Adversity

They had been walking for about forty minutes
So much for 'In and out as quickly as possible'
“This is all going to shit, isn’t it?” Cass grumbled as she morosely splashed though the cold waters flowing swiftly around their knees
White Wolf, wading alongside her, was silent for a moment
“I should have realised it would be different with you here” he eventually conceded “This is all new”
Shaking her head, Cass sniffed and dabbed gingerly at her nose with her fingertips. It finally seemed to have stopped bleeding now, but she was somewhat concerned about why the nosebleed had started the instant she had stepped through the portal
White Wolf glanced over at her and twitched his whiskers
"What?" she demanded
"Nothing" he said with an air of feigned indifference "I was just wondering if you ever had a neural interface?"
"Used to" Cass shrugged "What of it?"
"That would explain your nose bleed" he nodded "You're lucky you had the interface removed, or you wouldn't even be alive right now"
"You what!?" Cass stopped dead in her tracks and turned to face White Wolf "You're smegging joking right!?"
"Um... No" the hamster soothed "I should have thought to mention it, but they were illegal in the era you came from, so I just assumed nobody had one – It's banned technology amongst the Roo as well, so most dimensional portals scan for them to help prevent human incursions"
"You're shitting me!?" Cass breathed, her eyes widening in shock as she recalled the conversation she'd had with her future self after she had been abducted by the STCP; the one about her interface needing to be burned out to prevent her being killed by enemies
Shaking her head in disbelief, she turned to resume wading through the water, White Wolf likewise continuing in her wake and pulling an a-temp terminal out from one of his cheek pouches
"According to this" he muttered, tapping away at the terminal "The Med Centre is down a couple of levels, about a half kilometre away"
Cass glanced back at him, a frown creasing her forehead
"Do the Roo know about..."
"Heads up!" Katrina yelled "Incoming!"

With an earth shaking roar, a tidal wave of water hammered into them seconds later; the surging torrent smashing Cassandra's breath from her lungs as the three of them were plunged and whirled by tumultuous, seething eddies and swept away down the tunnel

For a few horrible moments she thought she was going to die
She needed... desperately needed to draw breath but couldn’t; and as much as Cass struggled, she was unable to get the surface; the icy waters tossing her this way and that in an even increasing state of panic, before she and her companions were suddenly swept out into a wide, oval shaped hangar of some sort to be deposited rudely on the floor
Coughing and retching as she gasped for breath, Cass rolled wetly over and curled up onto her hands and knees in the, by now, ankle deep and rapidly subsiding water
"Eurgh" White Wolf struggled to his feet and shook himself vigorously, his fur fluffing in damp clumps "I hate getting wet!"
A dozen or metres away, Katrina picked herself up, the water sluicing from her wet clothes as she hefted her pulse rifle and scowled down at Cass who was still coughing violently
"Keep it down" she hissed "You'll have the Roo on us in no time"
Making a superhuman effort to control her coughing, Cass glowered back up at her, her composure somewhat undermined by the thin string of watery drool, hanging from her lips
"Can’t help it" she croaked, and started coughing again, leaving Katrina to turn, with an impatient sigh, to gaze out around their surroundings
"How the hell did these ships get down here?" she asked “We are underground, right?”
"Roo vessels travel across dimensions as well as space" White Wolf replied distractedly as he frowned at the three ships in the hangar before them “I don’t like this...” he murmured, shaking his head as he pulled his tablet out and tapped away at it with his clawed fingers

It took several minutes before Cass had coughed up the last of the water that she had tried to breathe and, still wheezing, she was finally able to stand
“Think we can use one of these to get out of here?” she asked weakly as she wrung the hem of her vest top out between her hands and nodded towards the ships
“Not unless you’ve got upwards of forty three billion years to crack the security” White Wolf shrugged dismissively
“Bollocks” Cass coughed "So much for that idea"
“Come on” the hamster nodded towards an exit across the other side of the space “The med centre is this way”
“Move and you’re dead!” a voice suddenly yelled from behind them
“Oh, for smeg's sake” Katrina sighed, rolling her eyes and shaking her head in irritation
“Weapons on the floor. Kick them away” the voice yelled again “Do it now!”
White Wolf apparently being unarmed, the two women reluctantly complied, each kicking their weapons away across the floor
“Hands up behind your heads” the voice came again “Now turn around slowly and then down on your knees”
The squad of seven, large and heavily armed gerbil’s eyed White Wolf as the small group turned slowly around
“Traitor” the leader spat at him, before his beady black eyes widened in horror as he stared at Cassandra “Holy shit!” he yelled “That’s Jones![i]”
White Wolf moved at once, bounding with a speed that belied his size and cleared the distance between him and Cass in an instant to bowl her over and bodily drag her out of the way as the panicking gerbils opened fire, the air above them suddenly blazing with energy
Katrina meanwhile performed a rolling dive towards her pulse rifle, hitting the floor with long practiced ease to rise again, rearmed and firing; the angry bark of her weapon instantly killing one of the gerbils before she dashed off in pursuit of White Wolf to slide in alongside him and Cass, behind one of the ships landing struts
"What the hell was that?" Cass snapped, an edge of panic in her voice as Katrina dodged around the other side of the strut to fire off another volley
"Five left" she reported, hunkering back down as another blaze of energy burst against the other side of their cover
Cass glared at White Wolf
"What just happened there!?" she demanded
"This is bad" White Wolf grumbled in agitation "All bad"
"No, no, no" Cass said firmly as Katrina ducked out from behind cover again, to rattle off another burst "What’s with the '[i]That's Jones' shit?"
"Four left" Kat nodded with satisfaction
"I was afraid of this" White Wolf sighed as more shots impacted against the landing gear they were sheltering behind "These ships, our assailant's armour – This is a CCO outpost!”
“Who or what is the smegging CCO?”
“Catastrophe Control Operatives” White Wolf shook his head “It seems that they know who you are Cass"
"What!? I barely even know who I am!" Cass protested "How...?"
“They just know” White Wolf said firmly as Katrina dodged out fired another salvo "The Roo monitor and occasionally take action against Brittany and the STCP"
"Three" Kat smiled, but her grin quickly faded as she took in what had just been said "What the smeg!?"
"This has never been a CCO outpost in previous time lines" White Wolf insisted "This puts us all in terrible danger"
Katrina dodged out from behind cover once more and fired again
“Two” she nodded “They’re running. We should get moving”
“It won’t do any good” White Wolf sighed and bowed his head “Now they know you’re here Cass, they’ll kill every single human in the place – even the ones they keep as pets!”
“Pets!?” Katrina was aghast
White Wolf just gave her an odd, apologetic kind of look
“We need to get out of here” he insisted “This mission is finished”
“No!” Katrina snapped “Not without the Auto Doc!”
“I agree with Kat" Cass said quickly “We’ve come this far - We’re not giving up now”
“You don’t get it do you?” White Wolf shook his head “You’re all dead unless we leave now. We’re utterly smegged!”
“Not without the Auto Doc” Katrina repeated angrily, as the ground suddenly jolted beneath their feet and dust began trickling down from the ceiling around the craft they were sheltered beneath
“What the smeg was that?” Cass breathed, gingerly emerging out from beneath the ship to eye a jagged, thirty centimetre wide fissure that had snaked across the domed ceiling
Their communicators beeped
“I’m about to exit the outpost” Artemis announced triumphantly “I have half the serum for the cure – The other half is apparently in a vault on the other side of the facility!”
“Huh” White Wolf grunted “No chance of getting that, and an Auto-Doc would have worked just fine”
Katrina was about to say something when the three of them were suddenly thrown off their feet as the ground beneath them heaved violently
“What the smeg was that?” Cass yelled as she struggled back to her feet, her eyes widening with shock as she looked upwards “Shit” she croaked
“What is it?” Katrina was back on her feet in seconds and moved out from under the ship to look up towards where the ceiling used to be “Whoa...”

Framed by kilometre high cliffs on either side of the massive chasm above, they could see stars

“How?” Cass gasped
Something, somehow had just torn a huge section of the outpost and billions of tons of earth and rock away to reveal the dark night sky outside
“What the smeg!?” Kat breathed as Cass just gaped upward, her mouth hanging open in mute shock
“That’s not Roo!” White Wolf bellowed as the air all around them began shimmering “But this is! Move!”
As the three Dwarfer’s sprinted towards the exit, a dozen huge mechanoids, each bristling with heavy weapons, warped into existence around them
"Hit Mark Tau: Primary Target acquired" the first warbot intoned it's various weapons powering up as others of its ilk emerged through into this reality
The warbot’s weapons spoke as one, tearing scorched and blistered chunks out of the three ships in the hangar as Cass and Kat dodged madly through cover between the landing struts, White Wolf dropping to all fours to gallop on ahead of them

With energy crackling and bursting all around them, as the three finally made it into the tunnel, the ground beneath them heaved once more, pitching them up and off their feet as the end of the passageway suddenly collapsed, the gunfire immediately falling silent as the air filled with a mass of dust and debris

Coughing and choking as they stumbled from the blooming could of dust, Cass slumped weakly to the floor as Katrina pulled the communicator from her belt and keyed the other team
“Crap” Cass breathed, eyes wide as she distractedly ran a shaking hand back through her dust white hair “Oh, smegging crap”
“Yeah, that was way too close” Kat agreed
“We’re a long way from being out of the woods yet” White Wolf growled as he tapped away at his handheld “They know we’re here... Yes!” he continued exultantly “There’s a Gateroom not far from here; we’ll use that to escape”
“But what about the Auto-Doc?” Katrina rounded on him “What about Jay?”
“We’re useless to him if we’re dead” Cass sighed as she clambering to her feet “I took a full trawl; with industrial grade nanotech I can do a complete rebuild”
“I don’t want him to die” Kat murmured
“He's not going to” Cass insisted
“We don’t have time for this” White Wolf snapped “Katrina, if the others are, by some miracle, still alive: Signal them now, and let them know we’ll meet them on the level seven twenty one - Red section”
“So what’s a Gateroom?” Cass asked, snaking a hand out to grasp one of Katrina’s hands in hers and give it a sympathetic squeeze before reluctantly letting go again
“A place we can use escape into another dimension” White Wolf shrugged “We need to move”

<tag>
Half the Roo outpost has been destroyed by something, the place is crawling with killer warbots intent on executing each and every single human they encounter, and we’re going to escape into another reality
So it’s business as usual then :)

Over to you to escape the Roo and get us all somewhere else – Where is it, and what’s there?
Feel free to go wild :)
</tag>