BANG!
“Damnit! Don’t they ever quit?!”
It had been another long day so far. The oddest thing was the weather. Here they were, just a few degrees south of the equator, and it was snowing. Why on God’s green earth was it snowing? That answer came to light in the form of two massive cold generators. They were air conditioning the area on a scale that would make all of Tokyo comfortable in the middle of July. The result was a blizzard on what should have been a tropical island.
BANG!
They had also found the carrier and were attacking it relentlessly with hybrid attack helicopters and hybrid VTOL bombers. The bomber he jumped out of all that time ago would have been bad enough but the munitions these were dropping were three times as powerful and the bombers were twice as hard to destroy. Ransom was doing a good job of keeping him alive, and the repair vehicle on the deck was making sure Antaeus wasn’t taking any lasting damage, but a lucky hit to the bridge could prove a very bad thing.
“Found the energy production, Ranma,” Nabiki’s voice came in. “Destroying it now… done. That’s the last of it.”
“Finally.”
“So, what do I get?” Nabiki kept up.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? You did your job.”
“Cheapskate.”
“Sorry, I don’t take criticism from dead people well. Now, how’s everyone else holding up?”
“Much better than last time, if I say so myself,” Sinclair came in. He was his usual peppy self.
“Doin’ just fine, Captain. These guys ain’t so tough once you know how they work,” said the air combat multi-ace.
“Here, here, Ransom.” Yup, that would be Patton.
“Clean up’s a bitch, though.” …and Kroker. “Man you guys sure make a mess. Can’t invite you anywhere.”
"You know you like it, Kroker." Great, now Borden's joking.
“Stuff it, the lot of you. Now that the enemy’s out of resources, I can get this done. That hovercraft we sent in should be arriving shortly.” Ranma glared at the controls. “Why the hell didn’t they make soulcatcher work over longer ranges?”
“The range is fine, Ranma,” Nabiki replied. “The problem is that this fortification is causing some kind of jamming to the receptors for the vehicle’s soulcatcher interface. We’re just lucky that your direct controls work on a much higher frequency.”
“Yeah, yeah. This way I have to do all the hard work.”
“Quit your bellyaching and get the job done,” Korolev shot back. “Sir.”
“Shut up. I’m coming to… what the hell is that?”
On the screen was something from a science fiction horror movie. It was about half the size of Antaeus, was obviously made of the same hybridized flesh and metal technology as the vehicles they’d been fighting, and it had just picked up something that made it glow blue for a moment. Then it turned towards the hovercraft and the humming started.
“What’s it doing?” Ranma ran the vehicle behind cover, then the lightning flashed. “Damn it all to hell! I’m under fire!”
“What do you want us to do, Saotome?”
“Just blast the damn thing!"
"Quiet from the peanut gallery!"
The fight was long and difficult. The blue glow that he had seen had been from a force field generator of some kind that the thing had picked up before it started attacking. The rounds from the Gatling gun did eventually wear down the shield and attack the… whatever it is, destroying the gun that was firing, but that just caused the whole monstrosity to rotate and start firing with a different weapon. It was getting very annoying.
That’s when he heard, “No! Go away!”
This surprised Ranma considerably. “Did any of you just speak over the comms?”
Sinclair replied, “Negative on that, sir. Communications has been quiet.”
“Stop! Just leave me alone! I don’t want to go back!”
Ranma could only puzzle over what was going on. “Antaeus, identify where that voice is coming from?”
“The errant transmission is originating from the construct that the captain’s vehicle is engaged with.”
That… didn’t make any sense. “It’s talking?”
“Negative. Something upon the enemy craft is speaking aloud.”
Ranma stared hard at the screen. He couldn’t make out what the carrier was talking about. “Zoom in and display in screen 4.”
A moment later, he saw it. A person. Sort of. Wildly panicked, still shouting to stop and leave, and naked, but not exactly. This person had growths, sections of torso and legs having red protrusions that covered like padded clothing, but receded under the flesh where they originated.
“We’ll deal. First thing’s first, destroy those damned guns,” Ranma spoke, mostly to himself.
The overall battle was over in only minutes. The Salamander class hovercraft wasn’t doing well, but it would still run and fire.
Ranma glanced at the zoomed in image of this mysterious person who had sat upon the enemy weapon. She, or at least he assumed it was a she due to her figure, still sat upon the now dead thing and appeared to be muttering to herself. “Antaeus, activate external speakers.”
“Acknowledged.”
She was afraid. They had come. They were going to take her. Take her away. Take her back. She didn’t want to go back. She tried to fight, but they were too strong. She tried using this machine, made it like her, but they beat it. Now she was too weak to keep going.
“This is Captain Ranma Saotome of the Adaptive Cruiser Antaeus to the unknown person upon the Cabal device. Surrender yourself, and you will be escorted to the surface peacefully.”
That name. There was something about that name. “Ranma?” she asked herself. She tried to remember but it was all pushed away. Taken away. Stolen from her by those that made her like this. They’d taken everything, but she could recognize things she once knew. The sisters were wicked to her, so she didn’t trust them. The changers she didn’t trust since they took it all.
But this name sparked so many different thoughts. “Ranma?” she tried again. Frustration, caring, annoyance, friendship, kinship, anger. But there was also longing. She wanted this Ranma. She didn’t know why and didn’t care, but she wanted to go to him.
She looked down and jumped to the ground. She raised her hands and said, “You’ll take me to Ranma?”
Ranma was confused. Now that she, and it was most definitely a she, had calmed she seemed almost normal in attitude, but she knew his name?
“Yes, I’ll take you to Ranma,” he spoke into the microphone. “Hop on and the vehicle will drive you out.”
She nodded and jumped aboard. This was also confusing. She had jumped off of that thing from earlier. That jump must have been forty metres. No normal person could survive that. Granted, he had survived that when boarding the ship, but he wasn’t normal. Then again, neither was she. The jump onto the Salamander was also impressive as the vehicle was about seven metres tall.
“What’s your name?” he asked, hoping for more information while the vehicle sped out of the complex.
She seemed lost at the question. “I… I don’t know. I can’t remember. They took it from me. They took everything. I… the others call me ‘youngest’ or ‘sister’. The changers call me ‘newest’ or ‘third’. One of them calls us all ‘child’.”
“Us?” Ranma was perplexed. What did that all mean? He stepped back from the microphone and spoke to the ship, “Antaeus, any idea?”
“This vessel had previously acquired a data storage and manufacturing device identified as a culture stone. Within it was contained information about the origins of the biomatter that is being used upon the enemy vehicles. Identified among the data was that three humans had been similarly modified, referring to themselves as ‘the sisters’. It is likely that this person is one of those three.”
Ranma was significantly surprised at this. He didn’t expect that much of an answer. “Why wasn’t I informed?”
“It was before you arrived on the vessel, Captain.”
“Nabiki, Why didn’t you tell me?” Ranma’s voice was beginning to growl in his frustration.
Nabiki’s computerized imaged seemed to shrug and gave a simple, “Oops. Must have slipped my mind.”
Ranma sighed. Even when she was dead she mocked him. “In that case, you can bring her to shore. I’ll have a Pegasus meet you there.”
When the Salamander emerged from the base, Nabiki’s Puma, a four-wheeled stealth vehicle, was waiting. Ranma didn’t anticipate Nabiki’s next words. No one could have.
“Akane? What did they do to you?”
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