Pods

The massive blade slid out of Captain Romero, causing the man to slump to the ground in a heap, blood leaking from the head-sized hole in his chest. Fate heard a gurgle, then a long exhale, and he knew the captain was dead.

The long tentacle slid out of the ship. He was glad they were still in the atmosphere, otherwise, that tentacle would have killed everyone on the bridge. Of course, that small saving grace did nothing to alleviate his worries about the massive octopus attacking their ship. And even that paled in comparison to his true worry, the return of the Ascended.

'There's no possible way they should still be around. We killed the last of them a year ago.'

If the Styx's involvement in the war wasn't personal before, it definitely was now. But first things first, he had to figure out how he'd survive this mess. He noticed the ship was falling, its descent constantly accelerating.

"Based on how high we are, we have about five minutes before the ship hit the ground, less if the thrusters went out," shouted Tom over the noise of air rushing out of the ship, screams, and the awful sound of metal buckling and crumpling.

Rushing to the comm system, Fate activated the speakers throughout the ship and said "Anyone still on this ship better get off of it, fast. We're going down!"

The crew on the bridge had already rushed out the door before he even approached the comm system, and now Fate and Tom rushed after them. Along the way, they stopped to help a group of people lift a large slab of metal that had fallen from the ceiling onto a man.

He and Tom used their TK and lifted along with the three other people trying to get the slab off, and after three seconds of painful exertion, they managed to move lift the slab and drag the man out. His legs had been rendered as flat as paper, so two of the three rescuers lifted the man up and they all rushed to the escape pods.

They finally made it to a row of pods. To their dismay, the hatch was locked. A large crowd was gathered around them, banging and pulling on the hatches. Tom closed his eyes, then a *click* resounded and the hatches swung open. The crowd surged inside them, packing themselves as close together as sausages. Tom and Fate looked at each other.

"If these were locked, the others are too," Tom said.

"One of us will have to go back to the bridge and unlock them there," Fate said, turning around to head back.

Tom grasped Fate's shoulder. "I'll go."

Fate shrugged the shoulder off, looking back and staring into Tom's eyes. "When all these escape pods launch, I'm the only one of the two of us that can survive a freefall. You know your TK is too weak."

"…Fine." Tom released his grip. "Make sure you come back, or I'll find a way to bring you back so Autumn can punch the shit out of you."

Nodding, Fate sprinted down the long metal hallways, back to the bridge. Several times on the way, one of the octopus's giant blades pierced the walls, ceiling, or floor in front of him, forcing him to detour. Other times, it would stab behind him, the sheer force of it launching him off his feet.

When that happened, he rolled into a standing position and continued running. Once, a blade smashed through the wall, making him forcefully stop himself with his TK. His nose was inches from the boney weapon.

At last, he made it back to the bridge. He went over to one of the few consoles still intact, pressing a few buttons and flicking a few switches, turning it back on and having it draw power from the auxiliary generators.

The screen lit up, asking for a password. Cursing, he rummaged through the coat of a dead crew member slumped against the console before pulling a crumpled slip of paper out of it. Smoothing the paper out, he typed what was written into the computer. The screen flashed green, then flickered to a list of commands.

'Uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters. Good password, too bad they had to compromise it by writing it down. Lucky for me, though.' He typed in the command and pressed Enter, the screen flashing green in confirmation. The pods were unlocked.

At that moment, the entire ship shook three times harder than it was a second ago, the air filled with the scream of metal scraping against metal and being crushed. It sounded like the octopus was trying to squeeze the ship until it snapped.

Fate heard a loud *crash*, and whirled around to find the exit reduced to a wall of smashed metal. He cursed again, looking around. He found himself hating the fact that the Collective had stopped stocking parachutes on their ships.

Eventually, his eyes landed on a large box piled high with tools. Digging in, he found a small metal sphere with three small round buttons aligned in a triangle on the top. There was also a small carabiner clip on the left side, to attach to a belt.

'Perfect.'

What he held in his hands was a Stratosphere, a tool mechanics used in lieu of ladders. The tool emitted a localized gravity well that allowed the holder to float. Controlling it was extremely difficult, practically only allowing one to go up and down, stay level, and change the speed of ascent and descent.

Fate walked to the shattered viewport at the front of the bridge and activated the Stratosphere. The device hummed, and he clipped it to his belt. He bounced on his heels, noticing that the heels sunk to the ground much slower than usual.

He took a deep breath, then another, and jumped out through the broken glass, his body perpendicular to the ground far below. Looking back, he saw the ship still almost level with himself, and the octopus still battling the ship.

The thing had every tentacle wrapped around the ship, squeezing and crushing while stabbing it over and over with its blades. All around, escape pods were dropping from the bottom of the ship. When the thing started to look his way, Fate activated Null and fiddled with the Stratosphere, increasing the speed of his descent.