Peg led the Enoch crew as casually as she could down the stairs away from Samyaza’s chamber. As far as most of the Grigori were concerned, they were still allowed to ignorantly wander through the cult’s home ship. They strolled past the throngs of Grigori making their way to the broadcast deck where Peter had ordered the entire ship. They passed level after level en route to where Peg remembered they boarded.
When they exited the stairs into the cargo area, they saw that the ramp was still down. Three Grigori guards armed with tech rifles and wearing armored atmosphere suits stood attentively at the ramp’s edge. Peg and her crew slipped behind the stacks of container boxes and spare equipment and looked around for an alternate path back to the Enoch, but found none.
Peg signaled for Quan and Uriel to flank around the guard to the right while she, Red, Chime, and Tobias slipped to the left where the other two stood facing the bottom of the ramp.
They slid silently between stored equipment and the cargo bay walls until they were behind the guards. Once Quan and Uriel were positioned behind their guard, Peg nodded a go.
Tobias was the first out. He charged from his spot and tackled the first guard over the ramp's edge. The two tumbled rolling to the ground below.
The surprise focused the guards on Tobias. They didn’t see the others emerge. Quan lept onto his guard’s back as Uriel grabbed the tech rifle wrestling it from the guard’s hands.
Peg and Red burst forward and each grabbed the third guard’s arms spinning them around to face Chime who had armed herself with a pipe. Her swing connected with the guard’s mirrored face mask smashing the chrome visor and the protective glass beneath. Peg drove her knee into the back of the guard’s knee forcing him down. Chime swung again and the pipe connected hard smashing the guard’s face. He dropped lifeless to the metal deck of the cargo bay. Red pulled the tech rifle from his limp hand and spun toward Uriel and Quan just in time to see Uriel blast through their guard’s helmet dropping them.
The guard on the ground managed to squirm just enough to slip his knee up and to Tobias’ chest kicking him off. He scrambled to his feet slinging his rifle at the newly lunging Tobias and caught him hard in the ribs knocking him to the ground. Tobias gasped for breath. Behind him, the guard lifted his rifle. The simultaneous blasts of two rifles from the ramp ended the guard before he could fire.
“Let’s go!” Peg ordered leading the way back to the Enoch.
The crew sprinted the distance between the Grigori and the Enoch but slid to a stop as two Grigori techs exited the Enoch. They were caught unaware as Tobias fired his newly-acquired rifle blasting them both from the Enoch’s ramp.
Onboard, Peg barked, “Chime, fire her up! We are going to have to go fast!”
Chime ran past the crew toward the cockpit. “Here’s hoping they actually fixed her!”
Peg signaled for Uriel and Tobias to follow her to the armory where she grabbed all five grenades they had stored there. She handed two to each of them and kept one for herself. “We have to bring some of those old buildings down on that ship or we’ll never get off the ground. Flank it, toss these, and get back here fast. We have to stop them.”
Uriel paused. “Peg.”
She and Tobias looked at him.
“I know you know their plan. The matrix has rules. Hundreds of nukes around the world set off at the same time… nothing would stop them from bringing that entire system down. No sun. No more power from the matrix. The war ends tomorrow.”
Peg paused. No more machines. They would rain from the sky with a single blow.
“They’re going after Zion next,” Tobias protested.
“Not saying we don’t get away. Warn Zion. There is no way that one ship beats our fleet and gets past Zion’s defenses. I’m just saying… maybe let them kill the machines and then we take them out?”
The momentary silence was thick as Tobias and Uriel looked to Peg. Every machine destroyed. The war over. Not years from now. Not after a messiah emerges from the matrix. Tomorrow.
Images of new mountain ranges formed by machines raining from the skies danced like Christmas dreams inside Peg’s head. Then she thought of the fetal fields and how they would flood with a pink sea embryotic fluid as every human within the matrix died and was purged instantly.
“Eight billion people, Uriel.” Peg was soft as if she was talking more to herself than to him. She stared blankly into the space in front of her processing. Decisively, she turns her eyes to him. “It will be a wonderful day when we witness the end of this war and can stand on mounds of destroyed machines, but there are eight billion lives at stake… lives the Grigori are too quick to dismiss. I won’t sacrifice humanity.
With everything said that needed to be said, the trio charged from the Enoch and flanked the Grigori tossing grenades into what appeared to be the weakest structural areas of the crumbling cityscape around them. Explosions shook the air around them as they raced back to the Enoch.
“Get us in the air now!” Peg screamed. She pounded the ramp control and the ship closed as the hover pods sparked to life. She scrambled up the ladder and across the plating into the cockpit where Red and Chime punched controls furiously.
As the Enoch lifted off the ground, the Grigori gun banks trained on them. The face of a barely standing building slid off its structure and dropped onto the side of the Grigori smashing several cannons. The other gun banks changed position and begin firing at the avalanche of rubble and crumbling buildings that rained down.
Chime punched the controls and the Enoch raced forward despite being bombarded with rubble and Grigori bullets. Quan, Uriel, and Tobias took their position in separate gunner banks and began returning fire.
One of the EM cannons aimed and fired at the fleeing Enoch. Chime put the ship into a roll and the blast missed. She continued moving the ship from side to side and looping causing bullets and electromagnetic blasts to fly wide and miss.
“Can’t hit anything with you flying like this,” Quan screamed through the repaired intercom system.
“Yeah,” Chime barked back. “They can’t hit us, either.”
The three gunners did their best to train their fire on the Grigori. Tobias connected with one of the four EM cannons. Blue electric tendrils danced through the hot explosion and damaged two other guns.
The Enoch was out of range of the Grigori before the massive ship was able to fire up its engines and lift off the ground despite the rubble threatening to bury it. It was damaged, but not disabled.
“Can we outrun them?” Peg asked.
“Doubtful,” Chime answered. “You slowed their take off, but their engines are internal and significantly faster than ours.”
Peg slid into her seat and punched up the scanner monitors. They needed another tunnel fast. The one they had found earlier was covered by fresh debris.
The blue electricity of the Enoch’s hover pods lit the dark sky around the ship as it swerved back and forth between the canyon walls created by the still-standing ruins. Red clung to the back of Chime’s seat and gazed through the cockpit’s windows watching the blue-lit scenery sway sickeningly in front of them. She closed her eyes and listened to the code.
Orange fire exploded as the Grigori’s guns blasted a building ahead of the Enoch. “They’re already on us!” Chime screamed. “Any luck?”
Peg shook her head. Still no opening that would return them to the relative safety of the ancient sewage tunnels below.
“Then we’re in a lot of trouble.” Chime continued to move the Enoch up and down and side to side making the ship as hard to hit as possible.
“More than you know,” Red piped up. “We have zero time to warn Zion. The Grigori are broadcasting.”