“How does it feel?” Sabre looked at his newly reborn bodyguard, Redblade.
“Feels…awesome. Like I could kill anyone.” The muscled Badger returned with a cruel, sharp toothed smile.
This pleased the pirate lord though he did not show it outwardly. Redblade was one of the few pirates that he could always trust, ever since they had first set out. With the crew frequently changing and always picking up more recruits in every port they docked in, Redblade had been one of the few constants aboard the Skullia-One and had been with him since the beginning. His enthusiasm was all that the pirate needed to hear, and his priorities had been right on target. After all, what good were these new superpowers if not for killing the enemies that Sabre Khan was about to line up in abundance.
Suddenly Sabre Khan crossed the room in the blink of an eye and with a violent hammerblow, smashed the tank that had been used in their conversion beyond repair. Redblade needed no prompting, nor did his two ferret friends in exploiting their newfound power. They joined in the gleeful destruction of all the equipment within sight.
Crazy Tooth and the last two Titans that Sabre had selected for the procedure, Tusk and Enrico the Wall, joined in the senseless destruction as well, though there was not much left to smash after only a few moments. The lab and all the equipment used to create this procedure now laid wrecked in total destruction.
The few Zenith scientists that had overseen their operations watched horrified at the display. This lab and this feat of science, ascending normal Titans to the realm of gods, enhanced strength and speed and bulletproof skin, nearly unbreakable bones, it all represented the last several years of their personal and professional lives.
Sabre then took the next step. He shot out and clasped his new iron grip around the throat of one of the Zenith scientists, squeezing the air supply dry. The little scientist tried to pry the fingers away while enough life remained inside his frame but he might as well have been trying to remove a mountain. Eventually the scientist began seizing and ultimately fell limp and lifeless. This was followed by an orgy of slaughter as the others quickly joined in.
There was not much the Titan scientists could do to overpower or run from the now supertitans, and they had barely enough time in the frenzy to lament the fact that they had created the tools and instruments for their own destruction. The scientists were violently assaulted, beaten and ripped limb from limb. None survived. In a mere matter of moments, the lab was a wrecked mess and the scene of a horror vid with bodies of mangled Titans littered and thrown about everywhere.
The pirate lord looked about the results of his carnage and was pleased. He slowly looked up at the other pirates in the room and addressed them.
“And with this new power…” He waved a hand across the destroyed room. “..we will do this to the whole galaxy. One port at a time we will wreck and destroy and take what we want. These Zenith Titans have amassed all the power in the galaxy, setting up a system where Titans have to slave and toil and beg for their scraps. And we stand here defiant of their so-called law and order, we shout with a loud voice that we are not a part of your system!”
The gathering of superpowered and non superpowered Titans cheered.
“And this is our voice!” Sabre continued, holding a fist in the air while indicating the death and destruction strewed across the room. “Back to the ships!”
The pirates headed back through the corridors to their docked crafts. Sabre Khan had a special destination in mind, one that he had been longing to return to since puphood.
* * * *
The Rhapsody rocketed into the sky with full thrusters while Lupis frowned beneath his helmet at the battery life plummeting. The FusionCore batteries had good life and range, but were designed to unleash maximum power when needed for maneuverability, which could flood the system power and grant an edge in speed and cornering from all other model spacecraft in the same class. The downside to this was that it was entirely possible to exhaust the battery life too quickly if a chase went on for too long. The half battery life which he had arrived on Titan with was now looking less adequate by the moment.
Lupis had no time to worry about that now, he had to bank hard to avoid a barrage of antivehicle machine gun rounds fired from several UAV drones on his six. Streams of tracer rounds passed by the cockpit field of vision, narrowly missing the hull of his ship, even while his instruments blinked red, warning of multiple target locks from approaching long range smart missiles launched from the helicopters.
Lupis continued to bank hard, pushing the limits of G-force as he pulled up a rear view feed of the missiles now trailing his ship. The Rhapsody managed to complete a one hundred eighty degree turn and came back again the opposite direction. He knew the aerial drones would be not shaken so easily being fully automated, with no pilots they did not have to respect the same G-force limits as he did.
Lupis adjusted seven degrees to port realizing he had guessed correctly when he saw a small black ship come up on his viewscreen. He was now speeding straight at the interceptor as it was heading towards him. Lupis held course steady, playing chicken with the Interceptor at just under Mach-3. When they traveled towards each other at just a few miles and came into weapon range, the Interceptor opened fire.
Lupis pulled the flight stick up as hard as he could and the Rhapsody banked straight up. Playing chicken against robot pilots and automated vehicles was not something that was winnable, but his strategy worked all the same. His sharp trajectory change was too much for the smart missiles trailing him, and instead locked on to the next available target. As the Rhapsody headed straight towards upper atmosphere, the smart missiles crashed into the Interceptor vehicle with a large explosion.
Red warning panels lit up his screen, indicating several more missile locks, even while he heard a few stray thumps pounding the hull of his ship like hard rain from the UAV gunfire still hot on his tail.
All of these problems had a solution, and just as the first of the missiles was about to collide with the Rhapsody, Lupis activated the afterburners, which boosted the craft faster than the explosion radius. They were now propelling towards upper orbit at nearly Mach-4 and the limits of endurance. The fields of Lupis’ vision began to go white and static, then black but he persisted, rocketing away from the first explosion, knowing that if he didn’t there were more to follow.
It took roughly five minutes to attain orbit, soon the last of the clouds gave way and parted to the yawning blackness of space, interspersed with the millions of stars poking holes through its dark canopy, and the faint reddish and pink lightshow from the Strawberry Nebula visible across the divide.
The bounty hunter saw in his rear viewscreen the rocket propelled missiles lose momentum as soon as oxygen ran out, one by one they sputtered and began plummeting back towards Titan. The drones also could not achieve this altitude but did continue to try to use focused beam weaponry for a few minutes until the Rhapsody was finally beyond their reach too. Now the only thing to worry about…
Lupis saw on his rear screen several interceptors come barreling up out of orbit giving chase. They gave off no indicators that his ship could follow or track, and became lost easily in the blackness in space with their jet black exterior. The Rhapsody was surely one of the fastest ships in the galaxy, but the Zenith interceptors were some of the only vehicles that could match it. There would be no outrunning them for long, which meant the only thing to do here was a good old fashion dog fight.
No longer in orbit, his battery charge would hold longer, which was good since the indicator was now below a third life left. But he was not in the clear yet and threw the Rhapsody into a hard spinning turn towards his pursuers, ready to engage.
A stream of magnetized Gauss rounds passed by the wildly spinning Rhapsody that came shooting at them like a drill. Meanwhile, Lupis began using his ship’s AI to compute the complicated mathematics needed for targeting assist in the situation. The Rhapsody passed by the four interceptors and looped around to get behind them all.
The Interceptors began turning as well, and they did so in opposite directions to make tailing them all impossible. He chose two and depressed the thumb buttons on his flight sticks, letting rip a torrent of his own Gauss rounds. The bullets swept across and tore through both hulls, disabling them eventually.
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By that time one of the others was already behind the Rhapsody shooting. Warning lights indicated several hits to the hull as he banked once more, deploying countermeasures in the way of a deployment of a special hollowed out cavity underneath the Rhapsody, which was filled with about fifty Zero-G mines. The mines spun wildly as they fell from the ship, but armed almost immediately, each one equipped with a small blinking red light to indicate their armed status.
The Interceptor was too close to change direction, and plowed through the mini-mine field with disastrous consequence. The mines exploded into pieces of shrapnel, which shredded the hull of the enemy ship, which lost propulsion and soon became dead in the water.
The final Interceptor had managed to steer wide and was still on their tail. A stream of Gauss rounds as well as a space missile erupted towards them. A deadly game of cat and mouse ensued as the Rhapsody began banking hard with the Interceptor following hot on its six. Lupis felt the pull against his seat as he narrowly managed to miss the missile that whizzed by the hull and continued off into the blackness of space.
Lupis pushed up and then back down during their dance, trying to throw the robot intelligence chasing them off its game. The Interceptor was too well designed, and had a bead on them, no matter how hard he banked he could not make headway against his foe’s own turning radius.
“Full reverse!” Lupis commanded his ship’s AI angrily.
Suddenly the Rhapsody simply stopped their intricate dance and stopped forward propulsion. The Interceptor did not react to this unexpected move in time and went rocketing past. Lupis’ thumbs were on the trigger instantly, this time the ship’s E-cannons joined the cacophony of destruction to go with the storm of Gauss rounds.
The Interceptor passed through the stream of targeted destruction, and Lupis saw several rounds strike the hull. It was not enough to disable the ship, but Lupis turned on forward thrusters once more and gave chase.
Now the dance began again, only now it was the Zenith ship’s turn to be under the crosshairs trying to escape. It took several minutes for Lupis to manage to pretarget his enemy, and this time, the large E-cannons did not miss. The Rhapsody passed through the scattered shrapnel and wreckage at full blast, the pieces of the Interceptor bouncing off the hull like a steel rainstorm.
The adrenaline was still pumping fiercely, and it would take a little time for the bounty hunter to come down from his high, but for the time being, it looked like they were finally in the clear. Lupis took his trembling hands from the flight sticks and took a deep breath. He glimpsed at the battery life indicator, which was now angrily blinking red. He had a quarter battery life left to try to get to a docking station. It would be funny, the bounty hunter thought, to evade certain destruction by his Zenith pursuers only to end up stranded in the empty void of space.
“Gabriel, set course to nearest station.” Lupis used the EEG function to communicate to his ship’s AI.
“Exodus Orbital Relay set.” Gabriel replied. Exodus was the major satellite that orbited Titan itself. A risky move, one that Zenith would surely be looking out for.
“Next nearest.”
“Port Vega. Set.”
“Do we have enough energy left to reach Vega?”
Port Vega was in orbit around Titan’s moon and may or may not have been a better choice. At that time though, a little distance would be appreciated from any Zenith forces that may be trying to follow or track him.
“We would need to disable all non-essential power functions including weapon systems. Even then the margin for error is slim. With no more evasive maneuvers it is possible to barely reach the station.”
“Disable non-essential functions, set course, depart.” Lupis commanded.
The suddenly weary bounty hunter rose from the pilot chair as the AI took over basic navigations and made his way back to his personal cabin. He managed to barely escape with his life from Zenith custody, and now he found himself immediately plunging himself into the game of danger again. Was he becoming some sort of nihilistic glutton for punishment? Was it a deathwish? Or worse yet…survivor’s guilt?
This time as he entered his cabin, Lupis avoided the holo-picture that stood near his bed. He couldn’t meet her gaze this time and he didn’t want to do the soul searching to try to answer any of those questions. No, he was simply a Titan doing a job, and he did that job better than any other Titan that had ever lived. He now had his quarry, and would figure out how to deliver them. Just another job, he told himself. It was as simple as that. But first, he would need to wait for the heat to die down…
* * * *
The Zenith forces that remained at the dig site numbered into the hundreds at this point. The gathering of Constructo 500 construction drones, MV1 battle drones, and by now over a dozen crab-like CMIs were skittering around the site. All of these turned to the sky as their onboard targeting systems began warning of a meteor that was now plummeting straight towards them.
And then the sky darkened as the approaching threat loomed into view, blocking out the sun. A fiery aurora danced in the western sky, it appeared as though the atmosphere was on fire. The object was approaching at an impossible speed, and the calculations that the Zenith AI did discovered that this doom would fall upon the entire site within seconds. It was too late to react.
Robotic entities did not feel fear and did not lament their impending doom, otherwise there would have been mass panic, crying and terrified screams filling their air, much like there was suddenly within nearby Furwood. Ordinary Titans there, many of them just awakening to the new dawn, preparing for their lives in ordinary manner, saw the shadow pass across the sun, saw the sky darken and many looked out their windows or up to the sky to see the massive meteor plunging towards Titan. There had been no broadcasts across Titan-net, no preparation or forewarning, and the sounds of screaming could be heard echoing across the dry desert air all the way at the dig site from the metropolis.
“It’s beautiful!” Eligah remarked, looking up into the sky from the now exposed chamber of the temple.
There was a sudden flash of light, followed by more, until it strobed spastically as the meteor was just overhead and about to crash down on top of them. Eligah could see though that these strobes of light were ventilation of some kind, expelling gasses and flame outward, as if to dissipate some of the energy from the comet.
The meteor fell as Eligah flinched, from his vantage directly under it, the entire sky seemed to be ablaze. But then, much to the surprise of both the elderly Titan, and the Zenith high intelligence, the site was not destroyed. The meteor disappeared unpon landing, and instead of a massive space boulder, a Titan rose from the impact zone, which Eligah had not yet taken notice of, but it had inadvertently destroyed all of the Zenith drones that had a moment ago been in the chamber of the temple with him. Destroyed was not accurate, for there was no trace left, it had completely evaporated them, leaving him alone in the underground depression with this fantastic creature.
“My word!’ Eligah cried out, staring blankly at the Titan now before him. “You’re real! I knew it! I knew it!”
The Titan looked around at his surroundings and regarded the elderly prairie dog.
“After two millenium…” The booming voice resonated from the towering Titan. “I have been summoned.”
* * * *
Once Bingo reached the highway he ditched the armored van. His cybernetic body could take quite a pounding and could withstand trauma that would put an ordinary Titan into a hospital. He didn’t pull over and get out, he simply ditched it while in motion.
This proved to be a good decision, as Bingo rolled down a steep embankment down the side of the highway, several Zenith vehicles were catching up and opened fire. Pieces of hot shrapnel rained down on his head as he rolled to a stop. Bingo knew he had to keep moving though, it would not be long before the Zenith robots searched the vehicle and when they didn’t find a charred body, they would quickly be on him once again.
The cyborg legs bore the Wolverine on a swift wind as he was fully capable of reaching speeds to match the other vehicles speeding down the highway at that time. His legs carried him back up the embankment a few hundred yards away where he just so happened to come across a freight truck just about matching his speed. He reached out and with machine assisted strength, grabbed onto the back end.
Bingo allowed the truck to whisk him away from the situation for a few miles, before finding another truck to hopscotch to. He played this game for some time, all the while getting closer to the city again. Before reaching city limits, he abandoned his ride and instead, walked back. This also proved beneficial, as he eventually saw a Zenith checkpoint set up, where several CMIs and what looked to be a few supersoldiers would have been waiting for him along with the usual compliment of MV1 units.
It took the rest of the morning and afternoon to traverse the city safely. There had been checkpoints and search parties patrolling the streets everywhere. The city of Furwood had become a military installation by all appearances. Bingo stuck to side streets and alleys where he could, and avoided the public transportation.
It was late in the afternoon, about two hours before sundown when the cyborg finally reached the beach and the boardwalk along the oceanfront. He sighed heavily when he saw the Titans walking around carefree along the boardwalk, unmolested by the Zenith troops swarming the rest of the city. He afforded himself a small moment of comfort when he stopped briefly at a vendor set up along the waterfront and bought some hot food.
Bingo found a spot along the beach and sat down right in the sand, and ate his exotic delicacy. A fresh breeze was blowing in from the ocean and ruffled his fur pleasantly. The sound of the tide gently rolling in and back out was an intoxicating sound, and Bingo could see why Titans could mistake this for paradise. It might have been the closest thing on this miserable planet as Titans might find, he mused.
Bingo contacted Rocky, who was worried, but happy to finally hear from someone. The cyborg was already moving back across the sand towards where his internal mapping system had placed the site of the research vessel beneath the waters.
“Raise up. It’s time for us to leave.” Bingo said to Rocky.
“What about the others? Where’s my brothers?”
“About that…” Bingo sighed. This entire expedition had been stupid, a total waste of time. He was angry at the old Titan from diverting them. Had they gone instead back to their rebel contacts to fix his systems, they would not be in this situation they were now in. Defeat was not the way of a Wolverine, and was not the way of Cabraland. “We’re going to get them.”
Bingo took one last moment to enjoy the fresh air, the wide blue sky and the gentle lapping waves. One last perfect moment, the kind you only get a few times in this short life if you’re lucky. He committed the moment to memory before plunging into the ocean, heading towards a future that was uncertain of many things, but one thing he was counting on was not seeing another site this like for a long long time.