Luis' mag change gives his wounded Caretaker the chance to close in and swing its spear into Luis' submachine gun. The UMP burps, spraying lead into the pillars and ceiling. A few rounds glance off the Whiirr's still-sturdy carapace.
Angel reverses direction, charging in at the Avatar. He sidesteps, going for a contact shot on the machine's torso, but the golden humanoid is a hair faster. It sacrifices its right forearm to Angel's attack - the rounds leave ragged, smoking holes in the bladed, overlapping plates. Almost in retort, the Avatar brings its left hand back, fingers hooked into claws, and punches forward into Angel's chest! The Avatar hoists Angel aloft, pinioned on its sharpened digits. The Delta lets his rifle hang by its sling, trying to wrench his way free with both hands. Blood spatters the ground, streaming from underneath Angel's breastplate.
*Fools!* the machine shouts. Its vox is damaged; the Avatar's voice is scratchy, almost devoid of inflection, no longer human. *Your misguided persistence has ceased to amuse us! Die!*
Davis glances up. It's Ngawai who pulled him back to cover, and now the ex-Apprehender shouts something unintelligible over the gunfire. Rounds spang off the Avatar's back. It maintains its hold on Angel.
Desperate, Swims' foe plunges his blade into the shipmaster's leg even as Swims-the-Black grasps the Caretaker cross-handed, one hand on the beast's massive jaw, the other on the back of its head. The weapon slants off armor before piercing through the meat of Swims' thigh. Swims shouts a half-warcry, half-painful curse as he snaps the Caretaker's neck and staggers for the Avatar next.
The Whiirr who killed Jonnoperest grunts in approval, gets to its feet, and lopes up the gently sloping auditorium towards one of the many pillars that line the Court. He shoots at Ngawai and Davis; the beam vaporizes a seat-back, sending embers fluttering about in a cloud. The seat's electronics sputter and spark.
Davis pokes his rifle around the aisle and fires a couple bursts up at the sneaky Caretaker. Craters explode from the pillar, sending stinging fragments into the Whiirr and forcing him to full cover.
Davis figures out what Ngawai's been shouting, and realizes he agrees completely with keeping his head down and keeping that Caretaker's ass down. Ngawai curses as she pauses to bring her sights back to the Avatar. She waits as the golden machine stalks a few steps towards Swims-the-Black, murder written all over on its near-headless form. Angel writhes on the alloy fingers. It's these that Ngawai's aiming for. Her SCAR barks in short controlled bursts, the pressure thumping Davis' back and ears through his armor. The Avatar's left elbow dimples and twists. Ngawai's shots find vital circuits or tubes or something - the left hand reflexively opens and Angel hits the ground. The Avatar's left hand is locked into a macabre claw, gory and smoking. It stumbles, damaged sensors overcompensating for the loss of Angel's weight, and its right arm swings over Swims' head. The Avatar pauses, unsure where to press its attack. The wounded Homeworlder? The woman who just sniped it? Or a traitorous servant?
Adding to the temptation, Ngawai's empty magazine clatters to the Court floor as she fishes for more ammo.
Davis rests the barrel of his rifle on the back of the seat in front of him, and sights in on the pillar where the Caretaker took cover. He thinks back to the first shot he fired in all of this mess, back on Aikoro. Same deal, just line up the shot and fire. He tightens his hold on the foregrip of the rifle. Of course, a little extra fire downrange wouldn't hurt this time.
Swims pulls the knife from his leg and ducks in low to stab at the Avatar. The blade makes a hard pop when it punches through the Emperor's torso plates, but whatever was underneath must not have been vital - or it was already destroyed. Swims leaves the knife where it stuck and brings his own blade up in a reverse-grip uppercut. The Avatar slams its hands down, blocking the Whiirr's strike. A feint and a jab from both parties separate the two for a moment.
Angel uses the distraction afforded by Swims' attack to crawl back, away from the golden Avatar. He painfully pushes himself to his feet and pulls his rifle up from its sling. The machine sees the weapon - although Angel can't tell where or what it would be using for sensors at this point - and darts towards Angel in two zigzagging steps. Angel rolls sideways with a pained grunt as a ragged golden foot slams down into the floor with a heavy thud. The Avatar is trying its best to herd Angel and Swims so that they're both within a few steps' reach. It crouches, preparing to spring, when Arketta rips off her entire magazine in one long, loud roar. Angel's spattered with a shotglass worth of mercurial fluid, like the castoff from the damaged Keeper drones. Bullets punch through the Avatar and it doubles over. Silver, black, and red runs in rivers from the craters punched in its carapace. The SCAR rounds take the rest of the Avatar's head module off in chunks that scatter to the floor along with shards and pieces from its gold-feathered metal facade. The Emperor's machine shifts its stance, clearly marking Arketta as its next target. It tries to shout some sort of command or epithet but it just comes out as a warbling hiss.
The Caretaker briefly suppressed by Davis sees Arketta shoot up his overlord. The Whiirr pops up around its bullet-ridden pillar, aiming at the ex-Turai. Davis was waiting for something like this. He unleashes hell on the Caretaker and is rewarded with ablating carapace, showers of debris, and gouts of arterial red. The Whiirr drops back out of sight, mewling. The spook's gun is dry.
Luis' dance partner still can't hit the wily Delta operative, but it's all Luis can do to duck, dodge, and barely parry away the Caretaker's spear attacks. His backwards, circular movement is no match for the Whiirr's aggression. Luis finally uses it as a lure, stopping short as the Caretaker whiffs another spear-thrust. Stanhill steps inside to the left, terribly close to the alien's bare-handed reach. His opponent instinctively moves to protect his chest, so Luis fires a burst point-blank into the Whiirr's leg and steps away from the stricken beast. The Caretaker collapses on the ruined knee, eliciting a series of squelches and rips that would chill the groins of a studio audience.
Davis hears Arketta blow her magazine into the Avatar, and turns his head in time to see it turn and brace itself to charge at her, emitting a static hiss that still somehow seems filled with rage. He turns back to where the Caretaker fell and curses.
"Ngawai, fill that heap of junk with lead! I've got the Caretaker!" Davis drops the empty magazine from the SCAR with one hand while his other grabs a replacement and slides it home, then sights back on the Caretaker's position, waiting for it to reappear.
Angel slides back, kicking and pushing with his legs to get out of the Avatar's reach. The Imperial figurehead crouches to spring at Arketta when Swims-the-Black leaps onto its bullet-riddled back. The impact throws the machine off-balance; staggering, it elbows Swims off and starts to leap again when Angel flips his selector to "all the bullets". His rifle chatters away, happily punching through the Avatar's torso. The demonic vox-hiss cuts out with a squelch. Arterial geysers of exotic fluids spray across the floor. A heavy, painful grinding emanates from the machine, a grinding metal-on-metal death rattle that ceases as Angel's rifle empties itself with a cheerful slap of the bolt locking back and the scattered tinkle of brass.
The Avatar hits the Court steps with a crash and doesn't move.
Angel lets his head slump back as the pain of the Avatar trying to explore his ribcage catches up with him. Hands that don't seem to be working quite as well as they're supposed to fumble for an ammo clip in his webbing.
Luis drops a second empty magazine to the ground as he backs away from his kneecapped Caretaker. The Whiirr drags its bloody leg another step and raises its spear for a throw. Luis sees the alien's fingers arm the spear's warhead. His own fingers ram fresh rounds home and slap the UMP45's bolt forward. Luis stops his retreat, leans forward, and fires a two-round burst. Without the constant danger of death-by-spear-thrust, it's almost a coup-de-grace. The .45 caliber slugs spray Whiirr brains across the floor.
Ngawai no longer has to shoot at the Avatar - she brings her weapon to bear on the last Caretaker just as the Whiirr pops up, unable or unwilling to leave the hard cover of the pillar. Davis has him dead to rights already, and the two SCAR-Hs hammer away in unison. When the dust and debris clear, the last Caretaker is dead and nothing stands between the team and the Black Gate.
Luis drops his barrel slightly, and takes a breath. He looks around to survey the area. As he does, he calls out "Who's here, who's hurt? We clear to move?"
Davis sees the Whirr get hit with rounds from both Ngawai's and his rifles, and immediately hit the deck hard. Davis stands up, and walks slowly over to the Whiirr's body. The armor has a few bloody holes in it, other wounds cake the dead Caretaker's fur with blood, but the final confirmation that he's dead is the missing chunks of skull from the dead body.
As he looks over the Whiirr's body, the taste of metal slowly creeps into Davis' mouth, and he spits into his gauntleted hand. His saliva is red with blood, and he looks down to see the enormous gash torn through his armor. The edges of the slash on the breastplate look like a torn aluminum can, while the undersuit is just cut away to reveal a deep wound at least a foot long across his chest that's oozing blood down his chest. He can almost see his own ribs and sternum from his perspective, and as he turns back to Ngawai to wave her over, shock catches up with him and his knees give out, dropping him against the pillar.
He tries to shout, but he suddenly feels very weak, and all he can manage is a hoarse version of his normal voice. "Ngawai, I need...need help over here. Bring a kauka, I think this one's pretty bad."
Luis shakes his head. "Anybody who's not hurt, cover the door. I'll secure the wounded, Jo..." Shit "...Somebody check the Gate. We've gotta move out, now."
Swims-the-Black picks up a few extra beamers from the dead Caretakers and sets up behind one of the more-intact pillars, watching the entrance to the Court.
Ngawai lies Davis flat on the ground and pops off the front of his torso carapace. Luis still has the team's only kauka, and he checks Angel first. His teammate's basically been stabbed five times in the chest, but there's nothing exotic about the wounds. Angel feels more pain, then a warmth where the punctures are. The wounds begin to close, gossamer tissue spiderwebbing over the gashes and slowing the blood flow.
Arketta checks her own wounds - they're not bad enough to require the frisbee, so she turns to the Black Gate. She stares at it a moment, then calls back, "What code do I enter? These glyphs aren't the same."
Davis sees Luis and Ngawai over him now, feels the kauka work its magic, and doubles over into a fetal position. It hurts, bad, worse than the initial wound, but then the pain fades, replaced with a warmth like stepping into a sunlit lawn.
Davis shouts out in pain when Luis uses the kauka on him, as the sharp needles of agony from his regenerating flesh stab into his chest. Once the pain subsides though, he begins to feel much better. Davis lays there for a minute, letting the connective tissue regenerate and cover his wound, and then slowly helps himself to his feet.
He staggers over to the Avatar, and pulls out his knife. "There's something inside of this thing that we need. Arketta, we'll figure out the gate later, we need to document this thing and what happened here, to keep the Imperials from covering it up. And Swims-the Black, I might need your help taking this thing apart."
Ngawai fishes through Jonnoperest's gear and comes up with his handheld. "This'll record holos if that's what you want," she says. "But we don't have all day."
Swims helps Davis pry and beat at the Avatar's ruined shell, peeling back armor plates and bullet-riddled sheets to reveal a silver globe a little smaller than a bowling ball where a human's diaphragm would be. Severed and broken connectors ring the artifact. It looks like upon the Avatar's "death", the device disconnected itself, much like the Imperial reactor artifacts interact with their own connectors.
Swims reaches in to hand it to Davis, thinks better of it, and withdraws his hand before touching it.
"Just record the room and the inside of the Avatar, then help Luis and Arketta figure out a way to get the gate open," Davis tells Ngawai. "Bring over Jonnoperest's body, we're taking him with us."
After prying the Avatar's shell open, Davis sees what he's looking for. The silver ball just sits there, suspended inside its own support matrix. Swims-the-Black almost grabs it, but then thinks better of it. "Thanks a lot," Davis signs with a smile, and is about to grab it himself when he has a better idea. He opens up the vox unit and unplugs the handheld remote, then pokes the sphere with the plug end of the remote.
Davis clicks the mic a few times, then speaks. "This is Garrett Davis. I assume this is the Emperor?"
Like Davis expects, the vox-plug pushes into the globe as if it were clay, then there's a little pull and the quicksilver crawls up the cable just enough to make a smooth unbroken blend between plug and globe.
The rich, deep voice the team has come to associate with the Emperor answers Davis' greeting. Its anger is palpable.
"Say whatever you want, Garrett Davis. You are only wasting your last moments."
"Well, I'd hate to waste any more of your time then, Emperor." Davis looks over to the Black Gate. "We'd love to take our leave of your lovely palace here, but wouldn't you know it, the Black Gate has different glyphs than the other gates. You wouldn't happen to know the code to turn it on, would you? After all, you can still uphold your end of the bargain and let us leave through the Black Gate." Davis motions for Ngawai to get a detailed shot of the Black Gate. "The sooner you give us the proper gate codes, the sooner we're out of your way."
Luis looks up at the mention of different glyphs. He tries to mentally compare them to the Mesa Negras and Whirr sets, pulling on his memories of the ill-fated Whirr exploration mission.
Admiral Duck Sauce
