Contract: Nightstalker
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Roquesta (Rocket) Strauss groggily reached across her current bed warmer to slap at the communicator trying to figure out who was calling at 7800 in the night. WHO THE FUCK DO THEY THINK THEY ARE!
She calmed slightly when she saw it was the head of the Palatinian Rhetor. It must be important but why contact her during this sabbatical and why couldn't it wait until morning. "What you want?" Slurred the mostly asleep, partly stil drunk, and partly still high from what the man beside her brought to the party last night.
"Dr. Dolabella, get packed for a long trip. You leave in 6 hours. One of the new colonies found an actually intact matrix. Get out there immediately before they wreck it the others that were found. Get to the purgatorium if you have to to sober up. We don't have time to deal with your vices."
She woke up enough to start moving and throwing gear in her travel chest. Her excitement made her feel more sober than anytime in the last full Aventine day. When she was mostly through, Rocket threw the man's clothes at him and woke him up "Party time is over, I have somewhere to be, apparently."
The excessively tall and well sculpted man stood looming over her. Seeing him for the first time in bright light she noticed shiny lines running along his muscles like they were chased in wire. There was also a small port on the back of his hands and behind his right ear. These details were quickly forgotten when he pulled Rocket in with a suggestive smile. "Dr. surely you have enough time to end this Aventine night off right."
Rocket looked at her comm as it buzzed. 6 months. That's a long fucking time to be stuck on a ship. With a wry grin she said "More than enough."
The next stretch of time was distracting enough that she quickly forgot the brief sting at the side of her neck and the small clatter on the floor.
Back on Telecore, the floating woman within the energy shields continued to look at Rocket as her mannerisms changed. Her face subtly shifted as the left half relaxed like it had had significant damage. A crooked smirk grew across her face and her stance changed to a cocky stance that is pure Rocket. The eyes, however, remained the same glowing void that pulled you in to such an extent that you felt it in your stomach like looking over a tall cliff.
Antonio managed to somehow claw his way free of the ethereal force choking him and retreated out of line of sight. Bash shifted towards one of the floating shards and attempted to puzzle out the symbols scrawled across it.
The woman turned back towards the glowing orb and resumed her chanting while Rocket continued dreaming.
Rocket finished installing the last piece of her new generator around the Geomantic Matrix. Surprisingly these knuckle-dragging warehouse laborers didn;'t damage a single compenent. Sometime later, while somewhat nervous she projected absolute confidence while directing the directing the startup sequence from the control dome., which went without a hitch. The Geomantic Matrix dome fully shielded the various effluent energies. Sitting at her improvised mater control board Rocket remotely engaged the different points on the semi-solid Matrix.
With an earth shaking groan a new canyon 300 km long and 20 wide appeared less than 100 km from the base.
While hiding her shaking terrified hands Rocket turned to the handsome Dr. Iscalapius at the door and with a wink and a grin said "there's a reason you called for the best." (Fuck, I need a high after that.). Surreptitiously she grabbed the pocket injector for a hit. The needle broke skin but she did not feel the expected happy calm.
"Excuse me for a moment." Rocket walked calmly out of the control room then jogged towards her quarters in the hub. She pulled open the drawer with her stash and found it empty. She paused for a moment shocked and in a panic turned and flipped her bed. She scrabbled at the slit in the underside but could not find her emergency stach that she KNEW was in there. After pulling out every last bit of padding in the bed she collapsed in the tufts shaking in a panic.
.
.
.
.
*knock, knock, knock."
Rocket stumbled to the door sweating, pale, and looking like absolute shit. She looked through the peephole and saw Dr. Iscapalius yet again.
"Go away" she croaked.
"I have something for you." He said as surreptitiously shook a packet in front of the peephole. "It'll fix your problems."
Jerzac Scarlewe threw a grenade, whose energy was partly absorbed by the energy shield. Despite all the chaos Rocket stood there glassy eyed.
She rejoined the community as if the past three weeks hadn't happened. For the sake of morale the community did the same. Rocket spent a large amount of time with Iscapalius and when he wasn't looking trying to find his stash. He kept you in constant need, never enough to truly be sated. During the times you were alone, he started talking about the Veiled Ones who he served. Despite never finding his supply he was able to give you drugs whenever you truly needed them. One day he cut Rocket off completely but this withdrawal was much more intense and painful than any she'd ever felt before. So much so that she obeyed his order to kill Florian just for a hit. He ordered her to drag the body out into the wastes, disect it, and bring back organs to place in the cubby around the veiled bust. The high she earned from the act was absolute bliss. The next time, Iscapalius only had to threaten withholding the drugs for her to kill Dioscorus.
Antonio ran to the side and shot wildly, missing the woman. Bash moved out, fired a missed shot, and faded back behind the floating shard. The floating woman turned her head to look over her shoulder to glare at the crew and a wave of strange energy burst from her. When it hit Jerzac he fell into a similar reverie to Rocket.
One day reports came in of strange carved monuments on this barren world. Iscapalius did not seem surprised and marched there almost without guidance. He had part of one removed and brought back for study. In the nights he instructed Jerzac how to split them, engrave strange symbols, and feed them into the Matrix and arrange them around the chamber.
This is when Jerzac started to hear the whispers he told you of. They began to quietly direct you in both modifying the matrix and using the harvested organs to aid in that. These activities made the matrix's power act 10fold, though the actual consumption meant it should be acting at 25x the previous effectiveness. Somehow that thought could never truly take root since his addiction would spike and drive all thoughts other than the drugs out of his head.
The colony was teetering on a knife's edge. only ~20 remain of the original 100. Luckily for Jerzac his murders were never caught on camera. He'd always check after each one but something was covering his tracks for him: From the time he snuck out of his rooms to the time he returned with his harvest every camera in the complex only displayed an upside down black Ankh on a field of sickly yellow.
Surprisingly, Rocket woke up shortly thereafter and shot her plasma fork at "that bitch." "That Bitch" calmly pulled a Lho stick that appeared behind her ear, twirled it through her fingers exactly like the captain always does, and lit it. Antonio and Bash tried the same techniques as last time to similar results.
While on the Kormoran, Genji looked out at the dome the crew was in. The nanobot cloud had moved over to it and was forming a strange rune over the top of it. It looked like a Meridath glyph that the League of Worlds could never figure out but kept appearing during the Meridath War. It felt familiar somehow and when he investigated the feeling he was pulled into a buried memory of Zhoran Reygeiros.
Zhoran stepped into the Gate of Wonder. He strode out into a strange alien glen. The foliage all had a base shade of deep blue that faded at the edges of the leaves into bright fluorescent colors. He took another step and noticed the ground cover crunching oddly. He knelt down to see all the foliage is rigid similar to the coral found in Earth's oceans.
He heard the first natural noise since entering the gate and looked up to see a beautifully plumaged bird swoop out of the larger 'plants.' When it flared its wings a bright yellow flash burst out at the same time as another flash shone from above with three hard impacts slammed into the ground. Zhoran fell back blinking the spots out of his vision to see the bird throwing itself at a cage of light. The impact points showed two robotic creatures and one armored individual standing up out of small craters. The squat armored person removed his helm to reveal a long snouted primate-like species with a thick hair crest that went down the back of its neck into the armor.
It started speaking in a dual tone voice in a language unknown to Zhoran (but somehow mentally translated by someone called Ganji??????) to the bird.
"Magin, you seek to sunder The Veil. Your corruption shall not spread."
He reached out a finger to the light cage and with a swipe connected several points on the rune. The cage turned a dark red before several points of light speared inwards destroying the bird.
One of the robots turned towards armored creature. "Archon, orders regarding this one?"
Archon turned towards Zhoran and with a wearied expression said "I don't know where it came from but it is contaminated. Cleanse it."
Zhoran flung himself backwards through the gate ad the robots turned towards him. Now sprawled on the ground the rest of his order clustered around. Before he could even speak they recoiled. In a stunned silence one of the elders handed him a mirror. In the reflection he saw each eye had changed to have 12 yellow pupils that glowed with inner light.
Again a burst of energy came from the woman. This time Bash felt that itchy spot on his neck burned as he felt it inflame and burst like a boil. Inside his armor he felt strips of flesh writhing around on his neck and a new sense appear as a third eye awoke.
Jerzac also was affected by the wave which carried him further through the strange reverie he was in:
The mMatrix had never been fed this much power before. He overrode every system safety and fed it every scrap of power on the planet, even life support environmentals, to really see what it could do. The light in the matrix dome flared brighter than the noonday sun. He attempted to shut it off but the controls refused to respond. In a surprising display of heroics and self sacrifice he sprinted towards the matrix chamber to manually disconnect the power supply.
Running into the matrix chamber, Jerzac moved to the main cable to break the circuit as his skin started to crisp from the intense heat and radiation. Grabbing a fire axe he swung it. The absurd burst of electricity that arced through his body made him hallucinate in the moments between when his heart stopped and he lost consciousness. In the center of the chamber a glowing rift was open and a misty tendril of many eyes and teeth lashed through and impacted his body before the rift shut and severed the tendril.
While it was surprising that he ever woke up again he was also surprised to find himself uninjured, though there was a nagging feeling several of his limbs should be cybernetic. And something about an immense debt to a korean company? Despite that all seemed fairly normal until he felt something moving within his body following its own orders.
The Peregrine was landed. The colony could get out messages, ask for help again. Most of the gear was offloaded and the majority of the boarded to abandon the colony. Only a skeleton crew was to remain behind to hold the base.
As the engines were spinning up the dust they kicked into the air zipped towards the ship and latched on as it formed into vague arachnid shapes. The screams of metal and crew alike as it was disassembled were horrifying to hear.
Jerzac was in the control room and watched this on the cameras when the voices screamed RUN. He sprinted towards the matrix chamber, turning the corner just in time to avoid the brunt of the blast that opened the dome to the Meridath trooper drones. They executed his assistants effortlessly and followed him down the corridor to the matrix itself. They fired but a field sprang up between Jerzac and their bullets. Looking around he saw he had backed right up to the edge of the catwalk and the matrix had somehow acted on its own to make defenses.
After they were gone Jerzac snuck out through the wreckage of the generator. Pulling together the scraps he tried to effect repairs. Much of the data stored in the computers was corrupted but enough remained from the feed from the day of the attack to triangulate the source direction of the meridath assault. He placed it in and external storage and hid it in the 3rd wrecked server bank, knowing his other self would find it later.
Rocket shot Dolabella but again the field blunted the power of the attack. Bash's new eldritch eye saw the siphoned power flow through the field and suck into certain symbols on the shards of the monument. Calling this information out, he abandoned attacking the woman and obliterated on of those anchoring symbols on the monument in front of him. This caused the outermost field to flicker for a moment but it remained intact.
Again the energy burst out and Jerzac and Bash again started to dream.
Jerzac lay on a table strapped in place. To no one's surprise this is not an unfamiliar occurrence for the captain. The room's door opened to allow a wall of yellow fog to spill in and admit a razor wielding gangly creature with dried writhing strips of flesh all over. It walked up and without words cut into the captain's chest just to the left of his sternum. It dug its long fingers in and ripped open his ribcage to expose his wildly beating heart. It turned to a forge that suddenly appeared and pulled out a brand of an Egyptian Ankh, inverted it, and slammed it into Jerzacs thumping heart. After it removed the brand it pulled its razor back out and carved an intricate latticework of symbols across the captain's entire body. Once every last square inch was inscribed, it returned to the open chest cavity to plunge its sharp fingers into the oozing black branded heart. With a twist of its wrist the carved symbols burst with yellow light.
Bash closed his eyes and opened them to an underwater landscape. He stood on a cobblestone path that stretched through the sea growth into the distance. On the edge of his horizon a strangely shaped cyclopean city lay in drowned ruins. Towering far into the 'sky' a figure squatted behind the city. It seemed at rest until an immense golden eye with double slit pupils lazily flicked open to look at Bash. Unwillingly he started a steady march towards his fate.
Rocket shot and distracted Dolabella long enough for Antonio to shoot her. This firefight also allowed Bash to move and destroy another shard and the first field dropped. In a rage, Dolabella turned from her ritual to mentally strangle and immobilize the large armored soldier. Jerzac remained in his nightmare.
Antonio's shot broke the woman's concentration and allowed Bash to breathe again. Now on a mission he smashed the third monument causing the second layer of shield to flicker. Genji successfully burnt off Kormoran's unwanted passengers and at the crews insistence turned back to deal with the dust swarm that started to form an odd symbol above the Matrix Dome. Once he started looking at it, Bash noted the similarity between it and the symbols on the shards. His new eye also sensed a thinning of The Veil at the center of the room. The captain returned to consciousness and threw a grenade despite the immense pain in his chest but it had little effect. Rocket tried to remote hack the woman but she was both able to resist and knew the source of the command.
Overhead the cloud darkened towards red while Antonio ran back into the fight and Bash smashed the fourth monument causing the third field to flicker. Genji took a risk at the captain's orders and shot the ship's guns at the swarm symbol and vaporized a good portion of it. Jerzac threw another grenade and based on the poor effectiveness abandoned that plan. Rocket, taking a cue from Bash, ripped out her bone blade to charge a shard. Unfortunately her foot slipped and the bone blade buried into the metal a hairsbreadth from damaging one of the symbols.
Antonio sprinted around Rocket to get in position to attack the next shard. Bash moved again to another shard, this time on of the pair furthest from the door. When he destroyed this one he felt the rate at which The Veil was abrading decrease. Unable to line up another shot in time, Genji flew the ship right through the swarm taking some with which changed to the spiders to try attacking the ship again. In a rage Dolabella took her hailstorm pistol and with one shot knocked out the injured Bash. In his unconscious state he returned to his trudging march towards the sunken city. Jerzac moved to try to see the woman but couldn't line up a shot. Rocket tried to rip her blade free but was unable to. She pulled out her sword cane and slashed it through a symbol causing the 2nd field to fail.
Antonio sliced at the second to last rune but it wasn't quite enough to destroy it. Bash stabilized but continued his march. Wheeling around Genji hit the swarm again with the ship's guns. Dolabella stepped back into the final field. Jerzac missed his shot as he saw a writhing creature inside Dolabella clawing at the air and leaving yellow rimmed tears into an endless black void. Still embedded in the monument, Rocket slammed her sword cane down shearing through her own bone blade.
Antonio broke a rune on the seventh shard causing the final field to fail and moved towards the matrix. Bash returned to the fight by injecting stim packs anf moved inwards as well. Genji got off another shot at the now angry red swarm doing enough damage for it to lose cohesion. Dolabella unveiled her stadust robes causing damage to all nearby then her hands dissolved into whips which struck Bash, knocking him out again. Jerzac missed his shot and Rocket missed the final monument.
Antonio dug through his pouches and raced towards bash's side, ready to save his friend. Bash could do nothing to help and continued bleeding out now on death's door. Genji flew over to the control room breach preparing for a retreat. Dolabella tried to shoot Antonio but her gun malfunctioned staggering her. Taking advantage, Jerzac dealt grievous damage and deafened her. Rocket activated her eye laser but it shorted out and messed with her depth perception forr a bit. This meant her follow up cuncussino grenade failed to nock over the enemy.
Antonio slammed the healing serum down as the last vestiges of life were leaving Bash. Bash woke and tried to shoot from his prone position but his gun was fouled with his own blood and viscera. Diusgusted he flung aside the gun and stumbled towards his attacker. Dolabella unveiled her starburst robes again hurting the whole crew but not diminishing their resolve.
Antonio sprinted by and grabbed the matrix. Bash ran up and punched her in the face with his battle glove. Undeterred she shot and enervating ray at antonio, draining him of his vitality. Bash took the oppurtunity to punch her again. The captain, irritated at his previous misses, walked up to the woman and executed her point blank.
In the stunned silence Jerzac saw movement above them. The swarm remnants had formed into a ~5' diameter ball and zipped off to the west.
Exxhausted and bloody the crew spent only long enough to harvest the woman's pistol and armor before retreating to the ship to heal.