Gijo draws away and locks down the console turning readouts red. Looks at him with a smile. "Your turn."
...
McCabe - "So you're a robot."
Gijo - Furrows her brows at him like he's insane ... "Yeah. I'm a robot."
He pulls the combat knife and sticks it in her head, she looks at him.
Gijo - "What did you think was going to happen ?" She pushes him hard over the railing to a loud cracking sound. Pulls the knife, flips it over and throws it into a meaty 'thwip'.
Begins entering the codes to unlock the console ... as a horror beast of an alien ghost rises behind her shrieking its rage.
She notices. "Oh shit."
(1:10)
She tears through the halls as it screams leaping from one crew member to the next, whichever is closest to her and armed, each firing as she passes.
She
works her way to the graviton accelerators grabs the three confused
crew by their shirts and throws them in the closet, locking it from the
outside. Fires up the secondary accelerator.
A possessed crewman stands looming at the door as it slides open, weapon in hand. He raises and fires. She spins aside as it strikes the accelerator, she returns with a knockout punch, dropping the crewman and raising the ghost.
Tears the gun from the crewman's hand and falls back firing behind at the secondary accelerator control. It whirs violently as the gravitation grows.
She holds the crewman from sliding and grabs a beam, the ghost getting pulled in grabbing at everything with nothing hands, 'til shrieking in circles though the accelerator.
She looks in holding the passed out crewman in a headlock.
"Yeah ... "
Drops the crewman. The secondary is ejected behind the ship and fired on, sending the ghost shrieking from the slipstream, the sounds of many distant aliens raring with.
~ the wide eyes of the alien commander apparent.
______________
As the hazard team works their way carefully to the bottom inside the pilot grid's sphere to the crumpled body, knife in it's head.
Gregor - "How long did you know him ?"
Captain - "Two years."
Gregor - "How long do you think that he was ... "
Captain - "No idea. Maybe it's what made him interesting." Looks at him, "Promoted by command." Back to the wreck of a man, "He did his job well enough."
Gregor - A quiet laugh, he pulls a flask. "He did. We tapped the Archive system. If we were in his shoes ... he did what any of us should do." Drinks and passes, "Rum for the Baron."
Captain - Holds it up, "May Saturday be known to the galaxy's core." Drinks. A last look an a nod to the corpse down below. Passes it back and turns away as medical burns the corpse there.
Finishes with a chemical spray to dissolves the bone and another to wash it down the drain, a final burn across.
Captain - "Why."
Gregor - "They want to know their enemies."
Captain - "No. Why did the Operator steal that ship ?"
Gregor - "Something thing else they know now too ... for what it is worth. He would appear to be creating an interactive archive. Of everything. A 'video game'."
Captain - Stares ... "Holographic theory."
...
Gregor - "My God."
The captain laughs ... he pats the mechanic's shoulders and turns to depart, blocked by Gijo's arrival.
Gijo - "Captain I ... "
Captain - "Don't worry about it."
Gijo - "But I don't know that it was necessary to ... "
Captain - "He would have killed us all."
Gijo - "But ... "
Captain - "To remove an infiltration like that with only one death is remarkable."
Gregor - "Commendable."
Gijo - "But captain I could have ... "
Captain - "And if we survive this, commended you shall be."
He turns to leave, she stares after, lacking robot tears.
Gregor - "He teaches you the irony of ... recognition in war, where nothing is perfect nor clean."
...
Gijo - "That's horrible."
Gregor - "It is. And it is wise." He passes the flask, she takes it. "I'd say you handled a knife to the head with ... a fair response."
Gijo - "My brain is distributed through my body." Drinks, "Mm. Very old rum."
Gregor - Smiles, "Yes ! I was saving it for the end of the world !"
On the station lovers in windows clutch in tears and exhaustion spinning by, the wave approaching from the windows. All come down and broken into finally understanding what just happened, what's about to, and the nothing they can do about it.
While the Centaur rides the slipstream, now converging with that of the Archive a distance ahead.
Alien craft prepare and launch like ghost-ships, piloted by such but the hulls are hard, perhaps a steel aged beyond metallurgy. Barely distinguishable from the dust of a dead world until they rise scattering it.
On the Archive the pilot prepares the now well forming probe, flickering landscapes and planetoids on the readouts, our world as we know it.
Science walks to the window wearing Technology's shirt in no less awe than before as it grows, her own death now accepted, body burning endorphins.