When the Nothing Shines Upon [IC]

[Tiffany Korta]

Being outside her skillset Triakosia choose to stay out of everyone’s way whilst they revived the ships occupant. After taking the time of cause to introduce herself, this space stuff was getting weirded by the minutes. But it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle at least until Kyla started talking about the communion. Memories floated up out of the corner of her mind, vague indistinct things that seem to evaporate when she tried to focus on them, but one thing she knew had happened she had fled from something something trying to conquer her world.

 

“I think I know of them... or something very similar. We need to stop them now before they become a threat to Earth.â€

[trollthumper]

The Communion. Kyle had never heard of anything like that, and he'd browsed some of Mentor's more lengthy intelligence reports. There was always a possibility the name had shifted over the years - then again, megalithic all-consuming hive minds didn't exactly have much room for identity crises, did they? He was assuming.

"If they are headed this way," he said, "we need to get word out. Both here, and at the further reaches." He tapped open his comms link, reaching back to Citadel. "Mentor, I'm requesting access to files pertaining to post-Singularity machine intelligences, hegemonic, key word 'Communion' -"

Nothing. No connection. That shouldn't be possible - communications between Star Knight armor and Citadel relied on the quantum entanglement principle. It wasn't simply a matter of jamming a radio frequency. Before Kyle could think on it, the alarms started going off on the wreck of the ship. While the systems may have been damaged, it seemed the proximity sensors weren't - and something was approaching, fast.

[horngeek]

"Maybe?  That's the thing, we learnt a lot about them, but I don't have a connection right to them!  And if they knew about me, my guess if they would have specifically targeted me-"

 

And then, the proximity alarms started going off.  "Oh, so you're working.  And I just did that thing where I tempted the Fateweaver, didn't I.  Right.  Looks like my power cores might get a good workout, then."

 

Memorial looked around.  "Well, let's go and see who the... guests?  Is that the right word?  Are."

[Tiffany Korta]

Dancia had been momentarily shaken by the vague visions of her past but she quickly shook them off, ilke most of her memories they already seemed to be fading away like quicksilver. One day they’d stay and she would finally know her place in the universe, but apparently today wasn’t the day.

 

“I’m not sure guests would be the right word to use, generally guests are invited into you home. Let’s go see if we can explain to them the difference.â€

 

A few hours ago she’d never been this far into space, now she was ready to meet a possibly hostile alien race.

[RobRX]

Silver Magus remain impassive as ever. Well, at least expression-wise; it was really hard to get a reading from him given his face was covered in a silver plate with only two slits for eyes. The man had shown...disturbing enthusiasm when it came to the communion but the moment he closed his mouth, all that was left was a simple faceplate, impossible to read.

 

As the other were debating, his lifted himself in the air with rocket boots and began flying off to intercept the new arrivant.

[trollthumper]

Silver Magus arrived just in time to see the object. It appeared to be the size of a distant meteor at first - but then he realized it was approaching at hideously fast speeds. Judging by how much it was growing, it would arrive in under a minute - and it would not arrive peacefully. In fact, there was a very good chance they were in the middle of its flight plan.

 

"Oh, yeah," said Cavalier as he clambered outside, "nothing I love like being part of the big cosmic bullseye. Everyone, jump ship and get as far from the blast radius as we --"

 

Before he could finish saying it, the ship came to an absolute stop 1000 feet from Memorial's vessel, going from near-relativistic speeds to dead stillness. Cavalier momentarily told his brain to ignore all the ways that shouldn't have happened and focused his attention on the ship. It looked like one of the cargo freighters you'd expect on the space lanes, but it seemed like a much older make. Except not - as if the technology of 200 years ago had been mastered 500 years ago. The hull was banged and discolored, but still mostly intact. But what really stood out were the veins. Currents of mercury and obsidian ran across the ship's exterior, catching the light. As Cavalier watched, he swore he could see the veins throbbing.

 

"Yeah, very far from good." Cavalier patched Memorial into his comms. "I think those assholes of yours decided to come to the party."

[RobRX]

Silver Magus looked up, eyes wide behind the slits on his helmet. He looked at it and, despite all his previous fascination with terrifying beings, he began to feel a tinge of fear. He knew he was looking at something wrong, something horrific and he felt in a way he hadn't felt since being trapped by the Serpent People.

 

"So." He said to Cavalier. "You are the experienced and well-documented space-traveller, I'll assume. Do you wish to offer them the customary greetings?"

[horngeek]

"Yeah.  That's them."

 

Kyla was silent for a moment.  She didn't recognise the exact ship type.  Maybe they'd done to other races what they'd done to hers since then, maybe this ship pre-dated the attack on Belran.  

 

Heck, starship design wasn't her exact skillset, maybe this was from the same area as Belran had been in.

 

It didn't matter, really, because she more than recognised the effects.  That ship had been taken over, subsumed into the Communion as a whole.  She didn't know what happened to the consciousnesses of people absorbed by the Communion, or their spirits- but she suspected it was similar.  That at least some of them might be still trapped, unable to move on.  Unable to learn, to explore.  

 

She hadn't been kidding when she called the Communion a blasphemy.  

 

The silver-armored figure's voice broke her out of her state deep in thought, as she turned her head.  "If by 'customary greetings' you mean 'blow them up', I'm all for it.  They're not going to talk- we tried, when we first detected them approaching our world.  The people we sent just... disappeared.  My view, just ram this ship into that one, them blast anything remaining until there's one less bit of the Communion."

[Tiffany Korta]

Whilst Dancia had the vague memories of what terrible thing these people could do. But her own instinct were telling her a very different things, things that in her good nature she couldn’t ignore.

 

“We don’t know for sure who is in there or what they have in mind. There could be prisoners or refugees in there. I for one vote that we go take a look inside before we take any actions.â€

 

She floated there arms crossed and a stern look on her face, right now it would take her quite a lot to convince her otherwise.

[RobRX]

Silver Magus raised his armored hands, while using his suit to load up his most destructive spells. His magic wasn't primarily designed to destroy things but sometimes, destruction was perhaps the only answer. His hands moved by themselves as holographic displays of text and runes began surrounding him.

 

"I will not open fire yet." he said to the others. "But be aware that any hostility on their part will result in my unleashing of everything I can muster. If these beings are as dangerous as it is said then today, I am willing to put aside scientific curiosity."

[trollthumper]

"Yeah, I'm going to lean on the side of caution," said Cavalier, "and the side of caution says 'Don't get on the ancient space hulk that may have been taken over by horrible machine bastards.'" Still, the woman did have a point. It could be the transformative process these people used could be interrupted. Or perhaps there was intelligence on board that could provide more insight into this threat - that would be valuable for the stores at Citadel. They would need to destroy it, of course - he really didn't feel good about this thing being in his solar system - but perhaps...

"I know this is probably the last thing you want to hear," he said to Kyla, "but I'm going to check the ship." He looked to the others. "I don't know which of you has the best ranged ordnance - perhaps the thunder woman - but I'm going to loop you in. If my comms go deaf, or it sounds like I'm... not me anymore... I give you permission to blow this thing to scrap. Got it?"

[horngeek]

"If there's anything on the ship, it'd be a kindness to destroy it."

 

Kyla looked at Triakosia sternly.  "Did you even hear anything I said?  These things don't talk.  We tried.  They just... absorb."

 

She sighed.  "And you're right, Cavalier, that's absolutely the last thing I want to hear."

 

The woman floated for a few seconds, considering.  "But if you have to see for yourself, you should go in with some backup.  I'll come with."

[Tiffany Korta]

She had her order and as a rule Triakosia tended to follow commands given to her by others, at times she felt that at one point she had served in some form of military. But something had been stirred in her because of the memories that this had dragged from her amnesiac mind.

 

“I’d like to come aboard the craft with you.†she blurted out before she could gather her thoughts “I’m not that useful out her but I can help you all inside if trouble start.†she pause and decided to go for the truth

 

“I think I need to see what's inside, if it could give me back some of my memories of the past.â€

[trollthumper]

"All right, then," Cavalier said. "Boarding party it is. First sign of awfulness, we get the hell off that thing and scuttle it." He gestured to Triakosia. "You mentioned the possibility of prisoners. I'm leaning towards Kyla's idea that the best we'll be able to provide here is euthanasia, but we can't rule out the possibility. If anyone has the means of tracking vital signs or detecting heat signatures, I recommend you pop it. Either we find someone we can rescue, or we know where the bastards are coming from. Not bad either way."

 

The jump across the void was fairly simple. Soon, everyone had touched down on the prow of the ship. Given space liners, some of these things had oxygen fields that allowed passengers to enjoy an evening under the stars. If this one had anything like that, though, it had long since been shut down. Triakosia's x-ray vision was able to pierce the ship's hull easily - whatever had made up this thing's exterior, lead wasn't a part of it. She could see no signs of life - if any hostages had been on this ship, they were long dead. There were, however, things like statues - almost-humanoid forms, coated in metal and contorted in strange poses. 

 

Cavalier stepped into the darkness of what had at one point been a hallway. That strange silver paste was now all over the walls in patches, and more of the statues Triakosia had seen lined the walls. To Memorial, they were all too familiar - images of the claimed. 

 

"...yeah, not liking this already." 

[RobRX]

"Well, this is certainly quite eerie." said Silver Magus, with only his voice to convey any emotion behind the silver faceplate that would otherwise make him appear completely stoic and emotionless. However, his voice was certainly enough to convey his sense of unease as he entered the ship and looked around.

 

"Part of me truly want to study the inside of this ship and it's properties, but I can't lie about the sense of unease I am having." Slowly and carefully, the armored sorcerer approached one of the silver 'statues' to take a closer look.

[horngeek]

"Heh.  You... remind me of my people."

 

Kyla smiled grimly.  "Always eager to explore, to learn.  To..."

 

As she looked at the silver statue, her voice wavered.  "We never had a... great enemy or figure of pure evil in our major beliefs.  We considered the true evil to be ignorance, rather than a particular being.  But the Communion... they fit into everything that we'd consider a Great Enemy to be.  Absorbing others by force into a collective that doesn't change, doesn't learn, only consumes.  A fate worse than death.  Far worse.  At least with death, there's one more journey to undergo, one last thing to learn.  But this..."

 

She paused, shaking her head.  "There's only one thing I'd particularly care to learn from this ship, and that'd how to destroy it more efficiently."

[Tiffany Korta]

Dancia was still well outside her comfort zone, she hadn’t seen anything like this outside of Sci-fi films and who had time to go the cinema? Still she did her best to scan the ship to see if she could find anyone still alive.

 

“I’m not picking up signs of life, but I’m not sure if that would include anyone thats been what it called? You know put into sleep for a long journey, this space stuff is still a little new for me.â€

[RobRX]

"I suppose some well-placed yet potent explosives could do the trick. Alternatively, we could get rid of the problem by sending it to another dimension, somewhere deep within the coil where it will never harm anyone. Preferably a world without sentient life." Silver Magus said, considering such an option. It would be a clean and efficient way to make sure nothing of the ship remain within distances of earth. "However I am unsure if I have the means to do so."

 

As he paused, something came to his mind. "At the risk of invoking a classic horror cliché of our species." He said, adding the latter part so Memorial would understand. "Am I the only one who feel this ship is too quiet?"

[trollthumper]

"No, you're not the only one," said Cavalier. The power seemed to be down throughout the ship, and to Triakosia's vision, there was nothing resembling a cryogenics chamber. If there was anything living on the ship, it had been dead for ages. But that didn't really help when it felt like the statues were staring at him. Triakosia had a similar feeling as her eyes cut through the layers of the ship, from the emptiness of the aft deck to the long-since dried and decayed pool to the gigantic statue in what might have been a ballroom --

Wait. The statue had been there. She swore she'd seen it.

The lights snapped back on, flickering as if slowly remembering their own existence. At the far end of the hallway, an ancient freight elevator cranked to life, laboring to bring some gigantic weight up from below. A screeching noise emerged, a mixture of a bestial howl and microphone feedback. It wasn't the elevator. It was whatever was inside.

Cavalier channeled energy to his blaster. "All in favor of Operation 'Blow This Thing to Scrap'?"

[Tiffany Korta]

Dancia was kicking herself for missing the thing before it rumbled into life,maybe she was more focused  on finding life here and proving Memorial wrong. but now it was much more late for  all that.  All she could do now was stand  with them and try to defeat the creature.

 

“Any good suggestions on how we defeat this creature?â€