great Alkathar themselves. They were much weaker than the ones that the Ancients used, from what she'd seen, but it still left her feeling small and insignificant, and she shivered despite the armored environmental suit that she was wearing. How did one fight something that wielded the power of gods?
Do not let such defeatist thoughts cloud your mind! Serna chided herself as she engaged the maneuvering thrusters once again. The Imperials could be bested. Their ships were powerful, but the broken wrecks and shattered armies that she'd seen in her brief tenure as a pilot testified that they were not invincible. As it stood, in the six years of the war, they'd already managed to wrest a few thousand planets away from the Empire.
Another energy spike caused an automated evasive maneuver as the FTL energy bolt streaked into the heart of the squadron, a few thousand klicks aft of her Talon. The beam exploded outwards a moment later and another member of the squad was sent hurtling off course. The scouting ship slammed into an asteroid and Serna couldn't help but wince. Any hope that her comrades might have survived the impact vanished a moment later the Imperial destroyer turned one of its light guns on the rock. Scouting ship and asteroid were obliterated in a flash, blue hot plasma and gas flashing outwards for a split second before vanishing into the void.
"This is insane!" Eltes cried out. He looked up at her. "I can't overpower its targeting systems, ma'am."
There was a moment of quiet contemplation among the three-man crew. Well, as quiet as it could be considering the situation around them. Serna gave a bitter sigh and slammed an armored fist against her piloting seat in frustration. Tribunal doctrine in a matter such as this was clear. If there could be no escape, you were to die gloriously.
"This is Halo Two, moving about to target and engage Imperial ship." She heard a note of resignation in the voice of her squadmate and watching in the sensor screens as the Talon did just that. Halo Four and Halo Twelve followed suit, turning to run head long at the Imperial destroyer. The thirteen-hundred meter long ship tore them apart before they even got close enough to fire their weapons.
Such was the history of her people, Serna thought as she frantically scanned about, looking for some solution, any solution. It was a proud and noble warrior tradition, full of valiant last stands and heroic doomed charges. A number of which were probably unnecessary, she thought bitterly. Her eyes focused on the N-class planet that was a few million kilometers off. Halo Leader screamed as his ship was obliterated in another shot, and the destroyer continued to close the distance with them. It was only forty thousand klicks behind them. Soon, they'd be inside of optimal point defense range. Once that happened, it would be all over.
"Eltes, Magar, hold on, I'm about to do something insane."
"Dare I ask, ma'am?" her weapons operator spoke up, and she heard him gulp quietly. Magar was new, with less than three combat missions under his belt.
"The planet… I'm going to try and jump to it."
"Wait, what?" Eltes looked over at her. "You're going to disable the computer failsafes?"
"No, just the override," Serna said, shaking her head as she looked at her smaller compatriot. "We'll jump in close enough to activate the failsafes, and then try to put down and make a break for it."
"That's insane," Eltes muttered.
"I warned you it was," she said in return, and couldn't keep a wry grin off her face as she looked around at her primary computer, punching in activation codes and executive override commands.
"It's also contrary to the law of the elders," Magar said as Halo Eleven peeled off to try its luck against the MSE ship. It had barely turned around to face the destroyer before the Tribunal scouting craft became free-floating atoms and plasma.
"If they want to trade spaces with us, I'm more than open to letting them," Serna growled. "Right now, I'm going to try and get us out of this mess. We're no good to our Clan dead!"
With that, she activated the FTL engines and rocketed towards the blue-green orb that was on the navigational screen. There were a few moments of blissful silence, away from the constant warnings of the enemy ship and the dying screams of her scouting squad. She was even able to drone out the warning of the computer as they drew within ten light seconds of the planet. A millisecond later, she was catapulted forward as the ship forcibly cut the FTL engines. Her helmet nearly impacted against the primary control console at the sudden deceleration.
The Talon twisted and rolled and tumbled as the combination of planetary gravity, rapid deceleration, and the forcible destruction of the warp bubble that her ship had been encased in nearly ripped it apart. Cracks appeared in the external hull, one of her FTL generators overloaded and burned out and a sensor node was torn off with a loud bang. Primary maneuvering thrusters went offline as she struggled to right the craft and the retro-rockets fired intermittently as the automated safety measures sensed an incoming crash and tried desperately to halt the ship.
Well… it was this or certain death at that destroyer's hands. She thought. So close. And yet so far. Her golden eyes narrowed behind her helmet and she yanked hard on the control yoke. She wasn't dead yet, damnit.
"Brace for a crash landing," she said as she wrestled with the controls. It seemed so strange to say something like that, utterly redundant. Her crew knew that by now. She flipped open a covering on the primary control panel and pressing a large, purple button. There was a shudder and a bang as the primary anti-matter reactor was ejected and the secondary fusion generator took over. One less thing to worry about, Serna thought to herself.
The planet continued to tumble in and out of her primary viewing screen and she could feel the craft starting to vibrate from friction as they entered the upper layers of the planet's atmosphere. It was a struggle, but the retrorockets seemed to finally be doing their job. External sensors monitored the heat buildup on the Talon's hull and Serna kept a close eye on it. There was no telling how much might have been damaged by their forceful deceleration out of FTL. The last thing she needed was some vital component getting fried by the fireball they were going to generate.
With a final titanic effort, she was able to wrestle the ship into a flat descent and began to pull back. They wanted to strike as close to horizontally level as they possibly could. Even then, though, this was going to get worse before it got better. It took only seconds for the cloud layer to part and for a vast jungle-like expanse to come into view. The retrothrusters were going full blast and Serna started to get warnings from her computer that their components heat-levels were coming dangerously close to the automatic shutdown point.
There were no words or cries among the crew as the Talon struck the ground at more than ten thousand meters per second. Inertial dampners screamed in protest at the sudden stress that they were subjected to. The ground for hundreds of meters around was flash-fried and the shockwave blew trees down for kilometers in every direction as the Talon skipped like a stone across a pond, leaving trails of molten rock in its wake. For nearly a single agonizing minute, the ship tumbled and rolled through the air. It eventually came to a stop, its hull blackened and charred, dented from the impact.
Serna's world rolled and heaved, and she fought the urge to vomit inside of her helmet. Darkness ebbed at the edges of her vision, turning to gray as it neared the center. She looked around, blinking and trying to will the fatigue away. They were down, but they weren't safe. Hells, she didn't even know if she was still capable of moving. Her piloting suit was armored, but it wasn't the reinforced, heavy-duty power armor that her mother and other infantry types wore. She looked up at her HUD and shook her head again.
"Run diagnostic," she muttered quietly. There was a beep of compliance from the suit and it quickly ran a scan on her. A display of her body appeared and she looked over it, blinking a few times to bring it into focus. Multiple bruises, possible concussion, and four broken ribs. She thought to herself.
"Eltes? Magar?" she muttered as she undid her restraints and reached down for her emergency supply pack that was tucked underneath her flight seat. There was silence, and she called their names again, a little louder. She looked up in front of her towards the navigator's seat.
Eltes lay there, limp and unmoving. Sparks flew around the place as she moved up next to him and carefully pulled his helmet off. His eyes were hollow and unblinking as he stared ahead, brilliant blue blood coating his face, and she could see where his restraints had snapped and his head had slammed into his console hard enough to punch through it. She reached out and closed his eyes as she heard a groan and looked back over towards Magar. The rookie's voice was quiet and pained, and he gave a sharp yelp, followed by a whimper. Serna slung her supply pack over her shoulder and walked over towards him as another shower of sparks filled the cockpit, along with a foul stench. Smells electrical, she thought as she turned towards her weapons officer, only to find he wasn't where she thought he would be.
His acceleration chair had snapped loose but he had somehow managed to survive. The downside of that was that she didn't know how injured he was and from the looks of things, he'd slammed into the side of the cockpit area with enough force that part of his seat had become imbedded in the wall and trapped his left leg.
"You okay?" she said, kneeling down next to the much smaller male. He shook his head.
"My right femurs are broken, left leg's…" he couldn't finish, his breath coming in pained gasps as he reached down and tried to instinctively put pressure on the limb. She could see that his hands were slick with iridescent blood. The electrical fire stench was getting stronger, and she could see smoke starting to drift into the cockpit. Fire suppression systems must have been knocked out by the crash. There was no danger that the fusion reactor would cook off. It took tremendous amounts of energy and pressure to keep the reaction going, and if it ever lost that, it simply stopped, rather than exploding climactically. But that didn't mean that a mundane fire couldn't incinerate them.
It wasn't the first time that Serna cursed the Elders' tradition to issue non-powered flight suits to the pilots. She cast that thought aside. Magar needed aid, and she needed to get him out of here. She was tempted to try to wrestle him out as the smoke started to grow thicker, but knew that it would be a futile gesture, even with her fantastic strength. She looked over at her companion, imagining his pain-filled grimace behind his helmet and reached down for her serendo. He caught her movement and simply nodded his head.
The thick bladed weapon was a long-standing part of her people, from the heavy cutting edge to the curved tip. She gripped it, and swung the weapon downwards. The laser-honed edge cut through the armor plating around Magar's knee and sliced clean through flesh, bone and sinew. To his credit, he merely whimpered, rather than howling in agony at the amputation. Serna didn't even bother to clean the blade, merely sheathed it and unfastened his restraints. Blood was pumping out of the amputated limb and getting everywhere, and she grappled about in her pack and pulled out a container marked with a blue octagon. She shook the can up and sprayed the medical foam on his exposed stump. He also had internal injuries, she knew, and she'd have to be careful how she carried him, but that wouldn't help either of them if they were cooked alive because she dithered about.
The rookie was a full meter shorter than her in height, and a hundred and twenty kilos lighter, and she easily hefted him up out of the acceleration chair. Serna clutched him tightly against her chest and turned to jog out of the cockpit. The scouting craft was seventy meters long, and shaped roughly like a rounded triangle and fortunately, despite the violence of the impact, the primary corridor to the back of the ship was still intact, if debris strewn. She could see the flames starting to lick at the interior of the hallway, a few streams of liquid argon coming down in weak spurts in an attempt to force the flames to abate.
It wasn't going to be enough, she knew and picked up the pace, trying to ignore Magar's pained gasps as he was jostled by the movement. She just hoped that the outside environment was cool enough that it didn't burn the both of them alive. Just like with the destroyer, though, to stay where they were was going to be certain death.
She moved over towards the door, and pressed the manual override to open it. It fell back and slammed into the dirt and the heat immediately assaulted her, driving her back. She could see blackened glass for a hundred meters around and the rocks literally glowed with the heat.
"Magar, I'm going to need you to do something," she said, stepping back in towards the primary corridor. He looked up at her and nodded his head. His breath was coming in short gasps, and he coughed wetly behind his helmet. "They sure as hell weren't designed for it, but we need to grab one of the semi-portable suppressors and get out of here. I can't carry you and it, though."
"Understood, ma'am," he said as she moved over towards where one of the stations was clearly marked.
The semi-portable fire suppression units were standard issue to all ships, designed to be used in the event that the primary automated systems failed. The units linked into secondary storage tanks and had reinforced hoses that were long enough to stretch from one end of the ship to another. As she'd said, they'd never been designed to deal with neutralizing the extreme heat of an uncontrolled atmospheric reentry, but it was better than nothing. Her injured comrade grasped at the device and pulled it in close, pulling out the safety pins and pressurizing the system.
They stood back in the corridor as he aimed it as best he could and yanked back on the lever that controlled it. A burst of liquid argon flew out of the nozzle, landing on the ground more than forty meters away from them. Steam exploded and surged outwards as the argon, chilled to nearly absolute zero, mixed violently with the glowing hot rocks. Black, oily smoke continued to fill the corridor, and Serna knew that if it wasn't for the fact that her suit could sustain its own atmosphere and filter outside air that she'd be choking on the toxic chemicals in it.
Magar kept pouring the suppressant on, hissing as the steam swarmed into the corridor and washed over his amputated leg. The medical foam would offer some insulation, but it wasn't going to be enough. His leg had to feel like it was on fire. About a minute passed before the suppressor was exhausted and he let it clatter to the floor. Serna nudged it aside with her foot and took a deep breath out of instinct.
"Hold on tight," she whispered. Magar nodded and gripped his hands around her neck. The Quaten pilot exhaled and then charged forward into the steam.
She started to sweat through her environmental suit, her fur becoming slick and damp as she rushed through steam that would have scalded the flesh from the bones of any unprotected individual. As it was she could hear Magar whimpering, whether it was from the heat or his internal injuries or both, she didn't know. She just kept running past the burning remains of trees and listening to the rhythmic sound of her boots crunching glass under her feet.
In time, that transformed into downed tree trunks and the steam finally began to clear. She looked back over at the blackened wreck of her ship as the smoke spread out into the sky. It would be visible for kilometers in every direction, even if everything within five hundred klicks of the impact hadn't heard them come down. That didn't bother her. She was more worried about that destroyer. At any moment, she expected a flash of white light and an end to her mortal life, or for a glowing portal to open up next to her and MSE troops to storm out, pulse rifles blazing.
To her surprise, none of that happened. Instead, what she saw was a small ship approaching. It made even her minute Talon look like some sort of colossal behemoth and as it drew closer she gently set Magar down and drew her sidearm and her blade. She let out a breath and took a small bit of psychological comfort as the pistol hummed quietly. Not that it would do her much good against a ship.
The craft drifted down until it was only a dozen meters off the ground, and then the canopy opened and something jumped out. She nearly sighted it up and fired as she gazed at its form. Spindly limbs and a blocky, boxy looking chest, complete with a bizarre head that looked like a squat, flat rectangle. There was a rifle of sorts stretched across its back and a glowing blue "eye" that seemed to be looking straight through her. A robot, that's what it was, and only the MSE used combat drones. But… it was so oddly shaped, and it didn't look like anything they'd used in battle before. She looked up at the ship, and saw another one, this one with a red eye and a head that was shaped like an upside-down bucket.
The one that was on the ground spoke suddenly, and she jerked her attention back towards it, pointing her pistol at it, but after a moment she hastily checked that move and lowered the gun. The urge to shoot first and ask questions second and her innate distrust of robotic entities were difficult to suppress, and her mind screamed at her that this was about to turn ugly and that she needed to shoot. There was a second voice, somewhat more calm and quiet, that reminded her that the robots had hovercraft of sorts with them, and if the large barrels sticking out from under the wings were any indication, it was a hovercraft that was armed. Even if this was some elaborate trap, a pistol and a serendo weren't going to be of any use in this fight. Her head throbbed again, and with the adrenaline rush of the crash starting to wear off, she was starting to realize how much it hurt to breathe.
I'm in no condition to fight, she realized as the drone or whatever it was held up its hands and drew closer. She could hear another ship approaching and looked up to see a slightly larger craft.
Culture warred with instincts inside of her mind. Every recruit was taught that it was better to die than to be captured. A dead warrior could not be interrogated, could not give away information to the enemy, could not betray their clan. She should take her helmet off, execute Magar, and then turn the weapon upon herself. These newcomers were probably not like her, a part of her mind said, she had no guarantee that she would be treated honorably, or if nothing else, even made a bondsman to them. At the same time, she very much did not wish to die. In the back of her mind she wondered how many other Nariten warriors had faced this decision since the formation of the Tribunal, thousands of years ago.
For that matter, were these things even enemies? She had no idea, one way or another. They may have just been looking to help. Or rather, the biological entities that controlled them might have been looking to help. Yes, yes, she'd try that approach. Wait and see. If push came to shove, she could always wait until they got careless and escape, or if that was impossible, permanently silence herself. With a heavy, pained sigh, Serna let her serendo return to its sheath, holstered her pistol, and help up her hands to indicate that she meant no harm.
Alright, well, I hope that everyone enjoyed the chapter, and that I did a halfway decent job on it. If there is anything that didn't seem clear or was confusing or the like, please do not hesitate to let me know, and I'll try to address you questions or if necessary tweak the chapter. Any other feedback is also appreciated, for good or ill. And also, if you have any questions, feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to answer them.
I hope to have another chapter done soon, but until then, my friends, I thank you for your time, and I hope that you have a wonderful, safe day.