Awakening

The prison riot had broken containment. The Flock's prison fin was designed to limit access points during travel and open up when in battle station mode. It allowed a more effortless flow of spoils during a Flock's raid, shoving human meat in and disembarking at home, but as free men, the dozens of armed humans could reach the Flock's main juncture point and spread like mad. Their uprising was now that much harder to contain.

However, that did not mean there were no further points of defense, as beyond the prison hold were the barracks. 

It was a wide open room with rows of what could be considered beds alongside pens and cells that circled the area. Hardly better than the room they left, and as the prisoners quickly learned, it provided little cover. A sharp bank going into the ship's center was repurposed into a powerful bunker, with Rukis able to lay suppression fire upon the frantic and undisciplined Pandemians. Snu and Sam bolted the room unknowingly, dodging plasma fire before diving for the bunks. Sam tried to pepper in some fire at the enemy, but they proved too much. A bolt of plasma blasted the rifle out of her hand.

"Fuck!" She grasped her hand, boiling with frustration. "Damn it! We went the wrong way!"

"We gotta break through," Snu said.

"Are you kidding me!?"

"No, trust me. Follow me!" Vinisnu passed his spare rifle before crawling further up the hall. It was the last place Sam wanted to go, but at this point, being without Snu was worse.

The fast-running battle slowed to a grueling slog, a one-sided butchery that traded human lives for meters of the ground. The bedding could only last so long, and soon fervor and morale were the only items left at the Pandemian's disposal. The men with the courage to move forward were few, only a dozen or so men from several nests clawing for survival. They would've never imagined a battlefield like this in their wildest dreams. Grenades and pulse fire whittled them down to nothing.

Snu dived out of the bunks and rolled into a barricade guarding the stairs to the upper level. Everything around his small pocket melted to superheated slag.

"Hurry!" He waved to her.

Sam complied, a moment fearing a horrible pain to befall her, but she landed next to the boy unharmed. They reached the end. They just had to deal with the enemies before them. Her eyes looked back to see who was behind her, analyzing the best course of attack.

There was nothing. Not a soul in sight. No one was going to save them. The mountain they had just climbed led to nothing. Sam broke from her trance. At that moment, plasma and pulse fire splashed and broke against the solid metal barricade, their only lifeline. The EVO's numbers were still massive, and behind, they could hear the hungry snaps of Mono's jaws. All escape routes were lost. Everything was hell behind them, and their pocket of safety was slowly dissipating.

Sam tried to drain out all of the noise, to use her brainpower to think of a plan. She knew she was smart. There had to be another way out. They couldn't have made it this far for nothing, but as time ate away at her, she couldn't hear herself thinking over the wails in her mind, her desire to scream and cry for anyone to save her. Please be there for her.

"I'm gonna try to draw them away," Vinisnu said, his eyes focused on an unseen objective. "You see if you can find another way out of here."

Sam snapped back to reality."What!? No! They're gonna kill you!"

"I know-!" He stayed his tongue, instantly regretting his outburst. His countenance fell right before Sam's eyes, the suppression fire flying inches above his head, but he still put on a brave face as if it would help. "It'll be alright."

"No, it's not!" Sam grabbed him by the arm. "I told you I wouldn't let you die!"

"I-," his voice stopped. There was so much he could say, a thousand placating arguments, but his body was attuned to the reality of the situation, of the aliens mere meters away, preparing to flush them out.

Vinisnu had always listened to his body and its instincts, and they spoke true to his character all the way to the end.

With a grunt, he yanked Sam's hand off and threw himself over the barricade, his mind empty, thinking of nothing but what needed to be done.

For a flash, he thought of his parents before it happened.

"Vinisnu!"

A spark was lit, and the world exploded. The mountains of corpses and steel, the sands of the planet, and the faces of everyone Sam had met over her journey coalesced into a peak of emotion that shattered across the alien ship, crashing like a tsunami on an unsuspecting shore. The shout echoed across the room, bouncing off the barracks' walls and every nook and cranny. Vinisnu floated in what felt like an ethereal void for the longest time. He thought he had died. It was so bizarre. What happened to his spirit? He thought. Why was he fighting in the first place?

The aliens stopped shooting and stood there, dumbstruck. They stared at each other as if they had experienced a dream, as if they were waking up for the first time that day. Their bodies were so relaxed and unbothered that none of them so much as jolted as Sam gunned them down in a frantic, one-handed volley. Her other hand yanked a clueless Vinisnu as they barreled past the stronghold and into the ship's interior.

"Hey, why'd you do that?" One of the guards asked.

"We're supposed to stop them, right?" The mounted kappa scratched his head. "Do we have to?"

"Yeah," the imp leader shuddered, his fur standing on end. "We should really kill these humans," but it was an odd feeling in their bones like a switch flipped that redirected their stress, anger, and violence and reversed it. They felt peaceful.

From the smoldering battlefield, multiple Pandemians emerged from hiding, their minds as clear as their enemies. Approaching each other, everything seemed to feel alright. Perhaps, if this continued, the two sides could be friends, but those emotions quickly faded. Normalcy was returning to them. As soon as someone pulled the trigger, the battle resumed.

Vinisnu felt the effects fade, shaking off the aftereffects, but his heart only filled with joy. "That was amazing! Was that your blessing? I knew you could do it!"

"Oh my god!" Sam was trying to wipe off her tears. "I jumped out like an idiot! Don't ever do something like that again!"

Vinisnu hugged her mid-run. His heart was soaring to heights he had never imagined, to be still alive, to see an alien blessed by his god, and to see the absolute absurdity of the world and of his companion! It filled him with pride. What a wonderful girl Sam was.

"So what now?" He asked. 

"Maybe we," Same breathed. "Maybe we can lower the shields or something. Like if they have a tractor beam or something?"

"Or, we can take down the big villain?"

"Maybe?" Sam couldn't process that thought so quickly. Her head was still fuzzy, but "maybe!?"

As they ran across, they came across a bridge that crossed a significant part of the interconnecting flaps, a form only usable while the ship was stationary. The ship was a ghost town, quietly whirring with machinery and the flow of pipes, and since the breakthrough, the place was barren. They were getting higher up into the ship's main systems.

"Do you think any of this leads to the control room?" Vinisnu asked.

"I guess we'll find out?" Sam said, unsure but eager to run.