Citram screamed. She was forced to watch as the ships plummet toward the city below. She could hear Vector cursing. Through all the chaos, she could not hear anything from Vorn; he was silent. There was nothing; no sounds of life from his com. She'd seen, first hand, the shockwave. It was a tangible and visible wave that crashed into the Phoenix full-force. It lost momentum before rolling over the Leviathan. The hauler vanished and her two surface-side comrades just... fell.
In orbit, the horde had been overpowered with the arrival of Conclave Fomenters and large battleships. She and Mac entered atmos above the city to come to their aid, when everything had gone to the deepest pit of Darkness.
Vector recovered quickly, as he had been out of range of the initial blast. The force that hit him was weaker, but it still stalled his engines and caused his electrical systems to reboot. He dropped a couple thousand feet, taking Citram's heart with him, before he leveled out.
Relief surged through Vector's body on the heels of the adrenaline rush. Quickly enough, though, he realized they weren't yet out of it. He turned the nose of his ship just in time to watch Vorn streak past in an out-of-control spin. Smoke streamed behind the craft in fading corkscrew tendrils.
Static broke over the line, followed by alarms and Kitty's energetic voice. Before Vector could address the senior Ghost, Citram was on the line, "Vo- Requiem?!"
"-y fu-" was the last thing they heard as a massive fireball lit up the brightening city. Dawn was coming.
"Flux!" Vector yelled. "Get down here!"
Citram watched through the dimness of the pre-dawn light as the Phoenix careened between the buildings, spewing balls of fire and flaming liquid onto the city. At that speed, he may not survive the crash, even with his Skin. The engines re-started with a burst of smoke and fire, before working overtime to correct the trajectory. They failed to start in time. The ship clipped a building, tearing a wing free with the screech of rending metal, paired with the resounding boom of a destroyed wall. Glass and rock showered the streets below, followed by the wing. The collision sent the ship into an end-over-end, lopsided course for hard city turf and unforgiving pavement.
To Vector, the battlefield seemed to pause. Everyone was silent, holding their breath. What was left of the Phoenix plowed into the road below. Metal, pavement, dirt, and smoke exploded into the sky, enveloping the scene. Then all was still, save the faint breeze wafting the smoke and dust away from the burning husk. Everyone was still as they waited for something to move, other than the lapping flames. The Phoenix was silent, sitting on it's side in the excavated biocrete and dirt.
Then Mac was racing, far too swiftly, through the atmos toward the landing zone. That was all it took to snap both forces from the trance.
Watching a pillar of Requiem's magnitude fall was a momentous occasion. For the enemy forces, they had accomplished the impossible. For allies, they were watching a tragedy unfold. Mac sped toward the city below, ignorant of the rising temps on the external thermal regulators, or the increasing volume on the sensor alarms. Vector shook himself and joined the race to reach the Phoenix. Enemy forces had the same idea. The two were in competition to reach the fallen ship first.
A strangled expletive escaped Citram. The Higarin reinforcements, heartened by the destruction of the Phoenix, turned their attention away from the Fomenters and focused on the Kitsune. She was forced to worry more about herself, shoving away her concern for her friends on the surface. Instead, she needed to concentrate on the complex evasive counter and attack movements of their 'bait and attack' routine. It was a heavily ingrained practice, and the reason why the Ghosts bore such identifying markers.
Despite the maneuvers, she had to work her way to Vector, or at least to reinforcements. She was cut off from every avenue of aid. Vector was growing overwhelmed trying to protect the drop site, the down ship, and ground troops within that zone. They needed to get the Ghosts secured and the troops organized so they could pursue the Hauler.
Mac joined Vidian on the ground, leaving Kitty to man the vessel and provide additional cover for the Ker while he moved on, toward the wreckage. He left Ker -the deadly, insane, and capable woman she was- to protect the boxcars with injured Fomenters. She and her ground troops would deal with the enemy soldiers pit against them. His job was to reach Vorn. To retrieve Requiem.
The ship was a bent and twisted, sad resemblance of the grand machine it had been moments before. The fire had already burned low as it consumed what was left of the fuel, but it had obviously burned hot. His heart was pounding, praying that he would find Vorn alive.
The ship left little in the way of hope, however.
Electrical sparks issued from the jagged fissures of the side that was fire-free. Fire did still stream down the other side. Pools of small, dying flames licked along the underside of the ship and throughout the entirety of the crater. The fire inside the ship was mostly out. The fuel tank was bled empty, with a massive gaping hole in the side. There was little risk of the ship actually exploding. Unless the payload aboard ignited.
"Kitty, ring the Taxi." He ordered quietly, climbing carefully around to the cockpit.
"I've already alerted them, sir" She responded, matter of factly. Her voice rang loudly in his ears to be heard over the sounds of battle. She then related the retrieval team's estimated time of arrival. "ETA in ten."
The fight directly overhead was getting bad. Vector and a handful of Fomentors were fighting off the Higarin forces, protecting the landing site. Returning his attention back to the cracked, opaque cockpit, he heard banging coming from within.
"Status?" he called to the man within, praying for an answer.
"Not-" a coughing spell interrupted the response. "Not good."
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"Are you pinned?" Flux demanded, the incredible relief at hearing Vorn's voice instantly quashed.
"Not that I can tell, but the hatch is jammed."
I can see that. Mac thought, spotting the location of the hatch release mechanisms. Around the dirt and debris, that side looked like a pincushion crossed with a shredded can.
"Flux." Vorn hissed, feeling bruises beginning to blossom across most of his body, plus a possible broken rib or three. "I don't know if I can get out." He forced the words through clenched teeth, realizing the passageway and ladder to the cargo bay had collapsed significantly during the rolling crash. He couldn't see the escape hatch, but he didn't have much faith it was in good shape, either. Sparking circuits and exposed wires marked what gruesome damage Vorn could see. He wasn't sure he could get through it all with the hulking mass of his Apollo skin. He only knew he couldn't get out of there without it.
"Why?" Mac asked, instantly worried that Vorn's initial assessment of his condition had been wrong, and he was actually injured or pinned.
"Everything past the cockpit entry is caved in." Vorn coughed on the noxious fumes of the burned out circuits and thick smoke. A pained whimper forced itself through his throat as his ribs rebelled against the cough. He struggled to switch the air supply to the filters of his helmet. "Might have an electrical fire in here too."
'Might' was an excessively generous word. Just seconds ago everything had been on fire. At least now it was just inside the walls of the ship.
Vorn moved to get a better view through the entry and relayed the visual feed to Mac, who clumsily cursed under his breath. Vorn chuckled dryly, feeling the same sentiment settle in the empty region his stomach should have occupied. His stomach, knowing the task before him, had fled to his ankles.
"At the very least, I'm going to have to try it." Vorn said aloud, mostly to himself. Both he and Mac knew three things: 1) Vorn had to get out of the cabin before the suit could no longer filter out the toxins in the air, not to mention what would happen if the cockpit caught fire again; 2) the suits, when in good condition, could take a massive beating but were somewhat weak to electrical currents; and 3) the logistics of getting a 6'3 man in an Apollo skin through the minimal remaining space would be 'tricky'. It left very little chance of not incurring an electrical shock.
Vector's cynical voice broke the silence.
"Guys, we got quite the party up here. We'd fucking appreciate it if you two would get the hells out of the smutching open." The words themselves were drawn out with such flatness, thick with Vector's Tadoran drawl, that Vorn had to laugh at the contrast. Vector could have just as well been ordering a burger. The blast that shook the ship mere seconds later relayed the fact in the words. "Aaaaany day now."
"Smutching hells." Vorn breathed out, watching loose wires quiver in the blast. He began the awkward, painful crawl toward his freedom and/or possible electrocution.
Mac turned his attention skyward. The 'party' upstairs had revved up a bit as Higarin ground forces, manning freshly replaced or repaired turrets and RPGs, joined the fray. It did not look like a party. It looked like a battle. Why would Vector call it a party? Perhaps he meant a party of enemies, though that was an odd term to use. These outlanders used odd terms too often, though.
Kitty was screeching in Vorn's ears as he made his way through the demolished walkway. He didn't even want to see what the ladderwell looked like. The AI would start panicking when he got too close to a sparking source of electronics-frying, ungrounded source of electricity.
"On your left. Your left!" she screeched. She was, basically, an electronic thing. Well, software, anyway. Vorn didn't know what would happen to her if they did get a shock. She was not built into his suit, but was 'bridged' into it. That was how Saedah had once explained it. She was actually connected to every Apollo suit, but for whatever reason, chose to torment Vorn most of all.
"Can you not, you know, just sever your connection here?" He asked Kitty, gasping in shallow, harsh breaths around the stabbing pain in his chest.
"And leave you alone? I think not." She wouldn't tell Vorn, but she picked on him most because he needed a constant in this world of uncertainty. She could be that constant. Especially with the present Saedah catastrophe. She made it her mission to distract Vorn and keep him from thinking too much about the past. That was an important mission, especially now. She wanted to keep him from remembering his capture on Na'Boht and juxtaposing those experiences on Saedah's current predicament. It would not do to be unnecessarily worried.
Despite her heroic mission, the present situation would be far from pleasant if Vorn did happen to shock her. She sent a short data burst back to her database as a backup, then built a firewall between this instance of herself and the rest of her fractures. In doing so, she lost the connection to her other selves along with the Ghosts, all of Conclave, and ADOL, but she would hate to get zapped and let any possible corruption trickle down and spread to her database. That would ultimately be her death; her form of cancer. Unlike the vast majority of mortal cancers, hers would be incurable.
"Watch it," she quietly warned as Vorn brushed against a dangling wiring harness. What used to be a wiring harness, anyway. Now it was just an unruly nest of colorful death strings. Luckily, they were all mostly intact.
"It's going to be quite impossible to-" he fell into a coughing fit that made his chest erupt with bone-shattering pain. His helmeted forehead fell against his forearm while he tried to pull his knees to his chest. He could not curl up much, given the lack of space caused by the destruction. A splatter of blood sprayed the inside of his helmet, and worry crossed his mind for a moment. "Can't avoid everything."
"Breathe, V." Kitty was getting notifications on his elevated heart rate and perspiration. She could see that he was in pain. He finished the sentence breathily, wheezing, and still curled in upon himself. Another explosion rocked the ship, but Kitty could tell from the dilation of Vorn's eyes that he wasn't fully aware of his surroundings. "You have to move."
Vorn registered the sensation of the explosion, noting that it may have been closer than the last, but only hazily understanding the importance of the fact.
"Vorn. We are sitting in a 3 ton target." She paused, still monitoring his vitals. "A 3 ton target that is on fire. Oxygen level is falling below 38% normal concentration. I am switching you to internal oxygen reserves." Not to stress the fact that they were in a flaming 3 ton target filled to capacity with all manners of explosives, but they were in a flaming 3 ton tin can set to explode, with a figurative bulls-eye painted on it.
She swapped the suit over to the internal oxygen reserves and set a counter for the 45 minutes it would take for the reserves to be depleted. After 45 minutes, the internal synthetic photo synthesizer would be functional for 2 hours, but that would be undesirable. Not to mention, in their current position, surviving even 45 minutes would be highly unlikely.
Apparently some of what she'd said had registered. That, or the drugs she'd pumped in with the oxygen were doing their job. Likely the latter, as his vitals began to level out.
"On your right. No, right! Right right right!"