Ekological Chimera
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Chapter 32 - I am not locked in here with you
🕑 Added 2024-10-01 17:51:08 +0000 UTCThe blazing silver eyes were not what Ashwood had wanted to see.
“Interesting,” an eerie voice spoke as the prisoner sat up, breaking his restraints.
“What the fuck,” Ashwood took a step back, reaching for his sidearm.
The captive's head turned towards him, “You. William, yes?”
Before he could muster up a response, Jane opened fire at the currently escaping prisoner with her own pistol, the bullets disintegrating upon a silver shield without doing anything. A few seconds later, the pistol clicked empty.
“That’s unfortunate,” Jane commented, face impassive.
The prisoner stood up, examining his hospital gown and then the walls, paying the two of them little mind.
Ashwood exchanged a look with Jane.
Then the two of the soldiers posted outside rushed in. Seeing the prisoner up and moving, they opened fire immediately, to the same effect as Jane.
“Retreat!” Ashwood shouted, enthusiastically following his own orders as he rushed out of the room, Jane right behind him.
Outside, Ashwood quickly ran over to one of the barricades and the soldiers manning them, slowing down slightly as he passed it, but not stopping. The knight, or whatever it was, could have the ship for all he cared. He certainly did not intend to die just to slow that monster down for his enemies. The Admiral could deal with his problems on his own.
Looking backward, only one of the soldiers followed after Jane, though he stopped at the barricade.
Thoughts racing, he quickly put his helmet on, before commanding Jane to do the same and linking up to the ship’s internal comm network with his implants. Reaching the captain, a man he had never met, he spoke quickly, “Pump out the air!”
He didn’t know if his words were heeded, but the door to the medical room slid shut soon after. Hopefully, they would be. The usual suits soldiers wore were generalist, so while not ideal for vacuum, they had enough oxygen stored that a person could function for ten to fifteen minutes when fully sealed. The Soma Aspis suits were much more advanced and could last longer, but regrettably, both he and Jane wore the usual fare. The Cyborgs had packed up their armour before boarding Pleione, hopefully blending in with his other soldiers. Though Jane probably could have outlasted him even without any sort of armour.
The gown-wearing knight shouldn’t be able to last nearly that long.
Ashwood bludgeoned his way into the ship’s internal network with his credentials in hopes of access to the ship’s cameras. Surprisingly, he was quickly granted access. Not wasting the opportunity, he pulled up the view of the medical room and the outside corridor on his implants.
Despite minimising the video into two windows in the corner of his vision, he still missed a step the moment he tuned in and only barely stopped himself from kissing the floor. The prisoner had just punched through the metal door with his bare hand.
“What the hell,” Ashwood muttered. Turning to Jane, he spoke again, “Let’s get to the shuttle, this isn’t our mess.”
The Lieutenant nodded just as an alarm started blaring.
The Knight was examining the hole in the door, before grabbing its sides and peeling the metal, widening it. Suddenly, the escaping prisoner stopped, his only hand reaching for his own throat. The Knight frowned and then a blast of silver destroyed the remainder of the door. The man walked through and was immediately greeted by gunfire from both sides. Contrary to the knight’s display on Eigos, he had no trouble maintaining a barrier all around himself.
Ashwood congratulated himself for his quick thinking, hastening his strides.
An impact shook the ship next, making Ashwood stumble and the corridor cameras wink out.
The Colonel broke into a full-on run but was soon forced to a stop before a lowered bulkhead.
Jane skidded to a stop behind him, her voice coming through his helmet on a private frequency, “Too smart for our own good, huh?”
Ashwood grimaced, “He should be already suffocating.”
“Didn’t seem to slow him down much.”
The two put their backs to the bulkhead, watching the corridor. Though the flashing red lights continued, they couldn’t hear the alarm anymore, the vacuum unable to transmit sound waves.
The Colonel’s mind raced, but he had checkmated himself quite thoroughly.
“We just have to outlast him,” he responded, frantically flicking through the ship’s cameras, trying to spot the escaped knight while checking the ship’s internal comms. Chaos greeted him on both.
Sound returned then, though weakly. Ashwood’s frantic searching through the ship’s cameras bore fruit as he stumbled upon a trail of dead soldiers. A couple of flicks later, he saw another lowered bulkhead, this one with a giant hole in it. The rest of the ship must have still been filled with air, but they’d probably pump all of it out now.
“He’s heading away. We should follow,” Ashwood said. He wasn’t feeling terribly confident in outlasting the knight.
“What?” Jane responded, voice baffled, “Oh, he’s opening up a path?”
Ashwood nodded. Staying where they were might be safe, but even Jane would run out of air eventually. Their surroundings were already plunged into silence again. They had to make their way to the hangar and off-ship before that happened. Or space the knight, but the Colonel didn’t want to touch that with a ten-foot pole. With access to cameras, following behind the prisoner wouldn’t be too risky.
Not his ship, not his problem.
“Give me a second,” Ashwood spent a minute more searching for the knight. He found him walking down an empty corridor, a lot less hurried than Ashwood would have liked.
“All right, let’s go.”
The two backtracked at a fast walk, preserving oxygen and soon nearing the room where the prisoner had been kept. The barricade on their side of the corridor was mostly intact, but all the soldiers were dead. Most had their heads torn off.
“Fucking hell,” Ashwood mumbled.
The other side was even worse. The prefab barricade was pretty much annihilated and the soldiers there were torn apart, as if by an explosion or a particularly angry bear.
They followed the knight's path, easily recognisable by the blood and corpses strewn around, while Ashwood did his best to keep an eye on their enemy’s current whereabouts.
Then the knight glowed brightly and the camera currently watching him winked out. An impact shook the ship at the same time.
Ashwood shared a look with Jane. A few minutes later, they were forced to pause, as a large hole leading to the vacuum of space greeted them in the next corridor. Bloody footprints led to the hole.
“There is an idea,” Jane said, putting an arm on Ashwood’s shoulder.
“No way, the artificial gravity doesn’t extend outside. I haven’t had any zero-g practice in years. Not that it would have helped much with an insane plan like this.”
Any training he had done was for proper zero-g action, with the corresponding equipment and safeguards, plus how to move in a ship when gravity didn’t work. Not about sauntering on a ship’s hull without even a safety tether.
“Practice makes perfect, besides, I’m trained, even for shit like this” Jane rebuffed him ruthlessly.
The Colonel checked his internal oxygen supply. A bit under ten minutes left.
“Give me a moment,” he said, quickly informing the rest of the ship that their former prisoner was out of the ship, probably making their way down the hull. There was little reason to keep them confined to this are of the ship with the knight outside.
Why the knight did something so suicidal, Ashwood didn’t know.
The Captain acknowledged his information, but his following request for a passage to the hangar was denied. The ship was having issues with its life support and the Captain wasn’t willing to worsen them by opening bulkheads to an unpressurized section. Apparently, everyone else had either locked themselves in still-pressurized rooms or went to intercept the knight and subsequently died, making Ashwood and Jane the only two people out and about the airless hallways.
“Does he want us to die?!” Ashwood bit out.
“It’d certainly help if you died in an accident, wouldn’t it?” Jane said.
The Colonel paled under his helmet. He had almost forgotten about Song’s little war crime. Not much had come off it so far, to the point that he had relegated it as business which wouldn’t matter unless they made it back to Terran space proper.
He sighed, “How do you want to do this, then?”
The Lieutenant thought about it for a moment, before gesturing to her back, “Hop on?”
Ashwood froze.
“Look, we don’t have anything to tie us together or to the ship. I give you even odds of floating off into space if you go on alone,” Jane explained and paused for a moment, before adding, “Even if that thing is already dead, I bet the Captain won’t manage to get to you in time.”
“Fuck my life,” he mumbled. Unfortunately, Jane was speaking sense. Since she was quite a bit taller and much, much stronger, it shouldn’t be an issue, logistically speaking.
It was quite awkward for him, though.
Swallowing his pride, he circled behind the Lieutenant and… hopped on.
“Hold as tight as you can, you couldn’t hurt me even if I was out of armour and I’ll need both hands,” Jane added.
“Right, right,” Ashwood responded, tightening his grip.
It was karma, he decided. He had derided the Eigosians for riding horses and the universe was now punishing him for it.
