Sadish"I would hear him speak. Suppose we should dim the lights?" Sadish said.
Aimasc nodded and made practiced shooing motions at the swarm of glowing Sadishlings that were still engaged in their merry game of tag. The Sadishlings spun as one to regard her, universally adopting whale-moji faces with their eyes crossed (as crossed as Fin eyes could go, which wasn't very) and their tongues stuck out.
Aimasc made a show of pulling her lips back from her gums. A dangerous light literally glinted in her eyes as a low growl rumbled in her illusory throat.
The sadishlings instantly adopted expressions of stark terror (again, as much stark terror as could be expressed by a woji) and fled inside Sadish's harness, plunging the infirmary into near darkness. The only light was the silvery glow coming off of Aimasc herself, and that was comparable to a particularly intense jar of fireflies in terms of illumination.
"Enter, Ear. The light has been made low, you will not be judged for how you appear."The door to the infirmary cracked open slowly, and the radiation sensor in Sadish's rig immediately began to pulse a sickly greenish color. Four or five times normal background. Not harmful in the short term, and relatively easily treated, but still rather concerning. If that came through when the door was open part of the way...
Well, logic dictated that Sadish had already been through that at least once- and she seemed fine now.
Watching Ear slip through the mostly shadowed doorway was... perplexing. Sadish was able to determine, rather definitively, that Ear was not a Fin or a corvid, but beyond that was difficult. He was spindly and ghostly pale, and he used all four limbs to move naturally- but he didn't move in the way she expected a Cane or a Claw to move. Given Aimasc's information, living in microgravity had likely given them a rather unusual physiology and means of travel.
"Ah, ah... I am unworthy of the Lightbringer's true face, and I beg forgiveness for intruding, but the Daughter of the Rifle is coming."Another light, slightly less foreboding than the radiation indicator, blinked on Sadish's dimmed display. A short range message, its sender obvious from the title.
A.I.M.A.S.C: Daughter of the Rifle == Ms. Rhigg. Gunpuppy was a difficult appellation to translate."Has she seen any of you? Is she coming this way?"The long-limbed shadow that was Ear swayed, shaking what Sadish presumed was its head.
"No, we are not seen. We hide, silent. She comes slowly, guided from above. She can feel the Lightbringer."Aimasc bowed her head to Ear, whispering something that was inaudible to Sadish.
"Do not hinder her. If she seems to falter in her path, you should give her a sign of direction. Would the People be prepared to guide Lightbringer to the Daughter of the Rifle, if it were necessary?"There was a sudden whining groan from the shadows that were all Sadish could see of Ear, and the elongated creature seemed to have collapsed and was burying its head between its forelimbs and shaking violently left and right.
A.I.M.A.S.C: Good news, you're being rescued. Bad news is that it might take a minute for Ear to stop being overcome with Holy Dread.There was a moment of pause, during which Aimasc was clearly leaning down and speaking softly to Ear. After a fruitless minute, the holographic Cane popped her head up again and gave Sadish an exasperated look.
A.I.M.A.S.C: It... might help if you spoke to him, but it's also possible he'd have to spend then next twenty minutes rocking back and forth reciting your scriptures if you talked to him directly. Which, entertaining as it may be to watch him decry cilantro flavored squijium as an abomination unto the Universe, would not be productive.
KhateKhate whimpered slightly. She liked her mech, and wasn't as keen being outside it. Still, if that was what it took...
The message that Sadish was alive and not in need of rescue was a little relieving, but still left Scarlet and also possibly everyone including Scarlet and Sadish in need of Sadish to live. That meant in need of rescue or not, someone was going to have to go down there and fetch their loopy Fin.
Khate felt rather nekked without her mech. Not in a lewd way, but more in a 'tragically underdressed for the murder-death-party that was surely around the next corner' kind of way. Khate loved murder-death-parties, and she'd taken every care possible to make sure that her mech made the proper statement when she walked into one. Still, considering that Sadish seemed fine (and Sadish was not a big fan of Murder Death parties, despite owning a fuckhuge mining laser) it didn't seem
that likely that Khate would immediately need to simultaneously paste a roomful of hostiles AND convince the same hostiles that DNR was the bestest show ever.
Reluctantly, Khate slipped down the opening, adjusting to the micro-gravity conditions smoothly. A fluid sense of 'down' was essential to any mercy who did a lot of work in space, otherwise, you ended up cleaning a lot of barf out of the insides of mechs, fighters, powered armor, and hair in general. It was an essential part of vehicle training that was nearly always clipped out of action shows, unless they kept it in for the comedy factor.
Khate pushed herself along in a spiraling bounce, making twisting jumps that propelled her forwards, flipped her body 180 degrees, and pushed her into the opposite side of the passage so she could make another flipping jump. It was a quick method of travel that left the arms of the suit free to shoot things if shootable things should arise around her.
Which, if Khate was quite honest, seemed more and more likely. The maintenance area she was in was nearly totally dark, with the majority of the light being provided by the flashlight built into her suit rather than the dully flickering wall panels designed to be used by the Resort's former labor crews. More than once Khate could have sworn she saw movement at the edges of her flashlight's cone, always amid tangles of ancient pipe and wiring. Phantom sounds, the metallic clatter of debris bouncing around for no good reason and occasional rasps that sounded uncannily like something clawed pushing off from the wall just beyond the reach of the light, plagued Khate. Sure, maybe the drone had cleared out the necessary amount of thematic danger, but that only worked if Khate was starring in some sort of space opera action flick. If this was a horror... Well, then she was the heavily armed competent security girl person who decided to strip off her armor as fan service, only to descend directly into a dark and forbidding tunnel with no backup where she'd be killed by the monster to show the audience how serious things were. Or, if this was neither a horror or an action, then the monster would probably have tentacles...
Those thoughts in mind, Khate nearly obliterated a coolant tank when her tech harness beeped cheerily to inform her that she had mail. Kesari had sent her little program, along with instructions that explained what it was for. Sort of. It was a very Kesari explanation that veered between simplicity and technical jargon with a frequency that left Khate rather confused. Apparently, the program was designed to find Sadish using a star (of which there were plenty, this being space) which was going to go through a tree (of which there were very few, this still being space), in order to find the path that Sadish's message had been routed through.
Khate was happily willing to admit that she had no idea how a non-existent tree with a star on it (That sounded like a cult thing) was going to find Sadish, but she didn't really care as long as it worked. Khate ran the program. The program failed to fabricate a magical homing tree or a guiding star, but it did provide directions.
Directions which Khate was immediately tempted to disregard. There was a fork in the shaft ahead. The program told her to go left, but the edge of Khate's flashlight had framed something that had looked like a pale human arm -grotesquely elongated- retreating down the right passage.
She could follow the directions of the magic invisible tree, or she could try and chase down one of the things likely responsible for kidnapping Sadish.
KesariSadish's Drone actions:
> Try to shoot a very quick signal to the relay, on our location--a modernized version of Dijkstra's algorithms to (what I presume is) Sadish's location, highlighting areas of possible breaches or pressure variations/in room areas along the path;
> Attempt braking, and convert the drone into a relay between me and Aubrey. If possible, get full intel on what's going on and begin interfacing with what I can--boosting Boris/Aubrey's tech capabilities, or sending through any aid I can. Preferring manipulation/disruption of their power grid (or at least controlling their systems and transferring it to Aubrey)
Getting Sadish's drone to work on an immediate search algorithm was a stroke of genius. The internal signal relays on board the Reunion were laid in a theoretically optimal configuration, which, when one took into account the damage on board the section of the ship Sadish was (probably?) in, meant that the search tree of relays that Sadish's signal could have bounced through was of a very reasonable and highly local depth.
Problematically, there was no way Kesari had to test the relays that were on the tree. All nodes in the search space were isolated from the rest of the Reunion, if they weren't then Sadish's message would have gone through fine and the problem would be as trivial as just calling Sadish or pinging her suit. The nodes that needed to be searched were of a contiguous set that was on the Reunion's blueprints, but no longer connected to the main grid of relays. Searching each one would be trivial if the drone was still there in person...
A faint, flickering signal caught Kari's eye. Khate was in the abandoned area. She was off on her own, but still close enough that she could still send and receive with acceptable levels of corruption. Kesari sent Khate the entire tracking packet, appending instructions and explanations afterward. Khate could work through the dead section, though she'd be just as lost, communications wise, if she went much deeper.
Files transferred, Kesari continued working on trying to get the drone to just
slow down. Unfortunately, the drone operated on very small scale low impulse drives when it wasn't near enough to an object to drag itself along magnetically. The drone was slowing, but it did not do so quickly or easily. Braking in space was hard.
Regardless of that, attempting to contact Aubrey using the drone was a complete failure. The drone was a very, very tiny piece of equipment compared to the Reunion. It was likely less than one percent the size of the Reunion's phased broadcast array, and while it was well made, it couldn't really hope to compete at stellar distances. It sent a signal, and that signal probably reached the Nosoi, but it was extremely doubtful that it made it through the Nosoi's shields in any intelligible form.
It did, however, result in Sadish's drone getting pegged with a weapon's lock from the Nosoi.
Kari began to wonder whether it was a good idea to keep touching the drones controls.
ScarletScarlet looked for a couple things; firstly, something that might keep her patched over for the next few minutes. A way to boost up her nanites a bit more safely, or some plain old antibiotics; chances were that this thing, being an incredibly complex and dangerous programmable bioweapon of some sort, was probably resistant to, but it couldn't hurt. Second step was to find Sadish's notes on this thing and how to counteract it if at all possible.
Getting Cass' hand out of her shirt was not as easy as Scarlet hoped. The nanites coursing through her blood were very much of the kind of advanced technology that Scarlet hadn't much wanted to fuck with, and they'd never had any problems before that required maintenance. They took care of themselves, derived their energy from her own biology, and generally did their thing without Scarlet so much as thinking about them. The energized saline was probably helping them, though it burned like a bitch in every vein, and Scarlet didn't have anything on hand that would fulfill a similar role.
What she did have was a shitload of antibiotics of various flavors. It was a big galaxy out there, with a shitload of diseases that had developed in relative isolation, and only a great fool set foot on a new world without her immune system roided up to the point where it could probably kill a small horse if left to its own devices. Scarlet grabbed one auto-injector, handed another to Cass, and went to work giving her right thigh a brand new set of track marks while Cass followed suit on her left. It would probably only buy her minutes at best, but that was what her life was measured in at this point.
Varkonius laid his Panther down on one of the open tables, settling her gently. The panther would need help, but if Scarlet was any kind of vet at all (she wasn't) she'd guess the animal still had a considerably better chance of making to tomorrow than she did. Varkonius leaned over the panther and cooed to her, leaving Scarlet to unsteadily wobble past the sectioned off infirmary area and over to Sadish's 'lab' section. The Fin had to have made notes, and maybe, just maybe, there was something Scarlet could use to survive until Khate brought Sadish back.
Scarlet pushed past the racks separating the patient beds from the lab, and found it not quite as she remembered. Most of Sadish's tables were covered in fibrous tendrils of green and brown, all emanating outwards from a single large box from which sprouted a four-foot tall mushroom with a long, thin cap. The tendrils had pushed dozens of small objects of the tables, and the thin tips wiggled like feelers as Scarlet watched. A particularly ropy set of tendrils had buried themselves in Sadish's lab fridge, which was partially open and dripping a thick, honey-like substance.
"So, where is the doc? I didn't bring my baby here to wa-" Varkonius stopped, his mouth open, as he walked up behind Scarlet.
"Err, why do you have a giant mushroom? Please tell me that isn't your doctor's assistant or something equally ridiculous."Varkonius stepped forward, toeing past some unseen line. The tips of the fine tendrils emanating from the central mushroom twitched, pointed directly at Varkonius, and then went deathly still.
Terrible, terrible memories suddenly rose in Scarlet's mind. Memories of an excited Sadish being fascinated to discover numerous animals encysted in amber at the base of giant mushrooms. There wasn't a lot of strength left in Scarlet's body, but she used what she had to try and tackle Varkonius backward.
It wasn't much of a tackle, more of a slightly forceful fall, but it was enough to knock Varkonius back and send both of them prone- just in time to watch the mushroom split open. The mantle of the mushroom was not one piece, it was an illusion created by two bladed mantis arms tucked tightly beneath a downturned triangular head. The mushroom-mantis thrashed horribly, keening and raking its clawed arms through the air where Scarlet and Varkonius had just been standing. It couldn't quite reach them while they were on the ground, but it was too damn close for comfort.
The creature was much smaller than the one that they'd had to kill on Procython Prime, and its body was still rooted to its container by a mushroom stalk, but it was rather unmistakably a half-grown fungal mantis. Why it was there was anyone's guess. Probably because God was an asshole and had decied that was what Scarlet needed to deal with right now.
"What the fuck is that and why do you have it in an infirmary?!" Varkonius shouted, scooting back along the floor and drawing out three small spheres from a hip pouch.
"Screw that, why the fuck do you have that thing AT ALL?!"
AubreyGet up to the one visible explosive charge and if it seems probable that I can detach it “safely” then detach it and get it to King Boris. If time is available, search the 2 dead mercies for a gun that is more powerful than what I might have on me… Then/otherwise prepare for the assault by getting into cover and hiding. Assault tactics will consist of 1/ cloaking 2/ trying to mindhack the Cleaner’s weaponry to attack itself or just blow up and then 3/ trying to mindhack the Cleaner’s defences down to immobilise and vulnerabilise it. If King Boris looks in danger, than fly madly about in a highly distracting (to the Cleaner) way. Use hit and run tactics as much as possible whilst keeping up my electronic assault. Don’t panic! It would be nice to also cut the Cleaner’s communications back to the Nosoi, but this isn’t a priority.
Aubrey made jumping flap up to the explosive charge that the Sarraki had placed on the bulkhead, her wounded wing sending another spray of fine red droplets across the floor of the cargo hold. It was an ungainly leap, and Aubrey made it only by clawing onto the demolition charge with the arms of her tech harness and holding herself there. Detaching the charge was a simple matter -it was a bomb designed for work, not sabotage and terrorism-, but the fall back to the ground was made abrupt when Aubrey's injured wing failed to open into a gliding position when prompted.
Aubrey was light, and the fall damaged her pride more than her body, but it was a rather stark reminder that her wing needed medical attention, and she was going to be nearly ground-bound until such time as she could get it looked at. She tossed the explosive charge to Boris, who applied it to Sarraki (over the Fin's rather shrill objections), a moment before the airlock in the ceiling clicked open and dropped what Aubrey presumed was the Cleaner onto the floor of the cargo hold.
As it fell from the ceiling, it was a silver sphere approximately a meter in radius. For that brief moment when it was still in the air, it seemed to be made of featureless and flawless metal. Yet it deformed when it hit the ground. It hit like a ball of soft clay, the sphere deforming at the bottom and spreading out flat across the floor. The metal surface segmented at the point of impact, revealing itself to be comprised of hundreds upon hundreds of angular metal pieces that could fit together without seam, and were carried along by an underlying substrate of...
Flesh? The material beneath the metal, revealed as the cleaner spread out across the floor, looked soft, wet, dull grey-blue, and organic. The pile tensed, then reversed its spreading flow, rising into a pillar of metal and sinew. The floor where it had withdrawn from was rather distinctly clean and shiny, as though rasped clean by metal files.
Aubrey reached out to disable the Cleaner's weapons, to disable its sensors, to do
something, but she found nothing. She could sense the field of a living creature, that chaotic and disordered haze that was beyond her abilities to manipulate- beyond the abilities of anyone and anything except for the post-apex. The Cleaner, as it were, was running analog. It didn't have a computer in it, or anything running a kind of circuit she could manipulate.
Without warning, without a sound other than the rasp of the bulk of its formless body leaving the floor, the Cleaner reared up and lunged like an enormous snake.
BorisBoris ran the possibilities through his mind and found no ideal option. He made his decision.
'We've come too far to back down now. We attack.'
Fling the Fin, possibly strapped with explosives (ideally in a way that won't blow us all to space, though), at whatever horror comes through that door. Throw other stuff or punch as needed. If we don't die horribly, advance into the Nosoi with the explosives! Victory or death!
While Aubrey was staring at the rising cleaner like it had just stolen her lunch money in order to buy a knife to murder her dog with, Boris made some minor adjustments to the explosive. Specifically, he toned the charge power down by about half (in order to avoid blowing apart the inside of the Freighter with the force of a 16" kinetic driver round), detached the then unused explosives and tucked them into his exosuit, and then set the bomb on a five-second timer.
By the time the Cleaner had reared up to strike, Boris had already grabbed Sarraki and hurled him at the abomination's bulk.
Sarraki's screaming body hit the Cleaner like a marble striking putty. The Cleaner folded up around him, its angular metal plates reforming and interlocking like the blades of an
industrial shredder, with Sarraki at their heart. The sight of the Fin being pulled into the newly formed churning metal maw was short-lived, lasting only for two or three seconds before it vanished in a ball of white light.
The blast wave knocked Boris off his feet, deafening him and propelling him into one of the pillars supporting the catwalk he'd originally leaped from. The pillar bent before Boris' back did, but the impact still crushed the wind from his lungs.
Aubrey appeared more fortunate, flattening to the ground before the blast hit and sliding past Boris like a feathered puck.
As for the Sarraki and the Cleaner... Sarraki seemed to have suffered a total existence failure. There was no trace of the Fin left. As for the Cleaner, much of it seemed either pancaked into the floor plating or reduced to globules scattered in corners. Bits of twisted metal, the remains of its piecemeal armor, were scattered all around and embedded into various surfaces. The destruction was enough to bring a brutal grin to Boris' face.
A grin which slid off quickly when the remaining bits of the Cleaner began to quiver and move. Any globule larger than a pinky nail formed into a ball and began rolling towards the center of the blast, leaving tracks of clean floor behind them. The main bulk of the Cleaner that had been below the explosion, the part that had been hammered into the floor, quivered and rose, reforming and twisting as more bits of itself returned to the fold.
By the time Boris had enough of his breath back to stand, the Cleaner had reformed into an amorphous pillar, slightly larger than half of its original size. It twisted and roiled, pulling in more bent and twisted metal pieces from its surface and reshaping them into their original form. In seconds, it would be fully reformed, if substantially smaller.
A sudden shock went through Boris, lifting the hair on his arms that Mickaw hadn't singed off. A Bore charge, and a messy one. The Nosoi was moving for the Reunion
now.
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Topic: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat. (Read 53128 times)