Chapter 150 The Phantom Bridge
The Aether was not like a refuge anymore. It resembled a tomb that was tumbling out of the sky.
The enormous silver ring of the orbital station was visible in the whole field of view through the window of the Valkyrie. It was at an unhealthy angle, and the main propellers were slicing a straight blue line into the vacuum of space, and hurling millions of tons of metal toward the atmosphere of the earth.
Three hours to atmospheric interface," said Vane; his hands were flying over the controls as he struggled with the yoke. The beads of sweat rolled on his forehead and existed in microgravity of cockpit in small, airless bubbles. The automated defense grids at the station are down and the orbital mechanics are a nightmare. It is throwing off its axis to gain speed in falling down the center of it.
"Can you dock?" Ryker, unbuckling his harness, and floating behind the chair of Vane, asked, in which his boots magnetically attached themselves to the floor deck.
I can attempt it, Vane said to himself. But when I miss the airlock collar we will strike the hull and fly away into space. Brace yourselves!"
My right hand grabbed my armrest, and I hugged my sore left hand firmly to my chest, which was heavily bandaged. The Origin Stone was dead. The magic was gone. Up here I was nothing but a girl in a flight suit.
Matching rotation, Vane mumbled and his eyes were riveted to the alignment monitors.
We flew past the great, smooth white hull of the Aether in the outside. The maneuvers of the Valkyrie were shot out in short spurts by Vane using the maneuvering rudders. We crashed to the left, and then dropped down with reference to the rotation of the station.
CLANG-HISSS.
There was the grind of metal upon metal with a shriek of sound that reverberated in the ship, and there was the thud of the heavy, reassuring sound of the magnetic docking clamps falling in.
Achieved, Hard dock," Vane breathed out a breath which he seemed to have been keeping a week. Equalizing the pressure under way. We're in."
"Grab your gear," Ryker ordered. He drew his Star-Metal sword. The sword did not burn to a raging fire in the low oxygen of the airlock, but the old metal smoldered with a dim, deadly, internal temperature. "We move fast. We cut the heart out of the server core, we detach Valerius to the mainframe and we boot the thrusters so as to get this stuff back into a stable orbit.
I hate space, I hate space; said Baron, bursting out of the jump seat. He loosened his press-strap, wavering on his way into the airlock. The great werewolf seemed very much out of place, his movements were awkward in the absence of the firm earth beneath his feet.
On, on, on, Ryker said to him.
We stepped to the magnetic soles of our Purist scavenged shoes. Clack. Clack. We had returned to gravity, which we had artificially taken by weighing down on the metal floor.
Vane banged the outside door.
Out of the Valkyrie we got into the Aether.
The white white passages of luxurious beauty with which we have visited the place in the first time were lost. The station had gone to the emergency mode. The lamps were a slow blood-red. A coldness filled the air and the soft hiss of life support was substituted by the screech of suffering and agony of the metal hull of the station being overstrained by the unnatural dislocation course.
"Which way to the servers?" Ryker asked Vane.
Vane brought out a schematic on his datapad. "Level four. Not far under the Command Hub in which we had left the physical body of Valerius. We must pass over the Habitat Ring to go to the central spoke elevator.
We descended the winding red-lit passageway. The silence was oppressive.
"Where is the crew?" I whispered. "The civilians? The Purist guards? This station had hundreds of people upon it.
it is likely that Valerius shut the door on them in their rooms, so warned Sato before we made our landing. To him they are simply redundant variables at this moment.
We curved around a broad bend into the central promenade--a huge, vaulted hall, with windows, floor to ceiling, upon the fast-approaching Earth.
The promenade wasn't empty.
At the farther end of the hall there were dozens of persons standing in the way of the blast doors to the centre spoke. They were clad in typical Purist security bio-suits--smooth and immaculate, and completely covered.
Ryker launched his blazing sword. "Hold!" he commanded the team.
The figures did not take weapons. They didn't speak. They merely stood and their heads were tilted at unnatural, broken angles.
"Survivors?" Baron questioned, and his nose twittered. He sniffed the recycled air. "No. No heartbeat. No sweat. They smell like... cold meat."
The figures moved, as though they had been provoked by our voices.
But they did not move like humans. Their legs twitched and caught up in horrible, hydraulic accuracy. One of the guards of the first rank stepped up, and stretched forward with a movement of his knee stretched also well behind him, then swung back out and into position with a fierce jerk.
...Intruders detected, a synthetic, digital voice, from the outside speakers on all the individual suits at the same time. The voice of Valerius was heard, with fifty dead throats. "...You cannot stop the descent. The flesh has been purged."
Dead, I tell you they are dead, Vane thought with horror running into his voice. Valerius expelled the oxygen in the Habitat Ring. He suffocated his own people."
"Then what's moving them?" I asked, backing up a step.
The bio-suits, Ryker said, his golden eyes closed. They are connected through cybernetics to the mainframe of the station to monitor life support. Valerius is not a mere AI, but he has stolen the suits. He's using them as puppets."
The dead army lifted up their arms. No pulse rifles, just heavy plasma cutters and maintenance equipment dragged out of the engineering bays.
...Eradicate the fifty said in a horrifying unison.
"Cover!" Ryker roared.
He jumped forward at the moment when the cybernetic puppets fired. Plasma rays burnt holes in the sky, molten the perfect white walls of the promenade.
The gravity suddenly cut out.
"Whoa!" His mag-boots gave way, and in the flickering of red emergency lights Vane screamed.
He is riding the artificial gravities! Shouting, Ryker rose in the air, and magnetized his boots to the ceiling. "He's trying to disorient us! Elara, stay behind me!"
I caught hold of a floating handrail in my good hand, and drew my knees up to my chest as a beam of plasma burned the floor the few inches beneath my feet. I was absolutely naked without my magic, and I could not be a drag. I unloaded the large Purist pistol that Ryker had handed me, and held it nullly with my right hand.
I fired three shots. The kinetic slugs struck a puppet in the chest and it did not even twitch. It simply continued to drag itself along the wall towards me and its dead eyes peered through its visor with blankness.
"Bullets don't work!" I yelled. You must cut off the motor parts of the suit!
"Cut them to pieces!" Baron roared.
The enormous man threw himself off the wall, and sailed through the zero-G environment of the promenade like a torpedo. He knocked the three of the puppets against the ground, and he crushed the hard-shell plating of their bio-suits with his sheer mass. But the suits didn't feel pain. The dead guard which had its arms around the neck of Baron whined its servo-motor in an attempt to squeeze its windpipe.
Ryker was a masterpiece in killing. In Stygian posture, with his sword (Star-Metal) penetrating the zero-G world in flashes of burning-orange light, he stood on his head on the ceiling. He did not want the bodies he wanted the joints. He cut off the knees and the elbows of the bio-suits, cut the hydraulic lines and made the limbs useless.
Clunk.
The flow of gravity was restored at three times the standard pressure in a second.
We slammed into the floor. Baron fell on his back, and the puppet was still hanging on his neck. Ryker fell out of the roof, crouching upon the ground, and his sword was humming.
Vane could not breathe because he was stuck to the ground by the fierce 3-G.
Valerius is playing with the localized field! Ryker grunted, struggling with the heavy weight to get on his feet. "Vane! The blast doors! Break in to local terminal and shut them out!
I... can't... reach it... his arm shook and he attempted to raise his datapad.
The puppets were also totally immune to the gravity spike due to the presence of their hydraulic exo-skeletons. They had come to us, with their plasma cutters.
I was closest to the terminal. My flying suit had the weight of a thousand pounds. The pressure tightened the bandages as my left hand which was burned screamed with agony.
I clenched my teeth and my mouth tasted blood and pulled myself on the polished floor. Inch by inch.
"Elara, stay down!" Ryker screamed, and tried to pass between me and an onrushing puppet.
I ignored him. I hit the terminal panel beside the heavy blast doors that opened into the central spoke. I couldn't type. But I didn't need to.
I picked up Vane's heavy Gravity Hammer which had slipped across the floor beside me. I threw up with a scream of effort and struck with all my right arm against the glass face of the terminal with the hammer.
The screen shattered. The manual override lever was open.
I pulled it down.
WHOOSH-CLANG.
The neutronium blast doors were shut with a crash of great weight, and severed the torso of one puppet who had attempted to squeeze through, cutting it in two immediately.
The promenade was sealed.
The next moment the gravitation became standardized.
We were all choking, straining ourselves off the ground. Behind the blast doors we were able to hear the dull thudding of the cybernetic puppets attempting to break through.
Good hit," Vane coughed, and took his datapad.
Ryker walked over to me. He didn't scold me for moving. It was his right hand that he was holding onto the heavy hammer, and then he looked up to my eyes.
You are a weapon, Elara, a fierce pride in his golden eyes.
"I'm surviving," I breathed.
We are in the middle of the spokes, I said; and we are looking down the dark, vertical shaft before us. The Server core is simply straight down. But Valerius is aware that we are here. He will give us all the station has to give us.
Ryker drew the sword and looked at the charge.
"Let him," Ryker said. There are two hours to save the world. Let's go kill a god."