Play 2 Wage: Linked

The initial burst of acceleration hurt, it was almost as bad as the takeoff in the dwarven spacecraft I’d ridden into the undermountain on my first day. Luckily, it only lasted a few seconds before the engines of the Goshawk took over and pushed us all back into our seats again. There were a tense few moments where no one had enough breath to speak, and we all just held on tightly and rode it out in the cabin.

Worried about the reports of aircraft being shot down over the city I’d gotten from Rin earlier, I reached out to Max mentally. “Can you get anything from the cockpit?” I asked, wishing this ship had something similar to the gunner screens that had shown the complete surroundings of the dwarv built spacecraft.

“Nothing that good, but there are some external cameras I can pull up if you want.” I was slammed into the wall and pushed even harder when Ali rocked into me as the aircraft banked hard, and then a shaky free floating screen appeared in front of me showing off the burning city below. There were bursts of smoke and sparks popping off all around us as the pilot set off decoy flares and swerved to avoid flak and explosions that reached up from the ground. I saw a flash of the other dropcraft as it dodged away from us.

“Oh! Finally, a signal I can see from the attackers.” Max broke in. “Ah - maybe worse news than I’d hoped for, they launched a drone swarm. I think I can take care of them.”

We whipped through a massive pillar of smoke that rose from the ground and ripped it apart with the speed of our passage, then were all rocked in the other direction as the pilot swerved to avoid a swarm of tiny drones that rose up and tried to get out in front of the dropship. Some of the drones started crashing into each other, littering the field of view with even more explosions. A burst of smoke appeared directly ahead, an air-burst shell of some kind we had narrowly avoided, and the camera cut out as the point of view was washed with smoke again and hundreds of small pinging noises rattled against the hull of the aircraft.

The ship began to violently vibrate, shaking us all in our seats and causing my teeth to clatter together. I clenched my jaw and braced myself, glancing over at a grim-faced Ali just in time to see Rin dry heaving on the other side of her. I was really starting to see this as the terrible idea it was, if our forces couldn’t hold the airspace, what made them think we stood a chance out here?

“Relax, mate. You’re going to break something. Loosen up. We bought the ticket, now we take the ride. It looks like we’re going down, but it should be outside of the city. These things have pretty good stats for crash landings.”

The shaking continued to worsen, and I saw both Tevin and the mirror armored trooper by the door turn their helmets towards each other as they exchanged some message without speaking. I realized I should have put in my earwig so I could talk with Tevin, and cursed myself for having fallen out of the habit of keeping it on me. Life had been good in the apartment, maybe too good.

The rattling of the foldout seats and buckles was washed out and replaced by deafened ringing as an explosion hit the ship, punching a hole in the fuselage above me and letting the sooty light of day into the hold. For a moment, I was alternately slammed back and forth between the wall on one side of me, and Ali on my other side as we strained to both relax and hang on to our seatbelts.

The peeling screech of tearing metal preceded another violent shake before we started to spin, pushing us into the wall again and holding us there as we spiraled down to the ground. My still fuzzy nerves turned to water and sloshed around inside of me as we were tumbled like a dirty load of laundry. Little red lights began to flash above the doors, and I could faintly hear the buzzing alarms through the constant abuse of my eardrums.

We rolled our way down to the ground in a terrifying blur of smoke and twisted metal. Our ship crashed into something, slamming us around again and filling the hold with bitter tasting dust. A second later, we hit something else, knocking us around even more before everything started shaking violently as we crashed through a splintering series of obstacles until we slammed into the ground, then finally slid to a halt with a jostling crunch.

I lolled my head around, taking a few seconds to get my bearings and realize I was hanging from the ceiling, the floor dropping away as a repurposed and steeply angled wall. The ringing in my ears was already starting to lessen, probably a side effect from all of the meddling Max had done within my body, and I was alerted to the movement of the chrome guard who was the first of us to start moving after the crash.

He sluggishly rolled over and pulled a thickly built combat knife from where it was built into the armor of his thigh, and cut the harness that tied him to what used to be the ceiling but was now the wall. Tevin, who was suspended in the middle of the ship by his own straps, pulled a similar maneuver by yanking at a quick release toggle and nimbly spinning around to land on his feet. He then pulled his visor up and looked around, catching my eyes.

“You good up there?” He asked when he realized I was looking back at him.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I replied as I worked to unbuckle myself from the seat. I took a moment to look down the row and saw that Ali was groggily blinking her eyes and moving like she had just woken up, while Rin was hanging limply. The rest of the unarmored newcomers were a mix of the same, with Bree seeming to be the only one who was conscious and starting to struggle with her own buckles.

The only light, other than the flashing red alarms that still pulsed along with a steady chirping beep, came from a ripped out section of the hull above me that allowed the sunlight to stream in. I craned my head around as my hands automatically moved to my own harness to release myself, and noticed a mangled tree branch as thick as my forearm had been caught in the meter wide tear in the hull and was hanging partially into the cabin.

“Rin?” Tevin asked as he got his own footing and climbed up the now steeply angled floor to start checking on the others. “Wake up, man, we gotta go.” He said as he started working to unbuckle him.

Bree managed to free herself from her own seatbelt and crashed down to the floor, landing on her feet but crumpling to a heap anyways, while the mirror armored soldier picked his way across the new bottom of the ship and pried open the door to the cockpit. As soon as he opened the hatch, I could hear more alarms coming from up front and see thin wisps of smoke that wafted in on a slight breeze.

“Ali, nap times over.” I said as I nudged her with my elbow. She opened her eyes and looked at me blankly for a second before her pupils focused and she gave a quick nod. I then scanned around the cabin and thought twice about releasing my harness. As I looked about, I spotted a familiar shimmering highlight outlining the gap in the hull above me and rolled my eyes.

“What? I’m just trying to help.” Max added, appearing down next to the door to the front of the ship and miming as if he were looking through it. “The doors are messed up and the cockpit is smashed to hell.”

Deciding to take Max’s advice this time, I twisted as much as I could and got a good grip on the frame of the bench before releasing the latches of my harness. I held myself in place and released the belts, hanging by one hand for a moment before remembering my disused mag-boots and triggering them. I stuck them to the wall and shuffled around until I was facing the seat, getting a feel for the boots I’d purchased yet had not had a chance to really use.

The boots felt secure and made the work of climbing out easy. I whispered a silent note to Max to remind me to use them next time they’d be handy, something I was sure I could count on the smartass AI to do.

I pulled myself up and through the hole in the top of the craft, noticing there was a gap between two layers of hull that had been ripped through. Crouched on top of the dropship, I turned my head from side to side to survey the crash site.

There were a few fires and twisted ship parts scattered around a small field surrounded by leafy late summer trees, and the ship was wedged up against a row of rusted out pre-link cars and trucks that had been stripped of most of their parts left to rot. A few other piles of rusting junk laid amongst the grassy field, and there was a clear line of scraped dirt and destruction that led to a battered stand of trees behind us. A patch of the trees had been smashed to bits or pushed over and I could see the smoking city on the horizon through the canyon we had carved through the small forest.

I looked back down into the ship and relayed what I’d seen, noticing Ali had already freed herself and retrieved her backpack from where it was strapped underneath the bench. She was now hanging on her seat like a rock climber and looking up at me.

“Looks like we came down in some kind of scrap yard? I don’t see anyone else out there.”

“You should have let me through first, sir.” Ali said.

“And we were doing so good on the sir thing.” I said to her with a grin.

She pulled herself up after me and gave me a stern look before standing. She pulled out a little tube-like device that looked like a half of a set of binoculars that she held up to her eye to sweep around in every direction.

“Looks clear.” She said after turning in a full circle. “For now.”

“Hah, no kidding.” I replied before looking back down into the ship, spotting Tevin as he helped the rest of the passengers as they regained consciousness. “How’s it going down there Tev, everyone okay?”

He finished helping Kaylee down to the ground, then looked up at me and nodded. “Yeah, maybe a few cracked ribs and plenty of bruises, but everyone's breathing. Andy and Rin are still unconscious.”

“No.” Rin said weakly from where he was leaning against the wall in a heap. He started to struggle to sit up further, rubbing at his temple and wincing.

“Great, we need to get you all out of there.” I replied, before turning my head to look at Ali as she patted my shoulder to get my attention. She was pointing towards the rear of the ship at the smoking mess that used to be the main engine, towards little flickering flames that were starting to curl up around the back of the craft.

“Damn.” I nodded at Ali then turned back to look at Tevin. “The back of the ship is on fire. Is that something to worry about?”

Tevin frowned at me, but Rin was the first to answer. “The fuel is mostly stored in the top of the hull and nacelles.”

I looked around and realized the hole I had crawled through was where the port nacelle used to be attached. I looked at the gap between the plates I had crawled through and hoped that most of it had been emptied out as we spun out of the sky. As I was looking, motion from down in the ship caught my eye as the mirror armored trooper came back in sight from the front of the ship with a hastily bandaged and unconscious Katie slung over his shoulder.

The soldier had his faceplate up, showing a grim flat line of a mouth and a narrow and stern face with a heavy dusting of gray in his trimmed brown hair. He scanned around the hold, and then looked up to me before speaking in a rough, almost gravelly, voice. “Consul, you should be in cover.”

I blinked at him and heard Ali mutter something under her breath beside me. I ignored her and replied to the guard. “Then come give me some cover, everyone needs to get out of the ship.”

He frowned, and then looked over at Tevin and frowned some more. “Doors are jammed?” He asked.

“Yep.” Tevin and I both replied, almost in unison.

He nodded and shifted his grip on Katie, holding her like a handbag by a harness that was strapped around her torso, and then started to climb up what used to be the floor towards me. As he reached the opening, he reached up and used the strength of his power armor to peel the split hull open a little wider so he could fit through and carefully made his way up to tower over Ali and me on the top of the overturned aircraft.

“You know how to use that thing?” He asked Ali as he gestured to her rifle. Her eyes narrowed before she gave her signature curt nod.

“Good, you’re on overwatch.” He told Ali before turning to me. “We can’t wait here long, get your friends and let's go.” He said before hopping down to the ground and carrying Katie away from the burning drop-ship.

Ali and I exchanged glances, and I rolled my eyes again before looking back down into the ship. “Well that guy’s fun. Tev, start hoisting up the unconscious people, we need to move. Rin, can you and the girls climb out of there?”

“Right, on it.” Tevin replied and moved to pick up Andy, while Rin and the others shakily stood and started to climb their way up, using the tie-downs and locking channels built into the ex-floor as hand holds.

Kaylee made it up and out of the craft first and was quickly followed by Bree, when I was nearly scared out of my skin by what sounded like an explosion right next to my ear. I turned and saw Ali was aiming her little rifle out in the direction of the city.

“I downed a drone that was coming in from the city, they know we survived.” She said, followed by a short string of curses from Max because he hadn’t been able to detect it.

“Was that your gun?” I Ignored Max and asked Ali, hardly believing that the little rifle could make such a loud noise.

She nodded and kept aiming in the direction of the thrashed trees. “Big round, short barrel.” Was all she said before she fired again at something I didn’t even see. “Hurry.”