Slingers (The Slingers Trilogy, Book 1)

Chapter 25

Dante kept following the masked man, walking through the blinding white corridors, the entire ship feeling like a maze. He didn't want to endanger the mission by being close to the others when the masked man attacked. They both knew that they had unfinished business with each other. Dante didn't want the others to get in the way again when the fighting started. He had already been unable to stop Nolun from getting hurt, he wasn't about to let the rest of the crew suffer the same fate. Oddly enough, the masked man seemed to want the same, and that must have been why he was leading Dante away from everyone on the ship. Dante also thought of the possibility that the masked man could be leading him into a trap, but he was prepared either way. The masked man was the most powerful opponent he had every fought against, and he wasn't about to let him run free where could kill any of his partners. He was done with letting people die. The corridor that the two were walking down was completely empty, with only the humming of the engines filling the hallway. The masked man came to a door, which he opened with a single push of a button. It revealed a large and dark empty room, obviously a decommissioned hangar of sorts. A perfect duelling ground. Dante walked in, then turned around and stood a few paces away from the masked man. He stared him down, and the red visor glinted back at him. Then, unexpectedly, the masked man bowed to Dante, a technique normally used in respect to an opponent before a duel, a traditional action in many KendoKai forms of swordslinging. Slightly surprised, Dante bowed back, then reached over his shoulder, drawing both the blades from the single double-bladed sheath on his back. The masked man drew the katana from the sheath on the back of his waist, and levelled it at Dante. The two of them stood still, then lunged at each other.

Edvard and Elicia had made their way into the generator room by way of using the keycards found on the soldiers whose uniforms they had stolen from the ones that invaded their ship. The generators hummed loudly, the ion engines keeping the ship moving. Elicia looked around for a terminal, and saw the main console in between two coolant tanks. She moved over and took out her mini computer while Edvard gave her cover. She began hacking into the mainframe, looking for the controls to the ion engines. A small burst of energy from the engines would cause a temporary power surge, making the entire ship go offline for a few minutes. While everyone on board scrambled to fix it, that would give Bunker and Nolun enough time to make their way to the vault and hack their way inside, and with no record of the vault ever being opened, they would be able to get in and out with no one noticing. As Elicia's fingers flew over the keys, she found that she was having a great deal of difficulty hacking in. She had never hacked into an official GDF database before, and they had several firewalls and encrypted codes that she had never even seen before. She was just about to try creating her fourth backdoor into the system, when she heard a gruff voice behind her. "Hey! What are you two doing here?" Elicia turned around and she saw that a real GDF soldier was standing there in front of her and Edvard. Edvard, clearly caught, tried to come up with an excuse. "Uh, just doing some routine maintenance. New protocol due to the Director arriving. Didn't you get the memo?" The soldier reached for his radio. "Security, I need a team down in-" Edvard suddenly swung the butt of his rifle into the soldiers face, knocking him back. A soldier on the other side of the engine saw the two fight. "Hey!" He shouted, and started firing at Edvard. He quickly ducked behind the tank, and Elicia dove for cover. The bullets ricocheted off the side of the tank, and Edvard fired some shots back. The bullet hit the shoulder of the GDF soldier's armour, and something metal dropped from his hand. It rolled over to several fuel cells, and Edvard had only a few seconds to register it was a live grenade before the explosion.

"Edvard? Elicia? Can you hear me?" Nolun kept activating his comlink, trying to reach either of the twins. They had been in the generator room when the explosion had happened. Andress couldn't find them since the cameras had been disabled by the blast. No one seemed to be able to reach Dante either. Nolun cursed. The plan was falling apart. All they could do now was go get the Piece, and hope that they could find Dante and the twins on the way. Bunker had radioed into Andress that the Director was someone they knew. Nolun didn't ask how, but when he had heard Andress's reaction, a sudden and shocked gasp, he knew it couldn't be good. He would ask later, but he knew he had to focus now. They made it to a manual service lift that was still working, and managed to get on it without anyone noticing. They stopped down on the floor that the schematics had shown as classified, which was where they assumed that the Piece was They saw a large hallway with several guards still standing guard, even with all the power surges. Nolun nodded to Bunker, and he took a small grenade off of his belt and tossed it into the small hallway. There was a bright flash and a loud bang, and as Nolun and Bunker jumped into the hallway, they saw all the guards had been disoriented briefly. The two shot their rifles, and took out every soldier guarding the door. Nolun stepped over the bodies and made his way over to the terminal that unlocked the vault. He pulled out the small device that contained the codes, and placed it into one of the ports underneath the small terminal. It made a small humming noise, then beeped, signalling a successful data download. The lights flashed green on the door, and the vault door swung open, revealing the cylindrical Piece inside. Nolun walked up, and hesitantly reached out his hand. He found he was able to touch the Piece, the force field having been disabled due to it being run on emergency power. He picked it off the pedestal slowly, and carried it over to Bunker who placed it in the small case they had brought along. Nolun pulled out the hacking device, and the door swung shut. They had done it. Nolun activated his comlink. "Andress, we have the Piece." Static came through until Nolun heard Andress's voice shouting. "They're breaking through! We need hel-" There was a burst of static, then it cut out.