1.30.2

Determined, Detection

A gun clicked behind Walker’s head. Anders panted above him.

“Your only chance of keeping her that way is leaving here with us. This place is going to blow. Tell us how to get out. Now.”

Tenya crouched over bodies, including that of the last man she’d taken down. Under his collar, she found a beaded chain attached to dangling tags. She collected them, despondent.

“One of ours,” she said aside to Romo.

“Where’s Dell?” Astrid asked of them. “Is he alive?!”

“He is. That’s why we need to get out of here,” Romo explained. “He’s making sure this place doesn’t survive.”

“Well?” Anders pressed the remaining S.O. leader.

“There are dozens of people here. We’ll never get them all out…” Walker uttered while enraptured by Rahna’s unconscious face.

“That’s the point,” Tenya insisted. “But you don’t have to go with them.”

Walker didn’t answer.

“We need to get out now,” Anders reiterated through pained breaths. “Where do we go?”

Still, nothing.

Astrid knelt beside the couple.

“Walker.” Astrid spoke his name meaningfully. “She loves you. What would she want you to do?”

Steel eyes met hers with tension, as though offended she spoke so personally of them. But after a moment’s hesitation, the man answered.

“She’d want me to get out.” He hunched down to gather his partner in his arms. “We have an escape tunnel. I’ll show you the way. But you must help me save her when we get out of here.”

“If we save her, that doesn’t mean she goes free,” Anders replied.

Walker only paused a moment before he acknowledged, “I know.”

“Out the back.” He rotated, with his love slumped against his body. He limped stiffly for the door. “It’s a back tunnel. The others won’t see us leave.”

Romo, equipped with Dell’s kit and a drive full of data, clutched their prize.

But Astrid trekked across their battlefield to where Lucas’s body lay crumpled on the ground.

She rolled him over onto his back.

Her fingers hovered over the front fabric of his pants. She could almost feel the call of her crystal, as keen for reunion as her, through the cloth.

She gingerly delved into his pocket until her fingertips brushed cool hard gemstone.

The memorized edges of her dearest possession set her awash with relief. Astrid clasped her crystal back into a single hand and gave one last look to the man that stole it.

“Come on, Astrid,” Romo called.

Astrid replaced the pendant around her neck.

“No. You go. I’m going for Dell.”

“What?!” Tenya hissed. “Astrid, he’s doing his job, he’ll find the way forward! We need to leave!”

“We don’t know how many are left between us and him, or him and the exit. Let alone if the Tetrians are still outside. He can’t do it alone.

“I know what his energy feels like, I can find him faster than anyone else!” The Channeler insisted. “You’ve got to get out of here. I’m going to make sure he does, too.”

“Astrid…” Anders started. But she only shoved him toward Walker.

“Go!” she pointed. “We’re running out of time!”

Tenya’s face morphed from stunned into a decisive nod. Without another word she took the lieutenant’s arm over her shoulder, to help his battered body out.

Anders still looked to argue, but Romo approached with conviction.

From his side, the agent procured a familiar weapon. He returned to Astrid her hand-cannon with purpose.

“She’ll do it, Anders,” he declared. “I know she will.”

Romo's vote of confidence only strengthened her resolve, and Astrid gripped her own firearm firmly in her fingers.

“Come on.” Walker strained with his own arms loaded with Rahna. “We don’t have time for this. You promised you’d help save her!”

Anders stole one last reluctant, hopeful, glance to Astrid. Then he resigned to let Tenya direct him out behind the Guardian. He could have ordered otherwise, the Channeler knew. Silence was the only permission she would get, but it spoke volumes of his faith.

“Thank you, Astrid.” Romo squeezed her shoulder, then made to follow the others. “I’ll watch their backs.”

~~~

To say she felt tired would be an insult to exhaustion. But adrenaline propelled Astrid’s legs in a sprint back through the cavern halls.

She set upon anyone in her path before they could recognize her as an enemy. She drew power from the generators, the lights, anything nearby, careless now how much of the base she destroyed on her way out.

S.O. soldiers flew back from Astrid’s charging form, only to be gunned down should they not take the opportunity to flee.

Only twice did she run into more than she could manage in a fell swoop. But while they each needed precious seconds to warm up, Astrid’s body lit, already awakened and alive.

Astrid heard shouts throughout the tunnels. And she sensed when a group of Statics, not Dell, could be easily avoided.

It took several twists and turns before she paused, to pant and take account of how much time, if any, remained.

“Come on, Dell…” she breathed to herself.

When her surroundings fell quiet, Astrid closed her eyes and felt her way through the compound.

She pricked along the tunnels with her senses, to the subtle white noise that fizzled just out of range. She didn’t know how close she’d need to be before she could locate any single specific signature. But she martialed her training to keep panic at bay.

Her face pinched together with focus. She swore, then summoned the will to push further. Wider.

“Come on, come on!”

A male… then a female. She picked through thrums of foreign emotion. Doubt. Anger. Affection. None of the feelings she needed. Strangers, enemies.

“Okay, think…” she walked on, away from unknowns.

Dell, she reminded herself. Quiet, intelligent, Dell. The man whose energy lit up over zero-pool. The man that taught her how to tap into her emotions. The non-judgmental one who taught her all she needed about cameras, comms, and batteries. Who understood pathological repression.

Patient, kind, unassuming.

There.

Astrid’s eyes flashed open. Somewhere, niggling in her sub-conscious, a tingle of someone she knew. She sensed him nearby.

Astrid took to a run once more. She leapt over a body in the hall, a sign she was on the right track.

Until finally, she burst through a metal door that swung on its hinges.

Dell spun around, gun raised, with blood smeared over his cheek.

But when he saw her, his expression broke into surprise and relief simultaneously.

“Astrid! What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for you!” she informed him.

Dell immediately tucked his gun aside.

“Are the others okay, did they make it out?”

“They’re headed that way. We just need to finish up whatever you’re doing here and join them.”

Astrid took in the scene around him. Four bodies lay on the cavern floor. But all around, massive shipping containers filled a vacuous room with a fully stocked armory.

Not only the recognizable white polymer of Benson’s energy arsenal. But military supplies. Armor, infiltration kits, grenades, rocket launchers, all stamped with the emblem of the Earthen Military Service.

Behind Dell, where he’d been crouched upon arrival, sat a device as large as his body.

“Holy…”

“Yeah…” Dell rotated to follow her gaze. “Not really time for another lesson. The short version is this a bomb.”

Astrid knew she should feel startled, but her disbelief frayed under all that had been revealed in the last few hours. And that the S.O. possessed such a thing as a bomb, after all she'd seen, hit a nerve already too burned out for radical surprise. Especially with the veritable arsenal among which they found themselves.

She lowered her gun and came closer.

“What’s the plan?”

“Arm it. Get the hell out.”

“Okay, what’s the problem?”

“They did something to disable it. Probably to sleep better at night,” Dell grumped. “I can get the juice flowing in the detonator, but I don’t think it’s connected anymore. Or it's got an inhibitor.”

Astrid looked around the room. Too much gear remained to be drained by hand, or carried out. Moreover, the prospect of destroying the base completely did hold a certain satisfaction.

“Okay… turn it on.”

Dell didn’t even bother to ask if she was sure. She came to kneel beside him, and the two of them went to work.

The attached detonation device whirred to life and Astrid rode the wave of power that rippled outward. All seemed fine, until the energy pooled in loop somewhere beneath the bomb’s core.

She followed the sensation with her mind, and her fingers traced the flow through a series of conduits. The power cycled, but only into itself, rather than to any output.

When she crouched down Dell tensed, but he didn’t stop her.

“Find me the right block and I’ll—”

“Right here.” Astrid shrank closer to the ground, and Dell hunkered with her. “It's not an inhibitor. You see this circuit? It’s been removed from the path.”

“Shit…” Dell flipped on his back and climbed under to get a better look. Astrid backed away, to which Dell almost laughed. "Yeah, if this thing goes off, two steps is not going to make a difference."

Just then, more static buzzed in Astrid’s peripheral.

She rotated, more annoyed than frightened, before the Statics even arrived.

“We’ve got company.”

“If you can keep them from shooting me, or the bomb, I’d appreciate it!”

Astrid pulled her gun and dove for a nearby crate.

As expected, a pod of the three Opposition agents poured in from the door behind them.

They easily spotted Dell first. The trio had little time to act however, as Astrid sprung out of cover from their flank.

Concerned her abilities would only sabotage Dell’s work, she relied first on her weapons training. Which unfortunately, left something to be desired.

She fragged one, but not enough of her first shots landed to dispatch more before they could react.

The two remaining identified her the true threat and turned their attention to her alone.

A bullet pulled through the tail end of Astrid’s hair when she ducked. She cursed at how close it came. But she couldn’t let them divide their attention between her and her companion. She needed it all.

Astrid threw herself from around the other side of the container she made a shield and landed a messy hit into the stomach of one of the two remaining operatives.

The third, however, upon seeing her S.O. allies wounded and dying, proved the opposite of deterred. And this time, when the enemy fired, the shot landed.

Astrid cried out when a bullet lodged itself somewhere in her clavicle, where only her underarmor protected her.

The wound felt like a burning ember in her flesh, something no one could train her for. But neither had she expected the rush of fury that sprouted from such a sudden flash of pain.

Astrid retaliated in a thrust of her palm, drawn from the hurt and the lash of energy it provided her. And a bolt, much like those Rahna crafted, hit her third combatant solidly in the chest.

The woman’s body racked with light. She thrashed, then suddenly stilled, stiff as a board in a startled, silent scream.

The woman stood frozen for a single horrified moment, then crumpled all at once with her expression locked in permanent wide-eyed alarm.

“Astrid!”

Dell called to her. And Astrid, certain now the invaders posed no threat, drew herself to her feet with a hiss.

She pulled her hand away from her wound to find it thick with blood.