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[Dwarmin]

Sadish considered the information she had received and later, the information she would receive from Audrey...

The damage on the information meant that the clasp on Pandorum's Chestpiece was straining a bit-but, it might hold a little while longer. Or, maybe more likely the left hand of Al-Loy was keeping it's right hand unaware of what it was doing. Of course, given her previous discovery, it could have all been the random whim of fate.

Would that Hacker have sold her such precious information if they really had any idea what it was? It had cost her a mere §3 to find something that people would literally go to war over-whole worlds would be burned to keep such information from becoming widespread. All the Mercies heading down to arrest (?) Mr. Varkonius could literally stop their ships, turn around, and come to arrest Sadish instead for the information she had. They'd likely be paid much better to do so! Either the Brokers had been criminally negligent (She thought might be a pun if you were an actual criminal), or they had considered it worthless-compared to whatever else they already had. Still, she doubted they would have sold it if they knew what it was. An opportunistic Hacker who merely saw some intelligible chemical formula, and decided it had a little potential profit. That was one possibility.

She had to laugh, and did so out loud. Was all of history, in it's grandest swoops and dives decided by such random, ridiculous coincidences?

Sadish was not quite ready to believe that.

...

Somewhere in time, she responded to Keresh.

"If I come into direct contact with this man, by then it will likely be too late, but thank you for the warning all the same.

For my own warning-I've considered, once this information becomes widespread...if we learn how to unlock Vera's secrets (I've decided that's a fitting name for the Universal Cell, by the way)...everything will change. This is one of those things that causes an era of great change...Change is never without pain.

I hope your travails stay calm, Keresh the Shark-and, Sara the Sparkly as well...but, I think all of us are heading deeper waters, if we like it or not."

...

Back in the present time, she figured a decision was going to have to be made.

"Huh." She frowned for a moment. A universal cell was quite the find indeed - lots of potential uses for something like that, though Scarlet was rather concerned with more pressing issues that it presented. "I mean, I don't think they went through the effort of making something this complicated just to kill people. Not when there are so many easier ways to do it, so it - her, whatever- probably wasn't originally supposed to be a weapon. Probably. But it's one now, so now it's our problem. . ." She mumbled something under her breath, a phrase somewhat defying translation but coarse nonetheless. "So if you can't synth up a vaccine we're going to have to avoid exposure at all, aren't we?"

Sadish decided to simplify things for Scarlet. _{It's not like she had actually attended medical school...}

"Right, to put in terms you are more comfortable with-it's a magic gun. Wherever the magic bullet from the magic gun hits, you die. You can't dodge the bullet. Once it's fired, if you're in range, you're dead. Instantly.

The wielder of this gun can make his bullet go through any defense you have, on a mere whim. The only potential flaw is that he must make the bullet in a certain way, to account for those defenses he perceives as you having. He has to carve certain grooves into the rifling of the bullet, before firing it. For example, to counter an energy shield, or a chemical protection suit, or a bio-chemical defense. Furthermore, once that single bullet has left the gun, it can't be recalled and re-made. No matter how wonderful and terrible this bullet it is, it's still a thing-a projectile that has to obey certain laws of reality. Unless it actually doesn't, but let's not go there...

And yes, let's assume the owner of the gun is not also omniscient, and cannot read your thoughts, though that is certainly possible. We must assume he has accounted for simple biological defenses, such as your own immune system, even one enhanced by nanobots, or any of our relatively primitive chemical countermeasures we have available to our current science.

Your only realistic counter measure against this weapon, is to have a defense prepared that he did not previously anticipate preparing the specific bullet for. In this way, you may nullify that single bullet. The second bullet could, of course, be adjusted to counter your counter measure. Unless, you have yet another counter measure to counter his counter measure that counters your counter measure. Of course.

At some point, you will inevitably lose the game, since he can make and remake his bullet in a nearly infinite amount of ways-and, you have only so many defenses ready. Amusingly, If he even understands you are playing the game with him, you instantly lose the game-since, after understanding you are capable of actually making defenses in reaction to his moves, his next bullet will likely be so overpoweringly horrible that nothing in our known reality, will stop it for a moment.

So yes, avoiding him is the best option.

I have an idea however! Have of you heard the Black Fountains of Fyrin? No? Good..."

Action: Sadish considers if she is capable of making one of these 'metafields', and in a way it might be difficult to detect-such as making it subtly different from a personal defense shield this malicious being would expect mercies to have, which would obviously be expected, at protecting against energy and kinetic weaponry. Essentially, a 'bio-shield'?

She also had made sure to collect her payment before leaving the station

Edit: ALSO, she searches her tablet history to see if she still has Grenacs last voice recording to her, to use in identifying his voice on the video.

[lawastooshort]

Aubrey sat back and tried to stop thinking for a second or two.

She couldn’t quite put the words into timings any better that might make more sense of them, which robbed them of some of the helpfulness they could have had, but the meaning was chillingly clear, it seemed.

This Cane knew that his victims were after Varkonius, found them, and executed them. For being after Varkonius? For being bounty hunters?

The middle of the message made less immediate sense. Cause? Evolution? Ignorant?

It seemed unlikely that this weapon was being revealed just to protect Varkonius. So what was his connection?

All – words for your pondering. The black box recording was hacked by an insider to remove content. I have extracted from it limited audio of only the following words:

 “Belief” “Hunt” “Varkonius” “Bounty” “Cause” “Evolution” “Ignorant” “Regret” “Execute”

I have not yet decided what to make of them.

Sadish. The Cane is using this weapon to execute Mercies hunting Varkonius. I don’t know how to put my question into words, but it is a virus? Bacteria? That he is immune to? Hmm. No. It is stuck. Is there anything on the video that might suggest his defence?

Just a thought:
Action: is there any safe way to identify an origin of the virus that ruined the blackbox recording? Prioritise safety over results, I don’t want to incapacitate the ship’s computer.

Could an entirely isolated computer be used? Copy the recording and attempt data recovery on a copy of what we have and see what happens? Or is that likely to be pointless anyway? I guess the interesting question for later might be who supplied it and who the insider was who applied it.

[Dwarmin]

All – words for your pondering. The black box recording was hacked by an insider to remove content. I have extracted from it limited audio of only the following words:

 “Belief” “Hunt” “Varkonius” “Bounty” “Cause” “Evolution” “Ignorant” “Regret” “Execute”

I have not yet decided what to make of them.

Sadish. The Cane is using this weapon to execute Mercies hunting Varkonius. I don’t know how to put my question into words, but it is a virus? Bacteria? That he is immune to? Hmm. No. It is stuck. Is there anything on the video that might suggest his defence?

It is a bacteria, but that's irrelevant-the same way you could say the color of the bullet that kills you is. It's the coding that makes it truly dangerous-it's a Universal Cell. It can be modified nearly endlessly.

As for the the video, that is an interesting question, but one that is likely impossible to answer from merely visual evidence. No doubt his body has a universal defense-no matter what sort of virus he might utilize, he obviously wouldn't risk it harming him. If I knew how he was defending himself, I could make my own defense, likely enough. Or, make his own bullet turn back on him. The only physical evidence I have is a poor video feed of the aftermath. Without an energy signature recording of the era, or a biochemical sniffer reading of the killing floor, we have nothing.

Your decoded words don't tell much either...can you possibly tell who said which words? I might have a sample of Grenacs voice for you to use...one moment.

Sadish wondered if she could help with that...

Sadish hadn't known Grenac very well, as their professions ran in very much different directions, but she had spoken with him years ago at an illegal auction, one where she hadn't intended to buy anything, merely to take some scans of a rare petrified tree if they weren't too picky about it-and, that he eventually ended up crashing. She recalled their pleasant conversation, and how he had lifted the Petrified Yornak Tree that had been for sale right out of the gallery, through the skylight, and up into his waiting vessel. He had given her a nod as he ascended with them, seeming so young and fearless, like he didn't even notice the lasers and bullets flying around him...later, she had been pleasantly surprised to find that full scan data of the tree had been uploaded onto her personal tablet.

It might be a bit much, but she supposed she might still have Grenacs last (and only) voice message to her-buried deep in the message history of her personal tablet, the one he had sent with the scan data. The voice of an electronic ghost crying for justice! Maybe that was a bit much.

((Edit: Added a bit onto my action above))

[lawastooshort]

No, they don't. I have to listen again to attribute words to people, and assign any kind of non-verbal additional meaning...

Additional and priority action: can I attribute words to the people in the video, and timings to see which words connect more closely with each other? I.e. which words form which/whose bits of sentences.

edit:

One of those five ships going down is most likely Varkonius. While he's gone, why don't we acquire the object? If he should as unlikely as it currently seems be killed on the surface, we need to get something out of this job, right?

[IronyOwl]

If I'm not needed for our current plan, experiment with ironweaving some immobilizing net or goop for combat. Ideally I'd like two versions: An actual does-its-job version, and a fake one to scare Varkonius into wasting his bore jump avoiding or redirecting harmless slop onto one of my allies.

[Chevaleresse]

"...I guess that explains the apocalyptic description. Damnit, nothing can ever be simple, can it? _{I miss being a pirate.} So not only no vaccine, but a suit won't work either, and I don't think my nanites can shut down something like this. . . At least I don't have to wear a hazmat suit into a fight." She paces irritably for a bit. There wasn't much that scared her at this point - most things dangerous enough to end her instantly were fairly easy to keep away from, and short of her luck running out in a firefight and catching rounds in all the wrong places at once, there wasn't a whole lot she wouldn't be able to bounce back from eventually. But some sort of post-apex veritable god of biology - I've been listening to that goddamn Fin talk too much - was worth worrying about.

"I don't suppose there's a way we could find and snatch this thing without running into Varkonius at all."

[Dwarmin]

"I don't suppose there's a way we could find and snatch this thing without running into Varkonius at all."

"That was my idea as well. We've got Mercies waiting to intercept Varkonius, Mercies waiting for him to come back to the station-or not, as the case may be-but, As far as we know, we're the only ones who know where he is staying on the station. I think we should get in there and see if he's stashed the item in his room. Maybe get what we came for with no trouble at all. Otherwise, we're no better or worse off then when we are now.

...Anyway, do you want to hear everything about the Black Fountains of Fyrin? It's a truly gruesome story! I think you like those. And, it has something to do with my plan for a defense."

[Tiruin]

Kesari was...cautious. She had many thoughts about what had occurred, but for the most part, a vivid image in mind came out--smuggling ship. That was at least how complex her reasoning would be in connecting a 'freight delivery ship' to 'a ship with complex, and somewhat off-but-not-weird components'.

She basically transmitted all her ideas into her crew-comms.

Hey everyone, good and bad news--we've got mercenaries docked at the station, at around those five non-civ ships. The bulk trader however seems inconspicuously different. As if it's a smuggler ship (finely tuned engines and the like; weight heavier than expected, although I could similarly say 'mass' instead of weight due to density being far higher than the expected normal reading; and a ton of discrepancies I cannot parse without further information in its trade record).

And I say inconspicuous because all these are within normal bounds of reasoning. It could be a very well-done trader, but the adjustments to the engine do not reasonably point out the norm of 'bore trader ship'. Other than my bias, I'm suspecting those engines were more for intrastellar movement than bore jumping.

Also is everyone ready for going in? I can recalibrate the sensors quickly if we're to jump on our mark now.

[Digital Hellhound]

Boris punched the auxiliary shielding port he was working on, then, for good measure, punched it again. A lifetime of experience had taught him some machinery understood nothing but force.

This work was taking rather longer than he'd have liked. Boris monitored the team's comms - it seemed Sadish hadn't just been writing poetry, but that there was also some kind of super plague to kill them all? He supposed it might be worthwhile to talk to the Fin after all - and sent out a message.

'Boris Mundus here. Reactor work taking time. Suggest you leave without me. If there is need for explosives, check my quarters. Just don't waste them.'

Work! Offer my explosives for the mission for anyone who knows what they're doing with them.

[Dwarmin]

'Boris Mundus here. Reactor work taking time. Suggest you leave without me. If there is need for explosives, check my quarters. Just don't waste them.'

You know, the definition of waste is the expenditure of something to no end, and since an explosive by definition is designed to expend it's own existence, with it's only purpose for existence, is to not exist at a certain point in time and space, said non-existence engendering the non-existence of related matter in a similar proximity, then isn't every well designed explosive a waste-of itself?

[Digital Hellhound]

'Sometimes, Fin, I swear you come close to making sense,' Boris said, banging his forehead against the wall. 'Alright. Then... waste the explosives in a manner most engendering the non-existence of matter we don't like. Like Varkonius. Better?'

[Dwarmin]

'Sometimes, Fin, I swear you come close to making sense,' Boris said, banging his forehead against the wall. 'Alright. Then... waste the explosives in a manner most engendering the non-existence of matter we don't like. Like Varkonius. Better?'

Much better! I always enjoy when I can help you become more cogent.

[Chevaleresse]

"Go ahead." It wasn't that she preferred gruesome stories, per se, she simply wasn't particularly fazed by them. Scarlet also send a fairly generic affirmative reply to Kesari, grabbing her light rifle and starting to disassemble it partially. She'd discovered that the weapon, broken down, seemed to show up as a sort of personal grooming kit to cursory scans.

[Dwarmin]

"Go ahead." It wasn't that she preferred gruesome stories, per se, she simply wasn't particularly fazed by them. Scarlet also send a fairly generic affirmative reply to Kesari, grabbing her light rifle and starting to disassemble it partially. She'd discovered that the weapon, broken down, seemed to show up as a sort of personal grooming kit to cursory scans.

"...Anyway, where was I?

Yes, a long time ago, there was two ancient Apex Nations locked in a bitter war. It had gone on for so long none could remember why they started fighting. Entire generations of men and women had been born, grown old and died only knowing an entire race of people as the enemy who they had to fight and kill. Their measures became increasingly desperate as time went on, since both Nations were so alike in technological progress that neither side could develop a weapon that would be able to definitively end the conflict-neither side could break through the others defenses, and so the war ground on, endlessly.

Now, one of the Empires had a planet, named Fyrin. Fyrin was a beautiful world, as many Apex worlds are rumored to be. Fyrin itself means 'Beautiful jewel', and it's colonizers named it after the daughter of their captain. The world they founded was rich in water, with plenty of marshes and rivers and deep, cold oceans-and in time they harnessed the waters to provide them every manner of thing they could wish for. With the mastery of gravity manipulation technology, they could direct the waters in amazing trajectories, with brilliantly lit prismatic coruscation shaped by the light of their two suns and four moons, even the arc of the waters based on precise celestial, mathematical, and logical theorems. Fyrin was called the Planet of Fountains, and even during the war, it was a place of harmony. Many who meditated and prayed under those glittering waters found peace and calm, even during the worst times...it was, once, a sacred place, to my own people. A place where water and air, became one and the same, a whole. It's...not something you'd likely understand, but it's a concept any Fin would...

Now, a little bit more background. One of the Empires was extremely advanced in area of metafields-they could make shields that nothing, not even the most minor of bacteria and viruses, could ever penetrate. The other was extremely advanced in Biotech. They were likely capable of creating organisms similar to Vera, though perhaps not as advanced. In truth, the tragedy that happened was inevitable. If you are only capable of defending yourself, even if it's a nearly perfect defense, your enemy will eventually defeat you. It is said that the people of the first Empire, perhaps, understood this, knowing that they would ultimately lose the war. Hence, their desire to find a sense of peace and beauty, before they died. There is a reason people remember the beauty of Fyrin, while the second Empire has been all but forgotten-except, for it's most horrible creations.

...Now, they did die, of course. ...

Eventually, the second Empire learned to make a bacteria that would coat itself in an iridium alloy, allowing it to bypass the first Empires mighty, near impenetrable shields. With this weapon, their planet killing bioweapons slaughtered all the people of Fyrin in a single day...it is interesting to note, the amount of Fins that died that day, so long ago, exceeds the entire population of my own homeplanet, by at least one hundred times...

Was it mere random ill fate, or a deeper cruelty born of the madness of their enemy, that made the fountains run black? That is one thing I can never know. What I do know is that the unspeakable virus that ravaged their bodies was a slow one, and caused the victims to suffer-as if they were burning alive, from the inside out. In Fyrins last death throes, it's men, women and children threw themselves into the beautiful fountains, in the billions and billions-all of them seeking even a momentary cooling respite from the fire that was consuming them. And, so swift had the doom come upon them, that the fountains continued to dance in their brilliant and beautiful patterns, undeterred by the foulness of the waters, tainted by the blood and viscera of her people. It still has not stopped, as far as I know-the fountains continue to run, unabated, her waters still tinted as black as death-thousands of years later. It's very mechanisms for preventing bacterial growth, preserving what is left of Fyrins people, in a grotesque defiling of the fountains they once loved. Fyrin is now a silent world, under pitch Black fountains, run by their old machines. Nothing lives there anymore, I would think.

If we ever go to Fyrin, I suppose, you can see for yourself...I do know, that there are some who still make pilgrimage to Fyrin, to pray under the fountains. Though what sort of Gods they pray to, under those fountains, I wouldn't really care to know.

...

Well.

My own idea is to mimic the bio-shields that the first Empire used. The device could be concealed, I believe, and while it's duration would be impermanent and strip our equipment of defense shielding, it could protect us from Vera...at least, for awhile. It would only buy us a bit of time, much as it bought Fyrin time.

What do you think?

"

[Chevaleresse]

"Being goop later is better than being goop now.

It sounds like it should work, but you'd know better than me." She shook her head. It's not like the tale was unique; the grotesque remainder of it was, perhaps, but there were so many tales of empires lost, crushed by another or collapsed on themselves with naught left but unnumbered nameless dead and a few piles of junk to mark their passing. There were countless more, she thought, that had probably gone without leaving even stories behind, for someone like Sadish to dig up millenia after it'd stopped mattering and add to a shelf. She wondered how many of them had been downed because of someone like she used to be, vindictive and only seeking their own personal satisfaction above all else.

Her rather somber turn was likely clearly visible on her face, but it wasn't an entirely abnormal expression and really was not all that dissimilar to the general grouchiness she usually wore like a second skin.

Scarlet continues to prep her gear for the coming mission, preferably in such an arrangement that it doesn't actually look like she's getting ready for a firefight.