Hassan, Alexis, and Sun-Hi stepped over still-smoldering bodies and into the impenetrable artificial jungle. Dalmar emerged from a cloud of smoke as the party advanced on a single open bulkhead hatch. More screaming rang out as Dalmar discharged another burst of flame into the darkened interior.
Alexis charged in first, her shotgun trained on the gantry stairs as they moved upwards towards the transmitter, careful to not brush against the flaming walls. Coughing, Hassan kicked open the door to the first level, revealing a softly-appointed lounge with two dead security guards on the floor. They’d been beaten to death with bare hands, the perpetrator already vanished.
“Think Freya got lose?” suggested Alexis. “Jonah could be with her — we should look for them.”
“Stay with the plan,” said Hassan. “The transmitter must come first.”
Sun-Hi pointed upwards. “This way!” she shouted. The four charged up the stairs to the next level of the tower. Dalmar ripped open the door to reveal to a massive, sprawling room filled with humming computer servers and autonomous communications consoles. The compartment practically crackled with electromagnetic energy, buzzing audibly as thick power lines fed massive transmitters.
“More are coming!” shouted Dalmar. He aimed his flamethrower out of the door and fired one last trickling burst, laying a patch of low flames across the stairs. Hassan slammed the door shut, bracing it with his shoulders as gunshots rang out, blasting holes through the thin metal.
“Whatever you must do, please do it now!” shouted Hassan. But Sun-Hi stood unmoving before the endless communications consoles, frozen with indecision. There were too many independent systems disable them all— and the door between them and the security forces wouldn’t last long.
Himura leaned over the mahogany writing desk, his face illuminated by a hidden computer monitor within. “Your crew has been cornered in the transmitter room,” he said, face drawn into a scowl as he waved for the surrounding security personnel to go. The final man drew a pistol and kicked Jonah’s legs out from underneath him, driving him to his knees.
“They’re pinned down,” continued Himura, turning away from Jonah. “With nowhere to run. My men will end this soon. This is not how I wished to spend my final moments. I wanted peace, contemplation, not this senseless chaos and destruction.” Himura knelt down towards Meisekimu, his fingertips brushing against her glass enclosure. The organism’s crimson colors began to subside, slowly replaced by neutral blues as she was comforted.
And then Himura looked up.
Jonah was on his feet, forearm wrapped around the aging guard’s neck, a stolen pistol in his hand. It was too late for the old guard. He couldn’t so much as gurgle through his crushed windpipe as the remaining blood and oxygen in his brain dwindled to nothing. Jonah waited until the man’s eyes rolled up and his head lolled before releasing him into an unconscious heap on the floor. Himura and Jonah began to circle each other in a slow, uneasy dance as Jonah leveled the pistol.
“Are you going to murder me now, Jonah?” Himura’s voice was amused, even sad, like a master teacher whose final lesson was left unlearned.
Jonah aimed at his feet and fired three times, the bullets ricocheting off Meisekimu’s thick glass enclosure.
“You can’t kill her,” Himura said. “You could spend a hundred years trying to smash your way into her glass womb and still fail.”
Jonah looked up and shook his head. “Ruh roh.” Himura’s brows knitted together momentarily in confusion. He took a step forward. “I ask you again — are you going to murder me? Would that somehow assuage your childish fantasy that you have any control over these final moments?”
“Speaking of childish illusions of control,” Jonah said. He jutted his chin over Himura’s shoulder, “You made a mistake thinking Freya could be harnessed to your purposes. Or that she wouldn’t immediately escape your men.”
Himura swiveled to see Freya. The tall, blood-splattered blonde was a mess of torn clothing and bruises as she stared at him with hate-filled eyes. The blade of her blood-red fire axe rattled, digging a deep furrow into the bamboo flooring as she dragged it behind her the last few steps. Jonah turned away just as she lifted it.
Alexis ducked beneath an empty metal desk as more gunshots rang out through the transmitter room. She tilted the shotgun towards the rapidly disintegrating door and fired wildly, her shots blasting through the thin metal and ricocheting down the narrow gantry stairs. “I’m out!” she shouted. “Sun-Hi — what the hell is taking so long?”
Sun-Hi desperately scanned the room, trying to find any way of disabling the endless rows of unmanned communications equipment. “I don’t know!” she shouted. “I understand none of these systems!”
Dalmar pushed Alexis out of the way, taking her position. He aimed a small pistol at the doorway, carefully rationing out his shots as he barely kept the swarming security guards at bay. More gunshots echoed from up the stairwell, faster this time and accompanied by shouts of surprise and the sound of fists landing on soft flesh. Alexis nervously glanced around the transmitter room — but none of the latest barrage had been aimed in their direction.
A voice called out. “Don’t shoot!” shouted Jonah from the other side of the door. “I’m coming in!”
Alexis and Hassan peeked over the top of the metal desk as Jonah wrestled open the blown-apart door. He limped into the transmission room with a pistol in each hand, his face and chest covered by a thick spray of blood from ambushing the aging security personnel in the stairwell below.
“We have to stop the transmitter!” said Sun-Hi, gesturing to the long banks of equipment around her.
“You mind?” said Jonah, handing the two pistols to Dalmar. He gently took Sun-Hi’s AK-47, unslung the strap, and shouldered the rifle. Everyone stood back and plugged their ears as he fired, tracing a continuous burst across the consoles, computer systems, and electrical relays until the magazine was empty. Sparks, smoke, and electrical arcs erupted across the entire compartment as the consoles went dark.
Sun-Hi checked the electromagnetic reader as she coughed, waving away the cordite smoke drifting from the rifle’s hot barrel. “It read zero!” she said. “Transmission gone! How did you know?”
“Easy,” said Alexis. “He just aimed for the most expensive-looking stuff and got lucky, per usual.”
“Can’t argue with the results,” said Jonah, setting the empty rifle down.
Dalmar clapped a meaty hand on Jonah’s back. “It is good to see you, brother.”
“You too,” said Jonah. “Everybody OK in here?”
“We’re all fine,” said Hassan. “We’re just happy you’re alive.”
“That’s great and everything,” said Jonah. “But why the fuck are you back? You’re all supposed to be halfway to Buenos Aires by now.”
“There was a bit of a… mutiny,” admitted Hassan.
“You’re welcome,” added Dalmar.
“If it makes any difference, rescuing you was only a secondary objective,” said Alexis.
“I’ll deal with you lot later,” said Jonah as he jabbed the pirate in the center of the chest with an outstretched finger. “Right now we have a bigger problem — the transmitters were only half of the battle. The entire ship is automated and there’s no way to stop it, even if we somehow killed every man aboard.”
“I think Dalmar might have already done that,” interrupted Alexis.
“I have not,” the pirate stated. “Some are merely wounded.”