“Get behind me!” she ordered, her voice strange and distorted as she walked toward them.
“Tanker?” he asked Sparky as the two of them ran low and fast, getting behind the bulk of the machine she drove. As they moved, he caught a glimpse of her name painted on the breastplate.
“Armored Infantry Unit!” Sparky yelled, falling in behind Eris’s leg and using the machine as cover as he started to fire back at the humans. He explained between bursts of firing, “Basically portable tanks. They were decommissioned about a decade ago. I didn’t think any were left. These things are antiques now!”
“Moving left!” she warned them. They adjusted their movement, staying behind her as she pushed the human forces up while backing into the corridor that would lead them toward the docks. Only a few humans were left now, and it took the work of a minute for Eris to pick them off.
“Okay, we need to move. Not much power left.”
They broke into a run, Zero and Sparky taking point as Eris covered the rear. With the increased firepower, the resistance they met along the way was minimal and quickly dealt with.
“There she is,” Sparky nodded toward the airlock as they emerged onto the docking arm. “The Aegis. You might wanna do your thing, big man. You’ll be quicker than me cracking her security systems.”
“Make it quick,” Eris advised, clunking to take a position in the center of the corridor while facing the central station. Her guns rotated and reset in their rails, covering the passage. “We got incoming!”
Without the need to check on the station security feeds, Zero instead dove into the system. Freezing in place, he concentrated on racing through cyberspace. Data flowed past him in its rawest form, constructs for different departments, routines, and subroutines blooming like flowers in a garden. He ignored them all, searching for what he needed. He raced along the data stream like it was a highway until the construct that was the Aegis rose up in front of him like a mountain rising from the deep.
Skidding as he changed direction, he raced for it, his data-self already analyzing the shape and form of its defenses. It was more complicated than he’d thought and would be hard to hack. If only he was a… the memory glitch hit him out of the blue, the thought incomplete. If only he was a what?
Shaking his head, he ignored it. Every so often his systems would reach for information that wasn’t quite there. Like an idea that was on the tip of his tongue, but as soon as he reached for it, it vanished like early morning mist in the sun.
He didn’t have the finesse to break the Aegis systems covertly, not at this speed. Instead, he changed his digital form and sped up. Like a battering ram, he hit the ship’s firewall at full speed. There was a moment of profound digital silence, a freeze-frame in the flow of data. Then it tumbled down around him in a cascade effect that allowed him to surge forward and take control.
“I’m in,” he announced, hitting his body with a rush and surging into motion toward the airlock. Sparky moved with him, Eris still firing at the human forces that had appeared in the corridor while he’d been out. He realized the human had been covering him with his own body.
Humans… they were the strangest things.
“Fuck me. That was fucking weird. You were here, but you weren’t there!” Sparky turned and fired as they ran, even as Eris walked backward, keeping the human forces off their backs. “I thought I was fucking god with a keyboard, but you’re something else. Aren’t you?”
“You’d better believe it.” He winked, shoving Sparky ahead of him into the airlock. Even without his body armor, he could still take a fuckload more damage than a human. “Taking control of the ship now. Cycling the engines up. Eris, get your metal ass in here now!”
The two men fired from the cover of the airlock as Eris cut and ran, her steps reverberating through the deck beneath their feet. Shouts rang out behind her as bullets pinged off her armored back.
“Shut the lock!” she ordered, her face grim behind the screen. “I’ll make it!”
He nodded, ignoring the screams from his protective male side as he hit the controls. If she didn’t make it… he shut the thought down, firing back as the door started to slide down, cutting off his view of the corridor. His heart pounded. Eris was still too far away.
“Shit, she’s not going to make it,” he hissed, reaching out to slam into the controls to open the lock again. A hand shot out, wrapping around his wrist with surprising strength. Sparky shook his head.
“She’ll make it, squire. Believe me. Those tankers are fucking hard bitches to put down.”
“They’ll kill her!” Zero hissed, yanking his arm away and going for the control. But before he could hit it, he heard a screech of metal on metal. Then Eris’s tank suit appeared under the door, sliding across the deck into the airlock. She’d barely cleared it when it slammed shut inches from her “head.”
“Told ya!” Sparky winked and patted the armored chest. “Good on you, girl. Now you wanna get your lazy ass up off the floor? We still gotta get this tub outta here.”
“Yeah, yeah… keep your fucking hair on,” Eris replied, lying still in the suit. She hadn’t been in combat for years, and she could tell. Every cell in her body ached from operating the suit even for that small amount of time. “Need to shut this baby down. I’ll catch up.”
The two men nodded and then were gone, leaving her on her own. She closed her eyes and sighed in relief. Alone, she didn’t have to hide the pain on her face. Shit. She really should have taken this thing out for a spin a time or two to keep her skill levels up.
But…
“Neural link lost to lower right limb,”
