Connection Pt.2

Connection Pt.2

“My name is Locke, nice to meet you Autumn, correct?”

He introduced himself sharing the elevator ride topside with her and a handful of the mothers that had weapons. As wives of rebels, it wasn’t uncommon for them to have gotten basic training from their husbands and learn how to react in situations regarding New Aurora.

“You have an interesting scar I might say. Pardon me asking but, how did you get it?”

He asked, curious, if Autumn was willing to share the details.

“I imagine it’s a long story, but to tell you the truth I don’t remember, so I couldn’t tell you anyways.”

“My apologies.”

He gave her his sympathy; Autumn grinned, not bothered by the question in the slightest. It was a question she found herself asking increasingly lately.

“It’s alright Locke, let’s just get through this last section and be done with these people.”

“Agreed, the sooner the better.”

Locke smiled back, but in the back of his mind he was starting to make connections that seemed too far-fetched to be possible. He watched the lights just above the archway of the freight elevator shift to the left one tick at a time. Autumn and Locke prepared for what could possibly be just beyond the steel door. The Prisoners raised their rifles, the chime of the elevator doors preparing to open sounding off. Little by little the brilliance of Aurora’s dual moons poured into the elevator as the doors opened and one of New Aurora’s attack hounds rushed the elevator. Clamping down his teeth into Locke’s forearm as he jumped in front of the others to shield them from the attack. He quickly thrusted his arm throwing the dog off with ease. Tossing the hound back out of the elevator and into a group of soldiers waiting for them.

One by one the prisoners with rifles in hands stepped out of the confines of the elevator. Providing covering fire while Locke and Autumn advanced to engage in close quarters combat. The elevator doors closed behind the group as two prisoners broke off from the party in search of the lifeboats. Ducking underneath the butt of a rifle that was swung at her, Autumn stepped forward. Closing the distance between her and the soldier, taking away his ability to fire his rifle. Before he recovered and reacted, the soldier’s center of gravity was thrown off balance. Autumn, interlocking her fingers behind the man’s neck planted her feet and twisted her hip. Driving her knee into the man’s side repeatedly, before hip tossing him into the deck. It didn’t stop there, with no time to react, Autumn staggered and took a few steps to the side. Another soldier catching her off guard and landed a sucker punch, quickly he reached for his sidearm.

Locke was faster, returned the favor with a blindside punch of his own. Crumbling the soldier. The two came to halt in their assault, when the shot of a rifle rang off and the body of one of the prisoners fell to the ground. Locke yanked Autumn by the arm and rushed out of the line of fire. Evading the sniper fire coming from the men up in the crow’s nest.

“FOCUS YOUR FIRE ON THE CROW’S NEST!”

one of the prisoners shouted out in authority her fellow prisoners right behind her. Closing in on the crow’s nest under the protection of cover fire, Autumn and Locke converged upward. Focused on eliminating the snipers and securing the deck.

***

“Give me a situation report private.”

“It’s madness sir, Last reports from under the deck say that a large portion of the ship are overrun by beast. Multiple casualties and even more wounded. Our guys are doing the best they can to secure the engine room, but with us running a skeleton crew we are stretched too thin.”

The private reported still listening to the distressed communications from the men underneath the deck.

“What about the rebels?”

The command room around him was in utter chaos as ensigns went over reports coming in from all over the ship.

“No word from that side yet sir, but it’s only a matter of time, the tracking beacons we have on the beast show that several of them are converging on the interrogation room. We have a troop of mechs on standby to quill the beasts and anything else that might show up.”

“THE DECK UNIT JUST MADE CONTACT!”

One of the ensigns shouted aloud to everyone in the room. Augustus’ attention focused on the ensign giving the information. “Prisoners are armed, and we have sustained major casualty’s sir, they say that the prisoners seem to be attempting to secure the lifeboats to escape.”

The ensign further explained the situation going on. Augustus turned and looked through the giant glass window of the command center at the crow’s nest and saw for it for himself. There, in the light of the moons, on the crow’s nest his men one by one being taken out and on the deck of his ship, his captives overthrowing their bondage. He knew his career was over with after this. After New Aurora got word of this, the places they would stick him, he didn’t want to think about. The only thing Augustus could do now was salvage the situation before it got any worse.

“Activate all Mechs that we have at our disposal and send a message to all soldiers below to fall back to the engine room and regroup. I want all our the mechs on the interrogation room and exterminating anything not registered to New Aurora.”

He gave his orders, now it was time for his troops to follow through if they wanted to take control of the situation away from the prisoners.

***

Haiden maneuvered over and around the bodies of humans and beasts alike. Cutting around a corner with Ki close behind her.

“It shouldn’t be much further now.”

Haiden reassured Ki, reloading the clip into her rifle and yanking the slide back. Ki kept his thoughts to himself and followed the young rebel. Looking both ways before turning to the right at a “T” section in the corridor, Haiden slid into cover behind a giant rhino like beast that lay lifeless on the floor of the ship. Ki and Haiden soon noticed two mechs before them. Two grew into four, four into six as other mechs from various parts of the ship descended upon the interrogation rooms. Destroying any and everything in their path, their orders simple.

“We’re going to need more then bullets and kung fu to deal with these things.”

Haiden joked as she removed the clip of her rifle and closed her eyes and started chanting verses in a language foreign to Ki. The chanting took Ki’s attention away from watching the mechs closing in to look at Haiden as she started to drool saliva onto the bullets inside the magazine in her hand. Caught off guard Ki was confused by Haiden’s actions, not seeing the purpose behind it.

She didn’t bother explaining herself, opening her eyes he caught a glance of Ki’s bewildered expression. She simply reloaded the magazine into her rifle and yanked the slide back once again. Jumping out from the cover of the rhino and feathering the trigger of the rifle Haiden fired off rounds of bullets enchanted with her essence. Ki watched as the bullets pierced the mechs and exploded with concentrations of essence that shredded the mechs metal frame. Using the window of opportunity Ki bolted forward to continue in the assault. Haiden closed behind, placing her hand on Ki’s back. She chanted more verses and flowed her essence into Ki giving his attacks more impact than they normally did. With the boost of Haiden’s enchantment Ki felt the increase in his muscle mass as he delivered blow after blow of punishing strikes to the remaining mechs making short work of the New Aurorean menace.

“Calm your breathing, you did good kid, really good.”

Ki assured Haiden, watching as the young girl heeded his words and slowly eased her breath and watched her body loosen up and settle down.

“Now let’s go get your friends, we’re going to need that distraction that you talked about.”

Ki found himself pleased by Haiden’s heroics and with the end in sight the two of them raced off to free Lazard and the others.

***

“Sir, we just lost six mechs in a matter of moments and there is hardly anything in the way of beast capable of that type of destruction in the area.”

The ensign relayed to his commander, looking over his monitor as he flipped through various angles from the surveillance cameras in the area. After shifting through many angles, the ensign came across the feed containing Ki and Haiden freeing Lazard and the other high value rebels from their containment.

“Sir, two combatants have just released the rebels and sir, one of them seems to be one of ours.”

Confused, Augustus pushed the ensign out of the way to get a good look at the screen.

“He’s not one of the us, look at his long hair. No soldier of mine rocks a mop top like that. So, you’re meaning to tell me these two people, this little girl and this man are responsible for six mechs going down?”

He looked at the monitor as rebels celebrated their release and second chance to fight. Grinding his teeth the lieutenant was growing increasingly frustrated with the situation.

“Ok everyone this is a code red, drop what you’re doing and arm yourselves it’s time we take our ship back.”

A nervous look came across the faces of many of the ensigns’ faces and an air of dread filled the command center for all involved rookies and vets included.

Jumping down from the crow’s nest, Autumn landed on an unsuspecting soldier. She recovered and round house kicked another man readying his rifle to fire. Stripping a soldier of his weapon Locke gun butt the man sending him collapsing to the deck. Thinking fast, he threw the weapon at another soldier before punching him in his abdomen. Locke then dropped the full force of his elbow down on the back of the soldier’s neck, dispatching another adversary. Pivoting his stance, he faced off against his next opponent.

The elevator finally arrived, and the prisoners fell back toward the elevator doors to provide increase covering fire for the woman and children making their arrival topside. Atif was the first one racing out the elevator, hurling sand dragon scales at the New Aurora soldiers that stood as opposition for the younger tamer and company.

“Follow us to the boats!”

A woman shouted out to the group of mothers and their children ushering them toward their escape vessel. Once exhausted of all her makeshift shuriken Atif waved over toward Locke and Autumn alerting them that everyone was falling back to the lifeboats. Finishing off the enemies in front of them, Autumn and Locke heeded Atif’s warning and raced off with the others toward the lifeboats.

Gunfights broke out in the area surrounding the lifeboats as the last cluster of soldiers and now lieutenant Augustus stood between the group and freedom. Prisoners loaded up woman and children under fire from New Aurora, losing some prisoners in the process. But it wasn’t long before reinforcements arrived providing aid to the prisoner. The small group of rebels with Ki and Haiden in tow emerged from beneath the deck. Armed to the teeth with whatever they could find. The rebels laid down suppression fire on Augustus and his men. Allowing Haiden and Ki to regroup with Autumn and the Other.

“Haiden I’m glad you’re Ok!”

Atif exclaimed as Haiden joined her and Autumn behind the cover of a giant metal container. The pair waiting for their turn to jump on the boat. Locke and ki smiled and nodded at each other before celebrating their reunion. The sounds of the locks disengaging on the lifeboats caught the attention of the party as the prisoners released the vessels dropping them into the sea below. They released the boats before Autumn, and the others could board for the safety of the woman and child. It was time to move and without hesitation the party darted for the edge of ship all in the hopes of jumping ship and swimming to the lifeboats. Autumn, Atif, Locke and Ki one after another jump and dove into the ice-cold ocean. Only Haiden hesitated, staring out at the vast emptiness of the pitch-black ocean and her inability to swim.

“No better time to learn than now Haiden, you did a good thing for the cause kid, I need you to get word to Rexlacon in Busaya and tell him about what happened on the outer continent. Tell him we took control of a capital ship and are regrouping in the Aurora Bay.”

A mysterious man explained grabbing a firm hold of Haiden’s cloak and tossing the girl overboard so she could join the others. He smiled for a moment watching Haiden plummet and face her fears. It was short lived as he had more pressing matters at hand. Readying his rifle, Lazard returned to the battle for the capital ship distracting Augustus and his men away from Haiden and the others as they made their escape.

“SHE CAN’T SWIM!”

Atif shouted out over the waves crashing against the lifeboats, Locke assisting Autumn onto one the vessels. Ki, who was still in the water, heeded Atif’s warning and raced out toward Haiden who was struggling to stay above the surface of the ocean. Its intense waves constantly crashing over the swimmer. Haiden felt the strong hands of Ki grab hold of her and threw her on his back. She ceased her thrashing about, realizing Ki had started piggy backing her. Pushing through the water back toward the lifeboat and the other.