Archive of Our Own

Tommy breathes, like it’s all he can do.

He ignores it when he chokes on the inhale, suffocating on the exhale; hand pressed over his chest as he digs fingers into his newly-fashioned mantle as if he could reach his lungs underneath flesh and bone; the soft sounds of concern rising from through the wall that Tommy has crashed against, on his knees once more, fingers folded painfully tight around the last remnant of Nook in his hands as Zhay’s voice pierces the panic-hate-pain-anger-hurt-fear-frustration-regret—

“They’re gone, they’re gone,” Zhay is saying over and over, almost like a mantra that creates a melody all its own and Tommy slowly finds himself breathing in time to the cadence that beats back the silence.
Slowly, Tommy’s breaths get deeper and his hands don’t shake as fiercely, and distantly he is aware that the emotions inside of him—panic-hatred-mourning—have accumulated into an overwhelming force that stole his air and brought him, once more to his knees.

He’d equate it to a panic attack if he could actually feel the panic coursing through his veins, but with nanobots and numbness aside, he can at least breathe.
Slowly, thought comes back to him as he tips his head forwards into the wall and he knocks his knuckles against the panels in reply. It’s grounding, and he digs through memory, turning numbers over in his head, drumming them on the wall so soft that they go unheard.
Still. It’s grounding.

Zero, four, one, five.

“Brother? Brother what’s the matter?” he asks, somewhat gently, keeping up that slow knocking where the pattern of his voice doesn’t offer Tommy structure for his lungs to take in air and sigh it all back out again.
“I can’t stay here, Zhay,” Tommy says, ignoring the way his voice shakes, fragile in a way he doesn’t wish to be. But the weight of Nook’s broken hand, the missing chain and the scar that peels back his metal and reveals inner components that are as lifeless as he is a deep wound that Tommy can’t ignore.

“I need to leave. Before this place tears me apart.”

Zhay rumbles deep in the back of his throat; an agreeing sound. “What happened? What did they say?” he asks and doesn’t insult Tommy by beating around the bush. “I can understand some of what the Humans say, but your understanding is far greater than mine.”

Tommy lifts his head up from where he’s tipped it against the wall, closing his eyes to the destruction that his fingertips keep tracing and thinks instead of his words; giving the conversation his entire focus so that it might give him a chance to calm down.

“They told me something I should’ve realised long ago,” he admits, not really sure if he can explain the nuances of having been yanked through time without also having to explain his heritage.

“It was so obvious, it was right in front of my face—”
“It can’t be changed,” Zhay says, far too easily even though he has no clue what it is that Tommy has learnt. It is amusing, at the very least, that he has the same outlook that Tommy does; that what’s done is done and there’s no going back, no reason to go back and all it means is that Tommy is a little confused on his age—because he’s either eighteen or nineteen, or something closer to eighty-years-old—and he has to come to terms with the fact that Humanity are developed nearly a century further than he had previously thought.

“Don’t allow them to get into your head. Keep your focus,” Zhay says, with a tone of one having repeated the words enough that they’re almost second nature.
Tommy wants to ask, but knows better. If he gave it any thought, he could puzzle the pieces together all on his own.

“You’ll do no one any good if you’re too preoccupied to take escape if the opportunity presents itself.”
“I know. I know, I’m sorry,” Tommy says, shifting where he’s sat until he’s once more in the crouched-folded way that Technoblade taught him to sit, allowing him to rest without putting strain on his muscles, but just the same should he need to stand he could do so quickly. Not that he has any desire too. Just because he can only dimly feel the panic attack ebbing from his body, he is all too familiar with the lingering side effects and the Humans have been pulling him at all angles since he was captured by them.

Tommy’s hand closes tighter around Nook’s cold metal, and holds it over his chest and the thud-thud-thudding of his heartbeat.

One, four, two, zero.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been trapped aboard a strange ship,” he says almost idly, a smile beginning to warm his face as he compares this awful experience with his extended imprisonment aboard Xsdí’s ship, and while the memories aren’t exactly fond, he can find some sense of amusement in the fact that he’s a prisoner once more, feral like a leashed wolf that bites and tears at it’s restraints.

“You think I’d be better at this by now,” he half-laughs, trying to outrun the suffocating feeling cloying at his throat, the dryness in his mouth, the taste of vomit and bile that reminds him too closely of pod food and the near-untethered thoughts of sharp teeth and the soft flesh of his wrists. Nook’s metal, cold, pressed against his forehead is a good anchor, even if the sharp edge of twisted metal threatens to break his skin.
Not that Tommy cares about that.

Zhay doesn’t make the connections—understandably—and makes a questioning sound in the back of his throat. “You’ve been imprisoned by Humans before? And you somehow managed to escape. How?” he all but demands, probably thinking that however Tommy managed to escape the last time, they’d be able to use this time to achieve the same goal.
Which would work, if Tommy had anyone on the outside willing to get the door open, but his family were the ones that sent him here, mistake though it was.

Tommy chews his next words slowly.
They taste like poison. They taste like freedom.
Perhaps, in prison, they’re the same thing.

“Not by Humans,” he admits after too much time and at the same time, not nearly enough. “I was…. Xsdí. He stole me from my home,” Tommy says, sighing it out with not nearly as much emotion that the truth deserves, wondering what Zhay’s face is doing at the sudden revelation that Tommy had once been a prisoner aboard the ship of the most-hated bastard in the entire universe.

“He twisted my space jump, stole me through time and trapped me aboard his ship. Not that I knew why,” Tommy continues, thumbing running over Nook’s serrated metal, nicking his skin but barely deep enough to even bring a bead of blood to the surface; finger still drumming the pattern over and over; two, zero, one, eight, two—

“I only managed to escape because my family came for me.”

For a long moment, there is nothing.

Tommy feels himself frown when the silence shifts into something tense, turning where he’s half tipped over into the wall to keep himself upright, staring at the white panels as if he could some way see through to where Zhay turns Tommy’s admission over in his mind, trying to make sense, trying to come to terms—

“You are very lucky, Brother,” he says at last, firm in tone and word. “You should be dead. Xsdí is not the kind of bastard that allows others to live. Your family too,” he adds, and there’s another knock, although not as strong, like he’s tipped his own head against the wall, blown away by the trials Tommy has already faced. And it’s not even the most damning of his truths.

“I cannot even begin to wonder how—”
“Brute force, I think. Desperation,” Tommy shrugs. It’s… odd, talking about his imprisonment.
So far, he’d pushed it desperately from his mind, outran the nightmares that came with it, always avoiding the subject whenever Blue or any of the others wanted to try and talk about it. Soon enough they figured that Tommy wasn’t interested in rehashing past events and left him to his own devices. They were worried of course, but those concerns eased as time went on and Tommy’s nightmares became less and less frequent.

And yet, now Tommy is talking about it and the memories are in the front of his mind and beneath his fingertips and surrounding him as he sits in the humans' prison and some deep part of his mind can’t differentiate it to the too white, too bright, too perfect cell that had been his cage for months.

He laughs.
A hollow sound.

“We should’ve just killed him then.”

Zhay barks his own laughter . “It’s impossible. His body is not his true body. It’s a vessel.”
“To kill him, you have to destroy his primordial, I know,” Tommy agrees : “but… how do you? I didn’t think that the Nansolal were told of the Enol’ka’s power.” Or Eret’s continued existence at least, Tommy thinks, wracking his mind for information and hating that a lot of it got sidelined thanks to his terror when he first arrived to Daroda and realised the magnitude of their enemies power.

He is a little surprised that Zhay knows what he does; that, as far as Tommy was aware, the Nansolal as a whole are only aware that Xsdí seeks to destroy the remaining Enol’ka. He’s not even sure if it was known that Eret was still guarding the door through which the Enol’ka escaped, or maybe—maybe all of that is entirely different to the general knowledge of the Nansolal’s missing gods. It could’ve been that they had used their Primordials and vessels millennia ago and Tommy should know that—

“I—uh, I mean,” Zhay stumbles, tripping over his words a little, like he’s not entirely sure how to explain it . “Some of us Leorval, who are a part of High Command were told that by Eret and Kristin’s Sentinels. The Blood God and the Angel of Death,” he says, which must mean that they are the titles, or monikers that Technoblade and Philza earnt respectively.
Although, thinking back to what Techno had told him—perhaps in distraction of the goodbye they would soon share—Tommy guesses that they were titles bestowed upon them.

Tommy notes that, knowing this must mean that Zhay is fairly high up on the Leorval’s food chain, and that maybe if he can convince Zhay he is not any enemy, having a favour from him might make it easier to get back to the Ericitcratna, and he files that thought away for later.
Maybe it was this that has allowed him to live so long as the Humans’ prisoner despite all his escape attempts and retaliations—although no sooner had Tommy thought as much does he immediately negate that thought, because he doubts the Humans know that when the two peoples aren’t communicating. Despite the risks that it possesses, Zhay is probably still alive only because he can give more answers than he can dead.

“Even if it wouldn’t have killed him, I would’ve still liked to have done more,” Tommy admits, rather than continuing baseless questions. He’s also a little concerned about going into too technical a conversation when he doesn’t have the mental translations to back up the conversation, and while Xsdí isn’t a preferred conversation, it at least is safer ground.

“To kill him, I would’ve had to destroy his Primordial, but the coward is hiding it. But then, even if I had managed to get my hands on him, I couldn’t have killed him,” Tommy says, once more tipping his head back into the wall and staring up at the white lights, watching memories like a movie inside his mind.
If he concentrated, he could remember it far too clearly; the winding, twisting corridors that he’d pushed Philza down, following bloody footsteps and the sounds of alarms and klaxons that filled the silence and chased them through the labyrinth of endless white. He remembered the ache of Blue balanced on his shoulder; the soft sounds of shallow breath and the barely-there bitten whimpers of pain with every step Tommy took; matching Philza’s steps until they burst out on the ship hangar to the mess and chaos of Technoblade holding his own against Xsdí’s vessel, shouting insult and bloody promise alike.

He remembers Philza’s scream as Xsdí yanked him from the safety of the Enitnemelc’s hold; remembers Blue’s panic, his own hatred vile and ugly; the terror in his throat and behind his eyes and the rage that overtook him as he threw himself at the monster that had kept him prisoner long enough.

If Tommy closes his eyes, he can still taste Xsdí’s blood; as foul and rotten as he is.
Oil and ichor. Machine-built and blood-born.
An amalgamation of everything the Enol’ka stood against.

“I hurt him though,” Tommy grins, all teeth. “ He won’t easily forget that.”

That captures Zhay’s attention.
“You hurt him?” he parrots, not quite disbelieving, but suddenly finding it hard to comprehend. Not that Tommy blames him. He’d been running on fumes of his anger and was nothing short of terrified. It’s not like he had an actual plan; he just fought back with everything he had, so that he could escape.

“Nothing that would cripple him,” Tommy admits. “I did manage to snap off one of his mandibles when he grabbed me. I wasn’t really thinking though. Panic took over. And fear,” he says, ashamed a little to admit as much, but knowing that the only reason he did is because there was danger, and he’s only a creature of flesh and blood.
Genetically enhanced, yes, with dense bones that empower his strength and muscles that allow him to lift thrice his own weight, even as malnourished as he had been back then; but Tommy hadn’t attacked Xsdí because he understood the truth of his monstrosity.
He simply wanted his own freedom.

“It was fight or die. I chose to survive, and sank my teeth into his neck.”

“You are brave, Brother. I do not think that I could’ve done the same thing, were I in your place.”

This time, Tommy’s laughter isn’t so hollow, but it’s not really a joyous sound either. Not when he thinks that his actions cannot be considered any kind of commendable.
It’s perhaps one of the reasons that he hadn’t really wanted to talk about it, amidst his fear; knowing Blue was grateful enough, Philza too, and Technoblade had been impressed but none of them had truly seen how bloodthirsty and violent Tommy could be.

Just as his namesake are.

“I’m really not,” he repeats, before Zhay can argue otherwise, making a grating, disagreeing sound from through the wall; Tommy looking at the space where he thinks Zhay is sitting, leant up against the panels the same as him, probably imagining much the same, except he thinks Tommy is Nansolal—is someone worth admiring—

One, one, nine, two, zero, one.

“Zhay, I have to explain something,” Tommy admits, and tries not to feel like he’s laying his head on the chopping block. He can’t pretend anymore. He can’t continue to omit the truth when he wants Zhay to trust him, because he can’t hide the fact that he looks like a human when they try to escape, and Tommy can’t keep waiting for the words to simply come to him.

“You will hate me,” he warns, and again when Zhay continues to scoff at him, because he cannot consider anything that Tommy might say to be as damning as what Tommy hides on the other side of the wall.

“You will,” he echoes, forcing his voice to remain level.
Zhay must hear it, because he cuts off the disbelieving gruntle and listens to the way Tommy tries not to choke on the shallow air in his lungs, wishing that he had more words than what he can offer; being careful to enunciate them slowly as he translates in his mind.
“And I know that I can’t ask, but will you listen to me? To everything I have to say, no matter what. I’m not asking for you not to hate me because—”
“I won’t—” Zhay interrupts, like it’s simple, when it’s not.

“You don’t even know what I have to tell you.”
“I don’t know what you could tell me that would make me hate you,” Zhay says back, and Tommy can see the way he shrugs his words. “You’re clearly an enemy of the Humans. You clearly hate Xsdí and want to see him dead and this war won. You’re not…. I can’t think what you might….” Zhay trails off, like he’s grasping for any scenario that might make him hate a stranger, but Tommy doubts he’d ever consider him Human—

Tommy takes a deep breath.

Four, one, five.

Sighs it out.

Five, one, one.

“Just. Remember that,” he near-begs. “What you’ve said. I am on your side. If not a brother,” he says slowly, “I am at least a friend.

“I’m— I look Human. I am—I was Human,” Tommy says, trying to explain but hating the claim like it’s acid in his mouth, burning his throat and choking him just as vicious as being unable to breathe.
It doesn’t help that he can’t see Zhay; that he can’t read his body language when he’s gone silent the way he has, and Tommy words start spilling out of him like a breach in a dam, trying to explain, trying to shatter the silence, trying to evoke something other than the rejection that snags around his throat like a noose and pierces deep between his ribs—

“TOMMY!”

Without warning, the door to the room slides open with enough force Tommy hears it thud instead its’ cavity; the doorway spitting out a very flustered but determined-looking Boomer.
Anger shapes his form and strengthens his stride as he steps swiftly into the room, sleeves rolled up and hands occupied by—a gun?

“Boomer, what the fuck‽” Tommy hisses, bolting to his feet; the movement fluid in practised precision, as Techno had taught him; reaching the glass the same time that Boomer does. But rather than offer explanation or anything that might give a hint as to what he’s doing, Boomer immediately turns the muzzle of the gun towards the door panel that separates his and Zhay’s cell, and gives the trigger a squeeze.
He releases a quick-fire burst-round with pinpoint precision on the control panel, destroying it with a sudden explosion of noise smoke and hissing sparks. Almost immediately Tommy’s cell door retracts, sliding neatly to the side as Boomer offers freedom to him on a silver platter.

“Boomer, what—?”
“You’re leaving. Now,” Boomer says, words sharp. He throws a look over his shoulder, towards the door, and only then Tommy realises he’s breathing hard, shoulders rising and falling rapid, one hand ducking to his hip where he pulls out another gun, a slightly smaller version of the rifle he’s carrying—Spec Ops commission, with electrifying rounds and interchangeable fire control.
He holds it out, grip first, for Tommy to take.

“Jack is only able to buy you a little time, and there’s no guarantee as to how much. We have to move, ” Boomer says, voice growing in volume the longer Tommy stands there, not quite reaching out to take the gun; his hands curling tighter around Nook’s skin-warm metal, grounding himself with the pin-prick pain of sharp metal cutting into his thumb.
Between the truth he’s spilled like blood from the neck, and the ache in his bone standing before an open door, Tommy feels entirely untethered.

“How—how did he hack into the system?” he asks, mind scrambling, hand reaching—not for the gun, but—for the doorway, pulling himself through, smearing more red onto the white polymer.
“He didn’t,” Boomer grins, showing all his teeth. “They invited him in. Said some spiel about star-maps that Blue and Philza were teaching about, and they were very interested to know that they’d been teaching him how to fly—”
“But they weren’t—”
“—which is a load of bull,” Boomer continues, talking over Tommy’s interruption, his amusement clear as he takes a step back, motioning for Tommy to follow with the gun still held out in front of him, neither mind that Tommy is making no move to take it.

“They’ve got him up on the bridge, along with Niki, and he’s telling them everything and anything that he thinks they will find entertaining enough it works as a distraction,” Boomer says, although he can’t help but glance back towards the door and then up to the corners of the room, like he’s looking for the cameras that Tommy hadn’t been able to spy; hoping his words are true and that whatever Jack is supposedly doing is keeping the soldiers occupied enough that they’re not monitoring the feeds being directly transmitted to watchful eyes.

Except they’re not the only ones that can be watching.

“But the AI—?”

“Is overworked,” Boomer says, all too easily, because he’s considered this: has been planning this long enough that he’s taken it into consideration.

“Foolish is not Sam,” he says, deciding Tommy isn’t moving fast enough and places a hand on his shoulder to draw him from the cell, steadying him when Tommy is still trying to order mind-thought-body. “He can’t perform the same kind of miracles; he can barely perform on the same stage.”

Boomer leads him further out into the corridor, glancing once more over his shoulder. The door leading out of the room is still cast wide, but it’s quiet: there are no sounds of soldiers and of anyone else that might have caught onto Boomer’s plans. It’s a tantalising hopeful thought, but Tommy doesn’t rush through.

“I’m not leaving the others,” he says, pulling back a half step, only to break Boomer’s hand on him so that he can’t just pull him from the room.
Except Boomer’s grin just grows wider. “I never said you had to.

“But whatever you need to do to get our friend to follow,” he says, nodding head and glancing eyes towards Zhay’s painfully quiet cell—missing the way Tommy’s stomach drops out from beneath him, feeling suspiciously like he’s been stabbed in the side— “you need to do it now. Like I said, Jack can only keep the soldiers distracted for so long, and as soon as Ant and Velvet make their move it’s going to set off everything.”

Tommy nods in agreement, not feeling nearly as confident as he is projecting, but Boomer doesn’t see it because he’s not offering reassurances. Instead, he gestures once more with the gun, handle out. “Here,” he says, and then winces slightly when Tommy takes it as he realises that he might not be able to use it, considering that all of the Nova Corps weapons are print-locked, but—

“The other soldiers don’t need to know that. The threat alone will be enough to dissuade them,” Tommy says, trying to balance it where he’s grown used to the weapons in Technoblade’s arsenal. Immediately, he hates it; the sight too small, the barrel stumpy, the power that the gun wields not nearly enough and when he does pull the trigger, there’s the tell-tell click of the lock catching-sliding-breaking—

A charged electric slug belches out of the gun and slams into the wall on the far side of the cell corridor. Boomer and Tommy blink at it in mild surprise. “Never mind then,” Boomer mutters, squinting like he could see through the confusion as to why the gun had worked; Tommy thinking too as he glances down, because it’s not like the nanos had allowed Foolish to take that kind of information and even if they did take his fingerprints, it’s not like they’d upload a copy to apply permission—

Copy.

Hah.

Tommy laughs, steadying the gun again, flicking the nodule on the grip that changes the slugs into burst-fire rounds, but he doesn’t waste the charge in confirming what they already know. “They made a mistake,” he grins to Boomer.

Then, swallows fear and trepidation and steps further into the corridor, moving to the right until he stands before his neighbouring cell.
And Zhay, stood in the middle, torn between anger, hatred and disbelief.

Tommy’s first thought is of Technoblade.
It leaves him wanting.

He was correct in his assumption that the Leorval warrior he had slowly been befriending is Hylochoerian; just as tall and broad as his father, but where Technoblade’s fur is a deep earthy brown, almost russet in sunlight, Zhay’s mane is golden, and straw soft, threaded with three separate braids that take root from behind his ear, long enough to touch his chest.
One is gold-capped as Tommy’s is: the other two knotted, like they had been done without the proper time and care that the memories of the dead deserve. They were probably braided after he was made a prisoner, when he was still mourning the loss of Rissahlan and brothers and sisters alike who had fallen in the fight.

His tusks are not nearly as long as Techno’s, but they’re just as thick, comparably more so than others he’d seen in the brief glimpses when they’d visited Fundy on the white space-station and the random dirt-side colonies before the Nova Corps soldiers ambushed the ship. One of them has a gold ring.
Both of them are chipped.

He’s scarred on his face, muzzle and tusk; his left arm similarly injured.

His right is gone.

In its place is the Human’s thought of generosity, not realising the insult for what it is: silver-white metal moulded into the form of a human arm, but modified in places to imitate that of Zhay’s muscle distribution and bone structure.
It starts just beneath the ball of his shoulder joint; black-grey-silver stark against his golden fur, half hanging limp at his side like he makes conscious effort not to use it, as if doing so would be to accept the mutilation the Humans have forced upon him.

The truth of Tommy’s humanity paints shock across Zhay’s features, but he quickly swallows it down and buries it beneath a low rumbling growl that speaks of deep hatred. Having spent so long with the others, with Blue’s teasing, Philza’s jokes and Technoblade’s tired grumpiness, his own instinct is to growl back, to jut his tusks and curl his fists in acceptance of the challenge.
But that will do no good here when Zhay believes him an enemy, and instead, Tommy lowers his head and chuffs an apology he hopes that his brother-in-arms will accept as genuine.

There’s a stutter in his growl—a moment of uncertainty where he recognises the notion, understands what Tommy is trying to convey—but it returns tenfold with the emphasis of curled fists and one hoof that scrapes the floor with a scratching, grating threat.
But there was hesitation, if only for a moment, and Tommy holds onto that fact with two hands.

“I promised you that we were getting out of here. This is it,” he says, unflinching before Zhay’s hatred, voice firm and entirely believing in the words he says. He doesn’t have room for doubt. He refuses to entertain the idea for even a moment.

Zhay narrows his eyes but doesn’t say anything.
Tommy doesn’t allow it to dissuade him. “I’m getting off this ship,” he says moving towards the panel that controls the door, ignoring Boomer’s uncertainty because Zhay is acting like he’s about to tear Tommy’s limbs off with his bare hands.

“These are not my people. These are not my kind.”
“You are human—”

“No. I am not.”

Tommy stands up taller, and in one fluid movement, unlocks the door. He’s taking a huge gamble, but the hesitation, the fact that Zhay remains in the center of his cell and doesn’t immediately charge forward, the way that he’s actually listening to Tommy as he speaks, no matter his anger and his hatred that Humanity more-than deserves.

And somehow, Tommy finds the words he needs.

“Just as the Tolrii broke free from the betrayal of the Dkaræ, I am not Human. I am Starchild,” he says, hand over his chest to claim that title. It sits far more comfortably on his tongue.

Zhay scowls, but he’s still listening, and the low roll of his growl isn’t to drown out Tommy’s words.

“ I have no Human family,” he continues “My father is a Hylochoerian, like you. My family are Æirtyto, Væl’anyü, Titraier and Enol’ka,” he says, listing them off one by one, knowing that Zhay will question his claim to be family with one of the gods, and yet he cannot deny Ranboo is family as much the rest of them. He is their Sentinel, alongside Tubbo and Purpled, no matter the distance.

While it may be that he did not make the same oaths as Techno and Philza for their Enol’ka, but Ranboo is family, and if Xsdí has even the barest thought that Ranboo survived Daroda’s destruction, he will hunt them to the very ends of the universe and beyond, if he thinks that Ranboo stands between him and the annihilation of the remaining gods.

Whatever Zhay may think about Tommy’s blasphemous claim, he doesn’t rise to the perceived bait.

“But you side with the Human,” he growls, gesturing with his tusks to where Boomer has taken up position by the door, gun at the ready should any soldier realise what’s happening and make effort to stop it.
“Tommy, we need to go,” he hisses low, turning back briefly to throw the words, and then dips his head towards Zhay, who stutters again at the obvious submissive move.
It holds more weight than an apology, and gives Tommy more time to speak truths.

“I side with this Human,” Tommy agrees, gesturing , “because he is my friend.” Zhay bares his teeth, but he doesn’t growl or interrupt and that’s something. “He saved my life when Xsdí’s army would’ve killed me and my family. And he is helping us escape now.

“All of us,” Tommy says, slow and deliberate. And with the same tone in his movements, he holds a hand out to his could-be brother-in-arms.
“You can hate me, and you don’t have to trust me. But right now I have a way off this ship, where we both can return to our families.”

Expectedly, Zhay doesn’t immediately move. It’s not like he trusts him, and it’s not like Tommy believes that will happen any time soon—in truth he’s kind of waiting for Zhay to try and punch him, so for the fact that he hasn’t is well beyond his expectations.
He still hasn’t moved though.

“You’ve been trapped four years already. I’m giving you an out.”

“You lie. You wear the bastards face,” Zhay growls, dipping his head as if in preparation to charge, but the most he’s done is curl his fists and scowl, and the longer that Tommy talks the more his anger shifts into frustration, like he’s angry that Tommy isn’t the enemy he wants him to be and that he can’t simply punch him.

Explaining why he and Michael look alike will need more time than they currently have, so Tommy doesn’t even bother to try. He doesn’t want to admit that himself—just as he didn’t want to take the title of Human when he’s done everything he can to separate himself from the species.

From over by the door, Boomer adjusts his grip on his gun, turning back with frayed patience and all but spits; “Tommy, hurry the fuck up before I drag you out of here.” But there’s still no sound that the soldiers have learnt of the breach in security, and there’s been no reaction from the hijacked audio and video feeds either, which means that Jack’s distraction is still in effect, but for how long that will continue.

Tommy tries for one final nudge.

“You say only a few of the Leorval know that Xsdí is only a vessel of himself,” he begins, knowing that there is more strength in the actions he takes rather than words offered, but right now Zhay doesn’t trust him enough to allow him to act, so words will have to make do for the time being.

“Then perhaps you also know that Eret did not leave as they were told, but that he hid himself to protect from Xsdí’s attacks.”

Zhay doesn’t startle. If he didn’t know, he would’ve reacted beyond the further narrowing of his eyes and the way he grinds his teeth at the mention of the bastard’s name. But he doesn’t and that’s answer enough for Tommy to continue.

“ If you trust nothing else, trust this. How could I know, if I had not been there? To Daroda.”

It’s a bold claim; as bold as claiming Enol’ka as family (although far more believable than if Tommy were to tell Zhay the truth that he is a Sentinel).

Zhay stares, wide eyes, as the words connect in his mind.
“You have been—Impossible,” he growls, interrupting himself as another wave of anger stumbles him, conflicting with the slow understanding of Tommy’s truths that he dare not believe.

“But it is the truth. If you will listen, I will explain,” Tommy offers . “After, we’re out. We don’t have time now.”

And he knows, by the way that Zhay slowly—slowly—uncurls his fists from where they’re held at his side, that he has managed to break through the Hylochoerian’s first guard.
There is no trust, not yet. But there is the chance that Tommy can earn it, and right now that is all the victory he needs.

Finally, Zhay takes a step forward, distrusting it for a trap but risking it anyhow as he approaches the doorway. Tommy waits until he’s close enough to be crowding his space before he steps back, watching as Zhay stands taller, shoulders rolled back. His left hand readies into a fist like he’s still debating throwing a punch, and then—quick as a viper strike—he reaches out, grabbing a hold of Tommy’s make-shift mantle, dragging him close.

Unlike Techno’s eyes that shimmer red in the light, Zhay’s are molten, bright as solar flares as they sharpen with anger and hatred alike.
“Fine,” he growls with all the menace of someone a hair’s breadth from releasing their rage. He pulls Tommy closer until he can’t see anything but Zhay’s face, feel the press of a sharp tusk under his chin and digging into the soft flesh that he finds there.

“You promise that we’re getting out of here. I promise you this: if you betray me, I will kill you myself.”

Tommy nods, as well as he is able with Zhay’s hand holding him up near enough by the throat.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

Zhay actually laughs at that. And when he lets go, he doesn’t drop Tommy hard enough to unbalance him. It’s almost a kindness; another thing that Tommy tucks away without drawing attention to it, before turning to where Boomer is still stood by the door.
His gaze flickers briefly between the pair of them, trying to catch up with their conversation from contextual clues considering that he doesn’t speak their shared language, but whatever conclusion he comes to he decides it’s enough and gestures for them both to join him.

“Boomer, Zhay; Zhay Boomer,” Tommy introduces them briefly, redundant as though it may be, then thinks about it and regards Zhay who brings up the rear, softening the way he grinds his teeth so that it’s less noticeable.
“Do you know anything about where the others are being held?” he asks, wishing that he’d considered this before now. He half hopes Boomer might know too, but there’s a test and an olive branch both in the fact he’s asking Zhay for that information.
“Unclear,” he growls, sounding a little closer to how he’d spoken before Tommy revealed himself and turned his world on its head. Another win. “When they took us out of the cells, there were never any stairs. Only lifts and rails. But there’s one outside this room, to the left,” he says, pointing idle. Tommy nods thanks, and echoes as much for Boomer’s sake, while adding a question as to whether or not Boomer’s own information lines up.

“The others are being held in the bottom of the ship, out of the way. As far as I can make out, the prisoners are not a well-known secret, or if they are, no one is acknowledging it,” Boomer says, with a pretty decent imitation of Hylochoerian anger with the way he grinds his teeth. Zhay’s lip curls in response, but he remains where he is so at least he doesn’t feel like the notion is directed at him.

“Your friend is right,” he continues, nodding again towards Zhay, as they move closer towards the door; Boomer holding the gun closer to his chest but at the perfect angle to swing it up and take shots should he need to. Tommy falls into position beside him, mirroring the movement and taking his cues from the older as the three of them slowly move, voices shifting lower as they plan and move all at once.

“There’s a turbo-elevator that can take us there,” Boomer continues. “But with it being a secret among the highest officers, trying to access the floor without clearance might set off some kind of alert, or at the very least pool Foolish’s attention long enough for the soldiers to realise what is going on, and then we’ll be forced to fight our way down to the holding cells, and then back up to the hangar.”
“Which we don’t want to do,” Tommy agrees, hand curling tighter around the gun but remaining mindful of the trigger as the white surrounds him, but he ignores that in favour of following Boomer’s direction, stepping out into the corridor.

Outside the holding cells are familiar to the inside, even if Tommy hadn’t been paying attention when he’d been fighting the Humans soldiers that dragged him inside. Everything is pristine, all curved walls and white panelling breaking up the stretching shape, with lighting imbedded into the ceiling and beaded lights running along the floor, too familiar to Xsdí’s ship that it drips poison down Tommy’s throat and his breath catches in his lungs—

There are unconscious Nova Corps soldiers littered up and down the small space; a half dozen near enough, each of them with scorch marks on their uniforms and bloodied noses that smear a little more colour into the morbid scene.
Tommy whips around to Boomer, eyes wide, questions poised on slack lips, but Boomer ignores them all and keeps moving. Neither of them say anything when Zhay kicks the nearest soldier as they walk, but commits no more revenge.

“I’d suggest a maintenance hatch, but it will take too long. And I doubt the small space will allow Zhay to follow,” Boomer continues, gesturing further down the corridor when Zhay swings his head around at the mention of his name.
“We don’t have time to do anything else,” Tommy mutters as they come to a crossroads in the corridors. This has door alcoves cut into the walls, but the doors themselves are closed—labelled as cargo holds, offices and directories—and yet hold the risk of soldiers.
A double-wide one, outlined in blue and labelled in small text as the turbo-lift is their goal, and the three of them move swift; Zhay needing no instruction when he has walked the path too many times already.

Hopefully this will be the last time.

“Here goes nothing,” Boomer mutters as he summons a car for the elevator, before immediately turning to aim his gun down the corridor in case the sound draws anyone’s attention. Without being given the instruction, Zhay steps between them as Tommy mirrors the action on the other side, but he glares at nothing other than the turbo-lift door, focused solely on reaching his kith and kin, and helping rescue them from the soldiers.
Luckily, their luck holds out long enough for the car to arrive and all three to bundle in the moment that the doors cycle open; Tommy’s hand moving to cycle the doors closed before asking Boomer what floor.

He hesitates.

“We want the twenty-sixth,” Boomer says slow, eyes skimming over the LED screen that lights up on the side of the elevator. “But—wait, if we go to the twenty-fifth—,” he says, pressing the button before he’s even finished speaking; the turbo-lift shuddering minutely as it takes off, “—then we can take the access down to the twenty-sixth. From memory it should be autonomous bot storage, meaning there should be very few Humans and security measures on that deck so we shouldn’t be spotted. And if we take maintenance—they’re used often enough that it probably would only be reviewed later.”

“Better than nothing,” Tommy says, not really having the head-space to be able to think up another plan—nor the time as the turbo-lift makes a sound of slowing down, and Tommy regurgitates it all in Thíetue for Zhay’s sake, with the added explanation that they don’t want to fight their way through the ship if they can help it, despite Zhay’s more-than-willing attitude towards physical revenge.
“We get the others out first,” Tommy reminds him, grinding his teeth to emphasise their need to escape.

The elevator spits them out in an empty room large enough to model a hangar bay, but the machinery and technology inside is not flight worthy.
There are soldiers, but they’re dotted about the room, some up on walk ways, some walking with tablets, and as soon as the doors open wide enough to get out, Boomer is moving towards cover; Tommy’s hand on Zhay’s wrist to yank him to follow, displaying more strength than he should, but Zhay knows better than to fight him and he’s bringing up the rear as they move swift.

“Where’s the access?” Tommy hisses, not wanting to be out in the open for too long. Even if the soldiers don’t spot them, there’s the risk that there are security cameras and monitoring systems that will ensnare them before they get a chance to get out. Boomer points towards what looks like a structural pillar, with a stairwell and lifts leading up into the heights of the twenty-fifth deck, but also has imaging and text that directs escape pods in the event of an emergency evacuation order.

“There,” Boomer says. “We pass through the escape-access. Those escape pods are for everyone on the lowest three decks. There will be unmonitored access through there.”
“Also soldiers,” Tommy mutters, spying three separate groups of staff using the stairs while the lift itself spits out another pair closely followed by a small patrol of bots either being returned to storage or some other assignment.

“We move,” Zhay says, with no patience—the words an order and a warning all at once as he follows his own instruction and moves out of cover.

“Fuck,” Tommy and Boomer spit out together, and with no other choice and their guns held close to their chest, they follow at a quickened pace, praying to all and every entity that they’re not seen.

It works, right up until the base of the stairs, but Zhay doesn’t falter his charge even as the soldier shouts surprise and alarm all at once; slamming into him with an angled shoulder that punts the man back a full foot and heavily into the wall behind him, knocking him unconscious in one movement.
He grabs him by the collar—Tommy about to argue about his continued violence—except Zhay throws the man over his shoulder, unhindered by the added weight, and keeps going so as to conceal the attack.

“Smart, even under pressure,” Boomer compliments, despite the words going unheard, as the three of them all but throw themselves down the stairs with agility and strength, and fire burning under their feet; Zhay keeping the lead as they make their way down the floor with thundering feet and hooves.

Tommy waits for the inevitable alarms; the inevitable shouts from soldiers that see them as they pass. But whatever luck handed him a brother in arms as his cell mate continues to follow him now as they reach the end of the stairwell and come across the door that is marked as entry point to the Aegis’ twenty-sixth deck.

Zhay dumps the soldier’s carried body in the first empty alcove they come across, and then he’s tracking the corridor, taking lead where he is far more familiar with this part of the ship than either Boomer or Tommy; their own guns up, moving at a half-crouch and hurried step.

The corridors down here aren’t entirely the same pure, unchanged white as the holding cells on the upper floor, but there are marks of an off-set bronzed-grey where constant use and shift of cargo and mined resources from passing asteroids and the like have stained the polymer.
It’s a balm to Tommy’s strained mind and he soaks it in, never mind the growing pressure of the continued silence, only broken three more times as they move through the corridors: Zhay distracting one long enouhg to take down by using the unconscious soldier's boots he'd kept to use as a projectile, while Boomer shoots the other two who are at the end of a corridor too far to charge quick enough.

Zhay piles all the soldiers to one side, and they continue on, knowing it won’t be long now until they’re discovered but focusing on speed rather than stealth now; the endless, repetitive corridors falling behind them as they charge forward.
Tommy can’t help the familiarity of Zhay’s hooves on the polymer floor that keep making him think of Technoblade; head turning to his right expecting the shape of his father and instead being caught with the sight of blond; shorter, clipped and braided, but unfamiliar.
It hurts, a little, beneath the fear-anger-adrenaline-hope igniting his blood, but Tommy pushes it down along with everything else and focuses on nothing but the desire to escape; to return to his family and face them. To hear out their apology and give them his forgiveness, because he knows that they regret what they’ve done, that they only sent him away because they thought it was the best and safest option for him.

Hah.

As if Xsdí allows for any place in this entire universe to be safe, let alone the fucking Humans.

But then, it’s not Techno or Philza, or Blue or Sam’s fault that the Humans are treating Tommy this way. They probably figured he’d be accepted, brought into the fold and protected, just as the other soldiers had tried, when they’d first ambushed the Ericitcratna. Tommy knows they would’ve never willingly sent him here if they knew what was going to happen. They should’ve realised he would do anything in his power to get back to them.

But whatever.
That is for later.

Escape is for now, and they’re getting closer with every step taken; following Zhay who finds the familiar path as they backtrack towards the turbo-lift and then past it, towards the holding cells.

“ Get ready,” Zhay says, and it’s the only warning he gives—Tommy echoing for Boomer’s sake but not knowing what they’re readying for—as Zhay barges through a door, not giving it the chance to slide fully out of the way, shoving it with half strength and bending the polymer enough that it jams, derailed enough from the recess with a deep groaning whine.
It’s swallowed by the sudden startle of a dozen humans dotted about the room, standing at table-like structures and individual lights, machines and hover trays. Tommy has a split second to identify that none of them are armed—all dressed in the same white robes as the lab-coats that had visited him in the cell; recognises two of them as the lab-coats that had visited him in the cell.

The room that they’re in has near enough the same layout and design as the medical ward with the same stupid white panels, but they’re similarly dirty in places; smaller rooms branching off of a central room with a smaller room in the center—more like a cage despite it being made of glass and reinforced by electricity warning systems—that holds host to another Nansolal.

A red-feathered female Æirtyto, who looks as startled as the rest of the scientists, although it quickly bleeds into fear.

“Lulah!” Zhay shouts, anger getting a second wind as he wastes no time and reaches out to the nearest scientist, gripping them by the throat and using their body like a flail as he swings screaming limbs at a second nearby scientist.

“Zhay!” The Æirtyto shrieks, as the scientists react to danger, ignoring Boomer’s sudden-shouted demands for surrender. Tommy moves with them, ducking brief behind a pile of what looks like crates at the end of the table, out of sight long enough to be temporarily forgotten that he gets up behind three moving towards the door and tackles them to the ground; using the electrifying stun-function of the gun to shoot point-blank into their backs without the need to charge up and take aim.

“Emergency!” one of the scientists is yelling, calling out for help, but she barely gets the word out before Boomer’s stun-slug catches her in the side of the throat, causing her to choke on her words, tipping over into the desk. He doesn’t watch her fall, already taking out the last few on his side of the room; Zhay having already subdued the only man putting up a fight.
The rest fall still under Tommy and Boomer’s combined muzzles, thoroughly defeated.

“Wha-what’s happening—Zhay, what—?”

“Escape,” Zhay explains succinctly, cutting off the Æirtyto’s pleas; grinding his teeth as he stands before the temporary holding cell that traps her in a constrictive, too-small space that spikes panic in Tommy’s own lungs and he’s not even the one trapped in there.
“Just—let me—I’ll get this open,” Zhay says to calm her, but the Æirtyto is barely watching him inspect the outer structure or the energy currents that pool in the corners, and instead she’s staring wide-eyed and terrified at Tommy and Boomer, who have commanded the remaining conscious scientists into one corner.

It would be better for Zhay to explain, and the words would be far readily accepted coming from him than they would coming from Tommy, but they don’t have time to explain at length, and when Zhay curses for the third time because the door refuses to budge; another curled fist doesn’t do anything but shake the cell and caused Lulah to cover her ears from the hollow echo, Tommy breaks away from where he’s helping keep the scientists under control.
As he steps close, Zhay growls in frustration but he’s still focused on the cage, knocking knuckles against the glass. It doesn’t escape Tommy’s notice that it’s his own; the Nova-Corps inflicted bionic still hanging limp at his side.

“Let me,” Tommy says, ignoring the shock that ripples out of Lulah, and the surprise that Zhay allows him to step close, moving slightly to the side as Tommy brushes a hand over the controls, searching for a release and demanding the small cell to crack open like a treasure chest.

Lulah bolts out of the cage before the cell door is entirely retracted. Tommy doesn’t blame her.
Neither does he mind that much when she deliberately steps closer to Zhay, watching Tommy with unease. Curiosity, in the lift of her ears and the gentle click of her beak, further ignited when Tommy whistles warmth-apology-greetings before giving her the room she needs.

They need to keep moving—probably through the door on the other side of the room—but they also need to do something about the humans, and despite Tommy’s vindictive idea to stuff them all in the holding cell in the middle of the room, only five would fit, cramped as it was.

He moves to Boomer, to ask his idea while Zhay briefs Lulah as fast as he can while side-stepping every empty question she demands because “ what do you mean they can speak our language?” and “ are you sure we can trust them?” means nothing considering Lulah is out of her cage and soon so will the rest of the Nansolal.

But Tommy’s eye catches on a tipped crate that had been kicked in the scuffle, and realises with a start that they’re from the Ericitcratna. Another glance around the room shows that there’s a lot of things from the Ericitcratna, and even more from the escape pod.

It looked like the scientists had emptied the craft and brought a lot of its contents here; either to inspect or catalogue or whatever else they think is worth doing to the alien objects. There are smaller containers cracked open and emptied out; length of dissected coupling cord (that Tommy snatches a length of, to thread Nook’s medallion around his wrist, tied tight and tucked safely against the inside of this wrist); meld canisters that have been cracked open and brutalised.

Tommy catches sight of what looks like material; hand snagging it before he’s even thought about it and he realises with the start that it’s clothes.
His clothes. Clothes he’s worn aboard the ship—some of them once Blue’s, some Philza, some even bought specifically for him—but it’s his things from the ship, the others having packed up his things and sent them onwards with him—

“Fucking idiots,” Tommy snarls, ignoring the pricking in the back of his throat that feels too much like tears, or the anger curdling in his stomach. He’s grateful this hasn’t been incinerated in fear of contamination, or pulled apart and analysed thread by thread because the scientists are so fucking bored they’d probably do just about anything to keep themselves entertained for the remainder of their voyage. Tommy wouldn’t put it past them to do something so utterly useless.
Maybe they think they’ll learn something from the thread structure or the compound of the materials, but he doesn’t care. They’re clothes for the love of stars. There are more interesting, and more important things to be learning about then if aliens preferred textures comparable cotton or silk.

“Too right,” comes a voice and Tommy isn’t surprised by Zhay, but instead the offered words that are only slightly sharpened by grinding teeth. It’s not an olive branch, but certainly something as he glares at Tommy’s things scattered across the tables and between workstations. “What is all this anyway?” He’s not asking Tommy—he’s looking at Lulah like she might have the answer, but Tommy is the one who can explain it.
“They took it from my escape pod,” he answers, keeping his voice level, trying not to screw up the barest chance.

He turns half away; his own clothes are preferable to the makeshift crap he made for himself and although it could be a considered a waste of time, he wants familiarity back even in the smallest ways, and with one of his own mantles once more hooked around his shoulders, he’s feels a lot more comfortable. A lot more grounded too, despite the white permeating the room.

It’s not just the clothes that they were inspecting; there’s also nutrient supplies that Tommy recognises, an empty battery cell that looks like it’s been pulled straight out of the escape pod’s control panel; mag clips and respirators and a holodisk that has been rendered unusable from the destruction; the knife that Technoblade gave him which Tommy snatches up, sheath and all, and uses more cord to brace it to his other arm like a gauntlet of sorts. There are more emptied crates of energy cell, food stores, modular data keys, map and terrain projectors and—

“ What is that ‽” Lulah asks, beak clicking on the sounds as she turns her head to Tommy’s low rumbling growl, watching as he lifts up Xsdí’s mandible.

It’s had similar treatment as Nook, in that it’s got grooves of damage and freshly-pooled oil in the creases of fractal designs where the scientists have tried to carve it open. More vials of the liquid are set aside, and though Tommy has no attachment to the damn thing like he did with Nook, he still feels a lash of anger at the Humans’ incessant and dangerous curiosity.

“It can’t be,” Zhay mutters from where he’d been inspecting technology far more familiar than the Human’s less-developed inventions. Somehow, he is familiar enough with Xsdí’s visage to recognise his mandible that Tommy now holds in his hand; gaze drifting back and forth between them as he remembers what Tommy has told him and what he’s seeing now—

“It’s true then. That you were Xsdí’s prisoner. That you injured him and were able to escape.”

There is no anger in his voice. Only startled realisation as Zhay takes everything Tommy has said to him and looks at it in a new light: Lulah looking back and forth between them like she’s trying to decide if she did hear what she thought she heard.
Tommy shrugs, and chuffs agreement. “I didn’t lie. It sounds unbelievable, I know, but I haven’t lied to you.” He says, plain but firm, meeting Zhay’s eyes.

He’s still scowling; still angry because the person that is helping him looks far too much like the very race that has imprisoned him for these past four years. But he’s listening and he’s not denying Tommy’s claim and that is as much a success as everything they’ve achieved so far.
It’s not the last of their victories. Tommy refuses for that to be so.

“We need to keep moving. We don’t have too much time before the Humans realise what is happening,” Tommy warns, knowing that the moment that they break through the doors between this room and the cells next door is going to set off all the security settings on this level, if not the entire ship.
It’s a fear he echoes twice—once for Boomer’s sake, again for Zhay and Lulah (who is still very surprised and Tommy’s ability to speak their language, but tempering her questions in favour of escaping) and Boomer winces at the oversight. “I hadn’t thought about that. Guess we’re going to have to fight our way through the ship the moment that the General sends her people down here to cut us off.”

Zhay isn’t opposed to that knowledge when Tommy explains it. He’s been looking for a reason to rage, he figures, and he’s shown considerable restraint so far so to be given permission is an easy acceptance.

Permission means expectation and so that he's not going in empty handed Zhay turns to one of the nearest tables and salvages himself a weapon; tearing the modular arm off of an armed light fixture and preparing it like a makeshift club. Lulah takes her cue from him and similarly sharpens her claws with solder-like tools; talons cutting through the electricity supply that powers them. They’re not sharp like knives, but they’re something at least, and with Tommy and Boomer’s guns, and the scientists held at gunpoint, they force their way into the main holding cells.

The arrangement of the room is similar to that of where Tommy and Zhay had been previously staying: cells arranged in a long corridor stretching all the way to the back of the room, interspersed with screens, panels and control systems built into the pillared walls that separate each of the individual cells.
It’s a sickening thought that this is all the Nansolal have known for the duration of their imprisonment, but there is difference in comparing the solitude and emptiness that Tommy had been entrapped by, compared to the cells here where the prisoners have been given things to break up the monotony of white walls, white floors, white lights.
It looks as if in some efforts to create a rapport between the two species, or to try and facilitate good relations instead of the constant need to fight back against their captors the scientists have gifted furniture items, plants, decorations and drapery.

As if the scientists could hide the cages beneath a fresh coat of paint and a bedside table.

There’s clamour immediately; the Nansolal climbing to their feet in rapid movement, the moment that the door to the cells opens. All of them look frightened and panicked at the sight of so many Humans being forced into the room, held up at gun point by two more violent-looking Humans that bark unknown orders and threats that the scientists do nothing but comply or they’ll be shot by the volt-charge rounds that will definitely hurt before incapacitating them.
Tommy wouldn’t mind just shooting them all now, rendering them all unconscious, but despite his anger and low-burning hatred he doesn’t want to make it any harder for the Nansolal to trust him, which he needs if they’re all going to escape together, so he keeps his finger near the trigger and not held down and releasing round after round.

He wonders what the others must be thinking—how shock disarms a lot of their fear—even more so when Zhay and Lulah bring up the rear. But any chance to explain as to what's going on has to be brief: they’ve exposed themselves to cameras and security systems Jack and the others probably hadn’t thought to disable, they’re going to be discovered, it’s only a matter of time—

Some of the Leorval immediately shout out to Zhay, asking what's happening, trying to figure out what's going on. It’s too far a jump for them to think that Tommy and Boomer are helping them. They’ve known Humans to only be their enemies for the past four years, and in all that time they’ve probably had nothing to understand why that would change now.
Yes, the scientists and soldiers aboard this ship probably haven’t been torturing their prisoners, in want to garner peace—or the very least communication—with their people, but they’ve also kept them imprisoned, and kept it a secret from the other Nansolal because they know that what they’re doing more than deserves retaliation.

Tommy cannot—and will not—blame the Leorval for their fear of him.
The only thing that he worries about is that they’re not going to trust him when he tries to help, and that that in itself is going to cause issues with their escape attempt. The issue now is escaping before Puffy manages to send her soldiers down to cut them off.
They haven't got time to explain.

Tommy catches Zhay’s glance and wonders what he's thinking as he glances about the room to his brethren begging for answers, but any immediate conversation shared between the two of them on their plan’s next step is silenced by the sudden alarm system that shrieks throughout the room; the walls suddenly cast in an ominous, malicious red as the overhead lights change colour from a cool jarring white to vicious red.

Above the sounds of alarms that begin their repetitive drone, an announcement system—that suspiciously isn’t in Foolish’s voice—announces an emergency shut down of ship systems, emergency doors, access and all the rest of it.
It’s a brief, short spiel that speaks of pre-planned safety procedures and lockdowns; orders commanding personnel to their stations, enforced officers to the lower decks, everyone to return to their posts, this is not a drill, lockdown is imminent, report your location to your commanding officer—

The Leorval are all still shouting at Zhay, making little sense as their voices all clamour with the sounds of the alarm, but even without Tommy concentrating on any one voice, he knows that they’re all desperately trying to figure out what’s happening and why the scientists that have been making their lives hell for the past stars-know-how-long are now suddenly being bullied into the middle of the room.

“We’re getting out. We’re escaping from here,” Zhay shouts, making himself heard over the din of the klaxons.

He moves to the nearest panel between two cells; bringing down his makeshift club on the device. He doesn’t waste time with trying to press any of the buttons, or trying to figure out what the screen says; doesn’t even give Boomer or Tommy a chance to step forward and fix it for him.
But the violence is sufficient enough, and with the panel destroyed in one hit, the cell door opens and the first Nansolal steps out into the corridor; an Æirtyto who looks more like Lulah than she does Philza; with dusty-silver wings that sink into rich browns and ashen black. She takes Zhay’s offered hand without hesitation, taking the moment to fluff out her wings and spread them wide even if the cell suits the space to allow her too.

Tommy gets it though. This is the first breath of freedom she’d had in a long while.

Zhay doesn’t linger, and he’s already moving onto the next door, bringing his club down to break the electric current keeping the door shut; Lulah copying suit a few cells up.
Tommy doesn’t waste time either, and with the scientists still posing their own threat and the Leorval eyeing them warily—Tommy and Boomer regarded much the same or worse because of the guns they’ve got in their hands—he and Boomer direct them to the other side of the line of cells. For his plan to work, Tommy needs a working cell door, instructing one of the lab-coats to open it from where he’s stood, ignoring his sudden please for forgiveness or whatever else like that might change Tommy’s mind—

“Open the door, before I shoot you and your people,” Tommy snarls, words loud enough to be heard over the sounds of the announcement systems still spewing orders overhead. Fuck they don’t have time for this.

“These guns are powered to stun a charging Hylochoerian. What do you think they’ll do to a Human?”

The threat does the desired trick and the cell door opens. The Khaadren whose cell they’re taking over looks petrified at the sudden swarm of Humans, but he hides it as well as he is able behind a battle stance—shaky as though it may be—fists raised, tail lashing wildly behind him—

“We’re all getting out of here,” Tommy repeats as best as he is able, knowing that speaking Thíetue is disarming itself; proven correct when the Khaadren blinks at him, jaw half falling slack. “If you don’t trust me, trust Zhay. Go with him and the others. Help open the doors.”
“Wha—how?” the Khaadren stammers, but he listens and he’s not angry or hating towards Tommy on sight, and he’s moving closer, stepping around the frame of his bed and green plants to move to the door, glancing briefly towards the bundled scientists with another look of fearful confusion.

Tommy wishes he could give more than clipped words, but it is all he has with no time and too much panic surrounding them all.

“There is no time to explain now. When we escape, then. I promise,” he says, reaching out briefly to nudge the Khaadren out of the way—and he lets him—before Tommy is ordering the scientists into the cell with clipped words, anger pouring off of him in waves. They know better than to fight back, and then the cell door is shutting behind them, locking in place.

While Tommy has been tying up his own loose ends, Zhay and Lulah have been busy opening cells, instructing their brethren to help them do the same as they have created a ripple-effect.
Tommy joins in, ignoring the way that the Leorval watch him open distrust, but he doesn’t waste time beckoning out of their cells—no one waiting for an invitation—and Tommy finds himself moving with them; the Khaadren on his left, a Tagnuin on his right, until all of the cell doors are open and Tommy stands before the near half-hundred Leorval.

Some of them glare openly, some of them regard him with fear, and for a moment Tommy fears that now he has his brothers and sisters Zhay will turn on him and Boomer both, regardless of the truth he’s offered and the story that claims him a friend to them all, but before there is even the chance, the doors behind are opening and a squadron of armed, armoured soldiers stand on the other side.

They don’t even get a shot off before Boomer open fires, yelling for the Leorval to get down—useless as it is; they don’t understand and while a handful duck out of the way, the majority are as desperate for escape as Zhay and Tommy and they launch themselves forward in a wall of flesh. Leldrir throw bodies and punches in one move; Khaadren half a step behind; another Hylochoerian bellowing his own rage as he charges down the middle, meeting the soldiers at the same time that Tommy brings his gun cracking over one skull; Zhay’s hand grabbing the face of another and swinging him up-over-down, crashing into the floor behind and punching all of his air out of his lungs.

“Go!” Tommy yells, as more footsteps sound the arrival of more soldiers; not hesitating himself as a Titraier trio speed past like missiles, dodging the sudden spray of electric-stun-rounds to slam full-bodied into their sides. There’s shouts from behind; pained cries sounding out from where the Human’s gunfire had found purchase, but Tommy can’t stop and he doesn’t think as he keeps moving forward, falling back into the familiar patterns of instinct and adrenaline and anger; mind washed red with rage as he swings his gun around instead of firing it.
It’s how Techno taught him to fight, the weapon balanced in his right while Xsdí’s mandible sharpens his left; levelling them both in his grip, held out like a bird wing as he charges and knocks down two of the enemy in the same swing.

His screams are wordless as he moves, and although his enemy are not Dkaræ, they’re still intimidated by the sound that Tommy roars; echoed in kind by the Leorval that charge with him, brute-forcing their way through slugs of electricity meant to incapacitate. A Titraier falls out of flight when they’re slammed with a shot—orange fur too much like Tubbo’s—and Tommy shifts to stand in front of them, protective. He knows not to grab—he’s too strong, the Titraier too small—and though she’s dazed by the electricity, she’s not injured, pushing herself upright, shaking her head.

“You good?” Tommy asks, glancing between her and the remainder of the soldiers as the charge spills out of the holding cell corridor and into the lab-like room.

Zhay is calling for the others to arm themselves; Lulah organising the others to make sure no one got injured while a few are making sure that the soldiers are fully unconscious. Boomer is over by the far door, gun aimed and ready, but by a quick glance lets Tommy know that there are currently no soldiers outside the door.

That’s not going to last though.

“I—yeah I…” the Titraier says, and looks three kinds of confused as to why she’s talking to Tommy and why Tommy is talking back. But he doesn’t linger, only lends her a hand long enough for her to reach out unthinkingly, curl her sharp talons around his index and he’s hauling her up onto two feet before moving past, heading towards the door.

Zhay catches his movement and steps in tandem to meet him.

“There will be more,” Tommy warns him immediately, hiding the surprise that there were so few sent ahead first, but Tommy isn’t sure if the soldiers are underestimating the strength of their enemy, or if there’s another, more worrying reason behind the dwindling numbers. If General Puffy knows Tommy’s plan, she could be consolidating their numbers elsewhere, but surely it makes sense to cut off the Leorval before than can get a foothold—

“I expected as much,” Zhay nods, not sounding displeased by the idea; regarding Tommy again with an expression he can’t quite discern; eyes sharp, lips downturn, but not jutting tusk and no disgust in his voice.

He tilts his head ever so—a movement so slight Tommy would’ve missed it had he not been looking right at Zhay—before he turns back to the others that crowd the room; hulking frames of Khaadren and Leldrir ducking into the space; two Hylochoerians bracing an Angkor and Ovirs between them, struck by the Humans’ weapons but not grievously harmed.

“Brothers. Sisters,” Zhay says, authority radiating in his tone as he stands taller without moving an inch; shifting stance and raising his chin until it is a Leorval High Commander that stands at the spearhead of their group. “We are taking back our freedom.”
He glances back behind him and gestures in turn. “ Tommy. Boomer. They are helping. We will not harm them,” he says, leaving no room for anyone to challenge his words where a hush of noise alights to argue against everything the imprisoned Leorval have understood of their enemies these past years of torment.

His hand falls to Tommy’s shoulder, simply a weight, not crushing to hurt, not heavy to unbalance but simply there.

“Follow him,” he commands of his people. “ Heed him.”

There is a gentle murmur of confusion, but it sinks beneath a rising echo of agreement barked out in the singular word of understanding.
For Zhay, that is good enough and he turns on his hoof and marches single-mindedly towards the door, holding his make-shift club and moving aside enough to allow Tommy to fall in step with him.

“The Humans will not make escape easy,” Zhay says as they go, keeping his focus straight ahead, unflinching to the sound of pounding feet as the horde behind them falls in time without being instructed. They’re being offered freedom. There’s no chance they won’t take it.

“ But escape is not impossible,” Tommy echoes, ignoring the surprised looks he gets for speaking in a language he isn’t meant to know, somehow feeling lighter now that his steps echo with the pounding drum of a rageful, hateful army that wishes for nothing but freedom from this hell-forsaken ship.

Several Leorval snarl-hiss-laugh their own agreement and they move together like one creature, living, breathing, chasing freedom like a starved beast catching the scent of injured prey.
They move at a half pace, jogging and moving faster as hope takes seed; Tommy swept up like he’s caught on a tide and he can’t help feeling hopeful himself; determination warm beneath his feet and in the palm of his hands as he curls his grip tighter around the rifle and keeps close.

They keep the weaker, unarmoured species in the centre of the huddle while the larger, stronger and naturally protected Leorval take the forward positions, the rear. Tommy is given space—not that he blames them and neither does he mind; Boomer offered the same bubble around him as they chase familiar corridors of the Aegis’s lower deck.

Boomer is the one that tells them to head to the service elevator—the one that they’d bypassed when they’d hit the stairwell back when they first ran into the soldiers—so that they aren’t forced to divide themselves into small, manageable groups to fit inside the turbo-lifts.
It’s smart, even if it will be slower, but the risk is reduced as much as they are able by following Boomer’s lead.

No one fights it when Tommy explains as much to Zhay—ready to argue should anyone fight on it where he’s expecting it—but Zhay had already ordered his kin and kith to heed Tommy’s words, and while they may not trust him, they do trust their brother, and when Zhay doesn’t immediately negate the idea, no one else does either.

Still.
He has concerns.

“We shouldn’t trap ourselves in a small box,” he says, keeping the group movement, glancing down empty corridors as they charge ever onwards.
He’s waiting for the enemy, slowly growing more unnerved by the lack of response to their escape. He’s not the only one.

“ The ship is too big to use the stairs all the way,” Tommy says immediately. He should know that much alone, considering how long it took them to reach the holding cells from where they’d been spat out on the twenty-fifth floor, but Tommy can also see Zhay’s desire to minimise all risk of being trapped again.
Be it the elevator or the stairwell, all the soldiers would need to do is lock them out, but Tommy has an ace up his sleeve; drumming his fingers on the smooth metal of the rifle as he runs to remind himself of that; echoing as much to Zhay but with more simpler terms.

A Leldrir beside them—skin shifting between shades of blue-violet-red—scowls in open distrust, but it’s hard for Tommy to explain to them when his language is limited and he doesn’t have Sam or Nook to bridge the gap.

From behind, amidst the chasing Leorval, Boomer raises his own concerns.
“Foolish should’ve acted by now, surely,” he says, putting effort into keeping his voice level so as not to alert the others around them. “If not of his own volition, then by order of any of the upper officers. Tommy this—”
“We’ve gotten lucky,” Tommy says, with the same strained tone that doesn’t go unnoticed by their immediate audience. He ignores Zhay’s sharp look, and tells Boomer to keep going even as Boomer pushes to fall in time with him, rifle tucked close to his chest, but muzzle held up so that it won’t take him much effort to point-aim-shoot the moment that it’s needed.

“Tommy,” he hisses, abandoning all pretences of calm. “We’re heading right for a trap.”

“I know.”

Tommy bites his lip. Keeps his head focused on the path ahead.
“The rest of them know too,” he says, and can’t help throwing a grin towards Boomer, finding amusement at the shock he finds there.

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll break through.”

The Leorval won’t let anything stand in their way. This is the best chance they’ve had in years, and Tommy is going to ride the wave with them; help knock down walls and break through barriers until it’s nothing but the void and a straight shot home—

“There!” Zhay barks, as the familiar sight of the stairwell that leads up to the twenty-fifth floor comes into view. And next to it, the opening for the elevator large enough it can take large supplies all at once; more than enough room for the half-hundred Leorval and thrice that.

The doors are shut, but that can easily be rectified by brute force. Tommy can open them, but he knows that the moment he reveals his ace, the cyborg will counteract it before it can be used a second time. They’re watching, using the security cameras in the corridors and the elevator itself, and while they’ve locked the doors so that the elevator doesn’t open when one of the Daratrine presses their hand to the console and is denied, it means nothing to the strength of Zhay and his three blood-kin.
The Leldrir, Scorcur and armoured Terrol step up too, and with nothing but bare hands-claws, curled fists, they beat at the seal between the two doors and peel them back like tin foil: kicking in the inner doors until there’s space enough and they’re forcing their way in; Tommy swept up by the tide.

“We need this thing to move,” one of the Scorcur snarls; bone-armoured and flesh patterned, with rock fins and spines, and long narrow eyes that regard Tommy distastefully, angry that he must rely on the perceived-Human for help.

“Shit, I didn’t think of this,” Boomer hisses from where he’s standing by the panel, oblivious to the way the Leorval near him give him a wider berth in fear of his ire; slamming a closed fist against the wall like that might do anything. “Tommy, this isn’t going to work, we’re going to have to fight our way—”

“No. We’re good here,” Tommy cuts him off, turning back to Zhay and the damaged gate, making sure that everyone is inside and accounted for.

He didn’t have to want to reveal his hand so early on, but he refuses to be stopped here. All they need to do is get up to the correct floor; to the Aegis’s ship hangar and one step closer to a craft that they can steal, large enough for all of the Leorval, and powerful enough to outrun the fleet’s ships.

While Foolish’s previous silence has been helpful towards their escape—or at least hasn’t done anything so far to hinder them—Tommy hopes that he’s at least listening now, or the reveal will be for nought, and they’ll have to fight their way through the ship regardless without an advantage.

Tommy tips his head back and all but shouts, “Foolish. Override. Captain’s code, 04-15-14-20-20-18-21-19-20-14-15-15-11. Bring us up to Hangar Access.”

He repeats a similar enough order that Skeppy had given back in the medical ward when he’d thoughtlessly revealed his security code. Tommy had snatched it up and kept it in the forefront of his mind, drumming his fingers to the rhythm of the numbers to ground him and keep them fresh; laughing now as the spill out and miraculously, it works.
Because Foolish may be one of the most advanced AI that the Humans have been able to develop so far, but he is still AI, still constrained to rules and regulations and programming embedded in his core, and even without having to out-logical the priority of Human safety, Tommy is able to demand the AI to do as he commands and the elevator jerks once before rising swiftly.

“Fuck—Tommy how‽” Boomer asks, incredulous. He forgets that he too had heard the same code, but it hadn’t been as important and he hadn’t held onto it. Not like Tommy, who, despite his rage-panic-hatred-antagonising, had seen the advantage.

“Humans are stupid,” Tommy grins at him; all teeth, no mirth.
Boomer grins back. “I won’t argue with that.”

The elevator vibrates soft from the friction of moving; lights on the side panel counting down from twenty-five with startling speed until the compression systems engage to smoothly slow the lift until they’re stopping at deck level seventeen, as signified by the signage that is automatic. Tommy doesn’t want to doubt—doesn’t want to kick a gift-horse in the mouth—but he chances a glance at Boomer to make sure they’re being spat out on the correct deck.
Boomer is already moving towards the warped metal of the damaged gate; ducking through the gap where the doors on the other side have already opened in invitation.

They’re being lured, certainly, but Tommy doesn’t care for that when they’re that much closer to the ship hangar.

Boomer leads the way, familiar enough with the design of the ship that he doesn’t second-guess the corridors as he races down them; the Leorval barely more than a half-step behind him as they run. They spill out into larger corridors with branching doors, overlooking balcony walkways and maintenance bays that have all been abandoned in a hurry because of the announcements still droning on overhead.
Their path is blocked by a large, menacing door that stands between them and what Tommy is sure is the hangar bay.

But before they can force the door, soldiers stand in their way; perhaps double, or triple the number of Nansolal that chase their freedom; snarling anger or murmuring fear as some slow, some keep pace, but Tommy kicks himself faster, growling wordless threat to the uniform soldiers ordered in lines.
The front are balanced on one knee, guns aimed; the second steadying aim on the shoulders while the third and fourth stand upright and await orders from their unit commanders—

Tommy reels back his hand without warning and launches the weight of Xsdí’s mandible across the divide; the aim sure and the weight heavy enough that the promised damage draws the nearest soldier’s guns to shoot at it instead of the approaching onslaught. Boomer attacks too; his electric rounds doing their damage much the same before a wave of fist-claw-talon-beak.

The violence is unmeasured; the enemy armed and thus, don’t warrant any pity or mercy; bodies beneath his feet either unconscious, or dead, or soon-to-be. Tommy doesn’t even notice; the thought not even considered as moves with them until the soldiers are kicked aside and sisters support brothers on broad shoulders; a Væl’anyü supporting electric burns helping a Bo’hunt to their feet; a Vhoadan bracing the ashen Æirtyto.

No one is on their knees.
No one has fallen.

“We need a ship,” Zhay says, growling at the still-closed hangar door, not-quite panting but certainly growing tired. It’s not like he’s been given much chance over the years for a decent exercise to keep up his strength in preparation for this very moment.

He turns to Tommy standing steady beside him—unphased by neither exhaustion or the pain of being struck thanks to his nanobotic enhancements—casting an appraising look, like he has noticed Tommy’s unwavering strength and has observed enough of Humans that he should question it. Even Boomer is looking tired, shoulders slightly slumped, shoulders pulled forward as if there is weight on him, pulling him down to the ground, but Tommy stands tall, the gun warm in his hands and only the beginning of sweat beading along his hairline.
But they have more pressing matters.

“What of yours?” Zhay asks, having pieced together enough that Tommy must have his own ship—that he’d been brought here somewhat, somehow—and that the same vessel could be their ticket out of here.

“Probably destroyed by now,” Tommy snarls, mind shifting quickly to Nook’s hand still strapped to the inside of his wrist; Tommy flicking it over briefly to look at it, making sure that it’s still firmly in place; the dagger-sheath still fastened on his right in case he needs it.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been unconscious since the soldiers brought him aboard, and he doesn’t know how much damage the Human engineers could have accrued since. Besides, it wouldn’t suit them.

“Even if we stole it back, it is too small to hold everyone.”

Being an escape pod for a relatively small ship with a numbered crew, it makes sense for its size. All that means, however, is that they’ll have to commandeer one of the Humans’ ships, and though Tommy would prefer for something more technologically advanced and powerful than what can be offered of their comparable-primitive inventions, it’s all that they have to pick from.
And Tommy won’t deny himself returning home for something as trivial as there being no ships available to his liking.

But first, the hangar door.

It's too large to open force, no matter that the others immediately begin to try; claws scraping at the reinforced metal, fists echoing hollow and Tommy’s own stolen codes offering nothing where the soldiers up on the bridge must’ve realised the dangers of that Captains’ code being in the hands of their enemy and have already changed them, locking him out.

“We have to break through,” Tommy growls, staring up at the monstrosity. On the other side is freedom. This is their last hurdle; the last wall they have to break through—literally—but it is reinforced to withstand the depressurisation of the entire hangar bay should there be any faults with the shielding that acts as the air-lock function between the void and the rest of the Aegis.

“Jack was meant to keep it open,” Boomer growls, curling fists tighter around his gun as a slow thrum of sound betrays the approach of soldiers; the steady drumming pattern telling of far more numbers that they’ve faced so far that will corner them in the dead-end corridor.
“It wasn’t meant to take this long—the soldiers weren’t meant to realise—Tommy, there’s no other way through—”

“There has to be,” Tommy snarls, moving as the bodies part for him, no one daring to even brush up against him as he stands before the wall of metal no control panel to hack or programme—and even if there was, Tommy doesn’t doubt they’ll just be locked out—

“It’s useless. You might as well give up now!” shouts an all-too familiar voice, and Tommy snarls as he rounds where he stands; the Leorval behind him parting like retreating ocean waves as they sink into the shadows of the walls to reveal to Tommy the visage of the Captain who has led his men to cut them off.
They stand, almost triumphant; a solid wall of armoured soldiers that are sure to overpower the escaped prisoners, even if every last one fought to the last of their strengths.

The trap that Boomer feared has caught them in it’s maw.

“This is the end of the line. There is no escape from here,” Skeppy shouts, standing tall, shoulders set back, voice projected so that Tommy might hear him over the sounds of the continuing alarm that has barely softened since it first began.

Tommy cracks his jaw at him, setting his own feet, standing taller as his anger is given second life. “You’re wrong,” he snarls, spying Xsdí’s mandible discarded where he’d thrown it in his earlier charge. It would be useless this time; Skeppy and his men stand too far for him to effectively attack, even with the rifle used as it is intended and not something simply extending the reach of his swings. Still, he can’t help but pick it up, ignoring the half-hundred guns that follow the movement as he stands upright once more.

“We’re leaving,” he snarls, voice rumbling as deep as Zhay, as if the words are threat in and of themselves. “You cannot keep us prisoner any longer.”

“It is futile. Return to the cells or we will be forced to open fire.”

Like hell they will.

Tommy doesn’t think, but simply steps forward, arms raised to take the soldiers’ attention even if he cannot hide all near-fifty souls that stand around him, some too far for him to intercept gunfire should the soldiers release.

True panic begins to swell under all his other emotions at the shift in atmosphere. There is something about these soldiers that cautions Tommy more so than before; be it the steadiness of their guns or the way that none of them hold fear. It is as if they know that they can defeat the Leorval, either through numbers alone or—

Or the fact that their guns aren’t loaded with stun rounds.

It isn’t confirmed, but by Skeppy’s unwavering command and the determination of the soldiers speaks enough that Tommy is certain he has guessed correctly, even if he wishes that he was wrong.

It makes sense. The soldiers wouldn’t want to risk their quarry escaping when they haven’t finished using them; that they would do everything in their power to stop Tommy from leaving when he was the bridge that divided them both, even if he proclaimed that he would never help them.

Tommy is aware of the way he’s panting deep uneven breaths, but he can’t help it, even if he shouldn’t be tired yet; the exhaustion tempered by the power of his nanobots ignored but the fear that rises up and makes him feel weak and unsure; body shaking minutely where adrenaline hasn’t got as firm a grip on him as he’d like.

He’s sure the others have noticed the shift in him, and hopes that the humans are too far; too caught up in what they think is a battle already won to have caught Tommy’s stumble.

He tries to force it down, tries to trigger fear into adrenaline by focusing too closely on the white walls, white floors, white lights; focuses on the taste of vomit in his mouth at the reminder; focuses on—

Heat.
Against his forearm.

Between the space of skin stretched over strengthened bone and a small curve-edged metal hand bound tight to the inside of his arm.

“Tell them to surrender,” Skeppy repeats, words accentuated by the heavy drum beat of his force taking one step forward.
Behind, too many of the Leorval keep that distance, moving closer to the barred door. There are murmurs of words—questions to giving up, laying down, accepting fate and living to see another day, but no sooner had the whispers risen do growls silence them; anger outweighing fear. This is the closest they’ve ever gotten to escaping and enough are determined to see this through to the end, whatever that might be.

Tommy holds his ground.

“I won’t,” he spits, wrenching his mind back from a sudden storm of thoughts that don’t align enough for him to be able to make sense of them; choosing to focus on what he does understand, and that is the dead end that looms in front and the danger that looms behind.

“You can’t risk hurting any of the Leorval,” Tommy continues to shout, and it takes every last shred of energy he has to keep his voice sharp and flat as steel; eyes away from the slow warming heat that presses firmly against the inside of his left arm; the sensation familiar enough but the hope in his chest almost foreign and entirely contrasted by the vitriol he throws at Skeppy like blades all their own.
“You know that if you do you will never make any progress with the rest of them.”

He needs to buy the others time. He needs to buy himself time—time to think, time to understand, time to plan as reality shifts a little more into view, and their hopelessness doesn’t feel so insurmountable. The door still blocks them and the army is still lined up like a firing squad, but Tommy needs to relay the slow-forming plan he has with Boomer, without letting Skeppy and the watchful eyes of the security cameras pick up on the sudden change.
For the Leorval it is easy. His words won’t be understood if he simply tells them, even if he makes it seem like he’s begging them not to fight, but if things go wrong, Boomer could get caught in the crossfire, and maybe it won’t even work because the hand in his is only that—a hand, a small piece, damaged metal and heat growing more intense it will begin to burn him soon even if the pain won’t register because of Sam’s interference in Tommy’s nanobots—

“That is up to you,” Skeppy shouts, leaving Tommy to scramble uselessly for what’s been said, distracted by thoughts of shield doors, defence tactics and the pitiful weapons that he and Boomer hold against an entire army.

“Tell them to stand down,” Skeppy continues, emphasised by the soldiers around him adjusting their guns to take better aim. “If they don’t, we will neutralise the threat. That goes for you too, Lance Corporal Boomer.”

Boomer grinds his teeth at being addressed, doing a very good impression of anger that Technoblade would display, but he says nothing as Skeppy makes a gesture with his hand, regarding the others that stand around Tommy. He can’t help but glance at them.
Too many are fearful—both of him and the soldiers—but enough face his eyes with set jaws and subtle curled fists. Zhay still stands tall, Lulah and kin close to him, dipping his chin slightly when Tommy turns to him. His mind is still racing, pulling thought and prayer and shredded hope together into an amalgamation of barest sense—

There’s a seal in the corridor wall, between the Humans and Leorval.

“When I make a move, everyone needs to run,” Tommy says low, soft enough he doesn’t have to worry about any emotion betraying the meaning of his words. As he does so, he unhooks the human rifle he’s been carrying from where he’d hooked the strap around his neck, juggling with Xsdí’s mandible once more in his right hand, Nook’s heat growing stronger in his left, as if his impatience grows with it.
Boomer calls out, questioning, but Tommy can’t reassure him without alerting the other Humans, and he’s forced to ignore him, turning back to face the Captain. He makes a show of dropping the rifle on the floor.

The gun clatters in the tense silence; the sound echoing like gunshots. Too many near him flinch at the sound of it, and Tommy wrestles with his anger because the Leorval do not deserve to be as terrified as they are to flinch at an empty, hollow sound. It’s all he can do not to grind his teeth, reach down back to this rifle and empty it on the armoured bastards blocking them in.
Except that will do nothing but kill them all, or see them defeated and thrown back in cages once more, with stronger measures to make escaping all that much harder.

But there is victory in the smile that Skeppy can’t quite keep off his face.

He’s still guarded; his men keeping their guns trained on their enemy without falter, but there is an expectation now as to what comes next. He thinks that his orders are being adhered to—thinks that Tommy is convincing them all to stand down, and that the ripple of unease that shifts through their numbers is nothing more than dashed hope rather than a coming preparedness.
Skeppy doesn’t believe he’s won just yet; he isn’t a Captain for nothing but blood-ties and coincidence, but Tommy can use the dissimilarity between their expectation and his own actions to confuse them.
It will only give them seconds, but it’s all he can offer until he can get the door behind them open.

Zhay takes a step forward.

“What are you—?"
“Lying to them,” Tommy says clearly, not giving himself the chance to second-guess his words as he speaks them, glancing back to his brother-in-arms, praying that Zhay believes him no matter their short time knowing each other and everything that Tommy represents, as well as everything he doesn’t.
He doesn’t know what the others think when the look at him—a perceived-Human that can speak their language, that moves like one of them; a Nansolal that fights as a Hylochoerian does, who makes himself as expressive as he can without mobile ears, sail, fur or feathers—but Zhay has more than the act of fighting their way through the Aegis together.

“He says to stop. I will not stop. We are going home.”

Zhay holds his ground as Tommy moves towards him, his own goal just behind where the door still towers, keeping them trapped. Hopefully, not for too much longer, Tommy thinks, hand moving briefly to the metal still tied to his wrist, hot enough that it should be burning if he could feel it.

The Humans behind don’t give him any further orders as he moves towards the door, hands held up as Humans would perceive a surrender, except it means nothing to the Leorval that simply watch, waiting, Tommy warning them all as he reaches Zhay and reaches past—

Tommy presses Nook flat against the door, ordering quick and hurried in a last-ditch hope that this will be enough, not knowing if it will work—he’s only a hand, he’s damaged, he might not be whole, he might not understand when Tommy whispers hurried prayer for salvation and protection—

Heat ignites strong enough that Tommy feels it on his skin, right scrambling quick to the cord that braced Nook against his forearm as the door makes a deafening groan; locking systems unlatched in rapid succession; the function pushed to its greatest capacity as the hangar door clangs; the shielding rising hurried with a terrible grating sound as if the function moves too quick for the ship to handle.
The soldiers behind yell out their startle, Skeppy shouting orders for Tommy to stand down as all of them lift their guns to their sights, taking aim—

Another groan rings out from behind chorusing the first, and it’s the only warning any of them get before the second door begins to close; three shields of metal dropping from sheathes hidden in the wall, falling like guillotines; blocking the approach of the soldiers; thick, reinforced not-quite-glass standing between them. Skeppy yells, panicked, to his General and Foolish both, trying to figure out what is happening, demanding for Foolish’s system to override the mistake.
But the door doesn’t budge.

Skeppy looks back to Tommy, standing in the mass of confused Leorval that scrum together in fear of the doors moving, slow understanding dawning as Tommy can’t fight his own grin.

“We’re leaving,” he shouts, the words explanation and order both as the hangar door drops away with surging heat and a horrid strangled groan as Nook overpowers Foolish’s comparatively weaker computer processors, neither mind that he’s been reduced to nothing but a fraction of his original self. Tommy can barely keep hold; hanging tight instead to the cord he’d used to strap Nook to his arm to keep him safe, but he’s the first to move, not needing to question the action of the opened door, nor fearing the strength of the dropped blast door behind them.

His mind is on the hangar as they all rush into its heart; the rows of maintenance machines, automation bots, carousels and grid lines angled with walkways that create a working space for smaller fleet ships to be brought aboard the Aegis to be fixed. There are a triple dozen single-engine fighter jets suspended on racks that look like spare supplies for battle formations; stacks of crates and supplies, braces, frames, and large shielded hangar doors that stand between them and the void.
Now all they need is a ship.

And the one already chosen for them, hanging suspended on coupling arms and magnetic braces in pride-of-place, is a large interceptor, shimmering pale blue like the reflection of the sky.

The ship looks about twice the size of the Ericitcratna, but more streamlined in Humanity’s design; pillared in length and symmetrical in design, with enclosed engines on each extension as if there should be wings in inspired design to Humanity’s old atmosphere-bound flying crafts.
Jet intakes line the outer shell with streaks of black and exposed metal shielding, with very few viewports where the ship is designed for defence and manoeuvrability, and there are very few weaknesses exposed to its outer shell.
Infinity Dawn is printed on its underwing in cerulean blue.

It looks like it’s been pulled in for maintenance, surrounded by mechanical equipment, cranes and more coupling braces that have been retracted, but still pulsating with magnetic energies that hold it. Atop the ship, right next to one of the coupling links that braces the ship, Tommy can see the shapes of what looks to be Antfrost and Velvet on top of the ship, crouched over the connection that keep the Infinity Dawn locked in place.

“Tommy!” Ant yells, voice echoing in the emptiness of the vast hangar, hands cupping his mouth to drown out the sounds of the alarm that still rings hollow throughout the room. “We can’t get the ship to release. They locked us out of the maintenance controls before we could get them all to let go!”

They’re trying to brute-force it with stolen weapons; shooting the connection with charged up shots like that might be enough to dismantle the technology that keeps the interceptor restrained. It’s not going to work, Tommy knows, and he’s moving without thinking, leading the Leorval forward as he brings Nook closer, not sure if he can hear, or understand, or if he’s only subjected to the entity Tommy holds in his hand or if he has somehow infected the ship and is able to interfere on a larger scale—

The interceptor jolts as power surges through the system; Nook searing with heat that Tommy can feel it in the air around him. He’s not even touching the metal—knows it would scorch flesh and melt bone—and his words are little more than hopes and prayers, but they’re whispered and somehow, somehow Nook can hear him, because the Infinity Dawn jolts, as if coming alive; nose lifting, jerking forward as a magnetic pulse ripples through the braces with a growing drone that strikes Tommy to his very core.

From up above, Velvet and Ant give shouts of surprise, then fear, as the ship lurches with enough force to unbalance them; the smooth panelling of the shielding offering no handhold as they fall over and begin to slide, left to the mercy of gravity and the terrifying drop.
Tommy can’t hold back his own fear, choked only slightly when Velvet snags a handhold on one of the recessed jet intakes, hand reaching out uselessly for Antfrost as he slips past, picking up speed and only just managing to catch himself on the lip of the side. Left hanging, near thirty-foot in the air.

“No—No! Velvet, Ant, hang on!” Tommy yells, voice ringing out behind the explosion of gunfire raining against the reinforced shield door behind them and the echoed orders of Skeppy dividing his force to breach another access.
Many turn their heads to his panic, even if they don’t understand; gaze shifting to the visage of two human strangers dangling from a dangerous height, and Tommy barely has the words out, turning his head for Zhay, begging him to help that he might be faster, be able to jump higher, that he might be able to climb up and catch—

“Sanair! Eogul! Foruwua!” shrieks a voice—high and shrill compared to Zhay’s own booming tone that rings out; the clash of names commanded like orders of engagement and Zhay’s instructions that “we’re taking the ship, everybody forward” ring out and Tommy watches as four Leorval break away from the main horde.
Two Titraier and an Angkor, led by the orange-fringed Titraier that Tommy had helped to her feet as they snap four wings wide and shoot upwards in arcing, coiling ascent, moving directly towards Ant and Velvet before they can fall; Sanair snagging claws and braced strength catching Velvet before he can shift any further, while the other three are in perfect position to grab a hold of Antfrost when his grip fails him and he nearly plummets.

It’s difficult, Tommy can see that: Antfrost is heavy even though he’s slight; Human bones are dense and empowered, muscles thick and heavy enough that he drags all three down with him, no matter that the Titraier—Eogul and (who Tommy is later introduced to as) Sunny—have eight wings between them, and Foruwua, is easily his height and able to fly on similarly delicate wings.
Still, the descent is controlled enough that when they hit the ground, it is no heavier than a three foot drop. Sunny and Eogul are on their feet immediately, rolling out of the stumble, jumping up and continuing their ascent to help guide Velvet gracefully down just the same; Foruwua lending Antfrost a hand to climb to his feet just as the Infinity Dawn makes another jerk, and this time, her loading bay doors latch open and begin to lower.

“Yes Nook,” Tommy grins, unable to hold his friend tight to his chest as though he might want, and he steps back just enough to begin directing the Leorval towards the ship. Too many are unsure, but Zhay commands, Lulah leads, and she’s the first to scramble up onto the lowered door, having to jump and flap with her wings to bridge the gap where the Infinity Dawn is suspended just that little bit too high to be able to comfortably walk up the ramp.
The ashen Æirtyto stands at her side and she lends hands to brothers-and-sisters as they follow behind, cautious of another trap but far too determined for freedom to look before they leap.

“Nook—Nook warm up the engines,” Tommy says, not knowing how Nook can hear him, but grateful that he can, and he’s the first to throw his hands high in a victory shout as the Infinity Dawn cycles it’s engines; the whirring-growling-droning energy drowning out the ceaseless alarm. Tommy’s cheer rings out and is echoed by the Leorval; Tommy catching even Zhay raising a fist in victory, casting a grin in his direction and a quick flap of his ears that lifts Tommy even higher—

An explosion rocks them all; large enough it shudders the ship and tears through their moment of victory like a guillotine blade. Smoke billows from the corridor, and carried on the unmuted sounds of boots slamming into the hollow floor comes half of Skeppy’s arm. Behind, another door opens, and they’re faced with another surge of combatants, led by the familiar bulk of the Spec Ops soldiers that Tommy has already had the displeasure of fighting against.

A familiar face leads the way, gun aimed and taking shots as he charges, but the velocity and distance dulls the electric shots before they strike and they’re nothing more than gnat-bites that chase the Leorval to the relative safety of the Infinity Dawn.

Tommy doesn’t even need to say anything.

One look at Zhay—one brisk nod of the head is all they share—and they’re both high-tailing it towards the Infinity Dawn’s still-open loading ramp along with everyone else, shouting commands-warnings-encouragements until they’re echoing one another; Zhay’s hand on Tommy’s shoulder as they stand on the lip, reaching down to help haul others up onto the ramp. Tommy’s strength aids him while Boomer lays down cover fire; Velvet and Antfrost doing the same where they use their guns to take pot shots and keep soldiers back for as long as they’re able, even if it’s a losing battle with their numbers that swarm in the Leorval unable to fight back more than empty swings of closed fists, lashing tails, roaring threats and tossed bodies where the two of them do collide with fury.

“Get to the ship! The ship!” Tommy yells, his words as commanding as he can be as Skeppy’s soldiers close in from behind and Michael’s charge around the nose of the ship, avoiding the warming heat of the engine turning over and growing stronger with every passing second.
Ant yells for Velvet to stick close, Boomer telling them both to get close before they get cut off, and it takes Tommy too long to release that it’s only the three of them; Jack and Niki aren’t here—“Boomer, Boomer where are Jack and Niki? We need to leave—Boomer, Boomer where—?”

Between gunshots, the alarms, the jet engines and the heavy pounding of feet of both retreat and charge, Boomer can’t hear Tommy over the cacophony. He lays down cover fire, moving to channel the remaining Leorval to the ship as they duck between crates and maintenance machines that act as brief respites of shelter between the crossfire. They need help: Tommy not thinking as he kicks off the ramp, vaulting over the heads of the last few stragglers, Zhay and Lulah both shouting his name as he sprints the divide, hand weighted by Nook and Xsdí both.
One fist burns-sears-scorches, the other stabs twisted metal into the armour that doesn’t turn Xsdí’s sharpness away and instead it pierces through.

The Humans scream in ways that the Dkaræ and the androids on Daroda never did; pain sinking into their skin-flesh-bones as Tommy throws himself into the fight, hand clawed despite no talons, teeth bared despite no fangs, fist clenched despite his comparable weakness.
He knows he’s weaker—he wasn’t raised to be a soldier like these Nova Corps, who are all brawn and brain. Instead, he was malnourished and mistreated and thrown aside to crawl-scrape-fight each day until he could stand on his own two feet, under his own strength.

Tommy offers that strength now to the fight, to protecting strangers who want nothing but freedom; to driving Xsdí’s mandible up into stomachs, Nook’s metal searing flesh as he reinforces his punch, imagines Nook’s laughter as another stranger falls. Tommy grabs him as Zhay had done, but he doesn’t have the height or weight, but he’s got determination and in one swing he spins him like a human-sized flail, throwing his weight into charging soldiers that have been given the orders of overwhelm.
Their weakness is that they can’t shoot him—can’t risk killing him—even as the soldiers argue against that order, shouting at one another, shouting at Skeppy as another faceless soldier falls under Tommy’s rage.

Tommy doesn’t think for the noise he creates as it bellows from his mouth like dragon fire; fierce and unrelenting. The Dkaræ had hated his screams, had fled in fear from his bloodthirsty violence, but while the Humans do not fear the noise he makes, they are pushed back much the same;
Tommy’s fury echoing off of glossy white panels, storage crates and automatic machinery; words of threat tumbling into one another to create a wall of sound that urges him onwards as he reaches the forward line.

There isn’t enough weight behind his first swing to knock the soldier aside completely, but Tommy is strong enough that the Human stumbles sideways, pitches into another and they both crumple to the floor in a shout of pain; the sounds drowned out by the cacophony of the Leorval finally claiming themselves victory against their prison guards.

The hangar has plenty of targets; the soldiers’ guns tempered not to kill because to them the aliens are a precious commodity that still holds knowledge they simply need to unlock, and while some Leorval turn on their attackers to buy their kin time, enough are still ducking between cover, moving as quick as they’re able towards the ship.

Tommy fights to buy them all time.

One soldier, close enough to feel the full weight of his volume, enhanced by the nanobots flooding through his bloodstream, tries to dodge away, but Tommy is already on top of him; mandible-fist-blade swung around from behind in fluid movement, stabbing forward at the armoured flesh.
There isn’t enough power behind it to drive deeper than through the layered armour and an inch of flesh, but the masked soldiers stumbles to the ground in a scream of pain all its own; drowned out by the boy’s rage as Tommy pulls back and aims again for the weakness between collarbone and skull.

The screams gargle.
The body falls still.

Another rises up to take his place, hands grabbing for Tommy’s makeshift-blade; trapping his curled fist, stopping the swing. Voices near and far scream his voice—the echo of Boomer’s beneath the weight of soldiers cornering him in, Velvet and Antfrost shouting panicked; Techno’s voice roared from far behind—but Tommy doesn’t need a weapon to win.

He lets go, the smooth metal sliding against his finger; the soldier’s arm wrenching suddenly from lack of tension against him so fast he almost smacks himself in the face. But he’s focused more on Tommy’s weapon rather than his own, and before Tommy can think to unsheathe the knife he’s got strapped to his forearm, he sees the swing of black metal in front of him and grabs.

The strap is still slung around the soldier’s neck and he comes too, close enough Tommy doesn’t even need to lean to crash the butt against his face, barely blinking at the spray of blood from cracked teeth-jaw-nose; body crumpling as his consciousness leaves him.

There’s another, moving in; Tommy angling the gun but he’s a half-second too slow and the infuriating rageful visage of Michael stands before him. A fist blindsides him, another snatching the gun and Tommy stumbles; the world rising up to meet him as his knees jar and his breath catches—

He finds his feet before he finds his mind.

All Tommy has are his fists. His left is closed around the cord that balances what remains of Nook on the end of it; his right curled similarly, but he doesn’t have time or thought to spare, to wish that it is enough, only knowing it is all he has and all he needs to hold ground.
The last of the Leorval have left him, not even their shadows remaining; it’s just him, Boomer, Velvet and Antfrost holding back the soldiers as they clamber up the interceptor’s ramp towards freedom.

Tommy needs to join them, but Michael’s own hatred holds him fast.

All he can think-feel-breathe is pain beneath his hands—his own radiating in his chest; Michael’s in stolen attacks; Zhay’s and Lulah’s and everyone who has been subjected to torturous years of captivity. All he can feel is the heat in his hands, the smear of blood against his skin, the burning in his lungs as he inhales on the first stride, second stride, third, until there is a wall beneath his hands and he beats it with every fibre of his being.

The first retaliation lands squarely against Tommy’s chest, knocking the air clean from his lungs. He barely feels the rippling of what-should-be-pain over his ribs. His stomach.

Michael grunts when Tommy’s fists connect with mounting anger that has no use trapped within the confines of his own body. He lets it rise, lets it flow through him; lets it build and surge like tempest waves crashing down upon a cliff face, never mind the chorus of voices calling out for him, orders given in Thíetue and English both, but Tommy cannot tear himself away when Michael is stronger-fiercer-tougher.

Tommy may fight as Technoblade taught him, knowing how to overpower and outmanoeuvre his opponent, but Michael is stronger on account of having lived his entire eighty-one years, whereas Tommy has only lived nineteen, maybe twenty so far and most of that was spent weakened. Michael has spent years fighting-training-sparring; building muscle and stamina both.
He weathers every blow; holds fast against every strike; knocking aside the stolen gun when Tommy tries to use it to hit; keeping balance when Tommy strikes out with a foot to kick him away—

There’s no give under Tommy’s fists, but he doesn’t back down. Snatches the knife from his left forearm and swipes forward.
The blood smeared across Michael’s armour is Tommy’s own, knuckles cracked, bones screaming, flesh scorched; Nook’s hand burning in his own as the sharpness of warped metal digs in, and keeps him grounded away from the sudden growing panic of defeat that looms in Michael’s shadow.
His strength gives the rest of the Nova Corps time to move in, make plans, manoeuvre; Tommy scrambling for an edge and with the next strike, the knife in his hand levelled flat; tense with taut muscles and curled fingers that aims a particularly vicious stab into Michael’s side, driving into the softness between his ribs. Something cracks—Tommy doesn’t know what, nor cares enough to find out—revelling momentarily in the hiss of pain Michael rewards him as he backs up, reels back, kicks out—

Tommy’s knee twists the wrong way. He doesn’t feel the pain, but he feels his leg give out, watches the ground rush close, hands underneath him, balance slanted, black smeared to his left—

It’s one of the Nova Corp’s guns.

Tommy doesn’t even think.
He takes the momentum Michael gave him and rolls with it, twisting until he’s on his back, feet flat, knees angled up, gun aimed directly up at the Human who wears his face as he moves back in—

Point-blank range will hurt.

Michael hesitates.

“It’s print-locked,” he says, as if that will be his saving grace; the technology having been given security measures that would prevent their own arms being raised against them by the Leorval that they’ve kept trapped like animals in cages. He’s got one hand pressed to his lower hip where the knife had sunk in; familiar red washed over his gloved hand.

Tommy grips the gun tighter. There’s something satisfying about the way Michael’s face shifts into sudden alarm-fear-surprise as Tommy crushes the trigger in his grip and fires a warning shot directly into his chest. The impact is enough to wind him; knocking the air from his lungs and forcing him to his knees.

“H-how‽” he wheezes, like he couldn’t possibly fathom; face contorting into a grimace as Tommy scrambles quick to his own feet, half his mind lend to snatching back his bloodied knife; remaining a step ahead of Michael who is warned enough at least not to charge in when the gun stands between them, already proven that it is able to fire.

Tommy sneers.
“Same DNA. Same fingerprint, Brother.”

The knife sits snug back into its sheath; the gun a bigger threat as he steadies it, aiming a little lower, this time pointing at the bastard’s gut where he can do more damage that his nanobots won’t be able to easily disregard, no matter how much numbing medication and adrenaline they pump throughout his body and the rapid-stitching of the comparatively shallow stab-wound.
But Tommy barely gets the muzzle up, butt jammed in against his hip where his hand won’t curl quite right, Michael’s mouth opening on an insult when there’s a sudden shadow; Tommy turning his head in time to watch the flash of metal as a curled fist—glossy platinum; futuristic white—launches into his view and past, cracking beautifully across Michael’s jaw with enough force to send him crashing backwards.

Zhay roars his outrage, tusks jutting, air snorted fiercely, but he’s not here to crush their enemy into the ground. The same fist—Nova Corps-made—swings round, and Tommy barely registers the shift from fist to grabbing hand before it collides with his chest, snagging his mantle and he’s suddenly off of his feet, gravity pitched sideways and the echoing thud of hooves are carrying them both across the hangar, towards the interceptor’s lowered door.
Lulah stands waiting, yelling out warning and encouragement both; everyone else having already climbed up and tucked themselves into the shelter of the ship so that no gunfire can catch them; Boomer, Antfrost and Velvet using the ramp itself as cover to release round after rounds of electric slugs into the slowed approach of the soldiers.

“Zhay, what—”

“We’re leaving,” Zhay snarls, leaning into his run where Tommy and Michael’s fight had dragged him further from the ship than he realised. He braces when Zhay vaults, feet slamming into the ramp, shoulder jarring into Tommy’s chest where he’s got him slung over his shoulder as they slip into the shadows of the Infinity Dawn’s cargo bay.
Only then does Zhay tip enough for Tommy to slip from his shoulder, feet hitting the floor, knees following where he was a little unprepared. He barely registers the way Zhay is pushing Xsdí’s mandible into one empty hand; someone else hissing when they brush against the bloodied mess of his left, still curled tight around Nook’s tinted-green; metal clinking as it connects with the floor—

The connection is instantaneous; lights powering sudden and bright, tinged green as Nook takes control entirely. The Infinity Dawn is rocked with tremors; the Leorval’s panic rising in cries-fears-questions as the sounds of the ship’s engines and propulsion shift from ticking over into powering forcefully; the sounds of the grinding metal as the magnetic supports still cling tight.
And the creaking groan of the lifting ramp, that begins to rise.

“Wait—wait, no,” Tommy says, shoving at Zhay’s hand on his shoulder as he realises too slow, ignoring the unsteadiness as he clambers to his feet, choking on words in his haste to shout them aloud—

“Boomer! Boomer, we’re leaving, you have to—”

“You have to go!” Boomer shouts back, ducking under the lifting ramp, body half-turned between approaching soldiers and Tommy half on his knees in the hatchway.
Ant and Velvet are already ahead, pushing further from the ship as the upper commanders begin to panic; shouting out orders for the Aegis to seal her hangar doors, for the General to send reinforcements, for the fleet ships to intercept—

“You were never meant to come with us,” Boomer continues, as the ramp continues to steadily rise; shield doors from above slowly falling to meet them and create the seal. Tommy shoves again at the hand on his shoulder, head shaking because the others need to come with him; the Nova Corps won’t accept that these actions are not a betrayal, they’re in danger, Tommy can’t protect them if they don’t—

“You never should have left the others,” Boomer continues, halting his fire as he turns back to Tommy entirely.
“We’re sorry that we brought you. We shouldn’t have; we know that now.”

“Boomer, you can’t—”

“We’ve still got things to do here,” he continues, gun falling slack in his grip as the viewport between them continues to thin.
Behind, Ant and Velvet have given up fighting too; guns at their feet, hands on their head in offered surrender, staring at each other as if there is no one else in the room.

“Tell them I’m sorry. For everything. Tell them—tell them ‘ Naïm Daikthûn.’”

The cargo hatchway shuts, seals; air tight compression hissing as the Infinity Dawn gives another jerk the resounds through the ship; the sound of metal grinding, magnetic forces tearing at one another and the sudden onslaught of suppressive fire rounds slamming into the side of the ship as though the soldier’s orders have changed and they’d much rather risk destruction of the interceptor than the liberty of their prisoners.

Inside the ship, the noise is near-overwhelming where the Leorval have begun to panic now that they’re not actually fighting back. No one can do anything as the sounds of gunfire pound against the outer shell, and without the ship’s shields engaged in defence, it will only be a matter of time before the Nova Corps start dealing irreversible damage.

Tommy can hear Zhay and Lulah arguing with others—distinct voices making themselves known in the cacophony of so many souls crammed into a tight space—trying to figure out what to do next but not knowing, because this ship and all its technology is unfamiliar to them; they don’t know the words printed on the walls, the screens that function as controls rather than individual panels-buttons-switches that the Nansolal have a preference for, nor the sudden triggered alarm of ship systems detecting imminent danger—

Tommy has to get up. He needs to—tries to—but his mind his torn, body shaking by the sudden rush of adrenaline that makes it hard to curl his hands into a fist; trying to see through the thick haze of anger that spills blood across his tongue and heats his throat until he’s choking on dragon-fire; trying to swallow down the anger threatening to consume him and logical thought both.
He’s angry at himself for his failures, angry towards the Michael, to the cyborg and her soldiers, to Boomer and the others who had surrendered all too easily as if coming with Tommy could never be a reality—

It’s emotion that surges in and thoughtlessness that sees him collide his fist with the ramp that now forms one of the hangar walls; rage pouring from his mouth in a guttural, vicious sound. The ship replies in kind as he slams Nook’s hand against the metal, connecting intention and command that triggers another power of the engines that rocks the ship forwards; another wave of creaking and groaning filling the air as the systems engage again, fighting against the braces that support the ship.

It triggers another ripple of panic from those that stand around him; many backtracking for space in their haste to get away from the visibly angry human, but Tommy doesn’t linger to explain-apologise-reassure. He can’t even force the door open again, even if all he wants in this moment is to break down the ramp and drag his friends aboard.

But he can’t.

Even if he ordered it, the ship’s safety systems wouldn’t allow for it: a female voice warning of damage beginning to accrue on the starboard side, the resounding rattling of heavy-duty bullets slamming into the metal; the distant muffled voice of a unit commander asking permission for use of incendiary rounds to punch through quicker.
Opening that door right now would negate every action they’ve taken to get this far.

That doesn’t solve his anger, however, and with a bloody bruised fist, Tommy can’t stop himself from hitting out again; the door echoing hollow as his fist collides.
Blood smears and he nearly stumbles.
Doesn’t fall.

“Fuck,” Tommy hisses, anger rising up, acid in the back of his throat; Nook burning him in clenched fist when he reels back, pushing past the pain of split skin, bruised bone to punch against as if his anger might do something—

A broad body falls into the space beside him. Tommy’s instincts rise, his anger and his fist with it, but his snarl only gets as far as his teeth before Technoblade—Zhay steps in close, golden fur shimmering like hopeful light in the confines of the Infinity Dawn’s cargo hold.
His hand is heavy, grounding as he reaches out; Lulah behind him, strangers and strange faces continuing to move and shuffle around as the sounds of a thunderstorm shift into a hurricane of violence; danger steadily growing closer the longer they remain where they are.

“The-the bridge,” Tommy says, wrenching his mind away from pain, from confusion. His throat feels dry, mouth numb. He wets his lips and tries again. “ We need to get to the bridge. Fly the ship out of here.”
“None of us know Human technology,” Lulah says, in a voice that could almost be comforting if it wasn’t so fearful.
“I do,” Tommy reassures her, though without the smile he wants to give. His nanos are numbing more than his pain, and all too soon they’re going to fail him. He needs to help the Leorval get to safety before that happens.

There’s no time to waste.

“Whoever knows how to fly a ship, come with me. Everyone else, find somewhere to strap yourselves in,” Tommy commands, shaking himself and moving to stand, trying not to worry too much about how Zhay’s hand on his shoulder both guides and keeps him standing.

The interior of the ship is basic enough that Tommy roughly understands where the flight deck is supposed to be, and as he charges through the ship, he’s not the only one. Zhay is his shadow, and behind him Lulah follows close, as does the small Titraier that hadn’t hesitated to catch Antfrost before he could fall. With them, a pallor Tagnuin, a Scorcur, two Leldrir and a Khaadren, with a Vhoadan and a Daratrine to round the number to an accompaniment of ten.
The rest of the Leorval duck into alcoves and into rooms that branch off of the main corridor either to hide or hunker down as Tommy has instructed. He doesn’t bother sticking around to be sure; they’ve got a rapidly closing window and even the time it takes for him to race through the ship, climbing steep stairs to reach the upper deck, is wasted time they cannot afford to lose—

The door to the flight deck is shut and locked tight upon arrival, but Tommy presses Nook’s metal to the door and commands it to open; ignoring the hush of words behind him that do not understand his control of the technology—none of understanding that the thing that Tommy holds in his hand is a fragment of an Enol’ka AI that has somehow managed to survive all of his destruction, and it is by Nook’s power that allows them to bypass all of the humans meagre technologies so far.

None of them linger on the miracle of the opened door, however, and as soon as Tommy steps out onto the deck—a balcony-styled flight deck with a captains’ chair, two pilot consoles, a navigation and a ship-command console surrounding like guards to a king’s throne.
It overlooks a half-deck beneath that holds a central egg-shaped module, more computer screens and displays that beckon half of the accompaniment to them as Tommy falls into the captain’s chair, barely blinking as automatic straps ejected outwards and magnetise together, like a net that snags him around the waist and upper shoulders.

He presses Nook’s metal against the console and begs.

And somewhere, a god answers his prayers.

The entire room illuminates as Nook’s power permeating throughout the room, throughout the entire ship; overtaking the weaker, lesser AI nestled somewhere in the ship’s computer that had been continuing on with warnings of incoming structural damage, of suppression systems still in place that won’t allow the engine to fire at full capacity.

The voice wobbles and fades as Nook purges her intelligence like poison in the bloodstream; his control settling as he is offered a larger vessel to expand his power than the confines of the damaged medallion Tommy holds in his hand.

The lights flicker from hollow white to a soft green-silver-mercury as Nook’s control settles, and suddenly there’s a deep resonance of power; a pulse wave that echoes out like an EMP engaged, electricity crackling, noise buzzing, voices whispering just on the edge of Tommy’s understanding as the entire ship rocks, as if a sleeping giant has finally woken.

Ship lights power up and soften until they’re not so blinding. Tommy watches as screens around him begin to light up, and it’s jarring to see everything displayed in the Human’s language rather than the amalgamation of Thíetue that Sam had created to help Tommy ease into reading the language as much as speaking it.
All it means is a slight delay when searching for controls and reorganising his thoughts to be functioning around a replicative impulse drive rather than the Ericitcratna’s San’cent propulsors and the more-manoeuvrable repulsion drives.

Information floods the screens in front of him as Tommy demands it with hands flying over the keys, muttering under his breath as he reads aloud and files away the information—four rear fusion-reactor drives for near-space evasive manoeuvres, two replicative impulse drives with separate energy wells for near-instantaneous operations as well as two nuclear-powered jump drives.

Around him, the others who had joined drop themselves into seats—Lulah and the ashen Æirtyto: Empanada—have to tuck themselves onto the rear of the chair like a weird perch just so they can angle their feet to help if needed, while the larger hulking sizes of Barissun’s Khaadren form and the Leldrir height of Loesis and Crocus simply hunch over the chairs as the screens flicker with more information thanks to Nook’s growing knowledge and Tommy’s key-tapped commands.

“Nook. Nook, can you hear me?” Tommy asks as he scrambles, falling into the familiar systems of overriding Human spaceships, although finding an ease in it now when he’s not having to out-wit an AI or overriding his way through firewalls and ship systems.
Instead, Nook is helping him, the ship working with him and Tommy barely has to navigate towards ship defences before the shielding powers on, encasing the Infinity Dawn entirely, and nullifying any danger from the Human soldier’s guns.

A green helix of coding finds place on the screen—not a hologram, not even an avatar, but it’s the closest thing that Nook can offer to represent himself in the limited time-space-stretch between priorities of getting the fuck out of here.

“Nook, give me shielding and energy reports,” Tommy spits, as the ship shudders again. Despite the shielding, the soldiers are still trying to punch through, desperate rather than thinking.
“And I want ordnance capabilities, fuel logs, energy charge cells,” he continues, barely even having to wait half a second before Nook complies with his words and he begins to overlay the projected field in front of him with all the asked-for information.
Down on the lower deck beneath the overhanging captain’s deck, the egg module flickers into life as a hologram anchor; a star map blinking into life with pre-logged flight plans, either from the interceptor’s previous orders, or math that Nook has created, without needing to be asked.

A glance—because it is all Tommy can spare—shows that they’re somewhere near the border of Xemes and Me’hesan Veb, although it’s hard to be certain of specifics, because the map doesn’t include the border lines of the triskaidecagant Tommy has grown used to, because the Humans don’t know the universe the same way that the Nansolal do.
They’re not even meant to be out this far, regardless of Tommy’s suddenly-revealed time-skip.

A signal comes flashing in across his screen, front and center, but Tommy ignores it in favour of kicking the engines into higher power consumption as Nook reprogrammes controls conducive to familiar Nansolal layouts.

“ Who knows how to fire a gun?” he shouts, lifting his head brief to cast it about the room—Lulah and Sunny poking at the screens and the keys like they might just stumble onto an answer; Barissun shifting where the chair is too cramped and the screen too small.

“ If you can find me a gun,” Loesis growls over the sounds of more shaking, staring at the screen in front of him. He seems to startle when he realises it’s Tommy who has spoken—glances brief to Zhay and his brother-kin—but there’s no time for emotion—

“Nook, translate the other consoles into Thíetue,” Tommy says, knowing that it is easier for him to think-read-react in his mother-tongue without the need to translate. Nook’s own capabilities are much faster than his own when he’s torn between every other thought, because the braces outside the ship that are keeping the Infinity Dawn are also suppressing systems that are making it difficult to fire off the engines correctly, and syphoning power from the ships. Not enough to be concerning—not with Nook fighting the Aegis’s influence, overpowering Foolish’s lesser capabilities and throwing distractions at him left-right-and-center, and it’s easier for now if the Humans think they’ve got some kind of leg-up over the Leorval that are breaking out of their grip.

Tommy knows Nook takes his orders into effect when everyone around him startles at the sudden echo of his voice: Nook not discerning what needs to be said to everyone else and the muttering comments under his breath to help him think through the structure needed compared to what Philza, Blue and Sam had drummed into his head when he’s taken control of the Ericitcratna in moments.

Loesis makes a noise of surprise as the ship shifts colours briefly into red as systems migrate into patterns of warfare and defence; energy diverting more effectively from ship systems into shielding, engines, weapons powering in preparation to fire; the controls lighting up on everyone’s console for a moment.
Only Loesis, Crocus and Velon move to interact with them; Loesis taking the joystick in front of him and giving it a testing move; the near-side ventral laser guns on the left side moving in tandem to all align on the same target, as shown by the screens.

Zhay chuffs a note of confusion from where he has planted himself behind Tommy’s chair, leaning protectively over as he tries to scan the screen and make sense, regardless that Tommy hasn’t asked for Nook to translate it the same as everyone else’s. His head remains on a swivel, glancing back and forth between Tommy’s overarching screens and fractured information he can glean from Assang’s screen where he’s taken one of the twin consoles just in front of the Captain’s chair.

“You want to shoot the soldiers firing on us?” Zhay asks, watching as the Leldrir and Scorcur aim through their scopes, tracking targets with their screens but don’t move to fire off shots even though they have weapons in their hands and the protection of the Infinity Dawn.

Tommy flicks keys on the console in front of him, muttering to Nook as well for a near-side visual when he can’t immediately find the controls in the wide-spread information he’s got in front of him. He expects Nook to manipulate the screens around him to display a visual, but instead, the walls of the ship that create the dome shape shift as if they’re invisible, allowing them all to see the hangar outside.

There are soldiers still shooting the ship, but most of them have been pulled back so that there are only half as many still trying to deal damage, no matter the shielding that covers everything. Tommy grinds his teeth when he sees Boomer, Ant and Velvet have all been brought to their knees; two soldiers a piece holding them down, another angling a gun into the backs of their necks, but he can’t do anything about it. Even if he told the Leldrir to shoot at the humans keeping them pinned, the damage can’t be concentrated enough not to drag the others into it.

Fuck.

“Shoot the frames holding the ship,” Tommy says, then continues when the mean-looking Scorcur opens his mouth to argue; “shooting the Humans risks the structural integrity of the hangar bay, which risks the Aegis collapsing on us before we’ve made clear space.”
He’s not lying, but it’s a much easier pill to swallow for the Leorval who are desperate for more revenge.

Tommy has been privately impressed that up until now, there hasn’t been much push back. But now, there is no agreement, as no one takes action.
But it’s a mistake rather than rebellion, as Tommy realises far too slow that he’s given the orders out in the Human’s language—caught by the text he’s reading and the thousand memories he’s got of stealing Human vessels in the past, interfering with the habits he’s learnt from his family. It makes things easier to think, and much quicker, if he’s not translating everything before he speaks it, and that’s all the excuse he needs to bark out more orders, but this time he speaks them to Nook wherever he may be listening from.

“Nook, running translator. Go!”

Nook makes a trill. It's not the familiar singsong voice that he used to make and there are no words to confirm that he understood exactly what Tommy said, but when he repeats his earlier words to the self-assigned RIG operators, they all give him small nods of affirmation, like they're not quite comfortable with the action but do so anyway.

Tommy doesn't blame them.
Nor does he linger.

On the screens in front of him the comms marker is still flashing for him to accept an incoming broadcast but he continues to ignore it, not needing the added hassle of whatever the humans want to tell him. He can guess even without confirming that all that is going to be is something about surrender, about no way out about offering aid to the aliens that have been hurt when escaping from the lower decks.
What Puffy and the other Humans don't understand, though, is that no one is going to stand down when they’re so close to escape. Just the chance of it is better than rolling over and accepting defeat.

“Line up your shots but don’t fire yet,” Tommy continues, hands flying over the keys as he sight-lines the six different braces and mentally calculates the best place to fire for maximum damage to the claws pinning the Infinity Dawn in place, while limiting the potential damage to the ship itself.

“I need to break through the shielding or we’ll just drop like rocks.”

It’s harder than Tommy would like to admit, but he’s not going to give up before he's even tried. Nook gives support as his hands fly over the keys demanding information and calculations than anything else that might aid him in his efforts.
He’s not like Sam, who can calculate everything all at once and make conjecture on where Tommy's brain is going and what information he needs to formulate his plans, but Nook is quick enough on the uptake that by the time that Tommy is asking for energy conversion rates, Nook has already provided the calculation, the excess force of the ventral gun kick-back, the isolated damage and the necessary calculation of energy output for the RIG guns when they’re ready to fire.

“And I need a navigator. Who can read the star-maps? I can’t hack this ship and calculate a heading at the same time,” Tommy says, as the ship gives another shudder where the engines are slowly building up to a propulsion that will power them out of the hangar the moments that the braces let loose.

As it turns out, Lulah and the Daratrine that goes by the name Qalna, both can navigate. But the issue comes when Nook transfers star-maps to their consoles at Tommy’s command, and they’re both unfamiliar with the Human-style mapping.
Tommy doesn’t blame them. They’re bare and empty compared to the detailed records that Sam displays for them, and there’s the added issue of Nook’s reduced knowledge from the compounded damage he’s suffered both from the Dkaræ army, and possibly the Humans too, meaning that he doesn’t have everything that Sam had given him.

There is something miraculous in Nook’s ability to have enough data in the medallion that Tommy was able to bring with him; that despite Nook having been as young as he was, and only starting as a split from Sam as nothing more than a sub-mind, he has been able to override Foolish’s directive, adapting with the broadened scope of horizon as the Iron Gauntlet had once allowed of Sam.

Tommy can only be grateful.
He doesn’t have time to question it, or the capacity of thought, to even consider that he might need to ask those questions, instead, only focused on the here and now.

“Will you be able to learn from the stars outside?” he asks. Nook echoes.
Lulah and Qalna look at each other from where they’ve taken nearby consoles, far enough their screens are separate but close enough that they are able to work together to problem solve.

“ Yes,” Lulah says slowly, with gentle encouragement coming from the hopeful looks of everyone in the room, and the gentle chuffs that Zhay keeps giving from where he’s stood behind Tommy’s chair still, leaning into the motion as he gives it.
“If the sensors work to normal specifications and we can collect the necessary information, it’s doable,” Lulah continues, lifting her wings in an almost shrug—the act more dismissal than a Human gesture and familiar enough from Philza that Tommy reads it correctly.

She’s not confident, however.
Tommy doesn't give her the chance to retract her words.

“I will get you the information,” Tommy promises them both, knowing that it might be a little difficult with the Infinity Dawn’s sensors that have been built and designed to Human-level of technology.
Even if their specifications are leagues better than the interplanetary ships Tommy had stolen back in the Solar system, they’re still weak compared to the Ericitcratna’s. Regardless, they are all that Tommy has at his disposal, and with Nook in control, and the support of the alliance of the current-gathered Leorval, Tommy has high hopes he’ll be able to grasp something that they can use just so they can get a heading.

It doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to be to anyway particular.
It just has to be a jump.

“Where are we trying to go?”
“Right now, anywhere but here,” Zhay says, echoing Tommy’s thoughts perfectly.
Assang clicks his teeth and rattles low in the back of his throat. “Preferably not into a star or a planet,” he all-but-begs.

Tommy leaves the details to them. He’s still trying to figure out how to dismantle the obstacle that bars their path.

“Nook, can you cycle the Aegis hangar doors open? I’d rather not blast through them,” he says, not realising that Nook translates and broadcasts his words for the rest of the bridge to hear.
Velon scoffs in the back of his throat. “ Why not?” he asks, “ the doors shouldn’t be shielded this side.”

Tommy grits his teeth instead of grinding them. He tries to ignore the sharpness in Velon’s voice—he’s not the target, nor the reason, even if he looks too much like their common enemy.
“We risk destroying ourselves and the friends that are taking the fall for us. And I want to show the Humans just how pitifully outmatched they are on their own turf,” Tommy explains, words clipped, voice a little too sharp for his own liking, but given the situation, he’s not going to hold himself to blame for it. All of that can come after.

“Nook, can you—” Tommy begins, but barely gets the words out before there is a massive clank, and the hangar outside shifts into alarmed procedure that precedes the hangar doors opening for receiving and dismissing ships from the hangar. The warning system screams out louder than the orders given by the unit commanders, and by protocol and their own sense of self-preservation, many of the soldiers are falling back all together. Tommy is relieved when Boomer, Ant and Velvet are all dragged with them.

“Thank fuck.”

“They’re leaving,” Sunny says where she hasn’t taken a console like the rest of her peers; having moved to the balcony that overlooks the rest of the bridge and is staring out at the projected scene on the walls as the Humans near and around the Infinity Dawn scatter to the relative safety of escape doors, some in the floor that leads into lower levels. Others rush towards the doors before the entire bay can fulfil its programming and depressurize in preparation for opening the hangar doors.

“Why are they leaving?” Sunny demands, seemingly unafraid of Tommy as she shouts the words, beak snapping on the sounds where she doesn’t trust the actions to be anything good; having suffered at the hands of the Humans for too long that any action they take now is something to be feared, something that means caution; something they cannot trust—

“Human hangars aren’t like what the Nansolal have built,” Tommy explains, hands flying over the keys as he locks in pre-programmed evasive manoeuvres; Nook overwriting Human code to make the inner machinations of the ship work far more effectively, even if the physical technology cannot be so easily improved.

“They don’t use refined laser shields to counteract the vacuum, but solid mass of reinforced doors,” he continues, having only briefly seen as much on the use of orbital colony ships that the Ericitcratna had visited briefly, and even then, the Nansolal had a preference of air locks to differentiate void-accessible areas and corridors linking docking ships to ferry-like terminals that shuttled them towards the main civilisation of the planet.
He knows the technology a little—had had Blue explain it to him on one of their many shared sleepless nights—but that information means nothing to him now save for the fact it would’ve made escaping so much simpler than trying to bust through a three-metre-thick hunk of plated titanium.

“The soldiers didn’t think we’d get so close to escaping that they didn’t consider needing space suits,” Tommy continues, comparing calculations and observations that Nook is making—watching a sudden appearance of a time in the bottom right of his screen that ticks down in seconds until the hangar door will be entirely opened, a hundred and fifty-eight rapidly declining and still turning over so painfully slowly.

But there’s enough time for the few suited soldiers that have remained in the hangar to start pushing towards the door, to a large red-painted pillar on one of the walls, surrounded by text and instructions and all the bells and whistles that safety regulations demand.
Tommy recognises it immediately, and although it’s not exactly like all that he’s seen on the ships he’s stolen over the years, it’s familiar enough that he points it out immediately—Nook manipulating the projected view of the outside to highlight and redirect lines of focus towards it the moment that Tommy raises his voice.

“Quick, shoot that panel on the far side, half power,” he says, trusting that Nook will reduce the guns so that they can only fire with limited strength; not wanting to risk damaging the Aegis so close to the door.

Nook translates, and then plasters the words across both the Leldrir’s displays so that they don’t misunderstand the order, reflecting the same image on their screens. Crocus reacts before Loesis even gets the chance to, yanking the joystick-like controls around in sharp but precise motions, and two short burst-fire rounds erupt from the Infinity Dawn’s forward-facing coil guns: huge slugs of metal colliding at magnetic-propelled speeds to slam into the wall and shatter the fixed pillar with biased hatred.

“What was that? What did I just shoot?” Crocus asks as they all glance over to the shattered metal plating and sparking electricity where the inner functions have concaved and are short-circuiting themselves to create a risk of fire. Tommy idly wonders if Nook is suppressing the fire-safety systems, or if with everything else going on, Foolish is doing it himself to redirect more energy and power into trying to prevent the Infinity Dawn from escaping.

“Anchor points for space walkers,” Tommy says, watching as the soldiers that had been gunning for them slow, trying to decide quickly what their next plan of attack is. “Each suit has trackers in case anyone gets jettisoned, but they strap in to try and prevent that. We’ve just destroyed their deployment anchors, so by procedure, they should evacuate and reconfigure.”

The soldiers still haven’t made a decision.
Tommy knows why.

In the bottom right hand corner of his screen, the number ticks over at twenty-six seconds. Meaning, the soldiers have twenty-six seconds to either get to somewhere secure so that they won’t be sucked into the void of space at four-thousand miles an hour, and have to deal with all of the repercussions that come with that. They’re too far to get to the doors—too far for them to reach them and make it through, the doors closed behind them before the hangar begins to open, and too far from any other anchor point that will prevent them from getting sucked out.

Velon cracks his beak, jamming the keys with too-heavy hands like he could vent his frustrations on the console in front of him, like that would be enough to force violence through the screen and inflict it on his enemies.

“Who cares,” he snarls, wrenching on the guns, but while Tommy hasn’t given him permission to let loose, his guns don’t fire and cause any unnecessary damage. “Just blast the doors open and be done with it.”
“If they interfere we will. This is considered a warning shot,” Tommy growls, not clarifying who he is giving the warning shot to.

He cracks his jaw to accentuate the words. If Velon wants to fight him on this, he’s more than welcome, but any stubborn bastard would realise that fighting the one person who knows how to effectively fly the ship that they’re using to escape—as well as allowing them to gain a little control with the additional aid of Nook’s power that translates and converts confusion into understanding—

But Velon isn’t the only one angry.

“Why bother?” Zhay growls from where he’s still gripping the back of the captain’s chair. “They wouldn't do the same for us.”
“Except they did,” Tommy reminds him, knowing that no one actually wants to believe it.

The four years of imprisonment stands as a greater pain that cannot be so easily overlooked, and while no one wishes to return to their time of being captured, the soldiers had earlier instances from when they could’ve open fired to neutralise the threat, neither mind that they hadn’t wanted to sacrifice a prize that would’ve help further their own understanding and potential advancements.
Tommy isn’t saying that what the Humans did was a kindness, but it happened, nonetheless.

“Besides,” he says, left hand stretching across the keys to warm the jump drive, regardless of them still having no heading to jump to. “I'm not doing it for them. I’m doing it for me.”

The countdown in the bottom right hand corner reaches zero, and the Aegis shudders as the hangar bay door cracks open. Tommy didn’t see what happened to the untethered soldiers still in the bay, but dropped bodies from the earlier fight are snatched by the void as everything in the room is stolen by the vacuum of space. Machinery shifts fractionally, but magnetic powers and locked systems keep them from turning into debris projectiles as the hangar bay cranks open fractionally slow; the countdown restarting to count a hundred and eighteen, as Nook determines the new timing for the door to open. There is a second, overlayed in a slightly different blue, labelled that only seventy seconds are needed to clear enough space for the Infinity Dawn to take off leaving only five metres breathing space.

The hangar door shudders.

Tommy only sees because he’s staring intently, eyes flashing towards the countdown that lingers on the number forty-eight twice as long as it should—

“Interference detected,” Nook says, voice somewhere between his familiar tone and something deeper, like an echo of sound a little off note; two voices speaking at once where Nook is still piecing himself together. He’s delayed his reconstruction to lesser systems while they try and escape, but Tommy can hear him slowly forming, coming into his own; the helix he’s given to flicker on the console shifting into shapes so much like Sam when he had appeared as shyrds.

“Interference? What do you—Foolish,” Tommy snarls, half a second behind in his realisation. There is only one other that can counter Nook’s capabilities, and it is the only other AI in this calculation: Foolish either having been able to find a foothold in Nook’s not-quite-complete restoration, or having been able to find a loophole in his logic that has allowed him to delay of the opening of the hangar door.
He’s too late though. The Humans can’t stop this.

“All weapons, open fire on the restraints,” Tommy commands; barely waiting the remaining fourteen seconds that allows for the hangar doors to open enough to allow for the five-metre breathing space; snapping his head around to the gunners, barking orders with crisp and clear precision in the same tongue that Technoblade had ordered what felt like months ago, and yet what truthfully could only have been a few days.
He’s pretty sure that he hasn’t even been on the Aegis for a full Earthen day-cycle, despite being sixty-four years out of sync with everyone else.

Velon and the Leldrir are more than happy to oblige; their weapons lighting up with Nook’s guidance as they tear through the thick-plated titanium like bullets through paper; the point-blank range of the guns aiding them in their strength. Tommy deliberately ignores the trajectory and they way they slam into the walls behind the braces, resulting in a chain of explosions and bursts of debris that all get sucked out of the slow-yawning expanse as the hangar doors continue to open. They’ve slowed considerably, but Tommy can see the void now, just on the other side, escape is in their grasp, they’re getting out—

“Shoot the door! We’ll force our way out of here,” Tommy shouts, voice strained but determined regardless; jerking the controls under his own crushing grip the moment that the trembling begins.

The vacuum works in their favour, drawing them towards the void, guiding the Infinity Dawn towards the stars with the sounds of tearing metal. Tommy jerks when Zhay’s weight slams into the chair behind him, but he can’t spare a hand to help brace him; gripping tighter to the controls, planting his feet and using the strength to push harder on the joysticks, rigid with stress and strain.
Behind the engines kick up a gear, and with the horrible sounds of metal torn in two, Tommy yanks the nose of the Infinity Dawn down to duck under the slow-retracting door that is no longer retracting; maser fire and tight-rounds slugs punching their way through.

Shattered debris barely dents the shielding as the engines thrum with power, metal vibrating, systems echoing warnings and calculations and Nook’s guidance in overlayed voices, all too fast to be clearly understood other than Danger! and Collision! and—

Suddenly, the viewport shifts from Aegis white to the dark welcoming void scattered with distant stars and the burning glow of a nearby gas giant, and all the familiarity of home.

But they’re not out of danger just yet.

The screen lights up with targets names and symbols that represent the Human’s other ships where they've punched a hole through the side of the Aegis, and spat themselves out in the midst of the rest of the fleet.

Tommy isn’t scared. It is a human fleet after all: with pitiful technology and pitiable pilots behind the controls, with inferior AI whispering in their ears. Tommy also might be behind the controls of a Human-made vessel, and while he may want to curse the limited capacity of Humanity’s technological feats, so too has he learnt how to push stolen craft to their limits that it’s practically second nature to command Nook to redivert power from non-essentials, like gravity and life support and interior heating from anywhere that isn’t currently being preoccupied by the Nansolal onboard, and the bridge itself.

Nook shuts down everything but engines, shields and guns; Tommy lifting briefly from the captain’s chair before the straps hold him firm. He’s adjusted it temporarily between slamming console keys and shouting commands, but he’s still marginally smaller than expectations with only his clothing and no Nova Corps armour to bulk his shape.
Zhay, behind, has no such restraints keeping him and he makes a noise of surprise when his feet swing up behind him; anchored only by a sure-fire grip and his wrist that he twists into the restraints above Tommy’s shoulder. He’d be better off in his own chair, but aside from Assang fastened in like the rest of them, but he’s ignored Nook and Lulah’s reminders each time they’ve given, that Tommy knows not to bother wasting breath.

Besides, right now Tommy’s focus is on manoeuvring the ship. Now that they're in the void of space, with nothing to hold them back, there is no fear of recapture or destruction, and he doesn’t hesitate to yank the ship into a comparative nose-dive (seeing as there is no horizon in space) ducking down underneath the formation of warships that have gathered close to cast a net, of sorts.
Interspaced between them, fighters, jets and dreadnoughts scramble to keep formation around the Infinity Dawn, but they’re no match for Tommy’s chaos and he cuts the line between another interceptor and a carrier escort close enough that Tommy can practically hear their AIs screaming warnings of the near collision.

Puffy might think them easy prey, but that’s her mistake to make. They can think that the only weapons they have access to are only the missiles locked in the launch bays; the heavy MACs and Coil Guns that will do damage but not nearly enough to all of their ships.
Tommy has more than that up his sleeve, however.

He’s got Nook.

“Lulah. Qalna,” he says, breathing deep as a rush of emotions flood through him, eyes skimming numbers-calculations-angles-gravity wells and solar-outputs from the nearest stars. “Find me a heading.”
Neither argue. No one does. Most are too busy holding on; Zhay hovering even closer like if he gets near enough he’d be able to understand what he’s reading off of Tommy’s display. There’s enough room that from a few directions from Nook, the screen shifts until the information is displayed twice, slightly shifted from one another—blue hues in his mother-tongue, orange in their father’s—and Zhay makes a grateful chuff as he leans in even closer.

There isn’t much on the display that can’t be seen from the projected-invisible walls that surround the bridge, and the overlay of information that Nook is providing—targets labelled with different colours to differentiate between ship types as well as the saturation that speaks of their proximity to the Infinity Dawn.

Despite Tommy’s immediate evasive manoeuvres, there are still a triple dozen that are within a seventy miles radius. But that would only be an issue if he was actually trying to get away.

“Nook. Record this,” Tommy instructs, his words echoing in translation; everyone turning their heads with a question but Tommy ignores in favour of finally accepting the comms link that has been flashing on his fourth monitor, blinking in and out with rapt urgency.

The broadcast of the void is abruptly overlaid with the visage of Puffy on her own bridge; throned in her captain’s chair just as Tommy is. Her cyborg armaments glisten in the bright lights, almost spotlighted where she sits center-screen.
“Stand down,” she commands, as if that is how she wants to start this.

“Not happening,” Tommy spits, cutting her off immediately. His voice is flat, words sharp, but he tempers them just enough not to antagonise the Humans any further, even if he’s tempted to bait them into giving him a reason to unleash everything he has against them.
It probably wouldn’t take much for Nook to infect their ship systems either, and simply turn them against one another, but the lack-of-guarantee holds Tommy’s command.
For now.

“You have no authority and your ships offer no threats,” he says, holding firm, eyes flicking between what Puffy allows to be broadcast—wondering briefly if Nook is manipulating the technology to give them a better view as he copies Tommy to push Human technologies to their extremes.

Puffy opens her mouth, as if to refute, or lead this interaction into a conversation, but that is not why Tommy accepted the broadcast and he simply speaks over her, not even bothering to listen to what she has to say. He doesn’t raise his voice much, but most of the Humans flinch, as if Nook has hacked into their side of the comms and turned up the volume.

“I’ve been stealing ships all my life, outrunning governments and technology back in the Solar System for years. I bet it will be much easier in a state-of-the-art Nova Corps interceptor.”

While he’s speaks, he keeps his hands moving over the keys, having shifted the data briefly from the translating programme so as to temper Zhay’s reaction upon reading the words; typing queries for Nook to look into the with the hopes that his expanded strength from the Infinity Dawn’s extended memory banks will allow for him to overcome more of Foolish’s power.
It’s hard to keep concentration long enough to form complete sentences—typing the keys with no printed words appearing as he trusts Nook to take the key inputs themselves as the formulation of his message—and make it look as though his attention isn’t divided to the watching eyes of the Humans. He keeps glancing periodically through the projected screens to the display of the Aegis’s bridge and all the Nova Corps’ upper officers, but no one is watching him with any more hatred than he’s already earnt. He takes it as a win.

“Just know this,” he says, lowering his voice, leaning in to be as menacing as he can be; never mind that he’s far more fearsome to the Nansolal in the room with him than the Humans that have only been offered a fraction of his pent-up rage.

“We’re only talking because I have shit I need to say,” Tommy growls, voice dropping deeper, letting his teeth grate against each other in obvious display of aggression. “No other reason.”

Around him, the Leorval shift in accordance with the sudden shift in Tommy’s demeanour. He knows that they don’t trust him—that Zhay’s earlier words are the only thing that has allowed him to lead them thus far, and that the moment they’re far enough away Tommy could be at considerable risk, but that’s for him to deal with later. It’s all he can do to whistle low with a soothing tone that Philza had often echoed to everyone on the ship, and one Tommy mimicked just as often that it’s second nature now.
But he can’t keep focus on Zhay and the others, and what he’s typing out to Nook, and the words he’s spitting at Puffy, giving commands all his own.

“If you or your people take action against this ship, Nook has my permission to overload your cores and destroy this fleet.”

It is not the orders that he’s given him.

Instead, Nook has compiled information, stealing what he can from Foolish’s data banks and is working tirelessly and effortlessly to retrieve deleted data that has been expunged from his records and all associated information banks.
What he’s found is worrying, and will dictate his actions as much as the General’s response.

“You wouldn’t,” Puffy says, voice imitating Tommy’s own growl by a fraction. But he can hear the unnerve in her words—the slight shake she tries to cover.
He sinks his teeth in, like a beast tasting blood.

“Wouldn’t I?” he snarls, letting his lips curl into a cruel smile.

Puffy doesn’t outwardly flinch, but Tommy sees the shadow on the corner of her face. He leans further forward, ignoring the way the straps of the chair restrain him, baring his teeth and curling his hands tighter around the joysticks, letting his own mask slip a fraction to reveal the true depths of his hatred.

“You’re lucky your interference didn’t hurt Nook any more than you already did or I would wipe out this entire fleet, right here, right now,” he spits, the words growling, rolling like thunder; echoed by Nook’s voice where he translates for the rest of them, all gathered on the bridge.

“The only reason I’m not is because my friends are still onboard your ship,” Tommy continues, glancing briefly at the way Zhay looms over his shoulder with an apologetic look he hopes is accurately conveyed before turning back to the Humans.
“And because there are Leorval prisoners on two more of your fleet ships. Congratulations to Foolish for wiping the names of which ships. I’ll allow that your AI is marginally smarter than what I interacted with back in the Solar System.”

His words are gnarled with anger and his own frustrations, but it’s barely a few seconds before Nook’s echo catches up and the entire bridge echoes Tommy’s sentiment with cracked jaws, low hisses and tails lashing with want to strike down their enemies.

“How can you be sure?” Zhay asks, not wanting to believe. And maybe it is fake—maybe Foolish had forged the idea and executed the spread of false information so as to give Tommy pause long enough not to destroy the rest of the fleet; knowing that he cannot risk their destruction as much as he can’t very well destroy the Aegis because Boomer and the others hadn’t joined them.

Maybe Boomer knew. And that’s why he decided to stay.
It seems that there might be more to his plans than simply sending Tommy back to his family.

Tommy doesn’t answer Zhay’s slew of questions. He hasn’t the mental capacity to divide his attention any further—the conversation one being he wouldn’t want Puffy and the others to hear and he can’t easily translate everything so quickly to be correct on details. Not while he’s raptly scanning the starmap that Nook has pulled up behind the overlay of the Aegis bridge; Humans ships moving slow and into formation where they’re trying to surround the Infinity Dawn and prevent them from escaping entirely.

Tommy isn’t worried.
Nook can outmanoeuvre all of these ships even with the shitty sensor net and pitiful engine power, even without infecting the other ships with sabotaging orders that will make them all act on Tommy’s orders, and not the captains that currently think they’re in control.

“What do you want?” Puffy asks, sitting a little too rigid in her seat; voice even but contrasting too much from her body language.
Tommy chances a glance at the screen, but there aren’t any changes to the labels that Nook has created, so they can’t have realised yet. Maybe she just wants to keep Tommy talking while the rest of them move into position, or for some other faction of a plan Tommy couldn’t care less about.

“I don’t want anything from you. It’s what you want,” Tommy says, leaning back in his seat, despite that lack of gravity making it a little awkward to do so.

Puffy’s eyes flash—upper officer heads lifting up from where they’re focused on their screens, and Tommy wonders briefly if they’re all thinking of the same thing—but Tommy doesn’t give her the chance to commandeer the conversation.

“Survival. Continued existence.”

Tommy takes a deep breath, balancing emotions. Ignores the moving targets on the sensor net.
“I will offer you this, and nothing more,” he says, watching as the Humans on the Aegis bridge all tense up at his words. Around him, so do the Leorval as Nook’s running translations catch up, but no one says anything to interrupt.

Everyone gives Tommy their entire attention as he offers an olive branch.
Drenched in blood.

“The Nansolal are currently preoccupied with fighting their actual enemy, a creature that goes by the name Xsdí.”
His name tastes like poison on Tommy’s tongue, but he doesn’t linger.

“Think of him what you want—a bastard; a coward; an eldritch horror that should never have been created in the first place—but destroying him is what the Nansolal want,” Tommy continues, to the agreement of low voices surrounding him, and Zhay’s hand coming to lightly grip his shoulder, but Tommy’s eyes don’t leave the General’s as she watches him back with the same unwavering focus.

She knows this. This is not new information to her; Tommy has already shown just how much he hates the bastard, probably more than how much he hates all of Humanity combined, and if she paused to realise Zhay’s reaction to his name, or asked Jack or Niki or anyone else, then she’d realise that this is more than idle threats.

It is a chance to fix their mistakes, before it is too late.

“Humanity should want it too,” Tommy tells her, putting every effort into his words to try and make a connection. He’s leaning in, fists tight around the controls, eyes no longer glancing to the information behind and the slow-closing colours of fleet ships gathering into formations.

“Xsdí threatens you just the same. He is what matters. Killing him. Destroying his Dkaræ army,” Tommy snarls, accentuating each word with venom. There isn’t the same cathartic release when the Humans turn to him with fear, but at least they’re afraid. At least they’re beginning to understand that there is something out there to be afraid of.

Tommy decides to drive the final nail into the coffin.

“Here is your warning.”

His voice drips hatred and promise both.

“Fight on the right side of this war. Fight the actual enemy. Because if not,” Tommy snarls, cracking his jaw with visible threat, knuckles creaking where he grips the controls tight enough he threatens their structural integrity.

“The moment we’re done killing Xsdí and all his minions, we’re turning our sights on Humanity.”

Zhay releases his shoulder like he’s been burnt, but his shadow remains.

“This is my warning. This is my promise.”

Tommy doesn’t wait for a reply. He doesn’t wait for Puffy to give directive to her soldiers or to the thousand closing-in ships that surround the Infinity Dawn, turning instead to re-check the coordinates that Qalna and Lulah have plotted. Nook’s calculations and the charged engines will give them enough strength to make two-thirds of the jump—fuck Humans and their inferior technology—except Tommy has been pushing stolen ships far beyond their capabilities for years that it’s not even a thought to redirect all power towards the engines as they thrum with energy: voice lifting in warning, shouting over Puffy’s own as she calls out—

The Infinity Dawn jumps the instant Tommy shoves the throttle into engage; the engines reacting the moment he closes his hand around the handle by directive of Nook as he carves a path between the fleet ships.
There is danger in jumping while surrounded by the larger ships, such as the warships, the dreadnoughts and the other interceptors hanging about in the dead-space, and while Tommy knows that the resounding shock blast will deal damage to any ship that isn’t correctly shielded, he doesn’t care enough to stop.
Nor does he direct Nook to change the trajectory so that they don’t carve cleanly between two dreadnoughts practically sat on top of one another, simply adjusting his grip and falling into the familiar sensation of his entire body turning it inside out as the ship goes from relative-stationary to warp speed in the span of half a second.

For a moment, Tommy panics that he’s made a mistake when the feeling of pain and fear reignite underneath his skin; the memory of the last failed jump sitting firmly in the front of his mind as he jerks back into his seat. The screens in front of them blink out, the bridge cast into sudden darkness that feels too deep and inescapable.

Tommy barely braces against the console, head jerking forwards but not enough to smash through the screen. He hears the sounds of the others struggling—Lulah screaming, Sunny shrieking, the sounds of Zhay jerking backwards and slamming into the wall behind them along with everyone else who hadn’t managed to strap themselves in—as the ship groans painfully—

And then, it stops.

They’re free.
They made it out.

On the edge of Tommy’s hearing, he can hear the low sounds of safety systems all speaking warnings and updates, some of them adopting Nook’s voice; some of them adopting the dual tones that he’d been speaking with. Speaking around the cotton in his mouth and the taste of iron pooling on his tongue, Tommy asks for immediate concerns.

There are none. The jump was flawless, despite it feeling as much. So flawless, in fact, that despite Tommys’ estimates that the ship would only be able to warp two thirds of the calculation, they’ve actually managed to make the jump, and then half again, although they’re off course by a few million miles.
Nothing terrible, but instead something that helps their current situation where they won’t so easily be able to be chased by the Humans fleet. Not that Tommy expects them to do so. But it’s good to know it would be hard if Puffy demanded as much.

“By the stars,” comes Zhay’s groan, and Tommy is able to shift around in his seat enough to watch him peel himself off the back wall along with the others, groaning as he rolls his shoulders. He doesn’t look too badly hurt; as neither does anyone else, and the lack of gravity helps them shift even if they’re all spinning aimlessly on the bridge. Only Tommy and Assang are still seated.

“At least it got us out,” Tommy half grins from where he sags in the captain’s chair. He’s still listening to Nook’s report, watching as the walls flicker back into projected-clear, and he can see how the starscape has changed.

The giant gas planet has been replaced with a distant nebula; the stars themselves shifted into different constellations, and the sight of the Human fleet far from view.

“Did it?” Velon growls from where he’s up near the ceiling, having hooked his claws between the panels, balancing oddly with his tail and limbs spread out as they are. He doesn’t trust Tommy, which is more than understandable. But Tommy doesn’t need to argue with words that won’t be listened to and instead he turns to his friend. “Nook. Take a scan of the void,” he says, slumping further down in his chair. “Any nearby signatures?”
“Nothing,” Nook confirms, which is what Tommy had already read from the sensor net, but having Nook say it out loud was a very welcome encouragement. Tommy turns back to Velon with a slight nod of his head.

Velon bares his teeth but says nothing.

Lulah helps separate the others from where they've congregated on the back wall; offering a hand to Empanada and steadying her, where it looks like she's accidentally crushed a wing.
“So… what now?” She asks uncertainties threaded throughout every word. She turns to Zhay when she asks, and though he takes a moment to consider he turns to Tommy.

He shrugs.

“I don’t know what you all want to do,” he says as plainly as he can, “but I need to find my family.”

Tommy can't help but speak through gritted teeth.
“I am still owed an apology.”