Red slammed into the floor with a crash. The wind was torn from his lungs as everything around him buckled. The world screamed as the lights winked out. Metal grinded and wood shattered as he was tossed across the small room like a ball. His ears rang, and he couldn't tell if Derrin was shouting at him or if his head was simply throbbing.
The smell was unmistakable. Electricity. Raw Energy. It was all wrong.
Everything paused. The lights remained out, but the sudden force stopped. Red tasted blood and felt like he'd been torn through a grinder. Nothing seemed broken, but he was having a hard time getting his bruised body to move.
He heard the distinct sound of groaning pipes and grinding metal. Something grabbed him in the darkness. He flinched backwards, and his hand grasped the shockblaster in his coat. It was instinct, and his mind was in too much of a haze to understand what was going on.
"Red," a voice floated to his ears, "We need to go."
It sounded distant. As if someone was yelling at him from a mile away. Only then did he realize that the thing grabbing him was Derrin. He allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. He staggered and stumbled to the side, expecting to topple over. He hit something near his waist. Startled, Red glanced around to find the wall at a strange angle.
Red coughed and spat out blood, "What the hell just happened?"
His eyes had begun adjusting to the sudden lack of brightness, and he could see the vague silhouette of Derrin. He was leaning unsteadily against the wall as well. His sword was in his other hand. Red thought it was the man's sword at least.
"The ship was attacked," Derrin said, his voice stiff, "It must have been sudden because there was no sign of threat when I was just on deck. We need to hurry. They'll need our assistance."
As if on cue, the room suddenly pulsed with a wave of teal light. Red was once again blinded as his eyes tried to adjust to the sudden change in brightness. A light glow rippled through the room. It hit both of them and continued forward unabated. It stopped just outside the small room they were in.
Derrin turned and pushed against the wall of brightness. His hand stopped as if against a solid wall. Red knew what this was immediately. The shield's internal barrier had been activated. Vizim was trying to keep them from going down without a fight.
"Darn it," Derrin muttered, uncharacteristically losing his composure.
"We can't get out anymore," Red said flatly. "We won't be able to get out until Vizim turns off the barrier."
"They might need us!" Derrin shouted, his voice tight with panic.
Red was taken aback. Derrin usually remained calm under pressure. Now he seemed to be reacting abnormally. He was surely worried about the other passengers. Red wasn't. They were experienced combatants…more than he was for sure. If they couldn't handle themselves, then there was nothing he could do.
Actually, that wasn't true. Red turned to the opposite opening, leading back into the weapon's room. The ship had clearly just sustained major damage. It only took the strange tilt to notice that. Vizim would be trying to get their cannons firing, and he could definitely use the assistance.
"Derrin, all we can do now is help Vizim," Red started towards the weapon's room. "He'll be trying to get the ship's defense systems up and running. I'm sure he could use a few extra hands in all this chaos."
Derrin took a deep breath and followed him as they stepped back into the now tilted room. All across the room, papers were scattered, pipes groaned, and metal clanged. He heard Vizim's maniacal cursing as the man raced around the room.
A low grinding noise came from the center machine, and Red could taste the familiar electrical tingle again. Whatever had just happened was coming again. Vizim sprinted through the tilted room. Red took a moment to stick some of the scattered papers into his coat.
Vizim muttered incoherently as he danced back and forth across the machinery. He was completely focused on the Halo Beacon. Red had spent the last few days helping him out with various things down here. However, he did not understand the intricacies as Vizim did. But, he didn't need to know much to see something was already wrong with the massive piece of machinery.
"Vizim!" He yelled, "What can we do?"
Vizim paused for only a brief moment, "Crap. You guys were trapped in the barrier. I hoped you'd have made it out. If the ship goes down, this room goes down with it."
A chill ran down his back at the ominous words. If the ship goes down…that simple statement meant there was a chance the ship would sink. Red didn't know a lot about this particular shielding device's power output. What he did know was that it was all attached to the main body of the ship, and if the ship sank, so would it. The shield would need to remain on so that the ship would remain protected as long as possible, leaving them all stuck in here.
Once again, he yelled, "Is there anything we can do? We're stuck here now, we might as well do something."
Vizim never stopped moving, but he quickly glanced from Red to Derrin, "Red, come here and help me with this. Your friend can start firing up the cannons. Hopefully, the autotargeting still works."
Red pointed, "That wall. Do you know…"
"Of course," Derrin replied, already moving.
Red sighed. He should've expected Derrin to understand how to run the weapon systems. He had travelled on a ship for years after all. Red sprinted to Vizim, who was now balanced precariously on the tilted machine. A wrench was in one hand as he tried to tighten a nut that was leaking steam.
Red didn't hesitate. He may not have known everything, but he'd helped Vizim enough to notice a few problems. The machine pulsed briefly, and a spurt of oil exploded from a small hole. The shield had just expanded a bit more to protect the center hull of the ship. They still wouldn't be able to get to the deck, and with the machine's injuries, there would be no further expansion.
"Crap!" Vizim yelped as he rushed to fix the new problem.
The automatic expansion of the shield put additional pressure on the already weakened machine. Any more expansion and the thing might simply explode. Vizim tossed Red a rag and a smaller wrench. Together, they quickly tightened the weakened piece. The oil slowly subsided, and Red wiped it onto the rag. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to remove his coat. Already, smears of oil stained the faded red.
Red heard a buzz from the corner of the wall. The cannons were slowly being activated by Derrin. Normally, the ship wouldn't have been caught off guard, and the cannons would slowly be powered up. Derrin was turning them on one after another as fast as possible. That was putting additional strain on the central controller.
He wondered if it all would go boom in a few moments. Just as he thought this, steam began to erupt from various pipes on the machinery. The rabid vibrating subsided. It was still at an unsafe level, but it was now only bouncing a little. If not for Vizim's meticulous designing, they'd likely be dead.
Their success was short-lived. A moment later, the entire ship rocked. Red and Vizim were tossed from the top of the machine. His already bruised body collided with the deck with a thud. The wrench he had been holding bounced off his foot, and he yelped in pain. A new wave of grinding and vibrations roared through the machine.
"What the hell is hitting us!" Vizim growled as he stumbled upwards, "Don't turn on any more of the cannons!"
Derrin paused and glanced back uncertainly.
Vizim shook his head. "The central shielding is too unstable. Any more power and it'll overload too soon."
Red offhandedly noticed that the direction the ship had been tilting. For a while, they had been leaning to the side as if the ship would flip over. However, it was now tilting toward the center. Well, that wasn't exactly right because they were in the center. The ship wasn't tilting to the side anymore. It was tilting forward. Whatever had happened had caused the bow of the ship to begin sinking. That was, in turn, lifting the back half of the ship.
"Uh, why are we tilting that way?" Red asked worriedly.
Vizim was already back on the machine and yelled at him to help. Red let his question go and hopped into a new area that seemed about to melt off the entire machine. Sparks briefly sputtered out of the machine. Red smelled the electrical tingle again but wasn't certain if it was from the attacks or the giant machinery in front of them.
"No, no, no. Damn it all! The cannons aren't even firing, and we're about to be overloaded," Vizim didn't stop to explain any more than that.
He leapt from the machine, leaving Red sitting there with the half-tightened nut. A spring in front of him vibrated like Ayjax when he belly laughed. Red shook his head. Why the hell was he thinking about that now?
Vizim slammed down on a lever against the far wall, and the entire machine lurched. Red grabbed a bar to prevent himself from rocking off in a sudden jolt. He peered at the doorway and could just make out the faint light of the barrier's outer edge. The machine noticeably calmed. However, the machine exploding was no longer a concern. Once again, the ship was rocked by explosions.
The barrier was not wide enough to protect the main hull of the ship anymore. Red was prepared this time and managed to prevent himself from flying to the floor again. His head still banged against a metal pipe, but at least he hadn't been tossed like a rag doll.
That's when the entire ship flipped. It didn't flip on its side as it had earlier. It flipped forward. Red's confident positioning came to a quick end as he was unceremoniously tossed through the air. He had a brief moment of realization as he fell. The ship tipping forward meant something truly horrible. It meant they were sinking. Sinking very fast by the way he was falling. Red didn't have any more time to ponder. He slammed into the wall of the ship, which was now the floor, and everything went black.