Spacebound Chronicles

Chapter 27: Spring

Just a human shaped blur in the air, Logan led the way while Fall followed. That configuration allowed them to advance mostly in silence, while the sledgehammer bearing beast took care of anyone coming from the rear.

“Wait!” Logan held up a fist. The belt was recharging, the Security Control Room right around the corner, but two robots stood guard. He pulled a Dark Matter shard from the pouch hanging from his belt and pressed it in Fall’s hairy hands. “Don’t pocket it, I can’t see it in your inventory.”

Fall nodded, having understood what was about to go down. After pulling up his hood, Logan stepped around the corner into plain view of the guards tens of levels stronger than him.

“Intruder! Please do not resist!” both guards said simultaneously as the batons that tipped their limbs turned blue with cackling electricity.

Logan fired a few hand cannon rounds at each of them for no avail other than superficial hull damage, then sprinted out of sight on the opposite direction from where he had left Fall. As expected, both guards followed issuing formal warnings to cease and desist, not bothering to look in Fall’s direction, allowing the alien to slide around the corner and up to the Control Room.

He glanced over his shoulder to the point where Logan and the robots had disappeared, hesitant, until the crystal on his palm shivered and Logan appeared at his side.

“Not bad,” Fall said as Logan waved the stolen guard-bot chip in front of a sensor by the door, revealing them the control room.

They had expected nothing different than what they found: a dark round room with holographic camera feeds of the entire station coating the walls. What they did not expect were the three fluffy aliens with huge eyes and bunny ears operating the systems.

“Please don’t kill us!” they said in unison.

“Stay quiet and we won’t!” Fall grunted, taking guard position by the entrance. “Get to work, Winter.”

“On it,” Logan rushed to a control panel, fiddling around until he found the feed he was looking for.

Spring had docked the Jumper and now stood side by side with Summer in front of a locked elevator leading to the Guild Leaders’ Hall, where, clearly, only guild leaders and personnel authorized by them could enter. That was probably Meron Trius’ original role in the con, but the Control Room did the trick just as well.

Logan flicked a few buttons and the elevator’s door slid open, allowing Summer and Fall to sneak in. While Logan proceeded to shut down all cameras and erase recordings, the bunny operators screeched and launched a surprise attack. A few sledgehammer swings later, however, all would be resolved.

In the elevator, Summer had pulled her plasma-knife, the short rod by the end of the handle shining in a fickle blue light. Spring proceeded to cast a Dark Matter spell, Relativistic Time Dilation, to their surroundings, slowing all environment effects, such as the elevator’s ascension, to nearly a halt. That would give them time to do what was needed before the doors opened.

“Some help?” Summer asked, and Spring quickly tossed a sphere of Dense Matter on the elevator’s ceiling, shifting gravity so that Summer could reach the upper surface and slice through it with her burning blade.

Less than a minute later, both stood outside the elevator, closing the round hole they had just created. Each of them turned on a flashlight to see on the dark elevator pit, a pipe much wider than expected, dozens of cabins moving up and down its perimeter. When the Relativistic Time Dilation effect ran out, their own elevator shot at an unbearable speed to the top, bringing the two intruders along with it.

Once they stopped, another elevator, a few miles down and all the way across the pit saw its own roof blown out in a much less gracious fashion, Logan and Fall climbing out of it.

For a handful of seconds, four flashlight beams waltzed around the dark pit, until Logan’s landed upon a maintenance hatch on the wall, positioned between the two pairs of thieves. It was positioned higher than his and Fall’s elevator, but lower than Summer’s and Spring’s.

“There!” he muttered over the party communications. “How do we get there?”

“I have an idea,” Summer replied, and seconds later she and Spring leaped from their elevator, the six eyed Dark Matter mage enveloping them in a dark bubble that slowed their fall and allowed them to float effortlessly across the shaft and to the hatch.

“Nice, now what about us?” Fall asked. “Pretty sure those guard-bots are hot on our tail!”

“Give us a second!” Summer replied.

There was a huge gap between their position and the much taller hatch, simply impossible to jump, and their elevator had already reached its maximum height. Even if the distance was tolerable, three elevators connecting the Hangar Bay below and the League’s War Room above constantly shot by with enough speed to instantly kill anyone who touched them.

But those elevators were also the solution. A field of Dark Matter tendrils spread across the elevators’ tracks, and all three of them froze in place the instant they touched the Dark webbing, the one closer to Logan and Fall lower, the one closer to the hatch higher. A perfect three step staircase, despite the still considerable gap between the elevators.

“Here,” Logan handed Fall another dark shard. “In case I miss the mark and fall.”

“What if I fall?” Fall asked, wishing he too were able to teleport as a last resort.

“Then it was nice meeting you!” Logan snarked, then jumped up to the first frozen elevator.

Fortunately, all four of them gathered before the large hatch without needing to waste any more teleportation crystals. The hatch was huge, its radius more than enough to fit all the party side-by-side, but not particularly sturdy. Grunting with effort, Fall successfully bent two iron slabs enough to give them passage.

The other side was not nearly as cramped as the entrance felt. Albeit there were pipes, circuitry, support beams and monitoring consoles siding most of the catwalk they found themselves on, beyond all that an extremely ample universe of blinking lights spread as far as the eye could see. If the Dark Matter Heart was Megafleet’s, well, heart, those blinking lights would be its arteries.

Maintenance drones, the station’s white blood cells floated from one workstation to the next making sure everything was running smoothly.

Directly ahead of the group, at the end of the straight catwalk, a great door led into a dark spherical construct where all the wires started. That was their goal. Within the spherical chamber, they would find the Heart.

“See, it wasn’t so hard,” Logan whispered.

“Shut up,” Fall spat. “The beginning is always the easy part. Now let’s get moving.”

They all complied, crossing the catwalk step by step. The bustling hubs of activity keeping Megafleet alive made for a humbling scenario, the constant soft hum of machinery adding for an atmosphere of peaceful tension.

“Drone!” Summer hissed and dove for cover behind a backup generator.

Spring glued his back to a support beam.

Fall ducked behind a maintenance terminal.

Logan slid to the shadows of bundled wires, reengaging the stealth belt.

Beeping and bopping, the maintenance drone floated overhead, absent to their presence.

“Clear,” Summer said again. “But stay low, another might show up!”

They continued on, crouched, keeping close to railings, wirings and any kind of element that could serve as cover. They were nearing the objective, when Summer hissed again:

“Drone!”

Logan dropped to his back and rolled under a thick pipe, the others equally scrambling to discreet positions. Spring, being the smallest of them, had no issues finding cover, and Summer used her own stealth belt to vanish into the shadow of a pillar. Fall, on the other hand…

The group’s tank tangled into a medley of power cords that hardly disguised his magma-red fur. Him knocking down a metallic rod as he went in did his stealth attempt no favors either.

The drone interrupted its flight, a blue scanning tool flickering over the catwalk, advancing towards Fall.

Under his pipe, Logan cursed and pulled out yet another Void Dark Matter Diamond, which he gently rested beside him. “Fall, hold out the crystal!” he whispered over the party chat while unbuckling the stealth belt. Soon, he could perceive the item on Fall’s open hand, and teleported straight to it, appearing in the mess of wires into which the Rajaptor had sneaked.

The drone’s scan was swiping the catwalk from side to side, not more than three feet away from them. With sudden understanding taking his face, Fall helped Logan strap the belt around his hairy waist.

Two feet.

The belt clicked, then unclicked, then they clicked it again.

One foot.

Fall vanished with a dim flash.

The scan ran over the bundled wires.

By that time, Fall was safely cloaked, and Logan had teleported back to the crystal he left under his original hideout.

The drone issued a positive-sounding set of beeps, retracted its scanner, glided to the knocked over iron rod and placed it back where it should be, then departed. Once it was a safe distance away, Logan was the first to slide out of hiding, quickly followed by the other three. Fall nodded silent thanks.

Shortly after, the party stopped before the door that would lead to the Heart. Fall watched their back for any more drone activity, while the other three studied the metallic surface.

“I never dedicated many skill points for hacking,” Logan said, glancing at the panel on the doorframe.

“Well, I have, but this system isn’t like anything I’ve seen before,” Summer muttered. “s**t, that’s why we needed Meron! His guild leader access cards would really make it easier on me.”

“If you had asked before, I could have arranged!” Logan whispered.

“Yeah? How was I supposed to—What is it Spring?!” she turned to the silent alien poking her shoulder, only to find him pointing at the plasma-knife at her belt. “Huh… I doubt it’ll slice deep enough, but we can give it a shot, I suppose.”

She knelt, activated the heat sleeve around the weapon and stabbed the door. Cutting through that surface proved consistently harder than the elevator ceiling, and once the blade had cut through no more than three inches, the door slid up, yanking the weapon from Summer’s hands.

Before they could react, a huge iron foot swung out the door, destined straight to Summer’s chin. Spring wiggled his fingers and a large round mass of Dark Matter formed between the foot and Summer, not doing much to stop the kick, but substantially reducing the damage of the strike.

The robotic kick sent Summer in a parabola over Fall’s head. Meanwhile, Spring and Logan backed away from the door as an eight-foot tall war robot stepped into the catwalk.

Spring looked at Summer.

Summer looked at Fall.

Fall looked at Logan.

Logan couldn’t stop looking at the robot. Its shape was humanoid, but there was no head. In its cold hands, a plasma rifle the size of a motorcycle, the shining green barrel so wide that anything it produced would instantly kill Logan.

Apparently, such assumption was about to be tested, as the weapon turned towards his face and he felt utterly unable to act, overtaken by terror. The green glow inside grew brighter, and the red blinking dot of permadeath remained very much active.