Date Point: 3Y 8M 1W 6D AV
New Askitoria, the Outer Cluster
Spot had slipped past the defensive web with minimal maneuvering, reducing any indication of something being there for the guns to shoot at. They drifted past the docks and deep into the heart of the main cavern of asteroid base, setting down just outside of the awful excuse for a palace.
They’d cruised right past the Five-Fingers on the way in, so that gave him some idea on who to expect. “Looks like our old mate Kermit is one of the survivors,” he muttered loud enough for Trix to hear. “At least for the moment.”
“I still can’t believe he tried to kill you,” she replied, her voice emitting from only the speaker nearest to him. That was as he had asked of her, since he’d quickly found that getting it from all directions was a little confusing.
“Left me to die,” Adrian corrected. “I don’t know his reasons, maybe he really did need to run away, but I know we won’t be able to trust him. If he comes aboard, only speak to my earpiece, okay?”
She confirmed, sounding as worried as Adrian felt. He didn’t particularly want to kill the froggish alien, just make him wish he’d kept his word, and in any case, he couldn’t go in guns-blazing until he knew Askit was already safe.
Trix had parked Spot with the airlock facing away from the palace, affording Adrian immediate cover upon disembarking instead of exposing him directly to any rain of gunfire. There wasn’t any, and he hadn’t expected any, but it never hurt to be too careful.
Equipped properly – or at the very least with some measure of familiar weaponry – for the first time in years, Adrian was taking absolutely no chances. With an inbound fleet of probable enemies, and an asteroid base full of mystery and empty of everyone but Zripob and one other, he wasn’t going to get careless; his shotgun was loaded and ready, he was suited up in case Zripob decided to serve up hard vacuum surprise, and had his makeshift personal propulsion device – PPD for short – hanging from a cord around his waist, just in case the gravity suddenly vanished.
“You hear me Trix?” he asked, testing the suit communications as he left the ship and crept along the side. He was sweeping his eyes across the open area for any sign of anything untoward that wouldn’t have shown up on the life signs sensor, such as robots or god-awful traps, but mainly he was peeking around the corner of the ship to see if anybody was looking down at it.
“Loud and clear,” Trix’s voice rang through. “Life signs are on the move towards this side of the building.”
“Track with weapons,” he told her, briefly reflecting that it was already becoming extremely useful to have an ally who was also your ship. “If I don’t like the look of them…”
“I’m not going to execute Zripob without a reason,” she informed him firmly. “I trust you, Adrian, but I’m not inclined to murder for you without justification.”
He couldn’t exactly blame her for that, no matter how frustrating it might be; Trix was his friend, not his machine slave, and that came with certain negatives to match the positives. “I can live with that,” he accepted. “Let me know if those ships are getting close.”
“ETA is about (ten minutes),” she replied, “then they’ll be dropping into local space. We’ll have a little more time while they negotiate the debris, so if we hurry we’ll be gone before they arrive.”
“Let’s hurry then,” he decided, feeling more cautious than his recent gung-ho self, and more in line with how he’d been before he’d left Earth, and before he’d… well, before things had changed. The time spent on Cimbrean, doing nothing but working with technology and welding torches had done wonders for his mental state. “I don’t feel like fighting off a whole fucking army today.”
“I’ve spotted two individuals in a higher window,” Trix informed him. “Zripob and a Corti I don’t recognise.”
“That’s probably Askit,” he told her, though he was really only guessing. “Looks like we’re having another fucking get-together.”
Taking a deep breath, he exhaled it in resignation to his next actions, and stepped out into the open with his shotgun raised up towards the window. “Right you toady motherfucker!” he bellowed. “Want to tell me why I shouldn’t blow your fucking head off?”
In defiance of Adrian’s expectations, it was Askit who answered the question. “Because you’re late, and he’s been working for me. It’s a good thing you didn’t leave it much longer, though.”
Adrian wasn’t sure what the fuck was going on anymore, and he spared a glance to the little Corti standing at the window, looking for all the world as though he was the one in charge here. If that were the case, it would definitely change things, although not necessarily for the better. “Late for what?”
“To help rig up the defences,” Askit replied. “I sent out a fake report from Grznk’s account saying that Hrbrd was here and raising an army against the Hierarchy, so I suspect we’ll have company in the next few days. There should be plenty of time to finish the rest of the traps.”
“Next few days?!” Adrian exclaimed, looking back in the direction Spot had flown in. “There’s a whole fucking army on the way right now! We’ve got to skedaddle mate!”
“Strange words from you, Adrian,” Zripob observed, “although I do agree with them. But since when does the ‘legendary’ Adrian Saunders run and hide? I’ve seen you defeat an army of Hunters and fly through hard vacuum unprotected! From what I hear you survived the hunger of a dark star by accelerating towards it! You don’t run away.”
“I don’t want to hear that from you, you fucking leather-skinned dickhole,” Adrian shot back in disgust, both at the toad and at his own desire to flee. “And just because I don’t want to fight another fucking army with no fucking army of my own doesn’t make me a fucking coward! Fuck!”
The outburst hadn’t shifted his aim at all, because as pissed off as he was, he wasn’t going to give that fucking toad any kind of chance to try something stupid and hurt Askit. “I stopped the self-destruct on your fucking ship, by the way.”
“I know,” Zripob replied. “I returned to the scene to find the ship and yourself both missing. What happened to it?”
“I crashed it into a fucking ocean,” Adrian recounted, “on a cushion of exploding water, so that was another barrel of fucking laughs I can thank you for, shitbag.”
“I wonder why he’s even here,” Trix wondered, interrupting the tirade of abuse Adrian was about to launch into. “Chehnash morality is simplistic and self-oriented, so he must be getting something out of this.”
Adrian mumbled a reply of understanding, and formulated his question for the toad. “Askit I get,” he said, “he hates those motherfuckers as much as I do, but why are you here? What do you get out of this bullshit, Kermit?”
“He had no choice,” Askit explained, answering for the toad-man. “He arrived on the same ship you’d left in, and I wasn’t feeling charitable. I’d already started my plan, and I needed an extra body to help with the defences until you got back.”
Zripob didn’t look at all happy about whatever had transpired. “He locked me out of the computer systems of the Salvage-Runner,” he added. “I cannot force him to release control, because this whole place is on his dead-man’s switch, and now we wait for the Hierarchy to descend upon us.”
Adrian glanced nervously around, wondering what kind of fucked up threat Askit might have organised in order to properly menace Zripob. If there was a dead-man’s switch, he couldn’t risk it going off while he was still inside.
“They come prepared for Hrbrd,” Askit noted. “Not for us.”
“They come with a fleet,” Zripob shot back. “How many ships?”
“Six,” Adrian replied. “They’re coming in all stealthy. I don’t think we can win.”
“One minute ETA,” Trix added quietly. “They’re almost here, Adrian!”
“Can we still get away?” he asked, equally softly. “If we can’t-“
“Sixty-percent probability,” she calculated, giving a result that was considerably worse than he’d been hoping for. “We need to get clear of the debris before we can warp safely, and we need to hope we don’t disturb any to tip them off as to our location.”
“Those aren’t good odds,” he mused, and returned his attention to the two standing in the window. He knew it was a stupid plan, but if the enemy was coming for Hrbrd they wouldn’t be bringing the kind of force they might if they were coming for Adrian or any other troublesome human. As long as they underestimated their enemy, they wouldn’t be ready for what he’d do to them.
“We’re going to stay, aren’t we?” Trix guessed, sounding expectant more than she sounded angry.
Adrian made his mind up as he answered. “Yeah,” he confirmed, “we are.”
“Good,” she said firmly, “because I’ve got a score to settle.”
+++++
Irbzrk Orbital Factory, Main Station
It hadn’t been long before the environment aboard the asteroid base had become uninhabitable, and speedy evacuation had become necessary. Chir and Layla, along with the two humans and Corti doctor had been the last to leave, wanting to make sure that absolutely everybody got away ahead of them. As per Chir’s instruction, they had separated into groups, taken what supplies they could load, and utilised the entirety of the stolen fleet to scatter into the stars.
There they would find safe harbour and await the order to return, should Chir ever decide to issue it. Right now, with two bases recently failed under his command, he wasn’t sure that he would, but that didn’t mean that he had the luxury of retirement.
Currently there was the issue of Layla being very cross with him. “What do you mean, ‘we’ve been robbed’?” she demanded as soon as he’d finished telling them the direst part of the news. “There was almost a million credits in that account!”
“I know, dearest,” Chir replied, keeping his own voice calm in an attempt to soothe her. The two of them had grown much closer in the several days spent together in the close confines of their clapped-out little starship, and by now he suspected that she was with his child, although that suspicion had not prevented them from working to ensure a certainty in the fact. “As I have explained, there were millions of micro-transactions made to draw all of the money from the account over days. That, however, is not the interesting part.”
Keffa raised an eyebrow, a human expression indicating surprise, doubt, or any other number of emotions. Her posture – arms folded, and leaning against the wall of the ship’s interior – suggested a defensive or worried emotional state, although she’d been that way periodically ever since having had her ship stolen by the ever-elusive Adrian Saunders. “What could possibly beat getting all of your money being stolen?”
“Only yesterday, somebody else inquired about that very account,” Chir revealed. “That person – a human, in fact – then proceeded to rob the bank of the exact amount missing from the account.”
The two humans traded glances, no doubt making their guesses as to the identity of the criminal. Darragh was the one to actually ask. “So what? Was it Adrian? Jennifer?”
“Neither,” Chir replied. “It was a human female, but without hair. It appears she disabled all of the security robots before talking her way past the police barricade. Whomever she was, she was very dangerous.”
“A woman, huh?” Keffa mused. “Nice.”
Layla brought the conversation back to the topic of missing money. “So the bank will be reimbursing the account, yes?”
Chir slumped, having dreaded this particular revelation. He’d been furious when he’d been told, but as the bank had been surrounded by police he hadn’t been able to release his anger until he was alone on the streets. “They will not. It was an anonymous account, without liability to protect the funds. We have no legal recourse to get our money back.”
“Legal recourse? We’re pirates,” Keffa reminded him.
“We are privateers,” Chir growled back. “I am not about to let us be hunted by both sides of this ridiculous conflict.”
Nobody was happy with that argument, but it gained a grudging sort of acceptance. They were in no position to risk becoming wanted criminals throughout the Dominion as well as the Celzi Alliance; not with only a poor excuse for a salvage-runner to cling to, and few supplies to keep them fed. Try as he might, Chir didn’t see the way out of this situation, and he dreaded to imagine what Layla was thinking.
It turned out that she, for one, had not yet given up on him. “So, Chir… what’s the plan?”
Still having the faith of the female he loved, Chir felt the strengthening of his resolve. He didn’t have any ideas, but he wasn’t going to give up when Layla, and his child, were relying on him. He was a military strategist – a good one too – and an administrator when forced into it, but when it came to everyday problems like having no money, he was not exactly an ideas man.
What he did know was how to fill the gaps in his own skills and knowledge with that of those around him, and he figured that if anyone might know how to get by without any money, it’d be the girl who’d grown up poor and not even considered sapient. “I’d like to pool our expertise on this one. It seems to me that Kefani would have the most experience in this sort of situation.”
The look Keffa gave him was one of not being very impressed at being singled out for that particular quality. “I’m so happy my life of larceny and destitution could provide a helpful knowledge-base for this particular conundrum.”
“Y’know I had to deal with prejudice and poverty as well,” Darragh protested. “It wasn’t all clear sailing from the moment I got free of the Corti. I spent half a year before anybody figured out I was a human, and for most of that I was forced to steal my food and hide in access tunnels for shelter.”
“Oh yeah, half a year… poor you,” Keffa snarked, rolling her eyes. “However did you manage?”
“Please,” Layla said, her hand settling uneasily on her belly, “if you have any ideas, we will listen.”
Keffa frowned, and looked away as she started to think. “Let’s see… I don’t reckon we’ll be able to get through all this without stealing something. The big questions are what are we able to steal that makes the risk worth it, and how do we get away?”
“Great,” lamented Darragh, to no-one’s interest but his own, “I’m going to become a criminal in multiple jurisdictions. There’s going to be nowhere we can go where there’s not a price on our heads, is there?”
That sentiment earned him a stern glare from Keffa. “That’s only if we fuck it up,” she told him, “we just need to figure out what we can steal and get away clean. Fortunately alien security systems are mostly complete crap.”
Chir gave her a level stare. “Thank you so much for your assessment. The security at the bank was no joke, apparently it was even armed to resist human incursion.”
Keffa’s lip slowly curled into a sly smile. “Was.”
“What do you mean-” Chir began, only to be interrupted by the other human.
“You can’t be suggesting we rob the same bank,” Darragh protested. “There’s policemen crawling all through the whole fecking building!”
“But the bank is still open,” Chir said, pondering possible plans. “Security is reduced to the police on duty, and nobody would really be expecting anything to happen again.”
“Means there’s just the guards to deal with,” Keffa added. “How many did you see milling about?”
“Nine or ten,” Chir recalled, counting them off in his memory. “Most positioned on the customer side of the floor. But I knew some of those men and women… I do not wish to kill them.”
“They’ll have those stun guns after a human attack,” Darragh pointed out. “Ten’s too many to get all at once, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been hit by one of those things, but-“
“They’ll burn your eyes out?” Keffa asked pointedly. “I was thinking of some sort of area weapon, like a non-lethal sort of nerve-jam grenade…”
Darragh shook his head. “There’s nothing like that around, most aliens would break if you put them up against a stiff breeze.”
Chir frowned, annoyed at the generalisations. That was the problem when you got humans talking about how to fight anything else, it all became very derogatory against the sturdiness of normal races. “I like to think I can manage in uncommonly strong winds.”
It was then that the Corti doctor decided to make his own opinion known, having clearly decided that since his professional life was a complete ruin, he had nothing to lose by throwing his lot in with criminals. “Much as it would amuse me to see you all in prison, it seems that you may benefit from my talents as a doctor.”
All attention now turned to Grznk. “What do you mean, doctor?” Chir asked. “Are there some contacts you have who can help?”
“I mean that I can produce non-lethal poisons,” Grznk replied. “I simply need the required ingredients to formulate an aerosol delivery system that will subdue anybody breathing the air in there.”
Chir eyed the doctor suspiciously, not quite willing to trust the Corti. “What kind of ingredients?”
“The kind that’s going to require you to rob the hospital,” Grznk replied. “If you think you’re capable of doing so unnoticed.”
“We’re capable,” Keffa said automatically. “Just tell us what you need and you’ll get done.”
Darragh sighed, shaking his head. “You know,” he said to nobody in particular, “we really are just terrible people.”
He was probably right, but it didn’t matter; the plan was going ahead, and all it needed was for Chir to green-light it. “Seems we’re going to need to be quick,” he said. “Let’s get planning.”
+++++
Record 573-Black-04
+Recovered from C11-Orange-712-Yellow-6+
“Hey it works!” a man cried out in surprise, swinging the camera around to focus on the young female scavenging nearby.
“That is a grave, Tormas!” she chastised him as she poked over the two corpses laying nearby as though she was used to it. The ruins hardly burned at all anymore, but the air was filled with a thick haze.
“It’s loot is what it is, Mrera!” Tormas defended. “Does look like they buried their child, though, huh?”
Mrera shot him a dark look. “Don’t make me think of them as people, idiot! They’re just… dead things.”
“How’d they die?” he asked, focusing the camera on the dead male, seeing how his hair was slicked with blood.
Mrera looked up again. “My guess? She stabbed him then stabbed herself… damn it Tormas, I… I can’t just rob them now.”
Tormas went silent, running the camera across the bloody scene. “Maybe we should bury them?”
Mrera sighed. “It would be nice, but… we don’t have time. We have to get out of the city.”
The camera swung away, pointing towards the distance horizon where the haze lessened. “The countryside?”
“Turn off that damn thing,” Mrera told him. “Focus on getting out of here alive.”
End Recording
+++++
Irbzrk Orbital Factory, Main Station
Darragh suspected – and hoped – that robbing a hospital of its medical supplies was going to be the most morally reprehensible thing he needed to do in his life. In his mind it was on the same level of villainy as stealing candy from babies, except of course one could lead to the deaths of innocent people and the other simply deprived a child of its poor dietary decision and possible choking hazard.
Combined with the fact that security in the Irbzrkian hospital approached non-existence, Darragh felt as though he was destroying a sacred public trust that had probably existed for aeons.
His personal feelings on the matter had not prevented him from posing as janitorial staff to gain access to all rooms – greatly assisted by the fact that nobody wore anything approaching a uniform – or from stealing a sack full of anaesthetics from the hospital’s medical supplies room. He hadn’t even needed to come up with a particularly challenging lie, because as far as they were concerned there was nothing worth the effort to steal.
“This is probably the worst thing I’ve ever done,” he remarked to Keffa as he dropped the bag full of anaesthetics onto the salvage-runner’s floor. “Even when Jen was running the show, we only took the medicine that wouldn’t be missed.”
“It’s just painkillers,” she replied. “It’s not as though it’s life saving drugs.”
“How long before they’re ready for the job?” Chir asked the doctor, unwilling to discuss the ethical implications of stealing so many medical supplies. Darragh suspected it made him uneasy, but wondered whether that made the commander better or worse than Keffa for going ahead with it anyway.
Grznk opened the sack and inspected the goods, taking them out and separating them into independent piles. “This should be enough to subdue everybody in the building, so you’re going to have to figure out how to keep a clerk safe from it so he can give you what you want.”
“And tablets will work like that?” Keffa asked, looking at the solid content of the small tubs. “I thought you normally swallowed them…”
“These are intended to be mixed with the delivery agent,” Grznk explained. “In this case it is an aerosol, but normally only a very small amount is required.”
“Then get to work, Doctor,” Chir instructed. “The rest of us need to discuss how to get away with bank robbery.”
+++++
Debris Field surrounding New Askitoria, the Outer Cluster
With barely any indication of its arrival, Twenty-Four’s fleet dropped into local space just outside the debris field that reportedly concealed the asteroid base Councillor Hrbrd was making his staging ground for an – obviously futile – effort against the Hierarchy. He had six ships in total, fully automated and filled with forgotten weapons from the last days of the previous galactic era.
Hrbrd was said to have been present at two separate humiliations of Hierarchy forces, three if you counted surviving Thirteen’s attack on the Celzi Alliance fleet. It was unbelievable that one as experienced as Thirteen could make such a grave miscalculation – humans present or not – and as a result Twenty-Four was being even more cautious than usual. He had brought his fleet in slowly, suppressing their warp signatures, and even now, as he prepared to launch his opening strikes, they remained concealed by the most advanced cloaking systems history had to offer.
Twenty-Four had been around for a while, and he liked to use what worked. Nothing would penetrate this level of cloaking technology outside of a ridiculously overpowered array of sensor suites, and he doubted any ragtag band Hrbrd could have assembled was capable of integrating sensor equipment to that level.
As he had ever done, Twenty-Four would strike hard, he would strike fast, and he would strike from hiding, and Hrbrd and his forces would die. Only then Twenty-Four would return to his comfortable life of relative obscurity on a world that was home to billions.
With his youth long behind him, that was how Twenty-Four preferred to live, and it was only because the single digits had requested it of him that he had reactivated his fleet, and now brought its full might to bear against an insect who had foolishly roused a slumbering giant. Hrbrd’s continued existence had been deemed an abomination, and needed to be scoured from the galaxy and its history books, along with all those he had indoctrinated.
He looked down at the console projecting the disassembled consciousness of He-Who-Had-Been-Zero. It was a messy thing, as all consciousnesses were, but this one was more dim-witted than most, as had been proven by its performance on Cavaras. If it had been intelligent, or in possession of even a mote of subtlety, Twenty-Four would still be luxuriating in the indulgences his aeons of service had earned him.
“You waste of data!” he growled at the remains, still irritated at the stupidity that had led to his enlistment against a mere Corti. “If only you still possessed consciousness, I would show you competence in action.”
Unlike Zero or Thirteen, Twenty-Four did not rush into things, and did not simply throw force at a difficult situation, although he certainly possessed it in excess. He was determined that there would be no repeat of their mistakes, and no reason for the Assembly to turn its ire towards him.
Passive sensor sweeps from multiple sources revealed the location of the asteroid base in short order, but showed no activity on the outside whatsoever. That was unexpected of an operational facility, but not unheard of when that facility was attempting to remain completely undetected. The power signatures of an active -albeit incomplete – cloaking grid and weapons array showed up readily on even these very basic scans, and showed Hrbrd as an enemy to be reckoned with. The base had undoubtedly been enhanced by the pirates Grznk had been reporting on, but for the Councillor to have taken it from them showed remarkable cunning on his part.
Twenty-Four knew to tread lightly here, these had been the same pirates who’d defeated Thirteen’s miserable Allebenellin forces, and who had threatened to force the Celzi to end the war early; anything they’d left behind was not to be trifled with, and care would be taken to ensure a minimal amount of lost equipment in the process.
Once again he wished the mind of He-Who-Had-Been-Zero was capable of understanding the skill and expertise about to be employed, but that individual had opted for a Corti form on the basis of their intelligence of all things. Twenty-Four had ever opted for the more robust form of a Koffortha, an omnivorous species from a Class 9 world forgotten for nearly (thirty-thousand years), and who had held a seat on the equally forgotten Senate of the Galactic Imperium for the (forty-thousand) prior.
There was more sense of history in a body like this than existed in the historical books of the entire Dominion, and Twenty-Four rather enjoyed the sense of antiquity and individuality that came with holding the last body of an extinct species.
“No sense in delaying the inevitable,” he told He-Who-Had-Been-Zero as they reached weapons range, knowing there was no mind there but wanting to demonstrate his superiority in any case. “We open with missiles, as Thirteen did, but we do it properly.”
The thousand missiles currently loaded across all six vessels were set to independently target each defensive system on the asteroid base’s exterior. “Targeting complete… all warheads armed… all missiles cloaked.”
He spared a glance at the inanimate data-set that was all that remained of Zero. “And… all missiles fired.”
+++++
New Askitoria, the Outer Cluster
The whole base shook under the massive shockwave that rocked the asteroid, the rock passing a rolling thunder that split and shattered the fractures in the stone, and caused a rain of rubble to come down from the ceilings. Tunnels collapsed, lights flickered, and everybody held their breath for the moment it all either stopped or turned to shit.
“What the fuck was that!?” Adrian demanded. It had sounded like a mighty shitload of artillery just hit everywhere all at the same time, and as it was probably the Hierarchy who’d been responsible, he strongly suspected that to actually be the case.
Askit scanned through his data in a hurry, while Zripob did the same, looking for some known cause behind what they’d just experienced. Trix was the first to give an unsatisfactory answer. “Whatever it was must have been cloaked, otherwise I should have been able to detect something, even from in here.”
“All external weapons systems offline,” Zripob reported. “Nothing registered on sensors…”
Looking up at them, Askit shook his head in bewilderment. “I don’t understand… the coilguns should have fired on the first thing they detected, especially missiles.”
“What if the missiles were cloaked?” Adrian asked, and from the look of shock on their faces he could tell they hadn’t even considered that possibility. Somebody very clever had obviously figured out that adding cloaking systems to missiles made them a lot more dangerous, and they’d just been served a shitload of them as a demonstration.
“Fucking hell,” Adrian muttered under his breath, wishing those missiles had been on his side rather than that of the enemy. “How many defences have we got left?”
“We have nothing left on the outside,” Zripob reported. “Hopefully they’ll be coming inside, and we’ll be able to employ our defences. We’ve rigged up several traps to deal with whatever comes.”
“Active sensor sweep shows nothing out there,” Askit informed them, his temper rising. “Their cloaking technology exceeds that of the Hunters.”
Adrian was beginning to regret his decision to stay; historically his enemies had been inept, and had allowed their hubris to cloud their judgement, but this was an attack being made on a massive scale. Whether it was intended to shock and awe, or just to completely obliterate any threat to the fleet, it had succeeded. “Can we at least find out if they’re entering the base?”
“We’ll know,” Zripob said ominously. “The defensive power grid is still operational. It should zap anything that gets close, cloaked or not.”
“And what happens when that fails?” Adrian asked bitterly; if that was the extent of their traps then they were royally screwed, and he’d have to start thinking about how to get the fuck out of there in a hurry.
“We’ve got some creative uses of kinetics,” Askit replied, “some tricks with atmosphere I’m sure you’re familiar with, plasma weapons, and of course the warp core.”
There was a surprise; there’d been no indication of the base having any kind of active warp capability on Spot’s scans. “The base has a warp core?”
“It doesn’t work,” said Zripob. “They didn’t get it working, but it can still cause a self-destruct.”
Adrian stared at the toad-man. “I don’t want to self-destruct anything else I’m standing on, thank you.”
Another wave of thunder shook the base, forcing them to pause conversation until it stopped. The lights flickered, and dimmed for an extended period that preceded a whole new round of explosions that definitely came from inside the base.
“That was not an outside explosion,” he noted, his eyes flicking between Askit and Zripob for explanation. “Mind telling me what the fuck-“
“That was the defensive power grid,” Askit replied sharply. “It just cooked… six… very, very large automatons before the ensuing explosion destroyed it.”
“Automatons?” Adrian asked. “More fucking robots? Robots don’t give a fuck whether they’ve got air, Askit!”
“I know,” the little Corti grated. “I’m figuring it out…”
The third wave of thunder coincided with a tremendous cracking sound from elsewhere in the base, and the collapse of part of the palace. “That was a section of the asteroid breaking free,” Zripob reported. “The section with the warp drive. We are most definitely defeated.”
Askit looked up at him with hot vehemence in his eyes. “Don’t count us out just yet, we’ve been in worse spots than this.”
+++++
Hierarchy Fleet besieging New Askitoria, the Outer Cluster
The loss of six Abrogator drones to a single defensive system was one that Twenty-Four sorely felt. They did not make robots like that in the modern era, and rebuilding them would be a costly and secretive affair that would need to be conducted on the ancient Kofforthan homeworld, out of sight of Dominion, Alliance, or Brood. The facilities would still be there, maintained by automated services, awaiting the day when Twenty-Four would return and put them to work once again.
He had simply not expected it to be so soon.
“At least we can see who’re were up against,” he said, content to de-cloak the fleet now that external defenses had been destroyed and the asteroid was actually disintegrating. He had used approximately three quarters of his total missile stockpiles to achieve that outcome, but whatever the material cost it must have been worth it.
Life-sign sensors swept the rock, revealing a mere three survivors holed up deep inside. Other sensors revealed power and atmosphere were still maintained, and the burning remains of the Abrogators littering the destroyed entrance to the base.
“Three remain,” he mused, wondering how many there had been in the first place. Having been switched to automated operation, the Abrogators needed to rely upon radio contact to share data and receive further orders from Twenty-Four, but that better than the risk of losing control of them to the enemy. He had reviewed the failures Thirteen had experienced at the hands of his Human and Corti attackers, and had determined it was better to be safe than sorry, even if that meant he was further removed from the battle than he was accustomed.
He felt a sudden concern that the destruction of his drones was the work of a particularly tenacious human on the order of the one Thirteen had given up his ship to destroy, the one action that had saved him from permanent disassembly. Trusting his paranoia, Twenty-Four gave the next wave of Abrogators the order to focus on disposing any human resistance, an order that would be meaningless if none was found and completely necessary if otherwise.
“Entering through the front was a mistake,” he said to He-Who-Had-Been-Zero, “but now I have a second option. The next ingress will be through the broken section, and will disperse into the base to avoid falling into a common trap.”
Losing the six had left him with another dozen of the gigantic killing machines, but he wasn’t going to risk them all just yet. Four were deployed as a vanguard, with another six serving as the new mainstay to the invasion force, all travelling in a fairly loose formation.
“Now we’ll see what happens,” he said, sitting back to prepare for his backup; it was probably not required, but it was better to do it and not need it than to need it and have not done it.
Just like sending in a total of ten machines typically reserved for purging Deathworlds of intelligent life, it was simply best to be cautious.
+++++
New Askitoria, the Outer Cluster
“Ten more robots have entered the base via the tunnels exposed by the breakaway section,” Zripob reported, putting the pictures on screen. It looked as though they were still using hover-cameras for surveillance purposes, and that the little devices were so harmless that they were being ignored by the huge machines.
“What the fuck are those things…” Adrian asked, his eyes widening at the sight of them. They were beyond any kind of threat he’d seen before, enormous four-legged bug-like things, about three stories worth of steel and terror that bristled with weapons scaled for small starships. They didn’t look new, and they weren’t the sort of thing that he’d ever seen deployed by anyone, or had even been talked about.
“I have no idea…” Askit replied in equal horror, “but they look like they could annihilate a Vulza!”
“Nothing like that has ever been seen on any battlefield I’ve been part of,” Zripob added, “and I would have heard of it on any others. If there had been any survivors.”
That was not the most reassuring of qualifiers; Adrian could pick out heavy-kinetics, plasma cannons, and what looked to be a swarm-missile launcher. “How the fuck are we supposed to fight those?”
“Four are headed right for us,” Askit reported, returning to the internal sensor information. “The other six are dispersing throughout the base. We’d best connect to our harnesses, and hope the plan still works.”
Adrian and Zripob did as Askit suggested, quickly locking themselves onto an anchor that would prevent them from moving in unwanted directions.
“How long do we have?” Zripob asked as he finished connecting himself.
“About (five more seconds),” Askit replied, finishing up with his own harness and taking his datapad back in hand. “Or… not.”
Gravity inverted with a sudden lurch that tugged at the whole palace structure, pulling away at the fractured sections and sending them plummeting towards the ceiling. The three of them would have plummeted likewise had the stress fractured the building they were on any lower, but as it happened their anchors remained locked to the ruins that clung to what was traditionally considered to be the ground while they dangled above a two hundred metre drop.
“Shit!” Zripob swore, scrambling for some kind of handhold on the crumbling masonry. “Shit, shit, shit!”
“Ho…. fuck!” Adrian shouted, his eyes fixed on the straining anchor. “That is not fucking good…”
Four explosions punctuated his utterance as the enormous robots impacted the distant ceiling, exploding into shrapnel and flame.
“Switch it back!” Zripob shouted, clinging to the remains of the window frame. “Switch the gravity back around!”
Askit looked over to them with empty hands and terrified eyes. “I can’t…” he said quietly, showing that his datapad was truly gone, vanished with the rest of the palace into a pile of ruin on the ceiling.
“Better that way,” Adrian replied. “I don’t really want a whole fucking building falling back down on me.”
“I’ll catch you if you do fall,” Trix promised, apparently not having been included amongst those things crashed and crushed by the stupidest of plans. “I’ve taken up position directly below you.”
Adrian whispered a quiet thanks for her quick thinking, and flashed a grin at the others. “Don’t worry fellas, I’m sure things aren’t as bad as they seem.”
Trix interrupted again. “It appears the remaining six have begun moving towards the kinetics systems. They’re probably about to-“
The strain on the ropes suddenly slackened, and a feeling of weightlessness took its place at about the same time the air began to shift towards the exits with rapidly increasing speed.
“-destroy them,” Trix finished lamely. “It appears the vacuum suits were a wise choice. I should inform you that Spot’s cloaking is useless in an environment filled with micro-debris, so simply running away is out of the question.”
Adrian’s grin faded to a grimace. “Well, then…” he said more awkwardly, “this may actually be as bad as it seems.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve got some sort of plan of your own?” Zripob asked, relying on the radios to carry his voice rather than the quickly vanishing atmosphere and holding onto the window frame for dear life as the howling winds made their escape.
“Only Plan B,” he said, presenting the shotgun as evidence of his preparation for this particular course of action.
“I can’t believe we’re going to be relying on that again,” Askit muttered. “And I never thought I’d hear you suggesting it after the last time.”
“Last time I didn’t have a semi-fucking-automatic shotgun,” Adrian replied, admiring the gun despite the desperation of the situation, “but if you can think of any other option, feel free to fucking well let me know!”
“Just one thing,” Askit said, presenting him with the worn data-jack that had seen them through a half-dozen horrible situations. “Take this. I’ll find a console and maybe we can figure something out.”
Adrian took it, and since nobody had anything else to add to the completely fucking stupid old standby, he figured he had all the answers he was going to get, so he started by readying the shotgun, a silent process in the nearly airless cavern, and once satisfied he was properly prepared to embark upon this particular act of madness, he loosed himself from the anchor and kicked free into the great open space.
Once clear of the debris, he pulled out the PPD and switched it on, letting it draw him off towards the tunnels where the giant robots awaited.
+++++
Hierarchy Fleet besieging New Askitoria, the Outer Cluster
Once the backup was complete, Twenty-Four had resumed his command to discover four more of his Abrogators had been nearly simultaneously destroyed in some kind of calamity that had led to the entire base being reduced to the microgravity provided by the asteroid itself. The six remaining Abrogators had dispersed as ordered, and were busily approaching the central point from separate angles, while the life-sign sensors informed him that all three beings had survived in spite of the destruction that must have been wrought.
They were definitely tenacious, Twenty-Four gave them that, but he doubted that they would survive for much longer. One of them was even approaching a drone voluntarily, at a speed that suggested it was making use of some sort of vehicle.
“I wonder who you are,” he said aloud, primarily for the benefit of He-Who-Had-Been-Zero, but still focusing on getting a more verbose response from the drone that would be intercepting that target.
Twenty-Four was utterly unsurprised when it turned out to register as human. He was more surprised when the Abrogator reported critical damage, and then stopped reporting at all.
He was most surprised by the image relayed over antiquated systems, an image of a human who should have been consumed by the Hunter swarm, a human who should have been killed by Assassin drones aboard a Corti space-station, a who should have vanished into the heart of a dark star.
Twenty-Four screeched his frustrations amid a flurry of abusive clicks denigrating the competence and parentage of Zero and Thirteen and everybody who’d allowed things to come to this.
That human was named Adrian Saunders, and he should have been dead.
+++++
New Askitoria, the Outer Cluster
“A proper suit!” Adrian decided, “with armour and kinetics, and… I don’t know, big fucking guns, maybe? Something that would-“
He hit the wall feet first, pivoting sideways to spring off in another direction. The swarm of micro-missiles annihilated that spot a split-second later, spraying him with a shower of debris carried by the shockwave.
“-fucking help a bit!” he finished, zipping into a cavity opened by the earlier missile barrage. He didn’t know where it went, but it didn’t get him shot by a huge fucking robo-bug and that was something.
“Maybe I could design something,” Trix replied conversationally, although she was well aware of what he was currently experiencing. “I’d need a fabricator, though.”
The cavity didn’t go anywhere, but it did escape the robo-bug for long enough for Adrian to catch his breath. He’d managed to take down two of them by shooting them in the plasma containment tanks – a breach that appeared to cause a magnificent and utterly devastating explosion – but this one seemed to be keeping that module away from direct line of sight, and that suggested some kind of communication between the damned things.
“What’s going on with the other three?” he asked, although he was primarily concerned with what was going on with this particular one.
“Converging on your position,” Trix reported. “Your movements have been erratic enough and have covered enough ground that they haven’t been able to get to you yet, but if you stay still…”
If he stayed still, he was fucked. “That’s just great. At the end of the day, what does all this even get me?”
“Assuming you beat them, the Hierarchy ship will remain out there and will prevent our exit or escape,” Trix replied. “So things don’t improve much.”
Adrian kicked off the walls and worked up speed back towards the robo-bug which, now that it had expended its missile swarm, was only slightly less deadly. At least if it was protecting its plasma container, it could only shoot him with a gun that would turn him into a sort of mushy paste, so he had that going for him.
He saw it as it detected him, and kicked off from the left-hand wall the moment it shifted its weapon towards him. A moment later the wall cracked with the impact of heavy kinetics fracturing solid stone, releasing a puff of tiny slivers that glittered in a cloud of stone dust. That was all very interesting, and with his ultra-definition eyesight he wasn’t able to avoid seeing it, but his attention was on the robot and its reaction to having three shells pumped into the actuators that controlled its ability to move.
Under regular gravity that would have meant collapsing to the ground, but these robots seemed to have a small kinetic drive that allowed them to stay planted on the floor instead of drifting around, and this could just as easily be used to twist and turn and drift along at a slow pace, so when three of its legs stopped functioning it really only served to slow it down.
But it slowed it down enough for Adrian to come down on it with both legs, driving it into the ground with the full force of his bulk. “Now let’s see what we can do with you, motherfucker,” he muttered, smashing open the clearly marked access panel and sticking the data-jack into the first port he saw that fit the plug.
Then he kicked himself free before the robot could recover, and vanished off into the tunnels. “Askit, mate. You there?”
“I’m here,” Askit replied quickly. “And I’m looking at what I can do.”
“And what can you do?” Adrian asked, twisting his body into a crevice too small for the robo-bugs to even think about entering and following it along towards wherever it made its exit.
Askit was quiet for a moment, but when he answered there was a kind of mad glee in his voice.
“Everything.”