The entire rear of the hold was open, the ramp lowered away, clouds and sky whipping past at incredible speed. The battle was raging all over the bay. There had been the AI's agents trying to stop the runners, and they'd ended up with a stowaway.
Sonya raised her pistol to the cyborg, the shots loud even over the raging winds that spun past the soaring plane. Clear liquid was exposed, augmented blood, gelling the wound. The weapon was ineffective, The cyborg's focus unchanged. She would try for a head shot... but for the fact that they were on a moving plane, one that shook and wavered; without a scope, how was she supposed to target, let alone hit?
All that passed through her mind in a moment and then she was moving, past the stacked crates, dodging the short sword. A storm of blows followed, kicking at each other, until the ninja woman seized Sonya's throat, augmented hand moving faster and stronger than she could have escaped. Her feet left the floor, the sniper woman struggling frantically, teeth clenched.
And then she was thrown. The assailant threw her backwards, sending her flying out at the passing stream of atmosphere, plunging into the sky.
Richard Sinclair used one of his incredible bursts of speed and barreled his fist into her waist, powering her away. She was knocked away, almost off the ramp, but recovered. The adept continued his onslaught, fueled by his magic for blow after blow. She resisted the barreling adept and they grappled into the floor.
A few running steps and Arsenal was looking down at a simple control panel, power switch, a dial for entering approximate weight, buttons for back and forth, a tiny readout screen, an emergency shutoff. The bay doors had been opened from the cockpit, but she was scanning for some way of overriding it locally. It was somewhere on the panel, but in the havoc she couldn't find it. What she saw instead was the controls for the hydraulic rail. Used to push heavy vehicles out of the plane, to be deployed.
Arsenal hit the power switch, twisting the weight dial to the maximum limit, just under three tons. She shot a look at them, locked in combat. Richard was badly bleeding from a monosword to the back, and she saw that the assailant it was only a step or two from being in the direct path of the platform. Her hand hovered over the switch that would move it forward, that should send it down the hold. With the weight of the storage containers and the three ton rail, it would mow the woman down like a blade of grass. Almost... almost.. . now! When Richard knocked her almost directly on the track, Arsenal punched the button - and nothing happened, nothing at all. Shit! She fumbled for the power switch again, maybe she hadn't turned it on - and she saw what was on the little readout screen. The simple instructions read, "Charging for load."
It was then that she felt the floor slanting. Unmistakably- the plane was ascending, the bay was beginning to incline. First 20 degrees, then 40. The door between the passenger deck and the cargo hold slammed shut.
My God, Arsenal thought. Those maniacs are going to eject us.
The cyborg was still almost directly along the track. They might not get a better shot, because if the assailant got to Arsenal before the platform was charged, she'd be trapped between the wall and the storage crates. And if she moved to evade, and was in the open when the units were released, it would be a trip back to the surface, hitting the ground at terminal velocity.
The whole row of containers shot out the ramp. The impact carried the attacker along and then her and the units were gone. But at the last second her hands caught the lip of the ramp, swinging under outstretched arms and looking forward under the plane's fuselage belly as the craft forced its way up into the air. Richard Sinclair went with her, all his weight was taken by his fingers, hooked in their gloves over the edge of the ramp door. His arms ached. Clouds passed under his feet. I'm hanging onto the goddamn ramp!
