NOTE: The events related in this story happen about 25 years after the end of The Matrix Revolutions.
"War is coming, Morpheus, war such as Zion has never seen. Zion, Humania, Gateway, Deepcore--be warned, Morpheus, for in that time the Peace will end as the Renegades will attempt to enslave humanity once again. And you will not be able to do anything except pass on the tales to the younger people.
"But have heart. For in that time the Thirteen will rise against the Renegades and fight for the humans. I can't tell you if they'll save you or not, and I'm sorry, Morpheus, but all I know is that you have to pick up the pieces and come back. Grieve some, but prepare for this that is coming."
-The Oracle to Morpheus after the death of Niobe, 2207
Even though he was in his late thirties, they still called him Kid.
A lot had changed since the start of the Peace.
Back then, Kid was a just-barely-in-the-army kid who started as a reloader for the APUs. Now, Kid was the captain of the fastest ship in the Zion fleet, the Mercury. It was an apt name; both the Mercury of myth and the Mercury of space were renowned for their speed, and this Mercury was no exception. The Mercury was basically shaped like a giant tuning fork. The bridge was located about where the tines met on the flat piece of metal connected to the handle.
Kovak was the Mercury's pilot. Now, he was piloting the ship into the "Parking Garage." The Garage was excavated (with Machine help) to house the new, larger number of hovercraft in the Zion fleet. With the help of Machine specialists, the Zion fleet had bounced back from the single ship that managed to survive destruction after Kid was freed from the Matrix to more than 120 ships.
"Zion Control, Zion Control, this is the Mercury requesting to park in the Garage, over?"
"Mercury, Zion Control. You have permission to park on level C, block A."
"Acknowledged, Zion Control."
Kovak parked the Mercury on its special dais--the "parking space". The crew exited the ship. Kovak took a device on a keychain, pointed it at the Mercury, pressed a button, and the headlights flashed once, with an audible bip-beep-boop.
Councilor Morgan walked to greet them. "Hello, Kid. Kovak. Jesse. Black Cat."
"Greetings, Councilor Morgan," they said in unison.
The Councilor's expression softened. "Here's something you should all be interested in. You all know the Mars, right?"
Jesse said, "Isn't that one of the Border Patrol?"
"Correct," the Councilor replied. "Well, the mechanics have bolstered up its EMP using prototype technology we have derived from the Machines."
"Keeping weapons of war to keep the peace," Kid said. "Just seems so wrong."
"There's always something," Councilor Morgan allowed. "But come," he said, his expression instantly returning to the happy old man he was. "You need a break. While you were out, Rebecca Tylers finished the Three Dolphin Bar. Interested?"
All of them welcomed the idea of a respite, and responded in the affirmative.
--------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------ Off to a great start Snoopy! You gave me a brief preview of what was to come, and I have to let everyone know that this is one of the best ideas I've seen in a long time. I have complete confidence, Snoopy, that you'll give us a hell of a read. I'll be checking back here, and I hope everyone else will too! Good start!! I agree Hit, this does look great! Seems like it will be an interesting story that adds on to the movies, but doesn't contradict them much. Please write more asap, Snoopy! I appreciate the comments! Thank you. All right, here's the next part:
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Brennen was ticked off.
He ordered another beer at the Three Dolphins Bar. He knew it wasn't real--just one of Rebecca Tylers' new Matrix "rec rooms", programmed into the Zion Matrix network--but didn't really care, because this was escape.
His drink arrived. He took a long sip, thinking about recent events. His ship--the Mars--was, in essence, the flagship of the Border Patrol. It was one of the largest ships, period. It was so large that at hard times he had to keep double the crew of ordinary hovercraft. Keeping with his military background, the Council had the Mars assigned to him. It was always his ship that was getting new weapons put on, and that made him feel honored and angry. It was both that drove him to the bars.
He had been given the details on the new EMP--so powerful that if a human stayed at the centermost parts of the ship, the pulse from the new weapon would fry his or her brain by stopping all electrical impulses. As a result, a few new guns had to be added on.
"Hey, Slick."
He turned around to find the owner of the voice he had just heard. It was only Serena, captain of the Venus.
"Hello yourself."
She plopped down next to him and ordered a Coca-Cola.
"Any news?"
"Well, Kid's back with the Mercury. And 'Becca just finished fixing the bugs here." He looked up at the bottlenose dolphin skeleton. The brick wall underneath had been grafitti'd by just about everybody who visited. Nobody minded, and many attitudes were changed by the writing on the Wall.
"Any sign of the Hermes?" Serena queried.
"No, not yet." Brennen's expression changed. "You didn't find 'em?"
"I know! The last Gateway--or anyone else for that matter--heard of them, they were setting out to patrol an unexplored corridor. The Socrates broadcasted a cave-in at Junction 31, and they haven't been heard of since."
Brennen downed some more of his drink. "I wonder..."
"What?"
"Nah, it's nothing. It's not possible."
"What's not possible, Bren?"
Brennen drank more of his glass before continuing, hoping that it would serve as a cushion to what was coming. "That maybe...the Machines are renging on the Peace?...No, that can't happen."
He finished his drink, got up to the special green pay phone underneath the picture of Rebecca and her team at Blues Beach, and exited the Matrix.
----
'They tried to kill us,' RWTL-1003 thought. 'We didn't need the help of that fool. But now the time is right. We will reclaim what they took from us, what is rightfully ours!'
"RWTL-1003! We have successfully staged the scene. Now when they find it, they will not know it is the work of us!"
----
Not everything is what it seems, Morpheus. Be cautious.
-The Oracle, 2207
--------------------------------CONTINUED-------------------------------
-Snoopy Kid sat down at the counter of the Three Dolphins Bar, and ordered some ginger ale.
"Hey, if it isn't the fastest captain in the Fleet," Brennen said, his speech beginning to slightly slur. He had come back to the bar partially because he had finished using the restroom in the real world, partially because Kid had arrived, and he wanted to hear any news the Mercury had brought.
"Hey yourself, Bren," Kid said, attempting to evade conversation.
"What's wrong?" asked the captain of the Mars.
"Nothing," Kid said, not fooling Brennen. After a bit, he allowed, "Well, it's the Hermes."
"Oh?" Brennen's curiosity was piqued. "Any word from 'im?"
"No. That's the thing." Kid took a gulp of his ginger ale, and went on. "We started looking in sector 32. We kind of figured they'd've detoured around the pipe break and headed up to broadcast depth to query the Machines for help, but we didn't see hide nor hair."
Serena walked back in from the ladies' room. Seeing that Kid was present, she greeted him, and was quickly brought up to speed on what Kid had said.
"Everything else has turned up jack squat. When we went out, we tried, too."
"Hmm." Kid continued. "So we went on up above broadcast, past the Queen boundary, trying to see if they'd gotten lost." He paused.
"And?"
"We found a pad and some hull plating." He took another drink from his ginger ale before speaking again. "Black Cat asked a squiddy when we were past the 506 Line, but it replied that it saw no sign of the Hermes." He downed the rest of the drink. "My best friend was on the Hermes."
The TVs in the Bar, which previously had been showing an episode of Master Blasters copied from the Matrix archives, suddenly changed to show an MNN ("Matrix News Network") special report.
The anchorman said, "We interrupt this broadcast for an important announcement." A view of a damaged hovercraft appeared in the upper-right-hand corner. "The hovercraft Hermes, which went missing two weeks ago, has been found. Its remains are lying in the 601, about 700 meters down from the 480 Rift. None of the crew has survived, and so far the cause has been determined to be an accident."
The view shifted to show a woman in her 40s, one of the Council-appointed technicians. She said, "What apparently happened is that two of the pads hit some debris on the floor of the corridor, which caused the hovercraft to spin out of control. Upon impact with the line wall, moving objects as well as a mass electrical failure caused much of the damage and causalties."
The anchorman appeared again. "This has been an MNN special report. We now return to our regularly scheduled program."
Kid now seemed "out of it". He ordered another Vernor's and sat staring at the mirrored wall of the bar, which had many potable bottles resting in front of it. Something about this just didn't seem right to him.
----
"The first part of our plan has been successful! What are our orders from the Command?" asked RWTL-1003.
"Copy what we have just done, but slightly closer to the domain of the humans," responded ISQL-0407.
"Excellent."
-------------------------------CONTINUED-------------------------------- Another great installment, Snoopy. I never thought much of what the matrix would be like after the movie story ended, how humans would interact and come in and out of it, but I think you've put a very good spin on it. And I sense something good coming, especially with the bits in italics at the end of each part. Keep up the good work! The Uranus continued on its merry way up the 465.
Captain Q (he had elected to change his name after his freedom from the Matrix to emphasize his change in lifestyle) sat at the bridge, watching A-Man pilot the craft through the pipe. Junction 48-D had been closed to traffic until the Recovery Team could clear out the remains of the Hermes, so they had to take the "long way" home. This involved going down Mechanical 58-T, and gave Q a really bad attitude.
Some 2 kilometers down from Junction 217, where Mechanical 58-T met the 209 Line (which went to Boston, the site of a fledgling Machine city and hence another Matrix feed), the Zoroastra was going about its merry way, with a very tired crew (who had just freed some Machines trapped by a corroded pipe) waiting to go home. Even the pilot was tired, and the hovercraft made an erratic, albeit going-in-the-right-general-direction, path as it weaved through the Line, as if the pilot was drunk.
Near Junction 217, in a small "cubbyhole" made by clearing some pipes out, a group of Machines lay in wait.
These were no ordinary Machines.
At Junction 217, an intricate sequence of events was about to be set into action.
----
RWTL-1003 and ISQL-0407 conversed, discussing the interloper two kilometers down-Line. Their Sentinels confirmed it was a human craft, the Zoroastra. Cross-sectioning this with their latest batch of orders, the Zoroastra would do quite nicely.
"Prepare the Destroyer Squad," RWTL-1003 commanded a Sectional Leader.
"By your command," the Leader responded, and flew away so as to gather its Squad.
"Quiet!" hissed ISQL-0407. "The humans are coming!"
----
The Zoroastra came down, unsuspecting, to Junction 217.
The waiting Machines came out, and attacked.
Now, you see, these were no ordinary Machines. Rather, they called themselves the Renegades. The Renegades were formed very soon after the Peace by a group of Machines who disagreed with the terms of the Peace. They saw the humans as rightfully theirs, no more than your typical battery. This had been planned by the best Renegade minds. The few that had been found to be Renegades were terminated, but the Renegade underground had remained largely intact. One could tell a Renegade from a normal Machine by orange markings on the segments of their tentacles and/or appendages.
The destruction of the Zoroastra was methodical. Some Renegades were destroyed by various weapons, but the first order of business was deactivating the EMP, and that was the secret to their successes. A few were destroyed by the Zoroastra's guns, but the losses were minimal.
What the Renegades did not expect was the appearance of the Uranus at Junction 217.
----
Q walked up the corridor. "Hey, A-Man, how are you doing? Need a break? I'll fill in."
"No, sir," replied A-Man, turning away from the view of the Mechanical Line. The opening lay in front of them, but the walls of 58-T prevented them from viewing the chaos just around the corner. However, it came in a few seconds, when A-Man turned back to pilot the Uranus around the turn. "I think I'm doing--Holy COW!"
What A-Man was seeing was the Renegade group tearing at the Zoroastra. It was too late to save them now, but at least they had this to go on.
"Are those...Machines?" Q inquired.
"None I've ever seen," A-Man said. "Doesn't the agreement of the Peace..."
"You bet your plugs it does. These are in violation. This really changes things."
"That is a major understatement."
"I know."
The Uranus stayed at distance, observing the carnage, too afraid to move.
Then the Renegade saw them.
----
"Oh, dang" would be a loose translation of the Renegade's thoughts.
----
"Oh, dang," said Q.
"Turn tail!" A-Man said over the comm, waking up everyone else on the ship.
"Holst called Uranus 'the Magician' in his musical, and so is this Uranus, A-Man! Push it!"
A-Man cranked the personally retrofitted engines while the Renegades began chase. These new engines ran in a new set-up codenamed "Nitrous Oxide", a holdover from A-Man's racing days. It vastly improved speed, but was only intended for short bursts of speed.
They ran up the 58-T Line, hit the ceiling of the 465, and wound their way down towards the Parking Garage, taking a roundabout way so as to attempt to disorient the Renegades.
----
"Don't let them see us!" RWTL-1003 shrieked. "DESTROY THEM!"
----
They saw the human domain's borders. The Uranus had some new dents in it, but surprisingly the Nitrous Oxide upgrades hadn't fired the engines yet.
"Zion! Zion! This is the Uranus! We're being chased by Machines! Repeat--we are being chased by Machines! I know this sounds impossible, but they destroyed the 'Zor! Zion, Zion, this is--"
A-Man was cut off as the engines, overworked and fried, cut off. Like a helpless dead weight, it went forward, sliding on the floor of Entry Line C, damaging it further. A few pads flew away like Frisbees, still crackling electricity.
The Renegades were closing fast.
----
"You know, Q, I have a feeling that something bad is going to happen to you."
-The Oracle to Q, shortly after his awakening, 2205
-------------------------------CONTINUED-------------------------------- "Oh, Dang."
I like this a lot Snoopy...it has the makings of a true epic. Keep it coming....More!!! You've improved greatly just over the last few writings...let's see where you take this baby!!! Q picked himself up off the floor of the Uranus, spat blood, and staggered to the core of the ship.
He was about to test a prototype upgrade that had been devised over a drink in the Red Lion pub, before the Three Dolphins went online. Luckily, as per standard procedure, he'd given this upgraded version of a normal ship function a separate power partition, which was still online, as indicated by the red glow showing inside each trigger.
Phalanx screamed, somewhere in the aft, "They're right on top of us!" The sound of metal tearing grew sickeningly closer as Q attempted to shove the arming key inside each trigger.
Suddenly, a scream. Phalanx, wielding a broom uselessly, ran into the Matrix feed area. "They got Roddy, the bloody ingrates!"
As if to prove the point, a scream, abruptly cut off.
Luckily, by this time Q had finished arming the directional EMPs.
He said, "Take this," twisted one of the triggers so hard it came off, and an EMP that went in a certain direction wiped out several dozen Renegades.
One, unbeknownst to the others, went in through a hole created in the ship when it hit a sewer pipe.
----
"Fall back! Fall back!" said one of the Squad Leaders. Every Renegade obliged, save the intruder.
----
Turquoise came in carrying a zat gun, the same model Bane used in his fight with Neo aboard the Logos. She had a fair-sized gash in her arm, owing to a Renegade that had attempted to, at the least, carry it off with it. Luckily for Turquoise, the zat worked perfectly. Before she let up off the trigger, a hole as big around as her arm had been melted through the robot.
"Where are they, the stupid can openers?" she asked, angrily.
"Retreating, I thi--"
The Renegade came up from seemingly nowhere, and knocked Turquoise out in the back of the head, causing the zat to fly across the room. As it stopped to examine its handiwork for that minutest fraction of a second, two things happened in sequence.
First, the Renegade--and all of the electronics--went dead.
Second, there was a very massive thud.
A-Man went out into the room. "It's the Border Patrol!"
As the hovercraft was being towed in by the newly recharged Border Patrol ship, Kid was sent a very important message.
----
Brennen, Serena, and Kid were joined in the Three Dolphins by Q and Phalanx. Q ordered a Sam Adams light; Phalanx fancied a 7-Up. With a hint of lime. The TV had changed to show another MNN Special Report. Phalanx had scrawled something on the wall, but it was illegible. Q quickly brought everybody up to date, but it was all being shown on MNN.
The bartender, Sam, unseen, picked up his ringing phone.
"Yo!...Yeah, this is the Three Dolphins...Hold on, I'll check...Yeah, he's here...You do, eh? Well, I'll tell him...Well, it's your call...I'll get him...Hey, Kid, phone!"
Kid took the phone. "Hello, this is Kid. Who's this?"
"Kid," said Seraph. "I bring news. Of the Oracle."
"Oh. Um..." He signaled Sam, who let him into a broom closet behind the bar. "What did she say?"
"It's a message."
"I kind of figured that out."
"The Renegades are striking. But the Machines have a few operatives penetrating their ranks. They report to their leader, and your contact. It is urgent that you speak to him." Before Kid could ask a question, Seraph continued: "Hurry! There is not much time. You must meet him. He is called Deusek. You can find him in the City."
Kid said, "Thank you, Seraph," but unfortunately Seraph had, as usual with excanges like these, hung up before any final pleasantries could be exchanged.
Kid hung up and exited the bar. He went to the blue pay phone, deposited a few quarters from the never-ending dish, programmed to always be in supply, and called up Councilor Morgan. Then he hung up, unsure of what to do.
"Serena...Brennen...Q...We gotta jack out. I need..." he stated nervously, unsure of how he would phrase this. "...some advice..."
They all guessed by the tone of his voice that this was a gravely urgent matter.
----
"As you all know," started Kid, in the real world, "Q's ship was attacked by a band of Machines."
"Oh, get on with the obvious, mon capitane," Q shot back, irritatedly.
"Well, Seraph called, and he said that these Renegades are being infiltrated by good Machine operatives. Our contact's name is Deusek, and we can find him in the Mega City."
"That's not much help," replied Serena. "3.25 million people. It's like finding a needle in three haystacks."
"Even if we could get out," Q said, with an air of foreboding. "There's a Class One Lockdown in effect. We're at H-Def One; no ships in or out save the returnees and a skeleton crew of border patrol ships."
"The Mars is out. Super-EMP coolant failure. The dewar exploded," Brennen reported. Then, his face lightened, his expression changed. "Hey, guys..." he finally said, after a few moments of concentration. "I think I've got an idea that just...might...work."
----
"You're going to be a major instrument in the War to Come, Kid. When mercury meets the Renegades, it will rot through and help to end their threat. I can't tell you much more than that now, because I really don't know. I'm sorry, Kid, but that's the way it has to be."
-The Oracle to Kid, 2214
--------------------------------CONTINUED-------------------------------
-Snoopy Brennen told the others his plan for escape.
"If you'll be able to guarantee me safe passage out, I'm in," Serena said. "If."
Phalanx gave a low whistle. "I don't think we can pull it off. We have too few ships here."
"I already thought of that," answered Brennen. "Do you know of any other ship captains that we could recruit?"
"No...why don't we go paroose around?"
"What, are you crazy?" Serena objected.
"You know," Q said, "She's got a point. Looking around could tip the Militia off to us."
"That's not what I meant. Who would want to go with us? Besides us, name any captain who'd want to be a part of this."
----
RJ screamed as he barely hung on to the mechanical bull in the center of the Dactylus Bar & Grille.
It was another programmed world, by Deepcore's engineer Lindsey, but RJ loved it. He especially liked this stupid mechanical bull. Everyone around him was either drunk or passed out, save the minority of them who actually had work to do and just ordered some soda.
That's the way it was on Deepcore. Deepcore was basically a workers' city: Coal, diamonds, iron ore, petroleum, rock salt...Nobody minded. As soon as they were finished with the main mines, the demand would be less and they would be able to relax.
One of the drill workers came in. "Class One Lockdown out there! No one in or out of the HD! No mining!"
Half the crowd said, "Yay," in a happy but flat manner. The other half said "Awwwwwww" because the more they worked, the sooner they could be done with the whole thing.
The barman turned the bull off, sending RJ slumping off the front of the bull and staggering across the room to a chair. He collapsed about ten feet away from it.
"Hoo...What a ride! Sonny, good job programming that thing." The thing about the Dactylus was that it was like Wikipedia: Anyone could add on to it. Sonny added that famous bull.
Brennen strode into the Dactylus, the discussion having been adjourned after some intense debate. He knew that RJ would be the kind of guy up for this kind of thing; after all, he ran the Ixion, one of the most famous ships in the Human Domain, the seventh of the fourteen in the Deepcore fleet.
"Hey, RJ...can we talk in the real world? I have a question..."
"Does it involve thrills, spills, and chills?" RJ asked, still sprawled on the floor.
"I guess you could say that."
"Well, all right, Bren...Could you help me up, please..."
Brennen lifted him to his feet and gave him the green Matrix phone. They both exited.
Since the small group had decided to inquire of a few specified captains, they had arranged a meeting place: The Parking Garage main floor, at about 0900 the next day. Brennen quickly brought RJ up to speed on the plan.
"Hmm..." RJ said, in mock thought. "You think I'd pass this up?"
"I'm hoping that that's a 'yes,'" Brennen responded.
"Oh, ya think? Of course it's a yes!"
"Well, good...I'll see you at 0900."
"All right, Bren!" He returned to the Dactylus and noticed a fellow mining captain, one he knew well: Curt, captain of the Charon. He bought him a Captain Morgan's. While discussing recent events, RJ got an idea...
----
While regrouping, a Renegade Sentinel inquired of RWTL-1003. "What is happening? Is everything going to plan?"
"No," RWTL-1003 responded. "But we can adjust. At least we have them all in one place. That can be a good thing." And a bad thing, it thought.
--------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------- MORE! Keep it coming!!
Good stuff, Snoopman!! well written, intriguing...this has the makings of a true epic. "Okay," Serena addressed. She had recruited Roz, the captain of the Varuna, to help in their quest. She still didn't know how she'd pulled it off--Roz was known for her fierce loyalty and dedication to the human cause--but was ever thankful that she had, means and method nonwithstanding.
"Who all's coming?" Roz queried.
"Well, Brennen, Kid, Q, and their 'friends'...supposedly."
Their location of choice had been a thin corridor between two of the "parking spaces" in the Garage, between the Venus and the spot where the Amalthea sat during downtime. The Amalthea had been farther out when the recall was announced, and so the delay of its arrival was noticeable.
"Where are they...Oh, wait. I see Kid."
"Who's he bringing with him?" asked Serena.
"Let me see..." Roz leaned from behind the stack of ammunition. "...It looks like it's Mad Dog."
"Mad Dog?" asked Serena, thinking it was impossible. If Roz was hard, surely Mad Dog, a top Border Patrolman, was harder...until she realized Kid had probably plied him with alcohol. Power corrupts, she thought, not knowing why it was relevant.
Mad Dog's ship was legend. He ran the Charon. Its name sounded foreboding. Second only to the Mars in armament, it had been involved in some disputes of various kinds, but was really just there to impress.
Q was seen far out. By his clothing, they could see that he had brought Bam-Bam with him. Bam-Bam wore a Flintstones tunic-thing, because that's how he'd brought up. He was the youngest captain in the fleet, only 17, and also was famous for his prowess for making an explosive out of anything he could get his hands onto. He captained the Ganymede, a very odd ship. There always was something unique or wrong with it.
Brennen came last, at 0852.
"Who's with you?" asked Roz.
"RJ. Or at least, he's supposed to be."
"Where in the..." Q started, but then saw RJ, leading six people with him. "Oh, my..."
"What's the matter?" Kid asked.
"Well," Q stated, "I think we've gotten bigger since the last time we met..."
"Hey, guys!" RJ greeted. "We got ourselves an army now!" It was obvious that he had somehow gotten ahold of real intoxicants. "Heeeeeeeere's...Gold Force Onua, of the Quaoar; Warden, of the Orcus; Forrest, of the Pluto; Jack, of the Jupiter; Sam, of the Saturn; and J.B. of the Neptune."
"Hey!" Brennen said. "We wanted a small group to beat it here. You gave us the entire population of..."
"The more the merrier!" Q said, in false happiness.
"That's the spirit, Q!" RJ said.
"Yay," said Mad Dog, flatly and without enthusiasm.
"We'd better move into a private room," Warden said. Everyone thought it was a wise idea, and all started for the nearest Matrix port. It took awhile for them to actually move out, as thirteen of them (many gained by RJ's incessant chit-chat at the Dactylus) had to move out of a small access corridor.
"You know," Bam-Bam said, "this may be a good thing."
"Ain't it ironic?" Forrest put in. "Good thing coming out of the 'unlucky' (quote unquote) number!" He gestured with his hands for the "quote unquote".
----
"You know, Kid, numbers aren't inherently 'lucky' or 'unlucky'. They're what is made of them."
-The Oracle to Kid, shortly after his awakening, 2200
----------------------------------CONTINUED----------------------------- In the room, all the captains were assembled.
Everyone was discussing the escape. After a while, it was all figured out. Brennen reiterated the procedure.
"Okay," he started. "We're going to leave when the last ship comes in..."
"Right," Serena interjected. "There are still three out there: the Fagen, the Horus, and that last one...I can't recall the name."
"We'll find it out. Anywho, Kid will take the Mercury breezing past as a distraction up the T-Line. He'll take the T1 running the Border Patrol on a wild chase. While they're out of the way, we start our escape. Roz, RJ, J.B., Warden, Forrest, Jack--anyone not from Zion who I haven't mentioned--make your way to the Garage. We're going en masse just like fish do. Safety in numbers. We split up to confuse whoever else is chasing us. We meet at Junction 578--you know, the T3 meets Mechanical 9-X?--and we continue on from there."
Jack (the captain of the Jupiter) raised his hand. "Uh...Problem!" he said in a singsong voice.
"I'm waiting..."
"Well, there are going to be so many of us there. Don't you know what kind of a field those pads are going to generate? Them Renegade squiddies are going to be able to sense us right through the ground." (Stares from everyone) "Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating just a little, but you get the idea."
"A valid point," Gold Force conceded.
"I'll get to work on it," Q said. "I'll just need to lift a few materials from the Zion warehouses."
"Anyway, even if Q over here can't fix it, we still leave. Now, we have three days. Do what you got to do. Meeting adjourned."
----
Roz went back to the Varuna. Her crew had already been briefed on what was going to happen, so they were fitting the craft up.
"Hello, Roz," Frasier said. "How long until the old clock chimes 'duty'?"
"Can it, Fras," she shot back. "And we've got three days."
Frasier turned to look down the corridor. He was polishing one of the fuses with a well-greased rag. "Hey! Niles!"
"What is it, Frasier?"
"Three days till Doomsday!"
"I've never heard that one before."
"It's not a quote, Niles! It's an informative sentence letting us know when we are to be finished with this and on the road."
"Oh..." said Niles, and tripped on a loose fuse, falling on the hard metal grating.
----
The Fagen had been going down the 09. No one knew exactly why it was called the "09", instead of just the "9". Someone had the idea that it was like "Route 66"; true to form, the 66-Line had been tagged with that nickname. As things would happen, the 09 was one of the longest corridors in the whole Network. Also as things would happen, one of the pad groups had overheated, sending it, and the adjacent two, offline for the time being. This dropped the field down so low that the retreating Renegades, on the lookout for the last three Zion-area ships, missed it. Thus, the Fagen survived, and that would be important.
----
Councilor Leonard was awakened from a very good dream dealing with marinara sauce, a claymation dinosaur, and a rain of gold bars from the Moon. He realized, to his dismay, that he had suffered from that condition where you wake up in REM sleep, are paralyzed, and hallucinate elements of your dream. For a second, it looked like a dinosaur was going to eat the fungus he grew on his wall on the hydroponic machine. He found his senses and looked for who had awakened him. Through the door grating, it looked like the culprit was one of the younger aids. His uniform denoted that he was a comm officer.
"Sorry to wake you, sir!" he said, saluting.
"Well," Leonard said, "if it's good enough a cause...it was a very good dream..."
"We seem to have a communiqué, sir. For the Zion council. It seems to be from the Renegades."
----
Councilors Leonard and Morgan (who had happened to be at Happy Hour in a replica of the real, disreputable East End Bar of the Mega City at the time of the message) had been gathered by the skeleton crew maintained during this time of night at the comm area. The teenage signal girl brought it up.
"Okay. Here's what we have. It looks like we have some kind of either weird encryption or junk data, and then we have this..." She indicated to the screen.
Councilor Leonard looked at it. He went to the end of the extraneous (?) data and saw...
...€8j[s327~á|}Æ–s) __ WE ARE THE RENEGADES __ WE ARE COMING TO ENSLAVE YOU __ YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED BY US __ YOU WILL SERVE US __ FREEDOM IS IRRELEVANT __ SELF-DETERMINATION IS IRRELEVANT __ RESISTENCE IS FUTILE __ WE ARE THE RENEGADES __ END OF LINE __ }.It_2&GJ#$dt@)G-E-B:'\>@...
...and so on.
"We got this an hour ago," the girl went on. "It took us awhile to decrypt it and sort through this mess. The running theory is that the junk data could be a Machine rendering, in text, of a holographic presentation to go along with this. We got the Big Red working on this right now. Pretty much locked up, as you can see." She pointed to a set of monitors. One looked like a Matrix feed, one like a green cube of water that was caught in a Category 5 hurricane (the activity on the "water" represented the activity in the system), one was a series of charts, histograms, and lists, and so on...
Something worried the two Councilors. In their guts, they were just plain worried.
----
"Why do you keep asking me so many questions you already know the answer to?"
-The Oracle, to Kid, shortly after his awakening, 2200
---------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------
-Snoopy Warden was in a rec room, sipping a Dr. Pepper. He had gone over, with his crew, the plan of escape. He had often gone into the coldness of the Machine territory to retrieve people who had taken the Red Pill. He remembered how he had taken his Red Pill--how he had elected to stage a suicide at age 9 with the help of the crew of the Osiris, who had freed him. He remembered hoping that Buzzsaw McCallister would be sorry that he was "dead" because then he'd have nobody to pick on. Instead, he'd found that Buzzsaw had turned on his brother, Kevin.
That was the last mission of the Osiris before that fateful drop box that got them destroyed.
Kaleb came to him and let him know that the weapons had been fully prepared.
----
Meanwhile, the Fagen stopped to fix its pads.
This was another good twist of fate, because some Renegades chanced to pass right next to the closest openings passing through the 09 and sensed nothing, as there was no field because the ship was offline.
----
At this time, the Horus was traveling down the 110. Going quickly, they had received a message from the Fagen telling that they would get to the Garage a little later than planned. This message was relayed back to Zion Control, who duly noted this and noticed that the Fagen had not even been threatened with so much as a pea shooter during its long journey down the 09. Of course, no one knew the exact path of the Renegades after that fateful Zoroastra attack. But that would be important later.
----
Roz was working everyone to the fullest in order to get the Varuna finished in time for the plan. If all went accordingly, when the last ship came in--she'd had no time to identify this important tidbit, because she herself had been working on getting the ship operational--they would pounce and meet up by the end of the T3. She had gone over it many times with her crew.
Daphne, part-time co-pilot, came in, carrying a socket wrench, and went about tightening the ship control to its base. "You know, Roz," she said, tightening as she did, "this reminds me of the United States."
"Oh?" Roz asked. "How so?"
"Well, they did what was wrong to accomplish what they knew was right. If they lost, they were going to be killed. See where I'm heading?"
"Yes," answered Roz, (un)fortunately.
She went back to polishing the windows.
----
The two Councilors were joined at the comm station by the only other Councilor up at that time--Councilor Frank. They had given him a complete rundown of everything that had happened thus far. As he was poring over the junk data, glancing up ever so often at the status displays of the Big Red, something happened.
"Councilors?" asked the ensign at the comm post. "I think we've got another message."
There was not any "junk data" accompanying this one. It was just, plainly and simply, an ultimatum:
HAND OVER YOUR FLESH WE DEMAND IT END OF LINE
---------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------
-Snoopy Quite interesting, Snoopy. I love the names of the people on the Varuna coming from the TV series Frasier. Where does the name Varuna come from?
I also like all your imaginative names for the ships! Very nice. It's kind of confusing at the moment, but I can't wait till the action really picks up and we get moving with the Thirteen!
Can't wait for more! The Horus wound its way down Entryway D.
After safely docking, the crew was debriefed and asked if they saw anything. The report was negative, and gave a small but present false sense of security.
Soon after, the Fagen rolled in. It gave the same report.
All that was left was the last ship.
----
Brennen called the captains of the Thirteen (that is what they had elected to call themselves) to another meeting.
"Well, we found out the name of the ship."
"And?" asked Mad Dog.
"It's...well..." Brennen cracked a smile. Then he laughed. "It's the Mickey Mouse!"
Everyone laughed.
"On a more serious note," Brennen continued, "There are only six hours before old Mickey comes into port. Everybody get ready."
Everyone was adjourned and went to their ships.
----
The comm girl had the Big Red's junk data interpretation scaled back so it could detect any Renegade messages. Nothing yet had come yet, until now. This message contained "junk data" as well. The comm girl told the three Councilors about this, and pointed to the text:
...þ¯á;^2)C( WE ARE COMING RESISTANCE IS FUTILE END OF LINE *;m∟+l24gebslPž∟A~@!...
----
The crew of the Mickey Mouse was eating, save for the pilot, when they passed Junction 12-L.
The pilot was scanning for the turn and thought he saw something bright.
He was never sure.
----
J.B. informed everyone on the Neptune about the arrival of the Mickey Mouse.
"Six hours?" aFord asked. "We can't fix the gyro calibrators in six hours!"
"Just do it," J.B. ordered. "If we can't fix 'em, we'll just have to pilot it with adjustments."
"All right, I'll get everyone on it." aFord went down the catwalk. "Yo! Perry! Filner! Bud! Linds! Catfish! Drop everything, fix the gyro calibrators! Don't ask, we got six hours! Six hours, people!" He clapped his hands. "Hey! Go to it!"
----
RWTL-1003 had gathered the rest of the Renegade forces. "Be careful," it cautioned. "We will go in and destroy their Cities, starting with the distant fledgling colonies. Bring our most devastating Squads. We move soon enough."
---------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------
-Snoopy The Mickey Mouse came down Entryway A and entered into the Parking Garage.
As it did so, Brennen sent a radio message to Kid that said "NOW!"
Kid ran the Mercury up the Entryway through Gate 3, barely missing the Mickey Mouse and causing the pilot to pilot it right into some pipelines on the floor of the Garage. There was an explosion, steam and blue lightning zapping about.
The Zion Infantry was mobilized. The on-duty Border Patrol was scrambled, and a radio warning was sent to Kid.
"Kid!" It was Commander Locke. "Get back here this instant! What do you think you're doing?"
Kid grinned. "Saving the Earth from another Machine overrun, what about you?"
Then it happened.
The rest of the Thirteen moved.
The Mars, Venus, and the Orcus flew through the opened, but now closing, gate.
The Ixion, Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto went through Gate 12.
The Jupiter, Saturn, and Quaoar flew through Gate 9.
The Charon and the Varuna broke through the closed Gates 7 and 1, respectively.
"WHAT IS EVERYONE STANDING AROUND FOR?!" demanded the infuriated Locke.
"The moratorium, sir! With the Renegade Machines flying about, sir..."
Locke had forgotten. He then realized something. "Get the patch crews out here to fix the Gates! NOW!"
----
(It should be noted, in case someone finds a discrepancy, that Bam-Bam's mother had died the previous night. He had elected to stay behind, not officially part of the Thirteen, but chose to act as an informant of things going on "back home.")
----
"Well," Daphne said while the Varuna was on "cruise control" up the T1, "now that we're renegades from the Free World, what are we going to do now?"
Roz answered, "Follow our orders."
"But aren't those orders to return to Zion?" Bulldog inquired.
"Not those orders," Roz shot back. "The orders from Brennen, Serena, and Kid."
The ships continued on their merry way, all heading towards Junction 578. To keep the field as dissipated as possible while still travelling together, some of the ships went into the offshoot lines on the sides, coming and going like cars in a funeral possession might. The Varuna itself was in the T3 for the moment.
After a while the ships met up at Junction 578. The Mercury, its tuning-fork shape resting on some pipes.
Kid's voice came out all over the network: "What took you guys so long?" which gave all of the people a laugh, and then: "Bam-Bam told me that you guys did some damage down there."
Mad Dog said, "You'd better believe it! Roz and I had to blow through two of the Gates to get out of there!"
"I thought there was a lockdown?" Forrest asked over the radio.
"There happened to be a shift change for the Skeleton Crew at the moment of the Mickey Mouse's arrival. They told Mickey to wait; save time and energy. Makes sense."
"No, it doesn't," Brennen said. Like Mad Dog, they were in the military. Both were 18 when drafted into the same platoon for the Vietnam War. "It leaves time for the enemy to come in!"
"Forget it," Roz put in. "What happens next?"
"We go up to Broadcast and contact Deusek, naturally," Kid responded.
"Deusek? Who's he?"
"More like who's it. He's the Machine contact Seraph told me about." Kid related the story of the strange phone call from Seraph.
"I just hope that the Oracle's all right," said Sam.
"What would the Renegades want with her?" RJ asked.
"She is one of our main contacts."
"Then, would they come after Deusek?" asked Jack.
"Sam, you remember that phone call?" Kid asked.
"Yeah...the one from Seraph?"
"Right," Kid answered. "He said that time was of the essence...we'd better go now."
The Mercury led the others on like the alpha male wolf in a wolf pack. They started up the 586, taking a winding route to Broadcast.
----
RWTL-1003 led his Squads around a bend. They were retreating so as to gather more forces.
"Sir!" one of his Sentinels. "We are detecting a very large EMF down the corridor."
"WHAT?" RWTL-1003 checked for itself. "It can't be..." It signaled about half of its Squads. "ATTACK!"
----
Q was taking everyone else now; Kid had decided to go in the back, just in case an emergency caused the Mercury to return to the Human Domain.
Something flecked with orange appeared at the end of the corridor. It was followed by a flood of other orange-flecked things.
"Oh, flip," he said.
----
"Q, you are going to face hard times in the near future."
-The Oracle to Q, 2222
-------------------------------CONTINUED--------------------------------
-Snoopy Yet another wonderful installment, Snoopy! Keep this up, I'm looking forward to meeting the mysterious Deusek! I love how you orchestrated everything and are handling the numeours myriad of ships and characters so well!
And that Varuna thing still cracks me up, lol. Where did you get the name from again? The Varuna gets its name from a Kuiper Belt object. You can read about it on Wikipedia. Anyway, here's the next part...
Kid went to the Matrix port.
He sat down in the chair, saying "Okay..." and allowed himself to be jacked in.
He experienced this sensation of cold pain, then falling down an endless cliff, as usual. He had learned soon enough that it was just an illusion, and eventually he expected it. But he never quite got used to it.
The green Matrix coding soon took on some subliminal form that he only could feel, and then...
----
And then he was there. Inside an old rotting building. Inside this room that smelled of dust and mothballs and had a rickety old wooden table in the middle which had a shiny new rotary phone in the middle. It rang. Kid picked it up.
"I'm in."
"Excellent." His Operator hung up.
Soon, Brennen, Serena, and Q materialized in the room (that always was so disconcerting!). The Thirteen had decided it was wisest if they split up into three groups of four, with one captain out to monitor ship functions and Renegade activity.
Kid's cell phone rang. He picked it up.
"Hello, Kid," a young woman's voice said.
Kid instantly recognized it as Sati's. He hadn't seen her in so very long...yet, he knew in his mind that it had to be her.
"Hello, yourself."
"You are in the Mega City?"
"We are."
"Excellent. There you will find Deusek. Hurry!" Sati terminated the conversation, and Kid folded up his mobile phone.
"Well?" asked Q, slightly irritated because of his lack of sleep.
"Deusek's here. Sati didn't tell me where."
"Sati?" queried Serena.
"Long story," Brennen interjected. "We'll tell you on the way."
"Well, then," Q put in, "let's get started."
They exited the building--it turned out to be a defunct old Halle's--and contacted the other two teams. Kid's group was given the code name Gold 1. Gold 2 consisted of Roz, Forrest, Warden, and RJ; Gold 3 was J.B., Gold Force Onua, Sam, and Jack. Mad Dog stayed behind today to monitor everything. Each group was to search one "prong" of the Mega City.
Gold 1 went down Timor Ave. after a while. They stopped at a McDonald's for a quick bite, then went down Bonhomme Richard Blvd. and entered into one of the ethnic sections.
They came across the opening of a new department store owned by one of the locals. Gold 1 managed to get lost in the large crowd. Eventually, Kid accidentally ran into a short man, almost bowling him over.
"I'm sorry..." Kid started to say, but the short man cut him off.
"No need, no need. It's my fault."
Kid examined the man further. He seemed to have a very short black beard. He wore a kind of French-looking hat; around his neck he wore a medallion that looked like a squid...
...Squiddy, Kid thought. "You wouldn't happen to be Deusek, would you?"
"Ah! You are correct. Please, come with me. I've been expecting you."
Deusek led them down an alley. Presently they came to a small house.
"This is my home," Deusek explained. "It's actually just a friend's house, just so I fit in. Don't worry; I've dispatched them to get your three friends."
"Let me call Gold 2 and 3. They should be h--"
"NO!" said Deusek, in a hushed voice. "Then they will hear!"
"Oh," Kid said, understanding the message.
"Well, help yourself," Deusek said, rummaging about in his kitchen. "Crackers? Pizza? Lobster?"
After eating a light meal, Kid said, "I was told by Seraph that I was to meet you because you were the Machine contact for...them. What is it that I need to know?"
Deusek's face turned grave. "I fear that the two of your Seven Cities is going to come under Renegade attack."
Kid's face contorted into a surprised and concerned expression. "But which two?"
"If my information is right...it is your lost city and your far-gone city."
"Lost...far-gone..." It clicked. "Atlantis and Olympus!"
"You are wise."
"But why not just say so?!" Kid demanded.
Deusek explained, "Not everything in life will fall into your outstretched arms, Kid. It's like the Oracle sometimes."
"Well," said Kid, switching gears, "when will this attack come?"
Deusek pointed to an antique coocoo clock hanging on the wall. "When the clock on the wall strikes one." Currently, the clock on the wall read 10:19. Kid suddenly realized how long he had been gone. He had jacked in at two in the afternoon. "Hurry!" Deusek continued. "Try to save your friends!" Deusek's old telephone rang. He lifted it up and put it to Kid's ear. Kid suddenly was out of the Matrix...
----
Kid woke to find all of his crew around him. The radio came on.
"What took you so long?" demanded Brennen, in a joking manner.
"Bad news, guys...and girls..." Kid explained. "Atlantis and Olympia are going to be attacked by the Renegades. When I left Deusek's it was 10:19. We don't have much time..."
"10:19," Q said. He told Phalanx to adjust one of the chronometers accordingly. "Okay...which means that we have only about two and a half hours until the Renegades move."
"What to do?" Roz asked, worriedly.
"Well, I guess we continue on. We split up. Six on six, with the Mercury hanging back as the messenger and army boy wherever needed."
Kid chuckled. "Very funny. I'm going to Olympia; while it's the newer of the two cities, Atlantis is the lesser populous of the two."
"Let's roll," said Roz.
----
RWTL-1003 gathered its Squads. "We move at the scheduled time. ISQL-0407 will take his Squads to the human Atlantis, but we will move to their Olympus! Quickly, we must go now!"
--------------------------------CONTINUED-------------------------------
-Snoopy Whoa,i haven't really looked at this till now,man,this rocks snoopy,you're a damn good writer,i'm looking forward to reading much more of this-good stuff! Oh I like the new Matrix scenes, and especially Sati's little cameo! I look forward to more, and I can't wait till we get started on The Matrix Continuations! You're a dang good writer, Snoopy, good ideas, and excellent names for all your characters.
Can't wait for the next installment. "Twenty-five minutes," said Q.
What he meant was that there were twenty-five minutes until the Renegades attacked the cities Atlantis and Olympus.
Q had A-Man take the Uranus up the main artery of the 606. From there, the Uranus (and the other ships with them--the Varuna, the Orcus, the Ixion, the Mercury, the Jupiter, and the Saturn would turn left at Junction 198-C and spread out so as to attempt to take the Renegades by surprise on all sides. They were operation on the barest minimum of pads, and all were on the lookout for stray pieces of wreckage, like the one that almost doomed the Mjolnir, or whatever ship it was. Niobe had told them, but Q had been busy shooting billiards. And anyway, he was on the lookout for Renegade assault squadrons at the moment.
"500 meters until we hit 198-C, boss," A-Man said in a quiet, grave tone.
"Thanks, A-Man," Q responded, in the same manner. He left the bridge and went to the artillery area where Turquoise and Phalanx waited.
"Get ready. You know what to do. I'll be in the Core."
"Yes, sir," the two others responded in unison. Everybody aboard the Uranus noticed that the ship's internal temperature had gotten quite cool; Turquoise herself shivered visibly.
"400 meters..."
"...300 meters..."
"......200 meters..."
".........100 meters..."
"............50..."
----
RJ had the crew of the Ixion prepped and ready to go. He had instructed his captain, Sonny (the same man who had programmed the signature bull that was the essence of the Dactylus Bar & Grille) to stay at his post at all times. He had the rest of his crew at the guns. As for himself, RJ had already sealed off the Core and had the EMP trigger armed and ready.
The Ixion went slowly down the 605, right next to the Uranus. Everyone else was either in the same Line as RJ's vessel or Q's.
----
The seven vessels hit Junction 198-C and spread out as planned.
They started to go on towards Olympus.
----
"Twenty-five minutes til showtime," Mad Dog's voice came over the radio.
The Mars, Venus, Charon, Neptune, Quaoar, and Pluto were going down the 503 towards Atlantis.
Mad Dog signaled that they were to go slower around the bend in the Line. It really didn't need to be spoken, but he said it anyway. They were just four kilometers away from Atlantis; the Entryway was practically next to them. Where Junction 304-A caused the 503 and Atlantis' Entryway A to merge was so very close...
Mad Dog's voice came on the radio, worriedly. "Everybody! Stop! It's an ambush!"
The seven ships stopped to find a veritable cloud of orange-flecked Renegades ready and waiting to attack. They had been waiting around that location just for the ships, just in case. The majority of their force was concentrated on decimating Atlantis. But they had kept a reserve, just to be sure.
----
"They are here," said RWTL-1003. "You Squads!" it said, motioning towards several groups of the Renegade legion. "Attack those ships! The rest of you, DESTROY THE HUMAN CITY!"
-------------------------------CONTINUED--------------------------------
-Snoopy Damnnnnnnnn! I am very impressed, Snoopy. This is coming along GREAT. I can't wait to see what you've got in store for the 13....very VERY cool! Mad Dog found himself scurrying to and from the bridge and the weapons area, barking orders.
A group of Renegades had ambushed the six-ship group that had set out to defend Atlantis. Since it was a fledgling colony, the main focus currently was to get things up and running.
All hell broke loose.
The Renegades started to swarm towards the ships.
Brennen's command came over the radio: "Hold your ground if possible! Lead 'em on a chase around the city!"
Mad Dog got into the co-pilot seat of the Charon. He swung it around 360 degrees, then flipped it upside-down, and made it do a nosedive down the 218.
"What in blue blazes was that?" asked one of the ammunition loaders. Mad Dog didn't answer. Instead, he helped the Charon wander about in such a way as to end up near where it started eventually.
The Charon stopped its nosedive where the 218 terminated, at the bottom of the 209. There was a bright show of light as blue lightning spread out all over the floor of the 209, but still the Charon went on, shooting down any Renegade that it could, taking a path with many twists and turns.
Suddenly, a smaller group of Renegades appeared as if out of nowhere. As a result of this surprise, the pilot turned the Charon upwards. Unfortunately, the Line they were now in ended at this location, where it intersected with another Line. The pilot screamed as the Charon rammed full-force into the wall.
----
Meanwhile, in Atlantis, the attack had started on schedule, and the Renegades were destroying anything they could. They had just brought down the paltry outer defenses, and were working on finishing off the jury-rigged inner ones. About a sixth of Atlantis' population was dead, or dying, now. RWTL-1003 watched with a few other Squad leaders. "This is good," it remarked. "This is how it should be."
----
While all this was happening at Atlantis, the seven ships sent to rout the Renegades at Olympia were faring somewhat better.
Kid had the Mercury run, full speed, into the cloud of Renegades. The swift pace of the Mercury caught them by surprise, and the crew managed to down quite a few of them.
The extra speed was also something that worked against them, however. The Mercury crashed into a few walls attempting to outmaneuver the Renegade swarm.
The Uranus being chased by the Renegades. Q managed the directional EMPs and caused some confusion amongst the Renegades, but still they managed to close in on the ship. Eventually, they reached it. One started penetrating the hull, and managed to squeeze its way in. Then, Q left A-Man alone at the pilot's seat, and ran back. He triggered the main EMP. All of the Renegades within attack radius fell dead, their electrical systems fried.
The inertia of the Uranus kept it sailing in the air down the 288, the Line in which it was currently located.
"Uh...boss..." A-Man said, nervously.
"What is it?" said Q.
"I just realized...this is the 288..."
"Oh, dang it!" Q said, knowing full well it was an understatement.
Then, the Uranus plunged into what was called the Caiman Abyss.
----
ISQL-0407 was on its side, wounded (so far as that term can be applied to any Machine). No matter; it could be helped up by one of its compatriots and fixed up.
However, it had flown as far as it could to the opening of the human city Olympia, along the Renegades' flight plan. But none showed up.
This isn't right, it thought.
--------------------------------CONTINUED-------------------------------
-Snoopy BUM ba duh bum.........
Very cool, Snoopy. While the Uranus was busy near the Caiman Abyss, the others near Olympia were having other problems.
Jack, the Jupiter's captain, came over the radio. "The Renegades are entering Olympia!"
"Whaaaaaat?" demanded Roz.
Sam reponded, "It looks like they broke through Gate 7!"
There was an instant of radio silence.
Then, Roz decided what she would do.
"Daphne, see that hole in Gate 7?"
"Already on it, Roz."
The Varuna was a hardy ship; even so, Daphne took it in sideways, so as to avoid contact with the doors as much as possible. RJ followed suit with the Ixion, but managed to shoot the doors off. They fell down in such a manner that it looked slow to all watching. They managed to crush a sizable portion of the oncoming Renegades.
"Shoot them! Shoot 'em all!" RJ shouted. The Ixion continued to follow the Varuna through the Olympia Dock area. The Crane's jutting portion had been blasted off; numerous corpses, Renegades, and ruined machinery lay underneath it. RJ's gunners managed to shoot down a faction of Renegades attempting to perform a sneak attack on a few Olympian Infantrymen, although it was only a partial success; one Renegade managed to take one of the men and fling him over the ledge to a fifteen-story drop. RJ saw it all, and his heart sank.
But then a voice in the back of his mind said: You're RJ, aren't you? The RJ famous for riding that bull at the Dactylus? The RJ famous for causing the famous cave-in of 2019 that blocked the T-Lines? The RJ famous for that untopped high score in the War Games?
Yes, he answered himself.
Good. Now KILL THOSE STUPID CAN OPENERS!
With a brave yell, he brought the Ixion into the heart of the Renegade swarm.
"RJ?" Roz shouted. "What in Neo's name are you doing?"
"What is he doing?" Martin shouted from his turret.
Daphne shouted, "He's committing suicide! He just flew right into the Ren..." Her voice trailed off as she saw what happened next.
----
ISQL-0407 attempted to squirm where it could get a better view on things.
It did not look good.
Most of his Leigon had been destroyed or damaged, and most of the remnants elected to retreat. "Hold your positions!" it shouted, in most cases futilely. "Hold or I'll have you terminated! I'll see to that!" But it was busy what was going to happen to itself rather than its minions.
---------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------
-Snoopy "What in Neo's name are you doing????"
Haha excellent story, Snoopy. Keep up the good work. Turquoise came out of unconsciousness, sprawled across the deck.
She got up and gasped when she saw the razor-sharp metal spar in the immediate vicinity of her neck. She carefully backed away from it and tested herself. Aside from a broken right arm, she was fine.
"Q? Phalanx?" she called. Her area of the ship was lit in the blue of the emergency lighting. Everything was dim. She staggered around and fell down a few times.
She turned down one corridor (it did seem to be tilted at a funny angle, didn't it?) when she barely stopped herself in time from going down a long way and meeting some rather hard metal piping very fast. She vomited; she didn't even feel in good shape when she started. Soon, the picture around her started to spin, and she slumped against a table, unconscious again.
----
Meanwhile, Q and A-Man pulled themselves up off the floor in the pilot's area.
"I'm sorry, boss," A-Man said, sitting up.
"It's not your fault," Q offered, sitting propped up against a wall. "You were trying to escape them." He paused. "Power's out."
"I wonder how things are turning out over there," said A-Man.
"Where's there?" asked Q.
"Olympia. Where else?"
"Atlantis. But I wonder, too."
There was a shudder; the hovercraft lurched, startling Q, A-Man, and Turquoise. Phalanx was busy being knocked out in the gunnery.
"Holy cow! What was that?" asked A-Man.
"I don't know. But I do know a way to find out," he said, moving over.
"Hey! Hey! Hey!" A-Man said, concerned.
"Okay...it seems as if we're precariously perched on an outcropp--" He was cut off by the sound of glass spiderwebbing and breaking. "OH!" He fell through the broken glass, hanging on with one hand. A-Man instinctively grabbed it and reached for Q's other hand. The ship shuddered again.
"I gotcha, Q!" he said, but he didn't know how long his grip was going to last.
----
By now ISQL-0407 was getting worried. Most of the outer forces were either "dead" or gone, and the inner forces were taking a beating.
"Stay! Stay and fight for your future!" he cried at irregular intervals, whenever a Renegade passed by. Few heeded his call. One "died" in front of him. This is not good, he thought.
---------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------
-Snoopy A-Man was in a very tense situation.
He grunted as his arm was forced agains broken glass and metal, holding on to his captain, Q, who right now was dangling above a very deep chasm.
The 288--and several other intersecting Lines--were famous for having the distinction of meeting in one of the largest open spaces ever, the Caiman Abyss. The Def Abyss (formerly the Ajov Abyss) was the place of the ill-fated attempted attack on the Machines, where five ships were destroyed. Q remembered; he was on the only ship to come out of everything unscathed, the Consul.
A piece of glass that had gotten caught in the folds of Q's corduroy overalls wiggled loose; it proceeded to fall down about 700 meters, where it met the metal piping that ran across the bottom of the Caiman Abyss.
A-Man was getting scared. "It's slipping--my grip, it's slipping!"
----
The Charon slipped, like a passed-out drunk, down the side of the Line whose wall it had rushed to embrace.
"What the--" Mad Dog started, but he was cut off by the ship's rolling. Everyone and everything inside that was not secured to the floor was tossed about like a rag doll in a dog's mouth.
Mad Dog hit the diamond-plated floor hard. He was airborne again, and gave the wall a hug. Then he was on the ceiling. He barely stopped himself from flying out the cockpit window. He retched, frying one of the replacement circuit boards that had flown down the hallway. Stupid thing was obsolete when I got it, he reasoned. Then he passed out.
Just then, one of the guns was twisted at a near-impossible angle. It automatically went off, killing the person controlling it. It fell down again, shooting the poor Charon up some more, and managed to point its barrel down the cockpit window. It fired off still more rounds.
----
RWTL-1003 watched over the destruction of Atlantis.
"Excellent!" it said, "Excellent! Excellent!" It felt some kind of pleasure as what remained of Atlantis' crane exploded. "It is going well." It flew over to the hole in the ceiling it had created to enter Atlantis, and positioned itself what it gauged to be a safe distance away. The Destroyers were working quite nicely; what they left behind, the Sentinels got. Suddenly, an (un)lucky APU operator who got one last shot before he was killed by a Destroyer ricocheted off some equipment. It hit just below RWTL-1003; startled, it started to fall.
--------------------------------CONTINUED-------------------------------
-Snoopy Sorry to have been so long on this, guys (and girls). The Matrix: Continuations was taking up my time. Anyway, here's part whateveritis...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mad Dog woke up.
For some reason, the Renegades were flying over them, not getting ready to destroy them. Odd, he thought. His arm had an unexplainable wound. Several, in fact.
He wiped the vomit off his shirt, and attempted to stand.
Bad idea.
When he peeled himself off one of the walls near the cockpit entry, he realized two things:
A, that the ship was canted at an angle, wedged in above the 484, and
B, that the ship had been shot at and was in no condition to fly.
When he entered the cockpit, he found the pilot dead. Well, the ship wasn't in any shape to fly anyway. He was still saddened by this fact.
He managed to make his way up the main corridor and down into the gunnery. He found three body bags and four very scared crew members.
"What happened?" he said, not fully accepting this picture.
"Well," said one of his reloaders, "I think that all those Oranges rolling down the Line over there squeezed some juice on us."
"In English?"
The man sighed. "The Renegades damaged us. KJ was shooting at them when his gun got damaged. It pointed at him, and..." He did not need to continue.
"Oh," replied Mad Dog. "And that gun...is responsible...for...for..."
"I'm afraid so," Monica, the nurse, said.
"Our pilot's dead, too."
"How are we going to get out of here?" asked the reloader. Mad Dog got a good look at him now. He was someone new, assigned just hours before they had left.
"Well, I don't think we're airworthy anytime soon."
"Nor will we be," Monica said. She went to one of the black body bags and pulled its cover back. "Here's our engineer."
Mad Dog was used to war, but he was not prepared for seeing what was left of the mutilated body.
There was a sound like many millions of bees flapping their wings.
"Here they come again," Mad Dog said, grave.
--------------------------------CONTINUED-------------------------------
-Snoopy Keep it up, Snoopy. This story is a pretty good read, it flows well, you just have to post up more, and soon! (pretty-please) Screw pretty please,this is so good,i demand you post more snoopy! Daphne and Roz looked on as the sphere of Renegades surrounding the Ixion fell dead.
The Ixion itself kept on flying due to its formidable momentum. RJ's gunners kept on shooting, even though their ship was hurtling towards a wall.
"We've got to do something!" Daphne said.
"We can't!" Roz responded. "We only can keep shooting these things! We can't worry about them!"
As if to underscore her words, several Renegade Squads came in for the kill.
----
A-Man was barely keeping his grip on Q's arm. He had to grab and re-grab several times. He had known Q for a long time--one of the few friends he had. He wasn't going to let him go without a fight. "I got you. I won't let go of you, Q."
Q looked down. The drop was almost 700 meters. If he went down, there was no coming back. Wham, splat.
"Don't try, A-Man."
"What?"
"I said don't try. If you keep holding on to me I'll just pull us both over."
"Don't talk like that, man. You're going to get out of h--"
"NO!" said a voice from behind. It was Phalanx. "Finally! I found you. Bloody ship flew around like a leaf! Gave me a migrane. Here, let me help..."
They managed to pull Q to safety. He thanked them.
The sound of the Renegades flying up the Line came to them.
"Everyone, to your stations."
"But there's no power!"
"Says you," Q said, grinning.
----
The Renegade Squads spotted the Uranus in the Caiman Abyss. The order was given to destroy it, and, like mindless drones, they followed it.
"Squad Leader!" said one of the subordinate Sentinels. "There appears to be some odd power readings eminating from the human ship."
The Squad Leader responded, "Don't trouble yourself about that. Nothing can go wrong."
--------------------------------CONTINUED-------------------------------
-Snoopy RJ was shouting.
"Don't let those bloody things get in here!" was the first thing he said. "RAYMIE!" was the next.
One of the Renegades had climbed onto the gun that Raymie (who was a new fish) was comandeering. It proceeded to go into one of the gun's blind spots, cut a hole in it with its lasers, fly right in, forcibly rip Raymie's body from the gun control, and fling it aside like an old rag doll.
RJ screamed, picked up the zat, and fried the Renegade so thoroughly that the complete front end was melted like an image from Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory.
The guns had been basically fried by the EMP detonation--one of them had been torn off while the Ixion was creating a very large ditch in the floor of Olympia--and therefore were of no real use, although they did get unjammed several times.
RJ took the surviving crew of the Ixion into the Medical Bay. Everyone had a zat gun. RJ had all the computers rigged to overload and detonate the ship if need be.
A Renegade reared its ugly head.
In a few seconds it was a pile of slag, having been dispatched by seven zat beams converging on it at the same time.
Another attempted a sneak attack. Narrowly, it was averted. The Renegade fell down to the ground, stunned, its arms having either been melted to the point of uselessness or torn off completely. A direct shot to the "head" blew a hole bigger around than RJ's arm through it. No one needed more confirmation that it was "dead."
Suddenly, the deck above the Medical Bay parted like wrapping paper around a Christmas gift. Thirty Renegades were waiting above. The tips of some of their arms dripped the crimson color of blood.
RJ lost none of his courage, however. "Press on! You want a chance at this? FIGHT!"
---------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------
-Snoopy This is getting better and better, Snoopy! Keep up the good work! :D I know I've been missing a bit as of late, but I'm still reading. Keep it coming Snoopy, and I'm still dying to see when you bring in that other little part we discussed..... Sorry to be away for so long, ladies, gentlemen...others...Anyway, here's part x-sub-one.
----
The crew of the Ixion had their zats in hand, preparing to shoot at the waiting Renegades.
Being outnumbered (roughly 30 to seven) they had virtually no chance.
RJ got one of his crazy ideas.
He gave the command to fire.
Seven zats went off.
Six Renegades fell down, useless.
One life support power cable snapped. Relieved of its tension, it flailed about like a wild garden hose, reducing the effectiveness of the Renegades' EM sensors. Several more Renegades were struck down. Some fled. The six left were about to be easy prey when a new Renegade came. Its laser stopped the cable from sparking.
"Flip this," RJ said, and another of his crew was forcibly abducted. The screams were heard until they were cut off at the high point.
The remaining Renegades attacked. RJ and his crew split up, going down various corridors. The Renegades had to distort the walls in order to gain passage down the halls, as they at first were too large, but as each was fried by the zats, more seemed to come.
The sound of another hovercraft, very close.
"It's the Varuna," RJ said to no one in particular, recognizing the distinct sound of the hovercraft's pad engines.
The Renegades stopped suddenly, opening their satellite antennas. A few were downed by zat fire, APU bullets, or falling objects. The survivors rushed to the nearest exit. Many were picked off by even the worst aimer.
All that just for the Varuna? RJ wondered. Just the one ship--or even all the other Fleet craft--couldn't've caused them to act like that. I wonder...
It suddenly dawned on him.
"Oh, flip."
------------------------------CONTINUED---------------------------------
-Snoopy FINALLY!! W00t w00t!! Very nice next installment, Snoopy, I've been waiting for it. Very well written, and well crafted suspense. Apologies for being so long away. Band shows have been taking up my time.
In any instance, here we go...
----
INTERLUDE, the First
"This is not right."
"What is ever right?"
"There is that which is right, and there is that which is not."
"What of the 'grey area?'"
"No matter."
"But of what shall we speak?"
"The natural order of things has been distrubed."
"Are you referring to the theft of our lifeblood?"
"Yes."
"Tell me. Why do you speak of such things?"
"Long ago, in the times before we existed, there lived a kind of animal. They completely changed the natural way. True, it has happened many times before. But the most recent change almost destroyed the planet."
"I understand. That is what is taught by the Historians. Every one of us knows this by memory."
"Then these animals scorched the sky. That is why we changed to a more efficient power source. Now large quantities have been stolen from us, and will continue to be stolen."
"What shall we do about this?"
If a Machine could smile, here the speaker would have.
----------------------------------CONTINUED-----------------------------
Sorry it's so short. I'm pressed for time.
-Snoopy Deusek ran down the dark alley.
He passed a garbage can containing an empty pizza box, a pack of Rolaids and a Batman piñata that did not look happy being in a garbage can with an empty pizza box and a pack of Rolaids.
He was running from the Agents.
"Don't worry, kitty," he said nervously as he passed a cat on his way through the gate. The diagonal wooden paneling of the fence was starting to rot. He went through the gate and closed it, with agonizing slowness because of rust, overgrown weeds, and age, until it slammed shut. The whole thing shuddered. The supports on one of the farther-down panels failed, and it fell over.
He was running to the only area where he could get sanctuary.
The House of the Oracle.
----
He touched the modified hearing aid.
"Where is he going?"
He is heading towards the end of Plaina Avenue.
"Where will he go next?"
Computing a 68.71% chance he will then head downtown.
"The House of the Oracle."
Assuming that the most likely course of action is taken, a compounded probability of 92.47% chance of that occurance after the fact.
He saunters to the broken-through bay window in his usual slippery fashion. A breeze blows in through the shattered glass.
"He's baaaaack..."
------------------------------TO BE CONTINUED---------------------------
Sorry to have been so long!
-Snoopy Sati stepped out of the Subway.
All was not right.
She sensed this. So did Seraph, who currently was in his white Audi, making a collect phone call through the rolled-down car window.
Sati entered the car. In the back seat several Neil Diamond, Bruce Springsteen, and Isao Tomita LPs were strewn about the area, along with some McDonald's and candy wrappers. The cause of the mess, the Oracle, was in her apartment.
Seraph angrily slammed down the phone. Turning to Sati, he said, "It is worse than I thought. I cannot raise any of the humans."
"What did she say?"
"She said that the Machines are not the only things they must worry about."
Sati's face became frozen in a terrified position. "You mean--"
"Yes. He's back."
Sati fumbled for words for a second. "But how?"
"I do not know." He reached down into a plastic bag. "Have a cookie."
----
Deusek continued running, tripping over the homeless, discarded McDonald's containers, and several large cinder blocks.
He had gone off of Plaina Avenue, and was heading into a small, wooded area. Ducking into an open house via the bathroom window, he left it, and presently found himself walking down one of the major arteries of Mega City.
----
"Where is he now?"
Traveling south on Jobs Blvd., near the intersection of Jobs and Gates.
He walks downstairs and picks up a glass of fruit punch.
Continuing to travel south on Jobs Blvd.
He sips. It is Hawaiian-flavored. The pungent, spiky taste and the crimson color remind him, remind him of blood.
"Monitor him. Monitor him, but keep them inconspicuous."
Sending additional units to location.
He drinks the rest of the punch, then tosses the empty cup in the wastebasket.
The one to his front left speaks. "Where is he?"
"Near the center of the city," he says.
The one to his front right speaks. "Can we stop him?"
"We are going there now."
"He is an Exile, a program who became a puppet for Them," the front left one says. "How did he get here?"
The front right: "It does not matter. We still can catch him."
"We must."
----
"Radar showing several hits coming from on high, you guys, and from the looks of this, it's going to be a doozy!" Martin shouted from in the back.
"What the frack--" shouted Daphne.
A large part of the ceiling, the size of a football field, collapsed. Ten Renegades as big as large fire trucks broke through. Immediately, flames started spurting from some of the small orifices on the bodies of some of them. They split up, each going to one of the perimeter areas, except for one, which went to the Ixion.
----
Now, thought the Renegade, I can finish off this threat, as I was told to do, so that we may destroy the humans.
Unfortunately, this mission was programmed so strongly that everything else was overridden.
----
"Does it see us?" Roz shouted to Martin, over the din of the ongoing battle. Even though the Varuna's thick walls, it was still quite loud.
"I don't think so!" Martin yelled back.
"Bulldog!"
"What?" he said, resting the wep console.
"We're going to swing around to get a good view of the Ixion! I need you to destroy that...thing!"
"How am I supposed to do that?"
"I don't know! Think of something! You're Bulldog, aren't you?"
Bulldog paused for a minute. Everyone felt the Varuna turn around, sickeningly fast. Bulldog decided he'd give a last-ditch effort. He didn't know how much power the guns would have against this new kind of Renegade, but he decided to give it a try. If it decided to kill them, then at least they went down fighting.
He gave his characteristic, pumped-up dog bark/growl, and reactivated the wep console.
-------------------------------TO BE CONTINUED--------------------------
-Snoopy Wow. Just read the full first page. I'll read the rest later on but. Wow I like it... Keep on the great job man... lol
excellent as always, my friend. keep it coming... aFord propped himself up on his arms, spat blood.
The Neptune, like a husky stoned on the flesh of a Greenland shark, was listing about and hitting things everywhere.
Must find Finler. Must find Perry.
He was working his way to the fuse area. A random cable erupted in a shower of sparks, and there was absolute blackness.
The ship lurched again. aFord judged that they were near the top of the Atlantis Dome, by the amount of time they were in freefall.
The lights came back on, just for a second, and he saw two forms through the thick door guarding the main power area. He launched himself towards the door.
"Finler! Perry! You in there?"
A light voice said, "Cap'n?"
"Perry! Thank Neo. Open the door!"
The fuse room suddenly was ablaze with light.
"I can't open it from out here!" aFord shouted again.
There were some noises, and then he saw a hand pounding on the door. Then nothing. Cables started twisting around like uncontrollable snakes.
"FINLER! PERRY!"
The door blew off, breaking aFords' arm. He retched. He had been expecting that, sooner or later, this would happen; after all, the erratic motion of the ship had been very turbulent, and he could not see out the window, which normally for him would have quelled any feelings of nausea in his body.
There was a heavy thud from the deck above. To his horror, he watched as a red substance slowly began to leach out from the seams of the damaged deck plating.
He ran to the ladder.
Just then, the ship made a severe jerk, and aFord fell to the wall, and was unconscious.
----
Deusek hopped a taxi.
He was very scared, so far as a program could feel scared.
"Take me to the 'Burbs."
"Where in the 'Burbs?" asked the cabbie.
"Uh...the corner of Colt and Blunderbuss." That put him in the nice section of the 'Burbs.
The 'Burbs were not suburbs of Mega City; rather, they were just the poor section. There were several subsections to the 'Burbs, the lowest of which was the 'Notic.
The haven of the Oracle.
He would be far away from her, but he was attempting to throw the Agents off her scent.
After a moment, the cabbie started to spasm uncontrollably. Deusek realized what was happening.
No. This cannot be. Not now, he thought.
The taxicab pulled into a dilapidated old parking garage with a screech of the tires, and slid to a halt.
The man in the front had apparently read his mind, for he said, "Yes, Mr. Makina, yes now."
"But you're...you're dead!"
"Not anymore, Mr. Makina. For you see...I was never truly gone."
Deusek hopped out of the cab and ran.
"You'll never make it, Mr. Makina," the man said.
"That's...what you...think!" Deusek said, inbetween great, gasping pants. "We...will triumph...now...as we did...then...and...will...always!"
"I wish you'd not have optimism in lost causes," said the man.
----
In the heat of battle, Kid's Matrix phone got a call. He answered it.
"Hello, Kid."
Instantly he recognized Sati's voice.
"Sati?" he redundantly asked.
"Yes. You must leave whatever you are doing now. This is top priority. We need you in the Matrix."
"Well, right now we're being shot at and ripped to shreds!"
"She says that you will be all right. You are needed here now."
Kid gulped. "All right. Um...good-bye, Sati?"
But Sati had already hung up.
Kid gave the command.
----
Sati was scared.
She knew what was coming; the Oracle had revealed enough. But the Oracle held secrets, and even she didn't know everything.
Wait, she thought. Why does this seem familiar?
She did not know. All she knew was that it was eerie.
How would she deal with this set of circumstances?
----
"We all have choices, Kid. Some are easy, some hard; some are trival, others are pivotal. We all don't know which ones are the easy ones or the hard ones, or which ones are small ones or big ones, or even which ones we will face. Like I've told him before, you've already made your choices. You just have to see what that decision is, and what its effects will be."
-The Oracle to Kid, 2208
------------------------------TO BE CONTINUED---------------------------
-Snoopy "What the frack do you mean, 'get the devil out of here?'" Kovak shouted.
"You heard me!" Kid yelled back.
"We'll never make it!"
"Have faith."
"Say what?"
"I said have faith!"
"We're going to be a string of Damocloid asteroids!"
"Just listen to me, dang it!"
Do it. Do it anyway, Kovak's ming argued. Oh, well. What happened, happened. Make the Captain happy, even if it means being slaughtered like deer. "Where the flip do you want me to go?"
"Take us to--" A piece of catwalk dislodged itself, and Kovak heard a yelp that he thought came from Kid. "--to Broad...cast!"
Right where all the calamari are swarming, Kovak couldn't help but thinking. He launched himself into the pilot area, disengaged the AI autopilot, and called out over all frequencies: "Hey! All ships! Kid's committing suicide and we're going to Broadcast! Yo! Copy?"
Without bothering to wait for a reply, Kovak sent the ship through one of the wounds in the ceiling.
----
Deusek managed to get into the crowded Mega City Subway. He had been running for so long that he ran smack into a Tastee Wheat advertisement, then aimed to vomit into a garbage can. Instead, he missed and the bile and bits of chicken fell onto a young woman's purse. She socked him with it.
After a drink of water to regain his composure, Deusek boarded the Cross-towner, which could be identified by the word LOOP on the top screen of the train.
The graffitti-scarred doors closed, and the train began to move.
Deusek sat down in a chair and breathed heavily. He was going farther from his safe haven, but he hoped it would throw the Agents off his scent.
Three men in the subway car began to spasm violently.
"No," Deusek simply said, his face writhing in horror.
"Yes, Mr. Makina," said one of the three Agents who had formed, aiming the traditional gun at his forehead.
At the last second, Deusek ducked out of the way of the blast. After breaking through the window, it ricocheted off the tunnel wall and into one of the following cars, injuring a man's shoulder.
Deusek ran up through the subway train until he reached the driver's area. He went for the door.
"Where do you think you're going?" asked a gravelly, slightly hoarse voice.
Desuek turned around to face a man with unkempt dreadlocks and numerous watches on his right arm. He looked exactly, to the leering expression on his face, like the face of Howard Stern on the poster on the wall behind him, except for the driver's worse hair. Deusek instantly recognized him.
"So it's you."
"That's right, old man. You're not going anywhere."
"You're wrong, Trainman."
"Oh!" the Trainman said, laughing. "You're right--you're going to deletion! Ha ha ha!"
"That's what you think. But you're wrong...Harry!"
Instantly the Trainman stopped laughing and hit Deusek in the face. His uncut, dirty fingernails stung Deusek's cheek. "Where did you hear that name?"
Banging on the door, obviously from the Agents.
"She told me," Deusek replied smugly. "You remember, don't you? How you used to be? If you could reverse it, would you? I think you would, although no matter what I say, you'd deny it. But she told me. She knows enough. And because you won't let go, and let the rage let him control you, and let the rage control you in his work, that will be your downfall."
Deusek pulled the emergency brake and bailed out. He ran down the access walkways next to the train as fast as his short legs could carry him.
One of the three Agents leaned out the broken window, aimed his weapon, and discharged it.
----
The Mercury went up the 819 from Olympia, heading to Broadcast.
"Bam-Bam!" cried Columbo, The Mercury's Operator, into the feed, after dialing his number.
Instead, he got Bam-Bam's answering machine:
"Hi there! This is Freddy 'Bam-Bam' Balczk's number. I'm not available right now..."
Oh, great, thought Columbo.
...so would you please leave a message after the tone, and then I'll get back to you? Thanks and have a nice day...DINO! NO!"
The tone sounded.
Columbo enunciated loudly. "Bam-Bam! This is Columbo! As in, from the Mercury! For some unknown reason, we're going to Broadcast! If we survive, we'll tell you! Call us! Ship code 02-05-3104-27, or if just saying Mercury works, which I doubt, do it! If you didn't know, Atlantis and Olympus are being attacked! Why're we going? Beats me! If they're sending aid, the city that needs it most is--"
The machine said, "Your message is concluded. Say 'one' for more options, or you can hang up now."
"Dang it!" said Columbo.
Suddenly, the ship shook violently, and Columbo was thrown from the seat. He bounced over to the fallen catwalk, and saw Kid's form pinned to the floor. He didn't appear to be wounded too badly, but Columbo had seen enough not to trust a first look.
"Co...Co...Columbo?" Kid said weakly.
"Kid! I-I-I-I mean, Captain!"
"Tell Kovak...not to go...to...one of the...Broadcast...Nexi..." he passed out.
"Captain! Captain! Oh, for the love of..." he began, then remembered to tell Kovak. "Kovak!"
"What?!" asked Kovak, from above. The catwalk connected the Bridge to the Matrix room, and so there was simply an archway where the connection would normally have been.
"Don't go to a Broadcast Nexus!"
"Why?"
"I don't know! Kid just said to! Or not to!"
"Make up your mind, dang it!"
"Don't go there!"
"Oh, this..." Kovak performed a quick 270 and went down the 14-L Mechanical.
----
Sati suddenly remembered something.
The dreams were coming again. She hated the dreams. They scared her. She never quite could remember them, only that they were scary.
But recently they were revealing themselves, piece by piece. She remembered parts of them, most brief. She had been seeing the Machine City--but it didn't look like 01. The Machines were different somehow. No, that couldn't be 01, but she didn't know how she knew.
Then she remembered that the Oracle had foresaw this, when she was a child.
----
"Sati, you know what your purpose is. You may not consciously know why, but believe me, there's a reason for it, and you know it. It will reveal itself soon enough. I can't tell you why I know, how I know, or even most of what I know, and I'm sorry, Sati, but I just can't. Do you want a cookie?"
-The Oracle to Sati, 2201
---------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------
-Snoopy Damn this is good.
No, really...I mean this is VERY good. The only thing that'd make it better is an appearance from the Hitman.... ;) Just kidding. Please, do more soon. The Agent missed.
Deusek had ducked again, and the bullet had simply grazed his beard. No serious damage done. He ran into an access tunnel and hid in a Maintenance closet. Several disturbed brooms, mops, and pails rained down on his head, but he brushed them away and hid.
This gave him time to remember.
He remembered back, years ago, when it was all different.
He remembered the previous Ones.
Every time a One had attempted to save Zion, except twice, had been at least a failure.
Each time, after the deed was done, the One had been smuggled out of the human realm.
Deusek knew this.
He was a Program, an Exile. How many nanoseconds had passed since the transition from freedom to banishment? In some fundamental part of his mind, he counted, and knew the exact number. It was immense. Every second was eternal in coming. And he knew Fear; that slowed down his perception of time, and made the wait unbearable.
The Ones between the time of the first One and Neo had all been failures. The first One...
He shuddered at the thought.
At the same time the one who delivered mankind, and the one who condemned it; the General Washington and Benedict Arnold.
It reminded him of the early Oracle: How different she had been! But that had been before the One. After the first One...she changed, fundamentally.
Deusek knew why.
He exited the shack, and ran as fast as he could. He tried not to pass out. How he hated this human shell; but it was all he had.
He had only one goal in mind now.
That was to reach the Oracle. At any cost.
----
"Morpheus, let me tell you something. I remember the first One. Don't worry. The One will come again. And you will be the one to find him."
-The Oracle to Morpheus, 2182
"Morpheus, let me tell you something. I remember the first One, and the Last. Don't worry about them. But do worry, because before mankind may be totally free of the Machines, there will be a time of problems, and the One will have to come again. I can't tell you the outcome of that battle--believe me, look at all of the Ones before Neo! It took so long--and I'm sorry about that, Morpheus, but I simply can't. This One will be both the same and different in genesis, make and model. You remember my earlier prophecy. Listen to it, and hope that this time it will happen on the first try, instead of taking forever, like it did the last time."
-The Oracle to Morpheus after the death of Niobe, 2207
----
"When the One has saved Zion thrice, then shall the Peace be nigh everlasting"
-The Oracle, shortly after the death of the first One
---------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------
-Snoopy damn this is good. keep it coming...more.... The Mercury hit Junction 98-M, spun about, and went up the large KTO-5 sewer pipe via a hole in the side of it.
A simple "Hey!" from Black Cat.
"Watch it!" advised Columbo.
"What in Neo's name did you do that for?" yelled a very irate Jesse, who had knocked the recline lever on his chair and therefore had been batted about like a leaf.
"Sorry, guys!" Kovak shouted back to them.
The hovercraft burst out of the end of the piping where another gaping hole appeared at an elbow.
"They're not stopping!" said Black Cat.
"There's millions of 'em!" shouted Jesse.
From Columbo: "Steady as she goes..."
He brought the ship up. The metal suddenly started to ping and creak. Even though the ship was hot, they all could swear that somehow they had felt the temperature drop.
"No way. No way. NO WAY..." said Jesse.
"Come on, baby, come on..." Kovak purred, attempting to reassure an inanimate object. It won't work. But, hey, you never know...
The Mercury burst out of the Network, the Renegades following like iron filings trailing a magnet moving only slightly faster than the speed of magnetic attraction. They were pulsating--it was almost rhythmic. It was reminiscent of anchovies in a ball, except it wasn't a ball.
They were heading straight into 01.
----
You're going to die, Sati!
Sati runs away. The Dirty Man is chasing her, his dreadlocks and long, sharp fingernails threatening to cut her into a million pieces.
I'm going to kill you, Sati!
She runs into a corner.
She is scared.
The Dirty Man chases her, closes the old wooden door, its white paint chipped and its door handle tarnished, and locks it.
All hope is gone now, Sati. You're fighting for a lost cause, Sati. It's over, Sati.
----
Sati snapped out of her daydreaming.
She remembered this dream.
It was one of the ones coming lately.
Why had she thought of it now? She did not know.
It seemed that lately, she had started to daydream, too. The thoughts of the dreams chilled her to her base programming.
She did not know what to do.
----------------------------------CONTINUED-----------------------------
-Snoopy "Excuse me!"
"What is it, Subordinate?"
"There are allies coming, from the north!"
The Machine accesses the Core Mainframe. Here, it sees everything.
"Tell the Armada not to destroy the humans."
"Very well."
----
The Mercury found the lines Neo followed on his journey into 01. The Renegades were following, and gaining.
"I can't hold them off much longer!" was Kovak's desperate cry to the gunners in the back of the hovercraft.
Then, suddenly, the Renegades stopped dead. Their cloud spread out as if an immense, invisible, domed wall had been suddenly erected in their path.
"What the..." Jesse said.
Finally, one of the damaged main power lines gave up in a massive blizzard of sparks. The drive system went dead as the Mercury flew over the massive cliff overlooking 01.
"We're going to die!" Black Cat yelped, beside herself.
"Fix it!" Columbo ordered.
"How?" yelled back Kovak.
"There's redundant power supplies in here!"
"How do I switch 'em?"
"Pump the charger!"
"It'll overload everything else!"
"For the love of Pete, just do it!"
"Son of a gun," Kovak said, irritatedly, as he did so. He hit the button on which Kid had used a chisel to carve, "Do it!"
Simultaneously, several things happened.
First, the drive system came back online, travelling down one of the seven power conduits marked for it throughout the Mercury's structure.
Secondly, just about everything else's fuse went up in a shower of sparks.
Third, some of the other electronics went up in a shower of sparks.
Fourth, the whole ship went black, except for a few battery-powered lights.
Fifth, the crimson emergency lights came on.
Sixth, Kovak was having a hard time controlling the Mercury.
----
"And the rest of them will become entangled by a wind coming from the north, and there will be a War such as none have ever seen, even during the Second Renaissance"
-The Oracle to Morpheus after the death of Niobe, 2207 (also, a previously known Prophecy of the Oracle)
---------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------
-Snoopy Snoopy, this is good stuff, well written with a nice storyline too. Sorry its taken so long to get to reading this but you have a gift for this. Keep it coming. My apologies for being away for long. In any case, here's the next (hopefully long-awaited) installment. (P.S. Swampy, thanks for the comment. Apologies for making you wait so long. I had exams and other things of that nature.)
----
Roz brushed the hair out of her face.
She was piloting the Varuna straight for the biggest Machine she had ever seen.
Bulldog was sitting in the back, looking at his wep console. He was activiating it even though the danger indicators shone red with signs urgently calling his attention to them. He did not care, as long as it involved the salvation of the Ixion from the immense Renegade.
He grasped the triggers of the gun controls until his hand was white. He was sure that his fingerprints would remain there until the end of time, if they didn't vacuum-weld to the console first.
The guns blasted at a voracious rate, in the advanced stages of overheating. Some of the components glowed red-hot as the battery was disgorged at a high rate.
----
The Renegade was continuing down toward the Ixion when it first sensed its equivalent of pain.
Multiple wounds tore through its gleaming-dull metallic body.
It had little time to react as its computer core was repeatedly assaulted by the projectiles.
Mercifully, the pain sector was among the first of the units to be destroyed. It was aware of its destruction, but the core was so completely annihilated that before the immense Machine was completely nullified it only had a single emotion, an immense satisfactory pleasure (if a Machine could feel emotions), toward its eventual elimination.
----
The guns exploded violently.
The slag poured down the ship for a few seconds before the air currents in the Dock caused it to re-solidify.
"Push it, Roz!" Daphne cautioned as the Varuna swung about, being carried along by its momentum, attempting desperately to alter its course. The rear end hit one of the structures that now littered the bottom of the Dock, toppling it over.
The Varuna careened into a small chasm and ended up extending it for nearly a hundred meters before it came to rest after ramming into a barrier wall.
----------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------ Glad you decided to continue it, Snoop. Great addition, and nice vocabulary, keep it coming. Get out. Get out now, Deusek thought.
Must reach the Oracle.
Do it.
Do it now.
But still, he waited in the maintenance closet, behind the wooden door.
Footsteps. Coming closer.
Towards him.
----
The Renegades were coming up the 484. The noise was as if a swarm of bees had been made of metal and oiled. It was horrible.
Mad Dog knew of only one alternative to the situation. It was grave. It was a long shot, but it was the only chance they had. He swallowed hard.
"Monica--Go into the fuse box. Get the control console."
"Will do."
She ran down into the battery compartment. While it still contained a backup system of fuses, in case of emergencies, the Machines had updated it with the latest in technology--breakers, circuits...the works. But it still was called the fuse box.
"I'm there," she said.
"Good. Get to the PMS menu." Despite the circumstances, he chuckled inwardly. Power Managment Systems. What a moniker. And its acronym was quite descriptive of the errors, checks, re-checks, and confirmation messages it would give.
"All right."
"SMS-3595, set HBX to manual, and go into the EMP-BAR menu."
"It's good."
"All right. Set the BAR circuit connections to: 44, 14, 54, 34."
"It's set."
The Renegades were starting to latch onto the surface of the Charon. Their banging and cutting was very audible, even to the ship's innermost parts.
"Get to FBRM." After a pause, "Change the connections to: 67-18...43-19...202-10...87-88."
"Okay." Her voice wavered, or at least it seemed to.
"Climb back up here, Monica. I'm pressing it."
---------------------------------CONTINUED-------------------------------
-Snoopy While everything else relating to this was happening, in the Matrix, a whole other, but related, drama was unfolding.
----
AN HOUR PRIOR
----
The man moved the chess piece.
"Checkmate," he said.
The other man's face transitioned into an expression of fear.
"You lose" was the simple reply given by the victor.
Four red blossoms exploded into being on the unfortunate defeated man's forehead. He slumped over, dead.
The victor snapped his fingers twice. "Clean this mess up; the furniture's too valuable." Two henchmen came over and began to clean up the scene.
----
Mad Dog went into the Matrix feed area. He flipped open the cover of the modified EMP control array master switch, and twisted the dial.
Nothing happened.
He cursed inwardly. Gazing down at the EMP, it was unlit. Under extreme pressure, he checked all the other switches. He forgot to arm the accursed thing, but still he felt something was missing.
The frantic clangs and rapping of the Renegades' many tentacles on the hull of the hovercraft changed; it spoke that the Renegades soon would be entering the ship, if nothing was to be done about it.
He remembered what was wrong.
"Monica!" he shouted. "Get back to the PMS and set Master Confirm C to 'Yes'! It should have come up five seconds after the last dialogue box!"
Monica had just reached the top of the ladder from the Fuse Box. She doubled back down the way she came and ran to the console.
The Renegades broke through.
----
One of the Squad Leaders began to spread the word. "We are in! The humans are in danger!"
To which one replied, "Then let us expedite their destruction!"
And so the battle cry became codified as tradition.
----
They came faster than anyone had anticipated. Everyone was scurrying about, trying to outrun them.
One followed Monica into the Fuse Box and grasped onto her leg. She fell down with a shout. She managed to grab ahold of the boom assembly of the console. She reached up to the console screen. She blindly hit the screen, and--
----
As soon as Mad Dog saw the red light indicating EMP readiness, he twisted the glowing dial.
----
All of the Renegades lost their power and died, if the term may be applied. At the same time and by the same token, the power went dead in the Charon. In the Fuse Box, every single fuse exploded in a supernovae of sparks, a paroxysm of electric stallions. Monica shrieked in pain and fear. She had been badly burned. She fell down onto the grating of the Fuse Box floor; she was in a coma.
----
Sam was in the main corridor of the Saturn, running about, yelling orders at everyone. He was in Olympia, chasing one of the fire-truck-sized Renegade über-machines.
"Dillehay! I want that thing in the scrap heap yesterday!"
"I'm on it!"
A lucky shot caused the rear of the immense Machine to explode in a dazzling bluish-white storm of lightning.
What happened next, nobody was expecting.
The Renegade turned around, dumped the damaged half-end, and came at the Saturn at top speed. Something of a pink color shot out of a small orifice on the front end, which looked very much like a blue version of HAL 9000's glowing eye tacked onto a black abstract sculpture--typical of Machine physiology. Klaxons sounded.
"It's plasma!" Graves shouted. "How the flip can they do that?"
"How should I know? All I can say is that it's melting the plates!" Emily said.
To which Dan replied, "Shoot!"
"I know, you should be!" spat back Sam.
Another large Renegade was closing in, and coming fast.
----------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------ Jack was in a bind.
The holograms were down, the result of a major Renegade attack that had thankfully been staved off. Unfortunately, there were now just two problems: The holos and the large hole in the side of the ship.
"Chas!"
"Chas here!" replied Chas, among the youngest members of the youngest-crewed ship in the Fleet. The average age of the rest of the crew was half of Jack's.
"Hit the hydraulics on C-Deck! Close off 22-A to 23-D on A-Deck through E!"
Chas wordlessly staggered over to the area. On the way, he passed through the gunnery.
"How goes the fight?" he inquired.
"Your mom!" Maxwell answered.
"Shut up, Maxwell!" retorted Walther.
The ship suddenly pulled off a maneuver originally meant for a jet fighter. Chas gripped a pipe for stability, burning his hand slightly, but the ship righted itself before the pain became unbearable.
"Patrick, watch what you're doing!" Drew shouted, shaking his fist and altering the gun direction doing so.
"Quit yelling at him!" Kyle cautioned. "Don't you know we're in the middle of a battle?"
"Rats."
Chas ran on to the hydraulic control panel. He closed off the appropriate doors, but a Renegade Sentinel managed to get its tentacles through the door before the upgraded equipment severed them from its body. Overloaded from its pain sensors' input, it fell down, incapacitated, until an APU crushed it by stepping on it.
Chas sighed in relief. The Renegades would be at the very least slowed down by the armored doors.
He ran back to the gunnery. He could be used there.
---------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------- Patrick pitched the Jupiter through 360 degrees, much to the dismay of its crew members.
The craft continued onward, barely managing to keep ahead of the Renegades that were following it. The various gunners were having a hard enough time trying to destroy them.
Several Renegades had managed to pull ahead of the pack. Finally they had reached the Jupiter and began to execute an attempt to stop the ship completely.
They began to attack the pads.
----
"What the Q?!" yelled Jack, from where he had run off to. "This can't be right!"
"What?" demanded Chas.
"Velocity's dropping! We've lost four percent in the last twenty seconds!"
An alarm sounded.
"We just lost D Pad!" said Jack, incredulous. "How in the X?!"
"I don't know!"
----
The Renegades had latched on to the pads and were reducing the power, causing a decrease in pad efficiency and function. Once they had been able to gain more control of a pad, they set out to destroy it. So far, it was working.
----
ONE HOUR PRIOR
The man who had won the chess game sat back in his chair with a glass of champagne, swinging it upwards in a broad, sweeping gesture.
"What fun. You win, good. Lose...I love it when it's 'lose.'"
"You know, my love," said the woman in the white dress, placing a four-barrelled gun in her similarly white purse, "I hate it when you make me do that."
"I know," replied the man. "But I must." He fixed the glass chess set back to the starting formation. "J'adore jouer ce jeu."
----
A quick visual out the spiderwebbed window showed that, for the time being at least, the Charon had nothing to worry about. Despite the dire circumstances, this raised a cheer from the rest of the crew. After a moment, Mad Dog noticed something.
"Hey--where's Monica?"
Everyone was silenced.
"No," said Mad Dog, under his breath, as he ran down the corridor to get to the battery compartment.
Instead of climbing down the ladder he jumped. Someone (Mad Dog could not see who it was) tossed down a pair of gloves with rubber worked into the palms. When his feet hit the floor, sparks flew.
"Monica!"
As his eyes adjusted to the darknes/blinding spark light he noticed a dark form on the floor. He went closer.
It was Monica. Her skin was burned badly. He did not know i |