Although they had successfully evaded a breach and escaped the local horde of Aud, morale in the command compartment was delicately held in the balance. Techs and engineers raced around the platforms, climbing up and down, bringing and sending information to other consoles and officers with as much efficiency and coordination as they'd done when the Nyx Breaker set out on its trial run.
But Re-5 only had to look in the eyes of each runner that came to her, delivering one more piece of their ever-changing puzzle. They weren't defeated; that would be paradoxical. The Nyx Breaker was whole, they suffered no more than a single casualty and were still on course. The Nyx Breaker's burrowing feature had even performed up to standard.
They were still suffering. Re-5's nostrils flared as she received a report from medical. Ze-4's condition wasn't good. The Old Man's Vigor was a priceless gift that technology couldn't replicate, but even so, it had both its limits and drawbacks.
Ze-4 could boost his acceleration at certain intervals, which was why he could move so fast, as well as change directions so fluidly. It was an omnidirectional blessing that could push him onto any path he wished. But that was all he became: fast. He still needed to be careful not to clip a bulkhead or the edge of a doorframe. His body was just as fragile as theirs, in the end.
So as long as the sitesman kept his acceleration within reasonable limits, his constitution wouldn't suffer. He had gone to the extreme, running his body so far past its breaking point that he was creating microtears in his musculature, organs, and bones every second.
The staff had rescued him quickly enough after his stunt. They pushed several high doses of liquid sun into his bloodstream; the task's difficulty was magnified when they discovered most of his veins had ruptured. His condition at the moment was critical, but he had stabilized. Still, it was unlikely he would walk again or regain consciousness until the Nyx Breaker returned home and handed him off to more advanced medical institutions.
Another report came in from a team of engineers she'd sent to the breach. They had detained two pilots to assist; the WAVs lowered replacement scutumsteel plating out the hole, and the engineers bolted and welded what they could over it. They layered as much as possible, yet undeniably, the repair solution was flawed.
In the engineers' defense, there wasn't much to be done when the Nyx Breaker was in motion, and tunneling through a hazardous environment where a stray clump of rocks could kill an unprotected serviceman by inertia. She connected with the new assistant, a hastily-assigned officer somewhere among the techs below her.
"How are we looking on time?"
"The predictions have come out in favor of us losing another survivor, sir." She found him two platforms down, mumbling into his communicator as he read off one of the screens. "And we've got a communication from the echo-room. They have a problem."
"Can they fix it on their own? We need their scanning to keep feeding in to stay ahead of the next horde."
"There is nothing wrong with the basic functionality of the echo-room. But they can't get precise readings and diagrams required to locate individual sources of movement." In other words, the echo-room could paint a picture of their surroundings, where they were concerning the Gaiss Hollow and the greater tunnels, and the movements and presence of large groups of Aud. But it couldn't go smaller than that and perceive the location of individual sources of movement like Aud--or the survivors they were searching for.
The engineers and techs must've had an idea that required more cooperation than their compartment alone. "How can we help?"
"If they have enough time to use the Titan as a stationary point of origin, they can narrow down their scans and zoom in on suspicious clusters of movement likely to be what we're looking for."
So they had to stop traversing the tunnels. Mobility was the greatest asset humans possessed over the Aud. In a fight where the enemy was stronger and tougher to the point where being smarter failed to make up the difference, ensuring enough distance between them and the Aud was the best--and only--course of action. And now she was being asked to turn them into a sitting target.
"Is there any other way?"
"We can continue moving, but we'd have to enter back into the tunnels and do a visual sweep. Not all are interconnected, and we haven't even considered the lesser tunnels. The odds of finding them before they fall prey to the Aud are so low we can't afford to wait if we want to find them."
Her lip stung where her teeth split the skin, but she hardly noticed. She took stock of their assets. The only serviceman blessed with the Old Man's Vigor was out of the picture. They had hundreds of cylinders, enough energy cycling through their generators to keep the sonics and electrics firing for hours--or until they overheated, and forty WAVs equipped with assault emplacements. The latter's pilots were on standby, ready to sortie at their officer's command.
If the Nyx Breaker took a curled position where it hid the center of its body…the most important compartments would survive. She could be sure of that. But was it right to possibly sacrifice the external compartments to ensure their survival? Every room and part of the Titan, down to the smallest wiring patch, was there for a reason. She'd prefer to avoid the prospect entirely.
"Sir? We're running out of time."
"I know." She steeled herself. Why was she even debating with herself in the first place? The survivors unknowingly depended on them, and she completely agreed with the assistant. Speed was of the essence. She just hoped she hadn't doomed them to brutal deaths. "I'll call it in."
She reconnected with the Nyx Breaker's line itself. "This is Re-5. We are changing our modus operandi to purple. Prepare to bring the unused generators back into the powering frame. Expect action and immediate targets when we enter a stationary battle position."