Freelancers 01: Torianne's Awakening

Keller went over but his night vision view suddenly flickered and went dark. 'Shit.' he said and gave his goggles a slap. 'This piece of junk is acting up again.'

Birt looked back at him just in time to see someone appear behind his partner. 'Behind you!'

Keller ducked and spun around at once but Viri shot him in his thigh.

Birt aimed his submachine gun at the attacker but Saeru shot him through the side of his helmet while Viri killed Keller with another head shot.

'Birt!? Keller!?' came from the handheld radio on Keller's hip.

#

Rone cursed. 'Everyone return here.' he said over the radio. 'We found them.'

The mercenaries gathered at the cargo hold and entered it, but the moment they showed themselves from behind Torianne's oblong section, bullets greeted them to keep them at a distance. Rone called Rikman on the radio. 'We found them in a dead ship of some kind but can't engage them. They're holed up tight.'

'Keep them busy, more units are coming.' said Rikman. 'I'll send a cannon with them.'

Rone smiled sadistically. 'That will makes things much easier.'

#

Viri pulled back behind the hatch to dodge incoming fire and activated the intercom. 'Kal, we're at a stalemate now but I doubt we'll be for long. We'll run out of ammo and we can't slip through the shadows behind them with their numbers.'

Kal frowned in frustration because he couldn't be there with them. 'How much more do you need, Torianne?'

'The power buffer to activate the first core is almost full.' said Torianne. 'After it's running it needs to fill the power buffers for the other systems to activate.'

He pushed his abnormal magic ability to the maximum. 'We'll keep up the fight for as long as it takes.'

#

After several more standard minutes of exchanging fire, Viri pressed herself against the wall next to the hatch and exchanged the clip in her pistol while Saeru continued firing. 'There are too many of them, we can't hold them off much longer. I'm down to my last bullets.'

Kal grumbled. 'Torianne, how much longer?'

'Buffer is at required capacity. You need to go to the core and activate the link. I'll illuminate the way.'

He hurried along the stairs and passages lit by a strip in the ceiling, and ended up in a space mainly occupied by a thick ring structure about ten metres wide and a pillar of steel in the middle, connected by five transparent pipes covered by walkways. 'Go to the centre and switch each lever at the controls.' said Torianne.

Kal hurried along the walkway in front of him, and pulled down and locked the five levers on the pillar above each pipe. He sensed a change in the air as the pipes barely lit up for a moment, then lit up completely at once with a warm, yellow light, along with all the controls around the core. 'It's powered up now.' said Torianne. 'You can activate all the main sections at the main controls. Try the bridge first.'

Kal went over to the controls at the ring near the entrance, and found a row of sturdy rotating switches and red lights with written labels stuck alongside them. He turned the one labelled bridge and the light became green. 'Bridge is active.' said Torianne. 'Try the others one by one.'

Kal turned each switch, waiting impatiently for a couple of seconds for the related control light to become green, until he switched on the first of a row labelled weapons one to ten. The light stayed red. 'Broken?'

'I sense damage in that area. Weapons are disabled for now.' said Torianne. 'Can you switch on internal repair?'

Kal found the switch and was glad to see the control light turn green. He spun around at a clicking sound behind him and watched three different wheeled cubic objects the size of a soccer ball move from their holes in the wall to the doorway, then disappear down the corridor. 'What are those?'

'Master Maher developed a self repair ability for me, to take care of most defects myself.'

'That's useful.'

'Yes. It also saved him from doing menial tasks all the time by leaving it all up to them.' she said in a dry tone.

Kal chuckled. 'I can see why he created it.' he said, and tried the remaining switches.

Those all lit up green and Torianne trembled. 'Entering active flight mode.'

A couple of Rone's men found steel plating and created makeshift shields, and moved towards the hatch. They halted when the saucer hull trembled for a short while, then rose. The oblong hull it partially rested on moved up along with it as well as the large cylinders, while the mercenaries outside were knocked aside and ran away. The oblong hull took up position from the middle of the saucer to the edge at the rear with its slanted side, and the cylinders hung halfway underneath the saucer near the lower sides of the oblong section. Everything floated at a short distance from each other, and Rone could not escape the image of the ship stretching itself when the lower hull shifted back and the two cylinders spread a little at the front for a moment. He dismissed it as an illusion caused by the darkness and erratic lights and took his radio. 'Where's the cannon!? We need it now!'

Torianne sighed with satisfaction. 'Oohh, that feels so much better.' she said with a slight moan of pleasure.

Kal raised an eyebrow at the tone of her voice. 'You sound even more alive than I've heard so far.'

'Master Maher said he based my internal workings on living beings to improve my functionality and interaction. I think that's why he made me communicate with others the way I do.'

Saeru hurried into the engine room. 'We heard them call for a cannon. Viri is looking for anything we can use to throw at them.'

Kal frowned. 'They're going for drastic measures now that you're mobile, Torianne.'

'Repairs on my weapon systems will take some more time.' she said. 'There are two more power cores in me that you can now activate for redundancy. That should keep me running even if I suffer major damage while you fly me manually out of here. My own flight controls are damaged so I can't do it.'

Kal looked up. 'You have no obligation to do this for us. One of us could simply fly you to the other side of the cargo ship for safety while we escape on our own ship and lure them away.'

'I calculate that your chance of survival is minimal when you do that. I can withstand more damage than your Reliant and keep you alive. This is the least I can do in return for reactivating me.'

'Thank you.' said Kal and looked at Saeru. 'You and Viri head for the bridge and try to fly us out of here, I'll activate up the other two main cores.' She gave him a resolute nod and hurried back to Viri, and he stepped out of the engine room. 'All right, show me the way, Torianne.'

#

Rone didn't like how the ship hung quietly in the storage space. When an opponent kept silent, it was usually because they were up to something, and faced with a large and unknown ship, he didn't want to find out what it was capable of. The arrival of the mobile cannon made him feel only slightly better. 'Set it up over there and aim for the middle of the saucer!' he said as he pointed at a location to the side where they could target the saucer.

The cannon team lowered the cannon's tripod struts, bolted them to the hull, and the operator swivelled the barrel towards the ship. He adjusted the aim while the others loaded it, and stepped away with the firing switch in his hand. 'Clear!'

As he tensed his thumb to press the switch, blue lightning flashed inside Torianne's cylinders and spun around fast, and she banked towards the large storage doors when the cannon fired. The shell tore a gash in her lower saucer hull and hit the far wall. 'Hull damage, but nothing serious.' she said in reaction to the shudder running through her.

'Let's hope we can avoid worse.' said Viri as she flew Torianne forward and tried to hold back her wonder at how the entire bridge was transformed into a full spherical view of their surroundings, apart from a flickering section at the rear where multiple cameras had been damaged from the blast.

Saeru monitored the engineering console and system status, and kept an eye on the mercenaries moving around outside. The idea of sitting in a ship seemingly made of glass unsettled her survival instinct a little, but she kept reminding herself she was looking at a very large screen in reality. 'What now? How can we leave this hold?'

'I have an idea.' said Viri. 'Tori? How's your structural strength and engine power compared to the doors of this cargo hold?'

'Just see for yourself.' she said with amused confidence in her tone. 'I'll warn Kal to hold on.'

Viri placed Torianne's front edge against the cargo doors with a slight bump, and increased the engine thrust. The doors buckled and creaked violently as the saucer pushed them aside, and Torianne exited the hold with a jolt when the doors snapped apart at the last moment.

Viri banked into the cargo ship's main passage just as Torianne shuddered at the impact of another cannon shell at the rear. 'Damage to minor systems.' she said. 'All available major systems still functional.'

Kal entered the bridge and held onto a wall mounted case at the side. 'You sure know how to make an exit. honey.'

'Thanks.' said Viri and Torianne at the same time, causing Saeru to snort and laugh.

'There.' said Viri as she pointed at exit painted in large letters on a nearby wall ahead. She made another quick turn and headed straight for the cargo bay. They were close when one of Rikman's larger ships positioned itself directly outside the bay.

'Shit!' said Viri and swerved to the side just in time to evade heavy incoming fire.

Torianne's side scraped and tore a gash along a wall as they exited the old cargo ship, and Viri grumbled at the view of the many ships around them. 'They have us surrounded.'

'It's still a big space.' said Kal while he strapped himself into the second pilot's seat, and she dove at full speed while the closest ships fired at them.

#

Rikman balled his fists as he gazed at his screen, showing the weird ship seemingly dancing around his ships and evading most shots as it escaped. 'Why is that thing still flying!? After it!' he said, and every ship of his fleet chased Torianne through the cluster of rusting ship hulls.

#

'Two rotating side turrets are repaired, but they still have only partial power to the magnetic projectile coils.' said Torianne. 'They won't cause as much damage as they could.'

'Better than nothing.' said Saeru. 'How do we use them?'

Two consoles lit up on either side of the bridge. 'You can operate them manually from there.' said Torianne.

Saeru and Viri sat down at them and quickly noted the controls. Saeru grabbed the control stick on her chair's arm and observed how the view on the screen in front of her changed at the movements of the stick. 'Basically point and shoot.'

'Ready?' asked Kal, and both girls confirmed. 'We're going in for the kill then.'

The captain of the nearest enemy ship experienced a nasty surprise when Torianne dove to expose her underside and showered his ship with small calibre projectiles from below. His orders to evade did not prevent the barrage tearing through his ship in fiery explosions of sparks and crippling it into a tumbling wreck.

'Now I'm curious to see what your cannons can do at full power.' said Kal as he set course for the next target.

#

Rikman slammed his fist furiously on the arm of his seat when he had to watch the nimble ship cripple his own ships one by one. 'How are you so incompetent as to lose to one single ship!?'

His pilot tried to keep up while the remaining ships chased it between the junk hulls. 'There's something really strange about it. I've never seen a ship fly like that. It's like, a bird in the air or a fish in water. It's like it's alive.'

Rikman didn't appreciate nonsense. 'Shut your trap and put us on top of that damned thing!'

#

Torianne shuddered at the impact of a projectile while dodging the attack of another ship. 'The cumulative damage is approaching danger levels.' said Torianne. 'My engines won't last long either if they receive more damage.'

Kal steered her into a hollowed out structure that once belonged to a space ship depot while dodging more incoming fire and sped through the narrow central corridor. 'How are your remaining weapons?'

'Not available in time.'

He gripped the control sticks tighter. 'Anything else you have that can cause massive damage?'

'I don't know.'

Viri looked up from her screen when an idea hit her suddenly. 'Those barrels!'

Kal dodged a salvo with a feint as they exited the structure. 'What barrels?'

Viri took a shot at the attacker and their engine exploded. 'The barrels in secure storage in the back that I saw when we entered Torianne the first time. Those chemicals are highly flammable and explosive.'

Kal saw the potential. 'We need them to come close without shooting us to take enough of them out.'

'Play dead.' said Saeru. 'They'll surely want to take revenge or confirm we're dead and capture Tori more than simply blow us up. She's worth more in one piece.'

Kal grinned maliciously. 'Girls, you'd better hurry then before we really are dead.'

#

'They ran out of ammunition.' said the gunner on Rikman's ship when he noticed the lack of return fire from their target.

The pilot noticed a change in flight from their target as well. It wobbled, the engines went dead, and it tumbled slowly forward as it lost speed and debris floated out of tears in the hull. 'They're adrift.'

Rikman leaned forward in his seat. 'Good. If they're not dead, they're going to wish they were soon enough. Board them.'

The remaining ships of the fleet neared Torianne, crew floated out of them, harpooned her, and pulled themselves along the lines towards her. The first were halfway there when Torianne's engines suddenly flashed and she accelerated away. Rikman jumped furiously up from his seat. 'Shoot them!'

Saeru and Viri were faster and opened fire on the barrels covered with pieces of scrap among the debris floating near the ships. The explosions blasted shrapnel through the front of the hulls and bridge windows of every ship.

Kal turned Torianne around and flew once around the disabled ships where smoke and bursts of light came from their bridges. 'They're done for without any flying capabilities.' said Viri.

'I think we'll send them the option to surrender as a courtesy. Those who don't will die here when supplies run out.' said Kal, and Saeru and Viri agreed.

#

A standard day later, Viri stepped nimbly over a repair robot working on replacing electrical components, and walked onto Torianne's bridge wearing nothing but an oversized dark red sweater after her shower and preparing meals. 'I just read the news about Rikman's remarkable survival but him being buried under a mountain of charges while he's at the hospital. Doesn't look like he'll give us any trouble when he has nothing left after they're done with him.'

Kal looked up up from the diagnostic log on the screen in front of him, and Viri sat down on his lap. 'Good to hear.' he said while he pulled her close and caressed her wagging tail.

'My engines are fully functional again,' said Torianne. 'and the outer hull is completely patched.'

'So, you're mostly flight capable again, Tori.' said Saeru from the engineering seat. 'I'll bet you're looking forward to flying around without someone shooting at you.'

Torianne let out an electronic giggle. 'Yes, although I have no idea where to go to.' Her voice became sad. 'Master Maher is surely no longer after all this time I spent in hibernation.'

Kal leaned back in his seat and caressed Viri's supple black thigh. 'In that case, how about staying with us? Doesn't have to be forever, just until you find out what you want to do. We won't deny that having a great ship like you around is quite awesome. And we think of you as a great friend.'

She stayed silent for a little while. 'I'd be happy to.' she said with more hope.

Kal smiled up at her. 'In that case, welcome to our little family.'