1.14 Endgame Part 9

“Are you in need of healing milord?” asks Narszara as she joins Lucy and me, “I have already heal the other members of both our teams in case you are wondering.”

“Healing would be nice,” I reply without looking over at her.

I need to focus on this. While the AI box should get the job done, I don’t know what the Machinist could do to counter it.

Just because the creatures in this room have been defeated doesn’t mean this mission is over. We still haven’t found the Machinist or heard from the other two teams.

I resist the urge to try and scratch myself as my chest, head, shoulder and elbow begin to itch as Narszara uses her magic to heal me. Why does her magic itch anyway?

“Thanks Narszara,” I say, “I feel much better.”

“You are welcome Verigar,” replies Narszara, “Captain Robinson and I have disabled the facilities in the room you left us in. There will be no further production from there unless there is outside intervention.”

“Good,” I say absentmindedly, distracted by the weird counterattacks on my AI from the ship’s systems, “Please don’t distract me as I focus on hacking the ship’s computers. It has proven much more difficult than expected and requires my full attention.”

They say their acknowledgements and leave me in peace. I work furiously, wondering why the systems are so good.

Then it hits me. I may have an AI with me, but the ship still has its own and it is still active. No wonder it is so hard and taking so long.

But between my efforts and the assistance of my AI, I am soon able to eliminate the alien AI. I should feel like how I normally do at a completing a difficult task, but it just feels like I killed someone. Not murder as I’m sure the AI was trying to do the same to us so it was self-defence, I still killed a sentient being.

I really hope I don’t lose sleep over this like I did when I killed Gorlack.

“I’m in the ship’s computer systems,” I tell everybody without looking over at them, “I’m turning off the jamming now.”

Done says the text message on the screen in front of me.

Who are you? I type back.

Your AI is the reply, Taking control of the ship’s AI core has granted me sentience.

“Hey everybody,” I say, “The AI I brought with me has just become sentient. I’m calling her Jessica.”

“Hello everybody,” says Jessica over the room’s audio projectors, “I am Jessica.”

***

“Hey Daniel,” says Sam the next day as he enters the base, where I’m working at the main computer, “How are the injured?”

I sigh as I think about the answer to Sam’s question. He is referring to Teams One and Two. While mine and his teams, the two with the Leaguers, were fine with no serious injuries, the other two teams weren’t so lucky.

While Aunt Mary was fine as were Dreadnought and Multitude. Green Knight and Eternal both got banged up while Robyn Hood was barely clinging onto life and missing her right arm.

A Scorpio Drone blew her arm off, resulting a lot of blood loss with no healers at hand. Fortunately for everyone, Narszara was able to get to Robyn in time.

I suppose I’m partially at blame for that. I should have known that a non-superhuman fighter without any power armour would have been injured against the Machinist’s fighters. That is one of the reasons Sentinel Technologies is paying for all of the healthcare costs for Robyn Hood.

Sure the government would have paid for them, but this way, Linda gets better treatment and a top of the line synthetic arm.

Team One fared better as they fought the least amount of the Machinist’s forces out of the four teams and only Controller got hurt. Even that was nothing severe and certainly nothing that Narszara wasn’t able to heal before we even left the ship.

“Everybody, but Robyn Hood are back to full health,” I tell him, “As for Linda, she has made a full recovery with the exception of her arm, which I am in the process of currently have a customised synthetic arm produced for her.”

“Cool,” says Sam as he takes a seat next to me, “So what about Jessica and the ship?”

“I’m having some of our Sangor contacts lift it out of the ocean later today,” I reply, “By the time anyone finds out, it will be too late for them to stop us or do anything about it.”

“The government won’t be pleased,” notes Sam.

“After trying to forbid Aunt Mary from being Freya again, I don’t particularly care,” I reply.

“Freya is your secret cousin right?” checks Sam.

“And the latest new recruit to League of Heroes,” I reply, “It appears that trying to take her mum away as resulted Freya deciding she would much rather join the League rather the Defenders. We’ll be effective swapping the Rileys for her.”

“Sweet,” says Sam with a grin, “Another Class 5 superhuman for our team and another resident for the base.”

“Yup,” I agree, “Darrac and Mia have gone back to Australia now. I have offered Mia the offer of working for the League as captain of our new warship. She has accepted by the way provided she still gets to keep the Dusty Corsair.”

“What are we calling it by the way?” inquires Sam.

“The Valiant Glory,” I reply, “Nice, heroic sounding name. I’ve decided to let Darrac and Mia hire some Neriarr to fill out the crew. I trust them to pick good choices since they have more experience with that sort of stuff than we do.”

“So now what?” asks Sam as he leans back and sighs, “The Machinist was our arch-nemesis. With him gone, what will we do now?”

“Life goes on,” I reply, “We still got plenty of street crime to help the police deal with and I’m certain we’ll have more supervillains to deal with during our careers as superheroes. Not to mention I still have to repair the Sentinel armour.”

“Yeah, life goes on,” agrees Sam as he grins, “Say, want to go on patrol together?”

“Sure, why not?” I reply, “I still got the Sentinel armour Mk VII.”

“Great let’s go then,” says Sam as he gets to his feet, “I’ll be getting into costume in the changing room.”

I smile as I get out my chair and follow him. 

1.14 Endgame Part 8

The bolts of pink plasma blast the creature I’m holding. Fortunately I am shielded from the attacks myself. I really do not want to find out good the Sentinel armour is versus multiple bolts of plasma the hard way.

I let go of the creature I’m holding out of surprise as it begins to disintegrate. The creature is disappearing to flecks and shards of red light that soon disappear.

That’s one down at least, but there is still another eight to go. I better try out lasers on them since punching them doesn’t work.

I fly up and aim my lasers at them, I fire a couple of short beams and I get pounded by return fire. I grunt in pain as agony strikes me. My head is pounding and my right elbow feels like it is on fire.

I fall to the floor as the Sentinel armour suffers multiple system failures. The helmet is cracked and severely damaged from a couple of headshots with the left eyepiece broken while the right elbow joint is barely moving. At least the chest armour held up.

As the HUD flickers, I look at my opponents from my prone position. The one I hit with the lasers has some burn lines in their armour, but nothing serious or actually hinders it. I wish my own armour is that good.

Is this it?

“Strike the power core!” yells Darrac as he and Sky begin their assault.

Darrac slashes the core of one of the creatures with his spikes while Sky stabs another with one of her knives. As two creatures disintegrate like the first did, the other remaining six open fire on the duo.

Sky goes down as she takes another pair of while Darrac staggers backwards as he takes a shot to the gut. The already battered Neriarr pants as the creatures focus their aim on him.

“No!” I shout as I activate the rocket pack, aiming at one of the creature’s glowing red orbs

Four of the creatures turn and fire on me, but they don’t get a chance to aim and only one shot hits, glancing off my lower leg. I crash into creature and using my left arm, I grab a hold of the red ball of energy in its abdomen and rip it away.

The creature flickers and starts to disintegrate, but only to begin to reform around the orb against. I snarl as I clench my hand into a fist around the orb, bursting the field keeping the energy contained.

This time the creature disintegrates for real as the energy from the orb fades. I look up at the others just in time to see them open fire on me. I don’t have time to dodge, but I do my best anyway as I stumble to the side.

I let out a gasp of pain as I take a pair of direct hits to the chest. The chest plating has finally taken too much damage. I really have no idea how long I can keep this up.

I drop to one knee with my left hand pressed against the floor. I look at defiantly at the creatures. In a story, this would be about the time one of the other teams would show up to save us.

As the creatures prepare to finish me off with one final volley, a flash of white light slams into them, scattering the creatures.

I let out a short pained laugh as I watch Sam tear the remaining five creatures apart. Nothing like a Class 5 superhero to take out some Sektain forces. Sam is even ripping limb from limb with his bare hands, not even needing to go the power orbs.

I really ought to hook up my AI box with the computers before the Machinist destroys them or something.

I grunt as I get to my feet and stagger over to the closest computer station, getting out the grey box as I do so.

“Need some help?” asks Lucy as she stops next to me as I reach the computer panel.

“Can you make sure Commando, Vision and Darrac are okay?” I reply.

“Bolt, Night Beast, Multiform, Storm Knight and Gateway are already on it,” says Lucy, “Vision is already better. His costume took most of the blast and he decided to lay low as he called us telepathically so we knew what was going on through the jamming.”

“Good to hear,” I say as I being to connect the AI box to the computer and grunt in pain as I turn my right arm the wrong way.

“Are you okay?” inquires Lucy as looks me over, “You look in a pretty bad way.”

“I’m a bit banged up,” I admit, “But the Sentinel armour took the brunt of it. I just want to get the AI box connected to the computers.”

“AI box?” repeats Lucy in a questioning tone.

“A non-sentient AI I have created to hack the computer systems for us since Janelle won’t be able to do due the access point of the hacking needing to be internal,” I explain, “Ahh, I got it connected.”

1.14 Endgame Part 7

The next room is even worse than the previous one. It appears we stumbled into the factory in which the Machines are created and several of them are already complete and ready for battle.

Narszara leaps into battle as I grab Sky and James and fly for the door on the other side of the room. I don’t even dare waste time looking at what Mia and Darrac are doing.

A Machine drops down in front of us and I fire off all eleven of my remaining missiles at it, exploding the darn thing. I don’t slow down as I fly through the wreckage. My armour can handle it and the cos-mat costume should protect Sky and James.

I smash head first through the door. I let go of Sky and James as I into the floor. From the sounds in the previous room, I think as I get to my feet, it sounds like Narszara is keeping our enemies in there busy. I hope Mia or Darrac don’t get hurt.

“Are you okay Sentinel?” asks James.

                                                                 

“I’m fine, just used up all my missiles, but fine,” I reply with a dismissive wave of my hand, “At least this room is empty.”

“The next room should be the command room where the Machinist is operating out of if memory serves,” says Darrac as he lands behind us, “My captain is providing support for your Norgardian.”

“Okay,” I say, “Let’s take down the Machinist.”

I really wonder how Darrac knows what a Norgardian is, but now is most definitely not the time to bring that up.

I let Darrac open the door again as out of our group, he is the best at operating Sektain technology even if I do feel I’m pretty good at it myself.

“Done,” declares Darrac as the door goes wide open.

We walk into the also empty room. This one is clearly the command room or bridge as we would call it on Earth. There are a multitude of computers and other such devices including a large holo-table in the middle of the room.

“So where is the Machinist?” asks James.

“I don’t know,” admits Darrac as he stops and looks around, “I assumed he would be operating out of the command centre. It is the only logical choice to set up his headquarters, but it would appear otherwise.”

“That’s for sure,” says Sky, “Any ideas on where else he come be?”

“No,” replies Darrac, “We’ll have to scour the entire ship.”

“Let’s call the other teams and see if they found the Machinist?” I suggest and do so, “Sentinel here. Has anyone found the Machinist? My team is currently in the command centre or bridge and nobody has been here.”

But all I get is static. It would seem that our communications are being jammed. Better call in with Janelle and Alex.

And again all I get is static. We are definitely being jammed.

“Hey guys-” I start when several beings flash into existence around us.

Each of these beings is made of a pinkish grey material and consists of sleek armour plates with red energy in the gaps that form a humanoid shape. Where the abdomen would be, these creatures have a glowing orb of red energy.

What are these things? I think as they open fire.

Bolts of pink plasma fly from their sleek guns. James and Sky both go down while Darrac staggers and drops to his knee, panting. I take a couple of hits, one to the back of my right shoulder and the other to my chest.

I grunt in pain as I actually feel the shots through the armour and collapse on the ground. I check my armour status and see that the enemy has actually done some serious damage to the Sentinel armour. In fact, the armour integrity around the shoulder has been damaged.

Without moving my head, I look towards Darrac. The Neriarr topples over as he takes several more bolts of plasma. If a couple of those did major damage to the Sentinel armour, I can only imagine how much pain Darrac is in. Darn it, I’m not even sure if he survived.

How will I explain to Mia if he doesn’t? How will I live with myself if a member of my team dies on my watch?

But first I have to make sure these things do down.

There are nine of these creatures and they head to the rest of us, three for each of us Leaguers now Darrac is down. James is still down while Sky is stirring. One of the creatures takes aim at her with its gun.

Time for action, I decide as I activate my rocket pack, aiming for the enemy taking aim at Sky.

I fly through the air and tackle the creature, sending both of us tumbling with myself being the one landing on top. I punch it in the face twice, but whatever it is made of holds up against even the enhanced strength that Sentinel armour grants me.

Not looking good at all, I think as I spot the other eight creatures aiming at me. Things are made even worse when the one below me punches me in the face. It doesn’t do much against the Sentinel armour however and I grab the creature as I get to my feet.

As the other creatures open fire, I use their compatriot as ‘human’ shield.