Chapter 40: Chapter 20: Serenity

Ice stretched reaching his arms far above his head… Wait, arms?  He stopped and looked up at his left arm. There was a dark red prosthetic in its place.  He opened and closed the hand for a second before bringing it down and staring at it in his lap.  As he caressed the fingers lightly with his other hand he could feel the pressure on each finger of the prosthetic.  The metal of it felt soft but when he pressed on it with the other hand it didn't even dimple.  "Raven!! I have a hand!" Holding the blue chrome hand up in triumph he couldn't help the excitement on his face.

"Yes yes you also have a leg.  In case you hadn't noticed yet."

Ice gazed down at his right leg expecting to see the clockwork prosthetic.  He was pleasantly surprised at the smooth yellow leg that was present instead.  Kicking the leg up he found it had a full range of motion, maybe a little more even, as his other leg.  As he jumped to his feet off the white platform he heard the dark black foot clang on the deck.  It sounded louder than the clockwork prosthetic leg.  However,  it felt much lighter.  Standing up overbalanced him momentarily.  "Raven, this is so cool.  It almost feels like a real arm and leg."

"Yes.  We will have to get better ones when we can stand the upgrade. The higher tier models feel like a normal limb but are much stronger."

"For sure."  Ice looked at the neon orange hand as he smiled content. "Let's go thank Ducky! He must have worked super hard on these!"  Ice headed towards the door grabbing the knob with his purple hand and pulling it open..

As he looked up and down the corridor he saw a line of blinking lights on the wall. "Well in most scifi you're supposed to follow the blinking light paths." He said with a shrug.  He let his green hand trail lightly on the wall as he walked.  As he walked he looked in the open doors as he passed seeing rooms he thought he knew the purpose of. "Mmm, yea that's totally a janitor's closet.. storage… armory… security station…" and so on until he got to a closed door where the lights ended.  

"I believe this is the bridge of the ship.  Let me see if my command codes work on the door."  Raven said moments before the door opened on a spacious bridge upholstered in leopard print.

"Why, just why?" Ice said as he put his beige hand over his eyes.

"We can change the color, if you want?"  Ducky said from a seat in front of a large holographic display.

"Yes please yes! How about the theme from Mass effect?" 

The upholstery sparkled for a moment as the colors changed to a simple black and white.  Ice nodded happily.  "That is much better! Now I won't get eye cancer on my own ship!  Speaking of, should we relocate to the factory?"

"Yes, Francis asked us to hurry back. Would you like to issue the order?"

"Oh I've been waiting for this.  First we need the right music! Ducky, can you play the theme song from Firefly?"

"Take my love, take my land,

Take me where I cannot stand.

I don't care, I'm still free,

You can't take the sky from me.

Take me out to the black,

Tell them I ain't comin back.

Burn the land and boil the sea,

You can't take the sky from me.

There's no place, I can be,

Since I've found Serenity.

And you can't take the sky from me.”  The song rang out over the speakers on the bridge as Ice grinned unrepentantly.

"Take us up!" Ice ordered over the sounds of the much beloved music.

"Aye Captain!" Ducky called out as the ship rocked for a few moments before slowly rising off the ground.  "Do you have a course?"

"One star to the right and straight on til morning." Ice laughed at the misremembered words from his childhood. "Raven, can you give Ducky the location of Francis's Factory?"

"Certainly Ice." Raven responded.  

Ice felt the ship start to turn and he watched on the huge view screen at the front of the bridge as they headed over the forest towards the lone smoke stack on the horizon.

As they traveled over the forest he saw the automatons making their way back, each one carrying a broken automaton from the city.  They were making much better time than they had on the way to the city without Ice to slow them down.

The ship shuddered for a moment and he worriedly looked at Ducky. "What was that?"

"Nothing to worry about Captain, we hit a flock of type 1s! Splattered like bugs on a windshield!"  Ducky seemed extremely excited as he watched the gauge on his station hopefully for a moment.  "Not even a quarter of a percent damn." The nano fowl muttered.

Ice settled into the chair in the center of the bridge smiling as he lived a lifelong dream of captaining a warship.  One that wasn't damaged to the point of oh God oh God we're all gonna die.

_________________________

Some minutes later they came within sight of the factory.  Which looked to be under siege, it was surrounded by a sea of type 7s.  "Fuck, Ice cursed as he watched the Automatons on the factory walls fire indiscriminately into the horde of Blade Spiders.  Occasionally one would step forward and kick a Blade Spider as it crested the wall.  

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"Ducky, do we have any weapons we can use to help?"  

"The only weapon we can fire is the RFG sir.  However it would destroy the factory and we can't get high enough to deploy it with our current enzyme reserve."

A small voice came over the speakers. "Ducky release the nano clones of alanna even without her input they can fight type 7s."  

"Alice?  ALICE! Is that you? How?"  Ducky yelled looking at the wafer sitting on the panel in front of him. 

"I don't have much power left, Alley ordered me into preservation mode before she died.  Will talk when I…." The voice went silent.

Ducky looked at the wafer worriedly for a moment before reaching forward to tap a button on the holographic display.  "Only have enough power to do this once for five minutes so you had better have a plan for after that."

Ice watched the views creepy as it switched to a downward view as six grey colored women in trench coats dropped on the wall each one pulling out revolvers and firing sparkling bullets point blank into the Theriope horde.  "Ducky what the fuck is that?"

"Oh Alanna's power with nano technology allowed her to equip the ship with nano clones of her.  She liked movies so that is how her power manifested.  I think she called that outfit The Lady?  Diego told her about it.  It's from the 90s but the AI is pretty good at extrapolating."  Ducky's voice cracked as he spoke.  He sounded sad.

The nano clones didn't seem to be helping much at first but each theriope that was shot started to sparkle and dissolve after a few seconds.  The sparkles would zip back into the clones as the type 7s finished melting away into nothing.  As time went on the clones fired faster and faster and the blade spider horde rapidly began to thin out as more and more of them died.  After a few minutes the clones collapsed in on themselves before the sparkles moved towards the ship.

Ice looked down at the thinned but still highly present mass of theriope. He was worried for a moment until Raven Dinged.

Points received 4000

Would you like to make a purchase?

Ice cheered internally as he ordered Raven to buy 3 D.O.Gs.  "Release the hounds!" He ordered as the drones raced towards the airlock jumping out onto the battlefield each one locking its chain maw around a different type 7s thorax.  He could hear the machine guns firing and reloading as fast as the internal ammo factories could supply them.  "Raven, can we afford another control upgrade?" 

"The next control upgrade costs 20,000 points.  However we can purchase the two levels which will allow us to field two more units."

"Do it!" Ice shouted just before his body was wracked with pain.  

"Level up commencing, upgrading muscles by force, increasing body structure.  Upgrading mental capacity."

Ice screamed until the pain stopped.  "What the fuck Raven!"

"First level up I'd always the worst." Ducky stated watching him.

"Level up complete."

"Ice would you like to purchase more D.O.Gs or would you like the D.O.G tier 2 upgrade?  It just became available."

"Show me the Tier 2 upgrade Raven."

A screen popped up with a *DING*.

TIER 2 [Intermediate Combat Drone - Direct Operations Gunner]

 

Equipment: 2 Class 1 Coilguns fed by Matter Eater Ammunition Factory ; Internal

1 Class 2 chain maw

1 Class 1 chain tail

1 Class 2 LADAR detection suite

1 Class 2 AI: Independent Combat System

 

"Do it!" Ice cheered. "Those sound awesome!" White light manifested and two drones the size and shape of mastiffs with two short barrel coil guns appeared before running off and jumping out of the ship.  Even as they jumped you could hear the whump of the coil guns firing every few seconds.  Each shot disintegrated a Theriope.  Once they landed they seemed to go nuts.  Limbs were chopped off by the chain tails, heads were popped by the chain maws and the entire time the coilguns kept firing.  In a matter of seconds they had cleared the area near the walls of the type 7s.  

 

The type 7s began to retreat into the woods disappearing even as Ice watched.  Once the field had cleared they landed the Nano Forge next to the factory gate.  It was as big as the wall itself.  Then they went to meet with Francis.

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