Broken Boundaries Ch. 03-04

'Shit!' grunted Alain.

'That thing's too fast! We won't reach the Amaroth in time.'

'But if we go inside we'll get caught by the hunter drones.' said Tiness.

'And we're not trained enough to hit them if we shoot.' grumbled Asitha. 'We have no way to stop them.'

Alain stared intensely at the flickering dot of the scooter's thrusters firing.

'We'll have to take our chances with the drones and try to evade them.' said Asitha and turned to move to the nearest entrance hatch.

'Wait!' said Alain and typed quickly on his arm display. 'Fire some shots to his right when I say so!'

Asitha hesitated for a moment, then braced herself to the hull with her feet under a rung and aimed her gun at the scooter. 'All right, I trust you.'

Tiness clutched her empty gun and looked from the scooter coming fast to Alain typing, and back again. 'Please hurry, whatever you're doing.'

Alain focused on the scooter. 'Get ready to shoot.'

'Yes.' said Asitha and tensed.

Alain held his finger above his arm display. 'He needs to get closer.'

'Don't make it too close.' grunted Asitha.

'It's them indeed! They're not running!' said the bandit and increased his scooter's speed with another burst from the rear thruster. 'They know they're fucked!'

'Don't kill them yet, Syl!' said Frenk and turned his scooter around. 'We're coming to you!'

"Doesn't mean I can't make them shit their suits in seven colour." Syl thought and aimed his scooter at the three.

'He's getting close..' hissed Tiness and held her breath for anything that might happen in the next few moments.

Alain tensed his whole arm while his mind kept calculating the distance and fighting the urge to trigger the trap too soon and fail. 'Closer..' he grunted. 'Closer..'

'Now!' he said and tapped hard on his display.

Asitha unleashed a spray of bullets to the left of the scooter.

'Fuckers!' shouted Syl at the sparks to his right and fired the thrusters to evade the bullets.

He looked forward again only to see the edge of a missile hatch rising directly in front of him. 'FU-´

The girls and Alain watched the small explosion against the missile hatch with satisfaction. He exhaled hard. 'Shit, it worked.'

Asitha relaxed a little. 'I don't want to experience that again.' she said, then caught a glimpse of light flickering. 'Shaz! More coming!'

Alain looked at the distance to the Amaroth. 'Hurry! We have to go!'

They scrambled to the Amaroth across the impact wreckage and went into an open bay door. 'This way!' said Asitha and led them along the side wall of the bay.

'They're here!' cried Tiness when she looked back at the scooters entering the bay.

'Which way to the secure room!?' asked Alain.

Asitha pointed at a doorway in front of them. 'Through there!'

She went through first and Alain stopped to help Tiness get through, then hit the emergency button to close the door. 'Alain! What are you doing!?' asked Tiness.

'You go and hide! I'll lead them away!' he groaned and moved along the wall to the other side of the bay.

'You can't do that!' shouted Asitha. 'They'll kill you for sure!'

Alain stopped biting back on the pain since he was shot. 'I'm dead anyway.' he groaned. 'I've been losing blood fast enough to not last much longer. I don't even have that much oxygen left.' He looked back with satisfaction at the scooters changing direction towards him. 'I'm glad to have met you.' He muted their mutual channel. 'It's just me now..' he grunted and moved as quick as his nearly depleted energy allowed.

Frenk manoeuvred his scooter in front of Alain just after he entered a smaller cargo bay, and his blood boiled to make the nuisance suffer. 'You're done for.' he grumbled.

Alain slumped back and let go of his grip on the wall rungs. 'I know.' he replied via the broadcast channel. 'Nothing you can change about that.'

The other scooter stopped next to Frenk. 'The captain wants him alive.'

Frenk let out a single laugh. 'This one's dying here. The other two will be enough to satisfy our revenge on.' he said and pulled out his gun. 'But first he'll tell us where Sorg and Lio are.'

Alain chuckled and coughed. 'No, he's not.' he said. 'It won't matter to them anyway by now.'

Frenk aimed his gun at Alain. 'All the more reason to make your final moments as painful as possible.'

Frenk tensed the trigger but a cargo picker crushed him with the scooters and his fellow thug against the bay wall. Alain smiled when he saw Tiness step unsteadily out of the picker, and his vision turned black.

***

'Any sign of them?' grumbled Don.

Dural tapped on the communications console. 'Nothing.' he said. 'I think we'd better consider them lost.'

Don stomped on the armrest panel of his seat. 'Fuck! How much longer until you fix the engine!?'

'Couple more hours.' came the reply a moment later from the engineer. 'The only thing left that could mess up the controls to the engine is the internal control circuit and I need to replace that completely.'

Don stomped his armrest again.

Dural noticed movement on one of the screens with a view of their surroundings. 'Hang on! Someone's coming!' he said and zoomed into the two people moving along the Walkurea's hull. 'It's Frenk and Gust! Their suits are a mess!'

Don rushed over to the screen. 'Shit! They must've taken a beating.' he grumbled. 'But for them to come back must mean they dealt with those pests.'

The two staggered into the airlock a short while later and Don and Dural helped them inside the ship. 'What happened!?' Don asked. 'Did they do this to you!?'

The two turned and removed their gloves while Don and Dural unsealed the helmets and took them off. They froze when they saw Asitha and Tiness glaring at them with raging fire in their eyes, unsheathe their lethal claws, and bare their sharp fangs.

***

Tiness stared out of the pod window at the Lady Wind. Asitha moved up next to her and handed her a drink. 'Nothing else we can do.'

Tiness nodded slowly while she held the glass with two hands. 'Of all the remotest places to get sent to, we meet a human, become friends, and then all this happens.' she said and took a big gulp to feel the heat burning down her throat.

Asitha sighed. 'Even if you or I wasn't here, something bad would still have happened. Maybe even worse if we hadn't taken them down in the end.'

'I just wish the price we paid wasn't so heavy.'

Asitha looked back at Alain lying on an emergency bed with a portable health monitor next to him. 'Humans are pretty sturdy.' she said. 'He'll pull through in the end.'

***

Alain woke up feeling so groggy he was nearly glad for the worst headache in his life keeping him from falling back into a coma. He groaned from the strain of turning his head to see where he was but all he could make out were blurry splotches of colours.

'Alain?' asked a shimmering white shape.

He opened his mouth but nothing more than a faint wheeze passed before everything turned dark again.

***

When Alain woke up again he sensed he was in a slightly better shape than before. He took his time getting used to the headache and the slow activation of his body. After a while he opened his eyes and most of the blurriness was gone. He turned his head and saw Tiness sitting at the table of their pod.

She noticed the movement from Alain and rushed over to him. 'Alain? How're you doing?'

He gave her a faint smile. 'More or less alive.' he whispered.

She gave him a relieved smile. 'We raided your medical supplies and found this device and the instructions.' she said and gestured at the portable box next to him. He recognised it and noticed the attached pad strapped to his thigh which would seep medication into his skin. 'Then all we could do was wait and hope for the best.'

He looked up at her and barely smiled again. 'Thank you.'

She laid her hand on his chest. 'You were willing to save us. It's us who thank you.'

Memories of the last moments came back. 'What about?'

She looked away in the direction of the Lady Wind. 'We took the suits from those guys at the bay.' she said and shuddered. 'Using those we deceived them and entered their ship, then made sure they didn't survive.'

Alain thought it best not to ask about it until they were ready to tell more themselves.

She gave him a quick smile again. 'All we did since then was stay here in shifts to keep an eye on you. Asitha is working right now.'

'I'm really glad to have met you two.' Alain whispered.

'So are we.' Tiness said softly.

Alain noticed a part of his body that slowly became more active and needed attention. 'I'm also feeling hungry.'

Tiness laughed and grinned at him. 'I'll warm up something easy to digest.'