[M] Galactic Empires II

[dakkagor]

“To replicate. I know they need…” Sayori twitched a muscle in her cheek. “Bodies...but they must need metals, plastics, oils...this place looks like it hasn’t been touched.”

Davrry paused, and scratched at his stubble. Sayori noted that he didn't take his eyes of the corridor, but his furrowed brow told her her question had hit home on something.

"The others laugh at this." Davrry sniffed, then gestured for the party to move forwards again. "But I've been out in the corridors more than them. Seen them without them seeing me. Sometimes, I swear, its like they fight over territory. Resources. There is a hierarchy a. . .an ecosystem for want of a better word. They don't fight hard. More like the threat displays of buck deer. But if this area is untouched. . . "

He ran a hand over an undamaged fuse box.

"Means something really bad is down here. An alpha."

+++++

Winters finished dumping decoy bodies, some only kept together by their suits, into the shuttle. It was difficult to tell if they had been Lyran, Human or Kel'cyre. Two were Charabidian, in pilot suits. They had never even made it to a ship.

As she finished up dumping half a dozen bodies in the decoy, she felt something watching her. She put it down to the silent drone sitting waiting for its last kamikaze run, and double timed it back to the mission team and the waiting stealth shuttle.

+++++

Winters clambered aboard and the ramp swung up. There was a dull thump as the interior of the ship equalised its pressure.

+Alright. . .I think we are good to. . . oh, holy shit+

The hangerbay was a cavernous, dark space, and something had unfolded from the upper bays. Something massive, and silent.

It padded, on pulsing, reshaping hands formed from masses of cable, across the hangerbay. It seemed torn. Swinging its vast, shuttle sized head between the decoy and the mission teams own ship.

+Go go go go go!+ Davrry urged.

[MidKnight]

Winters reached for her shotgun and loaded several slug rounds as a precaution. Whatever was floating around out there, she wanted to make sure it didn't try and take her so easily. "I would suggest use the decoy and see if it follows." She thought as her eyes looked up towards the ceiling following the sounds of a moan or the creaks of the ship. "This is just getting too fucking intense."

She looked to the pilot. "I hope you can outrun this big ass freak." Then rolled her eyes as she slowly moved with her gun at the ready.

[Enigma]

"Predators are usually drawn to movement," Iona offered. "If we launch the decoy, it should follow."

Iona paused. There might be another way to use the decoy. "How hot is the engine exhaust?"

"If we could position it behind the exhaust, we could try firing it up while keeping it in the docking clamps"

[Azazeal849]

“Oh, holy shit.”

“What?” Sayori scrunched away her Lyran meal, dusting crumbs of pastry across the floor as she leaned against her restraints towards the cockpit. “What’s wrong?”

Davrry was too focussed on whatever the hell he could see through the cockpit canopy to answer. Instead, he seized the shoulder of Sinclair’s flight suit and urged, “Go go go go go!”

And then it dropped, far too silent for something so massive - a seething mass of cables, with a pale dome suggestive of a head that came nosing and slithering across the hanger towards them.

Means something really bad is down here. An alpha. Sayori wondered if Davrry was regretting being right.

“Oh shit.” she echoed the Lyran hunter’s sentiment.

The polarised glass of the cockpit was no barrier at all, and even Vez’s bulky thermal pistol strapped to her leg felt worse than useless.

“Predators are usually drawn to movement.” Iona offered. “If we launch the decoy, it should follow.”

Sayori snapped her fingers. “Yes! But we need to decompress the hanger, so we go spinning out with the other junk while it chases the other shuttle!”

[AngelDellaNotte]

The others around her were getting nervous and rushing her along. Miranda wasn't just stalling out of fear it took time to start up a ship. It wasn't just pushing the on button and going. There were systems that had be launched before you could go. It didn't help that she was hooked up to the drones and it was mimicking her movements. The feeling was a strange one she could feel the controls in front of her as she piloted their own ship and the haptic feedback from the drone. This would take a moment to get used. Not to mention having to pilot two crafts at once. She had programmed the drone's ship to move the opposite direction of their ship. The star charts she had been studying showed that she would be able to do this for the most part with the exception of any debris out there.

The drone ship also was moving several seconds ahead of their ship to give it a bit of a lead hoping it would draw the attention of anything out there. It took off moving out of the hanger. Miranda ignored Iona's comment about burning it out in the docking clamps she could do that but it would damage the clamps and if they planned on coming back that wouldn't be wise. If when they came back they had company they would need those clamps to lock the shuttle down and flush out the deck like they had done on the bridge with the explosion.

Dr. Sayori hit her shoulder urging her own as their own ship hadn't moved yet. Miranda batted her hand away causing the drone shuttle to rock and hit into the side of the ship, the screech of metal on metal was very loud. “If you don't want to die today keep your fucking hands off me.” Miranda snapped, adjusting the drone shuttle before taking their shuttle out of the hanger. As the drone shuttle moved right their shuttle moved left both moving on the same trajectory but mirrored of each other. She focused mostly on their shuttle it being a little more important that they didn't hit anything than the drone shuttle. The debris field was more than she was expecting and she was having to dodge more than she thought. It didn't help she was constantly switching between the drone shuttle and theirs. She hoped she would be able to get clear of the debris field and let the drone shuttle go without her guidance.

A warning went off in her visor, for the drone shuttle and she switched over seeing it was heading straight toward a large chunk of a destroyed ship. “Damnit.” She growled letting go of their shuttle's controls and pulling the drone shuttle up barely managing to miss the debris. She had just barely finished the move before another warning went off for their shuttle. Miranda switched back just in time to miss a large space rock though they did scrape it as they past causing their shuttle to shake violently. The damage wasn't bad but she didn't know how long she could keep both shuttle intact. “I'm going to have to cut the drone shuttle loose soon and we'll have to take our chances.” Miranda said, giving the others a warning.

[dakkagor]

The horror swung its head around and followed the drone shuttle as it roared out of the bay on a tail of fire. It silently padded after it, constantly reforming, constantly shifting, like a mass of sea anemone tentacles, or a ball of worms, bound together. Tentacles grasped for the shuttle, thrown out into space as the hanger deck vented, blasting debris into the alpha berserker.

Taking her moment, Miranda got the shuttle out its bay door. In her rear view cameras, she saw, for just a second, the vast domed head, and red eyes flare brightly as it regarded the fleeing stealth ship.

Then they were away.

For a few seconds she kept the decoy running as the stealth lander completed its near powerless tumble through the debris field, until something heavy, fast, and near black slammed into the decoy ship. For a second Miranda had the awful feeling of being crushed, then the drones safeties cut off, and she lost control.

"Decoys down." Davrry grunted. "Hit something. Damned if I can tell what."

With gentle nudges of its rockets, Miranda guided the shuttle through the debris field. Through the viewers, they caught their first non-telemetry view of the ship that had snared the Elcano

"Holy hell, look at that thing." Davrry breathed. "It looks alive."

Then the shuttle rolled, and the rest was a rattling, screaming fall.

+++++

They entered the atmosphere and were overwhelmed with noise.

Below the cloud cover, vast mountains covered in jungle dominated the landscape from horizon to horizon. As Miranda flew, Davrry worked sensors from the co-pilots chair. Every radio channel was washed out with chatter, random trills and shrieks that rose and fell like ocean waves.

"This is crazy." Davrry shook his head. "Either this things sensors are busted, or that jungle is transmitting radio. Not the mountains, or any structures, but the jungle itself. I'm getting EM readings like we're flying over New Dehli. And the mountains. . .I don't think they are mountains at all. I think they are hollow."

They flew on, looking for a landing zone, or a sign, or. . .

"There! Tightbeam scatter! And only a few kilometers from the coordinates we got from the bridge."

With direction from Davrry, Miranda banked between a pair of the mountains, before coming up on the landing zone. A burned back section of jungle on the side of one of the mountains waited.

"Atmosphere is breathable, but there is a lot of industrial waste shit in the atmosphere. Put on your re-breathers boys and girls."

As they descended, the ships Geiger counters began to click. The landing patch was blackened glass.

+++++

The shuttle hissed and creaked as the oppressive clouds rolled overhead. The air, even through the rebreathers, tasted like copper and ozone.

"Well, this is what laid out the welcome mat." Davrry held up a standard emergency beacon, before dropping it back onto the floor and smashing it under foot. "Lets close the door for any of the bastards up top."

The coordinates from the bridge pointed upwards, a kilometer away, through thick jungle. Once equipment was disembarked, and the shuttle sealed, it was time to climb.

[Enigma]

As she stepped out of the shuttle and saw the blackened glass underfoot, Iona found herself frowning. Glancing around, this didn't look like a place you would expect to find a lot of sand...

"How do you want to proceed?" she asked. "We have radio transmissions in the jungle, possibly more creatures like the ones aboard our ship. We should do what we can to avoid contact and preserve our vision."

[Azazeal849]

The shuttle lights flickered once again, then settled stable.

“Atmosphere is breathable,” Davrry’s voice came from the cockpit. “But there is a lot of industrial waste shit in the air. Put on your re-breathers boys and girls.”

Sayori realised that during the entire descent, she had somehow kept a hold of the half-eaten beef wellington. She tossed the foil-wrapped meal aside carelessly and snapped down her helmet visor. The click of the seal was followed by the gentle hiss of her suit’s internal rebreather, as it set to work injecting oxygen and scrubbing CO2. A projected timer of five hours blinked into life, splashing across the HUD on the inside of her helmet.

Five hours.

Her suit’s Geiger reading pulsed amber along side the oxygen reader, ticking between fifteen and twenty microsieverts per hour.

The signs were adding up to make Sayori nervous of their chances of finding their shipmates alive. Unless they brought prefab shelters with built-in scrubber units, they wouldn’t have had much longer than five hours themselves before they were forced to start breathing the toxin-laced air. And unless they stayed in their suits 24/7, they would soon start racking up radiation doses as well. Twenty micro per hour is something like one-seven-five milli per year. That’s almost double what a fission core worker is supposed to see in five.

The secret marks on the bridge had promised safety - but safe, after all, didn't necessarily mean sustainable. Sayori kept her doubts to herself as she filed out of the shuttle after the others.

The world outside almost drove the worries completely from her head. The ground beneath her feet was vitrified black glass, but ten metres away it gave way to dark, mulchy soil and spires of alien vegetation. The trees were spaced apart, but between them shrubs and creepers clustered so thick that even by eye it was difficult to pick a way through. And the trees glittered.

Sayori paced closer, hearing her boots crunch oddly as they sank into the topsoil. She reached up and bent a slender alien branch towards her to examine it. Black leaves sprouted from the dark wood, but although they were wafer thin they were solid and inflexible. They almost looked like…

“Solar panels?” Sayori mused aloud, stroking a gloved thumb along the glittering silver wire that ran through the tiny cells, exactly like the veins of a real leaf.

As she eased her grip on the branch and let it spring back to its original position, she saw a copper-bright insect the size of her thumbnail zig-zagging down towards the branch. It alighted on one of the photovoltaic leaves, and as the blur of its wings slowed, Sayori saw that they too were metal - linked together into a tiny helicopter rotor that split and disappeared beneath its brass carapace. Suddenly a long tongue squirted out through the leaves and struck the insect with a spark of blue light, before clamping onto it and dragging it back along the branch. Sayori only saw a shimmer against the leaves, until the creature waddled a short distance along the branch and settled. It looked a little like a gecko, with splayed legs, a whip-like tail and shiny black eyes. It lay there, chewing rhythmically, a ripple dancing along its back as it changed colour to perfectly mimic the pattern of solar leaves beside it.

“Ya-bai.” Sayori whispered under her breath as she watched the creature. Its eyes and mouthparts were undoubtedly organic, but there was no way that the perfect chameleonic skin was natural, any more than the helicopter insect it was still chewing.

Machine and organic. Her mind drew an inevitable comparison to the Berserkers that had butchered her crewmates, but there seemed to be a world of difference between the slashing nightmares on the Elcano and these delicate, seemingly benign life-forms.

Sayori swept her foot gently across the topsoil, belatedly realising that the crunching noise came from tiny shards of solar-panel leaves that had fallen from the tree. Near the base of the tree the soil had been blown back - possibly by whatever had glassed the ground where their shuttle now rested - and the sweep of her foot revealed a root that was sprouting with dozens of glassy-thin fibreoptic wires.

Sayori tapped the radio control on her suit’s forearm panel, and her ears were immediately inundated with a roar of static, undercut by hundreds of rapid clicks and blurts. After a few seconds the static seemed to settle, almost finding a rhythm - a gentle rise and fall through which the clicks and whistles surged. Sayori shook her head, unable to keep the grin from her face.

“Guys, are you seeing this?” she said, turning. “I work with human-machine interfaces but this is…” She half raised her arms, trying and failing to find a better word. “This is nuts! How could someone build an entire ecosystem like this?”

[Enigma]

“Guys, are you seeing this?” Sayori said, turning. “I work with human-machine interfaces but this is…” She half raised her arms, trying and failing to find a better word. “This is nuts! How could someone build an entire ecosystem like this?”

"Assimulation," Iona said, squatting down to examine the blacken glass at levels of magnification no human eye could manage. "Adaptation and time. All life here has been compromised, integrated, down to the bacteria level. This threatens all bio-organic life."

"This mission is at risk," Iona announced. "Do not remove your suits for any reason. You should all go to the shuttle immediately and return to the ship. Do not take it into the shuttle bay, abandon it outside and go to the nearest airlock and undergo a complete decontamination - your suits must be sterilized."

[AngelDellaNotte]

Landing the shuttle at the correct landing zone was difficult as the moment they hit the atmosphere There was interference that got worse the closer they got to the ground. Miranda was relatively sure she had got the right spot. She heard Davrry's readings of the planet and watched Sayori put on one of the environmental suits. “Hey doc you ever wore one of those for more than a couple hours?” Miranda said, having spent many hours if not days in environmental suits both in training and with her time in the fleet. “Whatever you do don't throw up in that thing.”

She didn't bother with the suits stocked in the shuttle, her flight suit was a environmental suit and was fitted to her. She took her helmet off and clipped it onto her belt. She wasn't just messing with Sayori about the suits they could get stuffy and a little claustrophobic. The air and atmosphere was survivable so she didn't feel like wearing the full suit longer than necessary. Digging through the supplies stocked in the ship she found a case of anti-radiation medication. With these they could counter the effects of the radiation for a while. It wasn't a permanent fix but hopefully it would get them through to wherever the others were. If they weren't dead already, if they were then they were screwed but that didn't seem new. They had been screwed since waking up. Miranda injected herself with one, stowed the others in her pack and, put on her re-breather then stepped out of the shuttle, ignoring both Sayori and Iona as she looked around. She still had her glasses on and was scanning around the clearing for any clues as to where the others had gone.

Something caught her eyes running out of the bushes, it wasn't one of the lizards that interested Sayori. The critter ran straight toward her jumping from the ground to her shoulder in one leap. It bounced from shoulder to shoulder focusing on her face. The critter was small standing only about six inches tall and resembling a squirrel, however it's back legs were metallic looking much like a spring, no doubt how it was able to jump from the ground to her shoulder without any problems. Its front paws were mechanical as well and it's eyes were glowing red. The creature reached out and pawed at her glasses seeming to be interested in them. “Hey leave those alone.” Miranda said, pulling the glasses off and tucking them into her pack. The creature still jumped around her face this time focusing on the control disk for the drones, Miranda had forgotten she was wearing it. She pulled it off her temple handing it to the squirrel like creature who let out a gleeful chortle before tucking it into a pouch on its belly much like a kangaroo had. Sayori probably would not but happy about her giving the disk away but Miranda didn't care.

She thought the creature would leave after getting its prize however it stayed on her shoulder seeming to enjoy the view from there. Miranda resumed her search of the clearing and noticed some scratches on a tree. She walked over to the tree looking closer at the markings noticing they were runes just like on the bridge, directing them to head that way. Below it were some other markings that Miranda couldn't make out though they looked just like nothing more than scratches. Around the tree Miranda could see branches that had been cut and then covered with new growth. Someone had hacked their way through here. She drew her sword intending to do the same, “I believe they went this way. These markings on the tree are a guide. Least the top ones are, I don't know about the others.” Miranda said.