Lunai was out of time. She only made it through half of the win-gel chapter before Pammy warned that they were imminently approaching Nula’s base. Her feet were practically vibrating under the control panel. A month ago, she couldn’t fetch a cat out of a tree without supervision. Now she was infiltrating the base of a massive galactic crime-lord.
Kelang was sitting with his arms behind his head. His legs were crossed over each other with the hanging one lazily swinging through the air. Either he was an expert at acting cool, or Lunai underestimated him. She couldn’t imagine this was the same man who threw up on her after flying through the void siren cluster.
“Kelang, are you nervous?” she asked, getting straight to the point.
“It’s not my first run-in with Nula. She’s been a real scourge on our home planet.” He uncurled himself and stretched his arms above his head. “I was powerless back then, but I’ve gotten a lot stronger. Besides, we have Entropi; we’re gonna be fine!”
As if summoned, they heard the door to the captain’s quarters slide open. The attending hero walked back into the cockpit fully dressed in her helmet and jumpsuit, ready for action. She observed the tiny dot they were rapidly getting closer to through the window.
“Nice of you to show up.” Pammy’s face was glued to the navigation screen below as she addressed her captain. “Give your interns something to do when we get there. I don’t want them fucking around blindly.”
Entropi groaned and threw her neck back. She poked her own forehead a few times and muttered through possibilities to herself before speaking. “Oh! You can look for that guy you were worried about. Your intern friend.”
“Really?” Lunai blurted out, trying to hide her disappointment. “I thought you wanted me to fight Nula again.”
“If I find her, she’s all yours.” Entropi patted her on the back. “Glad to see you’re excited about that rematch!”
“I wouldn’t say I’m excited…but I’m glad that you trust me to fight her again.” She ran her splintered fingers across her scalp, nervously scratching away. “I was worried that you were sending us on search-duty to get us out of the way.”
“No, I’m sending you two because I don’t know anything about your guy. You would probably find him the fastest.”
Lunai straightened up and clenched the fabric of her dress. “If he’s there, we’ll find him.”
She had to say it to believe it. Leaving Argalax there was not an option, not with the amount of fire that was going to be exchanged between their groups. Entropi’s powers were capable of causing massive damage to any structure, and Argalax may not have been able to survive in space without a suit.
“Docking imminently. Shields are going up.”
Pammy pulled a lever on her panel and a clear blue shield surrounded them just in time for a rapid barrage of missile fire to be absorbed. The ship started to shake and Lunai dug her nails into her chair. She looked to Pammy for a calm anchor, sighing with relief at her unchanged expression.
She tried to focus on the base as it became clear in her vision. It was made up of one metal cylinder connected to an orbital ring. It almost reminded her of the GSA’s ring transport system, though it was much more simplistic.
“Landing…Now!”
Hollybrook felt the impact of the ship on the metal dock of Nula’s base. Pammy kept the shields up as she left her seat and pressed a button on her CellPulse, summoning full-body armor on herself. Hollybrook and Blue-fin followed suit, double-checking to make sure that their hero suits were fully activated and functional. Entropi caught them both by the shoulders and pushed them to the exit of the ship.
“We’re going in together, then I’ll send you two off when there’s a moment of peace.”
They dutifully followed Entropi out of the ship into the safety of the shielded zone. The heaviest missile fire had stopped with the ship settled on the base itself, but dozens of armed guards stood at every entrance in sight. Hollybrook searched the skies for the GSA ships accompanying them on the mission, seeing them whir past them to land on alternate docking sites. An assault from all fronts with Entropi’s team taking the main entrance that sat atop an obnoxiously tall stairway.
Hollybrook was waiting for Entropi to move, but Pammy was the first to leave the bubble, jumping forward and honing in on a squad of guards walking towards them. She shot towards the leader and grabbed his head before she hit the ground. Blue-fin whistled at the pilot’s surprisingly strong combat expertise.
“Hey! Faces towards me. Let’s move!”
Entropi encased the two interns in a cube of black force next to her, pulling them all towards the main entrance faster than either of the interns could move. Hollybrook opened her eyes to find herself face-to-face with one of the soldiers.
Entropi’s barrier dropped and the man started raising his gun to his chest. Hollybrook moved to grab the base of the weapon and forced the barrel towards the stars. Short segments of light blasted off into oblivion. Her arms unfurled into several branches that wrapped the guard’s arms entirely. She bent her knees and lifted the man above her head, casting him down the stairs behind them.
She turned to check on her teammates, as any professional hero would do. Blue-fin practically had stars in his eyes watching Entropi. Her hand was suspended in the air with a black rope of force holding up the entire line of guards, save for the man Hollybrook tossed away.
Entropi’s hands moved like a conductor’s as another wave of forced sheared the metal off of the door in front of them, bringing it up to the restrained guards. The metal glowed red under Entropi’s makeshift rope and curved seamlessly to her force’s will. The final touch was a band of heat over the metal loop’s edges, sealing the soldiers in place. She carelessly let them drop to the ground as a line of force obliterated the door in front of them.
Stolen novel; please report.
Hollybrook looked back at the men who slumped over each other in the metal band squeezing them together. The metal around them had to have reached extreme temperatures to mold the way it did. Entropi ignored them as she started flying down the hallway, though it was at least a reasonable speed that let Hollybrook and Blue-fin to follow behind.
“Uh…Entropi?” Hollybrook was shouting in between sprints down the hallway towards Entropi’s flying figure. “Are we using lethal force?”
“Whatever happens, happens.” She surrounded herself in a black outline and shot right through another doorway. “But try to avoid it if you can, I guess.”
They were officially past the narrow entrance hall of the base complex. The ring’s walls widened at this point, and a wide archway could be seen in the middle of the empty hallway. Entropi abruptly stopped her flight path when the group realized they were alone.
“Oh, Goddammit!” she shouted.
Blue-fin covered a gasp coming out of his mouth. “Entropi, that word is heresy!”
She turned around, reached towards Blue-fin, and flicked his forehead with a tiny spark of force. He took two steps backwards and reached up towards the injury. One fin rubbed the small mark left behind and mixed it back into the intact skin. His healing technique caught Hollybrook’s eye; it didn’t look like standard regeneration abilities. Even Entropi, who had shown nothing but contempt and disinterest in Blue-fin, leaned in to observe it, but she quickly snapped them back to their time-sensitive reality.
“Okay!” Her hands clapped together in a nauseating flash of noise. “This place is gonna blow up or implode or something of the sort. Nula’s evacuated the building already.”
Hollybrook was already on the verge of throwing up before hearing that they entered a death trap. It took every bit of will for her to remain standing.
“So, we’re gonna split up now. Hollybrook, what is our number one priority in a situation like this as the infiltration’s lead team?”
She’s pimping me now?!
“Uh…”
“Find your fucking friend! An agent’s life takes precedence over anything else that may be here; even if they’re only suspected to be present.” She brought her CellPulse to her mouth, and Lunai heard her suit’s earpiece activate. “Code yellow. I repeat, code yellow. Evacuate immediately. An agent is expected to be somewhere on this base; the lead team will assume search and rescue efforts.”
The command was immediately followed by a cacophony of team leaders repeating the same word: “Affirmative, captain.”
“Hollybrook, you’re gonna run clockwise and the other intern will go counterclockwise.”
Blue-fin started opening his mouth, presumably to provide their attending with his proper hero name. It was an undoubtedly futile move with the current chaos, but Hollybrook respected how put together he seemed in a situation that could end with them in pieces. It didn’t stop Entropi from cutting off his nonsense before it could begin.
“Check any rooms you find, meet in the middle, then leave. I’m going to the main building. It’ll take me ten minutes at most to search the whole thing.”
Kelang spoke in a gruff voice, sounding like the GSA agents Entropi ordered to evacuate. “Affirmative, captain! And since we’re in the field, you should call me-“
Entropi zipped down the ring and popped into the hallway in the center of their ring segment. Blue-fin shrugged off the insult and took off in the other direction, sliding down the hall with a line of water produced by his feet.
Ok, don’t freak out now. It will be fine. If he’s here, it’ll be fine. If she were capable of it, Nula would’ve blown us up by now, so any trap left for us must be on a timer. If anyone can beat the clock, it’s Entropi.
Calm yourself. You’re going to find your friend.
Hollybrook had almost forgotten about the voice in her head; he hadn’t bothered her for quite some time. So long as he was telling the truth, she couldn’t have been happier to hear that calm, yet condescending cadence. She didn’t bother replying. She didn’t bother to ask why she should trust anything he says or how he knew where Argalax was.
Her roots moved beneath her and brought her through several segments of the same ring, each hallway insulated with the same white metal sheets that made her head pound. She expected clear doorways all the way down the hall, but the monotony of everything around her blurred her vision. She was rushing too much, but what other choice did she have?
It could take a second. Just one second for everything to end in a blinding light. Entropi would be fine, naturally, but Kelang and Argalax would be obliterated. She joined the GSA to help her home planet. Her idea of what home meant had expanded more than she could’ve predicted over the last month.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Hollybrook’s roots pierced the floor on instinct, slowing her down as the metal foundation resisted her movement. The soft thunking sound was coming through her right ear towards the inner wall of the ring. She turned to find what looked like a normal panel in the lattice that formed the entire wall.
THUNK!
There was no doubt about it. Someone was behind that panel; she just hoped that it wasn’t a trick to get her to rip the entire structure apart. Her fingers became barky claws of death that hooked as deep as she could into the panel.
She stepped back and snapped the roots back towards her body, taking the wall panel with them and hitting her right in the leg, cutting it clean off of her body. The injury hardly had any of her attention, as she was focused on the coffin wedged into the wall cavity.
“Hello?!”
A wave of cold air passed through her body and felt as though it was lifting her heart out of her chest. The noise was clear now, and the voice instantly familiar, save for the slight shakiness that was usually absent from his monotonous tone.
“Argalax, it’s Lunai. I mean Holly-I mean, whatever! We’re getting out NOW!”
She twisted both arms around the coffin and heaved it forward, barely able to dislodge it from its place. Her knees wobbled as she secured it with her own roots to her back. Argalax was heavy, and without his usual GSA suit, there was no gravity technology available to make him lighter. Hollybrook just grinned and bore it; her friend was there; her friend was safe.
She activated the infiltration communication line. “Agent Hollybrook reporting in! I’ve located the target and we’re evacuating immediately!”
Her footwork was sloppy with the coffin on her back. She trudged through the empty hall as if it were a hill of sand or gravel, never able to step onto something fully secure. The coffin may had been heavy, but the way the floor itself seemed to shift beneath her feet was wrong. Come to think of it, the ceiling also looked lower.
“Oh fuck.”
They were out of time at the worst possible moment. Hollybrook was one minute away from escaping with Argalax, a minute she no longer had as the ring’s walls started closing in. With nothing left to do, she turned herself into a living column and extended both ways vertically in an attempt to pop the ring open.
“Argalax, can you survive in space without your suit?”
“Yes!”
Thank the spirits.
She closed her eyes and continued pushing. Her mind was free from any other thought. Do or die; nothing she hadn’t faced before.
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