“I always have faith in you, Ana.”
“Okay then, let’s get moving.”
“Um…Ana, in our mad rush of scheming, I think we forgot something important.”
“What?”
“How do you plan on getting out of this locked locker?”
“Oh…shit.”
“It’s not like us, is it, Ana?”
“Well, I’m not usually this reckless. Suggestions?”
“You could shoot the lock with your plasma pistol.”
Eyana activated the flashlight on her helmet, revealing a slimy coating of filth inside the locker. “Ugh, what was stored in here?”
“Based on my analysis, nothing pleasant, Ana. Best not to dwell on it, I think. Just be glad you’re wearing a helmet and can’t smell it.”
She spotted what was likely the locking mechanism, housed inside a small box. She grabbed it and gave it a twist. There was a bit of give. “I think I can pry this free.” She glanced at the locator. The insurgents were staying put for now, and that was fine by her.
With a grunt, she ripped the box free, exposing a few wires that resembled ivy vines more than anything. She tore them loose and something clicked. She pushed upward and the lid lifted, the lock having disengaged. She paused after raising it a few centimeters.
“Well done, Ana.”
“Didn’t even have to fire a blast. Can you scramble their video again?”
“On your mark, Ana.”
Eyana checked the energy level on her refraction cloak. The power pack was down to twenty-four percent. She didn’t want to waste time replacing it with a backup—not yet. The power on her sensor pack and scrambler array was down to thirty-eight percent. She checked the emppy. Unlike a chippy, which would last for years on a single charge or Silky who could probably last decades, the emppy was inefficient and drew a lot of power. But at its current level, it would hold up for another day, so no worries there.
She took a deep breath. “Go!”
Silky fuzzed their cameras, and Eyana threw the lid up and leapt out of the locker, charging out into a gruesome scene. The jagged blast opening was only just wide enough for her to crawl through, and the explosive decompression had pulled the two insurgents against the door then ripped their large bodies through the gap. Milky-white Krixis blood was now splattered throughout the section, along with an array of unidentifiable body parts. A few chunks of woody gore hung suspended in the shimmering, blue plasma field, but the remnants of the Krixis bodies had rocketed out into space.
“Gross.”
“If you don’t mind, Ana, I’m not going to record any video of this.”
“Has the ship slowed or changed course?”
“No, Ana. They seem determined to carry on.”
“That’s fanatics for you.”
Eyana walked over to the breach and crawled through, carefully, not wanting to snag her armor. Getting Krixis gore on her was inevitable, but her refraction cloak didn’t provide a physical barrier, so it wouldn’t compromise her invisibility. Still, she shook her arms and legs to get as much blood off as she could, so she wouldn’t trail any along the way.
The Krixis had to know by now what she was generally up to, even if they couldn’t see her directly, but she still had a few advantages: they didn’t know exactly where she was heading, who she was, or what her motivations were.
As she sprinted down the hallway, she heard a rushing sound all around her. “Is that what I think it is?”
“They’re restoring the atmosphere in the hallway, Ana.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. They’re going open the plasma window to blast me out so I’ll get crushed and flung into space like their comrades.”
“It could be an emergency protocol, Ana, or maybe they want to come out and face you.”
“Maybe.”
She glanced at her locator display, taking note of the nearest insurgents. She was past Engineering and approaching what Silky thought was a break room where two Krixis huddled near the door. Waiting for an order to charge out, or waiting defensively?
“You know, if it were me and I couldn’t see my enemy, then I wouldn’t face them unless I had to. I’d find another way.”
“I would have to agree, Ana.”
“Silky, why’s it starting to feel more like I’m swimming forward than running?”
“Because, Ana, the atmospheric pressure is now at seventy-two percent.”
“That’s all?”
“Relatively speaking, I’m sure it feels higher to you now, given how fast they’re pumping air in. You’ve gone from no pressure to a nearly normal amount in less than a minute. In fact, if you weren’t wearing a helmet your eardrums would have popped by now.”
She passed the break room, but the Krixis remained in place.
“There’s more than enough atmosphere for them to come out and play. They’re going to vent me.”
“I think you’re right, Ana.”
“When do you think they’ll do it?”
“Any moment, I should think, Ana.”
There was still a chance they could pop out and spray the hallway with their needle rifles, so she kept her plasma carbine ready. She was nearing the galley where two more Krixis waited just beyond the door.
“And when they vent?”
“We could reverse antigrav, Ana, to weigh you down.”
“That would slow my forward progress, though.”
“Honestly, Ana, I am not even sure it would be enough to save you. Your effective weight would be only forty percent more than the heavier of the two insurgents who got chunked and scattered going through the gap in the door. At best, it would give you a chance.”
She passed the galley, and still the enemy waited. A window Silky had pulled up into her HUD showed the pressure in the hallway at ninety-three percent.
“We’ll have to use the spider.”
“They will be able to follow its line to your exact location, Ana.”
She slapped her plasma carbine over her shoulder, and it magnetically locked into place. “Got a better idea?”
“Now activating the spider, Ana.”
From a compartment on the front waist of her battlesuit, a hand-sized, metallic spider launched. An enhanced, synthetic spider-silk thread spooled out from the top of it. The other end of that thread was anchored to Eyana’s battlesuit. Though the thread looked delicate, it was strong enough to hold up a skimmer bike without snapping.
Using targeting sights in her HUD, she marked the location she wanted: the far door leading to Atmospheric Control. The spider landed ten meters ahead of her and scurried forward, moving a little faster than she could run.
Given its lead on her, it should reach the door a good five seconds before she got there. But that wasn’t going to be soon enough.
A sudden whoosh sounded. She was lifted off her feet and flung backward.
“Reverse antigrav!”
“Maxed out, Ana!”
She hit the floor hard enough that it knocked the wind out of her. The reversed antigrav weighed her down to the point where it felt as if several people were lying on top of her. Despite that, the suction from the atmosphere venting into space was so great that it pulled her along the floor, back toward the end of the ship and a near certain death.
“Deploy grips!”
Barbed spikes projected out from her boots and gloves. Winds howling viciously around her, Eyana clawed at the floor and dug her toes in as best as she could, but it was futile. The pressure was too great, the grips insufficient. The spider-grapple’s sticky feet scrambled as it fought to stay ahead of her. She considered trying to aim herself so she’d fly straight through the hole. Maybe that way she’d only break a leg or lose an arm…if she were lucky.
At her current speed, she was going to hit the hole in three or four seconds.
“Silky! This isn’t working!”
“Activating the spider, Ana, and overriding antigrav safety measures.”
Her weight m
ore than tripled as her battlesuit’s gravity field spiked to unsafe levels. Her vision darkened and stars danced in her eyes. She didn’t stop sliding toward the door, but her speed did slow considerably.
At the same time, diamond drill bits popped out from the ends of the spider-grapple’s eight legs. As it dug in, with her still moving, the drill bits screeched against the steel-hard floor.
Suddenly, she was jerked to a hard stop, her feet only a few meters from the gap in the door. The spider had attached itself to the floor successfully. However, its hold was tenuous and the super-silk line was straining to hold her. The meter registering the power level for her antigrav had plunged. It wasn’t going to last much longer, assuming the unit didn’t overload and burn out.
Her vision still swimming, her mind went fuzzy a few moments. She was only half aware of the spider as it continued to drill into the floor. Vibrations down the taut line connecting her to it rattled her helmet.
The pull of the venting atmosphere at last faded.
“Turning off reverse antigrav, Ana.”
She came to her senses to find that thanks to the spider-grapple she was safely moored. According to her HUD, there was little atmosphere left in the hallway.
As she took several deep breaths, she thought to check the oxygen level in her suit. She frowned. Action and adrenaline had made her use up far more than she would have liked.
“Atmosphere vented, Ana.”
She picked herself up, noting that once again, she was fifty meters away from the Atmospheric Control.
“Retract the spider-grapple.”
The tiny cog withdrew its drill bits, then scurried back toward her. The line spooled back into its body as a motor in her battlesuit reeled it in.
“Plasma window back online, Ana. And now they are once again pumping air into the hallway.”
“Do you think they’ll try to vent me again?”
“The ship is too low on atmosphere for another attempt, Ana. Unless they’re willing to risk their lives, too.”
The spider hopped a meter into the air, and the suit finished reeling it back into its storage compartment.
“In that case, I’d better get moving.” She pressed a trigger on the strap for her plasma carbine. The magnets released, and she pulled the weapon off her shoulder. “Cause they’re about to start shooting.”
Chapter Seven
Eyana Ora
Using a thought, Eyana activated the full-auto mode on her plasma carbine. She preferred precise, deliberate shots. Full-auto drained away far too much power and risked the carbine overheating. But she didn’t figure she’d have time for aiming. The Krixis were likely to come at her all at once.
As she raced down the main corridor, she recited, out of habit, the Fibonacci sequence. Her thoughts had been chaotic and panicked enough that the insurgents surely realized by now that she was human and using a refraction field, a technology the Krixis relied on their telepathic abilities to overcome. But that didn’t mean she should give up hiding her empathic presence. She didn’t want them to know her precise location, or have even the slightest clue as to her intentions.
She raced past Engineering and the break room.
“Might I suggest prepping a smoke grenade, Ana?”
The ZipBam-S micro-grenade launcher mounted onto the sensor pack on her back was loaded with two smoke rounds and two flash bangs. She hated using the thing. It was impossible to aim and temperamental, primarily because it was a stripped down version of the larger ZipBam mounted onto the Crusader-class, powered battlesuits used by the marines.
She sighed. “Do it.”
A smoke grenade wouldn’t be necessary as long as her refraction cloak held, but with needle shots whizzing toward her, it was possible the refraction array might get hit or fail. Plus, if a needle struck her force shield while it was active, the resulting flicker would give away her position.
She checked the power level on her refraction cloak. Twenty-two percent. She still had three backup power packs, but she was afraid she was soon going to have to make some hard choices about which systems to keep powered up.
She was approaching the galley, where two Krixis waited.
“Ana, door opening!”
She slid to her knees beside the door and aimed her gun upward. The door whooshed open, and Eyana opened fire, spraying plasma bolts into the chests of the lightly armored insurgents. At point-blank range, the plasma bolts punched through their uniforms and out their backs. While they were still falling, she darted to the other side of the corridor.
The two Krixis warriors from the break room stepped out into the corridor behind her.
“Incoming, Ana!”
She spun around and bellyflopped onto the floor. A spray of three-centimeter-long needles whistled overhead. Her plasma carbine hummed as she returned fire. A number of her shots burned into the ceiling and the walls, but more than enough struck home. Scored with plasma burns, one insurgent dropped, while the other ducked back inside.
“Launch the smoke grenade.”
The micro-grenade fired out from her shoulder, dinged the ceiling, and exploded on impact with the floor, spewing smoke into the corridor behind her. She leapt to her feet, darted back to the other side of the corridor, and launched into a sprint.
She looked at her locator. A red dot from Engineering entered the corridor behind her, but didn’t open fire. Instead, the insurgent paused just outside the door. She had no way to tell what he was doing, but as long as he wasn’t shooting, she didn’t particularly care.
Ahead of her, two Krixis exited the Bridge.
“Heavy weapons detected, Ana!”
While one insurgent stormed down the ramp to the corridor, the other fired a shock burst from his electro-blaster. The meter-wide, crackling, cloud-shaped blast sailed to the right of Eyana. As it passed, every hair on her body rose and her skin tingled. The insurgent at the door shouldered his electro-blaster, humming as it recharged, and closed the door, staying outside.
His comrade aimed a needle cannon toward Eyana’s side of the corridor and unleashed a whistling torrent of needles in her direction. Their clever tactic with the electro-blast had revealed which side of the corridor she was likely on.
She deployed her force shield and dropped to her knees, hunkering down behind it. Over a dozen, poison-tipped needles harmlessly snapped against the energy field, which lit up with each strike, overpowering her cloaking effect to reveal her position. A needle glanced off the floor, pierced her battlesuit, and pricked into her leg, just above her left knee.
“Neurotoxins detected, Ana. Releasing counteragents.”
Like all Empathic Services agents, Eyana had a medical implant in her chest, capable of releasing several emergency medibot injections and antitoxin doses.
Her leg began to burn as if it were on fire, and she bit into her lip to keep from screaming. “Shit, I’d forgotten how much that hurts.”
While the one with the electro-blaster placed something onto the center of the Bridge door, the other ejected a canister from his cannon and again leveled the device toward her, a mechanism whirring as it reloaded.
Eyana stood and fired at him with her carbine as she hobbled forward. Three plasma bursts hit directly on target, but they fizzled out against a strong, personal energy field.
“Needles incoming, Ana!”
“Launch a flashbang!”
Again she hit the floor and ducked behind her force shield as needles sprayed through the corridor. Her own, unaimed shots sailed wide, scorching the wall and ceiling. Needles pinged against her shield. One clipped her partially exposed right arm. The burning sensation was so intense and immediate that she cried out.
“Force shield at forty-six percent. Plasma carbine at fifteen. Refraction cloak at thirty.”
A micro-grenade whooshed out from the launcher on her shoulder and struck the insurgent’s personal force field. A light so bright she could see it through her closed eyelids lit up the corridor. The noise was unavoid
able, and so loud in the confined space that she worried her eardrums would be permanently damaged.
She stood and lurched forward. “What the hell?! Why was it so loud?”
“A side-effect of the toxins, Ana. It wasn’t any louder than normal.”
Clearly dazed, the Krixis with the cannon stumbled backward, wincing as he ejected another canister. Eyana drew aim as best as she could, her poisoned arm shaking, and fired three bursts. The first two knocked out his energy shield, and the third scorched into his left foot. He groaned and fell back against a wall, injured but still very much alive and dangerous.
The one behind him tapped a device he’d connected to the door leading to the Bridge. A green, iridescent film spread out across the door then hardened into something resembling stone. The now-embedded device then emitted a shimmering energy field. He spun around and pulled the electro-blaster off his shoulder.
“You will not be accessing the Bridge now, Ana. Not with the explosives you have available to you, unless you can find another way in.”
“Good thing that wasn’t my intention.”
She tried to raise her carbine to fire another blast, but her arm shook so badly she couldn’t even level the gun. She gave up. There was no point wasting energy shooting at their feet.
“I don’t remember it taking this long for the counteragent to take effect…”
“You got hit by two advanced, multi-toxin needles, Ana. It is going to take longer than a few seconds.”
Silky adjusted her antigrav as she hobbled forward, so she wouldn’t have to put as much weight on her left leg. That allowed her to go a little faster, and though it seemed to take forever, she closed on the Krixis with the cannon. He stood at the junction where one ramp led up toward the Bridge and the other down to Atmospheric Control.
“Ana! Watch out!”
Dazed from the toxins, she barely lifted her force shield in time to block the crackling, shock blast. Her shield winked out and the remaining energy burned across her. Without her battlesuit, she would’ve suffered severe burns.
Her HUD filled with static and Silky’s voice came through garbled. “Refraction…down…sensors offline…carbine…eight percent…antigrav…malfunction.”
Forbidden System: A Benevolency Universe Novel (Fall of the Benevolence Book 1) Page 5
