Aria climbed up to the next floor as the alarms continued to blare, pulling us up after her. This floor looked no different than the last two, holding cells lining either side of the wide hallway, and I hastily looked through them to find Kaeya.
She was laying on the floor in one of the corner cells, her bruised arm the only feature I could recognize from a distance. Two swift slashes of my gravity sword had the cell's thick plastic door crashing to the floor, and I rushed to her side and gently picked her up.
She didn't stir, but my suit's interface informed me that she was alive, and I clenched my teeth in anger. She was even more injured than she had been in my dream, her face heavily swollen and her nose broken, and I had to stop myself from screaming in rage.
Instead, I stepped out of the cell, Kaeya held gently in my armour's arms, and turned to Aria. "We're killing anyone that gets in our way," I said, the rage in my voice causing her to flinch.
She looked down at Kaeya, frowning, and then gave me a small nod, "I understand..."
"Viliana!" I shouted into my earpiece. "Where's the best place to pick us up from?"
Her voice came back slightly fuzzy, though I didn't know if it was because of interference or distance. "There are guards swarming all over your side of the station! You need to get out of there right now!"
I glanced at the two directions we could go from here. "Which way should we go?" I asked her hurriedly.
The light male voice of Viliana's ship AI answered my question, "I've uploaded a model of the station to your armour. There's a path marked on it that should get you to the other side of the station with minimal resistance."
"Thanks, Thomas," I said as I relayed directions to Reaper, Aria, and Abaddon. We set off as quickly as we could, Reaper using my sword to cut open any doors that blocked our way.
About a minute into our trip Viliana spoke again, "You've got company coming. It looks like a Dark-Ops ship is coming to the station from planet-side."
How could she tell it was Dark-Ops? "Wonderful," I replied. "How long till they're here?"
"Only a few minutes," she replied, her voice strained.
"Thanks for telling us," I said as we picked up our pace. We had another minute of smooth going when we reached a choke point in the station's design: a single room that had to be traversed to move between the prison half of the station and whatever the other half was used for.
It just so happened to be the main security room, a fact that we learned moments after Reaper started cutting open the locked-down door into it. A cacophony of laser fire barraged the door, a few lucky shots making it through the tiny hole Reaper had made and scorching her shoulder. She had to stop cutting.
We were stuck on this side of the door, fortified enemies stopping our advance while their allies undoubtedly converged on us from behind. We needed a plan.
"Anyone have any ideas for making it through that room?" I asked.
A tense moment passed as we all wracked our brains, and then Aria answered my question, "It's just like when Reaper was boarding your ship."
I caught on immediately, but a feeling of regret accompanied my understanding. Aria was going to have to do something she didn't like doing, and she was going to do it for my sake. That felt pretty sour.
I simply nodded to her, unwilling to confirm her idea out loud, and she raised her rail rifle towards the heavy door in our way. "Can you please get them to shoot again, Reaper?" she asked softly.
Reaper thrust my sword through the door again, standing off to the side this time, and immediately the laser fire resumed. This time Aria fired back. The exchange was short as Aria's rifle pierced the door with little regard for the thick plating, the guard's fire allowing Aria to figure out their locations, and after only a few shots from her rifle the laser fire fell quiet.
Reaper cut a small hole in the door and confirmed that the room was clear, and we all let out a sight of relief. Aria's sigh was pained.
I looked at her as Reaper resumed opening the door and realized that she had been hit by laser fire several times, burns and cracks in her exoskeleton where the attacks connected. None of the injuries looked serious, but that didn't make me feel any less responsible.
"Are you okay, Aria?" I asked, concern spiking my heart rate.
She smiled at me, though pain twisted it, "I'll live. You don't need to worry about m-"
A grenade bounced past her, flying into our hallway from the direction we had come from. I reflexively spun and wrapped myself around Kaeya, putting me and my armour between her and the blast. The grenade detonated with an ear-splitting blast and filled the room with shrapnel, a thousand tiny pieces of metal embedded into the back of my armour and the walls around me.
My armour had kept Kaeya and I safe, but I could hear Reaper and Abaddon shouting curses, and Aria's vitals were now showing as 'endangered' on my display.
I turned back around and realized that I was looking at Ignum Station all over again, only this time we were on the receiving end of the grenade. Several spots on Reaper's armour were turning red, shrapnel embedded in her back, while Abaddon was staggering back to his feet, his trench coat transformed into a pin cushion. He was nursing his right arm.
Aria was the worst off, though. She was sprawled against the wall next to me, her legs twisted in every direction. Though her woven armour had resisted the shrapnel, it had done little to protect her from the blast, and her chest was noticeably misshapen. The exoskeleton on her face was also broken open, and her blue-coloured blood was running down her face. If my display hadn't told me otherwise, I would think that she was dead.
Abaddon drew his pistol with his good arm and started firing down the hallway, forcing the guards that had just rounded the corner to dive back into cover. As he did so, he moved over to Aria, nudging her gently with his injured arm. A moment later she stirred, and I realized that I had been holding my breath.
"We're through!" Reaper shouted, the centre of the reinforced door crashing to the ground. She went through first, immediately setting upon the next door. I let Aria go next while I moved behind her, providing cover with the sheer bulk of my armour. Abaddon entered the room last, still providing cover fire with his pistol. He took a single look at the room, several guards laying dead on the floor, and then stopped firing, rushing over to one of the many computers lining the room.
"Reaper," he barked, "provide cover fire while I release the lockdown!"
Reaper stopped cutting open the next door and carefully returned my sword to the sheathe at my hip, crouching down behind the barrier that the previous occupants had set up. She picked up a heavy laser rifle that had fallen off its mount and began firing back down the hallway. It was more than enough to stop any thoughts of advancing that the guards were having.
I glanced at the room around us as Abaddon worked. The walls were absolutely covered in screens, each showing a different camera feed, while several computers sat beneath them, presumably offering control over the station's security systems. There were several cups and plates stacked around the room, food crumbs still on them, and I looked at Aria. She looked up from the plates too, and I could see the regret in her eyes.
"It was necessary," I whispered to her.
"It always is," she replied, and I felt my blood chill. It always was.
Viliana's voice came over my earpiece again, interrupting my moment of grim reflection, "The Dark-Ops team has boarded the station! What are you waiting around for!?"
"Abaddon is hacking into the security system!" I replied, a painful feeling that we were all about to die gripping my chest and causing adrenaline to start pumping through my veins. I looked down at Kaeya, her beauty always stunning no matter how she looked, and I forced myself to take a few deep breaths.
We weren't dead yet.
"Done!" Abaddon shouted, rising from the computer he was at. The door forwards slid open as the station's alarms fell silent, and a moment later we were rushing onwards, our path to the planned exit much clearer now.
We turned into a stairwell, Abaddon leading the way, and descended down to the lowest floor of the station, moving so fast that I very nearly fell forwards and crushed Aria.
That was when we met the Dark-Ops.
Abaddon rounded the corner first, only to be thrown backwards with the force of the explosive round that crashed into his chest. Aria whipped her rifle upwards with inhuman reflexes and fired clean through the corner of the wall, her weapon screaming as she pulled the trigger again and again until its clip was empty.
A hollow silence prevailed in the aftermath, my ears ringing from the sound even through the protection of my armour.
Reaper glanced cautiously around the corner and then rushed over to Abaddon, "Abaddon! Abaddon, come on, you wouldn't die this easily."
He groaned, pushing himself up onto his back. "Damn it. My right arm is dead," he said, wheezing. "I can feel it bleeding badly, and it's definitely broken, so the best option is to just cut it off and use Aria's webbing to stop the bleeding.
Reaper didn't hesitate. She spun around, drawing my sword from its sheathe, and cleanly severed the remains of his arm at the shoulder. She then went over to Aria and took the remains of the web rope from her, applying it to Abaddon's amputated shoulder as a pain-killing gauze.
"You aren't dying today, you bastard," she said to him as she helped him up to his feet. He just grimaced back.
Then I heard a 'thump' behind me.
I spun the head of my armour around to watch in horror as a person in heavy, pure-black armour lunged towards me from the stairs behind us, a large spear held casually in one hand.
The spear's blade pierced through my armour with contemptuous ease, sending searing pain up my left side as it narrowly missed me inside my armour. My assailant's armour hummed quietly as they withdrew their spear from my armour and pulled back for another blow, and I realized that unless I dropped Kaeya, I couldn't fight back.
Abaddon could, though. As the Dark-Ops agent thrust their spear at me again, an armour-piercing grenade flew past me and crashed into them, detonating with a whip-crack and tearing a hole in their power armour. They staggered backwards, thrown off balance by the concussive force of the grenade, and a bright flash of light lanced into the hole in their torso armour.
They fell onto their back, Reaper and Abaddon's teamwork deadly, and I returned my attention forwards. "Move!" I shouted.
We ran around the corner, passing by the agent that had ambushed Abaddon. They were wearing the same black power armour as the other agent and had a large cannon still in their grip, yet Aria's rifle had given little regard to the metal between it and its target, and several small holes were punctured right through their torso. I almost didn't notice my armour reading their vitals.
They were alive.
I spun around to see the agent laying on the ground hold up a string of unusual-looking grenades and activate them, weakly tossing them in our direction. "You're coming too," they coughed through their helmet.
There was only a split second to act, a split second to live or die, and once again I didn't know what to do. I could try to kick the grenades away, but that was unlikely to kick them far enough. I could pick them up and throw them away, but I would have to drop Kaeya, and with her injuries that simple act could be life-threatening. I simply froze, watching in slow-motion as the grenades bounced once, twice, three times.
Then Aria shot past me. She scooped the grenades up with one hand as she passed them, moving with astonishing speed despite her heavy injuries, throwing them back towards the stairwell that we had just come from. "Turn around!" she shouted at me as she ran back to us.
I turned around.
Then the grenades detonated.
A roar, like that of an enraged beast, exploded from the stairwell, followed by a burst of heat so hot that the air in the hallway momentarily boiled. My display showed external temperatures spike above ten thousand degrees for an instant, and then the flash of heat ended, leaving the hallway a sweltering forty degrees. My armour reported massive external damage.
"Holy shit," coughed Reaper, who had been thrown to the ground by the blast of heat. "Kalani, your armour has been melted together."
I tried to take a step forwards but found that I couldn't; my armour was locked in place. "Take Kaeya," I told her. I activated the emergency release on my armour after she'd done so, stepping out from my crippled armour into the oven that was the hallway. "Aria?" I asked into my earpiece as I took Kaeya from Reaper. "How're you doing?"
There was no response.
"Aria?" I said, stepping around my armour. "You oka-," I froze, dread filling me from head to toe.
Aria was on the floor, a few metres behind my armour. Her entire thorax was burned to the floor and the rest of her exoskeleton had been fused into a black crystal, cracks running throughout. I stumbled forwards, falling to my knees in front of her. "Hey," I stammered. "Wait a minute, Aria. You can't die like this! You haven't gotten to meet Kaeya yet!"
I felt a hand on my cheek and I looked down to see Kaeya awake, tears running down her cheeks. Her eyes were distant, and I recognized the look of her using her powers. "She wants you to know that she was proud to be your friend," Kaeya said to me, her mouth un-moving. "And she wants you to know that she would do everything all over again, even knowing that this is how it ends for her."
I swallowed down the lump in my throat, trying my best to stay composed. Kaeya's gaze refocused, and I smiled meekly at her, "Hi, love."
She winced in pain and then gave me an apologetic smile, "You can put me down now, my dear."
I set her down and she knelt in front of Aria's crystallized body, putting her hand on Aria's shoulder, "I'm glad that I got to talk to you at least once, Aria. You can go to sleep, now, you've earned some rest."
Something shifted in Aria's body, some subconscious sense of life within her disappearing, and it took all my effort to not break down then and there. Aria was dead, and it was my fault. She had just wanted to see the stars...
Kaeya tapped my forehead and I felt my mind clear, an unpleasant focus taking over my mind. "We can think about her later," Kaeya said gently, "but we need to get out of here."
I nodded. Then I reached forwards and snapped off a piece of crystallized exoskeleton from Aria's cheek, her blue blood burnt to one side of it. "Are you all okay?" Viliana asked through my earpiece, her voice heavy with worry. "I just picked up a massive heat spike beside you."
"The Dark-Ops agents are on us," I told her. "They just killed Aria..."
"What about the rest of you?" she asked. "That was a huge explosion."
"Aria sacrificed herself to get the grenades away from us," I answered hollowly, my emotions fighting to resurface, "so we're injured, but otherwise we're okay."
"That's good news," she said. "That blast ruined the stairwell you just took, so you've got a few extra minutes now, but you really need to get out of there before more guards arrive."
"We're moving," I responded, checking the cut in my left side. It wasn't too bad.
We hurried forwards in heavy silence, Kaeya leaning heavily on me for support, and a few moments later we emerged into a large room with cargo doors at the far end. A set of cabinets lined the wall beside us, a computer resting on top, while the rest of the room was littered with all manner of disassembled robotic machinery. There was a shoulder gear in one place, a thruster jet in the next; it reminded me of the crates I had been transporting.
Then I tracked my gaze up the largest piece of machinery in the room.
The skeleton of a Maestro Suit towered over us, almost seven metres tall even when stripped down to its most basic structure. It was unmistakably Teracon, from the materials to the shaping, and I realized that the station we were on wasn't just a prison.
"It's a research facility," Abaddon thought out loud.
"Why would they put a research facility and a prison together?" Reaper asked. "That's an idiotic combination."
Kaeya and I exchanged a look of mutual understanding. "For me," she answered Reaper. "They needed somewhere that they could hold me while dissecting my ship's technology."
"You really weren't kidding when you said that the Federation's robots are using Teracon technology," Abaddon said, pointing at the Maestro. "Are those thrusters on it?"
My head suddenly split with pain, the overwhelming agony of thinking about my childhood surfacing without warning, and I squeezed my eyes shut. When I reopened them, the pain was gone and I knew how I could recapture the Liberation.
"Viliana," I said into my earpiece, "are you in position to catch a bunch of people who're being sucked out of these cargo doors due to depressurization?"
"Am I what?" she asked incredulously. "Just open the doors! The room will depressurize safely and you can just jump back to my ship."
"Aria's not here to jump Kaeya across safely anymore," I responded, "and there aren't any spacesuits for her. We're gonna have to do this differently than planned."
"So what's your plan, then? You're going to blow open the cargo doors?"
"No," I responded as I climbed up the ladder leading to the Maestro's cockpit, "we don't have any explosives like that. I'm going to kick it open."
"Kick it," she repeated flatly. "Did that explosion give you a concussion?"
"There's a Maestro in here, Viliana. I can use it to tear open the doors."
"Since when do you know how to pilot a Maestro?" she asked, her voice growing more and more worried.
"I'm not really sure," I answered. "I just feel like I do. Like riding a bike." I reached the Maestro's cockpit and pulled myself in, letting my mind go blank and muscle memory take over as I turned on the giant suit.
It all felt so familiar...
"Are we really doing this?" Abaddon asked, his voice weak from blood loss. "I'm not really in the mood to take more high-speed bumps."
"I'm open to suggestions," I replied, the Maestro's reactor humming to life.
Reaper pushed aside some of the machinery laying around, making a small area for her, Abaddon, and Kaeya to stand, and then she crossed her arms and looked up at me, "I never expected to be fired out of a station."
"There's a first for everything," I replied absently, my hands flying over the controls reflexively. Then I sat back, the cockpit bursting to life as the suit came fully online. Since I wasn't wearing a proper piloting suit, I had to manually strap myself into the seat, but once that was done I was ready to go.
I gripped the controls and immediately the agony returned, my mind feeling like it was being torn in two. I could hear voices in my earpiece, but I couldn't make any sense of them. The world shook and my vision swam, and I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for it to end. Finally the pain died back down.
I was sideways.
"Kalani?!" came Kaeya's voice in my mind. "What's going on, are you okay?" She was using telepathy.
"I'm fine now, sorry," I thought to her. "I was in some pain, but it's gone now." I pushed myself back up, the simple motion powerful when in a suit as large as the Maestro, and carefully stepped over to the cargo door next to Reaper, Abaddon, and Kaeya.
"Is everyone ready?" I asked into my earpiece.
"I'm right outside, ready to catch you all," Viliana confirmed.
"As ready as I'll ever be," Reaper answered.
"Let's just get off this damned station," Abaddon grumbled.
"I'm ready, hun," Kaeya answered telepathically. "Do it."
It was a simple motion, nothing more than a basic kick, leg backwards then forwards, but done in a Maestro it contained the force of a wrecking ball.
The cargo door exploded outwards.