Carrier to Snowspider

The erratic shaking of the rail car was what brought Jet to a hazy consciousness, like an earthquake interrupting a lazy sea creatures’ slumber. What in the world...?

An icy, sharp pain, suddenly hit him. Blissful unconsciousness had previously muted the sensation that now slithered over his skin. Pieces of glass from a shattered cryo-tube had cut his skin. The smell of the tube’s sterile chemicals burned his nose. The sudden onslaught of pain and sensation threw back the curtains of his haziness allowing an unwelcome and overwhelming clarity to startle him awake.

His eyes flew open and he began to cough, dragging shaky breaths into his chest. He took in his surroundings quickly, driven by anxiety.

He was lying on the cold, grated-metal floor of a rail car, bleeding where the frozen shards of glass cut his skin. The unfamiliar rail car he was in rattled and shook to the rhythm of a track. It must be moving fast and… speeding up?

His anxiety rose as he made a last discovery. He could't remember how he got here.

He did a quick recall of his memory, digging for an answer. He could remember his name. Tough lessons growing up in the undercity. Fighting in a street alley. Attending university… no, not attending university and deciding to pursue… pursue what?

The gap in memory irked him. He felt it was significant, a responsibility he needed to fulfill, but for what? At this point his memory became illusive, like smoke twisting and twirling away into nothingness, leaving only the burning embers of curiosity behind.

Jet pushed himself up, his groggy limbs moving lethargically, broken glass crunching beneath him. He slowly rose to his feet.

A shattered cryo-tube lay hissing at his back. His tube. It had been shaken free from where it hung on the car wall; the first of many other tubes that ran along both sides of the rail car. These other tubes, however, still remained firmly upright, attached to the wall.

Blue lights within each tube illuminated the frozen faces of sleeping people, each dressed in the same form fitting black clothes he was.

Jet approached the closest tube, peering at the girl’s face within. His mind seemed to recognize her, but he couldn’t remember how he knew her. A number was printed on the girl’s black shirt. 027. Jet awkwardly pulled at his own shirt in search of a similar number. There it was. A number printed on his own strange uniform. 016.

A sudden hissing noise coming from behind him broke the silence. Jet twirled, fists up. Steam rose from a cryo-tube further down the line. He forced his arms down and gingerly approached the tube.

It was… empty. Empty but, unlike his own tube that lay shattered, this one was still attached to the wall and thrummed quietly. It was completely intact. Well… minus the massive hole that had been cut into the glass. It was a smooth oval, cut with laser precision. He glanced around, looking for the section of glass cut from the tube.

There. The oval glass cutout lay neatly tucket under a table at the end of the row of cryo-tubes. A table… that supported a computer monitor.

Jet may not remember how he got here, but his reasoning abilities were well intact. He and these other people were being transported someplace at ever increasing speeds. And one of us… one of us came equipped to break out of their tube. And computers always held answers.

Jet stepped quickly to the computer. He jabbed the screen with a finger and it lit up.

Almost instantly a small warning sign flashed in the top right corner of the monitor. Something about excessive rail speed and to not be doing standing work.

No kidding, he thought as he ignored the warning and began perusing the other files and icons on the screen.

He found one marked ‘CryoCargo_ArchonicSpecimens’ and tapped it. Faces with numbers appeared in a long list. Each photo was labeled with the word “Archonic” at the bottom in red letters. Again, a strange sense of recognition hit Jet as he looked at the photos of sleeping on the list, though he still couldn’t recall any memory attached with them. In the search bar at the top of the screen he typed in his number. 016.

The list automatically scrolled down until it landed on his highlighted profile. His photo had the same red letters making him as Archonic. Whatever that was, it seemed to be the link he had with all these other individuals in cryo. His listing, however, had an additional warning he had not seen on the others. It was blinking red under his number designation.

Warning. Non-Compliant Personality. Anamnesis transfer for tractability initiated.

Something snapped into place in Jet’s mind. There was a reason behind his mental gaps. His memory had been tampered with intentionally. The people that put him here were not his friends. He was in enemy territory. And totally vulnerable. The realization hit him like a brick.

With a growing sense of urgency, Jet tapped on his listing, opening his file. He would get to the bottom of this and…

A flashing warning popped up. Unauthorized Access.

Fantastic, Jet thought. At least it doesn’t come with an alarm.

An alarm blared throughout the rail car. Jet’s stomach dropped as the door behind him flew open. He reflexively reached over his head, grasping for something strapped to his back. To his confusing shock, nothing was there.

Two soldiers, body armor pulsing with glowing red lines, burst through the door. Their automatic guns pointed at him. Jet awkwardly raised his hands into the air from where he was stupidly grasping at nothing.

Seriously, what is going on? Jet thought, exasperated.

“Freeze!” The guard on Jet’s left barked, his voice electronically magnified through his helmet.

“Yup. That’s the idea,” Jet muttered under his breath. He kept his hands high. He knew he was facing death, a finger twitch away from being blown to pieces.

Clangs and crashes sounded from behind the guards. Someone was fighting. But it wasn’t a brawl. It sounded more… precise. The two guards in front of Jet both glanced over their shoulders. Jet tried to look past them into the car behind, but couldn’t see anything. The noise halted. The guard on the left turned back to Jet.

“Who are…” The speaking guard suddenly cut off as something hit him from behind.

In a crash of high-tech armor, the left guard flew into the rail car. Jet nimbly side-stepped, avoiding the careening guard. He looked back to the doorway at the remaining guard just in time to see a razor-sharp blade get slammed through the guard’s chest. The blade retracted and the guard fell, revealing a girl behind him.

She was dressed in pieces of tactical armor, similar to the guards. She wore a chest plate and heavy-duty gauntlet plates. Her head, upper arms, and hands were bare. Her legs were covered with heavy tactical boots that rose to cover her knees.

She gripped a thick, one-sided sword easily in one hand. The blade was stamped with a strange circle insignia, lines coming out of it like tree branches. A similar design was tattooed on the girl’s inner arm.

She stared directly at Jet. A look in her eyes similar to a jungle predator’s deciding if it’s worth the energy to catch a nearby bug.

Jet returned her look, emphasizing that his hands were still in the air by shaking them a little. Without looking away from Jet, she raised her free arm toward the still living guard. A bullet, like a glowing speck of light, streaked from her gauntlet and hit the rising guard in the eye glass. He fell back to the floor of the rattling train car, completely still.

The girl contemplated Jet for a few seconds longer.

“Well?” She asked him, her voice a cool mix of control and ease.

Jet cocked his head at the girl.

“Well, what?” He responded.

“You coming?” The girl asked him.

She didn’t wait for an answer, but turned on her heel and walked back into rail car she had appeared from, leaving Jet alone, arms still sticking into the air.

Jet didn’t know. The girl had just saved him from guards he assumed were his enemies. But he was also frustratingly aware that that was just a wild assumption. And who was this girl? He still had nothing to go on.

“Wait!” Jet called after her, finally dropping his hands and running after her into the next car. “Who are you? What’s going on?”

Jet slowed as he took in the rail car he just entered; his questions forgotten. This car was some kind of armory. His mouth fell open as he looked as the various heavy weapons and explosives around him.

The girl was rifling through various small explosives, her short sword now securely attached to a holder on her back. She moved along the racks, grabbing a small ammunition bag and dumping it out on the floor. She began refilling it with random items.

Jet wandered over to a rack of long guns. He brushed his fingers over the various weapons but stopped on a slender, pipe-like weapon.

He still felt the pressure of the situation, but like a giddy school boy in a candy shop, gladly fell into the distraction of things that go boom that were stacked around him.

He picked up the pipe-shaped rocket launcher and hefted it in his arms. He didn’t know the first thing about weapons like this. If attacked, he would be shot before he could figure out how to even turn this thing on. He didn’t care.

At least this one could double as a bludgeon. He thought to himself, falling quickly in love with the elegant deliverer of explosions.

He snapped out of his trance as the girl dumped three rocket shells attached to a shoulder strap into his arms. Ammunition for his new weapon. The gravity of it hit him.

“Hold on!” He demanded, sense of seriousness coming back to him. “What are we doing with all this? And what in the hell is going…”

“There’s not time to explain.” The girl stated in her cool voice, effectively cutting him off. “All you need to know is that we’re on a train rocketing to the entrance of a tunnel. An entrance with heavy blast doors closed tight that will stop this train like a gob of spit hitting… well, a blast door.”

Not one for metaphors, shame. Jet mused to himself, feeling a strange sense of calm now that he knew a bit more of their situation, despite that situation sounding like imminent doom.

“Why don’t they just stop the train?” He asked, “Or just open the doors?”

“Great questions. Why don’t you run up front of this guard infested mega-carrier and ask them? If you hurry you could make it up there only minutes after we collide with the tunnel doors.” The girl responded in a mock conversational tone.

“Well, what’s all this going to do then?” Jet asked, gesturing to the rocket launcher and shells. “I don’t even know how to load this thing!”

The girl had started tossing small disks with blinking red lights up to the ceiling, where they stuck. At his comment she paused and eyed Jet.

“Why would you need to load it? You’re just the bag boy.”

Her condescending instruction delivered; the girl pressed a flashing button on a hand remote. The small disks attached to the ceiling exploded, causing a hole to appear in the rail car ceiling. The smoke and debris were quickly swept away by the rushing air which filled the rail car with the loud sound of the outside.

The girl leapt up and caught the rim of the gaping hole and hauled herself up and out onto the top of the train, the ammunition bag and other items securely attached to her. Jet slung the strap of rocket shells and rocket launcher over his shoulder. He approached the hole. The girl was crouched down, looking hard at something ahead as she reached her hand back through the hole for Jet to grab onto.

Jet jumped to grab her hand. He barely brushed her finger tips.

The girl looked back down at him with a pitiful, withering look. Embarrassed, Jet pulled the long rocket launcher tube off his back and, holding on to one end, offered the other end to the girl. She took it, grabbing her end with both hands and hauled him up to the train roof.

Jet crouched on top of the train, air whipping past him. Terrifyingly fast. He opted to stay low, body close to the roof. He had no idea what the status of his balance was and didn’t want to find out here.

The two moved a few paces up the rail car, Jet awkwardly cradling the rocket launcher in his arms.

“There it is!” The girl yelled back at him, her voice barely reaching his ears before being whipped away by the air screaming past them. She pointed ahead of them.

Jet looked. A giant, pointy mountain jutted suddenly out of the ground ahead of them. It was still a ways off, but loomed closer by the second.

The girl knelt, grabbing her ammunition back, and began pulling out the items she gathered earlier and attaching them together.

Suddenly, something caught Jet’s eye. A light high above them, but speeding toward the side of the train. Some kind of ship!

“And uh, what’s that?” Jet yelled, bringing the girls attention up just in time to see three separate lights detach from the ship. Smaller ships with sharp reinforced noses. They dove quickly then swooped once level with the train. They were going to slam into its side.

“Brace!” The girl yelled as she dropped to the surface of the train roof. Jet followed suite and hit the deck, grasping an iron rung for dear life with one hand and holding the rocket launcher with the other.

With a metallic pop the three ships rammed into the side of the train. The train rocked to one side, but not nearly as bad as Jet had expected. It stabilized quickly.

“What were those!?” Jet yelled at her.

“Boarding ships!” She yelled back, “idiot pirates, boarding a doomed train.”

The girl hopped up into a crouch, frantically working with the parts from her bag. She was building a scope, Jet realized.

Jet looked ahead; the mountain was shockingly closer. He could make out the indent in the mountain side that marked the tunnel entrance, the track leading to it. Like the girl said, it was blocked with a massive door sealing off the tunnel entrance. The train was going to slam into it at full speed.

“Give me that!” The girl yelled as she yanked the rocket launcher from Jet’s grasp and a rocket from his strap. She slammed the rocket in the front of the launcher and attached the scope to the top. She took a knee, peering through the scope and took aim at the massive door.

She pulled the trigger. A rocket shell sped ahead of them, many times faster than the train, and slammed into the door.

The smoke and dust cleared. The door was blow open! The path clear… right into another level of doors, firmly shut, still blocking the tunnel. Jet’s stomach flipped.

“Shell!” The girl yelled; her open hand stretched out to him.

Jet, realizing what it was, frantically began trying to get another rocket off his shoulder strap.

“Shell!” the girl yelled again, panic seeping into her voice.

A boom sounded from above them. The ship that released the three boarding ships was there, hovering above the train. It had fired a missile of its own at the tunnel door. A massive explosion blew from the tunnel entrance on impact.

The smoke cleared again. The second level barrier had been blown to bits, revealing yet another door, shut tight. The train was seconds away from slamming into it.

“Shell!” The girl yelled a third time, still in a kneeling position. Jet got the shell free and slammed in into her hand.

The girl rammed it into the launcher, took aim, and fired.

Without waiting to see if she hit her mark, she turned, tackling jet and diving them back into their makeshift hole.

Time seemed to slow down as they fell back into the rail car. Jet heard an explosion, saw the train lurch around them, and heard a horrible metallic screeching sound ring through the train. The hole above them went suddenly pitch black. They hit the metal grate floor of the rail car. Hard.

Jet couldn’t breathe. Dust poured in from their ceiling hole. He slowly pulled himself over onto his stomach and pushed himself up. The world was spinning. Finally, small gulps of air began to desperately make their way into his lungs. He coughed and gasped, like someone struggling to stay afloat.

The train was still moving, full speed ahead.

We’re not dead! Jet thought, relief washing over him.

He looked through the dusty armory car at the girl. She was already up, short sword was still sturdily strapped to her back. Jet suddenly envied her bulky armor. She looked back at Jet.

“We’re not out of this yet.” She said casually, as if narrowly escaping death and saving a train from certain annihilation was routine. She started for the rail car door, moving up the train.

Pirates. Right. Oh, and stopping this train. Jet thought to himself. He looked at the pile of dust at his feet, locating the rocket launcher. The scope had snapped off, but the gun looked fine. He picked it up, simultaneously feeling the one remaining shell on his shoulder strap.

What is going on? He thought, not for the first time since waking up.

Jet took stock of his situation and options. Should he go back to the computer in the rail car behind him and figure out what he can? Maybe wake the others? Or should he go with the girl on her journey to stop this train? His memory was still frustratingly fuzzy. Though trying to make himself remember was like kicking a brick wall. It was pointless and a waste of precious time.

His mind seemed to fixate on the people in the cryotubes. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew these people. His mind registered them as familiar, despite his gap in memory.

He felt bound to them. Protective of them. Why? Was this strange sense of recognition making him feel this way? Perhaps it was their similar predicament of being stuffed in cryo-tubes for who knows how long. It could even be the odd classification that tied them all together; Archonics. Whatever that meant.

Jet had no logical indication of who he was or what end he should be working toward. But he accepted how he felt and what his gut seemed to be encouraging him to do. It was the best guide he had.

He made a decision. As far as he was concerned, the people in cryo behind him were his family until proven otherwise. Whatever lay ahead on this train, he would fight it or use it to protect them. And that meant following the girl to stop this saints-forsaken train.

He didn’t know her, but their goals aligned. They were on the same side. For now. Besides Jet admitted to himself, if there’s a corner I want to be in right now, it’s hers.

The decision made and his goal identified, Jet felt a surge or urgency and energy. Shaking dust from his hair, he followed the girl through the door way. Let’s stop this train.

The first few train cars they passed through were dark and quiet. Finally, they entered one that showed signs of a struggle. Bodies began to appear on the floor. Some dressed as armored guards, others dressed more exotically with strange pieces of tech on their person or attached to their bodies. The pirates.

They entered a larger rail car next. It was loud with air whipping into it through massive holes in the side of the train. Three boarding pods were lying open in a wrecked heaps in this car, taking up the majority of the space.

“Looks like the pirates made it on board easy enough.” Jet commented, more to confirm what he saw than anything.

The girl didn’t respond. The two carefully picked their way around the wrecks, moving toward the opposite end of the car.

Jet caught a glimpse out of the gaping holes. They were no longer in a tunnel. What he saw amazed him. It looked like an entire city! Lights and rail lines stretched, not outward, but upward.

They were inside the mountain! It was hallowed out, an entire city resting inside! Jet gaped at the sight.

“Olympus City.” The girls said back to him. She must have seen him gaping. “Home to the Superiority’s main tactical base, Snowspider.”

Again, Jet felt like these words were familiar. But why? Hearing them made him… angry? Maybe he was just angry he couldn’t remember why. He ignored the sentiment.

They reached the end of this rail car and passed through the door into the next, moving forward.

They passed more signs of fighting and bodies as they moved. The sight made Jet uneasy at how easy their progress was. To reward his unease, sounds of commotion began to come from the car just ahead.

The girl tapped her gauntlets and the began to glow with red lines, armed. She pulled the blade from her back and held it at the ready. Jet pulled the last remaining shell from his shoulder belt and locked it into the gun. The girl looked at him, eye brow raised.

“I know, I know. Just the bag boy. It’s ready for you if you need it” Jet said, trying to reassure the girl that he wasn’t going to do anything drastic.

She seemed hesitant, but nodded. They moved quietly into the other car.

This car was shaped differently, narrowing toward the front where it was sectioned off and became a cockpit, the doors to which had been blown open. They had made it to the lead car! Finally.

More dead guards lined this car. More than Jet thought was possible to take down in the short time since the pirates had boarded. What’s more, there wasn’t a single dead pirate among them.

Jet and the girl quietly picked their way through the carnage toward the cockpit. He noticed that most of the downed guards had massive slices and gashes in their armor, some with heads cut clean off.

What kind of weapons are these guys using? Jet thought to himself as he took in the precise and surely swift brutality that must have occurred here.

Angry voices floated back to them along with the sound of banging and tearing metal.

“Tell me something, Pudge.” A gruff voice coming from the cockpit said. “We’ve got about five minutes before we slam right into Snowspider. End of the line.”

Jet and the girl walked deftly up to the blown-out cockpit entrance and peaked inside.

More dead guards littered the inside. A driver’s chair and window were smooshed on the left side of the cockpit, the bulk of the space being taken up by a massive, whirring engine. Yet another dead guard slumped in the pilot’s seat. The control panels in front of the dead pilot were sparking and useless, a massive gash sliced into them. Similar to the cuts on the guards in the car behind them and here in the cockpit.

Five men pulled metal paneling off of the massive engine and were frantically examining various wires and gears within.

Another man, the man who spoke earlier, supervised, while yet another, smaller individual fiddled with a massive box near the cockpit entrance. A massive bomb. The small pirate was arming it. A fail safe if they couldn’t stop the engine.

One aspect of this scene stuck out to Jet. Close to the supervising pirate’s feet was a girl, also dead. Her dead hands still griped a thick sword emblazoned with a circle insignia. Lines coming out of it. Like tree branches. She had a tattoo of the same emblem on her forearm. An exact replica of the girl’s standing right next to him.

Jet looked slowly toward the girl he had been with all this time, but didn’t actually know. She was staring at the dead girl with her matching tattoo. Anger boiling in her eyes.

With no warning, the girl raced into the room and with one deft stroke cut the head off the pirate arming the bomb.

The other men froze and looked at her. Jet stepped into the cockpit behind the girl. Increasingly unsure of what he was getting himself into, but doing his best to look intimidating.

“Well… if it isn’t a member of the resistance stealth corps.” The gruff man said. He noticed Jet. “And the leader of the Archonics. I was wondering when you guys would team up.”

The girl brandished her blade threateningly at the man.

“Now, now.” The man said, putting his hands up and steeping back, “We might be working toward the same end. We’re stopping this train! Keeping precious Archonics out of the superiority’s hands. Surely, we can work out some kind of… beneficial agreement for keeping something so explosive out of the hands of the resistance’s enemy? And saving your people from certain slavery?” The man directed this last comment at Jet.

“You’ve got it wrong, old man,” the girl snarled. “We’re riding this line right into the heart of Snowspider.”

“Ah.” The man replied. “So, you are using Archonic bodies as a makeshift bomb to be slammed right into the Superiority. Your sister threatened as much.

At this the man gestured to the dead girl at his feet. The girl standing in front of Jet snarled.

“Colliding into Snowspider at this speed would be enough to ignite them,” the man continued, “but do realize the the scope of the explosion that man Archonics would make? No one inside this mountain will survive.”

The girl didn’t back down. A weight was growing in Jet’s stomach as he pieced together what the man was saying. This girl had no intention of stopping this train. She would use it as a suicide attack in a fight he had no recollection of. She was using his people as ammunition.

“Eh,” The man continued. “Your sister wouldn’t listen to reason either. I’ll deal with you as I dealt with her.”

The stood still as she calmly undid the latches of her chest plate armor. The armor fell away, revealing the same black top that Jet work, a number printed at the top. 023.

She leapt into action. Jumping at the man.

Faster than Jet could see, the man drew a sword of his own and parried her attack. Two additional pirates joined the fray while the remaining pirates worked at the engine with renewed vigor.

Jet watched, feeling numb. He had no idea what to do. He had felt confident in his decision to work with this girl. The girl that had no intention of saving him or anyone else on this train. It must have been her plan all along, sneaking aboard a cryo-tube and cutting herself out to provide backup to her resistance sister, together they would speed the train out of control, gain entry to city, and make sure it slammed right into Snowspider.

Jet was involved with something he couldn’t fathom. Should he continue to help her and deal a heavy blow to the people that did this to him? Working with the pirates seemed to be a safer option, but then what. He would transfer from one power he didn’t understand into another’s.

He thought of what the pirate had said. No one would survive the explosion. Not even the innocent people in the city they were passing through.

This last thought was the final push he needed. He would not aid in such a massacre, whatever the alternative consequences were.

Jet hefted the rocket launcher, aiming it right at the engine. His last heroic act.

He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Everyone froze.

A red ring appeared on the rocket, still loaded in the front of the launcher. It was shrinking. A countdown to its explosion.

Jet threw the launcher with the armed rocket at the engine and ran from the cockpit.

“No!” screamed the girl.

The pirates scattered, trying to get out of the cockpit.

Everything went bright, an explosion shaking the world around Jet. A burst of heat. Then nothing.

--

Jet came to on the cold, hard ground. Snapping awake, he jumped up.

He looked around him. A track lay at his feet. He looked along the track. There, in the distance, was the train. It was stopped, still intact. An obliterated first car still burning at its head.

It was swarming with search lights and armored guards.

One problem solved, thought Jet. Onto the next.