Aldross Science Station

Chapter 1

Aldross Science Station

- Control Room -

"Johnny?"

"Johnny!"

"D'Av?"

"Johnny! Get us out of here. The cargo bay, they've locked all the exits, Johnny! Do you copy?" Sounds of shots fired cracked through the COM link. "Johnny!" It was D'Avin. There was a cry in the background, "Dutch!" Alvis's voice was worried. "Dutch, stay awake." There was more sounds of gunfire. "We need to get her back onboard Lucy, now." That did not sound good to Johnny. The doors. He needed to get them open.

Things would of course move a lot faster for Johnny if his mind wasn't so hazy from the blood loss. The wound that he had taken from Lyaff was probably the same lines as the one D'Avin had given him a few months ago from Dr. Jaegar's mind control. While he wasn't sure exactly how bad the wound was, he did know he didn't have long before he would go into shock and be pretty useless in getting his team off the station. And he'd bet that's what the bastard Lyaff would have wanted when he stabbed him in the abdomen.

But as luck would have it, Johnny was one hard mother f*cker to kill. Though he wasn't dead yet, Johnny had a feeling if he didn't stop the bleeding soon, he would be. But he didn't have time for that. He had his priorities: getting his team the hells out of the Aldross science station. He could finish dying afterwards. Though ideally he wanted to live, for obvious reasons.

The com link suddenly went offline again.

Damn it. Johnny's hands had started to tremble already. He steadied them and focused on reestablishing the link to Lucy. Johnny knew he didn't have enough time to manually hack the Aldross A.I. But he could get Lucy to do it. Lucy would take care of them all. Unblocking the signal that was interfering with Lucy and keeping the com signal with his team was much more difficult than expected. The Aldross A.I. was much more sophisticated than Johnny ever imagined. But somehow, Johnny managed it. Loopholes, algorithms, all sorts of methods and subroutines just poured from his fingertips. Must work really well under pressure, he thought to himself.

Finally, Johnny was able to make some headway for Lucy to link to the facility's A.I. Linking it was one thing, but to keep the connection to the network, that was a different thing. The A.I. constantly tried to unravel his code, but Johnny wasn't giving it the opportunity. No way was he going to let this A.I. catch his girl Lucy.

"Lucy?"

He waited for a moment. There was static. Johnny wiped the code sweat from his forehead, and tried again to reroute some of the programming.

"Lucy?" He tried again. Come on, come on. He was running out of time. His team was counting on him.

"John."

"Yes!" He let the breath he didn't realize he had been holding.

"Lucy, this A.I. is a tough little assh*le, so I'm going to have to keep him busy while you do your best to hack into the main system of this little bastard's playground. Can you do that?"

"Attempting mainframe hack, John," confirmed Lucy.

"Good. Thanks Luce." His breathing had started to become more laboured. While he still had adrenaline rushing through him in keeping him conscious, his body was weakening by the minute. He began to lean against the control console. He was tired. So tired. He wanted to shut his eyes. Just for a moment. A second even.

"John. John, you must stay awake. Your vital signs are not bolding well."

Gods. Did he phase out? Johnny blinked his tired eyes and let out a weak cough. He tasted copper. Blood. Not good. Definitely not good.