“Did you see that?” Quentin gasped, ripping his helmet off as he pushed past the Schwabs and ran to the cockpit. “We´re under attack!”
“Wh... The parachutes? Who-”
“Who do you fucking think?” the man barked, sending as much power as he could to the firmament´s threads. “Black ops murder-drones crawling up our ass… this has what´s-his-name… Owly´s slimeball name written all over it!”
The ship surged forward, threatening to floor any passengers that weren´t seated, and zoomed away from the eruption.
“Should I resume hiding?” asked 2112, only yards from Mieke´s huddled form. The woman hadn´t so much as looked in the clone’s direction since her return, too shell-shocked by their ordeal to do anything besides rock her crying baby, in a catatonic back and forth.
“I don´t care, do whatever you want,” spat Quentin, checking their sensors to see where the third droid had gone. “Where are you… where-”
He rapidly received his answer however, in the form of a leak, sprung somewhere in the Firmament´s undercarriage.
“Shit! They tagged us!”
Isolating the damage, Quentin realized that something had pierced their starboard access shaft and leapt from his pilot seat to attempt a repair.
“Keep us at full speed!” he ordered Pavel, already half-way to the garden´s trap door. “Matt and Sergei, you´re with me…”
“What should we do?” asked Evelyn, feeling useless amid all the tumult.
“Take Mieke to the infirmary! And get your suits on, just in case…”
As the family exchanged scared glances, Quentin lifted the hatch and was promptly met by a swirl of choking fumes… and, once the men climbed below deck, it swiftly became evident why: lodged in the Firmament´s flank, a grappling hook gleamed angrily back at them, having stabbed through the wall.
“Son of a… It nicked one of the coolant pipes!” Quentin yelled back upstairs, diagnosing the problem. “Don’t let us overheat!”
Without waiting for Pavel´s answer, Sergei and Quentin went to try and pry off the barbs still keeping it in place, but their freezing, jagged edges made it impossible to get a good grip.
“Move!”
Behind them, Matvey had gone to retrieve the ship´s seldom-used sledge hammer and, with a monumental swing, bashed the claw straight back through the wall from whence it came!
Even more of their precious air whistled out through the jagged, silver-dollar sized hole that he´d just punched… and as a suffocating Quentin scrambled to plug the breach with an emergency layer of Kevlar epoxy, he watched the robot chasing them stumble and fade into the distance, with the terrible realization that it had almost managed to rappel itself onboard.
The other two men caught their breath and, after helping a shaky Quentin plaster the damaged coolant pipe closed, returned to the flight deck covered in frost.
“Are you guys OK?” Barney asked. “Wha-”
But their captain was in no mood for questions.
“I called it!” he seethed, relieving Pavel of his piloting duties. “I called it the whole Goddamn way… Look at this, they´re everywhere! They hate our freedom so much, they sent the fucking military!”
Recalibrating the radar to get a wider view of their surroundings, Quentin zoomed out and, as she and Sander came closer, Lori felt her heart skip a beat... for ahead of them, a second series of drones had appeared in the moon´s penumbra and were now fanning out, in search of prey.
“They must have all landed at the same time…” Quentin sighed, shaking his head as he nudged the radar´s remote controlled antenna and tried to get a clearer picture. “Why- Why couldn´t he just shut up? I knew this would happen...”
Yet for all of his experience with the elite underworld, Quentin on this occasion had slightly overestimated their importance: unbeknownst to any but the most well-placed members of the Earth´s black nobility, the true impetus behind these deadly, robotic apparitions stemmed more from 2112´s desertion of the Olympus Orbital Outpost than the late Reverend´s preaching.
In the days following Love Spirit Ministries´ first show, as a nameless chain of governmental pawns dutifully forwarded news of Revis´ lunar transmissions up through their ranks, the ultimate decision to eliminate all moon-dwellers -while certainly accelerated by the Coplands´actions- simply coincided with the broadcast… and barely mentioned the Firmament at all, focusing instead on the necessity to regain control of the top-secret clone base, rather than hunt down anyone in particular.
So, and without even a single direct reference to his persona non grata, a private-sector solution was therefore imagined to not only silence New Nazareth, but also exercise a little-known clause in one of Owly´s recent energy bills, that allowed for the “competitive conquest of space, in the interest of national security”.
Translated into normal English, this implied that America´s largest arms manufacturers had exceptionally been granted permission to launch whatever state of the art interstellar weaponry they had waiting in their warehouses, in a mad race to secure future defense contracts by being the first to complete the murderous, classified mission.
Needless to say, this also meant that updates on this kind of compartmentalized, pseudo-legal activity were never destined to reach President Waller´s desk, as his deep-state masters far preferred using the man as a lightning rod of constant tabloid drivel, to keep a dwindling majority of stunted minds invested in their television-set´s kabuki political system…
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This detail however, wasn´t lost on 2112, who rose from the corner he´d been quietly sitting in, to share his thoughts.
“I´m not certain this situation could have been avoided,” the clone said, coming to join them. “We were always destined to be visited, because I did not execute my orders.”
“Visited?” Sander asked, feeling a chill run up his spine.
“I abandoned my post,” 2112 explained. “It is logical to assume that someone, or something would be sent to investigate.”
A silence fell over the gathering, as they pondered the implications of what had just been said…
“May I?”
The small gray man typed some coordinates into the radar and sure enough, as their transmitter redirected towards the Beginner´s Luck´s crash site, a third trio of blips pulsed back.
“Jesus Christ… they´re everywhere…” exhaled Evelyn, peering from behind a wall of Russian shoulders until her husband gave her more room.
“Da… I think this group sent for find us, on dark side…” Sergei nodded, pointing to the different factions on their screen. “We escape Copland team… And this unit, to do what you saying? Protect bunker?”
“I believe so,” replied 2112.
From the medical bay, Mieke let out a pitiful sob that jogged them out of a growing, terrified stupor… and Barney went to check on her, his wife in tow.
“Quentin. What is plan?” Matvey bluntly asked as they walked off, vocalizing the thought that had been progressively coalescing in each of their minds. But instead of their captain, it was 2112 that once again took center stage.
“There are only 2 options...” he began. “Hide or run.”
“What about fighting?” Sander asked half-heartedly. “Can´t we-”
“This ship lacks any form of weaponry, so their armaments present too large of an advantage,” 2112 calmly stated, turning his big black eyes to Sander.
His words rang uncomfortably true… and despite wracking their brains for possible ways of overtaking the metallic foes, nobody managed to think up anything consequential.
"Let´s say we make a run for it…” Quentin interjected. “Maybe I could get the Firmament back in orbit, with a ton of work… But this was kind of supposed to be a one-way trip.”
“That was short-sighted.”
Stunned by 2112´s words, Quentin stared the little man down.
“You fucking kidding me?” he growled “Yeah, sorry. I didn´t know I´d be fleeing the, uh... Olympic midget outpost!”
“Please! No time for fighting,” chided Pavel, keeping an eye on the radar. “Why don´t we just keep moving? Is damage bad?”
“Bad enough… But the real problem is, these things don´t sleep! They´ll just keep closing in,” their captain explained. “Once we start playing hide and seek, it´ll be just like a chess endgame when your adversary´s got pawns, and all you´ve got is a king. Just waiting for checkmate…”
The man hung his head in despair, sparking a second round of multilingual debates over what to do.
“Look, the fact of the matter is that we need to stay far away from these people,” Lori eventually insisted, after having managed to wrestle the conversation away from the Russian´s increasingly dark musings. “And correct me if I´m wrong… but I´m guessing that running the treads constantly burns major fuel?”
With a defeated rictus across his face, Quentin just touched the tip of his nose with his index, to indicate how correct she was.
“Yeah… who´s going to be doing ice-trips, with these guys prowling around?”
The question was met with more silence, as nine minds tried to imagine a way out of their predicament…
“What about your ship?” Sander proposed, pulling at his collar to take his suit back off. “The, uh… Strikaza? Can that one fly?”
Sergei looked to his comrades and shook his head.
“It would be even more work than for Firmament, I fear… We stripped many parts, remember? For first base…”
“You know, you might want to keep that on…” his sister mentioned, talking about his suit.
“Relax, I´m going to the bathroom. Jeez…” Sander huffed, stripping down as he left.
Watching him cross paths with his parents as they returned from the infirmary, Quentin received a brief update on Mieke and Duncan´s miserable, yet stable condition… and made up his mind.
“OK, we need to pack. All the essentials, food, supplies…” he trailed off for an instant and ran the Firmament´s inventory through his mind, before snapping out of it. “Just- look: pack light, useful stuff. The main thing is: it has to fit on the rover.”
“Wait-wait-wait… Are we bailing?” Barney asked, understanding full well what such a gamble would entail.
“I don´t know…” Quentin admitted, sitting back in his pilot´s seat to plot a convoluted course that avoided all the drones. “But if it comes to that, we need to be ready.”
The men shared a nod and Barney set off to pack up his family´s meager belongings. For the next hour, the Firmament was abuzz with the simultaneous efforts of both the Russians and the Schwabs, as they ran to and fro in preparation for a hypothetical exodus.
2112, for his part, had been forgotten beside the cockpit to simply watch their manic ballet pile more and more tools, cables and rations near the entrance dock… But, as the minutes passed and the twins started bickered over who owned what, the little clone began to feel a strange elation in having no possessions.
It also got him thinking…
“There might be a way for us to leave,” he declared, after waiting until the Firmament´s occupants had halted their efforts for a quick lunch break. “Do you think we can get to the outpost?”
“What do you mean? It´s dangerous there…” Evelyn frowned “You just showed us!”
“If you´re talking surrender, forget it,” Quentin answered flatly.
Looking around the room, he saw some confused faces and reminded them of his original purpose.
“Far from it,” the tiny man reassured him. “My guess is that these factions have been tasked with executing my final order: they will wake the others and return to Earth, to simulate extraterrestrial contact.”
“So… why go to a place that´s supposed to be crawling with problems?” prodded Barney, sharing a look with Pavel who was obviously thinking along the same lines.
“Because the activation sequence is not an instantaneous process. While I cannot say with certainty at what time they landed, it is highly likely that we still have time.”
But the assertion just served to befuddle his audience.
“Time for what?” Sander asked, worried where this was going.
“Perhaps you did not see it when we first met… but beneath the birthing pods, there is a hangar containing the departure module. If we manage to enter the outpost and secure the craft, it can take us wherever we choose.”
Before they could even fully process what their little gray guest had actually said, Matvey said the words that they´d all been subconsciously dreading.
“Ah… Quentin, maybe you come look?”
Standing by the cockpit at their rear, the Russian had become distracted on his way for some water, and was once again staring at the little radar screen. Jaw clenched, Quentin swallowed hastily and leapt up to rush to the man´s side.
“That´s impossible…” he gasped, coming to the realization that some of the blips had radically changed position, as he skidded to a halt. “How fast are these assholes moving?”
While he pulled up a tab and read the exact coordinates of what they were witnessing, the others put their food down and came closer, with Barney leading the pack.
“What´s the matter? Where are they? ”
“Way too close… we´re not going to be able to outrun them, at this pace…” Quentin replied, bringing the radar display back to the forefront of the monitor. “They´ve got some kind of souped-up propulsion system, or something…”
Barney watched the signal advance before his eyes and cursed under his breath.
“So what? We drive faster!” Matvey proposed, trying to shake their captain out of fateful resignation. “We can-”
“And go where? We´re outnumbered, the Firmament´s hobbled… Hell, they fucking woke up the volcano! Who knows how far that´ll go… ” Quentin exhaled slowly, before squinting towards 2112. “You for real, with that spaceship story?”
They all turned to face the clone, who stared calmly back.
“Yes.”
“Then we´ve got to try.”