Hyperdrive

Chapter Two - The Plan

"By the gods, that thing is loud!" K'aarn shouts, barely able to even hear himself think. "We need to get to the command room, no doubt they're on their way to us right now. The ship's klaxon perforating his eardrums even through his helmet the siren still pounds his head. 

"We can't fight all of them, we'll tire before then. I think it best to head straight for the control room. Codeus is sure to be there, and we could at least shut off that fucking thing."

K'aarn quickly melts the hinges of a side door, they slip through into one of the ship's maintenance hatches. Arya holds up her hand and detailed hologram of the ship - complete with floor plan, a wondrous file shared with them by their patron - blinks above her palm. She makes a scrolling gesture onto her palm with her thumb and forefinger, the hologram zooming in, until they're looking at a plan of the room they're in right now. She follows along the floor plan as she speaks.

"Right, we're in area Kappa, and the control room is in sector Lambda, if we follow the maintenance tunnels down about a floor, cut through docking bay K-3 and into Kappa we can sneak right back into the tunnels and come about about a kilometre from the control room." 

K'aarn's brow shifts, one raised higher than the other in a questioning expression "It's a wonderful strategy but it seems a little too easy, wouldn't you think? If that alarm can be heard the whole way through that sector surely they'll just lie in wait by the control room and wait for us, making the journey seem easy until we walk straight into a huge group of them?"

"Yeah, that's why we cut through bay K-3, we needlessly go out of our way to the wrong side of the sector, if we cut straight through here," she scrolls along to bays K-1 and 2 "then we come out much closer to the control room, it would make sense to cut through those bays so they think we are heading somewhere else, like the primary cockpit, besides they probably have a bunch of them lying in wait for us to walk through, then they simply pin us down with gunfire and close in on us, cutting through bay 3 is a deliberate detour and entirely an illogical choice, if we were to be heading to the control room, so we go through there and viola, we avoid any unecessary engagement."

"Sounds like a plan, let's go then."

Arya swipes up on the small pad in her hand before double tapping a side button. She opens her void quickly and slides the pad in.

"Doesn't that ever worry you?" K'aarn wonders aloud.

"An odd time to be asking, isn't it? besides, I don't know what you mean."

"Well what if you put something in the void and it floats away, didn't you tell me it's endless?" 

"This is a discussion for another time. But if you want it in simple terms quickly, I can open a portal into the empty space, if something floats away I can just open a portal closer to it, or move the portal we already have closer to the object. Nothing can float away because I can just chase it down." Arya explains, rather confident.

"I was just curious, don't need to go all smartass on me" K'aarn snipes. 

The walk to K-3 feels like hours. K'aarn checks his watch periodically, they've passed the halfway mark and so far the trek has taken them 32 minutes in L. UST (Localised Universal Specific Time, equivalent to about 34 Earth minutes) K'aarn and Arya take this time to check their gear and weapons, K'aarn going as far as to remove his helmet, something he rarely did when not alone, Arya notes. His side-parted black hair flopping down against his pale skin, he runs a hand through it, propping it back up. His piercing green eyes roving the surface of his helmet, hunting any cracks or splits, dents or splinters of metal, satisfied he turns to face Arya. His eyes meeting her own, soft and blue, yet pained. 

"We're going to get through this, okay. I know what he did back on Ralsqath and I'm going to enjoy tearing that fucker's intestines out when we reach him" K'aarns voice is suddenly passionate, fiery, even. "Unless you want it to be you, killing him is more your right than it is mine."

"I want to do it," her voice is cold and emotionless. "I've been scarred by that bastard in more ways than one, I want to stare dead into his eyes as I slowly dice him up, starting with that fucking thing."

K'aarn, visibly upset, grabs her by the shoulders.

"I'm sorry it happened, it shouldn't have happened. He did it to hurt me, I know he did, and the hardest part about it is that it did hurt me. I'm sorry I couldn't protect you, I'm sorry I couldn't stop him doing what he did and I'm afraid that the best I can do about it's is to let you kill him yourself, but we're stronger now, much stronger than he'll ever be now, because I wouldn't have bought you here if I didn't know any different."

"K'aarn, we need to keep moving." She gestures towards his helmet. "Put that back on before we go back out, please, or I'll end up stuck in a ship the size of a small ship with no hope of getting out."

"If I die," K'aarn says, sarcastically "You can keep my shit."

The drop to the floor below is about 20 or 30 feet. a look behind him shows K'aarn that they've been descending a slope very slowly but he assumes that this must be the ventilation shaft for K-3. He looks to Arya for confirmation. She checks her pad again "that's the spot."

A well aimed jump results in K'aarn hanging to a large, brass pipe, about 2 feet from the vent covering. He can feel the power of the colossal fan blades whirring behind him, constantly rejuvenating the fresh air the circles the ship. He swings forwards, grabbing the vent covering and tears it from the wall before swinging through the gap into bay 3, Arya follows suit. 

The rest of the journey to the control room goes by rather uneventfully. With the exception of the odd guard or two (easily taken out with stealth) they don't run into any hurdles. However as they approach the control Center a particularly large group of Q'ataar soldiers surround them, Arya is too close for K'aarn to use his lightning to clear the group. The soldiers ready their guns and fire but are prevented from causing any damage by Arya opening a large void, their bullets swallowed into the dense nothingness. K'aarn draws a large, curved blade from his back and the pistol from his mag-grip, beginning to slice and shoot at the soldiers behind them, bullets popping mid-air as they meet the blade's edge or ricocheting uselessly from his suit. K'aarn makes sure that his body covers Arya's, she was unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a Falkner's cleaver on Scaris-Twelve, the resulting impact splitting her helmet in half, it would have killed her, K'aarn recalls that if she hadn't have been sliding forwards at the time the Four-armed creature would've split her in half too, the momentum causing the blade to shatter upon impact. She still hadn't got a replacement. 

Arya takes care of her side pretty quickly, the soldiers dropping like flies as she once again places a plasma cartridge straight through the temple of every soldier firing at her, periodically opening voids in front of her to prevent the oncoming hail of bullets making any sort of contact with her.  She looks around her, K'aarn zipping around at super speed slicing and stabbing at whomever is unfortunate enough to close in on him. Two Q'ataar remain in the hallway, one takes the curved edge of the blade straight to the crown, the flesh and bone of his skull carved open as the jagged metal cleaves through his face and deep into his neck, one left. 

K'aarn becomes vaguely aware that he must be running to alert whomever is in the control room, or set off the rest of the alarms, either way it would ruin the surprise. He sprints the length of the corridor, blade still deep into the other merc's neck and his pistol empty, the pole too long to throw in the narrow walkway. K'aarn charges towards the Q'ataar, driving his fist into the jaw of the insectoid, the impact forcing him through the door to the control room, blowing it straight off its magnetic plates and into the room beyond.