There was a scuffle in the hock section of whatever this ship was called.
A.F. immediately went after Leona, but he never made it all the way. True to
her promise to protect her, Marie stepped between them, and started fighting
with him instead. It didn’t last very long. Either one of them could have
won, and it could have ended in death, and Leona couldn’t take the chance.
She unlocked the hock cell door again, and threw him inside by the
shoulders. Once she slammed the door closed in his face, she discovered her
mistake. She hadn’t patted him down, or knocked him unconscious. All he had
to do was send a quick message to his security team that there was a breach.
Their plan to sneak around quietly while no one was the wiser was no longer
a viable option. They ran out of the room, and into the next so they could
change. They chose faces from their pasts again, who no one here
would recognize, because pretending to be A.F. himself wasn’t going to work
anymore. As for their clothes, they made them look like the standard uniform
of the crew, and just hoped that there were enough of them roaming around
here—or enough chaos after the alarms started going off—that they wouldn’t
stick out for being unauthorized strangers.
They quickly, but not too quickly, ran back down to the room where
their stuff had been held, and retrieved Leona’s gear. She got dressed as
fast as possible, and then reestablished her holographic disguise, just in
time for a team of three to open the door in search of two hot lady
criminals. “Secure this area!” one of them ordered. “The fugitives will come
here in search of their belongings.”
“Understood, sir,” Leona replied, looking like a boy she had a crush on in
college. He was a film student, on the same track as her for a few semesters
before he switched to some other major, and she never saw him again. She
always thought he would make a great enlisted soldier. He just had that
Starship Troopers look about him.
“Stay here with them, Bartok,” the commander barked before running off with
his partner. That was an annoying complication.
Now, for the most part, the IMS did not come with weapons, and as a rule,
the team didn’t carry them either. They were a mostly nonviolent crowd, made
up of people who would rather sneak in with surgical strikes, and leave
without anyone knowing that anything had happened. Even the two of them, who
possessed years of combat training, preferred peaceful solutions. Much like
one could theoretically hit someone over the head with a frying pan, even
though the pan was not designed as a weapon, there was a way to use a
built-in nonviolent feature of the suit as an impromptu weapon.
It was called a static discharge, and it was meant to protect the wearer
from dust and debris in dusty and debris-filled environments. A very low
charge was keeping the outer layer clean at all times while medium intensity
charges could repel foreign objects when the area was particularly harsh.
Safety mechanisms usually prevented extreme discharges, but these safeguards
could be subverted in emergency situations. It might be enough to shield the
wearer from a fallen or thrown rock, but it had to be done on purpose by
concentrating the energy in one spot. This was no emergency, and she didn’t
want to have to use it, but it appeared that they had no choice. Leona
rubbed her forearms together to build up and focus the charge. Then she
released it into Bartok’s back without a word. He slumped towards the floor,
but she caught him before that, and laid him down gently.
“What do we do,” Marie asked, “wait for midnight central?”
Leona shook her head. “A.F. will be free by then. He probably is already.
He’s quite familiar with our pattern, and will be expecting that gambit. Our
only choice is to get off of this ship, and away from the teleportation
dampening field. Fortunately, they’re drifting, so it shouldn’t be too rough
of a ride.”
“Are we sure that our suits can handle the equilibrium?”
“No, but we can’t steal a shuttle, or they’ll find it.”
“Maybe we do steal a shuttle,” Marie suggested. “Maybe we let them
find it.”
Leona didn’t know what she meant by that.
“We’ll require a distraction. How good are you at those external holograms?”
She was pretty good, having gotten even better since she was first given
Alyssa’s powers. She leaned into her knack for creating holograms away from
her person. She considered it her specialty. Nearly each one of them had
their own specialty. The only one who wasn’t all that great with any of the
tricks was Mateo. He would hopefully find his place eventually, but there
was no guarantee. Sadly, some people were simply not particularly skilled.
Using the nearest workstation, they pulled up schematics of the ship, and
made their plan. Leona generated an enemy vessel, which appeared out of
nowhere only about a couple hundred meters away. Now, this being made of
pure light and all, it wasn’t giving off any energy readings. If someone
tried to send a photon torpedo towards it, it would pass right through, and
fly off into the aether. The only reason it worked as a distraction was
because it was so big and sudden that it freaked everyone out before they
could determine that it was fake. While everyone was looking at the port
side, Leona and Marie went over to the starboard side.
The two shuttles that they tried to open were locked, but they noticed that
the fighters were all completely open, which made sense, because pilots
needed to be able to jump into them at a moment’s notice. So they stole one
of those instead. But they didn’t get inside of it to do it. Leona
programmed it to fly off in one direction, and make basic escape maneuvers
when the situation arose. It was vital that it managed to evade capture at
least until midnight, or the plan wouldn’t work. With that gone, giving A.F.
and his crew the impression that the fugitives were attempting to escape,
the two of them turned invisible, and stayed hidden. It was annoying, not
being able to use their jump to the future to their advantage, as they had
often been able to do in the past, but this slight modification would
hopefully get the job done this time.
A year later, they returned to the timestream, still in the hangar bay, but
hiding in the corner. Perhaps about every single soldier on this thing was
there now, pointing their weapons at the once-stolen fighter jet. Their plan
had worked. Everyone thought that that was where Leona and Marie would come
back.
“Sir?” one of them asked after several minutes passed, and the jet was still
empty.
“I know,” A.F. replied.
“Sir, they must have bailed out. They’re probably floating around out there
naked.” He didn’t mean unclothed, but unprotected by a hull.
“I know,” A.F. repeated. “Scan the entire kasma for lifesigns. They
can’t get through the membrane without the skeleton key.”
This was a big risk, but there were a lot of people here, and Leona could
use that to her advantage. Alyssa’s power gave them the ability to turn
invisible, but not to go unheard. Hopefully what she said here would get
lost somewhere in the crowd, and A.F. wouldn’t care about who specifically
said. “Unless they already stole the key last year!” she suggested in a fake
voice.
A.F. did look around to see who had said that, as did others, but no one
fessed up. It quickly became unimportant to him, because the voice was
right. “Lieutenant,” he said to a woman standing nearby. “Go secure the key.
I want two security teams left right here in case we missed something.
Everyone else, back to your action stations.”
The thing about being invisible to these people was that they were
necessarily also invisible to each other. They didn’t have some additional
magic power to see through their own disguises. Leona and Marie had to hold
hands the whole time to keep track of one another. The former led the latter
down the hallway, following the lieutenant to the place of their prize. It
was quite a ways away, down a few corridors, into an elevator, and then down
more corridors. The farther they went, the fewer crewmembers they saw around
until it felt like an eerie ghost town. Presumably no one was allowed in
this area for security reasons. The lieutenant punched in the code, unaware
that it was being seen and memorized by two invisible girls. They
immediately had more respect for her than they ever could A.F. Her code too
was composed of eight digits, but they were all different. It was a good
thing that they saw it, because she slipped in so quickly that they were
unable to tag along. There wasn’t even a little window for them to see what
she was doing in there.
Leona pulled Marie away, and felt her up a bit until she found her ear.
“When she comes out, continue to follow her,” she instructed in a whisper.
“We don’t know that the key is in the same place as the membrane thickener.
We don’t even know that the membrane thickener is on this ship. It could be
an entirely separate thing. But the key is in there, so once she confirms
that, she might go after the machine itself next, just to be safe. I’ll
sneak in here after she leaves. You gather all the intel you can. If you
need help, send me the feeling of fear, and if you find the jackpot,
send me elation.”
“Understood, captain.”
Leona gave Marie a kiss on the cheek, and then let go of her. When the
lieutenant came back out of the room, the two of them accidentally ran into
each other in their attempt to begin their separate sub-missions. The sound
of the collision caused the lieutenant to turn around in confusion, but she
didn’t pursue the issue, instead assuming that she was mistaken. Leona
hovered her hand over the keypad, preparing to unlock the door once the
coast was clear. She could only hope that Marie was doing okay on her own. A
few minutes later, she entered the secret chamber, and started to get a look
around, expecting to be alone.
A bespectacled bearded man was sitting at a desk in low-lighting. He stood
up, and looked around, but didn’t see anything. This could still work. She
could still find the key, and she might even be able to steal it. The name
was almost certainly metaphorical, so it could be the size of a semi-truck,
but at worst, she should be able to steal the plans for it on the computer.
She just needed to wait for this guy to calm down, and maybe go out for a
smoke break. He just kept staring into the dimness, before apparently coming
to a revelation. “Ah. I get it.” Without looking down, he pulled a drawer
open, and reached inside to retrieve a part of HG Goggles. He removed his
own glasses, and pressed the goggles against his face without wrapping them
around his head. “Mrs. Matic. I heard about what you could do. I came
prepared.”
Just in case he was bluffing, Leona waved one hand to her side, waxing on.
She waxed off with her other hand.
The man smiled, and mimicked the gesture. “Yes, I’m not lying, I see you
there.”
Leona revisiblized herself. “I need that key.”
“I know you do.”
“You do?”
“Everybody needs it. It’s a key.”
“Are you going to give it to me?”
“Doubtful.”
“You don’t look like much of a fighter.”
“You have no idea what kind of weapons I have in my arsenal. Yet I
know all about those suits. I helped design them.”
“Did you design the key?”
“Yes.”
“And the membrane thickener?”
“Indeed.”
“Is that here too?”
“It may be.”
“Where do your loyalties lie?”
“They lie with science. She has my heart.”
“Yet A.F. has your soul.”
He chuckled. “I guess. He’s not evil.”
“He’s a dick.”
“Isn’t everybody?”
Leona was done with the banter. “The people of Stoutverse need that key.”
“Oh, it’s for someone else? You’re not just trying to take this one down?”
“Not really. It’s not my concern right now. I’m not certain how vital it is
for Salmoverse and Fort Underhill to maintain physical connection to each
other. But I know that a race of violent antinatalists are intent on wiping
out an entire planet. It’s my responsibility to put a stop to that.”
The man lifted his chin, and studied her face. “You’re not lying.”
“You’re right, A.F. isn’t evil. To my knowledge, he’s only ever hurt me and
my friends, and we don’t have much use for grudges. We’ve always only been
trying to just get away from him. Any sense of hostility he feels is in
service to that end, not any real hatred that we feel. I suppose we may have
to deal with him one day, but that day is not today. Please. Give me the
plans for the machine, and the key, and then we’ll just leave. I won’t even
manufacture them in this universe.”
Now he sighed. “Very well.” He reached into his lab coat pocket, and came
back out with a data crystal.
“You just carry that around with you at all times?” she asked, but only
after she took it out of his hand.
“The second my boss found you in the kasma six years ago, I knew that this
was what you were after. My equipment can detect time travel events. You
obviously came back on purpose.”
“You’re too smart to be working for him.”
He cleared his throat, and reached up to the wall. He flipped a switch, and
Leona could immediately feel her ability to teleport return to her. “People
like me...always work for men like him. Now get off my ship before I sound
the alarm.”
