Junebug blinked as the stasis field around her vanished. She sneezed violently as in-rushing air gusted dust into her sinus. Fortunately her helmet visor maintained a low grade electric charge that repelled the particles and kept the face shield clean.

"More Goddess Cursed AI's," she grumbled as she vaulted down from the raised platform and landed with a clang, her combat books waking echos across the deck plates as moved at a tactical jog towards the door Drake had vanished in with, what she assumed, was the core of the facility.

"Can't it just close the doors on this asshole?" The moved into the hallway at a jog but the voice, seemingly omnipresent in the facility, followed them.

"System degradation over, the centuries has rendered this impossible Consort," the mechanical voice went on, with no more or less emotion that it had possessed when it spoke of the destruction of the system. Sayeeda was running through the corridors now, there were no obvious turns to slow her and while the corridor snaked back and forth there were no options for exploration.

"Consort!? She spluttered in outrage as they broke into a large room that seemed to be filled with some sort of statuary, still in the same alien metallic style.

"You are the Consort of the Representative are you not?"

"I don't think we need to go that far," Sayeeda said dryly as she moved through the forest of eerie statues, the muzzle of her submachine gun sweeping from side to side.

"Booster bring up thermal at a 25 percent mask," she instructed her helmet AI and the world took on the subtle shadings of color based of the rates of differntal cooling. The effect was slightly nausating with so much cold metal becoming tinted with icy blue. Neil had a warm glow of body heat about him, as would Drake when they caught up with him.

"Would you perfer a different form of address Consort?" the AI inquired polite.

"Shut the fuck up," Sayeeda snapped, she didn't have breath to talk with a centuries dead computer and she certainly didn't want to tip off. WHANGG!! Sparks showered her as she burst through a door at the end of the hall of statues. The were in a large room that reminded Sayeeda of a chapel or maybe a particular ornate mess hall. Strange alien designs hung on the walls and long benches lay in curiously asymmetrical rows here and there a console station flickered with the odd purplish light and strange symbols they had seen in the control room and at the keypad. CLANG! CLANG! Rounds ricocheted off the wall beside her as she through herself forward into a diving roll. Drake stood across the room frantically tapping at a keypad with one hand while firing one handed across the room at her, his face a mask of fear and concentration. His first shot had been lucky Sayeeda realised, Drake was comfortable with guns but even she would have struggled to hit a surprise target across a room while her attention was focused on another task. Well, maybe she would have struggled.

"How the fuck did you get out!" Drake shrieked his voice high with panic as he frantically hammered at the keypad.

"Not really relevant!" she shoulded back, glancing up to make sure Neil had made it through the doorway safely. To her relief he had.

"You aren't taking me back, there is too much work to do!"

"Full disclosure Drake, I don't give a damn about your work and my contract with your father dosen't specify what condition your kneecaps need to be in!"

"You don't understand with the knowledge of this facility..." she came up in a crouch sighted and fired across the room, two sharp snaps as the electromotive weapon drove the light metal slugs up the barrel faster than the speed of sound. There was a diffuse red flash and Drake dropped to the floor, shrieking in agony, and clutching at his lower thigh where her shots had torn to neat holes. Blood stained his finger and he whimpered for a moment.

"Crazy fucking bitch," he whined and then to his evident shock the door behind him hissed open.


[@POOHEAD189]