Luis, Angel, and Arketta reach cover on the ridge just as an evil boomerang-shaped airframe screams overhead. Everyone reflexively hits the dirt as some weapon system you didn't have time to see hammers the terrain like Godzilla's drum set. Dust, gravel, and tiny shards of the obsidian-like ground cover roll over the group in a choking, abrasive cloud.
A second swept-wing V-shaped machine arcs up from its dirt-skimming approach. The palpable heat of radiation beams force the team back into cover. The trilo-bot leaps forward and you can hear internals pop and fry. There's an inhuman whine and the large Sheen drops motionless. It appears it's taken one for the team when the oncoming attack craft wobbles, opens one egg-shaped engine pod wide, and spirals for the ground. The machine almost rights itself but it's too late. The explosion's a ragged orange line across the already-blasted landscape.
"That first one's slippery!" shouts a new Sheen, several floors up the side of one of the old Imperial hab-buildings. This one hovers unsteadily on three out of four impeller pods. Sensor booms and manipulators sprout from its top like an overgrown potted plant. A moment later you realize it's the same Sheen - it must have beamed into the fighter-craft and jumped out somehow.
The smaller dog-Sheen pipes up as a threatening-looking pod unfurls from its... shoulders? Well, threatening is putting it nicely. It'd be scary to a human, maybe not to the oversized boomerang now circling around. The hostile machine's just a tiny dart-shape against yellow sky.
"This hunter won't be ridden like its friend," the dog-Sheen says. "When you can, hit it with what you have."
Angel hits the deck when the first aircraft passes over head, ducking his head slightly as dirt and debris pelt his helmet. Little bits of obsidian grind into the toes of his boots as he does, and he braces himself. Since going through the gate, he's become disturbingly used to being under incoming enemy aircraft fire.
Not how that's supposed to work. I'm an American damnit!
At the dog-bots advice, he rolls onto his back and starts firing at the strafing craft.
Luis figures that they should hold their fire until the drone gets close, to ensure maximum cover and best effectiveness. However, before he can give the order, Angel opens up at range. Fuck. Committed. Make it count. He too fires. However, maybe Arketta can still wait for the close shot if he and Angel take the heat. "Arketta, when it gets close, give it all you can!", he calls.
OOC: Sorry, camp's been busy. Luis is firing two double taps, Arketta is to take cover until it's close, then give it a full mag of full auto, or whatever she can. Luis'd be better for it, really, but..he's made them 'his people' and it's his duty to get them home or die trying.
Angel's first few shots only serve the catch the airSheen's attention. It tightens its loop back, keying in off the spurts of dust and smoke from the humans' position. It lines up for a second strafing run; now Luis joins in. His UMP burps twice. The dog-Sheen's mounted gunpod twaps bright hot beams. The fusillade of fire doesn't down the aircraft but it shakes it enough that its attack blasts a ragged stream of craters across the ridgeline 30 meters away rather than across Angel, Luis, and Arketta.
The tiny hummingbird swoops in and shapeshifts, spinning flat into a shield. Invisible radiation lances sizzle off the Groi drone, which changes back and flutters, cowering close to Angel.
The enemy Sheen's barrage foiled, it swoops over the ridge and Angel, Luis, and now Arketta dump rounds into its underbelly. It's tough but its armor is thin out of engineering necessities. There's almost no sign it's damaged other than the visible bullet holes, then it streaks past. It banks right and starts to come back around when it plows into one of the Groi monoliths like it didn't even see it. The alien structure soaks the impact with a resounding thoom. Pieces of the air-Sheen rain across the landscape, the larger chunks blossoming fire on their way down.
The dog-Sheen spins towards Luis next, its weaponry still glowing with castoff heat. A terrible, hungry glare in its optics glows bright and suddenly blinks out. The machine crumples, as lifeless as any of the other scattered cybershells.
"More hunters will come. The Gate you seek is not far," states the strange radially symmetric ex-trilobot Sheen. "Forgive my friend. It is too easy to fall back on instinct in the heat of battle. It will compose itself and return if possible."
Luis nods, trying to seem like having alien robots pointing death beams at you is a regular occurance. He's aided some by the annoying fact that it is almost becoming mundane. "It is a problem all warriors face, I think. Let us move out with due haste." He signals his team to stay close and ready as they continue to the Gate. "So...would you care to elaborate on these hunters? Generally, I like to know what I've been exchanging fire with."
"They are realspace-only sentries," the Sheen replies, casually keeping pace on rippling grav-pods. "Base instincts bottled and given simple instructions. Seek out and destroy invaders."
Luis nods, "Yeah, life's like that. It's not the things you plan for that'll mess you up, it's the things you don't know that turn into stumbling blocks."
"If you find yourself stumbling, get gravity impellers," the machine jokes. At least, was it a joke?
Luis shakes his head. "Not required equipment right now. Feet are working fine. So...speaking of, what exactly is the story with the body-hopping? How's that work? You just keep what might be needed lying around?"
"Your people - forgive me, the Imperium - had quite a bit to do with that. We won Hashateem for our Homeworld, but as time went on we diminished its space and resources."
The second Gateway is visible in the distance now, sheltered within a curving structure that invokes both altar and fortress.
"Unlike humanity, we were not so tied to our physical forms. Our Homeworld is no longer so much a physical place as it is a shared datasphere. With resources drawn from the planet's core, from subroutines mining the outer planetary bodies, and from the sun, we are able to sustain an expanse of existence greater than any realspace shell."
No other sentinels strafe the group on their walk down the ridge and into the shade of the altar-fortress sheltering the Sheen Homeworld Gateway. The glyphs match the Gateway in the bowels of Mesas Negras and the Whiirr Gate, now long-since moved by the Imperium. A brisk, blustery wind sends pinwheels of dust past the team and bends distant cybershell antennae.
Three more Sheen stir into life as Luis, Angel, Arketta, and the Groi hummingbird close on the Gateway. Two are humanoid mockeries, rounded shapes and soft plastic hands suggesting older models, perhaps once Imperial servant drones. The third is an eight inch floating ball that projects a generic, flickering human face that regards the Earthlings with a cool gaze.
"Greetings, Stanhill, Riviera, Quis. This one - " the face flicks to the rightmost servant-bot - "has informed our family of the situation. Other branches have been privy to the proceedings and not all are in agreement. Our particular branch feels the main trunk will fall in line if we retain the... diplomatic momentum we have attained thus far. Would you permit a copy of myself, in this unit, to accompany you to your Homeworld as an ambassador for the Sheen?"
Luis eyes the Gate for a moment. On the other side of it, he's only a sergeant, and this would all be someone else's call. But right now...all those brass and experts are a million miles away. It's on him and his judgment. He has to predict how they'd want him to react, what they'd want him to do.
What would Hugh do?, he thinks. He takes a breath to disguise the pause, blows it out between his teeth. Fuck it, they're not here. Go with the gut.
"I would be glad to have you. I am sure my people would find much to discuss with you. I cannot promise you anything more than safe passage and contact with the proper authorities, but I hope they will see things the way I do and follow up on this first step."[/i]
"Excellent!" the tiny sphere says. "My comrades will vacate their cybershells now, so as not to alarm your people." And with that, every Sheen but the floating ball slumps to the ground.
Luis throws Arketta a look. "You think we're allowed to pretend that wasn't pretty alarming by itself?," he says in English.
"I don't know what to make of this anymore," Arketta says. "But they seem uncannily like, and unlike, us."
"Yeah, they're just an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in chrome," he says. He shakes his head, then turns back to the Sheen. "Is this Gate charged?," he says in Imperial.
"It is," the flickering face replies. "You may enter your code when ready."
Luis nods, checks around his team once more, then begins dialing. After he finishes, he steps back and readies his radio. The Gateway's glyphs glow as promised, then flash amber indicating, as expected, a blocked exit portal. As Luis checks his radio's frequency however, he notices that it's still dead, killed by the demon back in the Groi border world. A quick glance by Arketta and Angel confirm the same. Luis gets his unit open quickly and doesn't see any physical damage. He figures it's the batteries or perhaps something more subtle when the Sheen turns to them and says, "There is a transmission from the other side on an unfamiliar carrier and in an unfamiliar tongue."
Luis looks up. "For security, our base requires radio verification of identity before we open the Gate for transit. Can you play the broadcast and transmit a response on the same frequency?"
"I will try." * - selves, over.* The Sheen's holographic face winks out as it attempts to decode the radio transmissions, which repeat in Imperial soon after Luis catches the tail end in English. *Attention. You have attempted to engage a portal to a restricted area. Submit authentication or further attempts will be construed as hostile action. Identify yourselves, over.*
Using the Sheen as a proxy, Luis sends his codes and is greeted by a Mesas Negras operator.
*Please stand by for visual confirmation, Alpha two five. Send the Gate code for your side and we will redial you.*
"Copy, Mesa Negras Receiving. Requesting diplomatic contact team to be available at receiving Gate in addition to security team, please. We think we may have made a friend, and we're bringing him home to meet the family."
*Copy, Alpha two five. Mesas Negras confirms code SPIELBERG.* The codeword, indicating a potential friendly alien, is a welcome alternative to the more sinister "VADER" code. The Sheen reluctantly gives over the Sheen code and Arketta kills the connection. The Gateflash soon illuminates the shade of the Groi ruins a second time, revealing the well-worn gateroom in Mesas Negras' "Pit". Prototype remote beamers regard the portal with detachment, while the squad of heavily-armed soldiers looks slightly more antsy, more last-minute. Mesas Negras wasn't exactly expecting the away team - if they came back at all it was to be through Diego Garcia.
"Never a convenient time," Arketta jokes as a suit Luis doesn't recognize enters the portal's field of view. The man walks like Davis used to walk before he went all Colonel Kurtz. A look in his eyes that says that you're just a tool to be used. Luis is suddenly acutely aware of his sergeant's stripes but suppresses the anxiety. The suits aren't here, standing on alien soil, being strafed by Terminator rejects, surviving suicide missions.
Luis confirms and gives a quick sitrep. Fortunately the suit seems to know Imperial fairly well. Luis stands at attention with his detachment, trying to look relaxed while people on his side get ready to maybe shoot him from millions of miles away. Behind his back, he crosses his fingers as the Sheen chatters with the suit. It's mostly blowhard preamble, canned diplomacy written by committee, but Luis comes to realize that in this situation, that's the point. More delicate discussions can be had once they're through the Gateway.
Finally, the suit and the Sheen agree on terms: the Sheen may travel to Earth, and will remain on the Pit's lowest level until a more organized diplomatic corps can be assembled from all the countries with stakes in the Gateway. The portal is disconnected again, Mesas Negras redialed, the team re-authenticated, and finally Luis, Arketta, and Angel hear the operations room's radio chatter through the Sheen proxy:
"Good to be coming back, Receiving. Wasn't sure for a while there." Luis turns to the rest of the team. "Specialist, Private, accompany the Ambassador through. I'll go through last."
Angel and Arketta pass through on either side of the Sheen ball. Luis watches them stagger a bit and braces himself for the return trip.
The shock to his system is palpable, the shift in pressure and temperature nauseating. It takes a second to readjust. Even after so many transits, it's still a shock. Luis draws a shaky breath, closing his eyes. Come on, he thinks. 1 gravity, 1 atmosphere, this is home.
After taking a moment on the Gateway scaffold, Luis and the others regain their composure. The Sheen has been met by the suit, who perhaps through courage, desire for public perception, or lack of preparedness, is not wearing any sort of NBC gear. Luis realizes they're all going to have a fairly unpleasant shower in a few minutes but doesn't really care about the possible unpleasantness of decon, or even the inevitable debriefings. He's gotten his team home. His job's done, it's not his responsibility anymore. "Then why are you still thinking of them as your team ?" asks an annoying voice at the back of his head. "Shut up," he thinks back.
Ignoring the voice, he takes stock of his team. Angel looks...well, like always. If he's ever been terribly emotional, Luis missed it. Arketta....he gives her a look. "You okay? Isn't every day you stare down your old god-emperor and make friends with an ancestral enemy."
She seems fairly relaxed. A smile curls her lips as she answers. "I finally feel like I came home. I was waiting to feel this, and now I have."
Luis nods, "No kidding, and if your new home doesn't give you a freaking medal for all this, there ain't no justice in this world. Hell of a showing."
"We shook the pillars of heaven, Luis," she replies.
Angel steps through the portal, and as always, is half-convinced the other side is going to be a vacuum, a firefight, or solid rock. But instead, its a reassuringly...institutional...base on Earth. Where English is spoken with properly Midwestern accents, and as far as he's aware, the prevailing government hasn't decided to kill him.
It's good to be home.
A gloved hand, torn slightly from the sharp rocks on the ground he was last hunkered up against, flicks the safety on his weapon. He smiles as he listens to Arketta and Luis.
Admiral Duck Sauce
