1.20.2

A Life Taken

Astrid’s teal eyes shot between armor sets when they entered the briefing room beset by interlopers.

The hostile static of those within thrummed against the familiarity of the Task Force, posted at opposing sides of the table.

With the captain, Dell, and Astrid included, the sides remained eight on six. But the members of the S.O. did not seem concerned. As in their arms, gleamed the white casings of elegant and terrible armaments.

“They refused to surrender their weapons,” Karth murmured. Beyond him, Anders and Tenya kept their own munitions trained on their guests.

“Surely you can understand. We are, after all, taking all the risk for this little conference.” Insincere charm dripped from the false warden. Then his hawk-like eyes fell to Astrid in her plates. “And there it is.”

“What is it that you want?” London demanded to know once he took his place beside Karth.

Astrid fell in between them and glared at the man, as well as the mix of men and women at his flanks. Each kept their eyes pinned on the Channeler. Some furious, others disgusted.

“An offer of peace, Captain London,” Graves extended. “You know it would have been more strategic for us to have attacked your ship from the safety of our own. But we have been assured that you are a reasonable man, Captain. We’d rather work with you.

“We don’t need to be at each other’s throats. I hold no ill toward you or the rest of your crew. But you have a timebomb in your midst. Turn it over, and forgo this disastrous, ill-advised experiment. There need be no bloodshed between us today.”

“Except that of my specialist.”

“We’re trying to save you from your misguided preconceptions. Or do you truly not realize how this thing will inevitably destroy you?”

“So far, the only threat on my life due to Specialist Hale comes from your misguided perceptions. The Channeler has done us no harm.”

“Mm…” Graves hummed. His eyes slid down the line of the Aldebaran’s ground team. “And do all of your crew feel that way?”

“We stand together.” Karth braced his rifle to his shoulder. “I don’t imagine someone who starves innocents and uses criminals as meat-shields could understand that. Channelers are civilians. By attacking them, you incite the Service against you. You're an enemy of the people, and we are well within our jurisdiction to stop you.”

“Is that so? You have the support of the Admiralty, then? Do they even know the abomination is here? It deserves a cage and collar, not your loyalty!”

“Watch it.” Anders growled over his gun barrel.

However, the warning only spread a sly smirk over Graves’s face.

“You are the rebels here. We have the support of your betters. And we are offering a truce in exchange for a demonstration of reason. Not everyone in Earthen Military need know how many laws you’ve violated. Hand it over, and we will leave in peace.”

“Why do you want her?” Tenya demanded. “Why do you care about this one Channeler? If you're so certain she'll doom us all, anyway?”

“Is it not enough to be an escaped fugitive? That it should not only not be here, but that its mere presence puts you and your allies at risk? It has no place among the people. Let alone Humanity’s best and brightest. A Channeler among the military elite? Can you not imagine how… profoundly naïve that is?

“Letting the Channelers endanger those around them is an affront all its own. But that you would pay for it with the lives of your men, Captain? Kendall, Reeves, Thompson. Romo, Davis, Earhart...” Graves named them each. “Is this fool’s errand really worth their lives?”

“We decide that. Not you,” Captain London rebuffed.

“But did they? Or did you force that burden upon them? This, ‘specialist’ as you call it, is no more valuable than they. Give it over.”

The Aldebaran’s crew pulled closer. Astrid’s stomach squirmed, grateful. But fear of what she might cost them fueled something darker.

“Keep them out of it!”

Astrid found words, though her voice shook. She almost crossed to Graves herself, but the captain stayed her with a hand to her shoulder.

“You are not leaving here with the girl,” London insisted with finality. “You've made your demands, and we refuse. You are terrorists and the fact you yet live is on our grace. Surrender your weapons, before the Aldebaran is the last thing you ever see.”

Graves sharpened at the rejection. “I grow tired of your ignorance. It doesn’t suit an officer of the esteemed Service, London. Commander Kendall," Graves rounded on the next in line, "Relieve your captain of his duty if he is unwilling to perform it. Prove yourself worthy of his command.”

“Go to hell,” the commander snapped back.

Daggers glared.

“This Deathborn, one way or another, will be the death of you,” Graves bit out, one annunciated word at a time.

“That is not for you to decide!” the captain reiterated. His voice rose in a harsh crack of power.

“You did.”

In a single decisive movement, an energy weapon from across the table ejected a tight beam of harsh light. All other weapons rose with lightning reflexes, and in the shortest second of Astrid’s life, an all-out battle ensued.

Yet, Astrid stood, agape, against a mist of blood on her battered cheek. And a lone member of her new family fell to the deck in a lifeless heap.

Astrid heard someone scream, but it could have been her.

The captain shoved her down behind the briefing table. The whole team exploded in combat inside the tight chamber. With so many in the room, there remained little space to maneuver.

Astrid pressed her back to the table base, stunned. Overhead, spiked onyx armor hurdled over the table with a deafening roar. Rue set upon the enemy, a maddened creature craven for retribution.

Anders and Tenya covered one another while they rained fire on their invaders.

Romo guarded Dell, tucked under the lip of the table along the other end. The agent crouched around the edge of the centric structure, to angle a shot when some of the Opposition bolted for the exit back toward the airlock.

Energy assailed Astrid’s senses overhead, as she’d never heard or felt the S.O.’s weapons fire before.

But her eyes locked on the blank and bearded face of her commander.

His energy wafted away and out of reach. A cauterized wound, rimmed with blood, matted his greying brown hair around damage from which no doctor could save him.

In the six seconds that her world froze, and she stared, the last of his life energy dissipated beyond recovery.

“Hale!” Captain shouted at her side and shook her. “Hale! Now!”

The captain groped for Karth's gun to arm himself, then joined the fight in earnest.

Gone, she repeated to herself. He stood up for her, and he was gone.

In a flash she remembered the day they’d met. The moment he paused at the vestibule of the Sanctuary. Wordless, kind, warm, he offered her his hand. Inviting.

He’d smiled.

With a cry, Astrid burst from her space in time to see Graves round the table, his weapon now set on Captain London with a sickly victorious grin.

Astrid leapt enraged. Graves fired, and with a cry of defiance, Astrid shoved forcefully against the energy that assaulted them.

Amazingly, the bolt his weapon emitted thrust backward at her willful command and jolted into the warden’s chest. The man fell back, with a fresh hole burned through the armor over his pectoral.

Astrid discovered that in their quick response, the team cut the number of their adversaries in half.

But in such close confines, thick with Astrid’s wrath, each shot the enemy fired flailed in the unbidden chaotic torrent that surrounded the Channeler. Whether from the disturbance of the energy weapons, or the Channeler herself, the amber lights that adorned the ceiling of the War Room dimmed, then flared bright again in a tumultuous gleam.

Her fury rejected every jolt of energy they tried to thrust upon her allies, until the enemy party dodged both the fire of the Aldebaran’s crew, and their own.

Astrid possessed neither the precision, nor the control, to influence the direction of their failed shots. But it put them on defensive nonetheless, and the stragglers fled.

Rue and Romo bolted after, to run them down. Gunfire resounded in the halls beyond.

Lit in a hate-filled frenzy, Astrid returned to where Graves slid along the wall, a hand over his chest. He shrunk to make himself smaller, to avoid ricochets even while he hissed in pain.

His fervent eyes darted from Astrid to the deadened gaze of the man deceased mere meters away. Graves turned on her one last time, though his words came a vicious, vile poison.

"It should have been you, Deathborn!"

In resolute fury Astrid summoned no eloquent rebuttal. Instead, she drew her hand-cannon from its place at her side with purpose.

"I know."

Anders moved up to where she glowered into the man’s huddled form.

“Astrid… you don’t have to—”

“I’m ready,” she cut Anders off, her voice that of a cold stranger.

She pointed her sidearm toward the loathsome man.

Higher. Adjust. Put him down before this asshole takes out any more of our guys.

She squeezed. And fired directly into Graves’s head.