First Steps

“This plan is flawed to the moon and back. What about our guns!” Isaiah glanced at Samuel.

“We ain’t headed to the moon. Regardin’ the guns, we’ll get ‘em on the way, stop at the depot if we get the chance, now let’s get a move on.”

With a swipe of his hand, Jebediah unlocked the door, flung it open, then stepped out into the hallway. Samuel and Isaiah followed him close behind. Blaring red floodlights flashed down the hallway, the alarms blared: “Intruder alert. Intruder alert.”

More explosive-blasts resounded sporadically in the distance, slightly shaking the floor due to lesser magnitudes than the ones prior.

Jebediah paced down the hall, the other two, nervous and gun-less, trailed behind. They watched as Jebediah hopped around the first corner, CLLB - hip position - at the ready. “All clear,” Jebediah waved at the two after a moment, “Don’t just stand there foo’s, let’s go.”

The alarms continued to resound down the corridors as they left the safety of Jebediah’s office. Corner and corner they rounded; slowly, cautiously. Hall after hall they tread; sprinting, their feet pounded. Bypassing the omnidirectional elevator, they shot down several flights of stairs.

“We’ve made it.” The trio had made it to the weapons depot, yet still, there was not an enemy in sight. The door automatically slid open upon their approach and the trio sidled into the vast corridor. Row upon row of shelves, filled with crates, faded off to the distant far wall.

Jebediah watched the door as Samuel and Isaiah split off, each heading for their respective weapon of choice. Samuel headed off to the back. Isaiah headed to the special weapons department, retinal scanned, equipped his LB2K, then went back to Jeb. “What’s Samuel doing?” Jebediah shrugged in response.

After a few minutes passed by, Samuel finally returned.

“Blast it man, what took you so long?” Jebediah scowled.

“I couldn’t find one,” Samuel stood before them, empty handed.

“Couldn’t find a what? A blaster? Ain’t no time to be picky, just grab any, there’s plenty!” Jebediah whipped over to the nearest crate and ripped the lid off… it was completely empty.

“It’s a trap!” Jebediah turned and ran to the door, but as soon as he had stepped away from it, it had already begun to close.

With a click and a whir, it locked into place. Error. Error. Jebediah frantically scanned, eye to ear to foot to face to back to b-, yet it would not open.

“Blast it!” Jebediah stepped back and lowered his blaster. Brrrrrt… brrrooo-

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you; though I, we, would never be in this situation,” a foreign voice resounded around the depot, coming from some unseen speaker.

Jebediah lowered his gun, spun around, yelled at the empty room, “Yeah, and just who in Skimp’s name is this?”

The voice chuckled deeply.

“Wait… I recognize your voice… who are you?! Show yourself you coward!”

“That would be most unnecessary. Eh, anyways, I shall grant you your desire. You may go now.”

And with that, the door retracted. A thick fog billowed in.

“What is this!” Isaiah yelled.

Metallic thumping pounded towards them from the corridor.

“Run.” Samuel whispered.

The trio fled from the armada shuffling in through the door.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh!” Isaiah yelped as he ran; one arm flailed through the air, the other gripped his blaster.

“Why… are you… running. Why… are you… running.” The cyborg voices chanted through the fog. “Capture them, alive,” the voice resounded/resonated from the speakers.

Jebediah, Samuel, and Isaiah reached the far end of the depot. “Quickly, lift me up to the vent,” Isaiah commanded.

“Yeah? And just how’re we supposed to do that with all these guns? All these guns…”

“BLAST ‘EM!” Jebediah yelled. The trio whipped around.

Brrrrr… brrrrrrrrum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum.

Brrrrrt… brrrooooom-boom-boom-boom-boom.

With two blasters blasting, the fog evaporated into oblivion, the laser bursts eviscerated and eradicated through the cyborg legion. Scrap flew. Limbs scattered. Tubes burst, twirling ferociously. Coolant sprayed and sizzled. Integrated gray matter gooped from holes. Stolen blasters dropped to the floor with each cyborg that they felled.

“Resistance… is futile-” “Surrender.” “D-D-D-Die” “Why are you ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-” A multitude of cyborgs were sent crumpling to the floor, screeching in their mechanized death throws. The rest charged forth, hands lanky, reaching out for them, but were met with a hail of blasts.

“Hahaha! Thought that could stop us!” Jebediah yelled, pumping his fist at the unseen entity. Samuel wrenched a blaster from a fallen cyborg, then grabbed Jeb by the arm and they ran back to the door, yet it was locked again. Waves of cyborgs flooded in after a few moments. Again, the trio beat them and made their way back to the door. For a long time, this vicious cycle repeated, until Isaiah had the brains to blast down the door. At first, this made Samuel and Jebediah upset, for he had ruined their final fortification, yet quickly came to terms that the cyborgs would never stop coming and that they had to make their escape.

“Go, go, go!” The trio departed from the depot and began winding their way off through the maze-like headquarters. Behind them, the voice from the speakers screeched, “Capture them, dead!” as they escaped down the hallway.

Nothing could stop them on their quest for vengeance and bloodshe- metal shred.

Head tucked between his knees, he was jostled around amongst the load of comrades. Dark. No light. For who knows how long they traveled, their computations ceased in power save mode, now awakening. Light now shone through the cracks. The ramp slid out and their racks slid out; the cyborgs unfolded into the docking bay.

The lone cyborg that transported the units joined the rank and file of the line. Extracting a crate he cracked it open and distributed the blasters to his motley crew. The cyborgs held fast to their arms, save for the few with missing arms. Some bore the scars of laser bursts, others ripped tubes, others dripped fluids periodically. His voice box rippled as he stood before the troops – a screw dropped out as his jaws clacked together; an elder’s lead.

With cloaks equipped, they headed across the structure, fully under their command – surrendered for the façade of mercy.

Soon enough, the fugitives made their arrival. A simple trickery and they had landed.

They launched their attack, yet the fugitives fled back to their ship. Scrap flew in the face of the blasts of their redoubt. The bodies piled up and by the time he entered, they had vanished into their transport vessel. An alarm blared. Air sucked out into the vacuum of space; he angled his flying body, managing to land on a ladder rung.

Mission failed. The survivors returned to face the council; each to their own fate, him to his final mission.

“I told you we never should’a dispersed ‘em before they were ready!” Samuel shouted as he stuck his arms over a crate, then sprayed and prayed.

“Ah shuddup, ya never said none o’ that nonsense ya da-!” Brrrrr… brrrrrrrrum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum. Jebediah’s voice was unintelligibly cut off as he jumped out from behind the adjacent crate and let loose his insults like the shower of laser bursts.

Both dove back behind cover as the cyborgs returned fire, where they promptly resumed their art of the blame game.

“Quit yer yapping!”

Isaiah rolled back over to them, after dealing with a crew of cyborgs behind them, and interrupted their intellectual debate, “The only thing that needs to quit, is you guys wasting all your munitions, I’m almost out here.”

“Whaddya think we’re tryin to do here!” Jebediah snapped.

Footsteps pounded throughout the warehouse as another gang of cyborgs arrived. They quickly dispatched them.

“See, what’d I say, I’m out now.” Isaiah’s blaster beeped quietly, flashing red.

“If you really need one that bad, loot one from one o’ them,” Jebediah pointed his blaster. “Anyways we got to go now.”

“We have you surrounded… plebeians!” A voice boomed from outside. The dull crackling of speakers announced the presence of the earlier unseen entity. A bright light shone in through a high-up window, accompanied by the dull hum of a shuttle. “You have wasted enough of our resources as it is. Surrender yourselves peacefully, and we will mercifully send you to the penal mines.”

The trio sidled to the walls and glanced out the holes left by the stray laser bursts; cyborgs had the dinky warehouse completely surrounded. So much for a last stand. “Guess this is it boys. I do NOT yearn for the mines.” Jebediah slung his CLLB over his back, then grabbed two ALBRs from the cyborg body pile.

Samuel grabbed him by the shoulder, right as he was about to burst – figuratively and literally – through the door, “Wait a minute… I have a plan. Isaiah, you still keep that boomerhook on you right?”

“Yeah… why?

“Quickly, to the roof!”

Luckily, the warehouse was three stories tall with roof access via a ladder at the top of the stairs.

The ladder creaked precariously as they quickly clambered up it, but the trio safely made it to the roof. The humming outside intensified; doubled, tripled, quadrupled. Jebediah flung the hatch open, leapt into firing position, then began blasting away before the opposition could begin blasting at him.

Isaiah and Samuel emerged behind him; Samuel began blasting away as well.

The explosion of a shuttle shook the air, sent scrap flying, blowed back the other shuttles, and threatened to blow them off the roof. Isaiah pulled out his boomerhook. Another shuttle went down as he fiddled with arranging his rope. He clipped it to his ascension belt then swung it round his head, once, twice- as he let loose, another explosion sent the boomerhook flying much further than expected.

“Blast it! Missed!”

“It’s a boomerang, right? Just wait for it to come back round.”

“Oh… yeah.” Isaiah tugged on the boomerhook as it arched through the sky amidst the streaming laser beams and explosions, angling it towards the nearest shuttle. With one last tug, it lodged firmly into the slot of the propulsion unit. Isaiah ran along the rooftop, dove off, and flew through the air with the aid of his ascension belt. “OH YEAH!” Isaiah yelled a cool ai- and ferocious battle cry, blared his blaster, and shattered through the window of the shuttle with a flying dropkick. With the push of a button on his belt buckle, the boomerang folded in on itself, zipped back into the shuttle, then unfolded and flew around the interior, decapitating all of the cyborgs in sight, instantaneously. I should use this thing more often, Isaiah thought to himself, then stashed it away and dove into the cockpit.

With the other shuttles dispatched, Jebediah and Samuel watched as the shuttle Isaiah boarded spun around and a few bursts resounded from inside. Abruptly, it steadied and streamlined its approach towards the roof, avoiding laser blasts from below as the cyborgs cognized what had occurred. The shuttle leveled itself; Isaiah's hands stuck out and dropped a ladder down. As Samuel scrambled up, Jebediah tossed down the worthless ALBRs, sending them scattering down the roof, then followed up after Samuel.

“Nice job,” Jebediah clambered into the cockpit. “You sure dispatched them quickly. Now get us out of here, actually, you get out.”

“You bet- wait what?”

Jebediah kicked Isaiah out of the seat, disabled the autopilot, then kicked it into high gear, throttling the shuttle towards the outer edge of the city.