The interior of the cockpit suddenly turns red. Rennin checks over the instrument panel reflexively looking for the system error, but all the boards are green. He looks out the cockpit and finds that the glow coming from outside.
Caufmann snaps out a warning. “Rennin, Desolator 1 is locked on.”
“What the hell is going on?” asks Corporal Verge.
“Get us out of here,” yells Sabre.
“It’s almost ready to fire, Rennin,” calls Caufmann as the gunship begins to shudder mid-air.
Thinking fast Rennin begins a steep climb, taking Dead Star up towards the satellite, “I’m going to take us up high enough to shut the power down, it’ll lose us once we cut power.”
Signal detected. Priority: Evade. Priority: Evade, texts Del on Rennin’s screen.
“You’re going to do a freefall in a gunship, are you out of your mind?” calls Mia.
“No other option,” Rennin says, pushing the throttle to maximum. Dead Star’s engines roar, then screech as they are pushed to their limit. The steep ascent is driving the ship past tolerances.
Climb, you bastard!
“Hurry, Ren, I can’t hack into it!” yells Caufmann, typing frantically into his gauntlet.
Evade. Evade!
Rennin sees the updraft of wind pulled up by Desolator 1 as it stabilises the surrounding atmosphere for its blast. He swings around in his seat. “Del! Shoot the transponder!”
Del obeys instantly, pointing his built in wrist-gun straight at Drake’s crotch across from him. Drake opens his legs just as Del’s wrist-shot tears straight through Dead Star’s hull, obliterating the transponder unit.
Taking that as his cue, Rennin grabs both emergency shutdown levers above his head and pulls them down. Dead Star’s power cuts out instantly and begins a rolling descent—left wing first—as Desolator 1 opens fire. The red energy beam fires downwards at a forty-five degree angle, narrowly missing the falling gunship but viciously shaking it as it screams past.
All eyes are riveted forwards despite the almost blinding light. Caufmann is still typing into his gauntlet. Rennin has his eyes shut tight, counting out the few seconds he can allow Dead Star to freefall.
No one notices Del screaming. The gargantuan android is gripping the sides of his head, calling to Caufmann.
Rennin slams the levers back up restoring power to the engines and begins wrestling with the axis controls. He bellows out the loudest curse he can manage, but even that is inaudible over the roaring engines and the Desolator’s particle beam. He regains enough control to crudely straighten their descent. He doesn’t veer far from the blast trajectory, he follows it down, hoping that the beam will conceal the gunship.
The groundside impact of Desolator 1 is impossibly bright and Rennin averts his eyes banking Dead Star away from the site. With all the noise and desperation no one sees Del’s struggle at the rear of the gunship, they are all transfixed by the beam and it’s destructive path, all eyes focused beyond the cockpit glass at what may be their last moments.
Embedded signal… Assistance required!
Help.
Help me.
HELP ME.
Oblivious to Del’s messages, Rennin cuts across the blast radius at right angles, now barely a car height above street level. An alarm howls on the console indicating the rear hatch has been opened. A quick glance around confirms everyone is still in their seats.
He wants to double check, but wills himself to focus on flying. He hears Caufmann calling out to Del frantically and he realises that the great android was the only one he didn’t see.
I can’t think about that now.
He’s just trying to keep Dead Star low and get them to a landing zone where they can assess their situation.
The ground is shaking. Dead Star is too, and all he can hear is the discharge that sounds like a roaring demon behind him. His heart is pumping so loudly it feels like his ears are popping with each beat but finally they’re clear of the blast zone.
Sindaris Tessol is knocked out of his wondrous—though temporary— elation by a single vicious cracking blast topside that shakes the very foundations of the reservoir. It isn’t directly above, as the ceiling has not collapsed to crush the entire area and everything in it.
Nonetheless it’s enough to scare the mass of contaminants, and in so doing it knocks Sindaris back to his senses. His identity and memories come flooding back in one fell swoop like a cup being filled. It almost feels like life returning to him or vision being restored after a long time in darkness. Sindaris remembers who he is and why he’s here once again.
He looks at the entity controlling the contaminants but this time he’s ready for the face of his wife. This is not the person he loved for most of his life, it is merely a mockery coming from his own mind. Others would be seeing people important to them in their mortal life, people who have enough sway in their subconscious to make them pliable.
The once simple construction worker seizes his chance, disregarding the risk to himself. He focuses on the entity and pulls the gun from his pocket. For a moment the image of his wife’s beautiful face fills his stomach with lead, but when he looks into her eyes he sees nothing he recognises of the woman he spent his life with.
A single shot rings out, hitting the entity in the right lobe, destroying that part of the head. The body lurches back and falls but Sindaris doesn’t stay in place long enough to see it. He is gone, darting through the crowd, running for whatever life he leads now.
He feels random and panicked contaminant thoughts coursing through his head. Some of the smarter ones know what he did and they clamber towards him, clawing at him as he passes but the weight of the confusion caused by the masses makes their movements slow and inaccurate. Even though they are sluggish and overwhelmed, there are so many of them. Too many.
He feels a hand grab at his sleeve and slaps it aside. Another grabs at his ankle but it slips and fails to grasp. Fingers pass across his head and through his hair but he does not stop. He doesn’t look at them, he just runs.
Finally he makes it out of the main reservoir area only to receive his first injury. A razor sharp wrist claw slashes across his back tearing his skin like paper. He looks up in shock at his assailant; one of the more advanced mutations, with black skin and an unrelenting hunger.
Sindaris stumbles and falls forwards onto his face. The thing comes at him and slashes downwards. Sindaris can only roll onto his back, raising his arms to protect himself. He feels instant agony as his arms are carved down to the bone with enough force to push him into the ground. The creature backs off and screeches at him. Somewhere through his pain Sindaris realises that the blow cut his skin easily, but failed to pass through his bones. The creature slashes again but Sindaris rolls to the side and onto his feet. He rushes up a side passage away from the creature as fast as his shaking legs will carry him.
He focuses all the mental power he can muster into a terrifying, all-consuming feeling of famine, picturing the jet-black skinned creature as the only food that will ease the pain of being so ravenous. He pushes the mood outwards like a cursed invisible wave. His own desperation reinforces the impulse, building in power as more of the contaminants around him turn their attentions toward his attacker. The urge to consume becomes so powerful that all the surrounding contaminants feel the starvation so strongly it eclipses all else.
They come running from all directions. They rush past Sindaris as if he’s not even there. The torrent of contaminants charge maniacally for the congregations of those similar to his attacker, their numbers growing to satisfy their overwhelming hunger.