Survivors tales, chapter 15.
It's done, Lectra says that without a cooling system the engines will
overload and explode in less than five minutes.
Hope this mother is over the water when it blows.
And as for done, so are we.
The door to the engine room is blocked by two or three dozen wedgeheads
I have bouncing in my ice patches, but the patches are fading fast.
No way off the ship and Statesman isn't going to be here to save our butts
this time...
I grit my teeth as the rage inspiration hits me and start a suicide run toward
the trapped mass of Rikti at the door when Blinker shouts, "Ice, I think I can
pull us to the hospital teleport transponder in Steel".
Skidding to a stop, I look back at her just as a pair of Chief soldiers wriggle
through the ice, duck behind some metal crates, and bring their rifles up
to fire.
Multicolored streams of energy lace the air from both sides of the battle as
more Rikti make their way into the room through the rapidly fading ice
patches.
"Do it !!!", I yell as, what looks like, fifteen energy beams converge on
Fireball, vaporizing the majority of his body, killing him instantly and
mortally wounding Lectra behind him.
Lectra screams as her left arm ceases to exist and several of her internal
organs are damaged beyond repair by the searing beams.
She crumples to the floor and I hear another of my friends scream.
I didn't have time to look and see who it was, Blinker needed a brief
moment to tag our atomic structures for teleport and I was trying to
give it to her by hammering the doorway to keep the Rikti from getting
further into the room.
Tomino shoves me aside and rushes the door to try and hold them,
but even his nearly invulnerable giant body won't take the repeated
energy blasts for long.
His endurance drops to zero just as a Chief Soldier draws one of those
damned energy blades they carry.
It slices deeply into him, his body twists toward me, I see blood gush
from the rip in his suit.
He grabs the Rikti and with a howl of rage he snaps it's neck like a twig
flinging the corpse aside as more of them dogpile onto him, slashing and
blasting, trying to bring down his mountain-like figure.
His fury is titanic, through the haze of blood and pain he swings his
massive fists and everytime they connect a Rikti dies.
He knows he has only moments of life left but every one of the moments
left to The Tremendous Tomino will count toward his friend's chances of
escape.
His life ends with the slash of another Rikti blade that severs his spinal
cord, his huge body crushing and pinning an armored lieutenant and a
conscript as he falls.
Rikti corpses, and parts thereof, are scattered liberally near the door but
there seems no end, they just keep coming.
I unload a freezing rain on the group nearest me trying to break them up
when everything in my vision seems to go into slow motion.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Lectra, rapidly approaching death,
struggling to stand up.
She leans her tortured body against the ship's bulkhead, reaches to her
belt and pulls out every inspiration she has.
Raising her remaining arm up, she crushes the slightly glowing colored
capsules in her hand.
Her body and face stiffen and she's immediately surrounded by a bright red
and yellow glow from the nanotech energy fields the damage and accuracy
inspirations produce as they course through her ruined body.
I don't see the green glow of any healing nanites.
Paying no attention to the energy blasts that are splashing off the bulkheads
nearby, her face relaxes from the massive rage influx and coalesces into a
grimace of pure, unshakable, determination.
Clenching her fingers into a fist, she points at the group of Rikti that are
massed near the door.
She was drawing every erg of energy she had into one last shot, and even
though my mind was screaming "DO SOMETHING" I can only watch the
tableau as it unfolds in slow motion.
Blood trickles from the corner of her mouth as she unleashes the most
frighteningly beautiful electrical display I have ever seen.
Like a living Tesla coil, electrical arcs coruscate outward from her body
followed by a massive bolt of lightning-like electrical energy from her fist
that instantly kills the twenty, or more, Rikti conscripts that had pushed into
the room.
As she once again crumples to the floor, I look into her lifeless eyes and
I know I'll never hear Lectra's jokes or laughter again.
Even such a titanic blast isn't enough though, a half dozen armored
lieutenants and a Chief soldier are still in action, firing as fast as their
weapons will allow.
I can hear the pounding of the Rikti feet on the metal deck plates as more
of them run toward the room we're trapped in.
The hypnotic instant of my friend's brave death is shattered as Blinker
yells, "STAND STILL"
I see the familiar glow of Blinker's teleportation field surround me, and
in the next instant I hear her scream as an energy bolt tears through her
chest.
The normally instantaneous teleportation becomes a momentary blackness
and I feel like every atom in my body is being compressed and burnt in a
nuclear inferno.
I convulse in agony as I materialize just outside the hull of the doomed Rikti
saucer and instantly began to fall toward the ground four thousand feet
below.
Flailing dazedly as I fall, I notice is that the air is cold, freezing cold.
How can that be ???
Cold has never affected me.
Gasping for breath in the onrushing wind I try to form an ice patch
underneath me to create drag and at least slow my plummet.
Nothing !
Nothing is happening !!
I panic, trying to generate any of my ice powers as I plunge toward the
ground.
Nothing.
Wild panic, powers will not work, none.
Nothing I can do.
I can see the roofs of skyscrapers in Steel Canyon and they are coming
at me way too fast.
I close my eyes.
__________________________________________________ ____________________________
Pain.
Try to scream, oh Lord, everything hurts so bad.
My friends, I have to help them, where are they ??
A voice yells, "Code blue, crash cart, NOW !" beeping sounds, something cold
enters the vein in my right arm.
Strange dreams, Rikti everywhere.
Awareness and pain come again, and fade just as fast, time is a blur.
I open my eyes, and this time I really do scream.
And scream.
And scream.
__________________________________________________ ____________________________
I lived.
When Blinker died while trying to teleport us it caused me to somehow lose
my mutant ice manipulation abilities.
I guess that part of me just didn't teleport.
With nothing to slow me down, I impacted a skylight on on one of the Crey
super towers, went straight through it and hit the floor below at about 120mph.
Doctors said I should have died, but something in my mutant constitution
kept me living.
Almost two years after the day I impacted Crey Super Tower #8 I left the hospital.
My legs, well let's just say that the prosthetics let me get up and move around
pretty good, the amount of metal holding the rest of my bones together plays
hell with airport metal detectors and my left arm works a little bit more with each
year that goes by.
I'm not real big on mirrors these days.
My physical therapist calls my recovery "remarkable".
Me, I'm still deciding if survival was a blessing or a curse.
__________________________________________________ __________________________
I found out later that the saucer was blown to bits.
Luckily, most of the biggest pieces of the ship fell into the harbor in
Independance Port.
As for the rest of that heroic team:
Blinker teleported but she was probably dead before she exited the hull,
her broken body was found on a Steel Canyon street.
The others either died with Blinker or with the ship but no other bodies
were found.
I was told that hundreds of metas were gone, or wounded so badly that they
would never put costumes on again, and that the Omega team paid the big
price but somehow sealed the Rikti portal from the other side.
No chance to go to the funerals, I was busy just trying to stay alive.
__________________________________________________ ____________________________
One good laugh came out of all of it though:
Crey Industries sent me a statement of damages for the building my body hit.
Of course it was only a formal document for their tax purposes, not an attempt
to collect.
I guess the Countess wanted me to know how much I cost her.
I doubt she knows, or cares, what that day cost me.
__________________________________________________ ____________________________
After several months going stir crazy I took a job with Freedom Corps.
The once mighty hero now helps young metas learn how to use training
enhancements.
Am I bitter ?
I don't know.
I have to admit that I look at those kids with envy, remembering what it used to
be like out there fighting the good fight everyday.
Sometimes I go home at night and I make the mistake of looking at the photos
of my friends.
Those nights are so damn long.
__________________________________________________ ________________________
