Gunmetal Dark
By Angelina Vansen

RATING: NC-17 for violence
CODES: J/7 Uber
SUMMARY: After finally contacting Dr. Kaine Sigg (Janeway), MIA #223939 (Seven of Nine) must rescue her from the underground bunker where she is being held captive by Colonel Filer. If you haven't read this already, I'd go back to the beginning, however.

11.

Her heart beat hard, but everything else was silent.

Mia was braced in the blackness of the elevator shaft, high above the ground. The feet of the suit spread across a strut, and her hands gripped another above her head. She was perfectly balanced; the suit controlled her body, and the suit knew what to do.

The suit was here to save Kaine Sigg.

Mia was silent. Running in

GREY

mode, a thick wall about her ports. She was undetectable; someone would have to physically look at her to know she was here.

The suit had a needle pushed into the systems of the elevator car, chatting to it, working on its controls. The suit had a plan.

Below her, she could hear systems scanning for her, the prattle of machines communicating with each other. The suit felt the presence of biology, too. Spots of heat moving about, making formations, getting ready for when the elevator dropped.

They knew she was here.

Their hearts pounded, their adrenalin raced. Muscles tensed and breathing quickened.

The suit broke through the elevator's defence system and accessed the controls of the car. It rumbled obediently, fell slowly out of sight. Mia stayed up high.

The car hit the bottom, and the suit opened the elevator's doors. There was a sudden burst of gunfire from far below; nervous people shooting at thin air.

Then silence.

The suit watched four blobs of heat board the elevator, two searching, two flanking. Weapons pointed at walls, ceiling, floor. Every corner.

The suit shut the elevator doors, trapping the blobs inside. It brought the car back up the shaft. Inside, Mia heard male voices shouting and the sounds of the men attempting to pry the doors apart. She felt pleased, listening to them panic. They had taken Kaine Sigg. They deserved this.

The car approached, and she jumped on top of it. One gun slid smoothly from the bay on the suit's forearm and into her hand.

She aimed it at one of the heat blobs, pulled the trigger. Again. Again. Again. Four times, four people, four deaths. Through the metal ceiling of the elevator and into the soft meat of their brains.

Far below, she heard shouting; the soldiers in the bay tried to bring the elevator back down. The suit did not allow it. The elevator was her tool.

The suit made the car fall again, and this time, she stayed on top of it. Her guns slid into her hands and the suit went into

YELLOW

mode. The moving air blew across her face; she breathed it in, sweet, high, oily. The smell of machines and the sweat of the soldiers filled her.

The elevator hit the bottom, and the suit opened the doors. Showing the soldiers their dead comrades. Closer now, Mia heard gasps. Horror. She felt happy.

She heard orders shouted. Her heat vision watched another two soldiers board the car. One inside, who checked the dead. The other straddled the doorway to prevent it closing.

Mia watched them through the bullet holes, two young men, both with fair hair. Both looked afraid.

The suit selected them as

TARGETS

and she shot them both simultaneously, one with each of her guns. They crumpled to the floor, on top of their fallen comrades. Dead.

Panic below, shouting. A group of them, nine of them, stepped forward and shot back at her, up through the ceiling of the elevator car.

The suit was too fast. It switched instantly to

BLACK

mode, thrusting her body upwards in a fantastic leap. Up, back, over, one hand catching the thick cable that moved the car and then swinging from it. She pressed against the wall, balanced on a support beam, and the bullets whistled past her.

The suit took aim and Mia fired, four times. More shouting. A scream from below, the voice of a woman. Another volley of bullets, sputtering and sparking up the shaft.

"Back! Back!" someone yelled. "Fire in the hole!"

A device, small and round, skittered into the car. The suit sent a needle to ask it for an ID.

COMBOMB v5.7.0.1
"Network THIS, Tenkatech!"

The suit reacted instantly. Mia leapt from the support beam, launching several metres into the air. Below, the world exploded. Bright orange light, intense heat, flaring upwards, licking at her feet with a blistering tongue. She caught a strut with both her hands and pounced up onto it, pressing face first against the wall. Arms spread so she was flat.

Shrapnel zipped past, superhot, then clattered ineffectually back down the shaft. She looked down, peering through acrid smoke to see the twisted car, bent and broken, an enormous hole blown in the roof.

Thick smoke billowed up the shaft towards her. The suit calculated and she dropped down, beam to beam, landing in a perfect crouch inside the car.

No one could see her, but she could see them. The heat vision saw them, hunkered down in their formations. Shielding themselves from smoke and debris. People coughed. Someone cried out in pain.

Mia lifted her guns and fired.

Four of them, four men. Her bullets screamed through the smoke, landing with soft smacks in her targets' chests. Two grunts, one scream, which came from another soldier.

They turned towards her, weapons ready. She sprang out of the elevator car, emerging from the smoke like a metal angel. Guns for wings. She flipped, jumped, and turned a graceful somersault high above them.

Below her, the soldiers' faces dropped their jaws. Eyes widened.

"Softsuit! They've got Softsuits!" someone cried.

Panicky bursts of gunfire in her direction; nothing close. Her foot touched down on the roof of a parked vehicle, vaulting her higher still.

Three shots while she was in the air, one in a female soldier's face. One exploding the chest of a male. The last made a neat round hole in the temple of a male who had been looking in a pouch on his belt for ammunition.

Her hand caught the lighting rig; the suit pulled her up into it. Bullets shrieked through the air towards her, and she ducked behind a control box. It fizzed and sparked, the soldiers' bullets destroying it. Most of the lights went out. The rest sputtered and dimmed.

Now the room was lit by fire, fierce and orange. Mia crossed the rig in three leaps, balanced high in one corner with both feet spread across the gantries. Hidden in a shadow with both guns ready.

"Where is it? Where is it?!" came a cry from the darkness.

"Seven Alpha! Break!" called someone else forcefully. "Move!"

Smoke swirled below; the soldiers stumbled through it. Mia watched the orange blobs of heat break formation, streaming in two depleted groups through the hangar. Some coughed, others struggled to fit breathing devices over their mouths.

These soldiers were not like the ones she had fought in the desert. They had comparatively little body augmentation and carried hardly any devices. They relied much more on their own senses in combat.

Mia's advantage was huge; she was stronger, faster, better able to hide. She could see them plainly.

Six soldiers left below. She jumped from the rigging onto the roof of a vehicle; the metal buckled with the impact. She spread her arms and shot another four soldiers, clean shots to the head, targeted perfectly by the suit. They all dropped within seconds of each other.

Just two remained, one of whom was running around in a blind panic now. He fired at every shadow, screaming wildly. The other one was calm. In a good position, her back against one corner as she checked her weapon and readied it. She was away from the fire, and her breathing apparatus was fully functional.

Killing her wouldn't have been a problem, but Mia needed to take her alive.

The crazed soldier emptied his weapon, firing above his head. The last of his bullets sank uselessly into a wall.

Mia dropped from the truck, rolled along the ground, and uncurled silently behind him. He turned at the last possible second, mouth falling open in a black hole of horror, eyes pleading.

"No ..." he whispered. He shook his head rapidly. "Please no ..."

Mia pressed a gun to his temple and fired. He hit the floor, his mouth still open, eyes staring at something he could no longer see.

Crouched in her corner, the female soldier jumped at the sound. Her heart rate increased again. Did she know she was the last one left?

Mia watched her. Waited. Still. Hidden in the smoke and the shadow of the vehicle. Saw the soldier's throat swallow nervously, saw her pores sweat.

Her hands gripped her gun, finger on the trigger. Her muscles shook with adrenalin. She sucked harder on her respiration device. She did not see Mia.

Above, the lights blinked on and off spasmodically. A fan had dropped from the ceiling during the battle, and the blades moved through the light from a flickering tube. Black, white, black, white. Orange from the raging fire. Shadows everywhere.

Mia and the suit crept through those shadows, slowly, silently. So close to the soldier she could hear every breath the woman took. The name tag on her armour read "Cibb".

TRUESTAR A:>/
FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEM:
ACTIVATED IN MAIN HANGAR

The suit heard. Above, nozzles sputtered abruptly to life, a torrent of cold water dousing the room. The fire from the elevator bomb crackled and went out in a matter of seconds. Wet grey smoke rolled, listless, from the floor.

It was enough; Cibb's concentration broke for the merest of seconds. Mia struck. She leapt from the darkness and kicked the weapon from her hands. It spun across the concrete floor.

She pressed the woman's head against the wall with the barrels of both her guns. One movement. One second.

"Where is Kaine Sigg?" Mia demanded.

Cibb gaped at her in terror. Her mouth fell open, slapped shut again.

"Her location!" Mia pressed, prodding Cibb's forehead with the guns.

The water from the fire suppression system pelted down on them like hard rain. It splashed on the concrete floor, pooling around her feet, dripping off the suit's visor.

Mia was reminded of her first moments, the rain in the desert splattering cool on her face. The voice in her head. She had not heard the voice for some time now, not since she had spoken to Kaine Sigg inside the Network. Was that a good thing? She did not know.

"Co .. Colonel ..." Cibb spluttered.

"Repeat yourself!" Mia barked.

"Colonel Filer!" the woman exclaimed. "She's being interrogated by Colonel Filer."

"Who is Colonel Filer?"

"Sh-she commands the base! Please ..."

"You will take me to her location."

Mia grasped Cibb's armour and pulled her to her feet. She still held one of her guns to the woman's head, forcing her to walk in front.

Together, they picked their way through the smoke and shadow towards the back of the hangar, the suit keeping a watchful eye to ensure there was no one left alive. Cibb gasped at the bodies of her colleagues, sprawled at all angles across the floor. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to be pushed to the door that led to the rest of the bunker.

"You will open the door," Mia commanded.

"Yes ... code ..." Cibb stuttered. She reached out with trembling fingers to the number panel and typed.

The lock disengaged with a heavy clunk. Cibb pushed it aside to reveal a long, brightly-lit corridor. It was empty. A klaxon sounded, but nothing more. No people.

Mia pressed the back of Cibb's head with the gun, and she started to walk, leading Mia down the whitewashed concrete corridor.

Something itched Mia's ports; the suit began to pick up a signal.

HOST COMPUTER DETECTED

HOST:
TRUESTAR A
SYSTEM 4455-JIKK-Aa

GUEST:
EMPTY. PARR-44FO

it said. This was not the computer she had followed here, but it ran the base. The suit reached out for it, feeling inside its systems and mapping its pathways.

Its security measures were rudimentary, no match for the hacking power of the suit. In a matter of seconds, she was in control.

She tested her connection, turning the bunker's lights off and then on again with little more than a flex of her mind.

"Yes," she breathed to herself. Control was good. Now nothing would keep her from finding Kaine Sigg.

Cibb jumped nervously as the lights came back on, blinking and flickering the length of the corridor.

"Th-there," she stammered. "Colonel Filer's office."

Ahead, facing them, a door labelled

COLONEL S. FILER
Unit Commander

"Let me go?" Cibb pleaded. Mia ignored her.

The suit scanned, but was rebuffed by a security field not connected to Truestar A. It buzzed painfully inside Mia's skull when she tried to scan it.

The door's lock, however, was part of the bunker's main systems. Truestar A unlocked it, and Mia pushed it open. She went inside holding Cibb in front of her, still at gunpoint.

Inside, just as Cibb had said, was an office. A desk and a chair. File storage. An artificial plant.

No one inside. No Kaine Sigg, no Colonel Filer.

The suit reached out and found an internal computer,

BABY TRUESTAR
X7-NILL-TOQA
11443099-633.ARL

This system was what blocked the suit's scans. It bristled with virus needles; nothing too sophisticated, but enough to make the suit approach it cautiously.

"Where is Kaine Sigg?" Mia demanded of her prisoner.

Cibb looked as though she was about to faint with fear.

"I don't know!" she blurted. "The Colonel ..."

"Where is the Colonel?"

"I don't know!"

"You will tell me or I will kill you," Mia threatened.

"No!" Cibb cried desperately.

At that moment, the suit punched through Baby Truestar's defences and gained control. Mia's mind was filled with data.

The wall, the one that had been buzzing annoyingly in her ports, was false!

SHUT DOWN H-PROJECT SYSTEM

the suit told Baby Truestar. The wall shimmered and then disappeared, revealing a room of an altogether different character.

Cold, tiled and stark, with one wooden chair in the middle. Behind the chair stood a woman, a soldier, though she was not armed and wore no armour.

Mia span to face her, pulling Cibb between them, one gun still at her head. The other she pointed at the newcomer.

The woman did not appear to be afraid. She looked from Mia to Cibb and then back again with superior disinterest.

Mia was not used to this reaction. Everyone she had encountered while wearing the suit had been frightened of her.

"Where is Kaine Sigg?" she demanded again, addressing it to this woman.

The woman put her hands on her hips and raised her head, her shiny brown hair sliding across her shoulder.

"A Softsuit," she whispered, so quiet Mia barely heard her. "I should have guessed they would send Softsuits."

"Where is Kaine Sigg?" Mia repeated, more forcefully. "You will tell me now."

The woman shook her head. She stepped out from behind the chair and walked slowly towards Mia and Cibb. She squinted, examining the suit.

"You're a MIA, aren't you?" she asked. "I should have guessed that, too."

"You will stay where you are!" Mia warned. "Or I will shoot you!"

The woman raised her hands in mock surrender. Stopped walking. Her eyes, dark and glistening, looked into Mia's. It was an uncomfortable sensation, like she had a virus needle in her head, reading her thoughts like systems.

Mia noticed the name on her jacket.

FILER

As she had suspected, this was Colonel Filer, the woman who had been holding Kaine Sigg.

"Do you know what you are?" Colonel Filer asked her in a soft voice.

Mia did not understand what she meant.

"No?" she continued. "Do you not have access to your own brain, not at all? Not even flashbacks ... stray memories?"

"You will be quiet," Mia snarled. "I am not interested in anything you are saying!"

"Nothing at all?" the Colonel pressed.

"Where is Kaine Sigg?" Mia demanded for the third time. "Her location!"

"She's dying," Filer told her, eyes glittering.

Fear gripped Mia. Kaine Sigg could not die, not now she was so close to finding her.

"Then you will tell me her location so that I can save her!"

Colonel Filer shook her head slowly.

"I will kill your soldier if you do not!" Mia threatened. She pushed her weapon against Cibb's head for emphasis. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

Colonel Filer shrugged, unconcerned. A smile twisted the corners of her mouth.

Mia shot Cibb. Without thinking about it, without any concern or conscience. She pulled her finger tight on the trigger and killed her.

The sound was overwhelming in the confined space of the office, the explosion of the gun and the dull thud of Cibb's body as she hit the floor.

Her blood splattered, warm and sticky, across Mia and Colonel Filer.

"Now I will kill you!" Mia hissed.

She stepped over Cibb's body, grabbed Colonel Filer, and pushed the gun to her head. The muzzle still smoked, and the barrel was caked with blood and brain matter.

Colonel Filer lifted her chin, her dark eyes uncomfortably close.

"Look what they've made you do," she whispered.

"Where is Kaine Sigg?" Mia repeated.

"You shot an unarmed hostage," the Colonel continued without a breath.

"She was an enemy target," Mia responded, defensive. For some reason she thought of the body she had cut up and left in the desert. Did this woman, this Colonel, know? Her piercing stare said she might.

"She was unarmed and no threat. Is this how Tenkatech program you people now?"

The Colonel's eyes lit up as she spoke, full of something dangerous, something daring. She knew secrets, Mia thought. Secrets about the suit, about Mia herself.

The Colonel's eyes were strong, but they were desperate. Something reaching out to Mia, but something disgusted by her, too.

Distant and intimate at the same time.

"You will be quiet!" Mia ordered. "You will tell me where Kaine Sigg is - now - or I will kill you!"

Rage blazed across Colonel Filer's face. Her jaw tightened and her lips went white.

"That's a mistake," she warned in an icy voice.

"Where is she?" Mia repeated.

"She's in the Sluice," Filer told her. "But she's probably drowned by now; lab rats don't swim that well, as a rule."

"You will take me there."

It was not a request. Mia pulled Colonel Filer in front of her and pushed her from the room, gun at her head.

Outside, the corridor was still deserted. Smoke hung in the air from the fire in the hangar; the air system whined like a voice above them, working overtime to get rid of it.

Truestar A locked the doors to the rest of the complex; no one else could follow them.

Mia pushed Colonel Filer in front of her, urging her to lead her to this Sluice.

The Colonel walked obediently enough, guiding her captor into a section where her connection with Truestar A felt distant.

This section was disused. The walls were stained, and the lights barely worked. They flickered and blinked in their tracks like lazy eyes.

The Colonel led her to an open door. Inside, the suit felt nothing, no computer system, only a rudimentary power grid that had been spliced onto Truestar A.

They went in, and the room was empty. A dead end.

"Where is Kaine Sigg?" Mia demanded angrily.

But the suit was already at work; in the far corner, a scan revealed that a jagged hole had been knocked through the floor.

"The Sluice," the Colonel said breathlessly.

Mia did not understand. Kaine Sigg was in the hole? To what end? She pushed the Colonel closer to the opening, surprised that she could hear the sound of moving water below them.

The suit performed a search and displayed a surface map of the region. It highlighted a series of wells that served farms, suggesting that beneath, a river ran to support them.

"Kaine Sigg is in the hole?" Mia asked the Colonel.

The Colonel nodded.

"And there is water? A river?"

"A Sluice," the Colonel whispered menacingly. "A gate that slows the water. The current pushes her against it, the water rises, she drowns."

"No!"

Cold terror gripped Mia; the possibility of Kaine Sigg's death and a life trapped inside the suit horrified her.

She shoved Colonel Filer aside and ripped up the grate that covered the hole.

"Kaine Sigg!" she shouted into its dark depths.

She heard no reply.

Mia did not respond. The suit locked the door to the room to keep the Colonel from escaping, and without a backward look, Mia jumped into the Sluice.

Darkness enveloped her. She plunged into the cold water feet first, deep water, much higher than her head. The heavy suit pulled her to the bottom.

FLOTATION SYSTEM ACTIVE

printed before her eyes, glowing green in total darkness. Pockets on the suit filled with gas, and she bobbed up again, into a dark cave.

"Kaine Sigg!" she shouted again, but again she received no response.

She looked around desperately, using the suit's heat vision to detect any signs of warmth, but everything was cold. Everything.

Rain splattered from above, and she realised that it was swelling the river, filling the cave. The water was less than a metre from the top, and the current was strong.

Had Kaine Sigg already succumbed? The Colonel had doubted her ability to swim.

Ahead was a gate, the Sluice itself. It was clogged with debris; the water swept everything into it. If Kaine Sigg had lost her fight with the current, she would have been pulled into it.

Mia swam, pulling at boxes and plastic and empty containers, searching frantically. Her heart pounded and her throat felt raw. Every time she turned something over, she expected to find Kaine Sigg's corpse, white and drowned.

What should she do? Stay here, trying to revive her until the water claimed them both? Or should she climb back up that hole and take bloody revenge on Colonel Filer?

Something caught her eye. At first she thought it was a bird, fluttering its wet wings in the darkness. It moved, repositioned, moved again.

It was a hand. A female hand, small fingers, gripping a bar of the Sluice gate. Two bars to the left was another, holding on.

"Kaine Sigg!" Not so much a call but a cry.

Mia pushed through the thick water, through the floating garbage, fighting with arms and legs. She pushed aside a soggy bundle of knotted plastic and saw her.

White face, pale with blue lips slightly open, pressed against the rocks as she clung to the bars. Eyes closed, eyelids livid and thin over them.

Mia reached out for her, grasped her face in one hand.

Kaine Sigg took a shallow breath, and her eyes fluttered. She was alive! Alive! Her skin was cold, however, pale and goosebumped like dead meat. The temperature of the water was killing her, Mia realised. She needed to get out of it.

Mia pulled at her wrists to free her hands from their grip on the bars. She caught the Doctor's body before it could sink under the water and held her close to the breastplate of the suit.

Kaine Sigg moved, curling her arms weakly about Mia's neck, hanging on to her the way she had clung to the Sluice gate.

"Thank you," she whispered. She opened her eyes and gazed up at her rescuer with unfocused eyes. "Mia?"

Mia did not reply. They needed to get out of the cave quickly; already her head brushed the rocks at the top. She balanced Kaine Sigg's weight on one arm and pushed through the layer of debris towards the hole above.

Fighting the current was harder with the extra weight, but the suit kept her perfectly stable, and she did not falter once. Kaine Sigg clung to her, tipping her chin to keep her face out of the water.

Underneath the hole, the suit directed Mia's foot to a rocky outcropping that stuck out from the wall of the cave. She launched from it with tremendous thrust, bursting from the water with Kaine Sigg in her arms and up into the room above.

The Colonel, still trapped by the locked door, gazed open-mouthed at the spectacle.

Mia dropped the woman on her back to the tiled floor where she spluttered and shivered violently. She could not stand; her legs gave way beneath her and she flopped weakly onto her side.

"She's alive?" Colonel Filer asked, disappointed.

Rage gripped Mia, so black and complete it enveloped every part of her, pushing out even the electronic thoughts of the suit.

She advanced on Colonel Filer and grabbed her, one-handed, under the chin. In less than a second, the Colonel was off her feet, dangling over the hole in the floor.

She stared hard into the Colonel's eyes, wanting to see fear, needing to see it.

But the Colonel's eyes were dark and emotionless, glinting almost orange in the flickering lights.

"You're one of us, you know," she hissed, her voice strangled by Mia's grip. "A Citizen body in a Tenkatech shell. You're one of us."

There was an air of bravado about the statement, as if a great secret had been revealed, but it meant nothing to Mia. Citizen? Tenkatech? Words she had heard, but neither held any resonance.

"Ask her," the Colonel continued. "Ask Kaine Sigg."

Mia let go, and dropped Colonel Filer into the Sluice.

She cried out and clawed at the air as she fell, catching nothing. Mia watched her disappear into the darkness and heard her hit the surface of the river below with a muted splash.

Kaine Sigg gazed up at Mia with wide eyes. Mia held out her hand. Her lip trembled.

"Now you will save me?" she asked Kaine Sigg.

Kaine Sigg nodded mutely and took Mia's hand. Flesh on flesh, actually touching. No Network, no bad connection. Both held the other's hand as if they never wanted to let go.

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 12


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