The Lost Station (Open Location)

@schlampe: The site is still acting weird.

*sends a fleet to attack the station*

Annnnnd now I'm hallucinating.

@schlampe: I sometimes wonder if "reality" is nothing more than a massive, elaborate hallucination, and the surreal moments are the rare glimpse beyond our collective psychosis...

@schlampe:

Well, that was an impressive and surely very necessary display of strength...

"Yeah, probably," he responded, opting for the prudent route, as usual. "Best kind of something, too. The kind that doesn't weigh anything and is less likely to be noticed by customs officials. Data."

Glancing at the creature obediently following in Trinity's wake, he cocked an eyebrow. "You know, if you just wanted an exotic pet, I could have hooked you up with some black market folks; you didn't need to come to the universe's hard-to-itch place to wrangle one yourself." Sizing the creature up, he sighed. "If you were planning on taking that back with you, I hope you didn't want much else, because it's going to take up a pretty good amount of the hold."

@cosmosis:

Data. She repeated the word to herself and thought about what it meant. "Data" had been typically left to others to handle when she was heading the Demon's Fist; it was usually too difficult or not interesting enough to understand anyway. But there she made a note to ask him later for more details.

She'd still been deciding when he mentioned it, but as he joked Trinity decided that she did intend on keeping her new pet. Though to subdue the lot of them she would have to find another way. Even on the singular thrall she'd only just managed to take control after throwing up the barrier, and she could feel it slipping. She had a few ideas already, but not yet the time or proper environment to test them.

The first part of their mission accomplished, they were free to leave whenever they wanted, as soon as they were capable. Much remained to be desired but like all The Destructor's plans, it was a work in progress. But... As the smuggler voiced his concern, she decided it was time. Okay to let him in a little.

Dropping her arms and allowing her posture to slouch, she smirked and shook her head at his remark, then looked him dead in the eye so he would know she was serious. On the contrary...

"I want it all."

Both Trinity and the creature looked to Daltar, The Destructor gauging his reaction. Not that she entirely cared. But it was good to note. She repeated with elaboration for his full understanding. "This station and everything on it is mine now. Every scrap of data, technology, every piece of junk, every one of those things, belongs to me."

@schlampe:

Wonderful.

Mentally resetting his "it has been 173 Quillion cycles since you have inadvertently thrown your lot in with an aspiring warlord" calendar, Daltar held a long pause before speaking. He wasn't entirely sure he appreciated the way his employer and her new minion were looking at him. Ultimately, he opted for the "supportive, but rational route."

"Okay...well, the good news is that there's probably not a lot of other parties out there that are going to fight you for this place, as long as you don't count however many of those things we had to fight our way through are left. The bad news is that, even if this floating piece of debris hadn't been exposed to the void for who knows how long with no maintenance; it requires a small army of crew to even operate it on a basic level. I don't suppose Smiley there can run an engineering bay?"

@cosmosis:

'Smiley.' I like it.

With the speed at which she dismissed his claim Trinity may well never even have considered it. She was going to have the station, and no one or no thing was going to change that.

But consider it she did, and it was in fact his joke that gave her the idea. Opening her fist into a spear hand, she took a few steps nearer Daltar and the barely subjugated creature. A spatter of a pale green fluid gloved her arm and dotted her face as she thrust the hand in through "Smiley's" neck.

First she would catalogue his genetic material as it was, adding it into her own natural "database." Biological functions, instincts, genetic memories and more would be hers to access and explore. Then she'd began to rewrite his biological function in such a way that should facilitate development in whatever passed for a brain. She was evolving him, generations in mere seconds, and potentially in ways that otherwise never would be in his direct evolutionary path.

However, midway through her impromptu gene splicing operation, she stopped. Her eyes glazed into a wild stare. At that moment Smiley butted her with his shell-head and whipped her with his tail back into the junk pile and darted off screeching. This time she didn't rise so quickly. Or move at all, for that matter. She laid strewn among the old supplies, awake but unresponsive even as the faint sounds of a multitudinous screeching drew nearer from a distance.

@schlampe:

What the...

"What are you-" the question trailed off into a muttered profanity as his employer seemingly lost her mind and turned on her pet, who reciprocated by batting her across the room before skittering off. Firing a couple of plasma blasts at the retreating beast, all of which scored the walls but didn't connect with his target, he rushed over to where Trinity lay all akimbo in a pile of debris. He stared down at her for an indecisive moment; she seemed to be alive, but she had an odd, glazed look in her eyes.

"Hey, HEY!" he shouted, resisting the urge to get closer and check her pulse, as he had no idea what was going on her head at the moment. "Stay with me, now! Ship full of hostile aliens, remember?" He pulled out the med kit from his armor's belt pouch, wondering if anything in it would even work on her physiology. The halite gas, maybe?

@cosmosis: [So it occurred to me how long it's been since I've written anything at all. I need to start practicing again.]

With her body rapidly adjusting to the present dosage of the contacted neurotoxin, Trinity's catatonic state didn't last long. However, the assimilation process required more time to fully adapt to the new substance. The blood staining her epidermis was absorbed into her skin and the her body began pushing the toxin through her system. The first change was in the manifestation of symptoms. Catatonia faded, but was replaced by hallucination.

Her mind snapped to attention but she did not see Daltar the smuggler. Xiandra the huntress stood before her. She heard not the almost pleading words of comfort, but the rumble of the Ancient's beckoning when the huntress opened her mouth.

"Your bravado will not save you. Naive, to think your present weakness has overcome your conditioning. Foolish child. I will return your thought patterns to their rightful frequency."

"Tch!" Trinity scoffed, her face balling into a fierce scowl. With her mind she gave a thrust, looking to pin the advancing party against the oddly undulating wall. "I don't do bravado." Standing, she looked around but saw no trace of the Delosian nor Smiley. She crept slowly forward, frustration burning in her throat. "Where's my smuggler, where's my pet?" she demanded. Her face shone a distinctive red, as again she called Destructor's Might to her hand. Its characteristic glare reflecting on the surrounding area, the crimson plasma blade hummed a low harmonic threat.

@schlampe:

Okay, so the halite gas obviously wasn't the best idea.

It was his second thought, immediately following a a sort of "huuurghkk" sound and a string of profanities, as he was flung backwards against a bulkhead. His armor was the only thing that prevented him from suffering a seriously compromised skeletal system from the impact; he briefly considered going back and thanking the individual he'd stolen it from (assuming he lived that long), before remembering that the entire reason he'd stolen it in first place was because said individual had stiffed him on a payment, which was also why he's set it up to look like that selfsame individual was engaging in certain unspeakable acts with the local crimelord's favorite mistress. That bridge was pretty well burnt.

Focus, Daltar. Trinity was obviously still suffering some effects from whatever it was that had knocked her out, because not all of what she was saying made any sense at all. Still, one could but try. "Okay...no bravado, but do you think you could please give sanity a try?" He did his best to sound nonchalant, as he tried to subtly reach for his sidearm. He doubted it would hurt her, but maybe if he could hit her hand, she'd drop that nasty-looking bit of plasma. "Your 'pet' ran off after you punched a hole in it, and your smuggler would really appreciate not getting the same treatment."

Huh. Notifications are bugging again.

@cosmosis: Her every sense offset by the enduring neurotoxin, Trinity couldn't see Daltar reaching for the blaster, or even register its presence. Her eyes saw only Xiandra and her crude weaponry. Her mind focused singularly on the Ancient's words.

"Yes, fight. All the better when—"

The perceived taunting was cut off by a unified screech, courtesy of the emergent hoard skittering through the doorway on the floor, walls, and ceiling. Still under the blood's influence, her senses amplified, the shrill cries came to her ears as an amplified sonic assault. Unknowingly, reflexively she reached out, her hypersensitive but not fully trained mind linking simultaneously with the hoard over the entire station.

Every thing paused. The entire station held still. Silence hung in the air, belying the internal cacophony, if only for an instant. Innumerable thoughts from countless wretched minds, shrieking in a feral chorus. For Trinity, it was a telepathic assault. Clutching her skull, she doubled over and dropped to her knees, screaming, the station's ensemble followed her lead as conductor. The station erupted into a tremor for their sheer number, if not their volume.

Determined, Trinity fought back against the assault, unaware that under the effects of the toxin and her forced link, her mind had inadvertently turned on itself; the more she fought, she more harm she inflicted upon herself. Managing to lift her head, she shot her pinned foe an indistinct glare, features partially obscured by her draping hair. To her eyes Xiandra's presence faded in and out intermittently with that of the Delosian. Those eyes bore a predatory savagery, dubious as to whether or not she was actually seeing either. The assault never waned and the Destructor never stopped fighting back. An instant later she retaliated, attacking all the linked minds at once.

Where once the entire station trembled with their voices, there was a surge, and then...

Silence.

Trinity and the creatures collapsed at once, leaving virtual silence save for the thuds as some dropped from the walls and ceiling. Now free, the Delosian smuggler remained the last one standing. The only conscious presence aboard the entire station.

@schlampe: Daltar was having a very lively internal debate, as the hovercart he had somehow miraculously located hummed along the silent and lifeless corridors. He was heading back to the ship; there was no question about that. Glancing at his insensate passenger to ensure she hadn't rolled out, he once again turned over all the variables in his mind. Should he wait and see if Trinity came to? If she did, would she still be on a stab-happy rampage? If she didn't should he take her to the nearest medical facility? Would they even be able to do anything for her? Was there a cantina in this galaxy with enough spirits to erase his memory of this miserable misadventure?

At the very least, whatever had taken his employer out of the picture had apparently affected everything else on the station, aside from him; he encountered none of the beasties on his return trip. It was just as well, seeing as how this infernally slow cart probably couldn't outrun them, and he didn't like his chances of fighting off another horde with just his plasma sidearm.

Ditching the vehicle at where the umbilical still attached his ship to the station, he unceremoniously carried Trinity aboard and set her down on her bunk. Stiffening his resolve with a shot of Zyraxian redblood, he detached the umbilical and preset the warp coordinates for the nearest civilized, non-Imperium system. If they needed to get out of here, they'd be able to, and quickly. Pulling up a seat, he settled in and waited.

@cosmosis: I like this guy.

@cosmosis: She awoke with a start and bolted upright with a short panicked scream. "What the...?" A cursory scan of her surroundings told her where she was. The smuggler, she inferred. Ignoring headache it aggravated, the first move she made was to scan outside the ship to ensure they were still in acceptable range of the station. With that ensured, she arose fully, cautiously finding stable footing.

She remained not entirely sure of the situation, but remembered only bits of her previous state - those bits indicating danger. Her body had adapted to and shaken off the effects of the neurotoxin while she lay unconscious. In spite of that she couldn't be certain just yet what from that time was real and what wasn't. It was an Imperium station - or used to be - after all.

"Hey!" She called out for a response, beginning to venture from the bunk to the cockpit where she assumed Daltar would be waiting, if he were present.

@schlampe: "I'm up here," he answered, his hand moving away from his sidearm, where it had instinctively gone at the sound of her voice. She didn't sound the way she had when she attacked him on the station, so hopefully she'd recovered. He had briefly considered putting her in some kind of restraints until he was sure that whatever fit she had gone through had passed, but considering that she could burrow through reinforced steel with her mind, that would have probably just led to more collateral damage.

"Well, you're not trying to kill me; does that mean you feel better or worse?" He glanced up from his communications screen as she entered. "Wasn't sure if I needed to find you medical attention or just let you sleep whatever the flack that was off."

@cosmosis: "Maybe I'm still mulling it over," Trinity retorted in her own humorous way, taking her previous spot beside him in the cockpit. "I'm fine." As far as she was aware, conventional medical practices would be all but useless for her anyway, and she had recovered well. Well enough to remember most of what happened before her impaired state. That included the smuggler's admission that he had found "the best kind of something" aboard the station. "I want to know what you found."

@schlampe:

Humor? That was a good sign, at least. Of course, she could always still be plotting to kill him, but at least she wouldn't be in a bad mood when she did it. That was something. "Ah yes, the buried treasure. While you were out, I managed to get a partial decryption on the data pack. It's research material, something called 'Project: Godslayer.' It's going to take someone with better equipment than I have to get all the details out, and it's not like I'd be able to make any sense of Imperium super-science, anyways, but the gist I got was that it was some kind of aborted super-soldier program."

@cosmosis: Satisfied, Trinity nodded at the report thus far. She'd spend a lot of time mulling it over on the trip back, at least until they could get more. Somehow, she'd already began formulating her own theories based on the vague extant details they'd gotten so far. An inexplicable intuition from the experience at the station and....something within herself - the rest of herself, experiences since her conception. That same intuition suggested, perhaps, that she wouldn't want to find out. In spite of that...

"Get to work decoding the rest of that, or whatever, when you can. I'll handle the station." She reached out with her mind and prepared to tote it with them to their next destination. "Let's get outta here."

[Hehee, I think we can call that about the end.]

@schlampe: [You're the boss! ;)]

"Devin, you remembered to pack the explosives for this mission right?" Fillip asked, as he prepared his space suit made by his brother. "Yes, I'm not going to forget that kind of thing especially on a mission where it's likely" He stepped out of his seat, stopping whatever he was doing and pointed to their destination, an abounded space station. They both saw a small craft leaving the station. " It can't be that bad, come on lets go." Their ship got close enough for them to "park" and dismount onto the station.

"Devin, you go up front. I hear these things can put out at least a whole ton of force. Since your almost at that range, and I'm not you go ahead." Devin just grumbled, and went into the small maintenance hole. "Delta how close are we to our objective?" Fillip just shrugged and said "I don't know, we'll find out once we get down." They looked over a small empty hole.

"Just put down the beacon here, and follow me." Fillip jumped down, while Devin marked they got there. Once both were down, they looked around at the rusted, old, and out of condition interior.

"Do you know where we are now?" Fillip just shrugged again and said

"We'll find it eventually, heck we might even find some crazies out here. Look don't worry follow me and we'll be fine."

"After every other time what, happened?"

"We almost die, but still finish the job, I think that's pretty alright. Beta just shut up and keep walking." Then the two brothers went searching for whatever tech was left on the abandoned station, unaware of what lied for them ahead.

( ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) this seems to be rather fun)