Tori and Lara – Part eight

OH dear god, Author apologises for the amazingly awful editing in the past few chapters and will recktify immediately! Starting with reposting this chapter.

 

Tori and Lara – Part eight

“Really?” Lara tuned every scanner she could think of in the direction of the shots. “What hit us?”

Tori just shook her head and yanked the ship in a screeching turn that took them down before looping back up to face their attackers. Two ships came onto view just as Lara announced that there were two ships in front of them.

“Only two?” Tori demanded.

“Yes” Lara shouted back as the lead ship fired once more. “Shields holding. Whatever they’re shooting us with is not as strong as an impulse beam. We can hold another few shots before we start to take damage,” Tori nodded and pulling the ship up to avoid a shot fired from the second vessel. Lara didn’t notice Michael fall to the chair behind her as she flipped down the flap activating the lower guns located on the belly of their ship. Lara hoped that if the guns weren’t powerful enough to take down the Twin Dilemma’s shields on the first shot maybe their shields were not as strong too.

“Come around to line up belly three,” she ordered as Tori raised the ship’s nose once more to zoom above the next shot. On Lara’s command Tori rolled the ship and forced them into steep dive that took them inches from the second vessel and centered her gun-sight onto the first ship.

The second the computer sounded a lock Lara fired all three guns and watched as beams shot out from below the screen and sliced right through the enemy ships side. “Crap,” she muttered. It had only taken one shot for the ship to explode.

Tori dove the Twin Dilemma beneath the debris and swung around it using the mess as a shield to hide their direction change. Lara made short work of the second ship too. Seconds later they were flying from the wreckage and entered hyperspace again. 

Tori looked at Lara and asked, “what the hell was that?”

“Are we going to report that?” Michael asked, his voice rising somewhat timidly from behind the stunned pilots.

“And say what exactly? Those ships didn’t answer my hails before they started shooting at us and by the time we got them to stop, well… they’re no longer able to answer direct questions.”

Lara turned her head to face her friend, “So you did hail them?”

Tori nodded. “Of course I did. They appeared so suddenly their presence dragged us out of hyperspace. I called over to ask what was wrong and the next thing I knew, they were firing and we were bouncing around like a cork in a bathtub.

 

CHAPTER FOUR

“Okay we’re arriving, settle in everyone if this goes anything like yesterday then the minute we come out of hyperspace we are probably going to get dead.” Tori announced as they arrived at Michael’s co-ordinates.

The rest of yesterday had passed in something of a blur though to both girls’ delight they had discovered Michael made one hell of a double shot mocha chino so, all in all it was not a bad start to a mission. Of course the good mood had passed quickly and Tori had spent most of the day today hiding on the bridge while Lara alternatively flirted or swore at their passenger who remained as tight lipped about the mission as the day before. All Lara she knew was that Michael had a map-like-thing that should lead them to a quarter of a device-like-thing that when put together could destroy the universe. Yup helpful!

“So tell me again how big this thing we are looking for is?” Lara demanded.

“About the size of my hand” Michael answered vaguely, waving said appendage around in the air.

“So tiny then?” Lara snapped angrily. Honestly how hard would it be to tell them details about the damned device? Lara had been trying all day to get any kind of information out of the man and was just feeling pissed-off now. Regardless of how cute he was he was also a pain in her arse.

“Funny, I reckon he’s got big hands” Tori said watching the man in question squirm under her gaze for a moment before she turned back to face the screen in front of her, “Hold on, here we go”.

Stretched starlight on the screen dropped back their static positions and all three occupants breathed a sigh of relief as no one started shooting at them. Tori pointed the ship towards the red blinking light on the screen representing Michael’s hand calculated co-ordinates – Nutter.

 

CHAPTER FIVE

Lara locked the ship behind her and took a moment to look at the landscape around them. Spooky didn’t even being to describe it. Grey sand covered the ground as far as the eye could see. No trees or buildings in any direction and even the sky had taken on an eerie grey colour. The first word that came to mind to describe it was ‘desolate’ the second was ‘miserable.’ The third was ‘grey.’

“Looks like the inside of my head after a migraine.” Tori complained in the distance. Her words carried back but had a strange tinny quality to the sound as though even the air around them was depressed and didn’t have the energy to travel the way it should. In fact, the very atmosphere gave Lara such a feeling of foreboding it was a physical challenge not to turn around and clamber back behind the safety of the Twin Dilemma’s shields.

Lara looked at her two companions. Tori was staring at the land around as Lara was, only the other woman held her hand over her holstered weapon which spoke of her unease.

Michael was heading away from them at a brisk pace.

“Hey, hey,” she called running after him. Didn’t he know anything about horror movies and crazy people not sticking together while on missions to scary planets? Lara caught Tori’s eye and indicated that she should remain at the back of their strange little group then raced forward to get in front of Michael and take the lead.

“What are you doing?” Michael demanded as she pushed him behind her. “You don’t know where we’re going.”

“You have no weapon and you have no idea what is out here. For all you know we’re walking into an ambush or a den of hungry lions or something. You said yourself we are racing against the clock and that others are searching for this “thing” too. They might already be here. I will take the lead with my giant spacegun and Tori will stay at our backs with hers.” She punctuated her statement by waving her weapon around in front of his nose. “You stay in the middle where hopefully we can keep you from getting hurt. Now, tell me which direction we need to go in and how far, or tell me when to stop and turn or whatever. Okay?”

Michael stared at her blankly for several long seconds before he asked, “what if they come at us from the side?” he pointed off to the left of their position.

Lara stared at him and blinked her eyes slowly.

She blinked again.

“Oh for the love of…”

“What’s the hold up?” Tori demanded, her voice rising up behind them. She had stopped when they had and now stood with her back to her companions carefully watching the empty landscape in the distance for any sign of attack. Looking over her shoulder Tori saw them arguing again. Christ, this was looking to be a very very long day. Looking behind her again she watched her partner stare blankly at Michael. “Let’s keep moving,” Tori called.

“Yes,” Lara snapped and started walking, she was determined to ignore the excruciating man behind her as she led the way into the great nothingness ahead.

XXXXXX

It was as they reached the hole in the ground Tori actually realized that was where they were headed. “It’s a giant hole in the ground,” she stated loudly to anyone that was listening but both her partner and Michael ignored her and continued to the edge where there was surprisingly a long metal ladder. “Crap” she muttered and watched Lara grab hold of the top rung. She swung her body over the side of the abyss.

“Really? We are really going down there? Hey Lara,” she cried out before her partner disappeared over the edge. “Want me to stay here?” Really hoping she would say yes, Tori was admittedly disappointed when Lara replied in the negative and then lowered herself down.

“Damnit” Tori grunted and followed after Michael as he dropped down the ladder. The young woman grabbed hold of the cold metal and groaned as she peered down but could not see a bottom from where she was standing, “Great, this is going to hurt” before she began the long journey down.

All Lara could hear as she drew closer to the bottom was the grumbling of the woman above her. She didn’t blame Tori as she felt decidedly ill-at-ease after the long climb. She called back to let them know they were close and dropped to the bottom. She dragged her weary body to the side and collapsed to the ground. Time for a short break, she thought as she grabbed at the bottle of water dangling from her hip. Dragging off her backpack she saw two feet dangling from the ladder before he too dropped next to her. He appeared pale in the torchlight and she could see the climb had not been good for him.

He shook his head when she asked if he was okay and she shrugged, if he wanted to be all male about it then fine. Idiot, but nevertheless she held out the bottle and gestured to the ground beside her and he quickly collapsed. “Well that was fun,” she said with a smirk but he didn’t reply except for the glare he sent her way.

A moment later Lara saw Tori’s boots appear and she jumped lithely down sending a strange look in their direction “Seriously I am out of sight for how long, you guys couldn’t keep your pants that long?”

“Very funny” Lara replied throwing her bottle towards her partner after Michael passed it back.

Tori caught the bottle flying towards her head and smirked. “Can we all imagine for a moment what the climb back up is going to be like,” she grumbled as she drank the remaining water and shoved the bottle into her pack. Lara pulled a full bottle from her pack and clipped it to her side and with a loud groan pulled her protesting body up. “We can at least cancel our gym sessions this week,” she grinned at her partner knowing full well how she hated attending their gym “Let’s get moving.”

With a few last stretches they all gathered their packs and headed for the only exit they could see, a dark corridor heading off into the distance.

 

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