RP (non-canon) Hunting rumors and ghosts

[Tylium]

-Rough landing-

Nathaniel awoke hearing the voice of a woman screaming his name. He felt like something had just collided with him at tremendous speed. All his bones screamed out in pain. Seconds passed while he collected himself before he remembered he should respond that he was okay. “Y-yeah?” he replied while having trouble masking the pain. “I’m okay, just feel like I was dropped from several stories up.” His suit was quickly assessing the damage but came back negative. Whatever happened, it did no damage to the suit itself.

“Ah, good to hear you are alright. You disappeared from our sensors for quite some time. Did you make it safely to the surface?” The female voice replied again over the radio. He remembered that this was the voice of his commanding officer, but for some reason, her face and name escaped his mind.

“Yeah, I’m down on the surface, must have blacked out for a moment because I don't remember landing here.” His mind was hazy, while he could remember the mission, a simple recon job on a uncharted planet, he could just not remember anything from the last couple of hours, as if they did not happen. “How long was I off the grid?” He replied, the question of his missing memory had to wait till after the mission. It could just be a glitch in his brain.

“Thirty minutes, no static or anything else out of the ordinary, you where just gone. You sure you’re alright?”

“Having some trouble with my memory, last couple of hours are vague to say the least, suit checks out fine though. Running a diagnostic on my body but nothing so far.” Feeling the need to reassure his commanding officer he replied again. “I’m fine, don't worry about me. Now tell me, what are we looking for on this planet? I know you are hiding something from me.” Nathaniel carefully looked around him to get a idea of his surroundings and possible dangers.

“There have been a lot of rumors that mercenaries, and other shady groupings are talking about this place as if it is haunted. We where in the area, so the higher-ups asked us to check it out.” The voice replied calmly enough for Nathaniel to understand she did not believe these rumors.

Nathaniel turned around and looked at his surroundings. “Well, guess I have to inspect the area then, I take it the others are doing fine?” he referred to the other soldiers that landed on the planet. The woman did not reply back, the HUD however, did suddenly display the information of the other soldiers and their relative location to him. “Guess she is busy.” He said to himself as he made his way deeper into the woods.

His suit scanned each centimeter of his surroundings as if the worst kind of enemy could hide behind the next leaf or flower. Nathaniel got so annoyed by the constant stream of messages appearing on his HUD that he turned off the verbose messaging and set his suit to only notify positive hits. The woods started to get thicker and thicker and he suddenly realized that he could not see further then several meters. “Excellent place for an ambush…” he muttered, just as he finished his suit alerted him to a nearby contact.

 

[Tylium]

High above the planet the rebuild Gunship Abedah rolled gently around while basking in the warm glow of the binary stars of the system. She was an old and battered hulk of a ship but still space-worthy. Her hull was littered by the impacts from the same asteroid field that cost her current crew their own ship and nearly their lives. Most of her weapons where either smashed or inoperable but she still had some teeth left.

“You think you have everything you need Elera?” Captain Yumiko said while she floated above the Neko mechanic. Elera was slightly smaller then the captain but with a much more stocky build. As if she was designed to be a grease monkey
“If this is everything we can spare captain, I will make do.” Elera said while she dove deeper in the bulkhead.
“That does answer my question” Yumiko replied. Why cant you just speak your mind? She wondered. Her mechanic was a handful at times, she followed orders when asked without question but she tended to leave a bitter aftertaste in her mouth whenever she had to deal with her. She was terrific at her job, there wasnt anything she could not fix and better yet she wasn't afraid to get down and dirty like some other mechanics she served with in the past. No Elera was a mechanic that could hold her own and do her job under any circumstance.
“Doesn’t it? This ship is a pile of droppings from all kinds of filthy animals and held together by sheer magic alone. I asked for the items, they supplied me with everything I needed. Now I only ne… AH CRAP!” Elera bolted out of the bulkhead and grabbed something from her toolkit and dove back in.
“Elera?” Yumiko asked. But only a banging noise was heard.
“Captain?” Elera said from within the bulkhead. “Might want to hang on to something”
She did as her Mechanic told her and braced herself. Elera tended to downplay things but never in a way that endangered the crew. Within seconds it felt like an elephant was sitting on her shoulders. Her knee’s braced her for as much as they could but everything felt heavy. And just like the weight had come it subsided again.
Elera crawled out of the bulkhead and tossed her a small piece of tech. “Regulator, if we had turned on the gravity in this room we would have been flattened like a can.” Elera stretched out and picked up a piece of plastic that lied on the floor. “Fixed now, but don't try and turn this in some room to do gravity training in or anything. There is only one setting now and that is 1g. Anything else and you either repel something into the ceiling, or crush it on the deck itself. And you know I don't like cleaning.”
“So the shuttle-bay is now actually usable. Now if we only had a shuttle…” Yumiko stepped further into the large bay, without anything in it is was sure a lot of useless space.
“Well as this is a Elysian ship can’t Nathaniel not play for shuttle?” Elera closed the hatch and packed her stuff.
“Not funny.” Yumiko replied.
“Thought it was, always wanted to know how it felt riding on the back of those soft feathery pillows.”
Yumiko shrugged. Nathaniel and Elera got along pretty good since the start of their mission. A bit too good if you asked her. “I’m going to see what else is wrong on the ship.”
“What else?” Elera replied with a sarcastic tone. “I’d visit the medbay if I where you, you’re starting to speak nonsense.” She lifted her pack and stepped outside of the bay before the captain. “I’ll have a report on our current state done in half an hour. Expect a lot of words…”

Yumiko finished her trip around the ship without any problems. But every part of the ship showed some form of disrepair. She just hoped their mission would be over without any fighting. They where in no shape to fight anything bigger then a small scout.
“Anything from the ground-party?” She said when she entered the bridge. Two officers sat at their consoles and alternated between looking at their screens and fixing the consoles themselves. Not even the bridge was safe from broken stuff. It was a miracle that so much actually worked.
“Nothing yet sir, Hold on…” The redheaded Separa’shan medical officer franticly opened her console and then quickly close it.
“Anything wrong Charis?” Yumiko said.
“Nathaniel just disappeared” She replied back. She reopened the console and closed it again two more times. “Nathaniel, come in Nathaniel.” She waited for a few seconds but only shook her head. “No response captain”
“That cant be good, Nathaniel isn't one to keep quiet. Unless he is running stealth” Yumiko scratched her head. Something felt odd. Nathaniel wouldn't disappear without a message even a single text message would expected to be send before going dark. “How about the rest of them?”
Charis looked back at her console monitoring the vitals of the three other people they send to the planet. “Green across the board, some elevated heartrates but that is to be expected”
“Miko, send them the coordinates of Nathaniel, Just in case we need them to help him out.”
Miko sat on the other end of the room. She was a buxom looking Neko with short pink hair and pale skin. Charis beat her on the paleness though. But she did not have any freckles like Miko. Miko overlooked the coordination of the soldiers and relayed messages between them and the captain if needed. When the captain was not around she had full reign over the people she overlooked as long as she kept to the mission parameters the captain set.
“Done” She replied. “Nothing new to report. Area’s appear to be devoid of all life within several clicks.”
“All life? That is odd. I would expect some small animals to be detected” Yumiko Wondered how much their intel was correct. At this point they where hunting ghosts far away on the fringes of known space.

Half an hour passed, during which Miko and Charis reported several unusual readings. The planet seemed to be teeming with life but the sensors on the suits had a hard time detecting it. The reason behind it seemed to be that the animals seemed to emit small amounts of radiation that masked them when they hid in vegetation as that emitted the same kind of radiation.
“So we have planet with ghost animals that appear out of nowhere, guess the rumors about this place being haunted are correct.” Yumiko had placed herself in the chair next to Miko and both of them where trying to find a way to detect things. At this point they only ran into small critters and animals that resembled deer and a small form of tiger. Nothing that was threatening to the people down on the planet. But the animals had a reason to adopt this kind of stealth. So the predators could be extremely scary.
“Sir, Nathaniel just popped back up on my monitor. Life signs indicate he is dazed.” Charis replied.
“Nathaniel, Come in, Nathaniel! NATHANIEL!” Yumiko blared through the mic on her earpiece hoping that screaming would snap him out of it.
“Y-yeah?” Nathaniel replied back.
Yumiko noticed he sounded like he was in a great deal of pain.
“I’m okay, just feel like I was dropped from several stories up.” Nathaniel replied before she could ask him if he was okay.
“Ah, good to hear you are alright. You disappeared from our sensors for quite some time. Did you make it safely to the surface?” Yumiko said while gesturing Charis to check his vitals.
“Yeah, I’m down on the surface, must have blacked out for a moment because I don't remember landing here.” Nathaniel said over the comms “How long was I off the grid?”
“Thirty minutes, no static or anything else out of the ordinary, you where just gone. You sure you’re alright?” Yumiko said while looking at the readout of his vitals. Nothing seemed to be off. What happened down there…
“Having some trouble with my memory, last couple of hours are vague to say the least, suit checks out fine though. Running a diagnostic on my body but nothing so far.” he replied back. “I’m fine, don't worry about me. Now tell me, what are we looking for on this planet? I know you are hiding something from me.”
Yumiko was relieved that Nathaniel’s mind was still working like it should be. “There have been a lot of rumors that mercenaries, and other shady groupings are talking about this place as if it is haunted. We where in the area, so the higher-ups asked us to check it out.” She did not believe in the rumors and the current events with the hidden animals showed that it was nothing more then a rumor. Ghosts don't exist.
Suddenly her face felt a sharp impact. When she turned around to see what it was. She noticed that there was a large hole in ceiling. Emergency forcefields had already kept the air from flowing out but the metal was still burning white hot. Elera is going to be pissed… was the first thing that came to her mind. The second thing that came into her mind was that of a imminent danger. “Battle-stations! Set condition 1 throughout the ship! We are under attack! Radio the planetside crew about our situation.”
“Elera to the bridge, Cap’n, bastard just shot our main radio arrays. I'm heading to engineering to see if I cant fix it someway. But judging by the location of the holes and the type of weapon, they knew what they where aiming for.”
“Well that is convenient…” Yumiko said while she sat into her chair. Her consoles displayed that the shield where fully active. One of the only things the ship had still going for it. “Ready weapon systems and try to find out where those shots came from.”
“Those seemed to be railgun impacts. But judging from the damage they did and going straight through the hull, the gun has to be enormous. Sensors however, come up negative.” Miko’s second job aboard the ship was handling the weaponsystems and targeting. Her expertise in weapons came in handy when dealing with smugglers and mercs that generally used modified weapons.
“Great, no backup and no idea what attacked us.” Yumiko bit her thumb. Her ship was undergunned, understaffed and in no shape to fight anything. But somehow she needed to find a way out of this and keep her crew safe. “Turn the ship about. Use the computer to calculate the trajectory of the shells based on the damaged systems and put us between the planet and whatever is shooting us” A few more crewmembers rushed onto the bridge and sat down at their posts.

In space the battered Abedah lurched into action and burned away into the dark side of the planet. Her crew still safe in her hold. Deep in the vastness of the system a large cruiser slowly made its way towards the planet. Its main gun pointing straight towards the Abedah.

 

[Tylium]

The proximity sensor started pulsing faster and faster as the distance between Nathaniel and whatever was comming towards him became closer and closer. Whatever it was, it caused a sudden outbreak in silence in the woods, and he did not like the feeling that crept up his spine. Whatever was comming towards him caused his entire body to tremble as if he was some kind of animal that was being stalked by a predator. He carefully pointed his wrist mounted weapon on his right arm towards the approaching contact. He felt that there was no sense wasting valuable energy in his rifle when he had something that could feed from the reactor of his suit.
“Come on, show me what you are” He muttered from behind his helmet.
The woods suddenly turned extremely quiet and the contact stopped moving towards him. He could hear a low snarling sound coming from just deeper in the Forrest. It sounded big, to carry the snarl for this far, meant that it was no small beast. But he felt relieved, it was just an animal. The suit however, had some tremendous problems identifying it. But there seemed to be some consensus about the size, it seemed to be roughly as high as him, but much wider. The suit couldn't make heads or tails from the reading and displayed more errors on every query then he was used to. Suddenly he braced himself as the snarl picked up in volume and started moving around his position. There was no question about it now, this beast was hunting him.
“Begone beast.” Nathan raised his wrist mounted pulse cannon at the location, and fired three shots at low power at the general location of the beast. He was not interested in killing it and thus tried to keep the power as minimal as possible. He also guessed the shots would be too low in power to be detected by anything further then 20 clicks of his current position and that was if they where actively looking with sensors. But the beast wouldn't know that. No the beast would see three streaks of light smashing through the vegetation and burning through anything in their path. But instead of hearing a scared yelp and the sudden movement away from him, the contact roared in anger and slowly made its way towards him.
“So, you need some more persuasion?” He fired four more shots at the location, now aiming for them to impact just in front of the contact. The only reaction was an even angrier roar, and what sounded as a hammer smashing against the trees.

Suddenly the suit showed a general outline of the beast, just before it came into view itself. Nathan grinned to himself as he eyed the beast and could feel his heart pounding. The beast looked like a massive crab, with forearms as big as a fully grown person but as wide as a door. The pincers on those arms also looked like they helped both with crawling over the forest floor, as well as crushing anything they could grab. They seemed to move slowly compared to the four muscular but stubby legs on its abdomen. The legs where covered in thick chitinous armor and each seemed to have at least three sharp claws on their end. The beasts forehead looked like a crab viewed from the top. Where normally the legs would be located was a separate piece and split in half to cover its mouth. The wider area that would normally be the front of the crab jutted out on top to form some kind of crown, the eyes seemed to be the same beady eyes a crab would have but these where as red as rubies and hidden between the upper and lower faceplate. All of its armored parts where covered in spikes and other sharp edges and covered in a green blueish color, with the edges being white. The whole look and feel of the beast looked like the horror equivalent of a NMX Crab. And its made Nathaniel rather uneasy.
“Oh, you are one ugly puppy.” Nathaniel said while he kept his weapon aimed straight at the beast.
It did however do nothing but snarl at him for what seemed to be an eternity. It moved only slightly to the sides, only to return back to its original location. Nathaniel did notice that the plates on its back seemed to shift as if they covered something underneath them.

Nathan had enough of this beasts boasting. Either it was the apex predator on this planet and did not fear him, or it was just a mindless monster and thus not care. He raised his weapons power to normal settings and aimed straight for the head and let off a single well aimed burst.
The beast however took the hits to its face without flinching. The only thing this caused, was a small amount of smoke comming off the armor and two small darker spots. The other shots seemed to have dissipated without leaving a mark.
Nathaniel quickly activated his right wristblade and slashed the creature straight across its face from left to right. This affected the beast much more, its flesh screamed when the white-hot blade came into contact with it and the beast let out a pained shriek and staggered backwards. A large scar was now formed on the beasts face and dark blood was dripping out of the places where the wound had not been cauterized completely. The beast stepped back again when he pointed the blade back at it and snarled and then slowly turned around, and made its way into the forest.

Nathaniel was puzzeled what this was all about. Did he just prove that he wasn’t a prey, or did the beast just wanted to test its strength on Nathaniel. He made a mental note to worry about this later. He doubted that this was the last time he had seen that... thing.

“Albedah, I have something you might want to see.” Nathaniel’s suit tried to establish contact with the ship but only came back with a error about not being able to establish contact. “What the…” The errors also displayed the location where it expected the ship to be now and showed that the ship had moved from its location. This alarmed Nathaniel but he quickly openned a channel to Dane. Dane was another soldier that came down to this planet and had been a sparring partner for Nathaniel since the crew was assembled. Dane was a minkan just as Nathaniel but held him in respect due to his Elysian herritage and also due to the fact that Nathaniel was one of the few people on the crew that matched him in CQC.
“Seen anything Nathan” Dane said over the radio.
“Just got attacked by a large beast. I’ll send you the data. Can you transmit it further to the other two?” Nathan prepared a small datapackage with video and telemetry data from the fight he was just in. He hoped that this beast was one of its kind but just in case it wasn’t he wanted the others to be prepared. When the package was ready he transmitted it to Dane. “Be careful when you encounter one of these, they seem to be able to take a tremendous beating.”
“You don’t say.” Dane said back over the radio. His voice betraying the astonishment he felt from watching the data.
“One other thing, I cant seem to contact the Abedah anymore.” Nathaniel said.