May 12th
2:18 AM
I adjusted uncomfortably in my new Assault Armor, the cramped space in the oversized torso leaving little room for comfort. My arms were tucked tightly against my sides, and I could barely move to control the armour's mechanical arms. Walking with my legs wrapped in so much armour was also challenging, and overall I found that I was more than a little dissatisfied with the experience of wearing the armour.
But I had to admit that it was more than a little functional. The sensor array in the spot that my head would normally be had nearly a dozen different sensors, showing me everything from pressure and air composition to seeing thermal signatures, and with Viliana's ship AI routed through my suit I could even see the vital signs of everybody in the room with me.
Elevated heart rate was ubiquitous. I checked over my carbine, feeling very under-armed for the armour I was wearing, and turned to Aria. "You're gonna have a heart attack if you don't calm down," I said to her, trying to break the room's tension.
It didn't work at all.
Aria fiddled with her rail rifle nervously, and I put my armour's metal hand on her shoulder, hoping that I was being gentle. "Seriously, Aria, I need you to calm down. My heart is going to explode at this rate."
She gave me small consolation smile, and did her best to stop vibrating like a nervous bumblebee. "This is so dangerous," she said quietly. "My mom taught me how dangerous the Federation is."
I waved a robotic arm at Viliana's ship around us, "It doesn't matter how dangerous they are if they don't even know that we're there."
"What if they catch us? We can't fight all of them; they'll kill us."
"If we trigger the alarm then we will evacuate as fast as possible. We can blow a hole in the side of their station to do so if need be."
She frowned. "And what about the people working there that don't know that they're doing anything wrong? We shouldn't kill them."
I nodded, forgetting to do so with the armour so she could see, "We won't. Any non-combatants we come across we will disable, and then you can tie them up with your webbing."
She pondered my answer for a moment. "And we're going to try to limit the amount of fighting we do?"
I nodded again, this time remembering to mimic the motion with my armour's robotic head. "We're not here to take over the station, or to kill the people working on it. We're here to rescue Kaeya, and the less fighting we get into doing so the better. I want everyone safely returning to Dushel Station to meet her."
She gave me a firm nod and smiled lightly, "I can't wait to meet her."
I looked over at Reaper and Abaddon, who were sitting on top of a large white crate together, holding hands and whispering to each other. "I can't wait either," I responded to Aria. "I can't wait."
The ship lurched slightly, and I felt my armour automatically stabilizing me so I didn't fall over. "We're here," Viliana said into my earpiece. "Security doesn't look particularly tight... Oh, there are anti-orbital batteries planet-side, so if I get spotted I can't hang around."
"You're our ride out," I said into my earpiece, "so you need to protect yourself. Once we've disembarked hold two kilometres off and wait for our signal."
"Roger that. Want me to run scans on the station while you're all inside?"
I thought about it for a moment, "Limited ones. I don't want you giving away your presence."
"Sure thing," she confirmed. "You all ready?"
Reaper and Abaddon hopped down from their crate and checked their gear and armour one last time, Aria and I doing the same.
"I'm ready," Aria said confidently, her gaze turned to the cargo-bay door. It was a blessing that her exoskeleton gave her a degree of protection from the effects of being in space, because it had been impossible to find a space suit that find her alien body. She had all her ordinary gear with the small addition of a gas mask attached to an oxygen tank backpack. It made her look like a trench soldier out of some old movie.
"We're as ready as we'll ever be," Abaddon confirmed. He was wearing a spacesuit, his armoured trench coat wrapped around him like some weird western/sci-fi style combination. He had a half-dozen grenades in a pouch against one hip while his heavy pistol rested against the other, and four different tablets were packed into a small shoulder-bag he'd found. He wasn't the most impressive looking fighter, but he looked ready to lay his life on the line, and I was glad that he was here by my side.
Reaper was wearing her own specially-armoured spacesuit, its pitch-black color making her look like a moving hole in the hull of Viliana's ship. Her shot-lancer had been cleaned, polished, and reloaded dozens of times in the last few days in preparation for rescuing Kaeya, and the weapon had an oddly mirror-like finish to it now. What would such a mirror show back if I looked at it?
I shook my head; now was hardly the time for philosophy. "I'm ready too," I responded. "Let's go."
The ship's cargo bay door disengaged its seal, a very quiet hiss the only indication that anything had changed, and a minute later the room was drained of air. My armour flashed a warning that the room was depressurized, but I closed it since the armour was fully functional as a space suit anyways.
The cargo door inched open excruciatingly slowly, opening a few centimeters at a time so as to keep the ship as stealthy as possible, and after about two minutes the space was big enough for us to fit through.
Reaper led the way, having the most familiarity with moving in zero-gravity. Aria handed her a web-rope she'd made and braced herself against the half-open cargo door, prepared to pull Reaper back in at a moment's notice. Reaper wrapped her end of the rope around her forearm, took a deep breath, and then pushed herself off the cargo door, slowly floating towards the sheer side of the Federation station just outside the ship.
She landed a moment later, securing herself to the station with the magnetic boots built into her spacesuit. She held the rope taut, and Abaddon used it to slowly guide himself to her. Once he made it to her he secured himself to the side of the station and pulled out one of his tablets, setting about accessing the station's private network to find us a way in.
While he did that I stepped up to the rope and unsteadily floated towards Reaper, the weight of my armour visibly straining Reaper whenever I pulled on the rope to steady myself.
"You need to eat less," she said through clenched teeth.
I landed beside her, engaging the magnets built into my armour's heavy boots to secure me to the station. Then I took the rope from Reaper's hands and braced myself. A moment later Aria pushed off of Viliana's ship, and I pulled on the rope as fast as I could, the mechanical arms of my armour far stronger than Reaper or I.
A long minute later Aria made it to us, gently landing on the station's surface with a grace and steadiness that only an arachnoid could manage. "We're all good," I said to Viliana through my earpiece. A moment later the cargo door of her ship closed, and her ship returned to being utterly invisible, even to the advanced array of sensors in my armor's head.
"Good luck," she replied .
I plodded over to Abaddon, my gait unsteady between the bulky armour and magnetic boots. "You in?" I asked him quietly.
He nodded, his focus locked on the tablet in his hands. I waited patiently.
A few minutes of testing out my armour's sensors later, Abaddon sighed and shook his tablet in frustration, "I don't see any way in that doesn't involve blowing open the wall."
I pondered our options for a moment and then unsheathed my gravity sword. "How about cutting open the wall?" I asked him smugly.
He turned and looked at me, clearly about to mock my suggestion, but then stopped, his eyes widening, "Actually... That will work. We can use Aria's webs to reseal the hole that we cut once we're inside, that way we won't depressurize the whole damn station."
"Just tell me where," I said, being very careful not to cut anyone as I moved my sword around experimentally.
He tapped on his tablet a bit more and then pointed farther down the side of the station, "Just over here. There's a maintenance room we can get into."
We slowly and carefully followed Abaddon down the side of the station, the vast, empty oblivion of space threatening to swallow us up if we lost our connection to the metal beneath our feet. Overhead the planet that the station orbited shown like a yellow jewel set in an obsidian ring, too distant for us to make out any of its details. What was that planet like? Were there people living there, unaware of the prison orbiting so far above them?
Abaddon held up his hand and we came to a stop, waiting as he consulted his tablet again. Then he used the tablet's camera to project a circle of light onto the side of the station in front of him. "Now I'll admit that I'm not an expert at reading building schematics, especially three dimensional ones like this, but this should be the right place."
I stepped forward, impatient to get down to business, and thrust my sword down into the thick plating of the station. It parted like water as my sword moved through it, bursting into brilliant red life as the blade forced the metal out of its way like magic. I very carefully carved out the circle Abaddon projected, and a minute later I had carved out a large chunk of the station, the glowing edges already cooling as the void of space stole away the heat.
"Do we push it in or pull it out?" I asked Abaddon.
"We don't know what's on the other side," he answered, "so we should probably pull it out."
"Aria," I whispered, "you're up."
She moved up beside me, her naturally adhesive legs making walking on the side of the station much easier for her, and then attached her web rope to the chunk of station I had just cut out. Then she very slowly lifted it up and out.
Reaper slipped under the floating chunk of metal first, disappearing into the dark room we had just exposed. "It looks good in here," she reported a moment later.
Abaddon slipped in next, and I followed behind him once Aria had raised the metal chunk high enough for me to fit. Reaper was looking around the room with a flashlight, revealing that it was surprisingly large, shelves against the walls lined with all manner of tools and devices. A maintenance room, like Abaddon said.
Aria smoothly slipped through the hole behind us, her web rope now attached to the side of the metal chunk that was facing us. She slowly pulled it back in, very carefully slotting it back into the space I had cut it out from and then using the web rope to reseal it into place.
My armour's display showed the pressure in the room returning to normal levels. "Good job, Aria," I said into my earpiece. "Now who wants to go first?"
Aria crept forward silently as Abaddon hacked into the controls for the door into our room, her rail rifle in her hands. "Ready?" Abaddon asked her.
"Ready," she replied.
The door slid open smoothly, the bright light from beyond flooding into our room. I braced myself for shouts or alarms giving up our presence, but none came.
Aria silently glided into the room beyond, and for a long moment silence hung heavy in the air. Then she reported, "It's empty."
We followed her through the door to find ourselves standing in an empty cafeteria, rows and rows of bland metal tables waiting to serve the workers of this station. The room was utterly utilitarian, not a single decoration or adornment in sight, and I felt uncomfortable at how impersonal the whole room felt. It was as if the station was crewed by robots.
Suddenly there was a loud clang, and we all snapped our attention to the kitchen connected to the cafeteria. "Aria," I whispered tensely, "can you deal with that?"
She nodded and slid forward, disappearing into the adjacent room. For a moment nothing happened, and then there was a loud bang. We rushed forwards, maneuvering through the cafeteria tables as fast as we could, and found Aria using what was left of her web rope to restrain an unconscious cook. The cook's forehead had a dent in it.
She looked at us apologetically, "I didn't know what else to do."
"I suppose that we don't have any non-lethal weapons..." I responded.
She finished wrapping up the cook and then picked him up, hurriedly depositing him in the maintenance room that we had just emerged from. "Where to next?" I asked Abaddon as Aria returned.
He looked down at his tablet, "This way. The cells are above the hallway connected to this one."
"How are we going to get up?" I asked him, hoping that he had formulated a plan.
He looked at me and smiled as we reached the set of cafeteria doors, "We're going to cut our way up."
"Cut our way up?" I repeated incredulously. "And when the floor falls and crushes me?"
"Ah! I can hold it up!" Aria exclaimed excitedly.
"Bingo," Abaddon said, pointing a finger-gun at her. "Kalani cuts a hole in the floor, and you can safely lower the cut-out floor so that nobody gets crushed."
"What about cameras?" I asked him. "Surely there are camera watching the holding cells."
He grinned at me, inflating his chest. "I dealt with the cameras in this room before we'd even cut into that maintenance closet, and I'll keep doing the same as we advance up the floors."
"Are you sure you can do that for three floors straight?" Reaper chimed in. "Kaeya is being held on the fourth floor, after all."
Abaddon nodded confidently, an arrogant grin on his face as he tapped on his tablet a bit more. "I just disabled the one in the hallway right here, so yeah, I think that I'll be just fine."
"Okay then," I said, striding through the cafeteria doors into the hallway beyond. It was as bland as the cafeteria, and I shuddered at the thought of living in such a drab steel-grey environment. "Take out the camera above us, Abaddon."
"Done," he replied a moment later, and I thrust my gravity sword up through the floor above us. It cut through it as easily as it had the station's exterior, and it was easy to cut a rough hole once Aria was in position to hold it up. Once the hole was complete she lowered it down, careful not to touch the glowing-hot edges.
"Uhm, wait," she said, the thick cement floor still held above her head, "how am I supposed to set this down?"
Right; she couldn't touch the edges, and couldn't simply drop it either. I sheathed my sword and reached up with my armour's mechanical arms, grabbing onto the hot edge of the floor. "Put down one corner first and then I'll lower the other."
She nodded to me and then set down one edge of the thick slab of cement, leaving me holding up the other. I lowered it as much as I could without crushing my armour's fingers and then, holding my breath, quickly let go and pulled my hands out from under it. It settled on the floor with a heavy, reverberating thud.
One moment.
Another.
I released my breathe. No alarms, good.
"Aria," I said, "you go first, and then pull us up after you."
She nodded and then, using a new bit of web rope she spun on the spot, pulled herself up onto the second floor of the station. She pulled me up after her, followed by Reaper and Abaddon. We were now standing in the middle of a hall lined on both sides with holding cells, two dozen prisoners staring at us in disbelief.
Reaper leveled her shot-lancer and them, "Any of you make a peep and I'll blast your head off."
They looked at her, then her weapon, and then back at her. Then they all moved to the backs of their pitifully small and barren cells, none of them making a sound. I turned to Abaddon, "Next floor."
"Already done, Admiral," he replied cheekily. I nodded and then cut a new hole in this floor, repeating the same steps we used to open up the previous one: cement block carefully lowered, Aria up first, and us pulled up behind her. As Reaper was silencing this floor's prisoners Viliana's voice piped up in my earpiece, "Hey, Kalani... I just found something pretty incredible in the station that you're gonna want to know about."
"What is it, Viliana?" I replied, annoyed that she was beating around the bush.
"It's the Liberation," she answered, her voice quivering with excitement. "They have Kaeya's battleship moored in the station's docking bay!"
I paused, my sword half raised to start cutting through the next floor. Could we reclaim Kaeya's ship as well as rescue her? I hadn't expected her ship to be intact, but it would be a massive boon if we could get it back. The biggest problem was simply that there was no way I could steal a battleship without being noticed.
The Liberation. What an appropriate name considering the current circumstances.
Without warning, the station's alarms blared to life around us, and Abaddon let out a string of curses. "They've detected my intrusion," he shouted, "they know that we're here!"
I thrust my sword through the floor above us, cutting out the final hole between Kaeya and I. If the alarms were already tripped, then I suppose that it couldn't hurt to try to reclaim a little more than we had originally planned...