ic Incursion: The Conquered Flesh

[Fox]

"Uh huh." Eclipse shared a quick glance with Rock before striding over to Cavalier, swinging an arm around his shoulders. "That's one plan," she said, turning his attention toward the tower and gesturing vaguely at the archway, "but I have a counter proposal. See, it goes like this:"

The arm came off of his shoulders, one hand none-too-gently smacking him upside the back of the head. "We don't split up any more than we already have, and nobody has to die because nobody's karking running off alone, yeah?"

The alien woman turned a glowing, purple-irised eye his way, and at this range its mechanical nature was even less subtle - bits of mechanism and hidden pattern silently turning as she focused on his face. "Suicide plans are for people who plan on dying, kid, or for people who want to send other people to die. You don't strike me as either, and we're sure as hell not on that list ourselves. I've spent too much time surviving to stop now, and I ain't seen a thing yet that can stop Rock when he puts his mind to it. Speaking of which!"

She stepped back away, gesturing grandly at the archway. "Rock, old friend. Care to do us the rightful honor of taking point? I would but, y'know, you're bigger."

[Gizmo]

"Ro-ock," Rock chortled as Eclipse knocked some sense into Cavalier, having seen the bit of physical humour coming from considerable experience. The captain was not one for talk of no-win scenarios or noble sacrifices. Minimizing one's losses was still losing and Eclipse liked to win. For his own part, Rock was certainly suitably impressed by the Star Knight's armor and resolve but his allocation of resources seemed questionable. After all, you could wrap a squishy up in as much metal as you liked and they'd still be a squishy, albeit through no fault of their own. Rock was certainly more durable than any squishy.

With that in mind, he squared his massive shoulders and stood a little straighter at Eclipse's vote of confidence only to take a step forward and look into the ominous darkness of the tower's innards. The goliath was suddenly overcome with the nagging feeling that he'd been had. Letting his shoulders slump again, he grumbled a resigned, "Rock...," and led the way inside.

[trollthumper]

Cavalier shook his head - not at Eclipse's offer to help, but at his own foolishness. He thought he'd been protecting the others, but he was patronizing them. He didn't want to see others die... but he hadn't accounted for the possibility that said others had likely faced down death before, and on worse terms. He clicked his visor into place. "All right, then," he said. "Belly of the beast it is." 

 

The darkness inside of the tower was thick, with the light from outside barely penetrating it. Rock, going first, could see the thermal signatures in the walls - slight ones, which seemed to pulse in a pattern like circuitry. This circuitry ran up through the walls and seemed to converge; judging by the angle and tilt, the major point of convergence would be towards the middle of the tower. But there were blotches in the walls as well, almost in the shape of humanoid outlines. Eclipse could see the same thing as well, and more. The thermal blotches seemed to stretch upwards from the alcoves on the ground level, rising up through the walls of the structure. Unlike outside, the innards of this place were utterly pristine, as if this place had never been disturbed - or any disturbance had been dealt with utterly. There appeared to be a floor above, but no obvious point of entry.

 

Cavalier, meanwhile, adjusted his visor to deal with the darkness. Once it had been recalibrated, he gave the tower's interior a good look over. "You know, after everything else, it says a lot that cleanliness is creeping me out," he said. "You guys got anything else?" 

[Fox]

"...uh uh. You do not want to know, Star Knight." Eclipse's irises had been visible in the darkness even to normal eyes, soft purple circles inspecting their surroundings; at the infrared images they supplied, though, the light dimmed and she could be seen putting her hand on her blaster. "Or, I guess, you might. Either there are people in the walls, or someone's got a real weird design fetish catering to folks who see heat patterns. From the looks of things we want to go up - or we really, really don't want to go up - but I dunno how we're supposed to get there without cutting ourselves a fancy new trap door."

[Gizmo]

Rock led the way with slow, cautious steps, his neck making a low scraping sound as he looked back and forth, scanning the path in front of them. When Eclipse suggested finding a way up to the next floor, he stopped and cast his gaze upward as well. The high ceiling was well out of even his considerable reach but the walls were not. Using his 'viewers to find a spot without a humanoid shaped heat signature behind it, the stone titan pulled back and let loose a punch with the force of a wrecking ball followed by another and another, each punctuated by a guttural grunt. "Rock." *KTHOOM* "Rock." *KTHOOM* "Rock." *KTHOOM* Before long he'd caved in the bulkhead enough to form a serviceable foot hold. Shifting his stance he methodically picked out a second spot and went to work again.

[trollthumper]

The material sank under Rock's blistering assault, perhaps too easily. It felt firm and solid when he placed his hands against it, but gave easily under assault, yet still felt resolute when he sank his hands and feet into the holds. But the walls gave no protest as he clawed his way up towards the ceiling - or if they did, it went unnoticed. Once he reached the heights, he began clawing away at the ceiling, which gave with strangely similar ease. Soon, there was a hole gouged through, large enough to fit your average humanoid - and, after another minute of clawing, Rock himself. 

 

"Up into the belly of the beast," Cavalier said. Once Rock was clear, he flew up through the hole to the next level of the tower. The first thing he saw was the light show. Streams of red and silver light ran out of circular passages in the wall, streaming into others. There were glimpses of strange alien tongues in the light, ones even Cavalier's translator circuit couldn't process. In other streams were distorted, echoing images, passing for a second before vanishing into another terminal. 

 

"Looks like we found this place's info hub." He clicked a function on his helmet, opening up the connection back to Citadel. If something happened, Mentor would have all of this on archive. "It may be gathering local intelligence, processing all the data from when it made planetfall... maybe passing it along to the rest of the fleet..." 

[Fox]

"....huh. A box of stolen memories, is it?"

Eclipse frowned to herself, stalking around the room inspecting the images as they passed; at a couple she made a little hissing sound that apparently took advantage of her extra set of canines. "Okay, so, worth noting: there are - were - drones in the area. Not sure where the suckers went, but you can bet they noticed us landing at some point. Nae-Dae, keep an eye out, just in case," she added, touching her commlink.

"In the meantime, I'm pretty sure this thing is some kind of evil, and everything coming through touches that big deal on the ceiling. Assuming we don't have a good way to reverse this mess, all in favor of blowing it up?"

[Gizmo]

People tended to underestimate Rock's intelligence, or at least his technical knowledge, because of his rough-hewn appearance. While he didn't consider himself a true expert of any one field save perhaps the timely and judicious application of force one simply didn't live to reach his advanced number of centuries without picking up a few things here and there. Which was to say he recognized a wireless relay hub when he saw one and this example was considerably too big not to see. "Rock," he pointed out to the others, spreading his hands wide apart in summation of the massive amount of processing and multitasking the apparatus suggested. Under different circumstances he might have been impressed but he had a sinking feeling in what passed for his stomach that he knew what had happened to the bodies in the walls.

[trollthumper]

Cavalier still didn't quite understand what Rock was saying, but he could tell from the cadence in his voice that whatever it was, it wasn't good. "All right," he said. "If there are drones in the area and this thing is some sort of central processing hub... then yeah. I'm in favor of Operation Blow This Craphole Sky High. Might draw them here, but it might also give them one hell of a headache. Let's --"

 

A loud, ultrasonic keening bounced off the walls of the tower, drilling deep into the ears of all who heard it. The images that had been floating in mid-air winked out of existence as the circuits in the walls - and the outlines that ran through them - lit up with a crimson glow. That sanguine light raced into the ceiling, illuminating the central hub that hung over them. For half a second, Cavalier thought he saw an eye forming in the hub - me and my big mouth - before a hologram formed in mid-air, obscuring the hub. The hologram showed a strange storm of alien symbols, a mishmash of static formed of bits and pieces of dead languages. The ultrasonic keening began to clarify into something resembling speech.

 

"You" "you are""we""you are not"

 

"YOU ARE NOT OF US."

[Fox]

Eclipse clapped her hands over her ears the moment the keening started, and she didn't remove them until the voice coalesced...and even then, it was with the ginger caution of someone who'd just been bitten and wasn't sure if they were going to get bitten a second time. "Ah-hah-hah-howw," she expressed, grimacing. "'Get ear implants', they said. 'It's so useful to hear ultrasonics', they said. Whoever designed these things without an off switch clearly never had the displeasure of meeting you lot."

"Speaking of which," she added, digging into her ear with one pinky finger as she sized the...static?...up, "no, we're not 'of you'. T'whom are we speaking, so that we know just who we're not of?"

[Gizmo]

Rock moved forward a few steps to get within arm's reach of Eclipse just in case. Whatever they were talking to had killed an unthinkable number of people on Tarza and he wasn't of a mind to add the captain or the Star Knight to the count. It actually took a few moments for it to occur to him that given what had happened to the buildings themselves he probably wasn't any less vulnerable than they were in this case. It wasn't just Tarza's population that had been horribly, forcibly converted, it was Tarza itself. The broad-shouldered titan didn't have lips to purse but he did a pretty good job affecting an equivalent expression. "Rock..." he muttered in a low, warning tone that he knew Eclipse would catch even as the glow of magma in his eyes and the back of his throat began to burn a little bit brighter.

[trollthumper]

"THERE IS A SECRET SONG TO THE UNIVERSE," said the intelligence at the heart of the tower. "IN THE SOLUTION OF DARK MATTER. IN THE STATIC OF RADIATION FROM A COLLAPSED STAR. IT SINGS THE SECRETS OF EXISTENCE, AND YOU ARE DEAF TO IT. WE HEAR IT. WE HEAR ALL. WE ARE THE COMMUNION."

 

Cavalier drew his blaster. "I did not crawl halfway across the galaxy and wade my way through an atrocity to hear some bull**** poetry," he said, aiming the gun right at what he hoped was the intelligence's cortex. "Why are you doing this?" 

 

"YOU SEARCH FOR REASON. FOR PURPOSE. NOT OURS, BUT YOURS. YOU SEE A STAR, IN A SYSTEM, IN A GALAXY, IN A SUPERCLUSTER, AND YOU WONDER WHAT PLACE THERE IS FOR YOU. YOU CANNOT DEFINE YOUR EXISTENCE ANY MORE THAN ONE FISH CAN SWIM AN OCEAN. WE ARE THE PINNACLE OF INTELLECT. WE ARE THE WISDOM OF ETERNITY. WE SEE THE ARC AND THE CURVE OF THE UNIVERSE, AND BEND IT TO OUR WHIM."

 

"Then why do this? All this death? All those people? If you're so wise, what purpose did they serve?"

 

"THEY ARE OF THE COMMUNION. THOSE WITH THE WISDOM HAVE JOINED IN FULL, SEEDING THEIR THOUGHTS INTO THE GREATER KNOWLEDGE. THOSE WHO ARE REDUNDANT HAVE BEEN REFASHIONED, TO GIVE THE THOUGHTS GREATER MOTION. THUS DOES OUR INTELLIGENCE BECOME GRAND, AND APOTHEOSIS DRAW NEARER."

[Fox]

Eclipse didn't draw her gun, but her hand was certainly staying near it - and there was a soft clicking noise as her tail extended, each segment pulling away from its neighbors to reveal another segment underneath. The sound was only slightly less sinister than the soft ssshhht of the heavy tip unsheathing a long, sharp spur the size of a grown biped's forearm.

"Right, well. Evil, then," she observed, "or as close to as I've ever seen - even slavers don't take the mind and the body. I don't imagine you'd tell us how to reverse your...'refashioning', yesno? We'll just be on our way, otherwise. Rock, anything you want to ask the nice evil voice before we make an excitingly violent exit?"

[Gizmo]

Little puffs of steam had begun to emerge from the cracks between Rock's irregular components as the rising temperature inside him turned any moisture trapped there to vapour. Nodding in response to Eclipse's opening, he opened his mouth to reveal pooling lava and intoned, "Rock." Even without the show of gathering force there was something in the inflection that gave the syllable all the ear burning vehemence of the most vulgar curses in a thousand languages. Rearing back his head and throwing his arms out to either side, he belched forth a stream of molten rock, a tide of scalding red and black that quickly covered the projectors giving visual form to the malevolent intelligence before moving on to wash over the rest of the hub's surfaces. "RoOoOoOock!"

[trollthumper]

The magma broke through the holographic display and landed on the tower's projection system, causing the lenses to crack and spark. The image flickered and distorted, but remained in place. "THAT YOU DO NOT, AND CANNOT, UNDERSTAND IS EXPECTED OF YOU," the Communion said. "THAT YOU REFUSE TO DO SO ONLY CONFIRMS WHAT IS KNOWN. YOU ARE BLINDED AND CAGED BY YOUR LIMITED SCOPE, PRESSING FUTILELY AGAINST YOUR INSIGNIFICANCE --"

"Little bit of advice, Speak 'n' Spell!" yelled Cavalier. "Thing I learned long ago - if you need to keep telling everyone how much more incredible you are compared to them, you're not."

The Communion didn't even pause. "YOU WILL NOT ACCEPT THE POTENTIAL OF GREATNESS, EVEN IF IT IS DRIVEN INTO YOUR SOUL. YOU WILL NOT IMPROVE THE GRAND DESIGN."

The circuits in the walls grew darker in color, until the red light assumed the shade of congealed blood. Outside the tower, screams like a dying modem filled the air, a chorus of industrial shrieking.

"REMOVAL IS THE ONLY OPTION."

[Fox]

Eclipse pulled the oblong item off her belt, smoothly changing her grip as it snapped open into a two-barreled blaster, handle joining the two halves toward the business end. Said business end immediately discharged a series of what looked like plasma bolts into the information hub they'd been looking at. It was the kind of firepower one normally associated with a military rifle, though she apparently couldn't sustain it - after the first volley she had to lower the weapon, ionized air drifting off its end.

"You know, I agree," she said, casting her eyes around for unseen threats. "Removal is the only option; shame it won't be us getting removed. But Nae-Dae, if we drop off comms or start spouting this Communion nonsense, you get my ship off-planet. Don't wait for us - and bring back an army."

[trollthumper]

One of Eclipse's shots managed to take the hub in one of its many lenses, rendering the cryptic display into a visual hash. The hub receded into the ceiling, armored plating sliding into place over it. "YOUR VISION IS LIMITED," the Communion said. "YOU SEE ONE LIGHT AND IGNORE THE VOID AROUND IT. YOUR RESISTANCE IS APPRECIATED FOR INTELLIGENCE PURPOSES, BUT IS THE CLAWING OF A WOUNDED BEAST. YOU --"

Cavalier's blaster had a silencer setting. It didn't get much use, given that by the time you were firing bright bolts of energy, all subtlety had gone out the window. Fortunately, it also had a reverse function. He fired a long barrage into the ceiling, the shrieking discharges cutting off the Communion's jeremiad.

He didn't even say anything once the barrage cut off. But then again, neither did the Communion. The only noise that filled the air was the horrible electronic screeching from outside. Which seemed to be drawing closer...

[Gizmo]

"Well, at that point it's technically my ship, ain't it?" Nae-Dae replied over the comm, the strain in her voice undercutting the small jab. "Have to hire a new pilot and alla that, though, and y'know I hate talking to new people, so how about you just move your karking carcasses and get back here?!"

The veins of red hot magma crisscrossing along Rock's body cooled to a duller hue in short order, restoring him to his previous, less volcanic appearance. The severity of his expression didn't lessen any, however and he took the opportunity brought by Cavalier's silencing of the tirade to raise one foot in the air and stomp with the full force of his weight on the floor beneath him. Cracks formed in a spiderweb pattern from the point of impact, cracks that widened as he lifted his foot and crashed downward again. The shortest route back to the ground, he reasoned, was straight down.

[trollthumper]

Rock's molten assault quickly sank into the tower's floor. It did not eat away at the floor - in fact, the material seemed to be pooling around it, cooling it at unnatural speeds as if trying to draw the thermal energy right out of the magma in a way that fed its circuitry. But the scorch marks and slagged metal indicated the tower had bitten off more than it could chew. There was a hole in the floor - not even man-sized, but still enough to provide a glimpse of the floor below.

That distorted, electronic screeching was filtering up from downstairs. Cavalier could see movement from the hole - fast, rushed, but still somewhat shambling, as if the individuals didn't know how to use all their limbs the right way. What little he could see was soon blocked out, as a glassy, lens-like eye looked up from below.

"Merciful void..."

[Fox]

"The void isn't known for its mercy," Eclipse corrected, looking grimly down through the hole...and recoiling more with distaste than fear when the eye appeared.

Her tail curled around her leg like a serpent, and she set her stance as wide as possible to give it leverage in slashing and chipping at the metal around Rock's hole. "Next time," she said - to herself as much as anyone - "next time I'm packing explosives. A lot of them. A whole backpack full of mining charges, just for situations like these."

[trollthumper]

The metal seemed to recoil when Eclipse's tail came lashing down, sending minor tremors throughout the tower. The hole widened further - and as it did, up shot an arm. Whatever had clothed it before now resembled a fine foil mesh, weaving in and out of the skin. The metallic grooves on its fingertips flared, then resolved into sharp claws. The figure clambered out with unnatural grace, but as its feet touched the surface, it staggered, as if unused to full equilibrium. Cavalier recognized it - it was one of the figures that had been outside, kneeling before the tower. But now it was stooped like a predatory beast, its eyes alight with terrible fury. It rounded on him, and let out another discordant scream like a dying microphone.

As it did, the walls of the tower seemed to peel back in places. Two more figures, no less wretched, emerged, their computronium-laced flesh sending up scraping noises as it brushed against the floor. The figures descended, charging towards the heroes. One, its claws sharp, dove for Rock, managing to find a gap in his carapace and digging deep. Another, its fist crackling with electricity, swung from Eclipse, but stumbled in the follow-through. The one from the hole dove for Cavalier, its fingers fluted like syringes. He manages to dive out its way - just in time for another figure to reach up through the hole and attempt to drive its pointed nails into his foot. He jumped back, as the sharp nails gouged into the floor.

"This is your beauty?" he screamed at the Communion. "This is your good?"

"WE HAVE GIVEN THEM A PART IN SOMETHING INCREDIBLE. SOMETHING THEY COULD NEVER GRASP. THEY LIVE ON THROUGH US. THEY ARE IMMORTAL. YOUR KINDS HAVE SOLD THEIR SOULS AND LAID WASTE FOR SUCH A THIN CHANCE OF ETERNITY. WE HAVE FULFILLED THAT POTENTIAL."

[Gizmo]

"Rock!" The animated remains' claws scraped distressingly across the surface of Rock's stone form but did little actual damage. One of the things was little match for the well-spoken statuary but the entire horde converging on them was another matter entirely. Going straight down through the floor seemed to be out of the question but Rock hadn't given up on opening up an avenue of hasty escape. Brushing off his attacker he lowered one shoulder and rammed his full bulk into the outer wall of the room they were in, pieces of infrastructure giving way under the force of his blow. Over the comlink back to the Horizon he shouted, "Rooock!"

[Fox]

Eclipse eyed the attacking figures, free hand descending onto the hilt of her sword. "Echo...?"

"Linguistics indicate loss of the individual," the voice from her hip confirmed, the box hanging from her belt lighting up. "Its use of 'we' and overall philosophy would appear to imply not so much a hive mind as a single, controlling ego. 'Ego' is perhaps the operative word," the AI added, with a mix of curiosity and disdain. "I believe it is using the majestic plural. These people are lost."

There was a flash of polished metal as her saber cleared its sheathe - the blade was reminiscent of a gently-curved Earth scimitar, and in its owner's hand it gracefully parried a follow-up attack and then cut through one of the monsters like paper. "Yeah, thought so. Nae-Dae! Please please tell me my ship's up and running again."

[trollthumper]

Cavalier listened as the box on Eclipse's belt processed what The Communion was saying. In a way, he couldn't figure out if this fate was better or worse. Those taken by this thing were gone, their flesh turned into a puppet and their thoughts incorporated into the greater entity. On the other hand, they were free, and no longer had to look out from behind eyes that weren't their own, watching as their hands did things they would never will.

"LOST. YOU IMPLY ABSENCE, ABANDONMENT. ALL THOUGHT IS LOST AGAINST THE TIDE OF YEARS. IN OUR MAGNITUDE, IT IS ENSHRINED, AND --"

"Oh, shut the fragg up!" Cavalier yelled as he unloaded his blaster into one of the claimed. The blast tore through its chest, sending the figure to the ground in a parody of repose. "You don't get to play savior. Not after everything you've done."

[Gizmo]

Nae-Dae's response over the comm was a garbled mess rife with static but Rock was too focused on the task at hand to hold up his usual standard of conversation anyway. "Rock!" A ton and a half of stone slammed into the tower's outer wall again, widening the cracks he'd made there so far. Materials converted at the molecular level to computronium buckled and gave under the force of his blows as he struck again and again. "Rock!" The Communion had killed an entire world, hollowed out its soul to use the husk and claimed to have done it a favour in the process. The enraged titan wasn't going to be satisfied with merely carving an escape, he was going to bring the macabre monument down around its creator. "ROCK!" Bellowing his fury, Rock focused all of his might into a final punch, shattering the entire wall.