Jumping From Hell To Hell

BOOM… CRACK!

Spiderweb fractures raced across the blast door's locking pins as fifty-plus worms and Stalkers threw their combined weight against it from the other side.

[Suit Oxygen: 00:07:15]

[Door breach in six seconds.]

[This unit suggests leaving through the window. Quickly. With purpose.]

Leo looked down at the eleven-meter drop.

There was no time to climb down and no time to drift either… There was no time for anything clever which left only something stupid.

"We don't have time to float down gently!" Leo shouted, grabbing the jagged sill as the floor shook under his boots. "Everyone, kill your gravity right now! Chloe, throw them! Straight down at forty-five degrees toward the base of the tower, so the boots catch the rock! Don't wait! Throw them like baseballs!"

"W-what?!" Camila squeaked as her belt rune flashed blue. "THROW us?!"

"I'm sorry in advance!" Chloe gasped.

Her eyes flared crimson. She snatched Harper by the back of her harness and the collar of her chestplate, wound up her tiny shoulders...

And hurled her out of the window.

"WHOA… SHIIIIIT!"

Harper pinwheeled through the vacuum for half a second then her angle carried her feet-first into the grey dust at the base of the tower.

CRUNCH-CLACK!

Her soles registered solid rock and snapped her upright. She rolled to one knee in a cloud of grey powder, empty carbine up.

"I'm down! I'M DOWN! Throw the rest!"

Up on the sill, Chloe moved in a blur.

She grabbed Camila around the waist and pitched her down into Harper's waiting arms.

THUD!

She snatched Jin-Ah.

THUD!

Then Ms. Tachibana, who at least managed to look dignified about it.

THUD!

Harper caught every one of them by their harnesses and slammed their boots into the rock.

SCREEEEECH… BANG!

Behind Leo, Chloe, and Elena, the blast door's top hinge sheared clean off.

A nightmare wall of white armor and spinning black teeth burst through the gap at the top of the doorway and came pouring into the gantry like a flood breaking through a dam.

"Elena! JUMP!" Leo barked, grabbing her elbow to shove her onto the sill.

…She panicked.

She slapped her belt toggle a split second too early, before her back foot had even cleared the floor as her heel clipped the bent upper lip of the sill.

"Ah—!"

And in pure zero gravity, with nothing to stop her… She didn't go down.

Elena went out…

She shot away from the tower on a shallow rising angle, sailing straight past its edge, five meters out, ten, twelve above the crater floor, drifting helplessly away toward the endless black.

"No! No, no, no, no!"

Her voice cracked into raw blood-curdling terror. 

Her boots kicked uselessly at empty space however without a thruster pack, once she cleared the tower, she'd just keep going… Out into the dark… Forever… Until her seven minutes ran out…

"My boots won't catch! Someone grab me! Somebody… LEO!"

It was not peasant and not stray either…

For the first time in her life, with infinity yawning under her heels, Elena Sterling screamed his name like it was the only rope left in the universe.

"Chloe! Anchor my ankle!"

Leo didn't think.

He killed his boot magnets and dove headfirst out of the window after her.

His heels cleared the frame… and Chloe lunged halfway out of the opening behind him. 

She punched her left arm elbow-deep into the solid wall to anchor herself, and her right hand clamped around Leo's ankle like a hydraulic vise.

SNAP!

His whole body jerked to a stop, stretched out flat over the drop. His knee and hip screamed white-hot agony.

He stretched his left arm out as far as his shoulder would go and his fingertips brushed the strap of her belt. 

… He missed.

'Come ON—'

He lunged and his glove clamped down around her wrist.

JOLT!

The force of catching her ripped through his shoulder, down his spine, and into Chloe's grip on his ankle.

For half a second, Elena hung there over the infinite black void, staring straight up through her visor into Leo's eyes, barely a meter away.

Behind him, Chloe's fangs were bared in a strained snarl as she was holding all three of them with one small hand.

Elena's brain completely short-circuited.

The boy she'd spent two terms looking down on, and the girl she'd called a freak and a monster an hour ago… were the only two things keeping her from drifting into eternity.

"Got you," Leo grunted through his teeth. "Chloe! Whip us down!"

Chloe let out a feral growl, hauled backward on his ankle, and swung her arm down like a trebuchet.

She launched both of them straight at the rock, then kicked off the sill and dropped right behind them.

THUD-CRUNCH!

Leo and Elena hit the grey dust together in a tangled heap of white armor, right next to Harper and Sensei as their soles bit hard into the stone.

Chloe landed on both feet a heartbeat later and cracked the rock under her heels.

"Up! Get up!"

Leo shoved himself off the ground and hauled Elena to her feet by her forearm.

She stumbled upright. 

Her icy blue eyes were wide and unfocused behind her visor, staring at his hand on her arm like her brain refused to process what had just happened.

"You... you jumped out after—"

"Save the thank-you card, Sterling! Seventy meters to the ramp! SPRINT!"

All seven of them bolted across the cratered rock.

Twenty meters ahead, the eight worms from the cooling vent were already sliding over the boulders between them and the ship.

Five of them felt the pounding of fourteen boots through the stone, whipped their eyeless heads around, and coiled to lunge straight at the crew.

The other three kept sliding toward the ship's landing struts.

Elena ran beside Leo with the dead Wasp in her hand with its seam dark as a worm lunged out of the dust on her right.

She raised the dagger on pure instinct, and nothing happened. There was no violet light and no blast. 

At this point, it was just a very pretty knife.

"It's EMPTY!" she shrieked.

Leo grabbed her by the collar and yanked her sideways a split second before the worm's teeth slammed into the rock where she'd been standing as grey dust exploded upward.

"Then stop stabbing things and RUN!"

"I AM RUNNING!"

[For the record, the Wasp's charge refills over time… Just not in the next ten seconds so this unit recommends legs.]

"Twenty-six rounds left between all of us!" Jin-Ah shouted, running with her empty carbine clutched to her chest. "Only shoot the ones blocking the ramp!"

THUMP! THUMP!

Ms. Tachibana fired on the run with her silver halo painting the terrain.

Two rounds straight into the open mouth of the lead worm as it lunged from behind a boulder.

It cartwheeled sideways out of their path in a spray of violet spheres.

[Aoi: 7/15]

"Camila, Chloe! The one at the ramp!" Leo barked.

A second worm reared up three meters tall directly in front of the cargo ramp.

Camila and Chloe fired together.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP! THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

Six rounds tore into the soft cartilage under its jaw and it shrieked silently through the rock and thrashed backward.

[Camila: 6/15]

[Chloe: 5/15]

Chloe didn't wait for it to recover.

She sprinted straight up its coiled body like it was a ramp, leaped off its back, and brought both heels down on top of its wounded head.

CRACK-SPLAT!

She crushed its skull flat into the dust.

"Clear the ramp! INSIDE! INSIDE!" Harper yelled.

She reached the bottom of the steep broken ramp first and scrambled up the slick metal on all fours, grabbing Camila's hand and hauling her up behind her.

A third worm lunged from under the starboard landing strut, straight at Jin-Ah and Sensei.

THUMP-THUMP!

Ms. Tachibana fired twice from the hip, point-blank.

[Aoi: 5/15]

It flinched back a meter, and in that one meter, Leo and Chloe grabbed Jin-Ah and Sensei by the backs of their harnesses and threw them up the incline into the airlock.

Then Elena, who shrieked the whole way up and landed in a heap on top of Harper.

"GET OFF ME, STERLING!"

"I'M TRYING!"

…Then each other.

Leo and Chloe dove across the threshold just as two more worms slammed their heads against the bottom lip of the ramp.

"AI! Emergency override! Pull the ramp up and SEAL IT!"

[Emergency acknowledged… Using the backup hydraulic pressure. This unit would like everyone to know that it has never been so happy to hear the word "seal."]

GRIIIIIIIND… CLANK!

The old pistons screamed as they yanked the ramp upward. It slammed shut right in the face of a lunging worm and actually sheared fifteen centimeters of black teeth off its lip.

HISSSSSSS!

The locks engaged.

Warm pressurized air flooded the cargo bay from the ship's brand new twenty-four-hour reservoir. 

Their green helmets dissolved into shimmering nanites and sank back into their collars as the white armor softened and darkened back into matte-charcoal uniforms.

Everyone collapsed onto the cold floor of the cargo bay, gasping.

Real air… Sweet, recycled, wonderful ship air… It smelled like rust and old machine oil, and it was the best thing any of them had ever breathed.

[Suit Oxygen: 00:03:04]

Three minutes.

…For three whole seconds, nobody could speak.

Camila started laughing first. It came out shaky and wet and somewhere very close to crying, and she lay flat on her back on the cold floor with both hands over her face.

"We're alive," she hiccuped. "We're alive, we're alive, oh my god, we're alive."

Harper flopped down next to her and threw an arm across her stomach. "Told you, chica. Never doubted it for a second."

"You screamed 'oh shit' when Chloe threw you."

"It was strategic screaming which is very different."

Jin-Ah was sitting with her back against a crate with her eyes closed as she breathed slowly through her nose. 

Her hands were still shaking, but she wasn't hiding it anymore.

Chloe sat curled up beside the ramp, rubbing her left arm. 

The elbow-deep hole she'd punched into the tower to anchor herself had cost her a long scrape down the armor, and the skin under it was already knitting back together. 

She was staring at it in quiet wonder.

Ms. Tachibana went from person to person on her knees, checking each of them with quick careful hands. 

…Pulse… Pupils... A squeeze of the shoulder… Only when she'd touched every single one of them did she finally sit back on her heels and close her eyes.

And Elena...

Elena was looking at Leo.

She didn't say anything. 

She just watched him from across the bay with her expression completely unreadable and one hand wrapped around the wrist he'd caught.

He noticed.

She looked away so fast her hair whipped against her cheek, and became extremely interested in a scratch on her glove.

Then...

SKRRT-CRUNCH! SKRRT-CRUNCH! SKRRRRRRT!

A horrible grinding sound came from outside the hull.

Not just at the ramp… Everywhere… Along the belly… Down the port side… Across the roof even…

[CRITICAL HULL ALERT!]

[Eight Void Carapace Worms (Level 1) are attached to the outer hull]

[They have found the copper in your wiring. They are eating your ship.]

[Hull Integrity: 28%... 26%... 24%...]

[At this rate, the cabin depressurizes in four minutes and ten seconds. You cannot take off with worms clinging to the engines. This unit has checked. Twice.]

CRUNCH… SCREEEECH!

A dent bulged inward on the wall two meters above Camila's head as circular teeth ground against the plate from outside.

She screamed and scrambled away from it.

"We can't fly and we can't go back out there with sixteen bullets!" Harper yelled, staggering to her feet. "Leo, the turret! The alloy and copper are already in the Foundry! Build the damn gun and blow them off the hull!"

Leo was already pulling up the Foundry tab.

[Fabrication complete! S-Rank Mag-Rail Turret assembled in Dorsal Bay 1.]

[ERROR: Automatic installation failed… The roof mounting clamps are corroded and out of alignment. Someone needs to crawl up into the roof, line up the clamps by hand, and connect the main power cable, while someone on the bridge routes the power.]

[This unit would do it itself but this unit does not have hands… This unit has never wanted hands more.]

Leo looked up at the narrow hatch in the cargo bay ceiling as a crawlspace barely forty-five centimeters wide.

"I'll go!" Harper said instantly.

"You don't know a magnetic bus from a radiator, Harper."

"...Rude," Harper said. "Accurate. But rude."

"I'll go," Jin-Ah said, pushing herself up off the crate. "I understand the wiring."

"I need you on the bridge routing the power. Nobody else can do that part." Leo shook his head. "And the person in that crawlspace has to feel the clamps… Not guess… Feel..."

He turned on his heel.

His eyes landed on Elena Sterling, still sitting against the bulkhead while panting.

He crossed the floor in three strides, reached down, grabbed her forearm, and pulled her up until they were face to face.

CRUNCH!

Something chewed against the ceiling right above them.

"You've got Mechanical Attunement," Leo said, his voice low and intense. "You can feel the pins through the metal without even seeing them."

He held her gaze.

"You're installing my gun, Sterling… Right now…"