Heroes Do Exist (collab with Harper Lastimosa)
04 Apr 2022Lily Flemmon
SENSITIVE CONTENT WARNING: Violent themes, strong abusive languageCTAC CORE TECH MAXIMUM SECURITY --CLEARED FOR RELEASE--
About a week ago, I found myself having to put my own needs aside for a bit. I received an SOS directly to my comms pad, in the middle of a small group lecture on the various historical revisionism practices of different contemporary societies, no less.
= Incoming Data Burst - Looped =
ICS-SU-BAY4-ARMT
MAYDAY - MAYDAY - MAYDAY
Please send aid to the Skies Unknown immediately. Some of us heard the Concourse messages. Sir Lastimosa has gone insane! There are hundreds of innocent souls aboard; we do not want to follow him! He's planning to intercept the Solaris and attack! Send aid immediately!
SOS - SOS - SOS
= Message Repeats = I've answered SOS calls from ships before, and beacons by escape pods... but a whole carrier? This was a first for me, a very big mission to attempt alone, and it was only going to get more complicated. If I wanted to keep people alive, I would have to use the Dryad. And I would have to find some way not to do this alone. Everyone on the Solaris had enough problems to worry about at the time. Tensions were high as an entirely different carrier, located who knows where and packed with who knows what, had the Solaris under psychological seige... still. Yeah. And this SOS sounded urgent, meaning I didn't exactly have the time to spare to rope someone else into helping... except Deranov. He can't enter a hostile situation or fight, but he's probably one of the best scouts in the galaxy.
There's no doubt CTAC will want detailed performance data from this operation, because it's the first time the Dryad has been in a live-fire situation. I've trained with this suit for a solid 25 hours by now, and it's like... it's like being a god, but more in the responsibility sense than the power sense. With what I knew of the situation I was about to walk into, that responsibility is going to be paramount.
So I asked Deranov to act as a scout, and he stayed far enough away to avoid detection, but still close enough to get detailed scans, identify threats, and aid in navigating through the carrier. Let's just say his ship has an unorthodox and very good sensor array. My entry point was one I've been waiting to use until I really needed to- what I call the "ass-end vulnerability" of a Drake-class carrier.
I dropped out of supercruise about 12km from the carrier. Federal security was there in force, and there were heated arguments over comms. The security forces were trying to investigate, and the carrier bridge was not cooperating. It was plenty enough of a distraction for me to sneak in and mag-lock at my entry point, but it was not a good sign. If System Security had gotten enough clues that something was going on here to launch an investigation, And despite going in with the Dryad suit, I knew I was going in alone. Anyone who knows me knows I hate being alone.
I'll skip through a lot of details about how I did what I did, because that's honestly not why I'm writing this. I'm writing to get down what I did, and what other people did.
The manual lock-and-dock was tight, and tight is good here- once I was locked, the chances I would be detected were slim to none. The hatch wasn't even secured- I just went to an access panel and operated the door controls. I got in the airlock and waited for it to cycle, and once I was in, I had one more door to get to the FSD down a corridor only 75 meters long or so. Cover your asses, carrier owners. Disabling the FSD involved getting that door open (brute force, prying the latch) and closed again (the air on the other side was not exactly clean), and following the instructions of the emergency shutdown procedure, which were engraved on the control console. I found the restart lever and ripped it off, and I scrawled/scratched an apology to whoever was going to have to fix it into the recess where the lever was.
Next objective was to get eyes on the situation, starting with the engineering bay, deck 4, which houses the primary controls for the FSD, whereas I had just shut it down at the secondary direct-access console. I took the engineering lift, and headed up, but by the time the lift was moving, I heard a callout from Deranov.
"Lily... I'm picking up weapons fire... engineering deck 4."
And just like that, now I hated how slow this lift was. "I'm on my way."
"Weapons fire has stopped. 7 bio-signatures moving out of the bay, headed toward the bow... 6 remain."
"Will I be able to catch them?"
"Unlikely."
I came out of the lift almost a minute later, and I saw... 6 dead engineers, all in independent Titan Contractors uniforms, stained with blood, and lined up slumped against the same wall. And suddenly I was reminded that I was alone. Right now I was the only one seeing this other than the people who fired the shots. I was the only living person in the room, and I didn't even get a grasp on what the significance of that was for several seconds.
I needed to call this in. System security is definitely still in local space here. I needed to tell them. I patched into the traffic channels, and listened for moment before hailing.
"-done nothing unauthorized or illegal. Your investigation is in vain. The weapon discharge signatures you detected were in error. Our internal sensors show no such activity."
Asshole. "This is Dryad to system security, I have eyes on six murder victims lined up against a wall in engineering bay 4. I'm responding to a distress signal I received about 20 minutes ago, originating from a console in this room. Looks like I'm too late, and the firing squad has already been here."
And the channels exploded with accusations, denials, and arguments. But that wasn't my problem. Right now I had to find a way to stop this, all over the carrier at once.
"Deranov, get me to central security."
"Same deck, midship. 4 doors, straight corridors. Good luck, Dryad."
I started running to the door at the bow end of the bay as my thrusters came online, radiators on my back opening to dissipate more heat. Over comms I heard threats of bringing in a Farragut capital ship, and even an ETA of 35 minutes. Once the door opened, I started running again- running like this suit really allowed me to. Strides as long as 10 meters, and boots going fully digitigrade, only having to slow down for the doors. I got to the last corridor and switched to evaporative cyclic cooling as I slowed down. The radiators on my back went offline, and armor leaves closed over them, as hot fog began swirling tightly around me. I saw the door to the central security office and jumped up, locking to the ceiling above it, and deployed a thick fog screen, making use of the excess heat as I drew my railgun. I crouched against the ceiling and activated the control to open the door, using a sensor overlay to see through the fog. A barrage of laser, kinetic, and plasma fire came through the mist, and then the guard captain sent one of his soldiers to check if they'd gotten me- they'd missed entirely, of course. I sent a metallic vine right into the barrel of his AR-50, and he fired, causing his rifle to explode and send him flat onto his back. A second barrage just like the first came between us, and while he couldn't see me, he could see the mass of misguided death a mere meter above him. He was terrified, but I could tell that started before I even left engineering- he was afraid of me, but moreso of his captain. I wish I could have told him how sorry I was before I used a vine to grapple around his thigh and toss him back into the guard room like a human bola, temporarily incapacitating half the guards in the room. As they all fell into a pile on the floor, one of the other guards tried to flee, and the captain yelled "COWARD!" and shot him in the back before he even got to the mist. And I knew I was not going to let the guard captain get away with that. I immediately stood down from the ceiling and aimed my railgun at the guard captain's head, yelling "MURDERER!" as I charged the shot, and I fired, and the guard-captain died a painless, brainless death. His frontal lobe was pulverized before there was time for it to register any impact.
I crouched back to the ceiling, expecting another barrage, but instead, the remaining guards slowly started to lower their weapons. The fog began to clear slightly as I dropped down from the ceiling, powering down my weapons. I called out to the guards, breaking the unexpected silence. "Bravery doesn't mean shit if you're being ordered to murder civilians. If you wanna be brave, get on your comms and call off the execution squads. And if you aren't feeling brave enough for that, I get it. It doesn't make you any less of a good soldier. You can go."
I wasn't even visible yet when I heard a response from one of the guards, her feminine voice speaking into a wrist-mounted comms unit, hesitantly at first, but quickly gaining strength and determination. "A-All patrols stand down! Retreat to the Hangars, evac the bays! Do not attack, and do not retaliate!"
There was silence for a moment, before I could hear the radio on the other side being wrenched away from its user...then his voice. Lastimosa. Where his previous accent had been more of a drawling purr of upper class Imperial birth, it was now a half-demeaned rage as he screamed back at her. "WHO ARE YOU TO BELAY MY ORDERS?! YOU WILL CONTINUE THE MISSION, WE HAVE MORE THAN EMOTIONS AT STAKE. BELAY THAT WOMAN'S ORDERS AND SHOOT HER FOR TREASON!"
I stepped out from the mist, weapons holstered, radiators on my back glowing only slightly. "I'm not gonna go giving orders here. As I said, if you want to leave, it doesn't make you a coward. If you want to help, I think you're all qualified to know how you can help stop this bloodbath before it gets worse. Lastimosa's in the bridge, I'll handle him. If one of you can disable the carrier's turrets, that'd help, and if you can't, making the turrets fire on each other is good enough. And if you can't help, that's okay too. Don't do anything that'll give you nightmares the rest of your life. But first, are any of you medics? Your friend who tried to run might still be alive."
One of the other guards spoke up. "J-Just go. I'll make sure they all keep clear...I'll check on Vera."
"I'll make sure you're all set first." I stepped to the side as I grew a small white lily out of my left palm. Once I was out of the way, I stepped out of the Dryad hardsuit and plucked the flower I had just grown, and walked over to the woman who had called off the death squads. "Thank you. And don't worry about Harper's yelling if you can help it. I'll handle him. You did a really good thing today."
She took the flower and placed it in her hair, since that was the only place she could really put it, and she helped one of her still-dazed squadmates to sit up. "Finish this insanity, before he gets us all killed...please."
"I'll do everything I can. You have my word." And with that, I nodded to her, stepped back into the Dryad, and as systems powered up out of idle, I stepped through the clearing mist and finished the mission.
----
Now Harper is dead. I tried to save him, but he wasn't someone who could be saved. He was someone who needed to be stopped. Less than 30 dead that day, and less than 100 injured, and while I gave her the opportunity... Medic-Commander Hannah "Sharpes" Scharve stood up in the face of danger and saved thousands of lives. I was protected by a state-of-the art hardsuit that makes me feel like a god, but she was protected by armor that had already been damaged, and she defied Harper, putting herself on the line to protect her crew.
I... fuck, I need to be all official again. Formal honors for her. The best I can give. Because in her place, in her circumstances... I don't know if I could have done what she did.
Although they're rare, heroes do exist, and I... we... all of us need to honor that fact.