The Best Is Yet To Come - 11: Face the Music
04 Sep 2023CrazyGolm
Face the Music – August 3309Golm tentatively advanced through the darkness of the facility.
As he glanced around, he recognized the architecture immediately; the gunmetal walls, the general lack of windows. “It’s the same place all right.” The lack of lighting indicated he was in an unused area of the base.
For a prison colony, it was surprisingly empty. The Club had repurposed it for their own agenda.
Golm was here to shut it down.
A black-armoured guard appeared from round a corner, just ahead of him.
By the time the guard spotted him, Golm had already drawn his pistol and pulled the trigger. A shot of plasma had the guard reeling. His armour had absorbed the worst of the blast, so it wouldn’t be lethal. Golm followed through by clocking him over the head, and the guard was out cold.
Golm continued down the corridor, until something against the wall caught his eye.
“Clixer, I’ve found an access terminal of some sort.”
“Use that thing I gave you, the super-breach.”
He fumbled to grab the card of strange electronic tricks from his belt. When he plugged it into the terminal, a light on the card turned green, and it thrummed to life.
Clixer began to explain how the card works. “Basically, it makes the mainframe panic and perform a full system dump onto the card. This lets me gain control over pretty much anything on the system.”
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Aboard the Crux, hovering just outside the facility’s perimeter, Clixer held his Duradrive with triumph. The screen was filled with a mass of scrolling characters scarcely understandable to the average human. Raw data, and a lot of it. Then the screen flickered, and the data was replaced by a user interface. Mainframe controls.
“We’re in!” Clixer cheered. “Let’s see what we can do.”
Clixer tapped a few buttons. “That’s the turrets down. Now we can come a little closer. Don’t party without us, Golm!”
Golm’s dad was still settling into the passenger seat. As he glanced around, he inadvertently triggered the vast array of holographic menus, controls, and charts. He explored them with childlike awe.
“Do all the ships have this, Clixer?”
“Yup.”
“I could get used to this.”
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“Right, Golm, I’m loading a map of the facility now… and looks like we have camera access too!”
Golm waved into the nearest surveillance camera.
“Yep, I saw that. Hello, brother!”
Golm followed the corridor up a flight of stairs. It opened up into a warehouse, where the corridor became an elevated gantry.
“Golm, heads-up: there’s a few bad guys in there.”
Golm swapped a fresh energy cell into his suit, drew his plasma longrifle, and slowly stepped on to the gantry.
He spotted four soldiers on the warehouse floor. They had been milling around at ease, but one of them noticed Golm. “Who on earth is that?”
He was stunned for a second before he jumped to alert. “Intruder spotted!”
A burst of laser fire came Golm’s direction. He returned fire with his Executioner rifle, launching well-aimed orbs of plasma at the soldiers.
Golm had taken cover in the doorway, when a shield disruptor grenade landed right next to him.
Priming his jetpack, he boosted forwards and upwards, flying off the gantry to escape the blast. As he fell to ground level, he pummelled the soldiers with Tormentor plasma pistol shots.
They were panicking. They couldn’t stop him.
Golm landed safely behind a stack of crates. Using them as cover, he recharged his suit’s shielding, while taking careful shots at the soldiers to wear down their shields.
When he was ready, he took a deep breath.
Golm ran at the soldiers, and firing his jetpack again, used the low-g environment to launch himself through the air directly at them. He knocked them over much like a bowling ball knocks over pins. Golm landed across the room and glanced back at the fallen soldiers. They were all either unconscious, or had admitted defeat.
“I’m glad I tuned in for that fight!” Clixer remarked. “You’re nearly at the command centre.”
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The operative stood in the command room.
Someone had broken in.
Guards were going missing.
The mainframe was going haywire.
The intruder was a mystery.
This was disturbing.
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A figure stood in the shadows. The operative froze.
“Who are you?”
“A ghost.” the figure replied wryly. A familiar accent, a familiar voice.
“Impossible!”
It was him. It walked like Golm, it talked like Golm, it must be Golm.
“How are you here?” the operative demanded. His eyes, once cold and callous, were now wide with bewilderment.
Golm remembered the operative’s monologue from last time.
“You know, you were wrong about me. I’m not perfect, but I do my best to fight for what’s right. I’m not like other lawfuls, and I’m not like other turncoats either. I retired from the Agency for a time to get away from the conflict, but I did my best, and I’m back now. I’m not unstable or out of control, I belong to God and He is my King.”
“And I’m not dangerous. I’m Deadly.”
Golm levelled his pistol at the operative.
“So, are we gonna fight or what?”
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Golm had the leader, the operative, thoroughly tied up. The guy had tried to fight back, but he was no match for Golm this time.
Clixer grinned at the sight. Golm was at the top of his game.
“Clixer, we have a problem.” Golm’s dad pointed to one of the camera feeds on the Crux’s holoscreens.
In a large foyer near the command centre, at least two squads of hostiles were mustering, preparing to ambush Golm.
“Golm needs our help.”
Clixer glanced at the map, and made a swift decision.
“Buckle up, Dad. We’re going in, guns blazing.”
Half a kilotonne of Faulcon Delacy Cobra Mark 3 hurtled towards the wall at over five hundred metres per second.
The Cobra crashed through at least a foot of reinforced structure, slamming directly into the group of soldiers. Its shields had borne the brunt of the impact, but its hull had sustained some damage. Its multicannons pulverised armour and its beam lasers shot, well, laser beams. Furniture, equipment, and generally anything not bolted down flew into the void as the foyer depressurized, having lost an outer wall entirely.
Among the building’s wreckage, thanks to the shields and inertia dampening, the occupants of the Crux were battered but largely unscathed. “No one messes with my son.” Golm’s dad quipped assertively.
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In the command centre, Golm navigated the Club-controlled computer system. The operative sat scowling, tied up in a steel chair. The tables had turned.
Golm spoke confidently.
“You know, you never did get to see my face. But I never got your name, so that’s fair.”
“So here’s what I’m going to do, “Mr Nasty Club Operative”. I’m going to delete all the intel you have on me, no, on anyone your silly Club have been tracking. Judging by this system, the deletion will propagate up to wherever you got the intel from. Your superiors will get the message, and they’d better hope they have a backup. Otherwise, they’ll have to restart at square one. And I hope no one will have to live in hiding again.”
“And as for you… I’m kind, so I’m going to let you live.”
At that moment, the radio picked up an incoming transmission.
“Attention all units. This is the Independent Defence Agency. We are securing Oswald Prison Colony from hostile occupation. All hostiles, surrender now – we will only ask once. Commander CrazyGolm, we’ve got your back.”
Outside, Agency dropships had surrounded the facility, deploying dozens of marines. Vice President Logan O’Neal watched from the cockpit of an Alliance Crusader, having personally overseen this operation. He knew Golm was going after his kidnappers, and he knew he’d need help.
Beneath the mirrored helmet, Golm smiled. The Agency had come through, and he hadn’t even asked.
Now there was only one more thing to do.