[JE] [JEF #2] Attack of Nerves 4/5
Title: Attack of Nerves (4/5)
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: JE (specifically, KAT-TUN)
Pairing: Akame, though others are mentioned
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 20,000
Genre: AU, sci-fi, crack, comedy, fluff, angst, you name it...
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the bands, individuals or songs mentioned within.
Summary: The crew of the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN are given a new mission, to boldly go where several men from Osaka have gone before, and find out what attacked the K8. The answer lies somewhere in Jin's murky past, and only Kame, with the help of an advanced video game console, can save the day.
Chapter 4
The overhead warning lights came on to signal that all passengers should return to their seats and strap themselves in for a landing, and the captain's voice advised them that within the hour they would be arriving at their destination. The JJ Express was an old ship, incapable of fancy manoeuvres, and conveying an orphanage full of five-to-fifteen year olds from Earth all the way to Ross 154 was the most ambitious act it had ever undertaken. Taking them back in a week's time, after they'd had their fair share of museum trips and other treats donated by kindly souls, would probably be its final journey before it and its elderly captain were retired.
One child would not be making the return trip - but then, orphanage kids went missing all the time, presumed to be runaways, and if a certain Japanese fourteen year-old took the opportunity to strike out on his own on Ross 154's moon, no one would care. They'd do a cursory search, of course, and tut about what a shame it was that families only wanted to adopt babies and younger children these days, that a child of his age didn't really stand a chance and he'd probably be better off on his own. After all, they didn't really know him. No one at the orphanage did.
Not when he'd only been there for a week.
Akanishi Jin packed away the card game he'd been playing with the girl next to him, strapped himself in and settled back in his seat to stargaze. He was careful not to let his face show anything more than the normal excitement any kid who'd never been off-world before would display, but in reality, he was far happier than that. When they landed, he'd go through Customs with the rest of the kids and their harrassed chaperones and vanish at the first opportunity. No one would notice the disappearance of 'Jimmy Mackey', the name he'd given when he'd shown up at the orphanage a week ago under the pretext of having run away from an abusive keeper. They'd taken him in, no questions asked, and the bags under his eyes and skittish behaviour had been enough to persuade them he was telling the truth.
He genuinely hadn't been sleeping much of late, but not because he was being abused. Because he was so excited he could barely keep from grinning about it.
Only fourteen, and this was only his third job for old man Kitagawa, and he was going solo!
It would, he reflected, have been nice if he could've worked with his best friend again, but Yamashita Tomohisa had his own job to do and unfortunately, two new arrivals at the orphanage who both disappeared on Ross 154's moon would draw more suspicion than one. Jin had to handle this one by himself. The old man had promised that if he succeeded, he'd have one of his pilots teach Jin how to fly a shuttle.
Of course, if he failed, his life was forfeit, but he knew that when he joined. The risks were great...but the potential for reward was enormous.
"You think it'll take us long to get through Customs?" the girl next to him asked. "I hear there's a lot of stuff that's banned on Ross 154, and they're really strict when they check you through."
Jin shrugged. "What do they think a bunch of broke orphans are going to be hiding? Do we look like a gang of criminals?"
The girl cast her eyes over Jin's face and blushed. "You certainly don't."
He grinned and went back to watching passing ships. Closer to the planet, the traffic was heavier and every vessel had to adhere strictly to its assigned entry route or risk being fined - or worse, hit by another ship. It wouldn't be long before they landed, and Jin's task really began.
The first part had been easy. Getting himself included in the orphanage trip to Ross 154 had been simple enough, and he'd picked up the "package" the morning of the flight. The man who met him in the park hadn't given him any details, just advised him not to let it get crushed. If asked, he was to say that the three small plastic bottles inside held medication, though on no account was he to drink the contents. The labels contained false names for an illness he didn't have, but nobody expected an orphan to be in perfect health. He'd wrapped the package in spare clothing and squeezed it in his bag, making sure he kept it with him at all times during the journey.
Customs on Earth hadn't been a problem either. If anyone showed unusual interest in Jin and his belongings, he was supposed to use the other kids to create a diversion, but really, it hadn't been necessary. There wasn't a great deal that was actually banned on Earth - consequently, as long as you weren't carrying an unlicensed weapon, fuel, explosives or naughty postcards, you could leave the planet without anyone caring what you were taking with you. Whether your luggage was legal at the other end of the journey was someone else's problem.
Unfortunately for Jin, the girl was right about the Customs on Ross 154. While the star itself was uninhabitable, its moon had proven otherwise, and what had started as a small, experimental colony had quickly covered the bulk of the land. Security was very tight, which was why the old man was having him deliver a package while disguised as a harmless orphan on a trip, surrounded by innocent children.
At least the system was open to the public again, since the fuss over wannabe-Emperor Gackt's attempted coup of the galaxy had died down. The singer-turned-politician had raised an army and tried to declare himself emperor with Ross 154 as his power base, but the Sol System's military, spearheaded by the JE Fleet, had put paid to his plans. He'd have been tried and likely executed, if only he'd been found. By the time the dust settled, the man had gone into hiding, and his secret laboratories had been located and destroyed.
Personally, Jin wasn't so sure about that. According to the intergalactic news bulletins, Gackt's labs had been dabbling in highly illegal experiments involving the marriage of organic and mechanical matter, using humans against their will in brutal and gruesome ways. There were rumours that the would-be emperor was seeking immortality by using technology to extend his lifespan, which, based on the interviews he'd seen with the man, Jin thought was probably true. Some of the nastier goings-on in the labs had only been shown on the midnight broadcasts, and there was no telling how much remained unseen.
As a result of the staged coup, entry regulations for the system had tightened up, and even chemicals used for medicinal purposes were subject to intense scrutiny. Despite Yamashita insisting to the contrary, Jin wasn't an idiot. He knew Kitagawa had had dealings with Gackt before, and he didn't put it past him to be using Jin to smuggle banned chemicals to what remained of the underground scientific community. Jin just hoped the bottles hadn't been damaged in transit, because he didn't dare unwrap them to check.
If he was caught, he wouldn't have to worry about repercussions from the old man. The local authorities would enforce the law...and Jin would never worry about anything again.
-----
"Have a good flight?"
The question was in English, and caught Jin off-guard. "Sorry?"
"Did you have a good flight?" his guide repeated, switching to Japanese and smiling. "Any problems at this end?"
Jin returned the smile and patted the bag slung over his shoulder. "Nothing I couldn't handle."
As expected, Customs had been a lengthy trial. After the paperwork was dealt with came the bag check. Every single incoming passenger had to have their luggage inspected, and if the orphans hadn't been allowed to bring only one bag each, the queue would have been longer still. Jin whiled away the time standing in line by chatting to the people on either side of him, acting casual and occasionally helping to retrieve one of the smaller children who'd gotten fed up and decided to wander off. He'd discovered, over the last week, that he was actually quite good with kids, and it lent credence to his cover story to play the part of the kind, helpful big brother.
The spaceport staff were grateful for the assistance - their patience was limited and their skills didn't extend to chasing and consoling a large group of fractious children. When Jin was only a few feet away from the checkpoint, a small girl ran up from further down the line and started tugging at the legs of the guards. She howled as she tore at their clothes, their bootlaces and anything else she could reach, and the weary remaining chaperones exchanged despairing looks with the spaceport staff.
Jin saw an opportunity, and he took it. He stepped out of the queue and scooped up the little girl, holding her close to his chest and whispering soothing words in her ear to make her stop crying. He stroked her hair gently and she cuddled up to him, wrapping her small arms round his neck and refusing to let go. All the adults in the room breathed a collective sigh of relief.
"Can I take her through?" Jin asked. "We'll go get some juice, or something."
Once the passengers made it through the baggage check they were allowed to leave, and Jin knew there were shops and restaurants out in the terminal just through the door. Most of the passengers from the JJ Express were already there, refreshing themselves and waiting for the rest of the party to join them.
The officials, who by this point never wanted to see another child again as long as they lived, waved him through. What sort of contraband were a bunch of kids going to be carrying anyway?
Jin nodded politely and carried his young charge through the barrier, not even looking back in case they changed their minds and ordered him to hand over the bag for inspection, and made his way through to join the rest. He quickly located the girl he'd been sitting next to on the flight and asked her if she'd mind watching the little one while he went to the bathroom.
"Are we really going to get some juice?" the girl in his arms asked.
Jin set her on the down on the seat; he didn't like to disappoint her. "You know what?" he said, pulling out an unopened carton he'd picked up on the flight but forgotten to drink. "I've got some right here in my bag. I've been saving it for a special person and I think that might be you."
He handed her the drink and she gave him a big, toothy smile in return. He grinned back and kissed her on the cheek before he turned and left, ostensibly heading for the bathroom but actually going for the public comm terminals, which were round the corner from it.
Most of the terminals were in use, but he found an empty one, set the audiovisual-shielding to "full" and keyed in a number from memory. Within seconds, his contact appeared on the screen. The man had said little, only confirmed Jin's identity and current location, and had arranged a meeting point. Within ten minutes, Jin found himself being transported away from the spaceport and out to the rocky wastelands just outside the capital.
Once they'd reached an innocuous-looking building bearing the legend 'Merlin's Magical Sweet Factory', the contact had handed him over to a woman inside, who'd double-checked Jin's identity and led him through the factory. Much to his surprise, it was fully operational, and his guide allowed him to sample a few sweets on the way. She took him to an office in the back, where she sorted out his travel papers for the roundabout trip back to Earth and left him with food, drink and a change of clothing while she fetched a third contact - the man who was currently taking Jin down a secret lift.
"How far down are we going?" Jin asked curiously.
"Only another ten floors," his guide assured him. "We would have collected the package from you and sent you on your way by now, but Mr. Kitagawa wants visual confirmation of our activities here. We've sent pictures, of course, but he'd like a guarantee that they weren't faked. Since he can't leave Earth himself, that means we need you to witness a little project we're working on, okay? You might even find it interesting."
Jin didn't care whether he found it interesting or not, so long as he got to complete his job and get out of there. He suddenly wanted very much to go home, away from the cold, stark corridors of the hidden underground floors of the factory, and back to the life he knew, back on Earth. Unlike his fellows on the JJ Express, it wasn't his first trip off-world, but it was the furthest he'd ever been from home and there was something about the situation that made him uncomfortable. He just wanted to go back to the pink-and-black bedroom he shared with Yamashita and curl up next to his best friend so they could tell each other stupid jokes and practise secret handshakes.
But if the tickets now tucked in his jacket pocket were any indication, it was going to be a long - albeit scenic - trip home.
"Here we are," his guide said cheerfully as they emerged from the lift into another dimly-lit corridor. "Straight through this door." He led Jin into a room opposite and watched with amusement as the boy's mouth dropped open.
In the centre of the room was the biggest computer he'd ever seen. Towers were stacked round a giant screen, everything gleaming and new, shiny grey and white, with eager technicians clustered round like bees on a flower. At the back was a large glass box, though a swathe of purple fabric was draped over so only the base showed; Jin couldn't make out what was inside.
"Impressive, isn't it?" his guide commented.
Jin nodded, but at the risk of seeming stupid he had to ask. "What is it, exactly?"
"A computer, dear boy, a computer! But you can see that for yourself, can't you?" The man laughed, but not mockingly. "What I need you to confirm to your boss is just how special this computer really is. At least, it will be thanks to your successful delivery." He waved the three plastic bottles Jin had been carrying.
"Hey!" Jin felt his bag. "When did you take those out?"
"While you were changing. Sorry about that, but you know how it goes." He didn't sound at all apologetic. "What you see here is the latest incarnation of a project that's been around since before you were born - the culmination of a lifetime of work on the merger of organic matter and technology. Can you imagine what it would be like to fly in a ship with an autopilot that used a human brain? A computer is powerful, but even the most advanced machine can't think for itself. The human brain...we can't begin to understand how complex it is, how much potential has gone unexplored thanks to the cowardly bureaucrats!"
"So it *was* true," Jin marvelled aloud.
His guide took a deep breath and started again, calmer. "It's all true - only the spin they put on it is false. There's no limit to what we can do if we only let ourselves try, and my employer is a man who understands that." He didn't name names, but they both knew who he meant. "This particular model is intended for use in a much more complex project than anything we've accomplished so far. Up until now, we've tested nothing larger than a shuttle, but the results have been spectacular!"
Jin looked at his watch. "I don't mean to rush you, but according to the tickets you guys gave me I need to catch a flight to Barnard's Star in a couple of hours."
"Of course, of course." His guide seemed a little embarrassed. "You'll have to excuse my enthusiasm - as project leader, I'm entitled to get a little carried away sometimes! Anyway, this is for use in an experimental orbital station. Every function will be taken care of using an artificial core - a human who would have an entire electronic world literally at their fingertips!"
"A whole human?" Jin hoped his shock didn't offend the other man, but the concept was horrible. "I thought you used donor brains from people who were dying?" Or so the less biased of the news bulletins had said, anyway.
"We do, but for something on this scale we require a little more in the way of organic parts. To put it simply, what will happen is that the drives and needs of a human body will be acted upon by the station's hardware. The human will feel everything that happens inside as if it were happening to them physically. The perfect merger of man and machine! If the mechanical "body" becomes damaged, the brain will respond accordingly and take action to repair it with far more efficiency than any auto-repair system yet invented.
"Say, for example, the damage was caused by a gang of thieves scavenging parts. What normal auto-repair system would use station resources to track down the guilty parties and have them incarcerated, all without the necessity of alerting any human agents?"
Jin had to admit, it did sound kind of impressive. The part where they needed a whole human still bothered him, though, and he looked around nervously in case they were after volunteers.
His guide patted him on the shoulder with one white-gloved hand. "Don't worry, dear boy, we wouldn't dream of involving you! We're only interested in adults, and I believe you still have a few years of growth ahead of you, hmm? No, we have what we need - a man who is whole and fully-functioning in both body and brain, but sadly, of a disposition entirely unsuited to life in human society. He appreciates the power he will have at his disposal, the new abilities he will gain; he can even redesign the entire station if he so wishes, and his mechanical "arms" will carry out the work. He volunteered to be our test subject, so you need not be concerned on that score, regardless of what you've heard."
Somehow, that didn't make Jin feel any better about it. "So what do you need the bottles for?"
"Ah..." His guide held up the aforementioned bottles. "Our subject has, unfortunately, developed a slight ailment, which we would need to cure before the station goes live."
Jin looked at them suspiciously. "You mean they really are medicines?"
"Oh yes. Not the medicines on the labels, admittedly, but medicines nonetheless."
Jin groaned. "I thought I was carrying banned chemicals or something!"
The other man shook his head and smiled. "They're banned, all right. No mind-altering substances are allowed in this system. This one prevents the user from feeling pain, the blue one is used to give pleasure and the green one affects the brainstem in ways that you don't have time to hear about."
"I've been smuggling drugs?"
"All in a good cause. I need to give these to our subject now, so if you would just accompany me round the back, I'll introduce you. Mr. Kitagawa would like you to confirm his identity for yourself - I'm sure you'll have no trouble recognising him."
Jin allowed himself to be led to the giant glass box at the back of the room, heart in his throat and sweat beading at his temples. His guide pressed a button on the wall and the cover slowly rose, revealing a slim man dressed only in a tunic and a serpent's nest of wires.
No wonder the authorities had never found the would-be emperor.
Unable to stop himself, Jin screamed.
-----
"Jin!"
Jin's head was pounding, a pulse beating with annoying regularity coupled with a roar that would have done an old-fashioned jet plane proud. To make matters worse, some idiot was calling his name and shaking him by the shoulders.
He blinked several times before his vision cleared, and the idiot was revealed to be none other than Kame.
"You're not supposed to be here," Jin mumbled. "You can't be here. Why are you here?"
Kame hugged him tightly. "I am here, and neither of us should be. Can you walk?"
The floor wasn't *that* comfortable, even if the prospect of getting to his feet wasn't any more appealing. "Don't see why not."
"Good." Kame got a shoulder under Jin's arm and helped him up. "Don't look down. Don't look back, either. Just look at the door."
Needless to say, Jin did all of these things except the one he was actually supposed to do. He took in the grisly scene below, caught sight of the hideous, bulging computer in the centre of the room, and it all came flooding back to him in bright, gaudy colours.
How he'd marched to the hub, compelled by the pulse of the signal in his mind, and how it had overtaken him completely as he'd seen the computer. He'd collapsed to the ground - fortunately, on the metal outer ring by the door - and lost consciousness.
He filled Kame in as the other captain frantically tried to open the door, but it was sealed shut. In between bouts of cursing, Kame told his side of the story, and both of them struggled with the door till they were exhausted.
Jin was horrified to hear about the KAT-TUN's crew. "I tried to keep them out of it," he wailed. "I thought they'd be safe!"
Kame sighed. "They might be, if the autopilot works okay and somebody back home has figured out how to help them, but we won't be safe for much longer. The effects of the CNS Plus will wear off soon and I don't think pricking my finger will do much good after that. That thing," he pointed at the computer, "will have us both."
"Not if we destroy it first," Jin stated.
Kame looked down at the narrow strips crossing the open floor and grimaced. "Do you fancy going over there and taking your chances? Because I don't. I'm not even sure shooting it would help."
"It would just fix itself automatically," Jin said, and explained the memory he'd been reliving under the computer's influence. "I know what this is, Kame. After I left Ross 154, the next thing I heard about the station was years later, just before I went independent.
"The experiment was a failure - whatever that medication was, it didn't work. The computer went crazy! The, uh, organic parts were supposed to be fed a constant supply of nutrients through a tube, but once the station went live it redesigned - this room, I guess - so the floor was a trap for humans. It started sending out these pulses, signals that entranced anyone within range and drew them in here to become part of...well, you can see for yourself. It's feeding on humans, Kame."
Kame's face was pale. "That's sick."
"Right, it *is* sick," Jin continued. "Very sick, and they couldn't cure it. They couldn't even destroy it. Anyone on board died in here, and anyone trying to blow it up from a distance lost their minds. No one could get within range. The only thing they could do was tow it out to the middle of nowhere and hope nobody ever found it again, which obviously hasn't worked. They couldn't warn anyone without incriminating themselves, and these guys, Kame, they weren't looking for publicity. None of them even told me their names!"
The situation looked bleak. If they didn't get out soon, all they had to look forward to was losing their minds until they too joined the pile of corpses feeding the machine.
"All those ships," Kame murmured, "their crews are lying beneath us."
"If they haven't already been absorbed." Jin hauled himself up again and renewed his efforts with the door. "Look, Kame, I know it's not really a good time but I just want to say...uh...well...I'm not that good at expressing myself, and I know I say things I shouldn't and I don't mean them, I don't mean to hurt you."
Kame rolled his eyes. "Jin, if you're trying to apologise there are a couple of words you could try instead of rambling."
Jin wrapped himself around his partner, steering them both round so neither had to look at the death trap across the room, and dropped his head to Kame's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
Kame pulled back slightly and offered him a grin. "I'm not," he said. "If I hadn't been mad enough to storm off and plug myself into an interactive games console for a half a week, you'd be dead already and the rest of us would be either comatose or insane."
"That's a good point," Jin agreed. If he was going to die, at least he wasn't going to do so thinking Kame hated him.
What Kame was actually thinking that moment had nothing to do with Jin, hated or otherwise. He was puzzling over the computer. "That machine, can it do anything else to us other than try to get in our heads and persuade us to walk over the edge?"
Jin thought back to everything he'd seen and heard. "Not that I remember. Luckily they never built weapons for the station, although I suppose it could use the servos to attack us if it really wanted to." He cast a dubious glance round the room. "There can't be any in here, or it would already have tried to push us in."
"So if I shoot the door, the computer can't do anything about it, right?"
Jin brightened considerably. "Right! We can do that!" He reached for the gun attached to the suit, and his face fell. "The power pack's dead on this one."
Kame pulled Jin's customised blaster from under his jacket. "Here. When I went to grab mine, I saw you'd left yours so I thought I'd bring it along."
Jin stripped off the gloves of his suit and relished the comforting weight of it in his hand. Their matching guns, both created by Arashi's stylish weapons designer MatsuJun, were sleek, elegant, and always in fashion. The gene-locked triggers ensured no one else could use them, and the power packs could use almost anything to recharge. Consequently, even on the lowest setting they were weapons to be reckoned with.
"We can't do anything with the lock," Kame reasoned. "Let's both aim for the same spot and try to burn our way through."
Unfortunately, putting enough distance between themselves and their target to avoid injuring themselves left both men standing worryingly close to the edge of the outer band of floor. Kame fired first to show Jin where he thought they should start, and his partner added his own power to the assault.
Before long they had a nice, hot outline burning into the door, and the temperature in the room had increased so much that Jin wished he could put the rest of his space armour on. He'd always felt that it was a major design flaw that the internal temperature regulation system only worked when all parts of the suit were sealed together.
The temperature wasn't the only thing on the rise. The noise level was growing as well, and since Jin had the advantage of not having baseball fans yelling in his ears, he heard it first.
"Is it just me," he panted, "or is it getting louder? The computer, I mean."
"Not just you," Kame said, mopping the sweat from his brow with his free hand. They were both looking extremely bedraggled by this point. "I think it's annoyed with us."
Jin couldn't really blame it. The pulse in his head had died away, drowned out by the noise, but the infernal machine was still making its presence felt. "Wouldn't you be if someone started taking shots at you? This is its body we're burning!"
Not *his* body, because there was no way Jin could reconcile the bloated, diseased monstrosity before him with the sparkling new hope for the future he'd been shown. Whatever humanity it might once have had, it was nothing more than a machine now. A broken machine, one beyond his or anybody else's ability to repair.
He was about to say as much when something long and thin wrapped itself around his ankles, jerking his legs out from under him. His finger closed on the trigger as he went down and he shot wildly, hitting the ceiling rather than the door.
"Jin!"
Jin managed to get his blaster back under his control and looked at his assailant. It was a cable, looking for all the world like a long, black snake, and it was beginning to drag him across the floor. "It's all right!" he yelled, and fired at the cable where it emerged from the body of the machine. It broke, and Jin was able to untangle his legs and resume the attack on the door.
"I thought you said it couldn't hurt us!" Kame yelled.
"I didn't say I was certain!" Jin retorted. "It can modify anything it wants, so long as it has the parts, and it's got more than enough ships in the landing bay to scavenge from! Look out!"
Another cable lashed out, aiming for Kame's gun arm. He dodged and shot it at the point of origin, but another took its place. "You think we could do something to distract it?"
Jin wasn't sure whether or not to take Kame seriously. "Like what? You doing a striptease?"
"You're the one wearing armour. Besides, how do we know it even likes men?"
"Kame, I don't think this computer likes anybody!"
Kame was forced to concede that Jin had a point. "Anyway, I wasn't suggesting anything like that. I meant, one of us could concentrate on the door and the other could do some damage to the rest of the room. There must be some optical sensors somewhere, and if we can take those out..."
If nothing else, the cables wouldn't know where to strike. Jin approved of that, especially since one of them had just tried to remove his armour. "You take the door. Leave the cables to me."
Kame gave him a quick nod and focused all his attention on burning through the door. There wasn't much further to go. Between them they'd built up a nice, steady glow, and if they could only get near the door, Kame suspected they might be able to kick it out soon. Too bad they'd have to wait for it to cool down - it was made of metal, and Kame was in no mood to lose the soles of his boots to it.
Meanwhile, Jin was finding himself grateful for all the target practise he'd gotten in since joining the military. The cables moved fast, and while he was shooting one at the source, another was already aiming for him. He didn't have time to target anything else, much less look for potential weak spots. "How much longer, Kame?"
The other man promptly turned round and joined in the attack on the computer. "As long as it takes for that door to cool down, unless you want to ask the machine nicely if it'll open it for us." He was surprised to see Jin smirking next to him. "What? You're actually going to try that?"
"Definitely not. Keep them off my back, will you? I'm going to try something."
Out of the corner of his eye, Kame could see Jin donning the discarded gloves and helmet of his space armour and engaging the seals. The suit was supposed to protect against extreme temperatures, but Kame wasn't sure what its limits were, and there was no telling if it would be enough to keep Jin from being fried.
He wanted to tell him that, to beg him to wait, to plead with him not to risk himself, but even if he had the breath left to talk, there was no way Jin could hear him. All he could do was keep firing, and wait.
Kame didn't have to wait long. Jin's powerful legs struck the door again and again, and it gave a little more each time. When the metal finally gave way, falling to the corridor outside with a resounding crash, Kame finally felt his heart start beating again.
Jin removed his helmet and gloves, attaching the former to the fastening on the back and the latter to the belt round the suit's waist, and took his blaster in one hand and Kame's free hand in the other. "Come on!"
Kame fired one final shot as Jin pulled him towards the door, and it hit the screen dead centre. The glass shattered and an enraged roar sounded from the depths of the room.
"That'll give it something to worry about other than us!" he gasped out as they ran for the landing bay. "I don't care how fast it repairs itself - it can't be that quick to replace the glass!"
Indeed, the computer made no move to arrest their flight. As they raced down the corridor, the effects of the CNS Plus finally dissipated and Kame was able to immerse himself fully in the real world for the first time in days. It wasn't, perhaps, the ideal time to lose the only advantage he had over a monstrous machine that wanted to turn him into mulch, but it was worth it to be able to feel Jin's hand in his, skin warm and dry from its brief spell in the suit, and know that he wasn't holding hands with the first baseman again.
Much to their relief, the door to the landing bay was hanging open. They reached their shuttle, strapped themselves in, then realised they weren't quite home free.
"The airlock doors," Jin groaned. "They opened automatically to let me in, but I don't think they'll do the same to let us out."
"There have to be manual controls somewhere!" Kame used the external optics to scan the landing bay, and quickly found what he was looking for. "Look! On the wall by the doors. I think that's the emergency release."
In the event that a station had to evacuate and no one was staying behind to man the controls, all airlock doors had a manual release that opened both the internal and external sets. There was just one catch. It opened both sets at once, and once they were open, they stayed that way. It was the final exit.
Jin nodded. "I see it. Hold on tight - I'm going to hit it, and once those doors open, if the restraints don't hold up we're going to get sucked out. I won't be able to get us moving in the right direction until we stablise."
It was a difficult angle for the shot; Jin ended up using one of the small, guided torpedoes to hit the emergency release. It exploded upon impact and the airlock doors began their slow, painful separation.
"Come on, come on," Kame muttered under his breath. He'd had enough of waiting. He watched as the darkness of space appeared in the gap between the doors, which were perfectly synchronised, and anything that wasn't bolted down made a rush for the exit.
The restraints holding their shuttle creaked ominously but refused to break, saving them a short, rocky trip outside. Jin started the engines, which was the trigger for the restraints to cut out, and they were able to take off in relative calm, though they did have to dodge a lot of debris in the immediate vicinity.
Now that all the systems were on-line, they could see the KAT-TUN waiting for them. Kame mentally calculated the time to reach the ship and was relieved to be able to tell Jin that no, the autopilot wouldn't kick in and whisk salvation away from them before they could make it back. That fact notwithstanding, Jin pushed the little craft as hard as he dared - his first flying teacher, one of old man Kitagawa's trusted right hands, had taught him plenty about coaxing speed out of anything with an engine, though not much about flight safety.
"You think they'll give me another two years for leaving the ship?" Kame asked. The tiny location monitoring chip under the skin of his left thigh would have let HQ know all about his transgression by now - not that he really had the energy to care. All he wanted was a nice cold shower, followed by a soak in a hot tub - preferably with Jin by his side.
"I think they should give you a medal." Jin started laughing and added, "And if they don't, I will!"
"We're the same rank," Kame pointed out. "You can't give me a medal."
"Now you're sounding like Ueda. Hey, maybe we should give *him* a medal! Look how well he holds everything together in our absence!"
"And even in our presence." Kame thought about the briefing they'd both slept through, and started laughing himself.
"Let's give them all medals! Koki can always use more bling."
"Look who's talking!" Kame tapped Jin's wrists, which, when not covered by space armour, usually bore at least a couple of bangles. "Besides, I don't think military decorations are all that gangsta, Jin..."
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: JE (specifically, KAT-TUN)
Pairing: Akame, though others are mentioned
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 20,000
Genre: AU, sci-fi, crack, comedy, fluff, angst, you name it...
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the bands, individuals or songs mentioned within.
Summary: The crew of the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN are given a new mission, to boldly go where several men from Osaka have gone before, and find out what attacked the K8. The answer lies somewhere in Jin's murky past, and only Kame, with the help of an advanced video game console, can save the day.
Chapter 4
The overhead warning lights came on to signal that all passengers should return to their seats and strap themselves in for a landing, and the captain's voice advised them that within the hour they would be arriving at their destination. The JJ Express was an old ship, incapable of fancy manoeuvres, and conveying an orphanage full of five-to-fifteen year olds from Earth all the way to Ross 154 was the most ambitious act it had ever undertaken. Taking them back in a week's time, after they'd had their fair share of museum trips and other treats donated by kindly souls, would probably be its final journey before it and its elderly captain were retired.
One child would not be making the return trip - but then, orphanage kids went missing all the time, presumed to be runaways, and if a certain Japanese fourteen year-old took the opportunity to strike out on his own on Ross 154's moon, no one would care. They'd do a cursory search, of course, and tut about what a shame it was that families only wanted to adopt babies and younger children these days, that a child of his age didn't really stand a chance and he'd probably be better off on his own. After all, they didn't really know him. No one at the orphanage did.
Not when he'd only been there for a week.
Akanishi Jin packed away the card game he'd been playing with the girl next to him, strapped himself in and settled back in his seat to stargaze. He was careful not to let his face show anything more than the normal excitement any kid who'd never been off-world before would display, but in reality, he was far happier than that. When they landed, he'd go through Customs with the rest of the kids and their harrassed chaperones and vanish at the first opportunity. No one would notice the disappearance of 'Jimmy Mackey', the name he'd given when he'd shown up at the orphanage a week ago under the pretext of having run away from an abusive keeper. They'd taken him in, no questions asked, and the bags under his eyes and skittish behaviour had been enough to persuade them he was telling the truth.
He genuinely hadn't been sleeping much of late, but not because he was being abused. Because he was so excited he could barely keep from grinning about it.
Only fourteen, and this was only his third job for old man Kitagawa, and he was going solo!
It would, he reflected, have been nice if he could've worked with his best friend again, but Yamashita Tomohisa had his own job to do and unfortunately, two new arrivals at the orphanage who both disappeared on Ross 154's moon would draw more suspicion than one. Jin had to handle this one by himself. The old man had promised that if he succeeded, he'd have one of his pilots teach Jin how to fly a shuttle.
Of course, if he failed, his life was forfeit, but he knew that when he joined. The risks were great...but the potential for reward was enormous.
"You think it'll take us long to get through Customs?" the girl next to him asked. "I hear there's a lot of stuff that's banned on Ross 154, and they're really strict when they check you through."
Jin shrugged. "What do they think a bunch of broke orphans are going to be hiding? Do we look like a gang of criminals?"
The girl cast her eyes over Jin's face and blushed. "You certainly don't."
He grinned and went back to watching passing ships. Closer to the planet, the traffic was heavier and every vessel had to adhere strictly to its assigned entry route or risk being fined - or worse, hit by another ship. It wouldn't be long before they landed, and Jin's task really began.
The first part had been easy. Getting himself included in the orphanage trip to Ross 154 had been simple enough, and he'd picked up the "package" the morning of the flight. The man who met him in the park hadn't given him any details, just advised him not to let it get crushed. If asked, he was to say that the three small plastic bottles inside held medication, though on no account was he to drink the contents. The labels contained false names for an illness he didn't have, but nobody expected an orphan to be in perfect health. He'd wrapped the package in spare clothing and squeezed it in his bag, making sure he kept it with him at all times during the journey.
Customs on Earth hadn't been a problem either. If anyone showed unusual interest in Jin and his belongings, he was supposed to use the other kids to create a diversion, but really, it hadn't been necessary. There wasn't a great deal that was actually banned on Earth - consequently, as long as you weren't carrying an unlicensed weapon, fuel, explosives or naughty postcards, you could leave the planet without anyone caring what you were taking with you. Whether your luggage was legal at the other end of the journey was someone else's problem.
Unfortunately for Jin, the girl was right about the Customs on Ross 154. While the star itself was uninhabitable, its moon had proven otherwise, and what had started as a small, experimental colony had quickly covered the bulk of the land. Security was very tight, which was why the old man was having him deliver a package while disguised as a harmless orphan on a trip, surrounded by innocent children.
At least the system was open to the public again, since the fuss over wannabe-Emperor Gackt's attempted coup of the galaxy had died down. The singer-turned-politician had raised an army and tried to declare himself emperor with Ross 154 as his power base, but the Sol System's military, spearheaded by the JE Fleet, had put paid to his plans. He'd have been tried and likely executed, if only he'd been found. By the time the dust settled, the man had gone into hiding, and his secret laboratories had been located and destroyed.
Personally, Jin wasn't so sure about that. According to the intergalactic news bulletins, Gackt's labs had been dabbling in highly illegal experiments involving the marriage of organic and mechanical matter, using humans against their will in brutal and gruesome ways. There were rumours that the would-be emperor was seeking immortality by using technology to extend his lifespan, which, based on the interviews he'd seen with the man, Jin thought was probably true. Some of the nastier goings-on in the labs had only been shown on the midnight broadcasts, and there was no telling how much remained unseen.
As a result of the staged coup, entry regulations for the system had tightened up, and even chemicals used for medicinal purposes were subject to intense scrutiny. Despite Yamashita insisting to the contrary, Jin wasn't an idiot. He knew Kitagawa had had dealings with Gackt before, and he didn't put it past him to be using Jin to smuggle banned chemicals to what remained of the underground scientific community. Jin just hoped the bottles hadn't been damaged in transit, because he didn't dare unwrap them to check.
If he was caught, he wouldn't have to worry about repercussions from the old man. The local authorities would enforce the law...and Jin would never worry about anything again.
-----
"Have a good flight?"
The question was in English, and caught Jin off-guard. "Sorry?"
"Did you have a good flight?" his guide repeated, switching to Japanese and smiling. "Any problems at this end?"
Jin returned the smile and patted the bag slung over his shoulder. "Nothing I couldn't handle."
As expected, Customs had been a lengthy trial. After the paperwork was dealt with came the bag check. Every single incoming passenger had to have their luggage inspected, and if the orphans hadn't been allowed to bring only one bag each, the queue would have been longer still. Jin whiled away the time standing in line by chatting to the people on either side of him, acting casual and occasionally helping to retrieve one of the smaller children who'd gotten fed up and decided to wander off. He'd discovered, over the last week, that he was actually quite good with kids, and it lent credence to his cover story to play the part of the kind, helpful big brother.
The spaceport staff were grateful for the assistance - their patience was limited and their skills didn't extend to chasing and consoling a large group of fractious children. When Jin was only a few feet away from the checkpoint, a small girl ran up from further down the line and started tugging at the legs of the guards. She howled as she tore at their clothes, their bootlaces and anything else she could reach, and the weary remaining chaperones exchanged despairing looks with the spaceport staff.
Jin saw an opportunity, and he took it. He stepped out of the queue and scooped up the little girl, holding her close to his chest and whispering soothing words in her ear to make her stop crying. He stroked her hair gently and she cuddled up to him, wrapping her small arms round his neck and refusing to let go. All the adults in the room breathed a collective sigh of relief.
"Can I take her through?" Jin asked. "We'll go get some juice, or something."
Once the passengers made it through the baggage check they were allowed to leave, and Jin knew there were shops and restaurants out in the terminal just through the door. Most of the passengers from the JJ Express were already there, refreshing themselves and waiting for the rest of the party to join them.
The officials, who by this point never wanted to see another child again as long as they lived, waved him through. What sort of contraband were a bunch of kids going to be carrying anyway?
Jin nodded politely and carried his young charge through the barrier, not even looking back in case they changed their minds and ordered him to hand over the bag for inspection, and made his way through to join the rest. He quickly located the girl he'd been sitting next to on the flight and asked her if she'd mind watching the little one while he went to the bathroom.
"Are we really going to get some juice?" the girl in his arms asked.
Jin set her on the down on the seat; he didn't like to disappoint her. "You know what?" he said, pulling out an unopened carton he'd picked up on the flight but forgotten to drink. "I've got some right here in my bag. I've been saving it for a special person and I think that might be you."
He handed her the drink and she gave him a big, toothy smile in return. He grinned back and kissed her on the cheek before he turned and left, ostensibly heading for the bathroom but actually going for the public comm terminals, which were round the corner from it.
Most of the terminals were in use, but he found an empty one, set the audiovisual-shielding to "full" and keyed in a number from memory. Within seconds, his contact appeared on the screen. The man had said little, only confirmed Jin's identity and current location, and had arranged a meeting point. Within ten minutes, Jin found himself being transported away from the spaceport and out to the rocky wastelands just outside the capital.
Once they'd reached an innocuous-looking building bearing the legend 'Merlin's Magical Sweet Factory', the contact had handed him over to a woman inside, who'd double-checked Jin's identity and led him through the factory. Much to his surprise, it was fully operational, and his guide allowed him to sample a few sweets on the way. She took him to an office in the back, where she sorted out his travel papers for the roundabout trip back to Earth and left him with food, drink and a change of clothing while she fetched a third contact - the man who was currently taking Jin down a secret lift.
"How far down are we going?" Jin asked curiously.
"Only another ten floors," his guide assured him. "We would have collected the package from you and sent you on your way by now, but Mr. Kitagawa wants visual confirmation of our activities here. We've sent pictures, of course, but he'd like a guarantee that they weren't faked. Since he can't leave Earth himself, that means we need you to witness a little project we're working on, okay? You might even find it interesting."
Jin didn't care whether he found it interesting or not, so long as he got to complete his job and get out of there. He suddenly wanted very much to go home, away from the cold, stark corridors of the hidden underground floors of the factory, and back to the life he knew, back on Earth. Unlike his fellows on the JJ Express, it wasn't his first trip off-world, but it was the furthest he'd ever been from home and there was something about the situation that made him uncomfortable. He just wanted to go back to the pink-and-black bedroom he shared with Yamashita and curl up next to his best friend so they could tell each other stupid jokes and practise secret handshakes.
But if the tickets now tucked in his jacket pocket were any indication, it was going to be a long - albeit scenic - trip home.
"Here we are," his guide said cheerfully as they emerged from the lift into another dimly-lit corridor. "Straight through this door." He led Jin into a room opposite and watched with amusement as the boy's mouth dropped open.
In the centre of the room was the biggest computer he'd ever seen. Towers were stacked round a giant screen, everything gleaming and new, shiny grey and white, with eager technicians clustered round like bees on a flower. At the back was a large glass box, though a swathe of purple fabric was draped over so only the base showed; Jin couldn't make out what was inside.
"Impressive, isn't it?" his guide commented.
Jin nodded, but at the risk of seeming stupid he had to ask. "What is it, exactly?"
"A computer, dear boy, a computer! But you can see that for yourself, can't you?" The man laughed, but not mockingly. "What I need you to confirm to your boss is just how special this computer really is. At least, it will be thanks to your successful delivery." He waved the three plastic bottles Jin had been carrying.
"Hey!" Jin felt his bag. "When did you take those out?"
"While you were changing. Sorry about that, but you know how it goes." He didn't sound at all apologetic. "What you see here is the latest incarnation of a project that's been around since before you were born - the culmination of a lifetime of work on the merger of organic matter and technology. Can you imagine what it would be like to fly in a ship with an autopilot that used a human brain? A computer is powerful, but even the most advanced machine can't think for itself. The human brain...we can't begin to understand how complex it is, how much potential has gone unexplored thanks to the cowardly bureaucrats!"
"So it *was* true," Jin marvelled aloud.
His guide took a deep breath and started again, calmer. "It's all true - only the spin they put on it is false. There's no limit to what we can do if we only let ourselves try, and my employer is a man who understands that." He didn't name names, but they both knew who he meant. "This particular model is intended for use in a much more complex project than anything we've accomplished so far. Up until now, we've tested nothing larger than a shuttle, but the results have been spectacular!"
Jin looked at his watch. "I don't mean to rush you, but according to the tickets you guys gave me I need to catch a flight to Barnard's Star in a couple of hours."
"Of course, of course." His guide seemed a little embarrassed. "You'll have to excuse my enthusiasm - as project leader, I'm entitled to get a little carried away sometimes! Anyway, this is for use in an experimental orbital station. Every function will be taken care of using an artificial core - a human who would have an entire electronic world literally at their fingertips!"
"A whole human?" Jin hoped his shock didn't offend the other man, but the concept was horrible. "I thought you used donor brains from people who were dying?" Or so the less biased of the news bulletins had said, anyway.
"We do, but for something on this scale we require a little more in the way of organic parts. To put it simply, what will happen is that the drives and needs of a human body will be acted upon by the station's hardware. The human will feel everything that happens inside as if it were happening to them physically. The perfect merger of man and machine! If the mechanical "body" becomes damaged, the brain will respond accordingly and take action to repair it with far more efficiency than any auto-repair system yet invented.
"Say, for example, the damage was caused by a gang of thieves scavenging parts. What normal auto-repair system would use station resources to track down the guilty parties and have them incarcerated, all without the necessity of alerting any human agents?"
Jin had to admit, it did sound kind of impressive. The part where they needed a whole human still bothered him, though, and he looked around nervously in case they were after volunteers.
His guide patted him on the shoulder with one white-gloved hand. "Don't worry, dear boy, we wouldn't dream of involving you! We're only interested in adults, and I believe you still have a few years of growth ahead of you, hmm? No, we have what we need - a man who is whole and fully-functioning in both body and brain, but sadly, of a disposition entirely unsuited to life in human society. He appreciates the power he will have at his disposal, the new abilities he will gain; he can even redesign the entire station if he so wishes, and his mechanical "arms" will carry out the work. He volunteered to be our test subject, so you need not be concerned on that score, regardless of what you've heard."
Somehow, that didn't make Jin feel any better about it. "So what do you need the bottles for?"
"Ah..." His guide held up the aforementioned bottles. "Our subject has, unfortunately, developed a slight ailment, which we would need to cure before the station goes live."
Jin looked at them suspiciously. "You mean they really are medicines?"
"Oh yes. Not the medicines on the labels, admittedly, but medicines nonetheless."
Jin groaned. "I thought I was carrying banned chemicals or something!"
The other man shook his head and smiled. "They're banned, all right. No mind-altering substances are allowed in this system. This one prevents the user from feeling pain, the blue one is used to give pleasure and the green one affects the brainstem in ways that you don't have time to hear about."
"I've been smuggling drugs?"
"All in a good cause. I need to give these to our subject now, so if you would just accompany me round the back, I'll introduce you. Mr. Kitagawa would like you to confirm his identity for yourself - I'm sure you'll have no trouble recognising him."
Jin allowed himself to be led to the giant glass box at the back of the room, heart in his throat and sweat beading at his temples. His guide pressed a button on the wall and the cover slowly rose, revealing a slim man dressed only in a tunic and a serpent's nest of wires.
No wonder the authorities had never found the would-be emperor.
Unable to stop himself, Jin screamed.
-----
"Jin!"
Jin's head was pounding, a pulse beating with annoying regularity coupled with a roar that would have done an old-fashioned jet plane proud. To make matters worse, some idiot was calling his name and shaking him by the shoulders.
He blinked several times before his vision cleared, and the idiot was revealed to be none other than Kame.
"You're not supposed to be here," Jin mumbled. "You can't be here. Why are you here?"
Kame hugged him tightly. "I am here, and neither of us should be. Can you walk?"
The floor wasn't *that* comfortable, even if the prospect of getting to his feet wasn't any more appealing. "Don't see why not."
"Good." Kame got a shoulder under Jin's arm and helped him up. "Don't look down. Don't look back, either. Just look at the door."
Needless to say, Jin did all of these things except the one he was actually supposed to do. He took in the grisly scene below, caught sight of the hideous, bulging computer in the centre of the room, and it all came flooding back to him in bright, gaudy colours.
How he'd marched to the hub, compelled by the pulse of the signal in his mind, and how it had overtaken him completely as he'd seen the computer. He'd collapsed to the ground - fortunately, on the metal outer ring by the door - and lost consciousness.
He filled Kame in as the other captain frantically tried to open the door, but it was sealed shut. In between bouts of cursing, Kame told his side of the story, and both of them struggled with the door till they were exhausted.
Jin was horrified to hear about the KAT-TUN's crew. "I tried to keep them out of it," he wailed. "I thought they'd be safe!"
Kame sighed. "They might be, if the autopilot works okay and somebody back home has figured out how to help them, but we won't be safe for much longer. The effects of the CNS Plus will wear off soon and I don't think pricking my finger will do much good after that. That thing," he pointed at the computer, "will have us both."
"Not if we destroy it first," Jin stated.
Kame looked down at the narrow strips crossing the open floor and grimaced. "Do you fancy going over there and taking your chances? Because I don't. I'm not even sure shooting it would help."
"It would just fix itself automatically," Jin said, and explained the memory he'd been reliving under the computer's influence. "I know what this is, Kame. After I left Ross 154, the next thing I heard about the station was years later, just before I went independent.
"The experiment was a failure - whatever that medication was, it didn't work. The computer went crazy! The, uh, organic parts were supposed to be fed a constant supply of nutrients through a tube, but once the station went live it redesigned - this room, I guess - so the floor was a trap for humans. It started sending out these pulses, signals that entranced anyone within range and drew them in here to become part of...well, you can see for yourself. It's feeding on humans, Kame."
Kame's face was pale. "That's sick."
"Right, it *is* sick," Jin continued. "Very sick, and they couldn't cure it. They couldn't even destroy it. Anyone on board died in here, and anyone trying to blow it up from a distance lost their minds. No one could get within range. The only thing they could do was tow it out to the middle of nowhere and hope nobody ever found it again, which obviously hasn't worked. They couldn't warn anyone without incriminating themselves, and these guys, Kame, they weren't looking for publicity. None of them even told me their names!"
The situation looked bleak. If they didn't get out soon, all they had to look forward to was losing their minds until they too joined the pile of corpses feeding the machine.
"All those ships," Kame murmured, "their crews are lying beneath us."
"If they haven't already been absorbed." Jin hauled himself up again and renewed his efforts with the door. "Look, Kame, I know it's not really a good time but I just want to say...uh...well...I'm not that good at expressing myself, and I know I say things I shouldn't and I don't mean them, I don't mean to hurt you."
Kame rolled his eyes. "Jin, if you're trying to apologise there are a couple of words you could try instead of rambling."
Jin wrapped himself around his partner, steering them both round so neither had to look at the death trap across the room, and dropped his head to Kame's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
Kame pulled back slightly and offered him a grin. "I'm not," he said. "If I hadn't been mad enough to storm off and plug myself into an interactive games console for a half a week, you'd be dead already and the rest of us would be either comatose or insane."
"That's a good point," Jin agreed. If he was going to die, at least he wasn't going to do so thinking Kame hated him.
What Kame was actually thinking that moment had nothing to do with Jin, hated or otherwise. He was puzzling over the computer. "That machine, can it do anything else to us other than try to get in our heads and persuade us to walk over the edge?"
Jin thought back to everything he'd seen and heard. "Not that I remember. Luckily they never built weapons for the station, although I suppose it could use the servos to attack us if it really wanted to." He cast a dubious glance round the room. "There can't be any in here, or it would already have tried to push us in."
"So if I shoot the door, the computer can't do anything about it, right?"
Jin brightened considerably. "Right! We can do that!" He reached for the gun attached to the suit, and his face fell. "The power pack's dead on this one."
Kame pulled Jin's customised blaster from under his jacket. "Here. When I went to grab mine, I saw you'd left yours so I thought I'd bring it along."
Jin stripped off the gloves of his suit and relished the comforting weight of it in his hand. Their matching guns, both created by Arashi's stylish weapons designer MatsuJun, were sleek, elegant, and always in fashion. The gene-locked triggers ensured no one else could use them, and the power packs could use almost anything to recharge. Consequently, even on the lowest setting they were weapons to be reckoned with.
"We can't do anything with the lock," Kame reasoned. "Let's both aim for the same spot and try to burn our way through."
Unfortunately, putting enough distance between themselves and their target to avoid injuring themselves left both men standing worryingly close to the edge of the outer band of floor. Kame fired first to show Jin where he thought they should start, and his partner added his own power to the assault.
Before long they had a nice, hot outline burning into the door, and the temperature in the room had increased so much that Jin wished he could put the rest of his space armour on. He'd always felt that it was a major design flaw that the internal temperature regulation system only worked when all parts of the suit were sealed together.
The temperature wasn't the only thing on the rise. The noise level was growing as well, and since Jin had the advantage of not having baseball fans yelling in his ears, he heard it first.
"Is it just me," he panted, "or is it getting louder? The computer, I mean."
"Not just you," Kame said, mopping the sweat from his brow with his free hand. They were both looking extremely bedraggled by this point. "I think it's annoyed with us."
Jin couldn't really blame it. The pulse in his head had died away, drowned out by the noise, but the infernal machine was still making its presence felt. "Wouldn't you be if someone started taking shots at you? This is its body we're burning!"
Not *his* body, because there was no way Jin could reconcile the bloated, diseased monstrosity before him with the sparkling new hope for the future he'd been shown. Whatever humanity it might once have had, it was nothing more than a machine now. A broken machine, one beyond his or anybody else's ability to repair.
He was about to say as much when something long and thin wrapped itself around his ankles, jerking his legs out from under him. His finger closed on the trigger as he went down and he shot wildly, hitting the ceiling rather than the door.
"Jin!"
Jin managed to get his blaster back under his control and looked at his assailant. It was a cable, looking for all the world like a long, black snake, and it was beginning to drag him across the floor. "It's all right!" he yelled, and fired at the cable where it emerged from the body of the machine. It broke, and Jin was able to untangle his legs and resume the attack on the door.
"I thought you said it couldn't hurt us!" Kame yelled.
"I didn't say I was certain!" Jin retorted. "It can modify anything it wants, so long as it has the parts, and it's got more than enough ships in the landing bay to scavenge from! Look out!"
Another cable lashed out, aiming for Kame's gun arm. He dodged and shot it at the point of origin, but another took its place. "You think we could do something to distract it?"
Jin wasn't sure whether or not to take Kame seriously. "Like what? You doing a striptease?"
"You're the one wearing armour. Besides, how do we know it even likes men?"
"Kame, I don't think this computer likes anybody!"
Kame was forced to concede that Jin had a point. "Anyway, I wasn't suggesting anything like that. I meant, one of us could concentrate on the door and the other could do some damage to the rest of the room. There must be some optical sensors somewhere, and if we can take those out..."
If nothing else, the cables wouldn't know where to strike. Jin approved of that, especially since one of them had just tried to remove his armour. "You take the door. Leave the cables to me."
Kame gave him a quick nod and focused all his attention on burning through the door. There wasn't much further to go. Between them they'd built up a nice, steady glow, and if they could only get near the door, Kame suspected they might be able to kick it out soon. Too bad they'd have to wait for it to cool down - it was made of metal, and Kame was in no mood to lose the soles of his boots to it.
Meanwhile, Jin was finding himself grateful for all the target practise he'd gotten in since joining the military. The cables moved fast, and while he was shooting one at the source, another was already aiming for him. He didn't have time to target anything else, much less look for potential weak spots. "How much longer, Kame?"
The other man promptly turned round and joined in the attack on the computer. "As long as it takes for that door to cool down, unless you want to ask the machine nicely if it'll open it for us." He was surprised to see Jin smirking next to him. "What? You're actually going to try that?"
"Definitely not. Keep them off my back, will you? I'm going to try something."
Out of the corner of his eye, Kame could see Jin donning the discarded gloves and helmet of his space armour and engaging the seals. The suit was supposed to protect against extreme temperatures, but Kame wasn't sure what its limits were, and there was no telling if it would be enough to keep Jin from being fried.
He wanted to tell him that, to beg him to wait, to plead with him not to risk himself, but even if he had the breath left to talk, there was no way Jin could hear him. All he could do was keep firing, and wait.
Kame didn't have to wait long. Jin's powerful legs struck the door again and again, and it gave a little more each time. When the metal finally gave way, falling to the corridor outside with a resounding crash, Kame finally felt his heart start beating again.
Jin removed his helmet and gloves, attaching the former to the fastening on the back and the latter to the belt round the suit's waist, and took his blaster in one hand and Kame's free hand in the other. "Come on!"
Kame fired one final shot as Jin pulled him towards the door, and it hit the screen dead centre. The glass shattered and an enraged roar sounded from the depths of the room.
"That'll give it something to worry about other than us!" he gasped out as they ran for the landing bay. "I don't care how fast it repairs itself - it can't be that quick to replace the glass!"
Indeed, the computer made no move to arrest their flight. As they raced down the corridor, the effects of the CNS Plus finally dissipated and Kame was able to immerse himself fully in the real world for the first time in days. It wasn't, perhaps, the ideal time to lose the only advantage he had over a monstrous machine that wanted to turn him into mulch, but it was worth it to be able to feel Jin's hand in his, skin warm and dry from its brief spell in the suit, and know that he wasn't holding hands with the first baseman again.
Much to their relief, the door to the landing bay was hanging open. They reached their shuttle, strapped themselves in, then realised they weren't quite home free.
"The airlock doors," Jin groaned. "They opened automatically to let me in, but I don't think they'll do the same to let us out."
"There have to be manual controls somewhere!" Kame used the external optics to scan the landing bay, and quickly found what he was looking for. "Look! On the wall by the doors. I think that's the emergency release."
In the event that a station had to evacuate and no one was staying behind to man the controls, all airlock doors had a manual release that opened both the internal and external sets. There was just one catch. It opened both sets at once, and once they were open, they stayed that way. It was the final exit.
Jin nodded. "I see it. Hold on tight - I'm going to hit it, and once those doors open, if the restraints don't hold up we're going to get sucked out. I won't be able to get us moving in the right direction until we stablise."
It was a difficult angle for the shot; Jin ended up using one of the small, guided torpedoes to hit the emergency release. It exploded upon impact and the airlock doors began their slow, painful separation.
"Come on, come on," Kame muttered under his breath. He'd had enough of waiting. He watched as the darkness of space appeared in the gap between the doors, which were perfectly synchronised, and anything that wasn't bolted down made a rush for the exit.
The restraints holding their shuttle creaked ominously but refused to break, saving them a short, rocky trip outside. Jin started the engines, which was the trigger for the restraints to cut out, and they were able to take off in relative calm, though they did have to dodge a lot of debris in the immediate vicinity.
Now that all the systems were on-line, they could see the KAT-TUN waiting for them. Kame mentally calculated the time to reach the ship and was relieved to be able to tell Jin that no, the autopilot wouldn't kick in and whisk salvation away from them before they could make it back. That fact notwithstanding, Jin pushed the little craft as hard as he dared - his first flying teacher, one of old man Kitagawa's trusted right hands, had taught him plenty about coaxing speed out of anything with an engine, though not much about flight safety.
"You think they'll give me another two years for leaving the ship?" Kame asked. The tiny location monitoring chip under the skin of his left thigh would have let HQ know all about his transgression by now - not that he really had the energy to care. All he wanted was a nice cold shower, followed by a soak in a hot tub - preferably with Jin by his side.
"I think they should give you a medal." Jin started laughing and added, "And if they don't, I will!"
"We're the same rank," Kame pointed out. "You can't give me a medal."
"Now you're sounding like Ueda. Hey, maybe we should give *him* a medal! Look how well he holds everything together in our absence!"
"And even in our presence." Kame thought about the briefing they'd both slept through, and started laughing himself.
"Let's give them all medals! Koki can always use more bling."
"Look who's talking!" Kame tapped Jin's wrists, which, when not covered by space armour, usually bore at least a couple of bangles. "Besides, I don't think military decorations are all that gangsta, Jin..."