1.17.2

Jailbreak

Anders kicked over one of the metal tables to its side and forcibly shoved Astrid behind it. He crouched with her as cracks of weaponsfire pounded the surface and riddled the metal with holes. The table stopped some, but not all. Yet their armor rejected the worst of those that breached, with tiny nicks.

She felt Anders flinch and hiss when one grazed the armor over his back, still anything but painless.

The two of them barely fit, and with a nod to Tenya, the chief popped up from her own cover to lay down enough fire for Anders to find his own table to shrink behind.

His advance to the next position over gave the line a moving target, and they were distracted when Karth rose from yet another makeshift shield to fire back.

Once spaced and behind their modicum of protection, a coordination of efforts began to down one guard at a time.

Astrid gripped her pistol in her hand. Each time one of her companions broached their cover, her heart skipped a beat.

“Stay down!” Karth shouted to her over the ruckus.

She looked to him, forceful and commanding. But she couldn’t let them take all the risk. She still wore the armor, she still served under Captain London, and they were still a team.

She readied herself. Her emotional suppression training boosted her focus, and with one last exhale, she joined the others in fighting the men that pinned them down.

Her aim still left something to be desired. But the others were more practiced, more concise. And as they took turns keeping the hostiles busy, the enemy fell, one at a time. Betrayed by their overconfidence.

The last two standing, after they realized their mistake, tried to back toward the door. But by then, outnumbered and on the verge of panic, they failed to flee.

When the firefight ceased, and the squad rose from their positions, blood painted the interior.

Unlike on Penelope, Astrid knew the targets, this time, to be dead.

Her lips parted in dumb shock when she felt the last of their vitality dissipate from each fallen form and disperse into the universe around. The last of their life energy floated away into nothing and everything.

“Hey, hey stick with us!” Tenya shook her. “Come on, Astrid, you can’t freeze up. Stay in it, you got it!?”

Tenya’s eyes blazed vibrant, fierce, and alive. They gave Astrid something to latch onto. The Channeler's mouth snapped closed, and she nodded.

“Ground team to Bridge. Opposition identified, and they know who we are. Combat imminent and in progress,” Karth relayed hurriedly through the comm.

“I’m mobilizing the second team,” the captain’s voice responded brusquely.

“The gate is powered. They’ll need a way through.”

“You took our Channeler, how do you suppose we do that?” Rue’s cocky voice argued.

“You said a taser could do what she does!” Karth retorted. “And there’s plenty laying around. Figure it out!”

Anders stormed back to the doors they’d through which they entered and tried to budge them to no avail.

“There’s only one way out.” The lieutenant nodded to the exit left by their hosts.

“Yeah, I bet that’s what they’re counting on.” Karth reloaded.

Tenya checked the bodies. She collected radios, tools, and watches, anything with a battery, and passed them to Astrid.

“What-?”

“Astrid, we’re going to need you,” Tenya cut her off. “They’re going to be more dug in, they’re going to have more cover, and they’re going to know where we’re going. We won’t. You can’t sit this one out.”

The specialist slid her gun back into place in comprehension, and instead took the power sources into her hands.

Teal eyes moved from Tenya, to Anders, and Karth. Against the though of losing any one, she tightened her grip to a ferocious clench.

She nodded. “Okay.”

“We’re going to fight our way to another access point with Administration,” Karth detailed to the Aldebaran. “If the second team can meet us on the other side, we can flank the enemy and put this down.”

“At your leave, Commander,” Captain London concluded.

Anders marched to the far door and tucked himself just inside the frame, prepared to flip it open.

Karth took a posting directly tucked against the doorway, ready. “Let’s move.”

Tenya and Astrid folded themselves in on either side.

Anders swung the door, Karth’s eyes and rifle muzzle swept over the hall beyond. Upon finding it empty, he moved in.

Tenya zippered herself into file behind him, then Anders, then Astrid, on guard and watching their six.

They remained tight and low while they inched their way through the stark corridor. They paused at each lip of the wall, every bench, every object from which they could glean cover before they moved on. But the passage provided precious little.

“We need to get out of these halls, we’re sitting ducks like this,” Anders hissed while he followed Tenya’s back.

They came to a right angle turn and Karth held his fist in sign Astrid had been instructed to mean “hold.”

She tensed.

The commander peered around the corner before he silently gestured to Tenya to move up. The chief crossed the opening to the other side to get a better vantage point.

Once satisfied, the team made the turn together and continued on.

But partway down the next corridor, doors parted, and a rush of armor flooded to ambush them.

Astrid didn’t have time to see faces or count bodies. Startled and defensive, she grasped one of the radios in her hand, sapped its energy as quickly as she dared, and a burst of crackling power filled the passageway ahead.

Though insufficient to kill, it stunned their attackers. Some flew into spasms, and it bought the team all the time they needed to definitively control the fight. After, Karth nodded to her in approval.

Seeing her companions in action, Astrid grew both inspired and daunted. How many foes had each slain, she wondered, that they could so efficiently dispatch so many now?

Another batch of souls drifted away, lost, and Astrid almost pitied them for how thoroughly they’d been outmatched.

Her comrades investigated the downed party.

“These aren’t marked like the warden,” Tenya observed. “Just prison tatts. Bottom shelf gear from the lowest bidder.”

“Then this place is solely about gathering resources,” Karth discerned. “Labor and Benson’s middlemen. Graves likely represents the only S.O. here, to oversee operations. We’ll have to find the rest congregated elsewhere.”

The commander marched them onward. Astrid pointedly ignored the sad drift of remnant energy that escaped each corpse as she stepped over them.

“We need to find the infirmary,” Karth continued in hushed tones. “The facility wouldn’t make medical professionals walk through the cellblocks to get to work. They’d have to have a second access point to Administration.”

“Then we need to get to the other side of the cellblocks ourselves,” Anders concurred.

“What do we do about the mines?” Tenya rasped.

“Like Captain said, we reach the warden, occupy the control center, wherever it is, and hold it until Third Fleet can take over the post.”

The unit of four stalked through the building. Though minutes passed as hours, they crossed no more combatants in an eerily long time.

Through another set of doors, they found themselves flanked by self-contained cells partitioned behind thick glass polymer. Each chamber sat cramped with a wire-framed bed and teeny toilet unit and sink. The far walls lay fitted with hatches at the back, rather than the front. Access within permitted by way of another entry.

“The cell block,” Tenya named. They passed the first half-dozen, three on either side. “They’re empty. Where are they all? Down in the mines?”

“I don’t think this place is a prison anymore.” Karth kept his eyes fixed ahead while they moved. “There’s no signs of the original guards, either.”

“And the convicts?” Anders wondered aloud. “Either working the machines or already siphoned off to the S.O.’s forces?”

“Wait…” Astrid slowed in her tracks.

Nearby, she felt a flow. A weak, singular flicker of energy. A mourning, a grief… a cry for help.

“There’s someone here.”

The others hugged their weapons and rotated cautiously in place.

“Another ambush?” Tenya murmured.

“No…” Astrid closed her eyes to feel with more clarity. Her feet followed the pull. “Not static…”

“Astrid!” Tenya hissed. “Stay together!”

“Keep on her,” Karth ordered.

The squad moved with her as she followed the sensation.

They turned down a narrow lane to a second set of cells and a dead end. But Astrid strode toward it.

On either side of her, the adjacent units sat not so barren.

Bodies lay curled inside. Emaciated, skeletal, with stretched and sagging mouths ajar in perpetual torment and death.

“Oh my god.” Tenya pressed a hand to the clear pane of one of the cells-turned-tomb. “Astrid, I’m so sorry…”

In a horrific moment, Astrid pulled closer to observe what it was Tenya already saw.

Elongated crystals, dull and lifeless, hung from each hollowed neck.

Astrid could only look long enough to confirm what she knew to be true. Then the entirety of her being worked to push away the swell of emotion that would sunder her if she allowed. For the sight burned a hole through her with piercing depth greater than the death witnessed so far. And all at once, she was forced to repeat her people's mantra in her head.

It will pass. This is temporary. This is temporary... This is not all there is. They are light. I am light.

In her armored gloves, her fingers trembled. But Anders summoned the will to speak what she could not.

“Channelers…” he said lowly.

“Hello? Is someone out there?” A faint voice called from the end of the lane.