1.29.2

A Choice Made

Rahna darted back through the caverns with Astrid hot on her tail.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long for the racket of weaponsfire to draw closer. But other S.O. members were also moved by the sound, and they pinned their eyes on Astrid while she pursued their leader.

“Back to your stations!” Rahna called while she raced past. “Armor up, but do not intercede. Return to your posts! Avoid the main halls, do not engage!”

Not all seemed convinced by her orders, and only a handful fell away when Rahna and Astrid charged through.

Rahna repeated her warnings with each group they encountered. Astrid saw a glimmer of opportunity.

Though the S.O. remained their enemy, at least Polaris’s commands kept the Aldebaran’s team from being overrun. The Opposition Channeler unwittingly only leveled the odds for Astrid’s squad, and she inwardly thanked the woman’s confidence that she could handle such a crew herself.

“They’re not all going to listen,” Astrid warned her while they ran. “This is going to come to battle!”

“Not if I can help it!”

The thunder of rifles disputed some efforts too late.

“Would they kill Walker?” Polaris questioned as she led them down a turn.

“If they felt threatened.”

“They shouldn’t have. We had a plan. Something must have happened!”

The two came to a junction. At the base of a wall, steeped in a spreading puddle of maroon, an armored man with an old scar that marred his forehead, scowled furiously at the two women.

“We should have known,” he ground out in pained gasps, “not to trust you, bitch!”

It took Astrid a moment to realize he spoke to Rahna, not to her.

“You don’t understand what’s happening here,” Rahna tried. She paused to kneel, to help him, but he slapped her hand away.

“Don’t touch me, abomination! You let your kind, her, walk freely among us. We should have never tolerated you! We’re taking it back! There is no place for Deathborn among us!”

Rahna’s blue eyes darkened, and her alabaster forehead wrinkled in a scowl. She drew herself back to stand over him.

“You’re taking nothing.” She kicked his weapon out of reach, and the man proved too weak to crawl from his slumped position to retrieve it.

“Come on,” Rahna said to Astrid. “We should keep moving.”

“Bitch!” the man called again. Then gave a thick, wet cough that made Astrid’s stomach churn.

More bodies marked their route. People who involved themselves and obviously lost.

“I won’t be able to justify this to my people,” Rahna cautioned. “They’ll want blood for this.”

“That isn’t going to happen. Let’s just get there,” Astrid pushed.

She still checked the corpses they crossed. None of the Aldebaran seemed among them. She sought any radios, batteries, or tools for use. But the bodies gave up none.

“No batteries,” she grumbled herself.

“They go out of their way to work as mundanely as possible. They’re hypersensitive to what we can use,” Rahna explained with a hint of resentment. “They’ve never fully trusted me. Only trusted that I would be their best chance in identifying our weaknesses.”

“Like energy weapons?” Astrid sniped back to the woman.

“Yes,” Rahna said shortly. “A regular bullet might maim our kind where an energy shot would rend them completely. It’s certainly more conclusive, if…”

“Inhumane.”

Rahna scowled. In the doorway ahead, five armored guards blocked their path.

“We can argue about this more later.”

Astrid obliged. She straightened to full height and stood beside the opposing Channeler.

“It’s over, Polaris,” one of the armed guards declared. “It’s time the Static Opposition belonged to the Statics.”

“You’re being pathetically short-sighted, Gruber.” The woman’s expression, unyielding, did not flinch from the threat. “Stand down and let us deal with this together, as we always have.”

Guns raised into the air.

“Feel free to fight back, Polaris. But don’t worry. We’re ready.”

Astrid’s reflexes kicked in first. At the cost of her own vitality, she tossed her arm in a gesture that blasted the narrow corridor in a chaotic burst.

The group flung away, and shots fired. But wildly, and none found their target.

Astrid descended before the hostiles could regain themselves. She ripped one of the rifles away from clawing hands and sprayed until the ambushers stopped moving.

Clearly, they feared Rahna far more than their captive. Their mistake, it seemed, as Rahna stood, horrified, to see the carnage.

“Look at you!” she cried. “What have they done to you?!”

“Me?!” Astrid threw back at her. “This isn’t a game! They wanted us dead! It was them or us!”

“You’re no better than they are… aren’t you?” Rahna gaped, with tears in her eyes.

“We’re human. Whatever else we are, we’re still human,” Astrid fumed.

Still, drawing from herself weakened her. And Astrid knew she couldn’t do so again. She clutched the rifle to her chest, and finally aimed it at Rahna.

“You’re going to take me to my friends. Now.”

“If Gi could see you now…”

Furious, Astrid fired over Rahna’s shoulder.

“Damn it, I’m not playing around! Where are they?!”

Rahna’s expression turned from horrorstruck and gutted, to appalled and revolted.

She spoke not a single word. Instead, she walked past the military specialist, and through another series of doors.

Astrid followed. But with every intersection she swept the halls with her stolen weapon, then trained it back on the woman in front of her before they moved on.

She finally found her team when she and Rahna reached the hub of the base.

Astrid could feel power pulse behind the door. When they entered, she found walls lined with console towers and monitors.

A Strategy Center more equipped and elaborate than the Aldebaran’s blinked back at her. Maps and personnel images flipped over screens, some of which fizzled in disrepair and damage, as a few stray bullets popped their protective barriers.

And in the middle, weapons pointed at one another, Walker, and two others of his ilk, barked back and forth with Anders, Tenya, and Romo.

Dell was nowhere to be found.

Lucas turned from a monitor in the corner, but his face lit when Astrid and Rahna pushed through.

“What happened?” Rahna shouted over the ensuing dispute.

“What was always going to happen,” one of the S.O. snapped in return. “They’re not going to turn. We have to put them down. That was the deal!”

“It’s too soon to make that call!” Rahna raised a single hand. She marched to the head of the room to join Walker where he stood. “We’ve just started here.”

“You saw what they did outside! It’s over! They made their choice!”

“Walker?” Rahna ignored the man at the ex-Guardian’s side.

“They’re not going to give her up,” Walker informed her. “They’ve made that clear.”

“Then she must join us willingly. Lest they all fall.”

Rahna turned expectantly to Astrid, who stood flabbergasted the woman would even still attempt to sway her.

“Are you alright?” Anders called to her across the space.

“Yes.”

But neither Anders, nor Tenya, or Romo, lowered the weapons they somehow reclaimed in their escape.

“Well?” Rahna pressed.

Tensions rose, thick in the air, as all awaited Astrid’s choice.

She searched the room. A pair of bodies already lay, spent, by the computers.

Walker fervently flicked his eyes from Anders to Rahna. Lucas made to draw the pulsar stick from his belt, but Walker stayed him.

“No. You’ll get her in it, too,” he indicated Rahna.

With a disapproving grimace, Lucas instead unholstered his pistol and moved to defend the door. He effectively trapped the two parties, and their conflict, inside.

“Astrid,” Rahna repeated. “It’s time to make a choice. This is how we decide the fate of our people for the rest of our history.

“Continue to fight and you condemn us all to repeat this battle for centuries. Maybe forever. Or we can choose, right now, to start something that will bring an end to this madness with finality! For their children’s children, choose peace! We must do right by our people!”

Too late, the woman realized she’d used the wrong words.

Astrid’s expression, and her heart, burned. Surrounded by a team that counted on her.

“I’ve already chosen my people.”

At her stalwart declaration, Tenya fired.