Neither prospect seemed too good to the One Zero. Die by the hands of a physical manifestation of justice, or be put behind bars and suffer death at the hands of a judicial system and lose his credibility as a gang banger, to be forever heckled and eventually killed by his own men or executed by the police.
Either option didn't seem too good for One Zero, and instead, he reached for his grenade launcher and upturned the tube towards his chin whilst his other hand tried to fiddle for the trigger despite his shoulders being cut open.
If he were to succeed, he'd be beyond unrecognisable.
-
The stimulants in Luca's system were kicking in and his eyes opened at the worst possible moment - in the arms of what could be mistaken for an angel wearing a custom-fit Impulse rapidly ascending towards a space ship. He had no choice but to flail and yell: "Dagnabbit, I thought I was on my way to Valhalla!" Alas, he was instead being escorted to the SS Raider.
He then found himself set down on a gurney and escorted to a med bay as the doctors chittered about how to approach the situation and took flash X-Rays and administered drugs to knit bones and numb the pain.
"...did I mention his ribs look like gravel?" The head medic then turned his attention to the patient, "How the hell are you conscious?"
"Because," Luca smiled.
"Moreover, why are you talking?"
"Because I can, and I need to keep leading my team - even from afar. I've had worse, anyway," He sighed listlessly as he rested his head into the pillow, "Plus, you're pumping me full of painkillers. Its not a foreign sensation to me."
The medic looked worried, "Just TRY to stay back and recover, okay? You have a compound fracture in your forearm, six of your ribs are broken, and yet you're still able to hold friendly conversation!" He tapped Luca's head indignantly. Luca frowned and eyed the finger tapping his skull, "What the hell went wrong when they were wiring your brain?"
Fine... "Zeta, Smith, dismantle and hurl the explosives into the water! Quickly!" Luca was quick to command from his bedside. He heard a familiar crackling happen on his end of the line.
"I return." Echelon's electronic bandsaw voice said, "There was some slight interference at the Crimson Kestrel. The threat has been neutralised."
"Define slight interference," Luca said, balancing his communicator on his chest and putting up the video feed of Zeta's helmet camera, "Where's that little droid you promised me?"
"Patching his camera to you now..."
"Wait, what about-"
Luca could see the little droid following wires in first person, and making note of them in space, "Hey, uh, droid thingy - keep it up. You're doing a good job." It was a little hard to muster the enthusiasm with crushed ribs and from bedside rather than out and with them.
He then looked to Aerin, who was probably following him: "Get back down there and help the others. I want to make sure that if the bomb DOES go off, it at least goes off in the water, where less harm will be done."
He then sighed and gave her a headlong glance, "Besides, I'm in no shape for you now."
That's when Zeta discovered something. One last failsafe: There was a timer and some sort of convoluted detonation mechanism filled entirely with red wires. The timer said that there were two minutes, thirty six seconds left to go. There were six bombs to hurl into the ocean, each of them were the size of a barrel, and smelt of petrol - simple ANFO explosives with the detonators sticking into them.
