Right, I've had a bit more of 'Wild Rover' hanging around the drive. A bit of a makeover, spellchecked haphazardly, and a rough draft at best, but here it is.
And yeah, Catty, I know I didn't do makeovers in the part that I posted earlier, except maybe checking for spelling errors (and boy, they were plentiful). Call it being lazy, call it wanting to finish the whole thing, call it ... oh whatever.
Oh, and the double usage of 'occasional' was intentional. Still is.
*****
It was a sun scorched world with little water anywhere. It's atmosphere, though breathable for humans, was far from what would be considered safe, the remnants of some long ago used chemical or biological agent possibly still floating around. The occasional settlements, or rather, the ruins of the occasional settlements, were scattered over the globe, varying in size and grade of disrepair.
All in all, it was not a pretty sight. Though there were worlds out there that were worse off than this, it was seeing an entire culture somehow wiped out that made shivers run up people's spines. For some reason it was similar to looking into a cracked mirror in which the image is warped and distorted. In a way it could be considered seeing what your home would have become if not for some twist in the run of things, if not for some freak chance.
Still, it needed to be charted, and given a rudimentary scan at least. They were being paid for it after all.
One of the small lander shuttles was dispatched, two crewmen in hazard gear aboard. It was always useful to get a close impression, if the are wasn't _too_ dangerous.
***
"Goddess this sucks" he whispered, even though there was nobody really paying attention. His suit was an old model vac-proofed multi environmental exo-skeleton, not the best thing to go exploring in but it got the job done. The fact that it had been through as much as it had and the logs from routine overhauls showed only minimal wear and tear damage was comforting nonetheless.
It carried about five hours worth of oxygen, with a reserve tank for one hour more at best, and was equipped with basic zero-g motivation thrusters that utilized an extremely compressible mixture of gasses. Of added tools this one carried only the shoulder cam with a direct link to the ship it had come from. True, the suit's own helmet camera could have been utilized, but it's resolution was grainy at best, and the outside version had a much better frame rate anyway.
The reason for his quiet whisper, and the various gasps of shock that erupted from the monitoring crew on the bridge of the "Nay Never", was quite obvious. The various corpses that littered the corridor he stood in, floating in the null gravity of the powered down living compartment.
The ship had been called "Vivacious", and been an explorer class vessel. Those were a good three to four hundred meters long in average, and bulky to boot. Designed for long trips and charting unexplored worlds the "Vivacious" utilized equipment that had been a little aged but sure at the time of its manufacture. The now unmoving rotational section that the crew inhabited at practically all times measured about one third of the total hull length, and made up the middle of the ship. Two huge ion thrusters, of a model that was considered outdated a good fifteen years ago, took up the space behind that section all the way to the ship's end. The front section was a combination of bridge facilities, science labs and a small shuttle bay through which the man who was now standing within the "Vivacious" had gained entry.
The maglock boots of his suit provided for relatively easy movement in the zero-G environment as he took a step forward, hesitantly reaching out to the nearest corpse. Interior lighting was still out, but coming well on the way to being back online, and they were on the level for emergency lights. The red glow that covered the hallway made for an even more gloomy vision, as did the now revealed details of the corpses.
a short story of the Shining Spiral
written by Griever 2003(c)
-----------------------------------
UNCHARTED AREA - SILESIAN SEXTANT
The "Nay Never" floated in space, keeping a steady bearing in relation to the stranded craft. It was a scavenger, or had once been, before the current crew had gotten it's hands on it. After a few modifications it still fulfilled it's primary role well, but was a score more versatile than it had originally been.
Which did absolutely nothing to make it look like anything else than a randomly clogged together bunch of thrusters, at the end of a kludgy, thick hull that was topped off by a octagonal shaped fore section with the rotating living section in the middle. Measuring at slightly over three hundred meters in length and half that in diameter it was, quite simply, ugly. And not in an aesthetic way either. Just plain ugly.
Still, the crew considered her their home, and kept her in good condition, funds permitting.
"By the Gods." was ushered in a semi-silent whisper. Amazingly enough, the words were heard throughout the cluttered affair that passed for the ship's bridge. Richter was a spacer born and bred, and had lived over forty years worth of time in almost constant transit, whether as crewman, cargo hand, advisor or officer. He'd seen many things that would have chilled any normal person to the bone and lived to tell the tale. At sixty he was still looking half his age, thanks to a combination of slight genetic nudges here and there, a prolong treatment, and one of his ancestors to whom he'd merely referred as an 'elf'. Hence the slightly pointy ears.
At the moment his face was as ashen as those of the other three currently on the bridge.
"Bleargh!! Aurgh ..." correction, two. One had turned slightly greenish and made use of the barf bags (standard accessory for any seat on a spaceship, be it crew or passenger).
The screen they were watching, a relatively small display on the tech's console, was being fed the video directly from the vac suit, in real time. They'd just caught sight of one of the corpses slowly rotating and facing the camera, mouth open in a silent scream ... not that unusual for death due to hard vacuum. What was unusual was the way the man seemed to have been gutted, crotch to neck. Needless to say that the sight of what intestines looked after a person's death and then exposion to hard vacuum was not really very pretty.
Another of the bridge crew went to use the barf bags.
"*Have I mentioned how much this sucked yet?*" came a question from the man in the suit, his voice dryly sarcastic.
"Yeah." Kalia was a synthoid, a biomechanical attempt to copy a human. She was sentient, and quite intelligent by any standards. She was also highly sensitive to human emotions such as stress, anger and fear, and it was one of her main objectives to negate or lessen them. Morale officer would be a good description.
She didn't use the barf bag not because she wasn't capable of feeling revulsion. She simply had superior self-control.
"*Well, I'm saying it again.*"
"We _get_ it, alright!?" Richter raised his voice, still unnerved by the brutality of the injuries.
"*Kay, kay. No need to get pissed at the middle-man. Whoever ... whatever did this ... I'll check the others. Maybe we're lucky and this one was ... hell, I don't know, gutted by falling debris or junk or something.*"
Nobody mentioned the fact that the way their luck had been running lately it was unlikely. Nobody mentioned that there was no sign of any sort of hull damage in that section. Nobody mentioned that the section was one of the null gravity zones. They all knew that all too well, still ...
"Hope springs eternal." Richter muttered under his breath.
***
The soft hiss of air being let in to fill a vacuum signaled the final stage of the airlock cycle being completed, and the inner door slid open moments later.
"Katz, you look like hell." Viktor commented from where he was floating opposite the airlock, his left hand hanging onto the railing that ran along every corridor on board, not only in the null gravity sections.
Vic was a stout man, his face haggard and marked with experience. There was little doubt what position he had on the ship. His ever-scraggy coverall and tool harness told anyone with a little sense he was in charge of keeping the mismatched batch of parts that was the "Nay Never" operational. That is to say, he was chief engineer. Not really saying much, since there was a grand number of three people of that profession on the ship. Still, he was what passed for their boss, so it counted for something.
"You take a trip through a Goddess damned cross 'tween a morgue and a house of horrors and we'll see how you look." the man who exited the airlock replied disgustedly. He wasn't floating only because of the maglock boots of the vac-suit he wore.
"Now help me out of this thing, will you? I need a shower. Damn piece of Schrott ..."
*bong* was the sound of a monkey wrench impacting on the vac-suit's helmet.
"How many time am I gonna havta tell ya, kid?" Viktor asked with a resigned frown on his face "Don't ..."
"... badmouth the tech. I know, I know." Katz's voice was a little wobbly, then again, he'd just gone through the equivalent of having the bucket over his head hit with a crowbar. More or less. The ringing in his ears stopped after a few seconds though, and he de-pressurized the suit.
"Not my fault the thing's filter's shot. Again."
"Oh, damn," the tech shook his head "Ten _years_ that thing's been working like a charm, never needed to change the actuators, never needed to do more than lube the connections a little ... and the friggin filters get shot every bloody month. You'd think it was easier to live with after all that time."
"I'm the one who had to wear it," Katz removed the helmet after unlatching it's connections and twisting it to the side lightly. He was average looking, with a plain face, short brown hair and green eyes, faint stubble on his jaw marking that he'd forgotten to shave that morning.
"It's like a steam room in there with the filters like that."
"Yuck," Viktor said in distaste as the suit was finally opened, and Katz could float out of it. Clad in a sweat soaked coverall.
"Yer right, that thing needs the filters switched. Now go get that bath, you reek worse than my marching boots."
"I'm too tired to punt you right now," Katz muttered "Just get the filters working in time for the next outing, kay?"
"Yeah, yeah, kid. Now scram, I'm gonna be makin' busy like." the stocky man said, turning off the now open suit's maglock boots. He grabbed the hold on the suit's back, and pulled it after himself, heading for his workshop.
Katz went to take that shower.
***
"So" Richter asked, looking only mildly rattled by now "all the crew are accounted for, yes?"
"Fortunately ... or unfortunately, depends on how you look at it." the ship's physician said. She was a striking woman, her age indeterminate. She could have been anywhere from twenty to seventy, with the state of prolong in some places along the Spiral. Until one took a closer look. Then you'd count those years as being somewhere from twenty ... She was actually just over thirty in Terran Years. Her early days were as much of a winding path as those of the other crewmembers, but one thing that could be told was that she'd been born somewhere in the Taiidani Empire. The slave brand on her left shoulder was one used only in the Empire, and almost all the clothes Kara, because that was what she chose to call herself, wore were revealing enough to show said brand.
It was an act of defiance really, like giving them the finger, because she was most definitely a free woman. And woe to anybody who tried to claim differently. She was also one of the so called 'touched', her silver hair and long, pointed ears as well as her slender built almost making people mistake her for an elf, the original reason she was sold off by her parents. In some ways Kara was much more, in some ways she was less, but for all intents and purposes she was her own person.
"Medical is ... fairly sketchy for now, but the best I could do without being there myself and working on images. Compliment Katz on the angles, he almost managed to catch all the important ones for this." Richter nodded at this.
"So what's the verdict right now Doc?" the half-elven captain queried. He knew the answer wasn't going to put him even remotely at ease, however it turned out.
"Twenty three corpses in all, twenty of which died for ... presumably mind you, working with what I have to make an educated guess ... fairly much the same reason. That reason being cut and torn wounds. Either inflicted by primitive melee weapons, in which case - how the hell had someone still using those gotten on board the ship, and off it - or by some sort of vicious animal." Kara stated.
"Which brings us again, to the 'how' question." this from a dark skinned man in neat overalls. "How would the ship have picked something like that up? It wouldn't be very unnoticeable, with being able to do that sort of damage. It would have to be big simply to have big enough ... claws, talons, whatever. While there _are_ reports and files on things like that out there, various species collectively referred to as 'bugs' for example. What we have here isn't corresponding with their MOs, or those of most other predatory species out there. If simply because none of the bodies had been devoured or even remotely mutilated in any way resembling a feeding."
And the people gathered for the briefing were mostly aware that the man was right. He'd had enough contact with the so called 'bugs' of many kinds to know, and that he'd survived was more than a testimony of skill. It was a statement of his sheer _luck_ factor.
"We all know and appreciate your expertise Brian," Kara acknowledged. "Still, the fact remains that something had to have done it. Hell, the three that were still intact had preferred locking themselves in a vacuum chamber on the research deck to facing whatever had slaughtered the rest."
"So we're out on a limb here, with nowhere to go." Richter summed up "The 'Vivacious' will be restored, mostly, in a few hours. Then we can run through its logs, and see if we can make headway from there."
"There could have been a million reasons why what happened, and speculation is best left for when we have more information." Brian agreed. "So Doc, you want to go over and have a look at the stiffs I presume?"
"That was my intention, yes" the silver haired woman nodded her assent "Having the bodies secured in some way before the environmental systems are recycled would be prudent. Any sort of bio-agent in them would have been long dispersed, but caution is a virtue you know."
"Alright. That's it for now, next few hours I suggest we get some sleep in. This is going to be a bit on the busy side in a little." Richter sighed. He 'really' didn't want to have to do this, but they were being paid for mapping this part of the sector, which included this sort of investigation.
***
Kalia was worried.
This was not something she had felt in a fair few years time, ever since getting together with the band that made up the core crew of the "Nay Never". Before that was another story.
Exactly why she was worried she couldn't really tell. It was either the fact that this new find was far more morbid than anything she'd seen in quite some time, or she was simply having one of her 'paranoid' weeks again. It was hard to let habits die, and the fact that she had been on the run from the Taiidani for a decade before joining up with Richter's group of misfits made her a little more edgy than most.
For now it was just a feeling though, and there was reason enough to be edgy around a ship like the "Vivacious" had become. Yes, that must have been it. After all, what were the chances of anyone coming after her so long after the incident because of which there had been a price set on her head?
Maybe it was simply the seven new crewmen. They had to hire additional hands for some runs, simply because of the extended time the ship had to be on full supervision, and sometimes there were people with that bunch that she felt uncomfortable with on some level.
The door to the bath whooshed open, and she stopped and stepped aside to allow whoever it was more room. The hallways of the "Nay Never's" living section were a bit cramped in places.
"Thanks," the man's face was obscured by the fluffy towel he was using to dry his hair, but the voice placed the man's identity handily enough. A bit grating, soft ... the yawn had been a clue too.
"Doc wanted to compliment you on getting the angles right on those shots." she said as the man's head peeked from underneath the towel. He was clad in loose sweats and a baggy black t-shirt with a sword depicted on it.
"Yup, trust me to get the best possible image spread of a corpse," Katz made a disgusted face. "I think the only reason I managed to hold on to my lunch through that whole thing were the smelling salts Viktor had in the helmet dispensers. Bloody awful stuff, but sobering as hell."
He was a nice guy, in a weird sort of way, Kalia thought. Some of the crew had taken to calling him Lazybones simply because he really hated rushing things if they could be done calmly. He'd been hired recently as well, or rather, had come to them asking whether they needed anybody to do odd jobs around. Since they lacked a maintenance tech and he showed some aptitude, if not overly much, in that area, they took up the offer.
Something about him made Kalia think of water, the sort of easy way he took things that were thrown at him and flowed with them. He was by no means a cold fish, just that he seemed to prefer remaining stoic most of the time.
Something about him made her feel at ease, as if his easy-going attitude were about to somehow become a universal rule. Shrug your shoulders, crack a joke, and thins will usually turn out fine.
And something about him freaked her out. Big time. A part of her was saying that there was more than a little wrong with him.
She shook off the conflicting feelings, and found herself looking at a curiously peering Katz.
"What?!" she hadn't wanted to sound as harsh as she had, but for some reason it had just come out that way, and it was just plain hard to take someone who's head was covered by a towel seriously.
"Nothing, nothing," he said defensively "you looked spaced out for a moment there, boss."
"Guess I'm still a little wound up because of the ... well ..." she gestured helplessly with one hand, but he seemed to catch her meaning and nodded lightly.
"Sorry."
"No worries. I was pretty freaked the first time I saw something like that too." he said with a sigh "Kinda pulls at you the wrong way, ne?"
"Yeah," she nodded "First time? This isn't the first time you've seen something like this?"
"Frankly?" he asked, and saw her expression slip into a slightly more guarded one "Yeah. A few years ago. It was in the Centauri Sextant. There's the sector of unclaimed space between the Narn, Minbari, Taiidani, Humanx, Aann ... you know. A sort of buffer zone between them. Most of the mapped places there are burned out anyways, so there's not much to lay claim to, least not last time I was there. You know how I said I do odd jobs, right?"
"Yeah." she affirmed.
"Well, I hooked up with a small-time patrol force back then, nothing much, a temp set up by the Commonwealth for some reason or other. Later I found out they needed some of their forces elsewhere and they didn't have enough to keep the token presence they used to have there. So in come the temps. To make a long story short ... well, shorter ... there were a few nasty leftovers there, and one was a wreck of what had once been a passenger liner, the kind with its own jump drive. You know how some pirates work, right? Well, this group had a man on board during the cruise, and he caused an instability in the jump drive and the ship dropped from Q-space. That was as far as the logs went ... you can figure what happened later. The only reason there was anything left to find was that the ship was armed, and after the shootout it was too beat up to do anything with. Not even worth hauling away to sell. About three fourths of the people on board were probably sold into slavery or something. Why? Simple. We only found one fourth ... and you don't want to know in what condition. It was ... well, I think exactly _what_ had happened came through my thick skull until a few days after that. Wasn't pretty."
"Oh." from the tone of voice he had used, it had to have been serious. She'd seen, and done her share of violence, but what she'd seen done to the crew of the "Vivacious" was beyond any of that in sheer brutality. That Katz had ... well, it wasn't all that unexpected, but the information seemed to clash with his disposition and image.
Humans, who could figure them?
"What's the almighty planning for the next trip?" the man asked, towel now slung over one shoulder.
"Apart from placing the corpses in cryo storage until the Doc can work them over?" Kalia shook her head "Well, we're going to try for the ship logs, go through whatever's on board in more detail after the power's restored. Everything seems to be in more or less working order, judging by the startup procedures, just that the filters will take some time with pumping in new air."
"Guess it's better than a kick in the posterior." the man commented off-handedly "If anyone wants something from me, I'm going to my place to catch some zees. Night, night ma'am."
"Yeah, what you said." she nodded absently as the man mock-saluted and trudged in the opposite direction than the one she was going in, heading for his quarters.
***
"I should have _known_ there was something fishy about this job as soon as I saw the paycheck I'd be getting." Katz grumbled.
"Will you shut up and get on with it." Brian's irritated voice sounded over their radio link, earning little more than a snort.
"Look, what we're doing here ... I'd say I'm _entitled_ to a little bitching, no?" was the reply a moment thereafter. The "Nay Never's" Chief of Security muttered something uncomplimentary in disgusted resignation. Katz seemed to alternate between sulking, and complaining about the work at hand ... it was grating on Brian's nerves, even _if_ the man was entitled to a little grumbling because of their work.
There were five of them now aboard the "Vivacious", meaning Brian, Katz, and three other crew-members of the "Nay Never", and they were involved in the gruesome task of transporting the corpses to cryo-storage. The still disabled rotation-mechanism of the living section wasn't very tight ... if one were to discount the bulk of their vac-suits.
Movement was a bit awkward at times, and the corpses made it much more ponderous. Brian uttered a quick thanks for the fact that they didn't have to do this in gravity. It was hard enough as it is. The corridors were still hard vacuum, to prevent any chances of bio agents from the corpses spreading, hence the suits. Even if power had been more or less restored to the ship, life support wasn't an option until the environment was secured.
"Ewwww!."
"Damn, hand me that roll of duct tape, will you? The guy's gonna get hooked on something if you let those stick out."
"Christ, when I get out of this tin-can I'm going to spend a nice half hour in the head, paying tribute to the porcelain idol."
Sentiments were about the same all-round. Things look far nastier in full lighting and when you see them in person than when you watch a vid-link, even in real time, and with emergency lighting going on that end.
"So," Katz asked, shoving another ponderous load into a cryo-tube "What's the verdict on whatever did this?"
"It _looks_ like bug-work, apart from a few things." Brian admitted.
"Bugs?! And you still brought us in here?!" one of the crewmen exclaimed, panicky ...
"Can it! Bio-scans showed zilch, and I don't know a species of bug that can survive hard vacuum for however long this thing's been out here. We've got the motion sensor nets of the ship rigged to early warning systems, and" he jerked his thumb to the rifle-stock protruding over his shoulder "If worst comes to worst we've got the needlers. Doubt it though. They've just been cut up, far as I can tell, and I've seen a lot of bug victims. Nothing fed on them, far as I see, so ..."
***
"Either he's paranoid or he's the only normal person in their little group." Kara sighed at the crewman's exclamation, watching the 'clean-up crew' through their individual video-links that were being fed onto bridge monitors. She and Kalia were half-strapped onto their acceleration couches, preferring that to watching out for your every move. Zero-g bridges could be a little dangerous at times.
"Bio-scans _did_ catch only their tissue, along with some pressure-fried meatloaf that freaked the guy who went into the mess hall. Poor kid, nearly had a heart attack." Kalia chuckled, but her expression went serious again "You think you can do something about figuring out what happened?"
"Honestly?" the silver haired woman looked to the dark skinned synthoid with a thoughtful look on her face "I can't really say. I _could_ speculate at best, with this sort of evidence, but unless there's something really glaring that I missed the results are likely be as probable as the cursory I did thanks to the feed."
"How do you handle it?" the smaller woman asked "I mean, being so calm in the face of ..."
"A corpse is a corpse, a shell, a place that the soul lived in for a while and then left" Kara shrugged "It's easier if you keep telling yourself that."
Kalia lapsed into silence. Did her being a synthoid mean that she had no soul? Was she just a machine, slightly more complex than a normal android ... she hoped not. She certainly felt as if she were alive ... but how could she be certain without ever having known anything else?
Were she not so engrossed in her own reverie she might have caught Kara muttering something at the end there. As it was, she did not catch the words.
"And if I keep telling myself that, I may actually believe it one day."
***
"Bio filters in place, de-contamination protocols ready to run," Vic stated, from his lab in the rotary section.
"Everybody out yet?"
"Sound-off," Brian called over the baseline frequency.
"I'm not staying in there longer than I have to." one answered.
"Clear." the second crewman confirmed.
"I'm out, I'm out." said the third.
"He floats through the air, with the greatest of ease ..." Katz was immediately silenced by groans of frustration.
"Maybe we should have left him in there?" Brian muttered half-heartedly.
"I heard that!" Katz said, mock-hurtfully.
"And we had to hear you sing. Your point?" the Security Chief retorted sarcastically. Katz shut up.
"That's all accounted for," Richter cut off the chatter. "Vic, crank her up!"
The "Nay Never's" Chief Engineer grunted a confirmation, and let his fingers dance over the terminal's keyboard, sending information and instructions to the other ship's computer core. Status displays on his screen flickered as the "Vivacious" came to life again, external lights illuminating her hull one by one. He allowed himself a satisfied chuckle as the de-contamination protocols kicked in, purging the corridors and all the chambers of the ship, save for the cryo bays where the bodies had been stashed, of the most resilient trace residue, be it chemical or biological in nature.
"Working like a charm," he informed over the com-link. "Give it a few hours and the place'll be squeaky clean. Since the reactor's kicked in, their air supply ought to build itself back up from critical level pretty soon too. Estimate is at three to three and a half hours, depending on the state their equipment's in. Remind me to give it a look-over once it's no longer hard vacuum in there."
"Noted" Richter said, then addressed the five in transit between the two ships. "Get back here and get some rest, we're going to turn that ship up-side down if we have to one we're sure the atmosphere's at acceptable levels in there."
"Lemme guess, you'll find out what happened to that piece of derelict space-junk, even if it kills us?" Katz quipped. There was a sound of metal hitting metal, and a pained moan.
"That wasn't even remotely funny." Brian growled in frustration, lowering his gauntleted hand...
"My god, it's full of stars!" Katz's bewildered voice came across the link a moment later.
"We're in space, what else did you expect?!" the Chief of Security sounded as if he were about to start banging his helmet against the "Nay Never's" hull.
"Now get in the damn airlock! If I as much as see your face in the next three hours I'm likely to just do myself a favor and shoot you."
"Noooo-body knows, the trouble I've seen ..." the sound that followed, impossibly, made Vic wonder whether it was possible to strangle someone who was wearing a vac-suit. Brian was certainly making the effort.
"I need an aspirin." Richter muttered.
***
The faint flicker of greenish light coming from the lapframe's screen did little to abate the darkness of the room. Deft fingers moved over the keyboard, and the image of a young woman came up, along with a bio.
She was pretty, with dark skin and short white hair cropped in a pageboy cut. Her figure was slim, and she was short, at five feet and an inch or two of height. Blue eyes of painful intensity seemed to shine from below her wild bangs.
The computer's owner skimmed the information in her bio for a moment. It was familiar enough by now, but he tended to go over things a few times to be sure he hadn't missed anything. One mistake was one too many in his job.
Synthoid, companion class. Vague. It could mean anything from babysitter to personal slave. Original gene material spliced into form in the Atlantis system, spinward of Arrakis by a sector.
Model C-M-53U. Basically a human equivalent in body capability, thought the shell is of course flawless. Brain wiring, standard obedience directives. Minimal regenerative capabilities.
Designation - Kassandra. Generalized service package uploaded, personality set 78-GK.
Wanted for multiple homicide, carjacking, etc.
Current whereabouts unknown.
He chuckled. He knew where she was. Biding his time would come with some difficulty ... but he could be patient if he needed to be.
***
"Airlock cycle complete, welcome to the "Vivacious", ladies." Katz said "I'd say have fun, but considering what you're going to be doing, I'd rather you didn't."
The deadpan face of the "Nay Never's" Medical Officer didn't as much as twitch, though there was a faint sparkle of amusement in her eyes. Kalia simply chuckled. Both were dressed in standard issue jumpsuits, each carrying her tools of trade. For Kara that meant the AutoDoc suitcase, while the synthoid communications specialist totted a variety of interface devices, along with a satchel full of cracking software.
"Right," Kalia admitted "The Captain sent me to go through the logs. The bridge is pretty much where it's on the "Never", right?"
"Yeah," Katz nodded, then frowned slightly "Hold on a sec, I'll go along."
"Yo, Krig!" he leaned into an adjutant corridor and shouted. The soft thud of quickly approaching footsteps heralded the arrival of a short, wiry man clad in a baggy overall. His hair was an odd shade of blonde, faintly pinkish in places, and held in a loose ponytail that reached his shoulderblades, while his eyes were large and dark brown. Even as he walked briskly, glancing at the two women and one man, his right hand tapped a steady stream of commands into the PADD held in his left.
"Yeah? Whacha' need me fer?" he wasn't one of the "Nay Never's" regular crew either, same as Katz, still he did good work that had earned him enough trust. While he hardly excelled in any field he was more than competent in most of them to be a valued asset. A jack of all trades it seemed.
"Could you show the Doc the way to the freezer?" the taller man asked "Com here wants to go through the logs, and ..."
"Ya, ya. Sheesh, for a guy with your attitude you're giving paranoia a bad name," Krig snorted "Alright, c'mon ma'am, they're this way."
Kara gave Katz an odd look, and left after Krieg. There was a moment of silence as he trailed her with his eyes, then snapping out of it. Kalia would have giggled if it weren't for the fact that there had been something off about his gaze. Something that suggested it hadn't been quite the leer some would have seen it as.
The man motioned for her to follow, and headed into a different corridor. One, Kalia could tell from having looked through the rough diagrams of the "Vivacious", leading into the nearest spinal connect shaft.
"Ladies first." Katz said, motioning to the ladder that led spinewards.
"Worried about something?" she asked when she was halfway up the ladder, already feeing her weight drop dramatically due to the lower spin radius.
"Huh?" the reply was less than intelligent. She looked back to see the man's eyes blinking at her. He looked as if she'd interrupted a pretty intense train of thought.
"Say what?"
"Are you worried about something? You spaced out for a minute there." they were in almost null gravity now. A few more steps, more like hauls, and they were in the immobile spinal shaft. A red arrow with the word 'BRIDGE' in bold black letters showed the way to go. Handholds were provided by a railing along one of the sides of the shaft, and movement was easy for zero-g trained people.
"Heavy thinking?"
"No idea, honestly. Something about this ship rubs me the wrong way. I mean, 's nothing I can put a finger on, just a feeling I get" the man shrugged helplessly "Frankly, I'd rather we'd never come across it. Oh well, done is done I s'pose. I know well and good it's irrational, heh, I'm not a very rational minded person anyway."
"No, really?" the sarcasm was thick in her voice, but the way she delivered it seemed good natured enough. Katz wasn't one not to laugh at himself, she'd figured since the beginning of the "Nay Never's" tour, and he seemed to use banter to relieve tension. Even though Kalia was as free a person as a synth could get in her position the so called 'empath' software pack was one thing she had gladly let remain within her memory set. It was a part of her personality anyway.
"Better too silly than too serious, at least I think so," he shrugged again "There's _really_ something that sets me off on this ship. Kinda like a ... pfeh. Skip it."
They floated the rest of the way in silence, past several smaller doors leading to either labs or null-grav workshops, until they reached the bridge. It's layout was similar to that of the "Nay Never", a Captain's seat slightly above and behind a central column, an elongation of the ship's spine around which three stations were laid out. Since the bridge was a null-grav zone as well there was nothing weird in the fact that two seats seemed to be up-side-down, perspective willing.
"Standard setup," Kalia said as she floated forward, Katz staying by the entryway to the chamber. The synthoid moved as gracefully as a fish in water.
"From the looks of things the system is still in a diagnostics loop, normal for this sort of situation. Let's see ..."
Her fingers were deft and quick in their movement as they danced across the keyboard, calling up several process displays. She frowned, nodded, and removed a headset from her bag, along with a 'universal' plug. Useful thing that, software permitting. The plug was made from intelligent plastics, and if you had the right software it could adjust to juts about any in or out socket, allowing for interface. The headset was a custom design, that much was clear from the hand worked look of it, and Kalia fitted it across her temples and forehead with no trouble. She then used the 'universal' to hook it into the ship's data storage.
"Everything working with nominal efficiency," her voice sounded a bit disappointed, then again, she was a perfectionist about some thing "I _could_ improve response time by half, if I had an hour to spare. Since I don't ... logs, logs ... aha! Got it. There we go, encryption key loaded and running. Says it'll be done in a few minutes. What else is in here ... "
"Try the navcomp, that should at least have some interesting data." the man suggested.
"Navcomp memory ... _this_ is interesting. Wiped!" she exclaimed.
"Wiped? Why wipe only this part of the data, leaving the logs intact? Cripes, every good Cap has logs updated with nav-coords. Looking through them is a lot more trouble than navcomp databases, but they still do it. So why wipe only one storage bank, never mind asking what or who did the wiping?" Katz floated up next to her, frowning at the console. His handheld PADD was displaying a layout of what she'd downloaded, not being much at the time.
"I'd guess it's _what_," Kalia chanced "since it could have been a badly worded instruction string. Then again, maybe someone ignorant of what rules common sense dictates on a spaceship? A marauder or pirate would know, so would a soldier. Primitives wouldn't get on board in the first place, and ..."
Katz waited. The glazed look in her eyes meant that she was working with full cerebral capacity on something. She was also totally defenseless in that state. He was a bit nonplussed at the trust this displayed.
A moment later she was back in the land of the living. "No landing logs indicate anything sentient, not even animals, getting in. Not that there seemed to be many animals where these guys went down."
"Alright, now it's officially weird, nut just due to a gut-feeling," the man said. "Hmm, let's take a look at the logs before we start searching for anything else, right?"
"Right. First entry date puts it at 24330221. Using standard Humanx timeframe apparently." Kalia noted.
"Let's see ... okay, let's check the last one then. If we'll find any clues, it'll be there."
'... 'rounded,' the man's face was youngish, but stern ... and afraid. Very afraid. At least that much could be seen from behind the white noise on the screen.
'No idea what those ... things ... are. The first to go was Ryan, one of the away team, which means it's something we picked up planetside. That damn place ... if this message ever reaches anyone, then whatever you do, _don't_ let th ...'
"Talk about vague," Katz shook his head. "Ain't it bloody convenient for the message to terminate right as he was getting to the interesting part."
"Okay, one of the previous entries then." Kalia stated, keying in another set of instructions.
The screen went black, and then the image of the same man as before, only this time neatly groomed and well rested, not to mention not scared half out of his mind, addressed them.
'The preliminary readings show the planet to have been Class-M at one time, but what's left of it now is a husk at best. Most of the five continents are covered in deserts, and the parts that aren't are one huge ocean. It's obvious that there had once been a civilization here, and that there are no traces, at least obvious ones, of any sentient's presence planetside. Then again, we don't really have sensors that are all that high class, so that statement may be reconsidered sometime in the future. We'll take two more days on scans, and then send Mclean and H'Toth down with their teams on survey missions. Full enviro-kits issued, of course. We _did_ detect traces of settlements, and some ruins here and there, and those will be the first places we intend to check out. At least _on_ assignment on the list we got from HSurvey Inc. seems interesting. We were starting to freak after all the 'barren rock without an atmosphere' type. I wonder what happened to this place though ... oh, well. Speculations will come later, as soon as we have more hard data from on-site. That's it for now.'
"Any record as to _where_ that was made?" the man asked the synthoid.
"_Somewhere_ in F120, that's for sure," she informed. "No idea _where_ exactly. Weird ... seems the backups are totally gone from here as well. Damn."
"Crap. This may be more than we bargained for. Selective deletion from logs and navcomp. I do _not_ like this, Com. I do _not_ like this." Katz frowned. Kalia called up another entry, this time from a few days later.
'The away team reports are pretty much along the lines I expected them to be. Meaning no signs of any sort of life on the surface, nothing that could have been detected by our scanners anyway. Ryan's going to take his team down to one of the larger ruins ... on some sort of island or whatever. He thinks there might be something interesting there, but why exactly I haven't the foggiest idea. Still, more coverage that way, and we did schedule a few weeks up here if necessary. Not looking like it at the moment, but still, best be ready for anything.'
"Doesn't say much either," Kalia frowned. "Let's try the next one."
'Ryan came back today, with some sort of ... well, we don't know what it is, and he doesn't know why he picked it up. The item in question could be some technological relic, in fact that's what we're counting on. By the looks of it, it's either something totally primitive and useless, or damn impressive. It was also the only thing that bounced reads of any sort of power in the area, so we actually have a legit reason for having it here. Go figure. Bet the first thing Ryan thought when he saw it was that it'd make a damn nice souvenir. Not that I blame him, looks damn neat for something as old as we think it is. Basically, the item in question is a sphere of a quarter foot in diameter, making the whole thing half a foot wide effectively. It's black in color, but some sort of ... absorbent black. Looks like the thing doesn't reflect light at all sometimes ... anyway, it's also very light for its size. About a sixth of a kilo, maybe less. Another odd thing, it glows. There's a faint golden glow, as if someone had locked a firefly inside the thing. Sometimes it acts in a way that would suggest its surface being laden with electricity, throwing sparks of a sort ... the word 'fairy fire' would fit well, but you'd have to see it to believe it. And we still don't really know what it is. Maybe tomorrow’s investigation will bring us some answers. Who knows?'
"And the plot thickens," the man muttered. Kalia glanced at him, frowning.
"You sound like a bad detective holo, or vid." She shook her head, and keyed in another entry.
"But it _is_ getting interesting."
*****
Right, all comments welcome. At this rate it may actually get done before I have to do Term Finals ... though I don't want to give any sort of deadline, mostly because I know I won't be able to keep one, even if I tried. It's physically impossible. Don't ask why. Hmm ... heh, Rule One.
Right now I'm half broke, half dead from lack of sleep, thirsty, and bloody depressed, so I'm going to bed. See ya on the morrow.
*blinkblink* Oh yeah, idea ... somewhere around the fourteenth tome of Bastard the old wiseasses claim he was created by them, or something like that. Irrelevant, I know, but note this ...
-albino
-'incomplete soul'
-made to serve them in their secret agenda.
Sound like someone we know?
Just a tidbit of trivia. Could make a good EVA/Bastard Xover premise, so I thought I ought to share. Hmm, out of sheer curiosity, anyone using Darshu for anything?
-Griever
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Mention that the first part and the second part hava a large gap of time separating them... Since at first I thought this wass all taking place in pretty much the same few days...
>It was always useful to get a close impression, if the are wasn't _too_ dangerous.
I think you meant area.
> The slave brand on her left shoulder was one used only in the Empire, and almost all the clothes Kara, because that was what she chose to call herself, wore were revealing enough to show said brand.
I would break that up into multiple sentences.
>Humans, who could figure them?
I agree completly.
> If I as much as see
The dual as is a little akward.
>he was more than competent in most of them to be a valued asset.
I would rewrite like this:
he was more than competent enough in most of them to be a valued asset.
>sphere of a quarter foot in diameter, making the whole thing half a foot wide effectively.
I think you mean radious
Very nice, even though I'm 3/4 asleep so I probably missed somethings. Wonder what killed the crew...
oh well we''l find out eventually. Can't wait for more.
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It was a sun scorched world with little water anywhere. Its atmosphere, though breathable for humans, was far from what would be considered safe, the remnants of some long ago used chemical or biological agent possibly still floating around. The occasional settlements, or rather, the ruins of the occasional settlements, were scattered over the globe, varying in size and grade of disrepair.
All in all, it was not a pretty sight. Though there were worlds out there that were worse off than this, it was seeing an entire culture somehow wiped out that made shivers run up people's spines. For some reason it was similar to looking into a cracked mirror in which the image is warped and distorted. In a way it could be considered seeing what your home would have become if not for some twist in the run of things, if not for some freak chance.
Still, it needed to be charted, and given a rudimentary scan at least. They were being paid for it after all.
One of the small lander shuttles was dispatched, two crewmen in hazard gear aboard. It was always useful to get a close impression, if the area wasn't _too_ dangerous.
***
A FEW YEARS LATER
"Goddess this sucks" he whispered, even though there was nobody really paying attention. His suit was an old model vac-proofed multi environmental exo-skeleton, not the best thing to go exploring in but it got the job done. The fact that it had been through as much as it had and the logs from routine overhauls showed only minimal wear and tear damage was comforting nonetheless.
It carried about five hours worth of oxygen, with a reserve tank for one hour more, at best, and was equipped with basic zero-g motivation thrusters that utilized an extremely compressible mixture of gasses. Of added tools this one carried only the shoulder cam with a direct link to the ship it had come from. True, the suit's own helmet camera could have been utilized, but its resolution was grainy at best, and the outside version had a much better frame rate anyway.
The reason for his quiet whisper, and the various gasps of shock that erupted from the monitoring crew on the bridge of the "Nay Never", was quite obvious. The various corpses that littered the corridor he stood in, floating in the null gravity of the powered down living compartment.
The ship had been called "Vivacious", and been an explorer class vessel. Those were a good three to four hundred meters long in average, and bulky to boot. Designed for long trips and charting unexplored worlds the "Vivacious" utilized equipment that had been a little aged but sure at the time of its manufacture. The now unmoving rotational section that the crew inhabited at practically all times measured about one third of the total hull length, and made up the middle of the ship. Two huge ion thrusters, of a model that was considered outdated a good fifteen years ago, took up the space behind that section all the way to the ship's end. The front section was a combination of bridge facilities, science labs and a small shuttle bay through which the man who was now standing within the "Vivacious" had gained entry.
The maglock boots of his suit provided for relatively easy movement in the zero-G environment as he took a step forward, hesitantly reaching out to the nearest corpse. Interior lighting was still out, but coming well on the way to being back online, and they were on the level for emergency lights. The red glow that covered the hallway made for an even more gloomy vision, as did the now revealed details of the corpses.
a short story of the Shining Spiral
written by Griever 2003(c)
-----------------------------------
UNCHARTED AREA - SILESIAN SEXTANT
The "Nay Never" floated in space, keeping a steady bearing in relation to the stranded craft. It was a scavenger, or had once been, before the current crew had gotten it's hands on it. After a few modifications it still fulfilled it's primary role well, but was a score more versatile than it had originally been.
Which did absolutely nothing to make it look like anything else than a randomly clogged together bunch of thrusters, at the end of a kludgy, thick hull that was topped off by a octagonal shaped fore section with the rotating living section in the middle. Measuring at slightly over three hundred meters in length and half that in diameter it was, quite simply, ugly. And not in an aesthetic way either. Just plain ugly.
Still, the crew considered her their home, and kept her in good condition, funds permitting.
"By the Gods." was ushered in a semi-silent whisper. Amazingly enough, the words were heard throughout the cluttered affair that passed for the ship's bridge. Richter was a spacer born and bred, and had lived over forty years worth of time in almost constant transit, be it as crewman, cargo hand, advisor or officer. He'd seen many things that would have chilled any normal person to the bone and lived to tell the tale. At sixty he was still looking half his age, thanks to a combination of slight genetic nudges here and there, a prolong treatment, and one of his ancestors to whom he'd merely referred as an 'elf'. Hence the slightly pointy ears.
At the moment his face was as ashen as those of the other three currently on the bridge.
"Bleargh!! Aurgh ..." correction, two. One had turned slightly greenish and made use of the barf bags (standard accessory for any seat on a spaceship, be it crew or passenger).
The screen they were watching, a relatively small display on the tech's console, was being fed the video directly from the vac suit, in real time. They'd just caught sight of one of the corpses slowly rotating and facing the camera, mouth open in a silent scream ... not that unusual for death due to hard vacuum. What was unusual was the way the man seemed to have been gutted, crotch to neck. Needless to say that the sight of what intestines looked after a person's death and then exposion to hard vacuum was not really very pretty.
Another of the bridge crew went to use the barf bags.
"*Have I mentioned how much this sucked yet?*" came a question from the man in the suit, his voice dryly sarcastic.
"Yeah." Kalia was a synthoid, a biomechanical attempt to copy a human. She was sentient, and quite intelligent by any standards. She was also highly sensitive to human emotions such as stress, anger and fear, and it was one of her main objectives to negate or lessen them. Morale officer would be a good description. In addition to that, she made a good Communications Officer, having an aptitude to working with the sort of technology that entailed.
She didn't use the barf bag not because she wasn't capable of feeling revulsion. She simply had superior self-control.
"*Well, I'm saying it again.*"
"We _get_ it, alright!?" Richter raised his voice, still unnerved by the brutality of the injuries.
"*Kay, kay. No need to get pissed at the middle-man. Whoever ... whatever did this ... I'll check the others. Maybe we're lucky and this one was ... hell, I don't know, gutted by falling debris or junk or something.*"
Nobody mentioned the fact that the way their luck had been running lately it was unlikely. Nobody mentioned that there was no sign of any sort of hull damage in that section. Nobody mentioned that the section was one of the null gravity zones. They all knew that all too well, still ...
"Hope springs eternal." Richter muttered under his breath.
***
The soft hiss of air being let in to fill a vacuum signaled the final stage of the airlock cycle being completed, and the inner door slid open moments later.
"Katz, you look like hell." Viktor commented from where he was floating opposite the airlock, his left hand hanging onto the railing that ran along every corridor on board, not only in the null gravity sections.
Vic was a stout man, his face haggard and marked with experience. There was little doubt what position he had on the ship. His ever-scraggy coverall and tool harness told anyone with a little sense he was in charge of keeping the mismatched batch of parts that was the "Nay Never" operational. That is to say, he was chief engineer. Not really saying much, since there was a grand number of three people of that profession on the ship. Still, he was what passed for their boss, so it counted for something.
"You take a trip through a Goddess damned cross 'tween a morgue and a house of horrors and we'll see how you look." the man who exited the airlock replied disgustedly. He wasn't floating only because of the maglock boots of the vac-suit he wore.
"Now help me out of this thing, will you? I need a shower. Damn piece of Schrott ..."
*bong* was the sound of a monkey wrench impacting on the vac-suit's helmet.
"How many time am I gonna havta tell ya, kid?" Viktor asked with a resigned frown on his face "Don't ..."
"... badmouth the tech. I know, I know." Katz's voice was a little wobbly, then again, he'd just gone through the equivalent of having the bucket over his head hit with a crowbar. More or less. The ringing in his ears stopped after a few seconds though, and he de-pressurized the suit.
"Not my fault the thing's filter's shot. Again."
"Oh, damn," the tech shook his head "Ten _years_ that thing's been working like a charm, never needed to change the actuators, never needed to do more than lube the connections a little ... and the friggin filters get shot every bloody month. You'd think it was easier to live with after all that time."
"I'm the one who had to wear it," Katz removed the helmet after unlatching it's connections and twisting it to the side lightly. He was average looking, with a plain face, short brown hair and green eyes, faint stubble on his jaw marking that he'd forgotten to shave that morning.
"It's like a steam room in there with the filters like that."
"Yuck," Viktor said in distaste as the suit was finally opened, and Katz could float out of it. Clad in a sweat soaked coverall.
"Yer right, that thing needs the filters switched. Now go get that bath, you reek worse than my marching boots."
"I'm too tired to punt you right now," Katz muttered "Just get the filters working in time for the next outing, kay?"
"Yeah, yeah, kid. Now scram, I'm gonna be makin' busy like." the stocky man said, turning off the now open suit's maglock boots. He grabbed the hold on the suit's back, and pulled it after himself, heading for his workshop.
Katz went to take that shower.
***
"So" Richter asked, looking only mildly rattled by now "all the crew are accounted for, yes?"
"Fortunately ... or unfortunately, depends on how you look at it." the ship's physician said. She was a striking woman, her age indeterminate. She could have been anywhere from twenty to seventy, with the state of prolong in some places along the Spiral. Until one took a closer look. Then you'd count those years as being somewhere from twenty ... She was actually just over thirty in Terran Years. Her early days were as much of a winding path as those of the other crewmembers, but one thing that could be told was that she'd been born somewhere in the Taiidani Empire. The slave brand on her left shoulder was one used only in the Empire, and almost all the clothes Kara, because that was what she chose to call herself, wore were revealing enough to show said brand.
It was an act of defiance really, like giving them the finger, because she was most definitely a free woman. And woe to anybody who tried to claim differently. She was also one of the so called 'touched', her silver hair and long, pointed ears as well as her slender built almost making people mistake her for an elf, the original reason she was sold off by her parents. In some ways Kara was much more, in some ways she was less, but for all intents and purposes she was her own person.
"Medical is ... fairly sketchy for now, but the best I could do without being there myself and working on images. Compliment Katz on the angles, he almost managed to catch all the important ones for this." Richter nodded at this.
"So what's the verdict right now Doc?" the half-elven captain queried. He knew the answer wasn't going to put him even remotely at ease, however it turned out.
"Twenty three corpses in all, twenty of which died for ... presumably mind you, working with what I have to make an educated guess ... fairly much the same reason. That reason being cut and torn wounds. Either inflicted by primitive melee weapons, in which case - how the hell had someone still using those gotten on board the ship, and off it - or by some sort of vicious animal." Kara stated.
"Which brings us again, to the 'how' question." this from a dark skinned man in neat overalls. "How would the ship have picked something like that up? It wouldn't be very unnoticeable, with being able to do that sort of damage. It would have to be big simply to have big enough ... claws, talons, whatever. While there _are_ reports and files on things like that out there, various species collectively referred to as 'bugs' for example. What we have here isn't corresponding with their MOs, or those of most other predatory species out there. If simply because none of the bodies had been devoured or even remotely mutilated in any way resembling a feeding."
And the people gathered for the briefing were mostly aware that the man was right. He'd had enough contact with the so called 'bugs' of many kinds to know, and that he'd survived was more than a testimony of skill. It was a statement of his sheer _luck_ factor.
"We all know and appreciate your expertise Brian," Kara acknowledged. "Still, the fact remains that something had to have done it. Hell, the three that were still intact had preferred locking themselves in a vacuum chamber on the research deck to facing whatever had slaughtered the rest."
"So we're out on a limb here, with nowhere to go." Richter summed up "The 'Vivacious' will be restored, mostly, in a few hours. Then we can run through its logs, and see if we can make headway from there."
"There could have been a million reasons why what happened, and speculation is best left for when we have more information." Brian agreed. "So Doc, you want to go over and have a look at the stiffs I presume?"
"That was my intention, yes" the silver haired woman nodded her assent "Having the bodies secured in some way before the environmental systems are recycled would be prudent. Any sort of bio-agent in them would have been long dispersed, but caution is a virtue you know."
"Alright. That's it for now, next few hours I suggest we get some sleep in. This is going to be a bit on the busy side in a little." Richter sighed. He 'really' didn't want to have to do this, but they were being paid for mapping this part of the sector, which included this sort of investigation.
***
Kalia was worried.
This was not something she had felt in a fair few years time, ever since getting together with the band that made up the core crew of the "Nay Never". Before that was another story.
Exactly why she was worried she couldn't really tell. It was either the fact that this new find was far more morbid than anything she'd seen in quite some time, or she was simply having one of her 'paranoid' weeks again. It was hard to let habits die, and the fact that she had been on the run from the Taiidani for a decade before joining up with Richter's group of misfits made her a little more edgy than most.
For now it was just a feeling though, and there was reason enough to be edgy around a ship like the "Vivacious" had become. Yes, that must have been it. After all, what were the chances of anyone coming after her so long after the incident because of which there had been a price set on her head?
Maybe it was simply the seven new crewmen. They had to hire additional hands for some runs, simply because of the extended time the ship had to be on full supervision, and sometimes there were people with that bunch that she felt uncomfortable with on some level.
The door to the bath whooshed open, and she stopped and stepped aside to allow whoever it was more room. The hallways of the "Nay Never's" living section were a bit cramped in places.
"Thanks," the man's face was obscured by the fluffy towel he was using to dry his hair, but the voice placed the man's identity handily enough. A bit grating, soft ... the yawn had been a clue too.
"Doc wanted to compliment you on getting the angles right on those shots." she said as the man's head peeked from underneath the towel. He was clad in loose sweats and a baggy black t-shirt with a sword depicted on it.
"Yup, trust me to get the best possible image spread of a corpse," Katz made a disgusted face. "I think the only reason I managed to hold on to my lunch through that whole thing were the smelling salts Viktor had in the helmet dispensers. Bloody awful stuff, but sobering as hell."
He was a nice guy, in a weird sort of way, Kalia thought. Some of the crew had taken to calling him Lazybones simply because he really hated rushing things if they could be done calmly. He'd been hired recently as well, or rather, had come to them asking whether they needed anybody to do odd jobs around. Since they lacked a maintenance tech and he showed some aptitude, if not overly much, in that area, they took up the offer.
Something about him made Kalia think of water, the sort of easy way he took things that were thrown at him and flowed with them. He was by no means a cold fish, just that he seemed to prefer remaining stoic most of the time.
His manner made her feel at ease, as if that very easy-going attitude were about to somehow become a universal rule. Shrug your shoulders, crack a joke, and thins will usually turn out fine.
And something about him freaked her out. Big time. A part of her was saying that there was more than a little wrong with him.
She shook off the conflicting feelings, and found herself looking at a curiously peering Katz.
"What?!" she hadn't wanted to sound as harsh as she had, but for some reason it had just come out that way. Plus, it was just plain hard to take someone who's head was covered by a towel even halfways seriously.
"Nothing, nothing," he said defensively "you spaced out for a moment there, boss."
"Guess I'm still a little wound up because of the ... well ..." she gestured helplessly with one hand, but he seemed to catch her meaning and nodded lightly.
"Sorry."
"No worries. I was pretty freaked the first time I saw something like that too." he said with a sigh. "Kinda pulls at you the wrong way, ne?"
"Yeah," she nodded. "First time? This isn't the first time you've seen something like this?"
"Frankly?" he asked, and saw her expression slip into a slightly more guarded one. "Yeah. A few years ago. It was in the Centauri Sextant. There's the sector of unclaimed space between the Narn, Minbari, Taiidani, Humanx, Aann ... you know. A sort of buffer zone between them. Most of the mapped places there are burned out anyways, so there's not much to lay claim to, least not last time I was there. You know how I said I do odd jobs, right?"
"Yeah." she affirmed.
"Well, I hooked up with a small-time patrol force back then, nothing much, a temp set up by the Commonwealth for some reason or other. Later I found out they needed some of their forces elsewhere and they didn't have enough to keep the token presence they used to have there. So in come the temps. To make a long story short ... well, shorter ... there were a few nasty leftovers there, and one was a wreck of what had once been a passenger liner, the kind with its own jump drive. You know how some pirates work, right? Well, this group had a man on board during the cruise, and he caused an instability in the jump drive that caused the ship to drop from Q-space. That was as far as the logs went ... you can figure what happened later. The only reason there was anything left to find was that the ship was armed, and after the shootout it was too beat up to do anything with. Not even worth hauling away to sell. About three fourths of the people on board were probably sold into slavery or something. Why that number? Simple. We only found one fourth ... and you don't want to know in what condition. It was ... well, I think exactly _what_ had happened came through my thick skull until a few days after that. Wasn't pretty."
"Oh." from the tone of voice he had used, it had to have been serious. She'd seen, and done her share of violence, but what she'd seen done to the crew of the "Vivacious" was beyond any of that in sheer brutality. That Katz had ... well, it wasn't all that unexpected, but the information seemed to clash with his disposition and image.
Humans, who could figure them?
"What's the almighty planning for the next trip?" the man asked, towel now slung over one shoulder.
"Apart from placing the corpses in storage until the Doc can work them over?" Kalia shook her head "Well, we're going to try for the ship logs, go through whatever's on board in more detail after the power's restored. Everything seems to be in more or less working order, judging by the startup procedures, just that the filters will take some time with pumping in new air."
"Guess it's better than a kick in the posterior." the man commented off-handedly. "If anyone wants me for something, I'm going to my place to catch some zees. Night, night ma'am."
"Yeah, what you said." she nodded absently as the man mock-saluted and trudged in the opposite direction than the one she was going in, heading for his quarters.
***
"I should have _known_ there was something fishy about this job as soon as I saw the paycheck I'd be getting." Katz grumbled.
"Will you shut up and get on with it." Brian's irritated voice sounded over their radio link, earning little more than a snort.
"Look, what we're doing here ... I'd say I'm _entitled_ to a little bitching, no?" was the reply a moment thereafter. The "Nay Never's" Chief of Security muttered something uncomplimentary in disgusted resignation. Katz seemed to alternate between sulking, and complaining about the work at hand ... it was grating on Brian's nerves, even _if_ the man was entitled to a little grumbling because of said work.
There were five of them now aboard the "Vivacious", meaning Brian, Katz, and three other crew-members of the "Nay Never", and they were involved in the gruesome task of transporting the corpses to a storage zone marked out for them, that would then be sealed off until they were ready to conduct examinations. The still disabled rotation-mechanism of the living section wasn't very tight ... if one were to discount the bulk of their vac-suits.
Movement was a bit awkward at times, and the corpses made it much more ponderous. Brian uttered a quick thanks for the fact that they didn't have to do this in gravity. It was hard enough as it was. The corridors were still hard vacuum, to prevent any chances of bio agents from the corpses spreading, hence the suits. Even if power had been more or less restored to the ship, life support wasn't an option until the environment was secured.
"Ewwww!."
"Damn, hand me that roll of duct tape, will you? The guy's gonna get hooked on something if you let those stick out. Gross."
"Christ, when I get out of this tin-can I'm going to spend a nice half hour in the head, paying tribute to the porcelain idol."
Sentiments were about the same all-round. Things look far nastier in full lighting and when you see them in person, than when you watch a vid-link, even in real time, and with emergency lighting going on the other end.
"So," Katz asked, shoving another ponderous load into a cryo-tube "What's the verdict on whatever did this?"
"It _looks_ like bug-work, apart from a few things." Brian admitted.
"Bugs?! And you still brought us in here?!" one of the crewmen exclaimed, panicky ...
"Can it! Bio-scans showed zilch, and I don't know a species of bug that can survive hard vacuum for however long this thing's been out here. We've got the motion sensor nets of the ship rigged to early warning systems, and" he jerked his thumb to the rifle-stock protruding over his shoulder "If worst comes to worst we've got the needlers. Doubt it though. They've just been cut up, far as I can tell, and I've seen a lot of bug victims. Nothing fed on them, far as I see, so ..."
***
"Either he's paranoid or he's the only normal person in their little group." Kara sighed at the crewman's exclamation, watching the 'clean-up crew' through their individual video-links that were being fed onto bridge monitors. She and Kalia were half-strapped onto their acceleration couches, preferring that to watching out for their every move. Zero-g bridges could be a little dangerous at times.
"Bio-scans _did_ catch only their tissue, along with some pressure-fried meatloaf that freaked the guy who went into the mess hall. Poor kid, nearly had a heart attack." Kalia chuckled, but her expression went serious again. "You think you can do something about figuring out what happened?"
"Honestly?" the silver haired woman looked to the dark skinned synthoid with a thoughtful look on her face. "I can't really say. I _could_ speculate at best, with this sort of evidence, but unless there's something really glaring that I missed the results are likely be as probable as the cursory I did thanks to the feed."
"How do you handle it?" the smaller woman asked. "I mean, being so calm in the face of ..."
"A corpse is a corpse, a shell, a place that the soul lived in for a while and then left" Kara shrugged. "It's easier if you keep telling yourself that."
Kalia lapsed into silence. Did her being a synthoid mean that she had no soul? Was she just a machine, slightly more complex than a normal android ... she hoped not. She certainly felt as if she were alive ... but how could she be certain without ever having known anything else?
Were she not so engrossed in her own reverie she might have caught Kara muttering something at the end there. As it was, she did not catch the words.
"And if I keep telling myself that, I may actually believe it one day."
***
"Bio filters in place, de-contamination protocols ready to run," Vic stated, from his lab in the rotary section.
"Everybody out yet?"
"Sound-off," Brian called over the baseline frequency.
"I'm not staying in there longer than I have to." one answered.
"Clear." the second crewman confirmed.
"I'm out, I'm out." said the third.
"He floats through the air, with the greatest of ease ..." Katz was immediately silenced by groans of frustration.
"Maybe we should have left him in there?" Brian muttered half-heartedly.
"I heard that!" Katz said, mock-hurtfully.
"And we had to hear you sing. Your point?" the Security Chief retorted sarcastically. Katz shut up.
"That's all accounted for," Richter cut off the chatter. "Vic, crank her up!"
The "Nay Never's" Chief Engineer grunted a confirmation, and let his fingers dance over the terminal's keyboard, sending information and instructions to the other ship's computer core. Status displays on his screen flickered as the "Vivacious" came to life again, external lights illuminating her hull one by one. He allowed himself a satisfied chuckle as the de-contamination protocols kicked in, purging the corridors and all the chambers of the ship, save for the impromptu storage bay where the bodies had been stashed, of the most resilient trace residue, be it chemical or biological in nature.
"Working like a charm," he informed over the com-link. "Give it a few hours and the place'll be squeaky clean. Since the reactor's kicked in, their air supply ought to build itself back up from critical level pretty soon too. Estimate is at three to three and a half hours, depending on the state their equipment's in. Remind me to give it a look-over once it's no longer hard vacuum in there."
"Noted" Richter said, then addressed the five in transit between the two ships. "Get back here and get some rest, we're going to turn that ship up-side down if we have to once we're sure the atmosphere's at acceptable levels in there."
"Lemme guess, you'll find out what happened to that piece of derelict space-junk, even if it kills us?" Katz quipped. There was a sound of metal hitting metal, and a pained moan.
"That wasn't even remotely funny." Brian growled in frustration, lowering his gauntleted hand...
"My god, it's full of stars!" Katz's bewildered voice came across the link a moment later.
"We're in space, what else did you expect?!" the Chief of Security sounded as if he were about to start banging his helmet against the "Nay Never's" hull.
"Now get in the damn airlock! If I as much as see your face in the next three hours I'm likely to just do myself a favor and shoot you."
"Noooo-body knows, the trouble I've seen ..." the sound that followed, impossibly, made Vic wonder whether it was possible to strangle someone who was wearing a vac-suit. Brian was certainly making the effort.
"I need an aspirin." Richter muttered.
***
The faint flicker of greenish light coming from the lapframe's screen did little to abate the darkness of the room. Deft fingers moved over the keyboard, and the image of a young woman came up, along with a bio.
She was pretty, with dark skin and short white hair cropped in a pageboy cut. Her figure was slim, and she was short, at five feet and an inch or two of height. Blue eyes of painful intensity seemed to shine from below her wild bangs.
The computer's owner skimmed the information in her bio for a moment. It was familiar enough by now, but he tended to go over things a few times to be sure he hadn't missed anything. One mistake was one too many in his job.
Synthoid, companion class. Vague. It could mean anything from babysitter to personal slave. Original gene material spliced into form in the Atlantis system, spinward of Arrakis by a sector.
Model C-M-53U. Basically a human equivalent in body capability, thought the shell is of course flawless. Brain wiring, standard obedience directives. Minimal regenerative capabilities.
Designation - Kassandra. Generalized service package uploaded, personality set 78-GK.
Wanted for multiple homicide, carjacking, etc.
Current whereabouts unknown.
He chuckled. He knew where she was. Biding his time would come with some difficulty ... but he could be patient if he needed to be. He closed the lapframe, stashing it under his bunk, and laid back to get some sleep.
***
"Airlock cycle complete, welcome to the "Vivacious", ladies." Katz said. "I'd say have fun, but considering what you're going to be doing, I'd rather you didn't."
The deadpan look on the face of the "Nay Never's" Medical Officer didn't as much as twitch, though there was a faint sparkle of amusement in her eyes. Kalia simply chuckled. Both were dressed in standard issue jumpsuits, each carrying her tools of trade. For Kara that meant the AutoDoc suitcase, while the synthoid communications specialist totted a variety of interface devices, along with a satchel full of cracking software.
"Right," Kalia admitted "The Captain sent me to go through the logs. The bridge is pretty much where it's on the "Never", right?"
"Yeah," Katz nodded, then frowned slightly. "Hold on a sec, I'll go along."
"Yo, Krig!" he leaned into an adjutant corridor and shouted. The soft thud of quickly approaching footsteps heralded the arrival of a short, wiry man clad in a baggy overall. His hair was an odd shade of blonde, faintly pinkish in places, and held in a loose ponytail that reached his shoulderblades, while his eyes were large and dark brown. Even as he walked briskly, glancing at the two women and one man, his right hand tapped a steady stream of commands into the PADD held in his left.
"Yeah? Whacha' need me fer?" he wasn't one of the "Nay Never's" regular crew either, same as Katz, still he did good work that had earned him enough trust. Not excelling in any field, he was more than competent in most of them to be a valued asset. A jack of all trades it seemed.
"Could you show the Doc the way to the freezer?" the taller man asked. "Com here wants to go through the logs, and ..."
"Ya, ya. Sheesh, for a guy with your attitude you're giving paranoia a bad name," Krig snorted. "Alright, c'mon ma'am, they're this way."
Kara gave Katz an odd look, and left after Krieg. There was a moment of silence as he trailed her with his eyes, then snapping out of it. Kalia would have giggled if it weren't for the fact that there had been something off about his gaze. Something that suggested it hadn't been quite the leer some would have seen it as.
The man motioned for her to follow, and headed into a different corridor. One, Kalia could tell from having looked through the rough diagrams of the "Vivacious", leading into the nearest spinal connect shaft.
"Ladies first." Katz said, motioning to the ladder that led spinewards.
"Worried about something?" she asked when she was halfway up the ladder, already feeing her weight drop dramatically due to the lower spin radius.
"Huh?" the reply was less than intelligent. She looked back to see the man's eyes blinking at her. He looked as if she'd interrupted a pretty intense train of thought.
"Say what?"
"Are you worried about something? You spaced out for a minute there." they were in almost null gravity now. A few more steps, more like hauls, and they were in the immobile spinal shaft. A red arrow with the word 'BRIDGE' in bold black letters showed the way to go. Handholds were provided by a railing along one of the sides of the shaft, and movement was easy for zero-g trained people.
"Heavy thinking?"
"No idea, honestly. Something about this ship rubs me the wrong way. I mean, 's nothing I can put a finger on, just a feeling I get," the man shrugged helplessly. "Frankly, I'd rather we'd never come across it. Oh well, done is done I suppose. I know well and good it's irrational, heh, I'm not a very rational minded person anyway."
"No, really?" the sarcasm was thick in her voice, but the way she delivered it seemed good natured enough. Katz wasn't one not to laugh at himself, she'd figured since the beginning of the "Nay Never's" tour, and he seemed to use banter to relieve tension. Even though Kalia was as free a person as a synth could get in her position the so called 'empath' software pack was one thing she had gladly let remain within her memory set. It was a part of her personality anyway.
"Better too silly than too serious, at least I think so," he shrugged again. "There's _really_ something that sets me off here. Kinda like a ... pfeh. Skip it."
They floated the rest of the way in silence, past several smaller doors leading to either labs or null-grav workshops, until they reached the bridge. It's layout was similar to that of the "Nay Never", a Captain's seat slightly above and behind a central column, an elongation of the ship's spine around which three stations were laid out. Since the bridge was a null-grav zone as well there was nothing weird in the fact that two seats seemed to be up-side-down, perspective willing.
"Standard setup," Kalia said as she floated forward, Katz staying by the entryway to the chamber. The synthoid moved as gracefully as a fish in water.
"From the looks of things the system is still in a diagnostics loop, normal for this sort of situation. Let's see ..."
Her fingers were deft and quick in their movement as they danced across the keyboard, calling up several process displays. She frowned, nodded, and removed a headset from her bag, along with a 'universal' plug. Useful thing that, software permitting. The plug was made from intelligent plastics, and if you had the right software it could adjust to just about any in or out socket, allowing for interface. The headset was a custom design, that much was clear from the hand-worked look of it, and Kalia fitted it across her temples and forehead with no trouble. She then used the 'universal' to hook it into the ship's data storage.
"Everything working with nominal efficiency," her voice sounded a bit disappointed, then again, she was a perfectionist about some things. "I _could_ improve response time by half, if I had an hour to spare. Since I don't ... logs, logs ... aha! Got it. There we go, encryption key loaded and running. Says it'll be done in a few minutes. What else is in here ... "
"Try the navcomp, that should at least have some interesting data." the man suggested.
"Navcomp memory ... _this_ is interesting. Wiped!" she exclaimed.
"Wiped? Why wipe only this part of the data, leaving the logs intact? Cripes, every good Cap has logs updated with nav-coords. Looking through them is a lot more trouble than navcomp databases, but they still do it. So why wipe only one storage bank, never mind asking what or who did the wiping?" Katz floated up next to her, frowning at the console. His handheld PADD was displaying a layout of what she'd downloaded, not being much at the time.
"I'd guess it's _what_," Kalia chanced "since it could have been a badly worded instruction string. Then again, maybe someone ignorant of what rules common sense dictates on a spaceship? A marauder or pirate would know, so would a soldier. Primitives wouldn't get on board in the first place, and ..."
Katz waited. The glazed look in her eyes meant that she was working with full cerebral capacity on something. She was also totally defenseless in that state. He was a bit nonplussed at the trust this displayed.
A moment later she was back in the land of the living. "No landing logs indicate anything sentient, not even animals, getting in. Not that there seemed to be many animals where these guys went down."
"Alright, now it's officially weird, nut just due to a gut-feeling" the man said "Hmm, let's take a look at the logs before we start searching for anything else, right?"
"Right. First entry date puts it at 24330221. Using standard Humanx timeframe apparently." Kalia noted.
"Let's see ... okay, let's check the last one then. If we'll find any clues, it'll be there."
'... 'rounded,' the man's face was youngish, but stern ... and afraid. Very afraid. At least that much could be seen from behind the white noise on the screen.
'No idea what those ... things ... are. The first to go was Ryan, one of the away team, which means it's something we picked up planetside. That damn place ... if this message ever reaches anyone, then whatever you do, _don't_ let th ...'
"Talk about vague," Katz shook his head. "Ain't it bloody convenient for the message to terminate right as he was getting to the interesting part."
"Okay, one of the previous entries then." Kalia stated, keying in another set of instructions.
The screen went black, and then the image of the same man as before, only this time neatly groomed and well rested, not to mention not scared half out of his mind, addressed them.
'The preliminary readings show the planet to have been Class-M at one time, but what's left of it now is a husk at best. Most of the five continents are covered in deserts, and the parts that aren't are one huge ocean. It's obvious that there had once been a civilization here, and that there are no traces, at least obvious ones, of any sentient's presence planetside. Then again, we don't really have sensors that are all that high class, so that statement may be reconsidered sometime in the future. We'll take two more days on scans, and then send Mclean and H'Toth down with their teams on survey missions. Full enviro-kits issued, of course. We _did_ detect traces of settlements, and some ruins here and there, and those will be the first places we intend to check out. At least _on_ assignment on the list we got from HSurvey Inc. seems interesting. We were starting to freak after all the 'barren rock without an atmosphere' type. I wonder what happened to this place though ... oh, well. Speculations will come later, as soon as we have more hard data from on-site. That's it for now.'
"Any record as to _where_ that was made?" the man asked the synthoid.
"_Somewhere_ in F120, that's for sure," she informed. "No idea _where_ exactly. Weird ... seems the backups are totally gone from here as well. Damn."
"Crap. This may be more than we bargained for. Selective deletion from logs and navcomp. I do _not_ like this, Com. I do _not_ like this." Katz frowned. Kalia called up another entry, this time from a few days later.
'The away team reports are pretty much along the lines I expected them to be. Meaning no signs of any sort of life on the surface, nothing that could have been detected by our scanners anyway. Ryan's going to take his team down to one of the larger ruins ... on some sort of island or whatever. He thinks there might be something interesting there, but why exactly I haven't the foggiest idea. Still, more coverage that way, and we did schedule a few weeks up here if necessary. Not looking like it at the moment, but still, best be ready for anything.'
"Doesn't say much either," Kalia frowned. "Let's try the next one."
'Ryan came back today, with some sort of ... well, we don't know what it is, and he doesn't know why he picked it up. The item in question could be some technological relic, in fact that's what we're counting on. By the looks of it, it's either something totally primitive and useless, or damn impressive. It was also the only thing that bounced reads of any sort of power in the area, so we actually have a legit reason for having it here. Go figure. Bet the first thing Ryan thought when he saw it was that it'd make a damn nice souvenir. Not that I blame him, looks damn neat for something as old as we think it is. Basically, the item in question is a sphere of a quarter foot in radius, making the whole thing half a foot wide effectively. It's black in color, but some sort of ... absorbent black. Looks like the thing doesn't reflect light at all sometimes ... anyway, it's also very light for its size. About a sixth of a kilo, maybe less. Another odd thing, it glows. There's a faint golden glow, as if someone had locked a firefly inside the thing. Sometimes it acts in a way that would suggest its surface being laden with electricity, throwing sparks of a sort ... the word 'fairy fire' would fit well, but you'd have to see it to believe it. And we still don't really know what it is. Maybe tomorrow’s investigation will bring us some answers. Who knows?'
"And the plot thickens," the man muttered. Kalia glanced at him, frowning.
"You sound like a bad detective holo or vid." She shook her head, and keyed in another entry.
"But it _is_ getting interesting."
***
"Well, this _is_ getting interesting." Kara unknowingly echoed Kalia's words. The silver haired woman was clad in an enviromental suit, and standing next to a gurney. Said gurney was laden with the corpse of one of the former crewmen of the "Vivacious". Identification had proven him to be Ryan Mclean, head of one of the away teams, and if the data she was getting from her scanners was correct he was one of the last to die. At least according to _most_ of the scan. On some parts of it ... well, there were little or no wounds visible on the body, which was odd when comparing it to the people who _hadn't_ willingly gone into stasis, but not an exception at all. Three or four others appeared to be in much the same state.
No, what was interesting was the fact that, once she'd gotten past the crude initial scans and started a more in-depth examination several anomalies were readily apparent. Vacuum had preserved the body well enough that she knew she was getting a halfway-accurate reading on most accounts.
For one thing ... the muscle tissue was both exponentially more developed than it should have been, taking into account age, his health log, and medical history. A normal, if the term may apply, human male of roughly twenty-five years in age, trained in E.V.A. work, various kinds of hazard suits, healthy in a sense that he kept in shape ... was what she should have found, even after the blood vessels had burst from lack of pressure.
Instead, muscle mass exceeded what should have been by, oh, roughly fifty percent, maybe more. Their structure was ... just plain _odd_, as in - the alignment was all wrong for a human. While any other medic would have left it at that, giving an assessment of 'normal' and blaming the rest on outdated med-logs ... well, Kara was hardly a normal person in her own right. Besides, with the state they were in it was hard not to notice them. They were as worn as those of a man thrice Mclean's age, maybe more so.
What she saw here tingled in a way long forgotten memories did.
"Ya find anything Doc?" came a question from her suit's comlink.
"A clue, at least it's what this looks like." she answered, continuing with the examination. Her escort was standing beside the door, wearing his own hazard suit and still typing on the PADD. From what she'd seen on the way there, he was busy with some sort of hyperspace calculation or another. At least that was what she figured from the spacechart and radiuses overlapping each other.
He wasn't much of a talker, focusing on his own work and not bothering to check on anything she did. Focused would be one way to call him. Oblivious was another. He was probably somewhere in-between, so it was a fair estimate. His actually finding time to strike up even a semblance of conversation wasn't customary.
"What's it look like, then?" he asked again.
"I won't speculate right now ... it could be coincidence. Give me a moment while I run the check."
"Yeah, sure." Krig got up though, and stepped a little closer, peering at the scanner displays. Maglock boots clanked faintly on the metallic floor, no actual noise being transmitted through the vacuum itself but rather via the faint vibration of the floor. With the talents he'd displayed during their short tour she wouldn't be surprised if he knew what was being looked for. The way his eyebrows shot up, and his pupils dilated briefly showed she was right. He'd figured out what she suspected, and from the only cursory examination he'd given the readings she figured he had more talent in the field of medicine than he'd let on.
"Ma'am ... it this what I think it is?"
"I don't know," she cracked a wry smile. "What do you think it is?"
"The partial brain-fry in motive centers, the ... if the bursting of some blood vessles didn't knock it out of alignment then the optical nerve looks _way_ more sensitive than it ought to. Olfactory too. I'm no specialist," Kara raised an eyebrow as he said this. "But damn if this don't look to me like it was the biological equivalent of a rewired 'borg."
"Well, looks like you have some hidden depths, Mr.Krig," she said, and turned to the corpse again. "The nerves, yes, and the muscle tissue. I'm running a rough scan of the spinal column now, and ... yes. Your assessment was almost on the mark. Impressive. It _does_ look like a rigged cyborg’s, or an android’s, nervous systems, someone's attempt at biologically replicating adrenal boosters. Along with the muscle mass ..."
The scanner beeped, and she leaned over the flat screen to get a better look at the results. Then her eyes widened in shock, and her hands tracked out an intricate sequence on the touch pads, calling up a few more menus and calibrating the equipment.
"What is it?" Krig asked, as he moved to get a better look at what she'd done once she stopped.
She didn't answer, instead opting to call up a connection with the "Nay Never".
"Captain, Kara here. Yes, I think I found something important. Could you ask Vic to suit up and get over here. There's something I need a second opinion on."
Krig finally got to see what had been displayed on the screen, and his face went blank for a moment, as comprehension hit. Displayed was a readout from a ultra-high resolution EM spectrum scan, one that was a bit on the sensitive side for even the custom AutoDoc unit.
***
Richter frowned at the sphere sitting on the table before him. It was roughly a quarter foot in radius, making the whole thing half a foot wide effectively. It was black in color, an absorbent black in fact, and aside from a flicker of light dancing within there were no distinctive features to it. Kalia sat opposite him, at the other end of the table, while Brian was standing at one of the windows, browsing through something on a handheld PADD.
The door to the briefing room opened, allowing Vic and Kara entrance. They sat at the table, faces a bit drawn and tired. Since they'd been working for the past ten hours straight, without pause, it wasn't that strange.
"We found something," Kara said. "I think that we know what did it."
"Enlighten us, then," Richter nodded.
***
The door hissed open, allowing a vacuum-suit clad figure entrance. The contents of the chamber were hazardous, and he had taken as many precautions as possible. Redundancy was the key word here. He neared the storage chamber, and entered that as well. The lapframe was placed on a table, a few cables selected, and a hypo pulled from a medpack at his belt.
The figure then proceeded to one of the corpses, the few without any prominent injury. A long needle, with a cable connected to one end, was deftly stuck into the body's neck, said cable then being hooked up to the computer. The figure sat on a chair behind the table, and started typing.
The software he was working on was incredible kludge, and looked hacked together at best ... or rather, it looked like it had updated itself from time to time, without anyone there to check on the correctness of said updates. The man altered a little here, a little there, sometimes sloppily, sometimes efficiently.
It would do, and that was what counted, ultimately. It wouldn't have to do all _that_ much, either.
***
"I'm not allowed to say," Kalia replied to Katz query about the meeting. She'd gone to eat something in the ship's mess hall, and found the man there already. When she'd sat down across from him, he'd asked about what the command staff had been discussing, but she'd denied him the knowledge. Richter had said that it was to be kept quiet. Nobody liked news like that heaped on them, though the increased safety regs aboard the other ship would give them at least some hint of what it was about. The fact that the ship was again a 'hazard suit' zone wouldn't sit well with them, she wagered. Judging from Katz's frown she was right.
"Shame," he shrugged after a moment, and took a bite from the steak-facsimile the auto-kitchen had served him. It was bland, tough, and not at all that good. Unfortunately, they had to deal with it for another two weeks at least, since the rest of their supplies was gone by now, the better tasting foods having dispersed first.
"I ran some tests on the 'paperweight' a while ago," he continued, discarding the previous thread. They had found the sphere mentioned in the logs an hour after they were finished with them, in the Captain's office. It had rolled into a corner, presumably after gravity had reestablished itself. The office itself had been a mess, paper printouts and kipple strewn haphazardly all along the room, for the same reason the sphere was where they had found it. Somehow, 'paperweight' was the first thing that came to mind when seeing it.
"Find anything interesting?" she was genuinely interested in this, if only because the sphere looked neat in a way. It _would_ be cool to find out what it did, she reasoned, if only for curiosity's sake.
"Yeah. It scans as solid, only it shouldn't be ... too light, and the outer layer is a weird alloy that _sort of_ looks like something that would be normally associated with a cutting edge of a sword. That stuff is _dense_. Waaaaay too light though."
"Maybe it _is_ hollow, and the instruments can't penetrate the outer shell," Kalia reasoned.
"Huh. That's something. Might check up on it. Anyway," the man went on. "Remember the note about 'light'? Well, guess what, it's a pulse of sorts. I tried recording it with a high speed cam, got a pulse of a second's length, with a picosecond interrupt. No idea why it does that, either. It _does_ generate some electricity, far as I figure, though again _how_ it does that is a bit of a puzzle. Hell, I had it de-magnetized, put into a sealed off environment, and checked up on it an hour later. Guess what? Yup, static charge. Too many _hows_ and no answers as to what the thing _is_. Wish we had a manaprobe though. Oh well."
They trailed off into silence for a while, munching on their respective meals.
"So," Kalia started. "Why did you hook up with us? You never said."
"Oh, that." he mused for a moment, then answered. "I needed the money, for one thing. There's a little project I have going that may cost a bit more than I thought it would. Beyond that ... I thought it'd be nice and quiet."
"Some 'nice and quiet' this turned out to be, ne?" Kalia laughed, while Katz merely snickered.
"And you?" he asked in return. "How'd you end up as an officer on the 'Never'?"
He knew as soon as he said it that he should have left that particular topic alone, by the look on her face alone.
"Sorry, I have to go," she said stonily, stood up, and left at a brisk pace. The man cast a speculative glance after her retreating figure.
"Well, you have a way with words," came a voice from the other end of the mess hall. The man's head whipped around, and he caught sight of Kara, clad in her customary off-the-shoulders style silver jumpsuit. Her gaze was cold, impassive, as she held eye contact.
"I know," he grumbled, lowering his gaze. "Believe me, I know. It's a curse I think. Worst thing is, I'm only a jerk to people who actually know me."
The man shook his head, and looked at her again, with a crooked grin. "So, the name's Katz, want to get to know me better?"
"I'll pass, thank you," Kara replied with a wry smile.
"Wise choice," Katz chuckled.
"If you want my advice, I don't think asking most people on this ship about their past is a good idea. Take it as a voice of experience."
"I know, hell, I've known since I came aboard. And I just put my foot in my mouth in a big way." he shook his head ruefully. "So, dare I ask about yours, Doc? Or will my face become one with the table if I do?"
"Table," was the deadpan answer, and he nodded in acceptance.
"Figured as much."
***
Kalia stepped into her quarters, the door sliding shut behind her. The cabin was a modest one, nearly Spartan in decor, a single poster of an old band of some sort adorned one of the far wall, right above the bed. The silken sheets on said appliance were one of the few signs of luxury there. A desk sat against the left wall, and a comfy looking recliner in front of that. The workstation on said desk was a bit outdated, but did it's job well enough.
"Damn it, it's been _years_," she whispered to the empty room. "It's been years and I still react like that."
She walked over to the bed, wearily, and sat on the edge.
Running, that's all she figured her life had been, whether from actual danger, or an imagined threat.
Her story was known to a grand total of two people on the ship, the Captain and Kara. She still had no idea why she'd told them, but they didn't seem to be surprised at it. It was just that ... just that she wasn't really keen on reminiscing on the past. It hurt.
But it had, she ruefully admitted to herself, gotten better in the years since. So maybe ...
A soft beep interrupted her musings, coming from the workstation. Upon closer examination of the machine she found out why.
'Hey,
look, I'm sorry about asking that. I should know better. Hell, I did know better, I just forgot I did for a moment. Didn't mean anything by it, and I ... cripes, this isn't helping.
Look, I'd like to say sorry in person, but I got something from the Captain that told me to run a few more sweeps of the "Vivacious", just to be sure. Don't know why, but I'm not one to argue an order like that.
If ... if you want to talk, I'll be around the store rooms on level three of the null-grav section for the next ... couple of hours.
That's it.
Sorry if I'm bothering you.
-Katz'
Kalia read the message again. She guessed she was being overly paranoid. True, she'd learned to trust her 'gut instincts' and those did say that something was wrong about him, not right, but from what she saw he wasn't a bad person. He was genuinely likable, in that half-silly, half-serious approach he had towards life in general. And she _had_ been designed primarily as a companion model, plus she'd left the rather advanced empath software on one of her integrated drives. That had told her he was either a great load better at feigning things than other people, or that he was actually interested in her.
A year or two ago she would have distanced herself from anyone like that, but now ... there was a first time for everything, and she had to know if she were ready to put old fears to rest.
With that in mind, she stood up, and exited her cabin, heading for the airlocks and vac-suit storage.
***
Somewhere aboard the "Nay Never", in one of the crew quarters, a man was roused from his monthly brooding by a faint, but insistant signal. He knew damn well what it was, but was disbelieving at first. An old safety routine, something he'd coded in roughly a few years in the past, just because ... and his paranoid self had been very much in control at the time as well.
The program was small, almost insubstantial. It ran in the background as soon as the lapframe was connected to a local network, and acted as a sort of safety net ... as well as an early warning system. It's code was a
kludge of old hacked security software, strings of other applications, and a few minor firewall routines.
But, ultimately, it worked.
The man's eyebrows shot up as he read what his little mole had found.
Moments later the chamber was empty, a few hastily cast aside garments spread on the sole bunk, and the screen of the lapframe back to idle mode.
***
Kara floated along the spinal corridor of the "Vivacious", a frown gracing her slender features. It was an odd request, she felt, but since it had come from her 'unofficial' assistant, and he didn't want to meet in any restricted area of the ship she figured it couldn't hurt to see what he wanted a second opinion on.
The corridors of the forward module were alight with soft, yellow lighting, that being the usual scheme on most ships. Matte gray walls with arrows painted at intersections and the occasional ladder up or down to another level, a lack of many personal touches (the ship hadn't been in service for long before it had been lost) ... the atmosphere wasn't very good. She much preferred the "Nay Never's" decor, really. While it was almost as Spartan as this, it did have some quality that made her comfortable being on board.
Rounding a corned, then taking a ladder and pulling herself down a level she finally reached the place he'd written he'd be waiting at ... and nearly bowled over a distraught Kalia, who 'eeped' at the taller woman's sudden appearance.
After a few moments of awkward balancing, and re-orientation to a common plane of reference, they simply stared at one another for a few seconds.
"What are you doing here?" the question came from both, almost in perfect sync.
***
"Great, what now?" Brian grumbled, the annoying beep of his terminal waking him up from what would have been his daily dose of zees. As soon as he saw what it was trying to tell him, though, he changed his attitude altogether.
"What the hell?"
***
"Wait, hold up," Kara said, holding up a hand. "The guy I've been saddled as an assistant with, Krig Somethingorother, asked me to show up because he'd, supposedly, found something out about the nanomachines. Why're you here?"
"Well, after I had a ... talk with Katz," Kalia started.
"I know, I heard some of it." the older woman told her. "Sorry, couldn't help it, really. I was close enough to hear you. Go on."
"Well, he wrote a message that he was sorry, and that if I wanted to talk he'd be here for the next few hours, since Richter saddled him up with something."
"Richter? Something isn't right here. Kalia, the Captain's asleep right now, has been for the past four hours. You _know_ how he is about his downtime." Kara stated. Richter was one of the people who would be able to sleep through the apocalypse without as much as stirring, and woe to anyone who actually tried waking him up. But that meant ...
"So what in the world is going ..." the dark skinned synthoid started ...
... and shrieked in fright as Kara suddenly coughed up a cloud of blood, a clawed hand bursting from the white haired woman's abdomen. Her eyes were wide with shock, her breath ragged gasps, and then she was sent flying, tossed aside casually, too casually for a nul-gravity area, to smash into a wall. She didn't move after that, and a cloud of blood floated from the hole in her midsection.
In the corridor before Kalia, Kara's assailant snarled, and lunged.
The panicked woman pushed off a wall, and back towards where she'd come from with panic boosted reflexes, artificial adrenal glands churning.
She had recognized the person following her, though the grimace gracing his face was not there last time she had seen it. Frankly, there hadn't been much of an expression on the face of one Ryan Mclean last time she'd seen it, but then again, he'd been dead at the time.
***
"Perfect." the vac-suited figure allowed itself a chuckle. He hardly needed the suit, really, but his current tool wasn't the safest one around, even if indirectly. He couldn't be certain he'd gotten the algorithms corrected, or that the 'infectious' properties had been removed properly. The important thing was that it was near to perfect, in some ways. No traces, no witnesses, no getting his own hands dirty ...
... he'd easily get the bounty for these two, and claim it later on.
The Taiidani ... he didn't like working for them, but money was money, after all, and this wasn't even a particularly hard piece of work. A wonder nobody had gotten them earlier ... then again, they hardly had the luck he did, and stumbling upon this derelict was a perfect stroke thereof.
All that was left for him to do now, was to wait.
Dead or alive jobs were his favorite, and he was quite good at them really.
***
She bounded off the wall, snagged the ladder, and raced downwards, pushing against the rungs with all her might. The impact that jarred the feeble-looking metallic construct made her look up, into the mad eyes of something that had once been human ... now ... grotesque parodies of eyes peered at her insanely, and a foaming mouth was set in a perpetual snarl. Muscles that she was absolutely certain weren't supposed to be aligned like that, but were somehow managing it regardless, pushed him down towards her.
Kalia hurled herself backwards, not bothering to check whether she'd hit anything, just so she could get away faster. The being that had once been Mclean shot past her, an arm reaching for her and missing by inches. She twisted, taking the brunt of a hit against the wall with her shoulder, and pushed off with all her strength again, catching a brief glimpse of the creature still following her ...
Human. It had been human once, she knew, and humans had made it into what it was now. The crew of the "Nay Never", or rather the command staff, had gotten a working theory together. After having figured out what had caused the crew's demise it hadn't been that hard a thing to do. The last planet the logs had mentioned wasn't as barren as the crew thought. For some reason, Mclean had managed to trigger something, or maybe they were still somehow floating in the very atmosphere ... in the end, he was the first to be infected.
Nanomachines. They were a hazard, to this the Commonwealth could attest, and to use them in this manner ... because it was clear that someone had designed these especially for this one role. The infected person was 'rebuilt' nearly from the ground up, bones enforced, senses sharpened, reflexes and indeed the entire nervous system re-wired, and muscles re-aligned. Mind warped into a cruel parody, with only a basic grasp of anything short of causing destruction.
Dropped into enemy territory, such a weapon would wreak havoc to say the least, even against military units. Animal instincts to kill, combined with the human penchant for survival, and a humongous efficiency boost. Who cared that after a few months one affected would be useless. They weren't expected to survive anyway.
But they did, and someone screwed up, adding so called 're-production' protocols to the already existing one, where every infected person could infect another if he/she were so inclined. They weren't sure if this was the reason for the planet's downfall ... but it may well have been.
The only way to stop them would have been incineration, vacuum, or lack of anything to infect. The "Vivacious" had few weapons on board, originally, and they hadn't caught up with the second until the end ... and then it had ultimately been one of the infected who's put himself in stasis while they used it to 'purge' the ship ...
Kalia bounded from another wall, and around a corner ... straight into a blast shutter that had somehow come down after she'd gotten in. She spun around, just as the once-man appeared from around the bend.
Her hand went to her belt, closed around the weapon there, and brought it up.
Needlers were small, efficient sidearms. Low powered rail-pistols, firing 2mm needles at supersonic speeds, with little to no recoil and a fair fire rate. They were deadly against most unarmored targets, and Kalia was more than a fair shot with hers.
She flicked the selector to 'auto' and pulled the trigger. The gun jerked slightly, and there was the sharp snap of something breaking the speed of sound, repeating until it reached a staccato. The projectiles hit home, impacting on the torso and pushing the assailant back a fair ways, and up against the opposite wall.
For a moment, all was quiet.
The thing that had once been Mclean snapped its head back, eyes focusing on her again, chest looking as if it were trying to be a bad imitation of a porcupine.
Kalia remembered about the nanoweave enforced skin.
Her attacker twisted, placed both naked feet against the wall, and prepared to jump at her ...
It was thrown to the side, its head suddenly sprouting a collection of silver needles. Kalia's eyes widened as she saw Kara, covered in blood but apparently unwounded, fly into the now-beast and tackle it with a shoulder.
The shutter behind Kalia slid upwards rapidly, for no apparent reason, and her savior shouted: "Run!" ; she didn't hesitate, but turned around in an instant, pushing off and into the newly clear passageway. The last thing she saw before that was the image of Mclean and Kara, the woman managing to twist and rip a hand of the beast off cleanly, before striking a vicious backhand that nearly made her opponent headless, and receiving a painful looking slug to the gut in return.
***
"What the FUCK?!" he shouted in amazement, disbelief, and pure anger. "The blast door couldn't have been open! The hell happened?!"
Dreams of easy money were rapidly getting farther and farther from his mind.
"Damn it, okay, one's still down, the other's heading for an airlock. I can still get her," he muttered, deactivating the maglock boots and pushing off.
Had he bothered to check his monitoring equipment, he'd have noticed that the fight between the Medical Officer of the "Nay Never" and the nano-loaded Mclean corpse wasn't as one sided as it ought to have been. He'd have noticed that there was something off with one of the airlocks aboard the "Vivacious", something out of place or rather ... something superfluous.
He hadn't, so he didn't.
Mostly because of the fact that he was met with nine inches of Damascus steel, straight through the faceplate of his vac-suit, as soon as he turned to go towards the airlocks. The expression of extreme surprise was still on his face when his lifeless body was forcefully ejected out of one of the emergency airlocks, all the systems that would have helped locate his suit having been either smashed, or plain ripped out. There wasn't even a residual heat-trace after a few moments.
***
The airlock where she'd stowed her suit was nearby, and as she swung around another corner Kalia couldn't help but be scared for her friend. Still, she had to get help. She'd tried the comlink she had with her, a small standard issue set rather than her usual more elaborate affair, but found she could get nothing but static.
She didn't even notice the person she rammed, knocking both against the closed airlock's inner door.
"Ow, damn. I know I spoke out of line back there, but isn't trying to break my back a little overkill?" the voice of said person asked, and Kalia's eyes widened in shock of recognition. She planted her elbow into the man's gut, making him gasp, and then treated him to a knuckle sandwich. His head made a dull klang as it bounded from the alloy plating immediately behind it, nose bloody.
Her next punch was launched an instant later ... and caught against the man's forearm, while his other arm grasped her by the neck. He whirred her around, and twisted her right arm behind her in a manner that would become extremely painful should she decided to move, his other hand still on her jugular.
"What the hell was that for?" Katz asked her, his voice more resembling the hiss of an angry animal.
"You bastard! Scum! Murderer!" she still tried to get loose, but cried out in pain as he applied pressure to her arm.
"Godsdamnit, answer me! What the hell is going on here?!" he repeated his query ... and his left forearm suddenly burned with pain, blood spurting from the front and back, and a quivering needle, soaked in said blood, suddenly appearing by his ear; buried in the door behind him.
"Let go of her," Kara said in a cold, cold voice. She was covered in blood, her abdomen, hips, thighs and forearms crimson. In one hand, she held a needler pistol, steadily aimed at Katz's head. Her eyes were narrowed into vicious slits, and she radiated an aura of extreme malice at the moment.
Katz let go, and Kalia pushed away from him, and to the side, clearing the line of fire.
"_Now_ will someone _please_ tell me what the _fuck_ is _going on_ here?!" the man stated his query again, in a downright angry tone of voice; his left forearm was cradled by his right hand, the palm of which was pressed against the wound to stop the bleeding.
"Aside from you sending a letter saying you wanted to meet me here, me running into Kara, and us both being ambushed and nearly killed?!" Kalia shouted at him, voice wavering.
"The hell? What letter? I didn't write any letter." the man said, confusion plain on his face.
"Why are you here, then?" Kara asked, sharply.
"I couldn't find Kalia anywhere on the "Never", so I figured she'd be around here somewhere. I was looking for her because I wanted to apologize for being an ass, alright? I come here, look around, see a freakin' blast shutter down the corridor you were heading from, and try to get around it somehow. I was almost giving up and went back to try and call you through the comlink in the suits, and she bumps into me, slugs me ... what were you expecting me to do, stand still and get pummeled into a bloody pulp?"
The hiss of the airlock behind Katz made any answers to that question a mute point, since out came a _very_ irritated looking Brian Antigo, usual amount of personal weaponry included.
"Oh, this one had _better_ be good." the man stated in a deadpan tone.
***
EPILOGUE
HUMANX SPACE, SOME ODD WEEKS LATER
'It's been interesting to say the least' the man sighed as he watched the spacedock slowly get closer and closer, floating against the backdrop of stars and a lone reddish-brown colored planet.
"Hey," a quiet voice from behind him said, and he turned to see Kalia, standing in the doorway to the otherwise empty lounge.
"Yeah, hey," any conversation between him and either of the female officers of the "Nay Never" had been mostly monosyllabical since they departed from where they had left the "Vivacious" sealed and with an appropriately tagged warning beacon. That had been a good two weeks back, even after he was cleared from any possible charges.
After Krig had gone missing along with one of the vac-suits they checked over the things in his cabin. A few decryption keys later they were pretty certain about Katz not having anything to do with the attack, mostly because Krig had kept quite an extensive database of 'wanted' people, including those tracked by the Taiidani. It wasn't very hard to deduce the rest, since he had the files of two particular crewmembers highlighted.
"Last stop, bet you guys're glad to get rid of me." Katz chuckled.
"... I'm sorry." he heard her mutter.
"For what?" he asked. When he found no answer forthcoming, he turned around. The doorway was empty.
He sighed again, and went back to stargazing. Some time later, it could have been an hour, he had his second conversation of the day.
"So, you're leaving," the voice left no question as to who it was, not that he hadn't managed to figure it out already.
"I'd stay, if you were really nice about asking," he replied, grinning.
"Be glad I don't have my gun this time," she muttered.
"So, why're you here? Aside from the obvious," the man asked.
"Would you believe I came to say 'no hard feelings'?"
"Let me think on that a second ...umm ... nope."
"Good," she nodded. "What did you do to him?"
There was no need to specify that. He understood perfectly well what she meant.
And gave her a simple answer. "I threw the butterfly wannabe out of the airlock, after feeding him a few inches of steel and ripping the transponder from his suit."
Somehow, Kara had his role in that little drama figured out, and he'd be damned if he knew how. And for one reason or another, she hadn't told anyone about it.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but ... don't get killed out there, alright?"
'Whoa, where did _that_ 180 come from?' he wondered briefly, before shrugging it off.
"No worries. I'm harder to kill than you are." he smirked, and was fairly sure she caught it in his reflection on the lounge's window. For a moment, she stood stock still, then she nodded. A silent understanding was reached, or at least it felt like it.
She left, and he stood alone again, before he turned and pushed off in the direction of the corridor. It was time to pack his stuff.
***
"Oi, G! Yer usual?" the barkeeper droid asked as Gunther Richter settled onto the stool. He liked this bar, if only because it was the only one on the station with reasonable prices.
"Yeah." he affirmed, and a shot glass full of bluish liquid was placed before him. He downed it in one gulp, and gestured for a refill. He wasn't in the mood to be sober right then, having laid down his report to the local chief Humanx officer.
Questioning had still been a bitch, and covering up the 'incident' with one of his crewmembers even more so.
Morale aboard the ship was ... differentiated. It was enough to have him swear his lungs out and go out to get sauced, if only because he hated that sort of moody atmosphere.
As for what would become of the "Vivacious", well ... Peaceforce had sent out one of their smaller cruisers to where he'd left the deserted vessel, and they'd given enough information on the nanotech that had killed the ship's crew and was apparently responsible for the deletion of most navigational data from the craft's mainframe. That last bit had been more blind luck than anything else, apparently, since while the programming Vic had managed to decipher was primitive it included protocols that were meant to deal with various data-stores upon contact. That was one of the dangerous things about nanotech ... it could, given the proper circumstances and instructions, adapt incredibly well. Since the systems of the "Vivacious" hadn't been very well protected, they weren't much of a challenge even for the obsolete software.
'The bonus was big, thank the Gods.' he nodded to himself, taking a slow sip of the blue brew.
'May as well stay a while, and give the guys time to unwind before going out again.'
He shrugged off the though of having forgotten about something. It would surely come back to him in time.
***
"Some days I plain hate my job," Brian Antigo muttered to the partially empty station corridor as he made his way through the light evening traffic. He was clad in a sharp business suit in which hardly anyone of the "Nay Never's" crew would have recognized him, had they seen the usually reserved and notoriously averse to bureaucracy Chief of Security. That wasn't the general idea, but a perk all the same, since he was out hunting for information.
Or trying to.
Too much was left loose, too many threads not tied up. He could guess what had to have happened to Krig, but wasn't sure about accuracy. The fact was that he'd gone missing, as had a vac-suit. Nobody knew exactly how that had transpired.
Apart from that ... the task he was on now could be outdated, but he hated not knowing something for certain. And there was something he had to find out.
The establishment he entered was little more than a seedy bar, and patrons gave the sharply clad man a great many glances.
'Vultures circling,' he reminded himself. How many of the type he'd made sure would never 'fly' again he didn't know, and had no desire to find out.
His contact was a scruffy looking man, blond and a giving a distinctly 'rumpled' impression. Maybe it was the fact that his suit desperately needed to be pressed, or the half-tied tie, or the stubble and ever present cigarette-butt sticking to the corner of his mouth.
"Have anything for me?" he asked, settling down beside the man, and ordering a shot of scotch-equivalent for himself.
"Not much. Isn't surprising when you come down to it, really." was the answer. The man sipped his beer.
"How so?" it didn't help if you got angry at your fixer. Brian knew that, from long experience and hearsay as well as from more personal sources.
"The person in question or the ID at least, shows up over the past fifteen years. A virtual leap-frog as you will, with the first time on Neo-Edo, a sort of hobby ground for me." the fixer went on. "I checked there, and couldn't get anything side from a customs report and a bit of info about what he did. Yojimbo work, then he dropped from the face of the planet and Spiral altogether. Next is somewhere getting enlisted for a brief five months as part of the cleanup of G90, mercenary commission. Two years after that, bounty call from deep within Juraii space. Nothing more until nine years ago, in Taiidani space. Some sort of job for a House, though I couldn't find what exactly it was, or which House exactly, just rumors flying around. A month later ... well, those are the highlights anyway. That he's working on a fake is clear, as is that he's been around a lot. That he's still alive means something with that sort of lifestyle ..."
"I'd noticed," Antigo said dryly. "Anything useful, though?"
"Nothing. I had to stretch my contacts in the merc sector to the limit on this, _and_ put out a fair bit of cash to get as much as this."
"Damn, I'd hoped to get more." he shook his head. "Still, it gives me something to work on."
"Why _are_ you so intent on the guy?" the fixer asked.
"Call it professional courtesy." Brian slid a cred-chit over to the other man, who in turn did likewise with a small black case, containing a data-unit obviously. Each pocketed their respective choice, and the "Never's" Chief of Security bode his contact goodbye.
"I'll call in if anything comes up." the fixer assured the leaving man.
The small bar was quiet again, only the occasional refill of an empty glass interrupting the monotone noise of a turning ceiling fan.
The fixer smirked as he drained his glass. Standing up, he paid and walked out as well. It was time to go back to the old town, it seemed. He guessed he could wrap up his business here in a few days and be on the way by then. It was a shame, but not like he was really lying to Brian. Simply not telling the whole truth.
After all, helping an old acquaintance had a certain priority over money.
And he wouldn't have wanted be in his own shoes if a certain someone had found out he'd given anything more than the usual packet. Oh, not 'Katz', though he'd be a little miffed. She could be _way_ scarier than he'd ever been.
***
The small, insignificant looking craft wasn't much more to the Guild Heighliner than a single speck of dandruff would have been to someone's full head of hair. The hollow cylinder of the huge ship was a sight to look at, even at this range, and it grew in the view screens as they got closer.
Inside, a man shoved his duffel into a wall-closet, and shut the door.
He fell back into a comfortable chair, strapping himself in against the lack of gravity, and turned to the desk adjutant to said chair. On top of said desk stood a lapframe, booted up, and displaying the simple message stating 'download complete'.
Sure, there was no particular reason for him to be doing this ... actually, most of those who knew of him, and his job, would have expected he'd go and knock the people who's data he'd just retrieved off. They would have been downright surprised, in fact, to know he wasn't entirely what he made himself out to be.
And that included not really caring for the bounty that would come for killing a person who'd been in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Not to mention someone sentenced to death just because there was no way said person could be brought back of their own free will.
One they had managed to track down. The other ... all things considered, she was probably just unfortunate like that. Meaning half the work for him ... the half that he had a reasonable chance to accomplish at least.
Exactly why he was doing this ... he didn't know or care himself. Maybe he was a sucker for a sob story, maybe he felt he had something in common with her, maybe he simply had nothing better to do. Or maybe he just wanted to pull one over on Taiidani officials. That he'd likely get some money out of it was a bonus.
In any case, he was prompted to grin. Sure, it would require calling in a favor or two, but he knew who to contact exactly. The Heighliner would be stopping there directly in a few days, and he could get this over with.
Griever chuckled, flipping open the leather wallet he held in his hand. He looked at the ID contained within, and the image of himself, giving a V sign to the camera, on said card.
He stowed the Katz ID in the inner pocket of his jacket, his left hand resting on the nearby desk, playing with a sphere of black material. A faint flicker of light danced within. Whatever it was, it _did_ make a good paperweight.
One last look through the outside cameras before they went hyper. The station was left behind, as were the ships parked around it and docked with it. He found the one he was looking for instantly. As the world outside was reduced to a stroboscopic display of white and electric blue, sometimes fading into purple, he gave a faint laugh.
"And it's no, nay, never," softly the words came. "No, nay never, no more, Will I play the wild rover, nay never, no more ..."
"Ya," he said to the ceiling, loudly, grinning. "As if that'll ever happen."
***
Cast - in no particular order -
Gunther Richter
Carol Maisen as Kara
Kalia
Lucas 'Griever' Kocinski as Katz
Viktor 'Vic' Staff
Brian Antigo
J.Random crewman
Krig Wydon
Author's notes: It was meant to be that confusing and whacked, and you can read whatever you want into the shorter sections. If you're lucky, you may actually get what I meant. As it is, this thing's concept went through a lot of changes over time, from something similar to first season Trek (don't ask how the hell that idea came up - I think I wasn't entirely sane at the time) to Aliens (second concept, better to work with) to what it is now, with minor plot alterations. It went from gorefest in the good-ol Aliens style, to something more ... hell, I don't really know. Go figure.
Thanks to:
- Pepsi - for Dew.
- Coca Cola - for when the Dew was out.
- Nescafe - for when the Dew ran out at 3AM.
- My co-authors on this project - for not putting up little things like 'deadlines'. Consultation. Keeping my rampant ego in line.
- My aunt, at who's place I'm staying until Winter Term at the TU is over - for making sure I don't forget to eat that one meal a day minimum. And for handling the laundry.
- My parents - they don't get this whole 'fanfic' thing, but say I ought to keep writing if I like it so much. Also, for Pop's stir-fry, thanks to which I managed to finish this now instead of after having woken up from a hunger induced coma.
- V-chan - moral support, confidence boosting, and a lot of other things.
- and finally, the people without whos' work this story, or any other tale of the Shining Spiral, would have never been conceived at all. Yes, Gryph, Zoner, and the whole Eyrie bunch in general. Here's to hoping this story contributes to something that will one day inspire like UF did, does, and will do in the future.
- oh, and my cat. Just because ^^
"Nay Never" will be continued in the short story "Favors:Ersatz Thanatos"
(and that one will actually be short, inspiration notwithstanding)
***
Not stellar, but not overly awful either, I s'pose.
There are still plot holes I have to tie up, but I'll be getting to that soon enough.
This is, it should be noted, a rough draft. I've been busy with finals (three down, two successfully, the jury still being out on the third, and one to go) as well as working on a follow up for my 'Road to Hell' fic (see the Lost Library of Florestica if interested). Busybusybusy. Still, I dabble in the Spiral stuff regularly, though nothing's really ready enough to let it loose. Maybe after I'm done with the rest of this term's exam load.
Oh yeah, what taglines did we agree to for the Ten Years period? And do we get to chose avatar theme-songs? If so, dibs on 'Under the gun.' by Sisters of Mercy.
Till next post, have luck and clear skies!
And yes, the fixer at the end there was Fargo.
-Griever
'Living a dream, dreading the awakening.'
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
The clues aren't all there, are they ^^?
One is.
He did Yojimbo work on Nippon, Neo-Edo specifically.
For a Dr. Katsuhiko Stingray. Remember the lab explosion and Mason offing the Doc in the beginning of BGC OVA 1?
In this reality, the Doc had been a little more cautious. Strengthening the security detail of said lab from his private funds was one thing, getting bodyguards for himself and his family was another.
This'll be detailed in 'Ersatz Thanatos'. For now let's simply say that G was one of the bodyguards hired, and one of the two who managed to live through the lab raid and subsequent explosion. As a result, Mason ceased to be a problem a fair few years before he'd have been offed by Sylia.
As for why he'd been in Neo-Edo in the first place. Call it chance, call it luck, call it tracing back his roots - what I mean by this is -
During the first half of the 21st Century Earth was what some could call a Corporate planet, with several giant zaibatsu calling the shots around the globe and the UN (or equivalent) a mere figurehead. After a period of nearly-open warfare one corporation managed to rise and take over all the others. It's name was Eurocorp. For the next few decades Eurocorp ran the world with an iron fist. It took an opponent as ruthless as it was to contest this. Said opponent emerged as the Church of the New Epoch, an apocalyptic Order ... well, suffice it to say that the era of Corporate Earth ended briefly after the last remenants of the Church had been wiped out by Eurocorp forces. Said forces were both Corporate and independant mercenaries who saw the greater 'evil' of the Church. Plus, it's always good if the person you're working for isn't fixated on the destruction of mankind.
It was a Phyrric victory at best, with the final confrontation having taken place in orbit, a contest for one of the many orbital weapons platforms the Corporation had owned. The UN moved in, and forced the Corp's disband, taking into possession most of their security forces and some of the technology. Some of them disappeared though, both secforce and mercenary, as did the chips and schematics of the Utopia system, perhaps the first human made AI driven network in history.
What's the connection? Well, the core network of Stingray Ent. is based on the old Utopia architecture, and there are murmurs that the original core rests somewhere within the headquarters. A few select people know it was a parting gift from a hired gun Dr. Stingray had once employed.
You have all the pieces now. Tell me if I'm being over the top here.
-Griever
I'm a Syndicate fanboy at heart.
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