Theseus In and Out

As soone who spends a good deal of her ti effectively consciously separated from her human body, even I wasn’t prepared for how surreal it felt to deal with the aftermath of a shaped concussive blast so close to . Sohow, it felt like nothing around could possibly actually be happening the way it was, and that I was detached from reality entirely, like I was in a dream. To say I was disoriented would be a gross understatent. I was only technically conscious. It sohow both felt like I was on auto-pilot while it also took monuntal effort to make every physical motion. It was hard to focus on anything but the one objective my brain had latched onto with laser precision: the ledger.

I dizzily led Joel back into the compound where he had to haul a couple large pieces of debris out of the way of the door to force it open again. While he worked, I’d simply stared at the mangled corpses of my jailors, still and heaped into the remains of the violently collapsed wall. My mind began to wander without the object of my focus.

They probably deserved that, right? They were definitely going to kill as soon as I outlived my usefulness, so getting mashed together into so kind of grotesque mockery of modern art was probably a fitting end. I stared at the mangled arm of one of the n sticking out of the once-human pile and wondered how any part of them was still identifiable.

In my dazed waiting state, I beca introspective. I began to wonder what led them to this point in life. What made them desperate enough to take hostages and force them to work on their own sches rather than work together for mutual gain? I probably wouldn’t even have objected to helping them if they’d just taken it up with the captain and cut us in on whatever sche they were planning. That might even make feel bad for double crossing them to steal their records. Maybe that was why they didn’t trust with that, actually.

The rest of their gang had gathered at the opposite end of the complex to engage the rest of the crew in a mockery of an assault. The confusion would only last so long, and sooner or later they’d realize we didn’t actually have the kind of force we were projecting, so we’d have to act quick before the crew was overrun.

I looked down, away from the bodies for a mont, to notice that there was a dark, wet splash quickly drying across the arm and the lower part of my shirt, a bit of much more visible red spattered across my pants. Blood, splashed back from the carnage I’d narrowly avoided being a part of, then coated in a thin layer of particulate dust from the compromised structure of the building filling the air. Washing that out was going to be annoying.

I turned my hands over to see thin lines of red and gray where the shrapnel cut into them and left dust in their wake. While my makeshift keyboard shield had spared my face the worst of the stray flying bits of stone wall, my hands had taken so mild scrapes. Not that they were deep, but I hadn’t even felt them cutting into .

So stray feral part of my mind lifted my hand up slowly to my mouth, and I hovered over the wound. Dazed instinct and habit told to bite and salve the minor wound with saliva and pressure, but Joel interrupted .

He thankfully hadn’t take too long to clear the way, and before I knew it, he pushed to break out of the existential stupor I’d fallen into, my hands falling again to my side as I moved forward.

I stumbled into the next room, lined with several ssy desks with idling terminals, and without thinking, grabbed a hastily discarded pistol off a desktop and stuffed it into the waistband of my pants. I still hadn’t shot anyone with small arms yet, but I had taken out a couple people with Theseus’s cannons, and Aisling made sure I practiced how to handle a gun, so I didn’t think I’d hesitate if I absolutely needed to take soone out. It wouldn’t be the first ti I’d killed, and Aisling had been right; it had gotten easier each ti.

“Just move.” Joel grumbled as I took the firearm. I definitely wasn’t in any kind of shape to handle an actual fight, and it was probably for the best that he handle anyone we run into, but I was too mixed up to think about it too hard. I kept thinking the pistol would co in handy. “Co on, hurry up, grab the thing, and let’s go.”

I nodded slowly and walked through the office with little regard for cover, trying to recall exactly where I’d felt it through the haze that was my mind. I’d only mapped it in relation to the other electronics in the room, most of which had moved with their owners toward the firefight, so I would have been more than a little disoriented even if I wasn’t shellshocked. “It’s here. S-Sowhere.” I grumbled as I started throwing open drawers from a desk in one corner of the room, not even actually looking at what I revealed. “Know it’s here.”

Joel rolled his eyes, let his rifle drop around his torso thanks to the strap over his shoulder, and grabbed by both my arms. My eyes went wide as he shook slightly, and that just made feel dizzy, my head lolling about and making feel like I needed to lie down. What was he doing? Then I felt it. A sharp sting on both sides of my face as he lifted his hands and slapped them together on both my cheeks. I took in a deep breath, and it felt like I was almost present again. “Hey. Co on. You with ?” He asked as he grabbed by the shoulders and held firmly in place so I wouldn’t fall.

I stared back at him, unsure how to respond. I was supposed to be doing sothing important, wasn’t I? I stamred out sothing, but I don’t think it was words. He groaned and reached down into the large satchel at his waist, producing a sealed water ration, which he wasted no ti in tearing open and throwing into my face.

I gasped, suddenly drawn back to comprehension by the cold, wet splash against my face. I nodded vigorously. My head hurt, but it felt like I could think clearly again. “Yeah. Ow. Shit.” I nodded and put a hand to my head, feeling where he had struck , and groaned. What did he just snap out of, exactly? “Thanks,” I said as I took in a deep breath, grabbed the rest of the pouch of water out of his hand and imdiately gulped it down. That helped. I felt dizzy and nauseous, but I at least felt present again.

“Please, give more excuses to hit you.” Joel scoffed, letting go and scanning the room with his rifle again to be sure no threats snuck up on him while he was distracted by my confusion. “Hurry the fuck up.”

I nodded and closed my eyes. The direct approach would be most useful here. I’d just find it again. I pinged the room and felt the right hardware address behind now, in the next room, closer to the gunfire.

“There.” I swallowed, turning toward the door. I pulled the gun from my waistband, adrenaline taking over my muddled focus for now, and pressed myself to the door fra, watching Joel get in position opposite before he pushed the door open and took point.

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“Down!” I heard him shout, and after a mont, he motioned for to follow in.

On the floor, a man in a suit with slicked back black hair lay with his arms extended across the floor. Seems we’d caught soone unard, or Joel wouldn’t have hesitated to respond with violence instead. “Just stay down and be quiet,” he instructed sternly, then addressed . “Get your thing, quick.”

I nodded, holding my gun at the ready myself as I blinked to reorient myself to the ledger again. I approached the man and knelt down to him, holding the barrel of the pistol firmly against the side of his abdon while he whimpered, “Please, I’m no one important. They make do this shit. I don’t even want to be here!”

“Yeah, yeah. Not gonna hurt you if you don’t do any...thing stupid. Just stay down.” I told him as I rifled through his jacket with my other hand and pulled a handheld terminal from an internal pocket, checking it one more ti with my virtual sight before nodding to Joel. “Let’s go.”

“’Bout ti.” Joel grunted, motioning back the way we ca. We closed ourselves off from the unard man and traced our way back to the opening in the wall before another crack of the Thunderbolt crashed in the distance and made flinch. This one didn’t land anywhere near us, though. They must have been running out of convincing covering fire, and he had to use the artillery to convince them not to advance.

The two of us climbed through the hole in the wall, and we scrambled over the hills surrounding the compound, taking cover among the rocky terrain. I pinged the word ‘Clear!’ to Aisling’s handheld, and just continued moving. My head was pounding, and I was still a little bit confused, but I held it together long enough for us to move far away from the fading action of the staged assault.

“Hey!” I heard an unfamiliar voice call behind us just as we were about to turn into a ridge, and I whipped around with the pistol at the ready. I saw movent behind a rock and aid down the iron sights of the gun. Unfortunately, my vision blurred as I tried to focus, and when the figure moved out from behind the rock, I pulled the trigger twice, the shot going wide and recoil sending the pistol kicking up uselessly off-target.

I saw the flash of black tal down range, a young woman with a brown ponytail and a long scar across her cheek ready to take her shot back at , and I’m sure she wasn’t fighting what was probably a concussion. Luckily for , I heard a series of returns from a firearm behind . The woman flinched and fell down with a loud groan before she could take her shot at .

Shaking, I turned to see Joel holding his rifle up, and let out a frustrated grunt as I lowered my own gun. “Your aim sucks,” he grumbled, grabbing by the shoulder and pushing forward. “Co on, move it.”

I nodded and began running again. Death had beco normal for by that point. It no longer bothered that I just watched soone unceremoniously riddled with bullets and left to rot in the wilderness. At least, it didn’t bother enough to dwell on it in the mont. I’d seen it happen nurous tis since my journey began, and in the past few months, I’d even caused it more than a couple tis, with much larger munitions. This was just a part of being an outlaw.

If Joel hadn’t been there, though, it would’ve been in the dirt right there instead of so random stranger. We just had to make sure we were the ones still standing at the end of the day.

We continued on and thankfully didn’t run into any more trouble as we made our escape. The sound of gunfire and explosions faded as our crew made their way out of danger behind us as well, retreating into the rocky terrain for themselves, and I could only hope they could get away without trouble, too.

“Knew we should’ve sent a bodyguard with you.” Joel grumbled as the two of us stopped to catch our breath in a craggy outcropping of rocks. Well, I needed to catch my breath, anyway. Joel was fit enough to berate instead. “But no, ‘it’s just a quick eting. They’ll never suspect I’m casing the place.’ Didn’t account on the fuckers just forcing you to do sothing completely unrelated, huh? Like you’re not a valuable commodity on this planet or sothing. Fuck, even when people don’t know you’re a goddamn living computer, they’re still trying to take advantage of you, idiot.”

I panted loudly, finally holstering the pistol back in my waistband now that we had a mont to rest. Joel had a point. Maybe I was taking being incognito a little too lightly. Even if they didn’t know what I really was, I was still becoming a prolific hacker in this community. “Okay, yeah, fine, not my b-brightest idea. I’ll admit that. I thought they’d be more like the guys we w...work for, not so disorganized gang. You know, the type we could pretend to be wor...king with in the future, like civilized criminals!”

“Fucking whatever.” Joel let out a controlled breath. He gave a frustrated grunt, definitely still angry with stumbling into what was an obvious trap in hindsight. But after a mont, he asked, “First ti getting shelled, huh?”

“Huh? Yeah.” I nodded quickly. The ntal fuzziness hadn’t completely gone away, even if Joel had helped temporarily jar back to reality. I definitely wasn’t used to exploding. “Different from Theseus’s ar...armor taking a hit, that’s for s-sure.” I gave a nervous laugh. “Mouse doesn’t f-fuck around with that thing. Those two idiots got fuck...ing vaporized. If I was, like, a half ter c-closer to them...” It probably wasn’t sothing I should think about. “I bla my aim on that, just so you know. I can hit a target. Seriously.”

“Should’ve seen yourself, looked all dopey stumbling around with your head screwed on the wrong way.” Joel chuckled, checking back around the rock we were hiding against and scanning for anyone that might have followed before he cleared and checked the chamber of his rifle. “Nah, I get it. Almost feels like that just when you’re standing next to him shooting that thing. Bet you could mount it to your ship and you’d still feel the recoil. Ordinance like that’s no joke. I’d probably be pretty fucked up if I was that close to it, too.”

“No shit. Joel admits he’s n-not invincible.” I wasn’t sure if it was just surviving the prolonged brush with death, but I felt like I was in good spirits as I finally caught my breath. My head still hurt, and moving around still felt strange, like I was controlling a puppet instead of my own body, but I was feeling pretty good about myself for how I handled things, at least after the action started.

I looked down to inspect my clothes again now that I was thinking clearly. It wasn’t the ss I thought it was in my stupor; just a few dark splash lines that were barely visible against the black. I thought the stray spatter that hit my pants actually made the solid beige garnt a little more interesting. My hands just had a couple scrapes, barely breaking the skin. I still felt the urge to bite them, but I ground my teeth, knowing to fight the habit rather than risk putting whatever might have been in the dust in my mouth.

My inspection complete, and my nerves as cald as they were going to be, I looked to the far horizon past the ridge and took in a deep breath. We had to keep moving. “We have a rally position?” I asked, wondering if we should keep moving.

“The ship.” Joel nodded. I slumped a little at that. Theseus was too far away. Beyond a vague sense of the direction to it, I couldn’t even feel my shell. “No bitching. This is your fault, and you need the cardio, anyway. Fucking beanpole.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I pushed off of the rock and took another deep breath as I rolled up the sleeves of my sweater, consoling myself that this would be a march rather than a sprint, at the very least. I stopped for a mont to read my biotrics on my arm terminal. Other than an elevated heart rate and blood pressure, it read all normal. I’d definitely still need Doc to look over once I was back ho, but on the surface, it looked like I would be okay to carry myself there.

I navigated through my storage to my music, and started a playlist of upbeat music only I could hear. “You better have more water,” I told Joel as I started walking.

“Only if you admit you can’t aim for shit without a bunch of computers running calculations,” he chuckled as he pulled another pouch from his satchel.