She'd come into view at any moment. Aiden grit his teeth and leveled his cauterizer down the corridor behind his station. He wasn't psychologically ready to shoot the young woman he'd come to love practically as a daughter, but as a soldier he would do what he had to.
Any second now. He rested his finger on the trigger, one eye on the display and the other on the corridor. Any second.
A moment later the gunner opened fire . . . towards the other entrance leading into the bridge. “She spoofed the sensors!” the young man yelled in warning.
Aiden cursed and threw himself flat, narrowly dodging a cauterizer beam that whined sharply overhead. It would've liquefied his brains if he hadn't moved.
Looked as if Lana didn't have the same qualms about shooting him as he felt about shooting her. Then again, if she was a Dormant why would she?
The gunner had been forced down behind his barrier as more cauterizer beams stabbed their way across the bridge. He returned fire with his usual accuracy, keeping Lana pinned behind the doorway as well, but it was still a shock to see the Construct reduced to a stalemate.
Aiden's eyes darted to his display, then back to the corridor he'd originally been watching. With a surge of relief, he caught sight of familiar hulking forms coming into view. He ducked back behind cover, raising his voice to be heard over the whine of cauterizers and the hiss of melting metal.
“Fixes, Lana's a Dormant! Reprioritize her as a threat and ki-”
The word choked in his throat, and he couldn't bring himself to say it. He hadn't known her long, not that there was much to know since there hadn't been much there. But even now, even when she might've got them all killed, he couldn't bear the idea of being responsible for her death. She was as much a victim of the Deeks as any of them, as helpless to prevent her betrayal as if the enemy had implanted an explosive inside her rather than brainwashing her.
It didn't matter. Before he could change the order to “neutralize her”, ducking his head out just long enough to make sure Lana was still occupied fighting the gunner, he saw one combat android raise its arm with the attached cauterizer port and take aim at the other, blasting it into a nearby bulkhead.
The traitorous Fix kept up the punishing fire until the other android's AI circuitry was a puddle of slag dripping onto the deck, then shifted its cauterizer to point back down the corridor towards the bridge.
Directly at Aiden.
He cursed and ducked back behind his barrier as another deadly beam whined overhead. Unreclaimed sewage, she'd stolen his robot! He didn't know when or how, although he supposed she would've had plenty of chances since he captured the new combat android.
“Barix, we've got to hold off Fix while the gunner deals with Lana!” he called to the Ishivi, who was still ducked behind his workstation. If the slight man was planning to do something to help, he certainly hadn't shown any sign of it.
The same couldn't be said for the gunner, who abruptly vaulted over the plating around his workstation, dropping his weapons as he rushed the far doorway. Since he wasn't immediately charred to a crisp he must've managed to take out Lana's cauterizer, or maybe the young woman herself.
The fact that he hadn't used that advantage to finish the Dormant off, instead abandoning his own weapons to engage her hand to hand, was more than a bit worrisome. In fact, it seemed beyond stupid.
Was the young man trying to take his lover alive, even now?
* * * * *
A good fighter didn't just exploit opportunities, she created them. Her handlers had literally burned that lesson into her brain.
Although there were plenty of opportunities to exploit until she set one up herself. First and foremost being the gunner's injured arm, which was weaker and obviously caused him intense pain with every contact. Not that he let it stop him.
Unfortunately, that disadvantage was balanced by the Dormant's own injured hand, now a useless lump of burned and blistered flesh with flecks of molten slag from her destroyed cauterizer, or his technically, still coating it.
Luckily for her, there was a far better weakness to exploit than mere injury; their emotional bond.
Which was why Lana was screaming inside, and not because of the blinding agony of her severe burns that the force that had control of her didn't even seem to notice.
Not Dax. Not him. Whatever was happening to her, whatever was making her do this, she had to stop it. Stop it before she hurt him the way she'd hurt Belix, or sent Ali into space.
He looked just as reluctant to hurt her as she felt, but unfortunately her body had different ideas. She attacked viciously, without hesitation, even using her injured hand as a club, and each blow was meant to kill or incapacitate. And she hammered mercilessly at his injured arm, horror seeping into her soul at the agony writ across her boyfriend's face as he continued to use it to fend off her attacks in spite of the pain.
But even though she obviously intended to kill him, her boyfriend never tried to do more than defend against her attacks, occasionally trying for a hold that would never work on a committed enemy of comparable skill. “This isn't you, Lana,” he pled, normally even voice thick with pain that had nothing to do with his arm. “It's some kind of conditioning.”
She simply snarled and tried for his legs, taking advantage of her lower center of gravity.
Dax countered by taking a more solid position, his greater mass more than making up for being more top-heavy. “I know about conditioning, Lana. I've had to fight it ever since Belix released me to join the crew.
