Chapter 24 Roxi
Obsidian falls apart. For a moment, he doesn’t move. He hovers, folding in on himself, like an edgy cloud of black smoke.
“What is he doing?” I utter to myself. He can’t seriously think we’re leaving him or that this is going to work.
Castor fires a pulse at the closest generator, and it simply absorbs the impact. “Shit.”
Captain Florin, based on the ship’s screens, is of a new generation of CSP. They have upgraded shielding, gravity nets, and even this vessel. The resistance needs to know. They need to see this ship, and we need time to design countermeasures.
Jackknife picks up the glowing harness Obsidian dropped at the bottom of the ramp and hikes a little closer to me, steadying his rifle in his other hand.
Then Obsidian’s mass surges across the overgrown concrete and pummels a generator. It shoots sparks. Light flickers, but doesn’t fade. His mass of shards arcs skyward and bashes into the next generator, fraying metal, then the next, until he circles the ship where we cannot see him.
“He’s killing himself.” Castor slaps a hand to his head. “But none of us can get down there and help! You saw how they stopped him in Titan form.”
“Pulseguns don’t work,” I add, watching Obsidian’s shards smash into the generators again and again.
I fear what’s become of him when I see flashes of pulse guns zing toward him.
But then his storm cloud races by again, faster, disintegrating more and more of the generators with every lacerating hit, flinging parts into the air.
Obsidian becomes a tornado of glass and metal and sparks and pulse fire.
Solcrue and CSP squads shy away from the turbulent air.
Flamberge rises.
“He’s going to break us free,” Flashbomb calls back. “We can get out of here! But I need Titans on guns! We have a fuck-ton of ships waiting to shred us!”
He maximizes thrusters. The radiant green net over us thins and turns to threads that begin to snap.
Jackknife calls to Obsidian, but he doesn’t stop. The generators shut down one at a time, but Obsidian still hasn’t slowed, as if he’s got himself in a death spiral.
And we’re leaving him behind.
I walk to the end of the ramp and look up at Jackknife. “Aren’t you going to turn on the aligner?”
He gives me a heartbroken look. “Roxi… I did.”
Obsidian’s tornado keeps building.
Armor grabs the back of my harness as I lean over the ramp and call down to him. “Obsidian!”
Still, he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t even slow down.
Dread fills me. I have never had anyone ever fight so hard for me, risk so much, or ask for so little. It is long past time someone fights for him.
Fuck this!
I storm into the ship, and Armor thankfully lets me go. The weapons closet is locked and coded to Captain Fuckface. But I am mad enough and desperate enough that I don’t give a shit how much it’s going to hurt to break in. I’m not doing things my usual way. It’s now or never.
Grabbing a nearby crate of food, I swing it back then throw it with all my might at the case doors. They break open just enough I can reach a hand through and get what I want.
I rip a grav-beam gun off the rack and rush back to the ramp. Lying down at the edge, I steady my rifle and pinpoint the largest cluster of Obsidian’s pieces below us that I can track. Armor and Jackknife are promptly at my sides, holding me.
“Roxi, you are officially part Psycho,” Jackknife remarks.
“Obsidian will not approve of this,” Armor mutters as he grabs the handrail beside the ramp’s opening and keeps my harness tight in his other hand.
“I don’t care. I’m not losing him.”
Obsidian has a leading cluster and a thinner tail, like an asteroid. Following his main mass, I fire. The green net launches below.
“Come on,” Castor mutters, joining me in leaning over the edge of the ramp, a pulse rifle in his hands.
We watch and wait.
I fear the gun didn’t reach far enough, even though in my mind, I know it could. I calculated.
Then I feel a tug.
“Ash, hold!” I shout.
Engines stabilize. I strain for the piece that slows as it nears us. My shoulder stretches, but my fingers still aren’t long enough. I open up my thyristor threads and snatch up the piece. When I feel the warm glass in my fingers, I close my eyes.
Come on, Fracture. Feel my touch. Follow it. Please.
A blast slams into the shields. Castor returns fire. “Get him up here, Roxi!”
“Obsidian!” I call to him with such force it makes my throat hurt. The gravity net strains to hold onto him and reel his body into the sky. His circling slows, and his mass trails upward.
“We can’t stay!” Vandal launches cannon fire from a ship-mounted gun. “Do you have him or not?”
Obsidian rises closer.
“Fracture, move your ass!” I bark.
Siphon throws himself down beside us, extending a rifle as he helps pick off Skysprinters with Castor. Nix takes up another position, firing counter-blasts at ground-to-air assaults.
Finally, amid the flashes of light and heat, Obsidian clusters up on the ramp beside me. Armor tugs me upright and inside. Obsidian’s cloud floats lazily after us inside the gravity beam.
Once the other Titans are upright and back inside, Castor closes the ramp, returns to his gun seat, and joins Vandal in attacking ships.
“Hang on, everyone!” Flashbomb calls out.
I grab onto a nearby handrail. Armor steadies me with an arm around me like a belt.
Obsidian’s pieces form a finger, then a hand. A firm jolt from weapons fire knocks him into a cloud again.
“Rrrrock….ssssiiii.”
My eyes fill with tears because I’m not sure how to help Obsidian.
His core aligner is busted, but it’s more than that this time.
The device someone built for him resembles the units we used to build for Titans who struggled to return to Titan form after their first forced shift.
If that isn’t working, then this is new territory for me.
And I’m not a Titan Creator. I only ever worked on security systems.
“Steady,” Flashbomb calls back. “Portal jump in five…four…”
Flamberge cloaks in black ink.
“Stay with me, Fracture.”
His mass moves closer to me. When we jump, his fragments smash into the closed ramp and tumble to the floor like rocks.
We exit into space.
“One more,” Flashbomb says.
“No! We can’t do another. You’re killing Fracture!”
“We can’t stay here!” Flashbomb replies.
“Then hyperjet us out!” I shout as Obsidian, barely hovering, coalesces into what looks like more of a puddle than a Titan.
I switch off the gravity gun, crouch down, and gather as many pieces in my hands as I can.
Castor gets up from his seat and treads with caution back toward us.
All the Brothers help except Vandal, who remains on guns, and Flashbomb, who speeds up and flies us at max thrust out of the system.
Even Vandal’s green eyes, which usually look like they’re planning someone’s demise, are filled with deep sadness.
“What’s happening to him?” Siphon asks.
My mind races through all the equipment I’ve seen on the ship and what I can do to save him.
“Roxi…” Flashbomb motions for me to join him up front while the others pick up their fallen Brother.
I hurry up to him.
Flashbomb glances at the pieces in my hands that fight each other for space. He stirs them a little with a finger. “I have been this way. It is severe power depletion. You need to induce a charged field to give his pieces the power to pull back together. To realign.”
His gold eyes look up at me with sadness. “If you wait too long, he will be unsalvageable.”
I process what he’s said and frantically dig around in my mind for how to build such a thing.
“So I need an ionization chamber,” I mutter.
“That would be ideal.”
I grab Flashbomb, kiss his cheek, and thank him.
His marbled face darkens to gold with his bashful glance.
I hustle into the back of the ship, carrying the pieces of Fracture that I’ve collected. “The best thing we have is in the medbay, but the recuperation chamber is built to plug into Titans.”
“Can we even build an ionization chamber?” Jackknife asks.
I scan him, Castor, Armor, Nix, and Siphon. “Yes, but it requires all the weapons’ dampeners. If we reverse the polarity and connect them to the bed, it should create a conductive atmosphere.”
“You’re saying Fracture is just basically low on power?” Castor asks.
“Yes. And if we don’t charge him now, his core will never be recoverable. Some things, when they power down, they lose the critical working memory that oriented them to their…parts.”
“So Atomizer and the others of the atomorph class are at risk for the same?” Siphon asks.
I nod. “Such a skill does not come without risk.”
Jackknife walks to the closest gun, pries free the pulse dampeners that create a reverse force to counter the vibration of the firing weapons, and tosses the pair to Castor.
We lay Fracture’s pieces on the cushion inside the horizontal recuperation chamber.
Castor hands me the first dampener. “Show me, and I will assist.”
I open up the backplate of the dampener, grab a set of insulated tweezers, peel the calibration panel out, then motion to the chips that need to be switched. “This is all just theory. I can’t say if it’s going to work.”
“But you try to help us,” Castor replies. “This is why we respect you. Solcrue try to kill us. CSP are no better. Even if it isn’t enough, we will know to protect Atomizer and the others. Nothing bad is ever a total loss. And we honor sacrifice with protecting others from the same fate.”
I rest a hand on his arm. “Maybe you can go on. But Fracture understands a side of me no one else does. I don’t want to lose him.”
Castor takes another dampener and opens it up. “Then I will double-check my work and run a simulation. Because we cannot afford to lose you.”
I have missed what it felt like to work as a team toward a common goal. Titans are united, and they care like family. They fight for family. And seeing them now proves that our programs weren’t total failures because we lost the war. These Titans are proof that we finally did something right.
When all the modified dampeners are in place, and the polarity has been set up so that it will pass ionization through the chamber in a way that maximizes Fracture’s exposure, Castor checks my theory on the medbay station.
“It cannot determine success because it is against Titan Regulation,” he reports.
“I wish Rebel was here,” Armor mutters. “He would know if this will work.”
Switching on the recuperation chamber screen, I close up the door and run a safety check. When everything comes back green, I message Fracture through the onboard recuperation communication system.
Creator Roxi>>Fracture: I don’t know if you can hear me, but we’re going to try and charge you atmospherically. It might hurt. I’m sorry.
The messaging screen blinks for a moment.
Fracture>>Creator Roxi:…
Fracture>>Creator Roxi: 1
Castor breathes out. “I hope this works.”
“Me too.”
Creator Roxi>>Fracture: Here goes…
Creator Roxi>>Fracture: I love you.
I don’t know why I say it, but it feels right. And if it’s the last communication that we have, I want him to know that feeling of being loved, even if it is only for a moment.
Fracture>>Creator Roxi: 1
His message makes me smile, but my finger trembles as I hover it over the Start button. I question every piece of the dampeners, the procedure, and my theory, checking just one more time to ensure I haven’t made a fatal error.
Armor rests a hand on my shoulder. “I believe in you.”
“I don’t believe in myself.”
“Fracture did. Try to…for him.”
I press the button.