LSDF Akahar, Bridge
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Röyksopp - And The Forest Began To Sing ♫
Keib drummed his fingers along the panel of his chair, his foot tapped on the floor as he watched things unfold on screen. He heard the Freespacer's input, but didn't formulate a response. It was a compelling observation - but what if they were wrong? "I'm afraid not, Pratima. It's too dangerous already. Recall your units on the Hull of the Akahar immediately."
The comms soon called and Keib looked at the screen.
Code:
AK: I've got something. I don't think you're going to like it.
AK: I'll be with you in a moment but I think you should come down here.
AK: Confidentiality is of the upmost importance at this point.
MK: I understand. See you in a moment.
"Miri, take control for a moment. Speed's of priority," Keib directed to the New Tur'listan Bridge Bunny as he rose from his seat. "I need to stretch my legs."
"Understood, Keib," Miri replied, nodding back at him and taking control of the situation. "Away team, proceed!"
LCS Mok'Ro, Aft Engineering, Deck Two
"Ah-Understood." Al'ris had finally gathered her wits and took point with Bastion, "Come on, Soft Touch, Yar'mak, Veronica, we have orders to move!"
"Yes Ma'am!" Yar'mak raised his LMG and pivoted, jogging across the engineering bay to meet with Gough, and the two moved ahead together. He was afraid of what would happen if that corpse in the hallway started following them again.
The team proceeded through a shorter corridor and to their immediate left was a staircase and ramp system. They double-timed down the stairs, turning corners until they hit the 'ground floor' at Deck 5. The access to the Main Cargo Storage that took up a majority of the space in the Mok'ro was wide open. It seemed to have been in the process of opening or closing, but the mechanisms jammed halfway through, providing more than enough access for the entire team.
LCS Mok'Ro, Main Cargo Storage Area
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Super Metroid - Maridia, Rocky Underwater Area ♫
This was the belly of this space leviathan, in was the contents of its former crew's takings. Cargo containers were stacked upon each other - occasionally in haphazard piles, some larger or smaller than others. It was easy to climb upon them with the lack of gravity weighing the Away Team down.
Gough looked at the nearest cargo container, "Hey, it looks like it's melting." The way the container was partially sunk into the ground.
"What about what was in it?" Yar'mak asked, looking at the container and scratching his head, then looking at the floor around it. How it blended and melted together in rivulets like something out of a surreal painting didn't set the Llmanel's mind at ease. "I'd say it'd be a good idea to stay off of the floor then."
"We'll use thrusters to glide over it or walk along the walls." Al'ris said, feathering her jets to rise into space, little puffs of thrust correcting her. The WIND armours with GUST attachments had similar capabilities to control space movement. Otherwise, the walls to either side of this massive cargo bay could be walked along.
"I'll take the left wall and keep you covered," Gough said as he floated along the floor and bumped into the wall. He grabbed onto it and reoriented himself, his relative 'down' now sideways to the others with the aid of magnetic boots. He walked up until he was at deck 4's height to provide overwatch. "I can see you all. Proceed."
"Copy that." Al'ris nodded as she and Yar'mak started floating forwards, guns up.
LSDF Akahar, Aiesu Kalopsia's Room
After a minute's walk with long strides towards Aiesu's sanctum, Keib would notice something when he entered: The thick rack servers she'd been using in her private chambers: One of the blades out on the table in pieces connected to the decking which she'd gone to the trouble of peeling, revealing the pipework.
What had been a bed-chamber had quickly become a server-farm, even the lower bunk full of equipment with only a thin space to walk through and a single chair opposite where she sat with the equipment on that lower bunk laid out already for him. Upon entering, the door locked automatically behind him, presumably as per her own instruction and the dim place of pinpricks of green and red flickering with the whirring of equipment gained a semblence of real light as the ceiling lit the room.
"Ms. Kalopsia," Keib greeted her, laconic as he stood dimly lit amongst all of the machinery. "Taking cues from the Freespacers?" His neck pivoted and gazed around the room, settling on the spare chair and then swivelling back to Aiesu. He moved over to the chair and sat down on it, before letting his gaze level with the woman.
"Something like that." she said, her gaze taking on warmth as she parted herself from the hardware long enough to speak. "I think I see what the appeal of the vessel was now. This of course doesn't bode well for any of us. We've been issued with instructions to subdue it and ensure it doesn't activate the Moro'ko's FTL systems. The easiest way to do that obviously would be to destroy them -- but doing that without destroying the hull is going to be difficult. The secondary objective you're not going to like."
"First of all, what is -it-, exactly?" Keib interjected. "The Freespacers think some sort of-"
"Life, Keib. Its life. But not life as we know it. Its totally unlike anything in known space... With a single exception."
Keib rested his head on his hand rubbed his fingers through his goatee. "Who?"
"What I'm about to tell you absoloutely cannot ever leave this room under any circumstances, whatsoever. But I trust you. Remember during the war, the last rush the Mishhu made for Yamatai?" Keib nodded to her.
"Something delayed their battle-group, giving Yamatai time to form a blockade. Nobody really knows what happened. It arguably saved Yamatai from total bombardment."
Keib's eyebrows raised. "That sounds like the stuff of legends, or cryptozoolgics. Forgive me if I'm a bit sceptical."
"That's fine. What actually happened was they were intercepted. Aetheric interdiction: We don't really know how to do it yet but whatever did it, did a good job of it. Unfortunately the craft in question was unable to continue FTL movement -- and neither were the battle-group so you can imagine how upset they were when they realised they couldn't make it to the party in time. We found the wreckage on some desert world about six months later. Does the name Maras ring any bells with you? The vessel that the fugitive Miles Gunn was aboard?"
"I've ... heard the name but no. The rest escapes me."
"The craft in question was biological in nature. Well, biomechanical would be a better descriptor though the mechanical components were all made by the biological parts, the same way a crab makes its own shell. The genome structure was unlike anything we'd found prior."
"What sort of energy would be required for a being so large? It violates square-cube. You'd need an immense amount of energy or a very, very broad diet at the subatomic level spread through your entire surface area."
"Unfortunately we still don't know the answer to that question... Though what we found is quickly becoming the basis of our innovations. The maesus computer. Structol. Quasicrystalline components? They're all by-products of what we found."
Keib looked at the few available patches of bare wall in his ship. He'd put some of those things into his ship knowingly without really knowing what was in them. Only that they had the branding and advertising power behind them. "Do they have a name, these... things?"
"Our working title is Sourcian. Mostly from one of the living specimens when Lor originally discovered the craft. Its actually not what it calls itself: 'it' doesn't commit language like we do -- but we had to come up with a name."
"So, what then is the second thing," Keib shifted in his seat, wobbling back and forth before his gut settled.
"Well obviously you're here to subdue it for pickup. But if a sample can be retrieved or communication with it achieved, that would be rewarded in spades. Picture it -- your entire crew: Everything you ever wanted, all of you set up for life. Whatever debts you have, wiped clean. If your name is unspeakable in circles, we make you a new identity. At least, that's what I'm being told."
"We're going for the ARIA Core - it's SOP when we deal with retrieval on salvage. Would that suffice?"
"The ARIA core is actually a maesus computer. Same as I am" she said, tapping her own temple. "Same as yours is. So yes: Given whats happening its almost guarenteed that it has attempted to communicate with the ship. I'd even go as far as to say it has attempted to assimilate with the ship, to learn from it... And unfortunately its crew."
"I'm more worried about my crew on that ship. It's talking to them."
"You have people on the Moro'ko?"
He nodded.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I was upfront with them going there from the first second."
A slow sigh tickled through the tiny body sat opposite Keib.
"At least tell me they're in power-armour of some sort and not just vac-suits."
He nodded. "There's hard vacuum, possibility for hazards. Of course."
"Good. Are any of them fitted for demolition?"
"Yar'mak and Kam'kebek are, my Heavy and Tech Sentry respectively."
"We need to perform a controlled destruction of the Mok'ro's FTL systems. The destruction has to be total but contained, otherwise our subject may repair the engines. We only get one shot at this and we'll immediately be designated as hostile if we do this... So I say we try to retrieve the ARIA first. You only need the head, not the whole body, though the spine and the head would be ideal because of the secondary storage systems."
"Then we blast its FTL out so it can't move. What happens then? Take it with us or leave it?"
"No, we'll be returning for pickup. At that point, you're to rendevous with the Talana -- another Mynoded class vessel for decontamination and debrefing."
"I'd better head up and change my game plan then. My team should be halfway through the Cargo on their way to the ARIA now. FTL wouldn't be far off."
"Got it. Again, I want you to be absoloutely sure: The demolition has to be controlled and timed: If the vessel splits in two, it could choose to self destruct the powerplant of the Mok'ro as a defensive measure -- Which... In doing so, would mean the contamination has already been spread to other passing vessels. So what we're essentially dealing with is a spore or a method of self-propegation."
"What contamination?"
"The life-form."
Keib remembered those horrifying images. "Fuck no," he mumbled.
"We'll be scuttling whatever gear your people return in. We can't have it onboard ship. Push comes to shove, if any crew are contaminated, we'll probably have to scuttle them too. Why the reaction? What have you seen?"
He showed Aiesu a video of what Merrill had seen. It was talking.
"Huh... Interesting. Do you have any more of this?"
"About a minute's worth of audio, video and scanning data from each boots on the ship."
"Keep be informed and updated. Anything new, send it my way. The more raw data I have to play with, the better my conclusions are goingto be and the safer your crew are going to be."
"I understand." He stood up and despite his short stature for a New Tur'lista, he still dwarfed Aiesu. "I should go."
"One thing."
"Yeah?"
"Under no circumstances whatsoever should this vessel or its crew come within one kilometer of the Mok'ro. Those you've already sent you should already be considering losses. Though... Provided your mission goes off quickly enough though, we should be able to recover contaminated crew: I'm optimistic we can probably recover 40% of the Mor'ko's crew from the hull for later questioning. They're still alive. Sort of."
"I'll be frank." Those words... "That's perhaps the most encouragement I've gotten for this venture since it fell in my lap. I'll be sure to deliver quickly," he smiled.
"If they undergo total contamination for more than 48 hours, based on the data we had for the Maras, they'll be non-recoverable. It takes seven hours for our recovery vessel to arrive as of the end of your mission since its still dealing with a prior engagement."
"It's already been half an hour." Keib walked towards the door until his nose was an inch away from it, "I'll see to it that the next half hour finishes this."
Aiesu didn't nod, her expression becoming glassy and statue-esque again. The door opened.
"Keib?"
He turned around, head over shoulder.
"Good luck. I mean it."
He smiled back at her sideways and looked ahead to leave. There was no going back now.
♫
Descent: Freespace -- briefing #3 ♫
