Chapter 16 Fracture
I cloak the LightBlade and watch the hull shimmer. With my beacon offline, my ship disconnected from Rogue Fleet, and all coms down, I am on my own. There is no backup plan or force of Brothers who will come to save me if I mess this up. I cannot afford mistakes.
My plan to circle wide has kept me off radar. No Solcrue or CSP ships scan in my direction. I find the asteroid belt that Lotus had to navigate Aegis through to reach Planet Lencio, and I use it as cover to get on an intercept course with the ship that I believe has taken Roxi.
The CSP vessel banks away from the enemy fleet and in my direction. Venoms return to their mothership, leaving just me and the CSP vessel, a similar model to Scythe. I’m starting to think the Solcrue just wanted to be sure our Rogue Fleet didn’t engage.
Solcruean ships disappear, likely heading back to their system.
But CSP heads for a different world in this solar system.
I wager CSP would remain close to Creators and CyberTechs but have a separate facility.
I should have made the connection. One of us should have.
But I had my priority processes working on other concerns, like Roxi.
I hope she’s okay.
I know she’s not. She was injured. I heard it.
As CSP heads toward the belt, I see my opportunity to latch on and increase my speed. My LightBlade hums and races toward the much larger ship. As they glide through the asteroids, I dart in, behind them, where their shields are weakest.
It’s just going to be a flash of heat. I transfer shield strength to the nose of my LightBlade.
Probability of success: 32 %
I’ve had worse.
The ship shudders as I fall in behind the vessel, where I notice Sickle etched in the side.
I pick my landing spot and blue brackets appear in my vision.
I spool up the thrusters, watching the pulsing pattern of Sickle’s engines.
I need the wider opening from the biggest flares because it pushes the shield back just big enough for a LightBlade.
I launch through the last asteroids and sprint into the tailfire. Alerts flash all over the dash. The LightBlade can burn for all I care. I just need it to get me onto Sickle.
The nose of my ship blazes with Sickle’s thruster heat, then it fades, and my momentum has me on a crash course with one of the aft ailerons.
I tap the reverse thrusters on and ignite the grav beam just long enough to get me against the ship between its main engines.
Then I magnetize the LightBlade to the hull, switch it off, and grab all of my gear.
Hang in there, Roxi. If you’re still alive…
I lower the ramp just enough that I can crawl out. CSP may discover my ship at any time, but this leech method is a move we’ve learned since CSP betrayed us years back. I hope they’re not watching for it.
Crawling over the LightBlade, I make my way to Sickle.
Some of my other Brothers have been captured by CSP ships.
I pull up their information downloads and bring up a recording of a hatch just forward of the aileron I almost smashed into.
It sits just before an external exhaust port for Terran missions.
But it’s going to drop me right into a busy open area of the ship. I need something quieter.
I scan the ship as recordings from Brothers flicker in a search window in the corner of my vision. I finally find something I can work with: an exhaust port on the belly that leads into an airlock big enough for a Titan.
Scaling the ship, my hands magnetized to the hull, I find the exhaust port and pull myself inside. Bracing myself in the port, I pry open the wiring panel and clip in a piece of wire from my gear bag that will keep the vent registering as closed, a trick I learned from Vandal.
Manually opening vent louvers takes more energy than I expect, but eventually they crack open just enough for me to slim myself down and slip inside.
The one problem with carrying my weapons is they won’t fragment with me.
Only my armor responds, so as I slip through, I have to adjust my weapon positions to get them to the other side with me.
I push the vents shut and open the internal airlock the same way: a jump wire to register the lock is shut, slip through, and close it up again.
But as I solidify myself inside Sickle, I don’t form up in my usual self. I am in Stealth Mode because I am filled with rage and the desire to cause my enemy extreme pain.
I sneak through the shadows of the maintenance shaft and look up as the exhaust ports track around the room to the Terran motors at the back.
With a single blink, I pull up the heat signatures of everyone on the levels around me. My first victim whistles as he walks into my kill zone. Keeping my feet quiet, I ease up behind him where he works and rest a hand on his shoulder.
He looks up at me in annoyance, then fear. Fissures race through his body, and he bursts into crystallized shards that promptly turn to dust.
“Edins, what are you doing?”
I step slowly backward into another shadow, wait for the next person to walk in front of me, then I send them crumbling beside their cohort.
It is a demonic side of me that I never liked and rarely use. But taking a Creator, especially harming one, earns the highest of punishments any Titan can give.
This is mine.
I stick to the blind corners and shadows until I’m close enough to render each soldier to dust and a pile of clothes and weapons. When I’ve exhausted the tighter spaces, I find myself staring down a bright shaft with no place to hide if I want to advance.
Grabbing my pulse rifle, I switch it to stun, and press on. Three Solcrue head toward me from an adjacent tunnel. I fire, taking all three down before they can get a call out, then I shatter them all.
One touch.
Fissures.
Fragments.
Dust.
Silence.
I clear the passageway to a lunchroom packed with soldiers.
At the panel beside the open access, I pull up a recording from Vandal, remembering that he had mentioned locking soldiers in a residence once on a CSP ship.
I put in the code, and the faint shimmer of a sealscreen closes it up.
Unless they’re looking for it, they won’t see it until they try to leave.
The door will warn them it’s active on approach. That should contain them for a while.
Continuing down a residence corridor, I encounter a CSP soldier working on a screen while holding a tablet. He doesn’t even look up at me as I approach. He is so locked in that I get a hand on him before he registers my presence.
Something makes me hesitate when he wheels around and pales. He’s much younger than most.
“Where is the Creator you have taken?”
“Sha…she…shielded compartment.” He nearly drops his tablet.
“Where?” I can’t see it in my heat scans.
He hesitantly points below.
Movement at the end of the hallway near the lunchroom makes me look back. A Solcrue and a CSP soldier stop when they see me. I lift my rifle, switch my mode to Warp with a flick of my thumb, and take them both out in one blast. They slam into the far wall and fall.
My cover is blown.
The young man in front of me can’t be more than fifteen. I doubt he has any idea of what he wants in his life. He’s just trying to survive. I think Roxi would give him a chance to change.
“You are on the wrong side of the war. You are torturing and killing your fellow humans who never asked to serve Solcrue. Titans protect humans as long as they do not hurt other humans. Have you hurt humans?”
He fervently shakes his head.
“Good. Don’t start.” I slowly slip the tablet from his hands. “You do not belong here. Go.”
He backs away and throws himself inside the nearest residence, hiding behind the closing door.
I open the security systems on the tablet as I slip into a new passageway, knowing I now have attention on me.
There are traps all over the cell: laser grids like on Hyperion, cryo-gel launchers, phase-shifting bars like the ones corrupt Creator Quris recently used on me, and more.
They have the place rigged to blow if a Titan opens the cell.
Finding a ship maintenance shaft, I open the panel and disaggregate just enough to hide myself in a compartment where no one can see me.
Then I reposition the tablet so I can work on it and search for a safe place where I can meet up with Roxi and get back to my ship or steal another if they block the path.
I open up the video feed of her cell and watch her as she leans against the wall, bracing her side with a bloodied hand. A bruise taints her luscious neck.
Alright, Roxi. Let's see if you can follow my lead.
I am no CyberTech. And I’m not a unit like Thyristor. But I watched Roxi work. With the tablet already unlocked, I open up the cell controls, double-check my planned path, and hover a fragmented finger over the button for open doors.
After a deep breath, I tap it.