Ronin exited the building at a dead sprint. Elyria took to the sky as soon as she had room to spread her wings, and Doctor Mycroft ran surprisingly quickly for a bare footed woman carrying a laptop. She had been wearing heels but had kicked them off instantly to run faster. The 1930’s gangsters on the other hand, weren’t doing so well.
“My lord, I have a firm count now, four ships inbound. Leo is enacting his plan. You need to hurry.” He could hear Stone in his earpiece, but he was running too hard to have the breath to respond. Ronin didn’t have time to wonder what the lionid was planning, because the gangster’s ship and the one he’d come down in with Leo, both closed their ramps and took off.
“Hey… where’s my… ship… going?” Wheezed an obviously anxious Chip, as he ran for dear life, holding Bunny’s hand the whole way. Each of the empty vessels had set themselves on a crash course for the incoming dropships. They were going too fast to avoid, and before anyone could do anything, the empty ships smashed into a pair of the incoming craft.
“Hurry up boss,” K3 yelled, from the base of the ramp. “We gotta go before the debris falls.” He wasn’t getting any arguments from Ronin. He could already see chunks of crunched ships raining from the sky.
Dropping to all fours, Ronin used the bounding technique Leo showcased during their race to the tree. He’d practiced a few times in secret, but still fell just as often as he didn’t. Landing on his hands, he shoved off the ground, propelling himself forward as he brought his feet up to kick off again. Ronin knew he didn’t look as smooth as Leo while he ran. The lionid’s joints were a little different from Ronin’s mostly human body. Still, he was strong and sturdy enough to make it work, and he bounded for everything he was worth. Hitting the ramp, he shot through the entrance to the ship right behind Elyria, who had been flying slower than she needed to, waiting for him.
“What was that?” She asked as he picked himself up from a pile of scattered equipment he’d managed to plow right into. “I mean you were doing great, then, POW, right into the harvester.” Ronin ignored her, knowing she was talking out of nerves more than anything, and looked back to see where the doc was.
He saw her, now being carried face down across the back of a gryphon. Leo had flown out, scooped her up and was already on his way back to their ship. The gryphon also had one of the gangsters, the older man with the face scar, held in its claws.
“We gotta go boss,” K3 said worriedly as Stone and Whisper shot through the door, each carrying an extra two gangsters a piece that the gryphons had snatched up in their front claws. Looking out, Ronin saw the final member of the gang, the handsome young man, still running.
“Shut the doors and let’s go,” Ronin said. It pained him to leave someone behind, but chunks of the ships were already raining down around them, and he couldn’t risk the whole mission for anyone.
“Grinner, noo.” Said the woman wearing men’s slacks and a dirty white undershirt. Her fedora had fallen off at some point and her short hair was flying wildly around her face, as she clawed her way towards the already closing ramp. Knuckles was holding her back, struggling to contain the furious woman as she fought to get out.
“Damn it Jackson, calm down.” The bruiser growled at her. The ship had already left the ground, and she was still struggling. Right up until Whisper slammed the butt of a rifle into the back of her head. That put her down, and Knuckles was able to get hold of her, near unconscious, form.
“Hey… kid… you hear me?” Leo’s voice came crackling through his earpiece, but it was breaking up already due to distance. “We each got… on our tail… going the long way… try and shake… before we get… or we will have problems. We’ll… three days behind you… stay alive kid…” Ronin struggled to understand, but when the line finally died, he thought he’d got the gist. He turned to his team.
“Get everything secured. We’ve got an enemy on our tail. Leo and the Doc are going the long way with another ship on theirs. We’re more than four days away from the mountain. If they’re still following us in twenty-four hours, we’ll have to figure something out. We can’t have them interfering at the lizard ship.” He got nods of agreement all round, except from the gangsters, who weren’t looking very happy.
“Sorry about your man.” He said, addressing Bunny and Chip. “I would have had to make that call no matter who it was, but I’m sorry it was one of yours.” They didn’t respond in words, but Ronin thought he detected a grudging understanding in their eyes.
“Alright. Karr?” He called, looking for his sergeant. Finding the man, helping secure the ship’s cargo, Ronin called him over. “Sergeant Karr, this is K6, the leader of yokai team 01. They are going to need weapons and some training in their new bodies. Can you get a few of the smaller fabricators going on that please?” He asked the leader of his troops, who nodded in agreement.
“Now, I want to check out the rest of the ship while we’ve got the time.” He turned to Elyria, who’d just been standing beside him, and raised a brow.
“Yea, I’m coming.” She said with a snort. “Though I have to say, your timing sucks. We barely survive several tons of falling ships, and now is when you wanna go exploring? I mean, I guess we don’t have anything better to do...” Ronin thought she seemed excited to explore the ship but couldn’t outright say it. So, was just throwing out complaints.
“Let’s go then.” He said, leading the way deeper into the ship. It was strange, they’d had the ships for at least a few days, Ronin honestly couldn’t remember how long, but he’d never once thought about taking a tour. Well, now was as good a time as any. He’d just woken up less than an hour ago, so it wasn’t like he wanted to take a nap or go hang out in the library.
The round doorway at the back of the troop compartment irised open, after Elyria flew up and pressed a button some ten feet up the wall. It was excessively high for a human but must be at a perfect height for beetles. Before walking through, Ronin looked back at the troop compartment they were exiting.
The size of two football fields sandwiched together, it made a rectangle, something like one hundred fifty yards from where he stood, to the exit ramp, by one hundred yards wide, give or take a few yards. It was a huge space, at least for someone used to living in caves. Though it was already filling up with equipment. Not to mention the big, airlocked glass chamber they’d made in a corner closest to the exit ramp, for the natural humans to breathe in. As well as the big two-story house that the color force had built in another corner.
Turning around, Ronin entered the dark entrance that led deeper into the ship. Only to find the path lighting up, as overhead lights automatically turned on at his passage. Blinking at the sudden brightness, Ronin looked around. The passage connecting the two compartments was only a few feet long. Which made sense when Ronin thought about it. No point wasting valuable space in a spaceship, no matter how short ranged it might be.
“Wow, Talk about clutter.” Elyria said, from where she hovered overhead. The constant droning of her wings blending into the background noise of the ship underway. She had a point about clutter, Ronin noticed as he took in the room. It was half the size of the troop transport and had another exit ramp in one of the outer walls. The rest of the compartment was rather cluttered.
It was still quite open from a human perspective. With a path no less than thirty feet wide, running through the middle up towards the cockpit, but most of the rest of the compartment was taken up by what looked like massive organs. Bubbling and churning various liquids, while the thick membrane walls of the container restricted and slackened, like breathing lungs, or a beating heart. Ronin shuddered, looking at the grotesque sight.
“These are the engines, if I’m not mistaken.” K3 said, pointing at the pair of organs on either side of the central path. “That over there,” he said, indicating the wall with the exit ramp. “Is the fabrication unit. While the huge tank on the other side is the growth vat… I did some reading, while you were sleeping on the information Xerox sent over to us.” The giant said by way of explanation.
“So, what’s all that stuff?” Elyria asked, pointing at the wall next to the fabrication unit. It had what looked like a storage locker, of beetle proportions, bolted to it. “It looks like a weapons locker.”
“Close,” K3 said. “The crystal beetles are actually quite passive. They don’t terraform planets with intelligent life on them, and any non-sentient life is normally wiped out as the atmosphere changes. No, those are equipment lockers. Wood working, mining, stone crafting, a number of other odds and ends. All designed to be worn over the beetle’s body. They will actually carry them into the fabrication unit, and it will attach the gear to their shells. Since they aren’t really capable of putting it on and taking it off themselves.” Ronin thought about arguing the point about them not terraforming inhabited worlds, but they hadn’t fought back at all when the war broke out. Rolling right over when humans attacked their vessel.
“They don’t really seem capable of making any of their own tech.” Elyria said, buzzing around the room as she looked at the various fluid filled containers. “How did they manage to make all this without hands, anyway?” A good question, and one Ronin should have thought to ask.
“I’m by no means an expert,” K3 said hesitantly. “But from what I read, it looks like the elder race, or the old ones, or the ancients… they were mentioned several times by different names. Regardless, they liked to raise up species that would never have gained sentience on their own. Two of the species they raised were the beetles and the…”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“The lizards,” Ronin finished for him. “Jade mentioned the elder race having created the lizards for battle or something.” His ears went red with embarrassment as he admitted, “I ah, actually cut her off while she was trying to tell us the story. It was during the battle for Undercity and…” Ronin trailed off, unsure how to finish.
“No complaints here boss,” K3 said with a shrug. “This is all academic really, because at the end of the day, no matter how unlikely or unrealistic it seems… we’re looking right at it. If you’d waited even a few more minutes during that battle, I at least wouldn’t have made it. Besides, we can always research the old ones later, when we’re not running for our lives.”
“Agreed,” Elyria chimed in. “But we should see if we can use this stuff.” Flying over the locker she opened it up, or she tried to. The door was too heavy for her to get while flying. She ended up placing her feet against the wall, grabbing the handle with both hands, pushing off with all her strength, before she got the locker door to budge.
“Here, let me help you with that.” K3 said, jogging over to lend his own, considerable strength to the effort. “That door was really heavy,” He said, panting for breath once they’d finally opened the door. “She has a point boss. This stuff is too big as is, to work with any of us. But we might be able to rig it to work on the exosuits?” He was looking at a giant, tapered cone, covered in teeth as he spoke. Ronin’s memories that weren’t his, told him it was some kind of drilling instrument for stone.
“Ok,” he said with a nod. “We should bring some of the exosuits in here and see what we can do. Maybe we can utilize the big fabrication unit to rig up some extra supports. Though, I sure hope we don’t have to dig all the way down there. We’d honestly never make it.” Ronin frowned at that thought, having never really considered how they would reach the ship, without the valley he’d excavated in his pocket world.
“Did you not read at all, White Flame?” Elyria asked with a derisive snort. “Here I thought you loved to read. I mean you talk about it all the time… Xerox, or Owl Two… one of them sent us a missive on the location. The pre fall country that owned that mountain had built a mine there. Eventually, the government closed it down, saying it was unstable. But there was activity there, right up until the beetles arrived on your planet. The conclusion Owl Two came to was that the miners had found something, and the government was covering it up.”
Ronin winced at the accusation because there was some truth to it. Honestly, he’d hidden inside his books for his entire life on earth. The one time he’d ever done anything heroic had ended with his death, well it would have if he hadn’t been crystallized. Once he entered his pocket world, and realized that the stories that had sustained him through the tough times were nothing but pretty lies… Well, he really hadn’t wanted to read since then. Every time he picked up a book, it brought back bad memories.
“I must have missed that,” he said, lamely. “But what are we going to do about the ship that’s following us?” Ronin asked, changing the subject. “If they are following us, even after we blew up two of their ships it’s likely they have enough people to swarm us. Leo said we needed to take care of them before we reached the mountain. Any suggestions?” The elf eyed him critically, clearly knowing he’d changed the subject, but eventually she caved in and answered.
“Not sure,” she said with a shrug. “The guns we have are pretty powerful, but I’m sure theirs are too… we can’t control the ship, beyond giving it locations to fly to. So, trying to outrun them isn’t an option. Heck, these things don’t even have external guns, so we can’t even shoot em. Though, that also means they can’t shoot at us either.”
They shot ideas back and forth as they explored the middle compartment. Sadly, they kept coming back to landing, and shooting it out. Unless they wanted to be followed all the way to the mountain, there wasn’t any other choice. As they talked, and explored, Ronin was amazed at just how much stuff was packed into this small room. There were tools, the growth vat, the big fabrication unit, a healing station, and several other pieces of equipment he couldn’t figure out the use of. When he mentioned it to the others though, Elyria only laughed at him again.
“What did you expect?” She asked with a laugh, brushing her silver hair away from her face, in a way that definitely didn’t catch Ronin’s eye. “These ships were designed as the primary method of colonizing a new planet. I’m sure there are tons of things in here, and on the mothership, that we haven’t even seen, or at least understood, yet… Everything was manufactured to a purpose. Everything. Even their bodies were designed to work with this equipment.” She waved her hand around the ship in wonder.
“I mean look at this thing, it’s actually alive. At least it has biological functions. I don’t think it is intelligent or anything… though who knows? It might not be an AI who’s piloting us around at all, but the ship itself.” Now that was a thought that made Ronin pause. Not just him either, the other two stopped their exploring and stared at each other for almost a minute. The idea of being flown around by a living, thinking ship, almost more than they could comprehend.
“How about we set that thought aside until Xerox meets up with us?” Ronin said at last, knowing he couldn’t find out either way with the information he had available to him. “Should we check out the cockpit then?” He asked once they’d explored as much of the compartment as they could. Getting nods of agreement, he moved up to the forward most hatch and jumped to access the button. Nothing happened.
“Really? Defeated by a button?” Elyria flew forward and hit the button herself. Again, nothing happened. She slapped it several times to no effect.
“Really?” Ronin asked, putting as much snark into the word as he could. Elyria glared down at him, and K3 sighed wearily.
“Let’s look around for another way to open it.” The giant said, in a tired tone, that Ronin didn’t miss. He chose not to comment on it; however, his bodyguard had been watching his back while he slept after all. He’d have to insist K3 got some sleep before the shootout they hadn’t been able to find a way around.
The three of them looked everywhere, tried vocal commands, and even tried to force the doors open, to no avail. Giving up, the trio returned to the troop compartment of the massive drop ship. To find yokai team 01 had each taken turns in the portable fabrication unit. They had redone their armor in white flame colors. Each now had their team number and their names printed on the left side of their chest. A good thing, for Ronin at least, since they were nearly identical now, with the armor no longer being different colors.
“Lord Ronin,” Dandelion said, coming over to them at a trot. “We just got our proper colors put on, and sergeant Karr is growing, or printing, our weapons now. How do you feel about a sparring match?”
“Dandelion, show some respect to our lord.” K6 hissed, walking over and saluting Ronin after she pulled Dandelion away. “I’m sorry my lord. Although Dandelion is our oldest member, her heritage means she hasn’t developed past her teens yet. Please excuse her childishness, I promise her skill with the rifle makes up for her lack of tact.” Ronin smiled at the clearly nervous team leader, before turning to look at K3 and Elyria.
“What do you guys say?” He asked, with a raised brow. “You want to test yourselves against the next generation?” The pair glanced at each other, before replying in unison.
“Not at the moment, we have things to work out,” from K3.
“We need to discuss our battle plans,” from Elyria. Ronin frowned but had to agree. If both his closest people thought it wasn’t a good time then he wouldn’t argue.
“Sorry Dandelion,” he said turning back to the group. “Hopefully, sergeant Karr and Bunny’s groups can give you a proper work out while we go over some important planning. It looks like we are going to have to fight the ship on our tail, so you’ll have to be fighting fit soon.”
“By your will,” the team answered in unison, each saluting him in turn before turning to Karr, who was glaring daggers at K3 and Elyria for some reason.
“Let’s get to the planning boss,” K3 said, ushering Ronin along with him back towards the house.
“Ok, so what did we have to discuss that we hadn’t already covered?” Ronin asked, unclipping his goat hide cloak before sitting down in the library. His companions shared another look, before K3 finally answered.
“There isn’t a whole lot to go over, though now that we’re here, we might as well get a little planning done. Maybe we can figure out how the equipment works in the locker, and how to attach it to the exosuits.” Ronin frowned, looking at his friend.
“If we didn’t have any urgent need to plan, then why did you both drag me in here so quickly?”
“Well, boss… it’s just that…” K3 said, scratching his bristly face with a carapace incased hand.
“Use your head, White Flame, geezz.” Elyria said with a harrumph as she crossed her arms. “Don’t you remember fighting the color force? They’re way stronger than we are, I couldn’t even hurt them. You and K3 had your armor cracked by mere punches. Now, add into the equation a bunch of young kids, kids with at least ten years’ worth of constant training, who are eager to prove themselves to their idol… they’d freaking tear us apart. What would happen to your image in their eyes after that?”
“…Oh,” Ronin said, thinking about her words for a little while. “Guess I hadn’t thought about that.” He said with a sheepish grin. “I keep forgetting I’m not as strong in reality as I am in my pocket world, or at least, not in the same ways… Poor Karr, no wonder he was glaring at you two before we left.” That thought made Ronin wince in sympathy, and he regretted telling them to be sure they were combat fit. Odds were high they’d put at least one of Karr’s people, or the gangsters, in the medical unit before it was over with.
“It’s something you need to pay attention to, boss.” K3 said, uncharacteristically stern. “It’s been ten years back home. A lot can change in that amount of time. The kids we have here are clearly loyal to you. There’s no way Owl Two would have sent them if they weren’t. Still, I’m sure they’ve built up a larger-than-life image of you in their minds. I’m not saying you have to be someone you’re not, just, remember that to those kids, you’re their hero.” Elyria nodded along as K3 talked, and Ronin swallowed hard,
“No pressure or anything though, right?” He asked, trying to lighten the mood, it didn’t work. “Ok guys, I hear you.” He said, standing up and taking a lap around the reading room. “I know I’m not leadership material, heck, I never wanted to be a leader in the first place. All I wanted to do was go on adventures with my Owl team, just like in the books… Did you know I didn’t even come up with the team’s name?” He asked, throwing himself back into his seat.
“No, it was from the book I took most of my ideas, for the armor and the drop pod from. I would have never even considered building a settlement if it hadn’t been for Markus getting injured. I did it all for the credits. I did the math, you see. I got one ship credit for killing that poor, malnourished goblin woman, and ten credits for each goblin I’d restored to health. If the system had rewarded me ten times as many credits for killing her, then saving them… this story might have ended very differently.” He looked up at them with conflicted eyes, looking for condemnation.
“Even afterwards, I didn’t make any of the day-to-day decisions, I left that up to Owl Two. I’m not qualified to be a leader; I have no idea why anyone willingly follows me. Even Leo has asked my opinion a few times, for reasons that are beyond me… and we’re supposed to somehow fend off the leaders of my people, find a spaceship that’s been hidden underground for over one hundred million years, combine its tech with that of another alien species, and somehow get away from my home planet? I don’t know if I can do it.” After he finished, Ronin slouched back into the comfortable chair, waiting for Elyria to let him have it in a way that made him feel better, like she always did. To his shock, however, K3 was the one who answered.
“You can’t.” The kaldarr said, glaring at Ronin with a ferocity he’d never seen directed at him before.