Location: The Needle
Planet: Precursor Vault - The Needle
Kieran and Mae rush through the corridors, the sound of claws clicking against metal behind them. They rush past rooms, and other vestibules that are carved in the walls.
Mae pants into her mic, "We've gotta get the hell out of here!" She slumps against the wall to catch her breath.
Kieran slings her arm over his shoulder and supports her. He holds the submachine gun ahead of him as they round a corner into a room with a large central spiral staircase that's several feet wide. The spacing of each step designed for legs slightly longer than a human's. The stair case twists up into the darkness and into the heights of the spire.
"Jesus, fuck. This place sucks." The room, still covered in glyphs, seems to end at the stairwell. The clicking and clacking of metal claws continues behind them, the tremors of movement reverberating through their boots.
Mae pushes forward and starts to climb the stairs, Kieran behind her. He primes and grenade and tosses it back behind them. A few second later the pair are further up the stairs as the grenade explodes behind them, the silent explosion vibrating through the soles of their feet.
Legs burning, after countless minutes of spiraling stairs (weak hit) the pair find themselves at an interior landing. The lamps from the helmets illuminating the walls near them. The lamps only reach out about ten meters, the surrounding darkness weighs on them like a wet blanket. The staircase rises above them, disappearing into the black.
The tower shudders and they can feel a groan echo through their feet. The faint tap-tap-tap of armored legs stops for a moment, then continues. Their pursuers closer, clambering up the stairs behind them.
"GO, GO, GO!" Kieran shouts into his mic. "Laris, are you there? Laris?" Kieran tries to maintain his calm, but the desperation in his voice echoes in his head.
Mae, with a burst of energy, climbs faster, her weapon holstered. She leaps up the stairs, trying to cover two at a time. With one hand up against the walls, she braces herself and continues.
They make steady progress, fueled by adrenaline. Kieran holsters his weapon on his hip, the magnetics grabbing it and holding it tight. Within moments they burst free at the top of the spire, a large platform, hexagonal nestled between six small towers, a tower at each point of the hexagon.
"Laris! Laris, can you hear me?" Mae clicks her mic.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm here. You guys have been silent for the past hour or so. Where are you?"
"We don't have time to explain, we're at the top of the tower with Forgespawn--" Kieran interjects.
"What? Forgespawn" Laris' voice cuts into his feed.
"--right behind us. Prep the ship, keep the door closed until you see us." Kieran grumbles into his mic.
"Don't worry, I got you!"
The platform lights up from the flood lights of the Relentless as the ship rises above the tower. The cargo bay doors open and the ship wobbles slightly as Laris shifts it to port.
Kieran and Mae sprint towards the cargo bay as several Forgespawn appear behind them, the impacts of their armored talons vibrating through the soles of their boots.
(weak hit)As the approach the rim of the platform, the ship is still a handful of meters from them, the cargo bay door open. Mae and Kieran leap for the cargo bay doors, but an armored leg reaches out and catches Kieran's foot as he leaves the ground. In the lower gravity, he spins away off the edge of the platform but see's Mae land safely inside the ship.
(suffer move - strong hit - +1 momentum <embrace the pain>)
(face danger - weak hit - suffer move) The Relentless drops with him, dangerously close. There's no drag, only the pull of gravity that's going to slam him into the surface of the planet. (Check your gear - Strong hit) Kieran reaches back and grabs his small grappling hook dangling from his pack. In the blink of an eye he aims and throws it towards the open cargo bay door and feels it snag and hook onto something. (suffer move - Endure Harm - strong hit - shake it off) He tugs hard and pulls himself into the ship, landing heavily onto his stomach.
"Laris, pull up! Let's go! We've got him!" Mae's voice lights up the comm. Her armored glove slaps the button to close the doors which glide shut. She falls down next to him and rolls him over onto his back, rope entangling them both. She looks down into his helmet.
"Fuck. I don't want to do that again." Kieran reaches up and opens his helmet. Rope tangling around his arms. He flails his arms half-heartedly. "I hate those things." He looks up into her brown eyes.
"I know, Kieran. Me too." For a moment her eyes and his meet and then she looks away, her eyes crinkling from some inward pain.
"We're gonna come back to this Needle, and this time, I'm going to bring bigger guns. His hand clasps over his forearm where his Iron totem is embedded in a leather bracer. "I swear it."
Kieran climbs to his feet and he and Mae remove their armor and vacuum suits. "Let's get up there before she crashes this thing."
They make their way up to the bridge, Laris still in the pilots chair. "Sorry about that, I didn't know what to do when the comms cut out. Turns out, this ship isn't too hard to fly." She looks back of her shoulder, a smile on her lips. "Much better than the junk that we cobble together back on Scirocco." Mae smirks and sits down in one of the bridge chairs and starts to review the system logs and sensor data.
He flops down into the co-pilots seat and gestures vaguely, "You did a fine job, may as well keep on going. I'll warm up the E-drive. He flips a few switches on the control panel and faint whine begins to vibrate through the hull. For a few minutes, he gives her a basic overview of the systems on the Relentless and enters the nav data into the navigation system.
With a bit of back and forth, Laris lines up the ship with the navigation coordinates and enables the e-drive, the ship grabs hold of the gravity waves and accelerates into the bright starfield.