Alex – Heart Of The Vanguard

The lift ride was all but silent, the slight hum from machinery being the only thing breaking that silence, though it somehow got quieter suddenly. The lift bumped to halt and the lights went out.

Jinx: "What's happening?"

42: "They shut the lift down?"

Ember: "They're called 'elavators'."

Jinx: "We're English, we call them 'lifts'." My vision quickly adjusted to counter the darkness so I held my hand out over the dead lift control touch pad and remotely accessed it.

Me: "Security office on the next floor locked it down."

Jinx: "Great! I'm not overly keen about being trapped in small spaces."

Me: "So that's why you wouldn't go into that air duct in that training scenario back on Draconia..." she stayed quiet, "...Relax..." The lights came back on and the lift started humming and moving again, "...I overrode their lockdown. Be ready, they're probably getting ready for us down stairs." The electronic 'bong' sounded, indicating we had arrived. The doors parted revealing a similar layout to the security check point we just left upstairs, only this level had many more ballistic covers set up, positions through the centre of the room that could be easily used to defend from either direction. As soon as the lift doors parted, there was a small scurry of activity as the SkyTech soldiers slid in behind cover, accompanied by the sound of cocking weapons as they were raised and trained upon us.

"FREEZE!" One of the men demanded, as he finished pulling his rifle up to bear.

Me: "We don't have time for this. Wrex, stay back." I stepped forward out of the lift, the forces in the room started firing, so I did too. The short charged/rapid fire shots of plasma mowed them down quickly, especially once the rest of Fury joined in and started firing, bar Wrex of course. The few stragglers that realised they were doomed if they stayed in position, tried falling back as they continued to fire their rifles.

But the sounds of the Humans left in the room quickly faded out as we dropped the last few. Once the room had gone quiet from those sounds of gun fire and incoherent orders and screaming of pain, a new sound had replaced it. An alarm, with a message...

"Multiple security breaches detected. Defensive positions compromised: Main entrance, tidal generators and turbine generators. Enemy forces have entered the base - execute with extreme prejudice. Security lockdown is in effect." The artificial dull toned male voice announced, that same voice that accompanied us in the training hall simulations all those months ago.

Ember: "Oh shit..."

Me: "What?"

Ember: "Security lockdown means everything is sealed. All doors, access routes, elevators, maintenance, even the damn sewerage system get closed up. We're trapped in this room."

42: "How do you know this?"

Ember: "They activated it when I was in the middle of escaping from here last time."

Jinx: "So how did you escape?"

Ember: "Thankfully I was already in the generator room, I managed to rig an explosion. As a safety thing, the loss of power overrides the lockdown - they can't have life support potentially failing with people locked inside, eh?"

There was a clonk, a whine, then the lights went out, for a split second, before flickering back on.

Jinx: "What was that?"

42: "Power surge?"

Jinx: "Someone already trying to take out the power?"

Sarah: "Could be Hammer or Strike force causing trouble."

Ember: "Alex?..." She called, sounding a little unsure. The rest of us turned to watch the bodies of the SkyTech soldiers, the barricades, even the metal scanners ripped from the floor and parted, like the red sea, to pile up at the sides of the room, red fog started forming in the center of the room where the clearing had been made. Out of the fog a figure was being formed and from which a voice originated... I didn't need to see the figure to know who the voice belonged to...

Reikon: "My my, aren't you bold?" She stepped out of the fog and folded her arms, looking as she had done before, full female Draconian, and looking all too overly confident as per usual. My blood boiled.

Me: "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just paint the room red with your blood!"

Reikon: "Maybe it's not boldness, just stupidity... I'm not real Alex. I'm an image. Why are you here Alex? I warned you not to come."

Me: "You know bloody well why! You have what belongs to me and I am not gonna stop until I get them back!"

Reikon: "Indeed..." Images came floating existence, rotating around in front of her... 3 scaly eggs... MY eggs. "...the same as YOU have what's MINE!..." Another image formed in the middle of the trio of eggs, an image of the Shard, "... here's the plan, the last chance for you. Call off the attack, you give me the Shard and your precious little family can leave, eggs and all."

Me: "You know I can't give you the Shard, it will kill-"

Reikon: "-Kill you, yes I know. I'll consider it a bonus. But let me tell you, I don't care what happens to you, your family or anyone in this base. I want what belongs to me..." She started growling with each and every word now, "...So these are your options: Call off your Vanguard, the other forces attacking the base, give me the Shard and I'll allow the others to leave and we can all go about our business. You come to me, alone, I'll ensure you have safe passage down we'll finish our business and I'll send your eggs back up. OR. If you keep pushing, you will regret it. Everyone you know will die. If I so much as get a glimpse of you in this base, I will smash your eggs, as a start! So... How do you want this to pan out?"

Me: "You had better fucking hide when I get downstairs Reikon. NOBODY threatens my family and I will show you why!"

The room darkened and Reikon's image changed, turned into a glowing red Dragon's skeleton. Surrounded by red mist and it charged, floating through the air screeching at us, dissipating into smoke as it blew through our group. All but myself flinched at her attempt to scare us.

Jinx: " 'cause that wasn't creepy at all!"

Me: "She just putting on light shows to scare us off. She's weak and she knows it. We finish her, now!..." I barked as I span back towards the lift doors on the other side of the room, but Ember, stopped me, grabbing my shoulder, "...get off!" I tried throwing her hand off, but she flipped my throw, grabbing my wrist and opened her helmet to look at me.

Ember: "You need to chill."

Me: "We NEED to get downstairs!" I corrected her, throwing off her grip with the intention to head for the lift again, but she grabbed my arm once more,

Ember: "No! Now you listen to me! I know that attitude! That tunnel vision you get! If you go down there in a fit of rage, you will die! She will get the better of you! Don't you see?! She knows you, she knows what buttons to press to make you angry! To make you rush into things!"

Me: "She's not strong enough to kill me!"

Ember: "She will with that attitude! Please, just slow down and think about it."

Wrex: "She's right my love, we can't just rush into this."

Sarah: "We've got to figure a way to get around the lockdown as well yet."

Me: "I can hack systems! Smash down doors."

Ember: "One door at a time, yeah, but with this lockdown, that will take time."

Wrex: "Plus the other teams won't be able to make any progress either."

Ember: "And you need the backup. If you don't free them then the SkyTech forces are called back down on us."

Jinx: "Right, so we just cut the power, right? Can we do that from here?"

Crystal: "Negative, we'll need to get into at least one of the generator rooms and cause disruption, as Ember did before." She announced aloud from Ember's armour.

Withers: "Strike Force reporting, we've hit a dead end. Security has locked down tight and we've searched for alternate routes and got nothing. We can't get through to the next area. May have to abort this route, double back and assist hammer." He announced over our communications.

I eyed up the security office at the side of the room, much like the one we saw upstairs, and made my way for it.

Me: "Negative Strike, we're locked out too. Whole base has gone into lockdown. Hold position, I'll get that door open for you. Standby."

Withers: "Roger that, standing by." And we cut the channel.

Wrex: "What are you thinking?"

Me: "Short cut..." I kicked the security door through and eyed up the monitoring stations. CCTV screens watching over multiple areas and halls, including the elevator we rode down in and the security office upstairs. "...the CCTV doesn't cover the whole base, not from here anyway. But... Ember, tell me, is that that the generator room?" I asked pointing to one of the screens. She stepped into the cramped office and up next to me.

Ember: "Yeah, that's it." She replied looking at the screen cycling through cameras, all showing a plant room, large cylindrical objects, with catwalks and pipework lacing between them. There were dozens of the cylindrical objects, all the size of houses, from the images, couldn't work out how many exactly.

Me: "Perfect." I started wirelessly tearing through the firewalls and security on these consoles. It was interesting, they had compartmentalised the security system of this base. The lower levels could access the higher/outer levels, but they couldn't access the lower/inner levels. Makes sense really, if someone is breaking in, like us, you'd want to make them to work for their goal. Being able to unlock all the doors from the moment you jack into their network at the front door would be pretty lousy security.

Ember: "What's 'perfect'?"

Me: "I should be able to jump us in there. Save some time."

Jinx: "I thought you said that would be a bad idea because you don't know where it relates to the rest of the world?"

Me: "I just found a floor plan for this level. I know the floor layout, I know where the cameras are pointing, I know the distances between the cameras and what they're looking at by looking at the blueprints. With some complicated maths, I know exactly where to end the Jump. Theoretically."

Jinx: " 'Theoretically'? That's not inspiring me with much confidence."

Me: "Trust me..." I said with a confident smile then realised it would be hidden behind my helmet, so it quickly faded. I opened a Jump outside the office, "...Come on, let's push on."

 ...

Jinx: "It worked!"

The Jump opened on to a crossways on the catwalks between the large cylinders that we saw on the CCTV feed. No sooner had we stepped out, we were spotted...

"TARGETS ACQUIRED! OPEN FIRE!" Bullets pinged off our armours from all directions.

Sarah: "Shit, we're surrounded!"

Me: "Split up! Work our way out to the edges of the room! Wrex stay behind me, keep your head down!"

I ran down the catwalk nearest to me, opposite direction to where everyone else went. There were goons left, right and center on the catwalk, poking heads around the edges of the numerous cylinders and firing their automatic rifles at us. They fell down quick once I started unloading plasma into them.

I took down every one of them that I came across until I got to the edge of the field of the cylinders. Within seconds of me exiting and looking around for my next target, something whacked me in the shoulder, HARD, hard enough to cause me to stumble, followed by and echoing 'crack'. Damage indicator lit up red on my right shoulder, so I peered over at it... Bullet damage, a round had ricocheted off of my shoulder pad, actually buckling and cracking it slightly. Another thump and crack, this one caught me in the head, whipping my neck painfully to direct over to my left shoulder.

I whipped back to where I saw the muzzle flash, another cat walk, up high, against the wall and which encircled the room. My HUD highlighted the sniper red, I raised my arm to target him but I was blocked, Wrex stepped in the way, facing me.

Wrex: "Get down already! -GAH!" There was another crack and he stumbled into me, then he grabbed and manhandled me back into cover behind one of the cylinders.

Me: "What are you doing? I had him!"

Wrex: "Yeah! And he almost took your head off! That last shot damaged your helmet!"

Me: "Yeah but me and my armour heal, you don't and you took the hit! Are you ok?"

Wrex: "I'm fine."

Me: "Let's have a look..." I spun him to have a look. The cover over his plasma core, on his back, tucked between his wings, was buckled, you could see the red and purple light show escaping through the gaps. "...your core might be damaged. I'll have a proper look in a minute..." I brought my arm up and started charging the plasma jet. "...might want to stand back a lil'." I said with a slight raised voice to be heard over the increasing hum of the charging plasma round and the gun fire echoing around the hall. Wrex did as he was told as I spun around the edge of the cylinder, eye balled and targeted the sniper and released the ball of plasma.

The large round screeched through the air, the sniper saw it incoming and tried to stand to run, but he had no chance. The round struck the catwalk right where he was crouched, blowing a large enough hole through it to cause it to pivot down and collapse with a mighty crash. More rounds bounced off of my back. Through my minds eye and looking behind me, some more goons had appeared. A quick flick of my arm without turning and they were hurled up and backwards about 30 meters by a pulse of purple energy.

42: "What did you have planned Alex?"

Me: "Ember, what did you do last time?" I fired off 2 plasma shots at 2 goons trying to take cover behind a cylinder.

Ember: "Last time I stole a guard's grenade belt, planted it between 4 of these capacitors. The power dip was enough to cause the lockdown to lift."

Sarah: "So we just need to find some explosives."

I looked back at Wrex, analysing his armour, more specifically his plasma core. I was detecting larger amounts of radiation coming from the back of his armour, along with spikes on the electromagnetic spectrum.

42: "We'll have to clear out the room before we can search."

Me: "No need, think I found one." I grabbed Wrex's back,

Wrex: "Hey!, What are you doing?"

Me: "Improvising..." I stated as I removed the damaged cover, "... your core was damaged by water ingress, I didn't know until the sniper round dislodged the cover..." I explained while going through the process of disconnecting the core, "...if I leave it in, exposed as it was you'll be suffering with radiation sickness soon anyway..." I switched back to the team chat, "...everyone, meet back near the middle, where we came out."

With a final click, I twisted and unlatched the core from Wrex's armour, I stared at it analytically, properly diagnosing it now it was sat in my hand. Indeed, salt water ingress had fused some of the circuits closed, some of the coils were stuck in their 'engaged' state when they shouldn't be and were over charging the inbuilt capacitors... I did the maths, output power, vs capacitor strength and decay rate... We would have about 2 hours before this thing detonated like the big one SkyTech were playing with, it would be like London all over again, except just on a smaller scale. However, this one still had it's safeties intact, it would shut down long before that happened.

Wrex: "What are you thinking?" I didn't realise he had turned and was looking at me analysing the plasma core.

Me: "I'm thinking London." Wrex's eyes widened,

Wrex: "You want to detonate that?!"

Me: "We need explosives, there's one right here, it's fucked anyway so I just need to prime it."

Wrex: "But the effects are nuclear-"

Me: "We're underground, the blast will be contained... Mostly... Besides, this is much smaller than London's, only about 3 kilotons."

Wrex: " 'ONLY'?! Alex!, We only want to disrupt the power, not destroy the base!"

Me: "It won't, this plant room is off to one side of the main base, that turbine field is right above us."

Wrex: "But-"

Me: "Trust me Wrex, please, I've done the maths." Wrex hesitated, there was still the odd bit of gun fire going off in the background, but nowhere near as much, the team had obviously still been clearing out of their way back to the evacuation point.

Wrex: "Alright, fine. As long as you sure."

Me: "Like I said, trust me. Come on, let's go. Keep an eye out for me while I mess with this."

So I followed Wrex, just keeping him in my peripheral vision as he led us back to the center of the capacitor cylinders while I remotely hacked the core. 'Let's override the safeties and...' Gun fire ensued, pinging off of guard rails and cylinders around us.

Wrex: "Shit! A group to our left, I counted 4." I carried on casually walking past the ducking Wrex as I played with the core, gun fire now hitting me as I emerged from cover. Although I was still focused on the device, I raised my arm, and in my mind's eye, I called up a much wider peripheral vision on my left side than my current attention span allowed, quick charged and fired 4 shots. 4 guys almost instantly fell to the grated deck of the catwalk. 'Now where was I? Oh yeah, force more coils on and... If I break this..." I pinched and ripped out one of the connections on the core and it started gradually humming and glowing louder.

Me: "There we go. We've got about a minute, 30 seconds."

Jinx: "A minutes and a half to what?" I waved the core to the group as we rendezvous back with them.

Sarah: "YOU DIDN'T?!"

Me: "I did." I reached out and dropped the core over the edge of the guard rail, and it fell, clattering between the nearby cylinder and the metalwork below.

Sarah: "WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!"

Jinx: "What? Why?! What's she done?!"

Me: "Alright alright, hold your horses." I opened a Jump on the other side of the group.

Sarah: "GO GO GO!..." she shouted in a panic while forcing the others through "...Come on! Let's go!" before jumping through herself, Wrex shortly after, I hovered for a second, looked around the room, huffed in a amusement and then stepped through myself.

...

Stepping out the other side back into the security office we left about 5 minutes prior, Sarah was stood, open helmet to greet me, looking rather irritated.

Sarah: "Are you insane?! We're still on the same level as that!"

Jinx: "I still don't get what she's done?"

Sarah: "She just rigged my plasma core to blow. Remember London? The EMP that knocked half the city out? That was a much larger core that Skylen rigged to blow, and they're nuclear when they go off!"

Me: "We're about half a mile away, most of what's between that room is concrete steel and bedrock and- wait, here we go."

As soon as I finished that sentence, there was an almighty thump, the room vibrated violently, the lights went out, the glass of the office exploded and parts of the ceiling panels came down. Jinx gave a small squeal and jumped to 42's side as the emergency lights came on, then the main lights came back on.

"Emergency power levels in use, all non essential system are deactivated and emergency protocols are in effect." A calm female voice announced over the base's tannoy. There was a loud groan as the base seemed to relieve it's stress.

Me: "See, it's fine. Ember, do you know what's next?"

Ember: "One last security checkpoint, similar to this one, from there it's straight into the base. But after that explosion, they'll be ready for us."

Me: "No doubt. Collect all the grenades up from these goons." I gestured to the bodies that littered the floor at the sides of the room from earlier.

...

With the grenades all thrown into a duffle bag we found, 40 odd I counted and I kept one out separate and then placed the bag in the middle of the lift, doors wedged open to stop them calling it down.

Me: "I need something..." I looked around the room, "...There, someone grab me that bit of cable please." I said pointing at a bit of the collapsed ceiling that had the support cables dangling on show. Wrex, being closest, grabbed and the wire of hard, snapping off about 2 foot of it and brought it over while I jumped up and smashed through the roof of the lift. I searched around for the emergency brakes, the overspeed guvnor. After finding them, I ripped both of the them from their rails.

Wrex: "What are you up to?" Wrex asked as he peered through the hole in the roof at me while offering the wire up to me.

Me: "Making a surprise for them..." I knelt down, leaned through the hole took the wire, tied one end around a light fitting inside the lift, directly under me and then gingerly tied the other end to the grenade pin I had in my hand still. I cautiously let go of the grenade, making sure it was settled before pulling my hands back from it. "...you might all want to step back in case this goes wrong." Wrex scurried out of the lift as I stood back up on top of it.

Me: "Lift clear?" I asked on the coms.

42: "All clear." He shouted back through. I flicked out my right arm blade, igniting it in plasma, then swiped it at the cables holding the lift in place and the lift dropped away beneath me. I engaged my jets to float harmlessly back into the security checkpoint room to meet back with the others as the lift plummeted away. There was an almighty crash a few seconds later and 5 seconds after that came the explosion from the shaft. Metal fragments could be heard tinging up and down the shaft.

Me: "Shall we?" I gestured to the lift shaft.

...

I gave Wrex a ride down, not on me, but I used my powers, made us a solid platform out of purple fog for us to stand on and we descended down the shaft. The others took a gradual drop down powered by their plasma jets. The remains of the lift, twisted, buckled and still smoking, sat at the bottom of the shaft, just halfway up the floor we needed to get through, the blast had blown the doors out, leaving us enough gap to slink through.

My surprise had worked. The room beyond was peppered in shrapnel damage. Half of the forces in this check point were dead, a quarter were injured and/or dying and the final quarter were attending to those bleeding out. I started stepping between the bodies, a few in and one that I brushed against, jolted and looked up at me, then tried shuffling away as I drew my arm to bear towards him.

"Please... Please!" He begged as he painfully shuffled away, holding one bloody hand up in surrender. I lowered my arm. Damn my guilty conscience.

Me: "Remember Fury, kill only if engaged. No killing if they surrender."

Wrex: "Understood." A woman further down the room, in a pained struggle also lying on the floor while being medically seen to by one of her unharmed colleagues, withdrew her sidearm, managed to squeeze off 2 rounds at me. I raised my arm and gave her a small charged shot to her chest, narrowly missing the guy attending her and she dropped dead. The rest of the survivors in the room, quickly dropped any weapons they might have been holding and raised their hands, if they could.

'Only took this much to get them to realise they don't stand a chance?'

I made my way over to the security office, opened the door after shifting one of the bodies out of the way.

"Stay back!" A man squeaked inside, sat on an office chair, holding a side arm up level with my head very shakily. I turned back to 42 and Sarah, being the only ones to show their heads in the office doorway.

Me: "This is SkyTech security??..." I asked astonished, thumbing back to scared shitless guard. I turned back to the man, flicked my fingers in the air towards him. His gun went flying from his grip, bounced off of a monitor (and broke it) before clattering to the floor. He quivered more so as he raised his hands slowly above his head. I stepped towards him, "... you're in my way." He whimpered slightly as he quickly scooted backwards in stages, still in his chair and hands raised, away from me. Once more I stepped over and placed my hand over the security console, remotely hacking it.

Me: "Yeesss...! I have access to the floor plan for the rest of the facility!"

Wrex: "You know where they're being held?" He asked, 42 stepped back allowing him in the doorway as well. I knew he was referring to our children... I shook my head,

Me: "I can't find them, they're not listed as being stored or moved anywhere."

Wrex: "What about Skylen?, Where is he?"

Me: "He... he hasn't left the same room for the last couple of hours."

Wrex: "Then maybe he's keeping guard of them."

42: "What about Reikon? Is she with him?"

Me: "No. I have no idea where she is actually."

Sarah: "If she's evading sensors, we'd have to chance that she and the eggs are not together."

Me: "Ok, yeah, let's keep moving then."

(-P.T. Adamczyk)