Bullets zipped by Sage’s visor, fired from the flashing muzzles of a green wall of Tribunal soldiers. They were lined up in front of the brig’s main exit and had Sage, Talon, Tarsis, and the rest of the Ceresians pinned down.
Talon grabbed Sage’s shoulder and shouted: “What do we do?”
“We’ve got to push through,” she answered. “It’s the only way.”
“Great,” Tarsis coughed. “And how do you expect to do that? Or was it all part of Cassius’ plan to get rid of us?”
Sage raised her pulse-rifle with her artificial arm and poked it around the corner. She fired blindly. A bullet or two grazed off of her metal forearm as she did, but it held up. It was made out of the same, nearly-indestructible alloy as ADIM.
By the time her clip was empty, she had no doubt she’d hit a few Tribunals. It wasn’t enough. The line of soldiers pressed closer.
“Fuck this!” one of the rescued Ceresians hollered. He raised his gun and charged out into the hallway. He barely got off three shots before he was riddled with holes.
Sage reloaded, extended her artificial arm, and fired blindly once more. Again her arm was battered but managed to hold up, only this time a chorus of screams followed. Much more screaming than there should’ve been.
“The creatures are behind us!” voices shouted in terror from the ranks of the Tribunal soldiers.
Extraneous gunfire clanged against the walls of the passage. Sage peered around the corner and saw androids leaping up over the Tribunal lines, their white eyes glowing.
ADIM! she thought. She couldn’t believe it. He’d sent them down to help all on his own. An android was saving her life.
Tarsis noticed as well. “Charge!” he rasped, signaling the crowd of freed Ceresian prisoners to follow him into the hall. Bullets flew in every direction. Sage glanced back over her shoulder into Talon’s watery blue eyes. She could tell how much he wanted to join his people in the fight, but nothing would pry him off of his daughter. She wasn’t going to let anything happen to either of them.
“Stay behind me,” she ordered before she bounded out into the corridor to join the fray.
It was chaos. Bodies were everywhere. She jumped as high as she could and stabbed the blade of her artificial arm into the ceiling. While hanging there, she used her human arm to shoot at anything in green. The gun was heavy, but she clenched her jaw and maintained her aim.
Once the blade couldn’t hold any longer, she dropped and rolled forward. The butt of a gun swung at her, but she twisted out of the way and cut the Tribunal across the stomach. She flipped her rifle over to her artificial hand and shot another one through the chest. That was when her clip ran out again. She dropped the gun, and as she did she caught the reflection off a corpse’s visor; Talon and Elisha were right behind her.
The body of an android flew in front of her. She evaded it and bowled over a soldier. Behind that soldier she saw Tarsis receive a blow to the head from the gun butt of a Tribunal and stumble back onto his rear. As the soldier took aim to finish Tarsis off, Sage leapt through the air, over the Vergent, and planted her blade deep in the Tribunal’s chest. His gun went off as he toppled over, the bullet striking Sage in her lower torso.
She howled in pain. It was a clean shot, straight through a weak point in her armor and out the other side without hitting anything vital. She fell to her knees, and as she did she saw the back of Tarsis’ exo-suit soar over her and grasp another soldier by the throat. Even through her helmet she could hear the man’s neck crunch. Tarsis tossed him to the side before grabbing Sage’s arm and yanking her to her feet. There were no other soldiers left standing.
“Can you still move?”
“I’ll be fine.” Sage spit a gob of blood into the base of her helmet. Implant or not, she had been trained to tolerate pain. All she had to do was bite her lip and focus on the task at hand.
Tarsis nodded. “Let’s get them out of here then. Forward! To the hangar!”
Only two Ceresian prisoners survived the scrum. A handful of androids remained intact as well. Sage checked to make sure Talon was on her heels, and then they all pressed on. She snatched a new pulse-rifle off of the ground on their way.
The androids stayed out in front, absorbing the brunt of the few defenses left on their way back to the hangar. It was apparent that Yavortha had never expected them to escape. Sage knew that when they reached the hangar the quiet wouldn’t last. She’d seen the transports arriving from the settlement on Fortuna earlier. This was where their plan was left open-ended. All that remained was finding any possible way off of the Ascendant so Cassius could retrieve them. They were going to have to improvise.
When they reached an entrance to the hangar, what remained of ADIM’s force were positioned outside of it. Sage placed her back against the corner. She was breathing heavily, and through the bottom of her visor she could see a stream of her own blood running down the leg of her armor.
The rest of her companions lined up alongside of her. Every one of them was looking to her for answers. Everyone except for Tarsis. He was leaning against the wall, wheezing, hardly able to stay on his two feet.
She peered into the massive hangar. It’d become a warzone. Smoking remnants of Mechs and fighters littered the glossy floor, sprinkled amongst countless bodies of both metal and flesh. The android numbers were dwindling; they wouldn’t last much longer. They’d already lost the area around the vent through which they’d entered.
Beyond them she recognized the armor of Hand Yavortha, all the way across the hangar amongst a sea of green. He was standing on the raised ramp of a transport ship.
“We’re going—” Sage began before a sharp pain pulled at her stomach. She pressed her human hand against her wound and took a measured breath. “We’re going to need to find a new way out,” she said. “We’ll only get one shot at this.”
“Nice fuckin’ rescue this was,” one of the Ceresian prisoners remarked. “I say we blast through!”
Blast through, she thought. She peeked around the corner and saw two vacant Mechs sitting against the wall behind the ranks of shooting androids. Their rail-guns might be enough to break the soundness of the Ascendant’s hull.
“Talon, can you operate a Mech?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I helped Julius with one or two back on Kalliope but those were for mining.”
“There’re two left. I’m going to provide cover so you can reach the exterior wall. I’ll load into the further Mech and fire the rail through the side of the hangar. You and Elisha will be sucked out into space and Tarsis and the others can hold on until Cassius retrieves you. I’ll follow right behind you.”
An unexpected look of dread seized Talon’s face. “No!” he yelled, grasping Sage by her forearm. “We’re not bringing Elisha back to him.”
“There’s no time to argue, Talon!” Sage barked. She looked toward the two surviving Ceresians. “Get in Tribunal suits and put on the helmets.”
They didn’t even wait a second before picking through the many Tribunal corpses around to find one with an uncompromised suit. Talon backed down and started whispering with Tarsis while they waited. Sage took that time to use her wrist-blade to bend the punctured portion of her own suit over her bullet wound. That would ensure that there was constant pressure on it and that her suit was sealed when she entered space.
When she was done she glanced out from cover again. A sea of green was crashing down on them, under the direct command of Hand Yavortha. Androids were dropping one by one.
An explosive round took out a cluster of them, spraying metal arms and legs through the air. If she was even able to reach the second Mech it would take some time for it to charge up its rail-gun. She wasn’t ADIM, so she couldn’t calculate the odds, but it was beginning to seem likely that she wouldn’t be able to follow Talon out into space.
One last mission.
“Talon, are you ready?” she yelled. “We’re going to get her out of here.”
Talon brushed back Elisha’s hair and looked down at her, lines of terror wracking his face. She’d never seen him so scared. “I’m ready,” he whispered.
“On my signal then.”
Sage closed her visor and switched on her helmet’s com-link. She lifted her arm, giving the freed Ceresian prisoners just enough time to finish putting on their suits. Then she let it fall, signaling the rest to move before she ran out shooting.
She hopped from android to android, taking cover behind each one and picking off what were once her own people. Talon sprinted behind her, weaving his way across the bodies and the debris toward the Mech parked against the adjacent wall. She couldn’t see Yavortha’s face as he watched her from across the hangar, but she could just imagine his rage. It propelled her. It felt good to join a fight from beyond the shadows against someone she knew deserved it, for once in her life.
“We’re in!” Talon shouted over the com-link.
That was her cue.
She broke off from the androids and bolted toward the other Mech. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Talon’s Mech’s cockpit sealing. She hurdled the broken-down chassis of a fighter ship, sparks showering and bullets trailing her. A few times the pain in her gut almost made her stumble, but she managed to keep her balance.
When she finally reached the Mech, she froze in her tracks. The cockpit was already occupied and closing, only it wasn’t a Tribunal inside. It was Tarsis. His visor was lifted so she could see his messy beard and the pull of each of his strained breaths. The veins of his face bulged, so blue that he looked like a Gravitum Generator ready to burst.
“I can never repay the gift Talon gave to me, but take care of them, Sage,” he rasped. “Let’s hope your people are right about the Spirit.”
The cockpit sealed and Tarsis pulled down his visor. Pistons hissed as its body lifted until the gargantuan hulk of metal stood at its full, imposing height.
“No!” Sage shouted.
She slammed her metal fist against the Mech’s chassis, but as she did the Tribunals took notice and started riddling it with bullets. She ducked down behind its leg and looked back to search for Talon. His Mech was bounding across the hangar, the two surviving Ceresian prisoners using its legs for cover.
“Sage, are you in?” Talon asked frantically over the com-link.
“She’s in,” Tarsis said before she could respond. His Mech’s feet slammed down and it bent over, revealing the illuminated spine along its back. A white light there began to brighten, and a humming noise even louder than the countless firing rifles greeted Sage’s ears.
There was no time to think. With the entire room’s attention turned to Tarsis, she took off to catch up with Talon. She picked up a large shard of metal from a wrecked fighter with her artificial arm and used it as a shield. It didn’t take long before it was assaulted by a barrage of bullets. She immediately discovered why. The eyes of the remaining androids were slowly going dark, and they were crumbling without even being shot. ADIM was no longer controlling them.
She used her human hand to reach into her synthetic forearm while she ran and activated the HOLO-Recorder Cassius had given her so he knew they were coming. Keeping the shield upright in the face of so much fire was almost impossible, even for her artificial arm, but it at least helped distract her from the hole in her torso.
In front of her, Talon was able to keep the legs of his Mech churning. The further he went, the better he got at piloting the thing. It went from swaying side to side, to maintaining a straight line, and then firing the chain gun built into its arm toward the Tribunal ranks.
“Sage, are you going to shoot?” Talon shouted. “We’re almost at the wall!”
Any possible response died in Sage’s throat. She caught up with Talon’s Mech and as soon as she did she glanced up and saw a wall of soldiers impeding them. Yavortha stood in their center, fully armored and aiming a rifle. Through the visor of his helmet she saw a patch over the eye she’d taken from him. His other one glared straight at her. The rest of the soldiers were focused on Talon’s Mech.
“Bring it down!” Yavortha thundered.
Sage couldn’t use her shield to guard both her flank and front. She was forced to zigzag to avoid the Hand’s shots. Running straight had been easy, but every cut she made further distressed her wound. On one turn her foot gave out and she slipped, and as she did a bolt of white energy speared over her shoulder and pierced the wall of the Ascendant. The entire ship lurched to the side.
She extended her artificial arm as far as she could. Her metal fingers dug into the leg of Talon’s Mech just in time before she, the Mech, and anything else near the breach was sucked out.
“I bet even the android never would’ve thought of this!” Tarsis laughed over the com-link. “Flying a Mech out! Take that you bastards!” The sound of gunfire echoed through the com-link he had never switched off.
Everything else around Sage went quiet. She gathered her bearings as she and the Mech tumbled through space, and then drew herself up its body until she was right beside the cockpit. Through the narrow slit of glass set in it she could see Talon staring out, dumbfounded. A bullet suddenly grazed her artificial bicep. She pulled herself flat against the metal chassis and used her artificial arm to roll over, dodging a few more shots. She could hear Tarsis and Talon conversing over her com-link, but there was no time to ask Talon what was going on. Yavortha was clambering up the leg of the Mech, his sidearm in hand. Another soldier was with him, but he kicked the man off in order to get a boost.
He crashed into Sage. With her artificial hand she held him from being able to shoot her in the head, but he was able to position his pistol to unload the rest of his clip through the arm itself. She couldn’t feel anything, but slivered shards of metal and circuits sprayed across the vacuum.
She wasn’t sure why she screamed, but she did. She kicked off of the Mech, rolled behind Yavortha and put him in a choke hold. He elbowed her in the stomach and twisted away, his groping fingers wrapping around Sage’s calf and wrenching her leg backwards.
The muscles in her quad tore. She willed her artificial arm to move, but not even the fingers twitched. After Yavortha’s close-range onslaught she couldn’t control it. He flipped her over and wrapped a hand forcefully around her neck. Her back slammed against the chest of the Mech.
Yavortha pinned her human arm down with his free hand so that she could neither fight nor reach the switch to speak through her com-link and allow Talon to hear her. All she could do was stare into his ravenous eyes as he squeezed the life out of her.
That was when the massive arm of the Mech swiped across her view and slapped Yavortha away. She couldn’t hear if he said anything, but despite weightlessness rendering his Mech mostly useless, Talon was attempting to help her.
Yavortha grabbed onto the arm when it stopped moving and he pushed back toward Sage. She quickly stole a glance down at her artificial arm. She may not have been able to move it with her mind, but she wasn’t useless yet. With her fleshy hand she grabbed it and began to shift it into various positions, hoping to find the one which would cause her wrist-blade to shoot out. Before she could, Yavortha’s elbow slammed into her throat, knocking both of them away from the Mech and causing them to twirl through space.
That was when it finally worked.
The blade sunk into Yavortha’s chest. Blood spiraled out across the vacuum. She screamed at the top of her lungs as she used her human hand to lift it. The blade sliced up through his body until her broken, metal arm was sticking out of the top of his helmet.
They continued to spin through the vacuum together, her and the Hand of her former master. She was completely out of breath by the time she was finally able to stop screaming and tear her gaze away from him. A cluster of ships was bearing down on their position. Her vision was too blurred from pain to tell what was what, but one of them had to be the White Hand.
She yanked her blade out of Yavortha and attempted to raise her arm to contact Talon when a dazzling display of flashes and explosions coruscated across space in front of her. She felt her back cradled by the open hand of Talon’s Mech, and then darkness closed in around her.