It was one Hell of a sight: The SS ABADDON ONE, pristine and glistening white against the twinkling expanse of space. Suspended alone in such a remote part of the sky, it was impossible to truly grasp its size as they approached.
Gabe fed in the signal tracker sent by Stone and allowed the auto-pilot to guide them to their allocated parking bay. As they neared, the Archangel became dwarfed by the shadow that now loomed ominously over them.
'Pretty impressive, huh?' said Gabe.
'Don't get any ideas,' replied Monkey, 'I reckon that costs more than ten-thousand credits.'
'What sort of food do you think they've got on that thing?' said Jaibles hungrily, 'if it's anything like the YAMA, it will be wall to wall five-star dining.'
Gabe shook his head.
'What? We're guests of honour, we're the heroic renegades who suffered a great injustice in uncovering corruption and righting wrongs.'
'What do you mean we?' snapped Gabe.
'You heard her, they want all three of us to give an official statement, all for one and one for all.'
By the time the Archangel docked, they were excitedly waiting for the ramp to descend. Jaibles had even deemed this occasion important enough to wear clothes - clean ones.
The safety light turned green and the escape hatch opened. Waiting for them at the bottom of the ramp was an impatient looking Miss Stone.
'Gentlemen, right on time. Please follow me.' She turned on her heels and paced towards a door marked 'Meeting rooms 314 - 796, Gymnasium & Cigar Lounge.' Gabe, Monkey and Jaibles quickly followed.
Plush red monogrammed carpets lined the floor of the gilded mahogany hallways. Between the windowed oak doors of each meeting room hung ornate portraits of Abaddon's ancestors, each staring down at Gabe in solemn arrogance, leaving him in no doubt where they placed him in the great pecking order of life.
Jaibles nudged Monkey and whispered, 'if this is how he decorates the corridors to his meeting rooms, imagine what the rest of the shuttle looks like?'
'Once again, allow me to express the gratitude of his excellency, the Supreme Leader of the New World: President Abaddon and all of EDEN for your cooperation today. Here at EDEN, we take our responsibility seriously.'
Gabe was hardly listening, his attention was on each passing meeting room, each occupied with EDEN officials being studiously productive and immaculate in their neatly pressed black jumpsuits. Occasionally they would look up and catch Gabe's passing eye. Not once did they smile.
'We understand our responsibility didn't end when we saved, trained and evacuated every living person from our dying planet. It is still our responsibility to maintain law and order as we search for our new world, then rebuild society to maintain the status quo.'
'What if people don't want the status quo? What if the status quo was what got us in this situation in the first place?' interrupted Jaibles.
Miss Stone flashed him a sour look and ignored his question. 'We're nearly there,' she continued sweetly and marched on ahead.
They followed her in silent awe of the decadence of their surroundings. They had already walked the equivalent of the entire length of the Archangel and still couldn't see the end of the hallway.
Up ahead, Miss Stone had stopped at a large door and waited patiently for them to catch up. As they did, Gabe noticed the remaining two meeting rooms were also occupied - the first with Dawkins, his head low and defeated as an aggressive looking Eden official shoved several papers in front of him. The second with Training Command Cain who gesticulated wildly and banged an angry fist on the steel table.
It was the first time Gabe had seen him since YAMA and it surfaced all the old rage that still welled inside of him. He'd see him dead if it was the last thing he did.
'Can't imagine he likes having his authority questioned,' said Gabe walking into the corporate boardroom and sitting in the first available chair. The black leather squeaked as he made himself comfortable.
'Commander Cain is a respected senior member of the Military Police and has many years of loyal service behind him. What we do today, we do to maintain the respect and dignity of EDEN and the office of President Abaddon.'
'Cain is a murderer who would have happily sent every child to their death if it meant getting a cosy retirement aboard this shuttle.'
Gabe matched Stone's icy stare as she remained standing over him.
Behind her, in the corner of the room, stood a second woman in an identical black pencil skirt and white shirt. She held a notepad and pen at the ready and pushed her blonde hair over her ear piece, quietly relaying events to whoever was on the other side of the phone as she winked suggestively towards Monkey.
'Refreshments?' said Stone sweetly, once more flipping her tone and demeanour like a coin.
'That would be lovely,' smiled Jaibles seizing his chance, 'I'll have a bottle of your finest champagne and two, no three bacon sandwiches - white bread, no crusts.'
'Certainly. Madison, would you do the honours?'
She responded with a curt nod and spoke into her comslink.
'And for the rest of you?'
'Nothing for me, please,' replied Monkey feeling increasingly uneasy about the situation.
'Nothing for me either,' said Gabe, turning his chair to look out the windowed wall, at the towering side, of the Presidential shuttle, and its thousand upon thousand twinkling windows against the night sky.
'Then to business. I assume you don't object to my colleague here taking notes? Good. Then may I ask you to start from the beginning and please, leave nothing out, no matter how insignificant you deem it to be.'
Monkey and Jaibles both looked at Gabe, who took a deep breath and began. In the two hours that followed, he was only interrupted twice: once by a knock on the door for an EDEN official to whisper something covertly into Stone's ear and the other for Jaibles to order another bottle of champagne through a mouthful of bacon.
'I see,' said Stone once Gabe had finally fallen silent, 'and do you gentlemen have anything else to add?'
'Only that I think Tiffany would have left you regardless, mate. She just wasn't a nice person,' slurred Jaibles.
Monkey kicked him under the table.
'What? I don't think it's fair to blame Cain for that as well, that's all.'
'Duly noted,' sighed Stone, 'but are you confident that outside of this room the only other people that know of this are Cain and Dawkins? You didn't mention this to any other family or friends?'
'No,' said Gabe rubbing his tired face, 'it's just us.'
'Very well,' replied Stone motioning towards Madison, who promptly left the room. Miss Stone rolled across an empty chair, placed it in front of them and sat down for the first time since they arrived. She slowly, methodically crossed her legs and straightened her skirt, allowing silence to fill the room.
'So what happens now?' Said Gabe eventually, 'when will you decide if there will be a trial?'
'And when do we get ten-thousand credits, and what's a credit and how do we spend them?' blurted Jaibles, 'what's, like, one credit worth? How much bacon can you get for that? What's the cost per bacon ratio?'
Miss Stone picked a piece of fluff from her skirt and flicked it away. 'There will be no trial.'
'What? Don't you believe me? Go ask Dawkins, he'll back up everything I told you.'
'You misunderstand,' pacified Stone, 'I believe you, in fact I know it all to be true, but what did you think would happen? Supreme Leader Abaddon has invested everything into EDEN and finding a new world to maintain his legacy, do you think he would jeopardize all of that for one idiot training commander who couldn't keep his mouth shut? And as for Dawkins, he lost any credibility to the organisation the second he started bleating on about God and redemption.'
'Then why bring us here? Why go through all of this?' Questioned Monkey.
'To be sure,' replied Stone.
Monkey felt the hair on the back of his neck prick up again. 'Be sure of what?'
'That the situation was contained, that we had absolutely everyone involved in this sorry episode.'
Before Monkey could ask why, he felt Jaibles hand on his shoulder. He turned around to see him standing, pointing out towards the window. His face drained.
Floating gently out into space were the twisted corpses of Cain and Dawkins, from the choked expressions on their faces, it was clear they were pushed out alive. Gabe looked back in horror at Stone who remained motionless.
'Well, this is where we part ways, I'm afraid. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good and the reputation of Supreme Leader Abaddon is at stake. You must understand, he is a symbol of hope for all mankind and must be protected at all costs,' she smiled sweetly. 'Now, you have two choices: wait here to meet the same fate as Cain and Dawkins, or take your chance in that bucket you call a shuttle against the fleet of Military Tanks that now awaits you. Good day gentlemen.'
They exchanged brief glances before bolting towards the door and sprinting back towards the Archangel.
'Get her in attack mode and all power to the back shields,' yelled Gabe as they pelted through the Archangel, 'they won't risk damaging Abaddon's shuttle by firing at us as we leave. If we're quick maybe we can make a jump before they hit us.'
'Searching for jumps,' exclaimed Jaibles as he landed in his seat.
When the bay hatch opened, Gabe rocketed them out with everything it had, deliberately bouncing and rolling them as a hale of cannon fire followed them across the sky.
'Eddie Van Halen! This is it, this is how I die.' screamed Jaibles.
'Jaibles, divert power away from the shields to the engine,' said Gabe, 'they're no use to us against those cannons anyway, just find us a jump route out of here. Monkey, I can't outrun them, so put everything on the side thrusters.'
The Military Tanks temporarily ceased fire as nine Military EXs' began their pursuit of the Archangel. Gabe focused on his time in the simulator, convincing himself this wasn't real, that his and everyone else's life wasn't in danger, he felt sweat trickle down the side of his face.
'I need that jump, Jaibles. I can't hold them much longer.'
'KRUMP.'
The Archangel shook as the bridge flashed red their final warning. 'We're hit,' said Monkey, 'surface damage to the right thruster, I can get around it but if we take another like that, we're done.'
'Full power to the front cannons,' ordered Gabe.
Jaibles shot him a confused look
'We need to try something different,' shouted Gabe.
'Something different, like suicide?' Screamed Jaibles.
'Have I ever killed you before? No. So full power to the front cannons.'
He flipped the Archangel and powered full tilt, screaming towards the fleet.
Gabe grit his teeth as the glow of the Military front cannons brightened ahead of him, preparing to unleash Hell.
A cold white light tore through the bridge as everything around Gabe shrank and disappeared, replaced by a cloudy, liquid light that surrounded and suspended him. He felt cold and weightless, like that split second after jumping into a swimming pool, neither sinking or rising, just letting the cold disarm him.
If this was death, then he accepted it.
From the corner of his eye he could make out Monkey and Jaibles frozen in time, their expressions slow and sad.
He tried in vain to reach out and comfort them as his world turned to darkness.