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The ExMortis, Chapters 1-10 - Corsair - 08-10-2012
// OOC bit. This is the first three chapters of my ExMortis story that I originally wrote two(?) years ago. I am re-writing it to go into more detail and expand the character's lore. It is graphic and violent, and mild language is used. Some images of nudity are briefly mentioned but nothing sexual is present.
PROLOGUE, 812 AS
In a secluded and dark nebula, a single ship sat alone inside the suffocating green gases. Frequent electrical discharges illuminated the silhouette of an Osiris-class ship. On its flank was emblazoned the ship's name, 'Jelkanar'. Its shielding had been up for so long that a round shell of particles had formed across its surface. Its lights were dim, so as to minimize its power draw to prolong the time between recharge.
The ship flared to life, and as the engines kicked back to full thrust the shell around the ship cracked and fell away, drifting behind the ship like a fractured egg casing. Maelstroms formed in the clouds behind the moving ship, spreading and being lost in the already turbulent nebula. The ship's exhaust trails were blown apart and scattered behind.
The ship flew for hours on impulse speed alone before reaching the edge of the cloud. It burst free like a sea beast moving between water and air, exploding forth in a burst of silent crescendo. The Jelkanar trailed behind a long, spindly fiber of gas for a long time before it dissipated and fell away. In front of the mighty ship was a pinkish-white star, growing larger each second. When the Jelkanar was close enough, it turned so that its starboard side faced the star. The ship's hull shifted as radar panels were retracted and replaced with pitch black trays that gorged themselves on the sun's brilliant light, converting it into power. Lights on the Jelkanar went completely dark as the reactor was fed a fresh supply of energy and allowed to reboot.
Red fumes vented from the Jelkanar's engines as the accumulated exhaust was jettisoned. On-board refineries converted the helium and deuterium collected from the nebula into homebrew fuel- not very efficient, but serviceable. For 156 hours, the Jelkanar sat in the pale glow of this unnamed star before the lights switched back on, and the reactor flared up again. Engines rumbled into action and the ship lurched forward. The solar panels were flipped around to reveal a set of radar dishes, which unfurled and began searching for transmissions again. The Jelkanar curved its flight path, back into the forbidding green nebula. Its once-in-six-months refueling operation had gone without a hitch. Back to business as usual.
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CHAPTER ONE- RESEARCH
As the Jelkanar took its usual place in the clouds, the crew were taking their usual places throughout the ship as well. A majority of the battleship was dedicated to research, and the multitude of laboratories were bustling with people. Men and women in dull gray scrubs tested the effects of substances and energies on one another while assistants scurried to and fro, fetching this and writing down that. Yet for the amount of people in each room, the noise levels were low, with each person scarcely whispering; in fact, the hum of the computers throughout the room was louder than the people operating them. The scene of laboratory research was as stereotypical as you could get.
Chief Biological Researcher Daniel MacDonnegal was one of the few research crew not actively involved in testing. He figured it was because his name and title were too long to fit on a lab coat pin. His red military-cut hair stuck up at the ceiling while his short, bristly beard stabbed at the floor. Just looking at him told you that this was a man who hadn't showered, shaved, eaten or slept properly in a long while. The sternness of his glare at the computer screen in front of him lost some of its weight when you saw the dark sags below his eyes. The eyes themselves were red and puffy. And the way he occasionally glanced at the empty coffee mug as if fairies might have visited him while he was looking away lent itself to his image of the overworked employee. The only clean thing about him was the open Egyptian eye on his forehead, the symbol of the Order.
He glanced at his coffee cup for the last time. Taking a deep breath, he put his hands on his desk and pushed himself into a standing position, groaning as his muscles protested and vertebrae popped into place. He rolled his head in a circle, moaning again as his neck snapped and cracked. He hadn't moved for over eighteen hours, and hadn't slept in twenty. Picking his mug up, he took a few slow steps towards the door. As blood rushed back into his legs, his strides got longer and stronger. As he neared the door, he took some lunges, dropping each knee until it almost touched the floor. Taking a series of deep breaths, Daniel refreshed his exhausted body. The door hissed open at his approach, and he stepped out into the hallway.
The Jelkanar, much like all long-term space habitats, was equipped with 'friendly' lighting that emitted a carefully tuned frequency of light that eased the optical nerves and was supposed to soothe the mind. But no fancy lightbulb can erase the sensation of being stuck in an unexplored region of nowhere, half a year away from the rest of the Order. But for now, he just wanted his damned coffee.
Jackie Fae patrolled the hallways, and she smiled and nodded to Daniel as he passed. She hadn't seen him in a long time and her smile soured as he passed and she smelled the acrid stink of stress and old coffee in his wake. She shook her head and hoped that he was heading to the shower. There wasn't much to guard on this ship, save for the errant fistfight between agitated scientists. Being out here in the deep dark for a long time will do that for you. She paused at a terminal, and looked down the hallway. Nothing more than the friendly lights. She looked behind her and just barely saw Daniel's shadow disappear around a corner. Turning to the terminal, she opened up a viewscreen to the nebula outside. The display showed roiling green clouds, lit up by the occasional flash of lightning. She smiled slightly, and absently laid her hand on the pistol attached to her belt. The pistol was only one of many versatile tools on her person. She carried a second pistol on the other side, a close quarters knife, a fire extinguisher, a single flash grenade and the entire suit itself was special Order issue.
The suit was specially designed to handle usage on a science ship. It was resistant to chemical burns and intense heat, and the hoodie could be closed around the face and sealed to provide the wearer with an airtight hazmat hood in case of toxic fumes. The suit was also double-inlaid with bulletproof and puncture resistant fibers to protect against projectiles and explosions. The perfect defense for a security officer on board a ship that will only find conflict within its hull.
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CHAPTER TWO - UNKNOWN VARIABLES
Daniel held the coffee mug under the dispenser until the container was 90% full of rich, dark, steamy goodness. Steam wafted out of the top as he carefully carried his prize to an empty table and stared at it for a few seconds before blowing on it gently and taking a sip. He sucked his lips into his mouth, hissing at the heat but not hesitating to take another drink. He was halfway through his cup when some of his underlings came and sat at the table with him. They smiled at him, and he glanced at their name pins before looking them in their eyes and returning the smile.
"Good to see you out, sir." said a middle aged blonde woman named 'Jeryl'. She looked almost as exhausted as him, but her hair was damp from a recent shower. The man next to her, 'Daeid', looked to be a Rheinlander. He smiled and nodded as she spoke. Daniel took another drink before responding.
"Yes, I've been organizing the latest batch of test samples. I'm fascinated by this nebula. Are you two involved in testing its properties?"
To this, Daeid nodded (Day-id? Daniel mused, completely unaware of how to pronounce the man's name) and spoke with a light Rheinland accent. "Yes, sir. I've been seeing how the nebula's gases affect starship and starbase hull plating. It appears to coat metals and other energetic substances with a residue that forms when the gas condenses and evaporates. The residue-" Daniel cut him off with a weary nod and a smile.
"Yes, I read the report. Thank you. Have you tested it on biological samples? I've noticed that category so far has gone untouched."
Neither spoke. Jeryl said, "No, sir. As far as I know, there are only four biologists on board and they all work for you. They're all busy testing the applications of nanobots for repairing damage to humans."
Daniel sighed. For being 'Head Researcher', he had no connection to the rest of the biologists on the station. He was technically in charge of them, but he had long forgotten their names and was far too busy with his primary job of organizing all of the research data collected by the crew. He finished his coffee, said goodbye to Jeryl and Daeid and grabbed a few pieces of rehydrated fruit before returning to the hallways, heading towards the showers.
Jackie continued her patrol of the endless corridors. She always loved passing people in the hallways because she could guess what they were working on based on how they looked and smelled. She stood a good head taller than most of the men on the ship (only Daniel was able to match her in height) so she was always able to see where they were coming from as well. She passed by a man hurrying away from a room pouring out smoke. His own clothes were singed and seemed to be dissolving. She paused by the door, and looked in. She couldn't see anything through the inky black smoke, but grabbed a fire suppression canister from her belt and pulled her security hoodie up, sealing the front. The hoodie formed an airtight Hazardous Materials suit, complete with gas mask. She waded into the room and spotted the source of the smoke. A charred piece of metal was spraying the area with sparks as it dissolved. She sprayed it with the thick white foam from the extinguisher and coated it until it stopped flaring. The fans in the ceiling were able to suck the smoke out, leaving her standing over a sopping wet pile of soot. The scientist entered the room again when he saw the smoke had cleared and Jackie silently left the room, unzipping her hoodie and continuing along.
Encounters like that had stopped being interesting. She made several such rescues every hour, before returning to base to refill her fire extinguisher. But something caught her attention as she passed by a room.. And didn't hear anything from inside. This forced her to stop. There was always noise in each room. It might be quiet, but it was there. Whispers, footsteps or pen scratches could be heard when passing by any of the doors. The sounds didn't travel through solid metal of course, each room was equipped with a two-way microphone that was always on. It was only deactivated if there was classified material being discussed, and that never happened in an ordinary lab. Something was wrong.
She approached the door, but it didn't open. She grabbed the handle and yanked, but the frame wouldn't budge. She tentatively took off her glove and felt around the edge of the door. It was warm. Someone had recently welded the door shut. Replacing the glove, Jackie touched her shoulder to activate the radio there.
"This is Jackie. Security HQ, come in."
"Receiving."
"Room 18-D is silent and the door's been welded shut."
"Roger.. We're seeing a complete deadzone in that area. Internal sensors are offline. We're going to have an engineer over there momentarily to open that door up. Stand by.. And be ready. That room was delegated to biological research. There could be hazardous materials involved."
Daniel was woken from his nap by someone gently shaking him. He took a deep breath before opening his eyes. His quarters were still dark, and the clock told him he had been out for a good six hours. He rolled over in his cot to see a shadowy figure over him. It spoke.
"Sir, there's been an accident with some of your staff. You'd best come quickly."
The figure retreated from the room, and as the door opened, light flooded in and he recognized Jeryl from earlier. He rolled out of bed and did a quick stretch to banish the last vestiges of fatigue from his limbs. He pulled on a clean uniform and was still in the process of donning his boots when he hopped out into the hallway. Jeryl was there waiting for him, and set off at a brisk pace down the corridor. Daniel swiftly tied the laces on his footwear and jogged after her.
The traveled to the elevator and then descended three levels to the medical ward. The door hissed open and Daniel found himself in a spacious hospital room. The cots were all empty save for the far side of the room, where a plastic curtain obscured his view. Doctors trickled in and out, looking confused. When one spotted him, he was flagged over. The doctor shook his hand and introduced himself.
"Chief MacDonnegal, my name is Soji Hatama. I'm the administrator of this hospital wing. We have your staff here, and I was wondering if you could answer some questions for us."
The administrator was a Kusarian man who looked too old for his time. His skin was smooth but he had stress lines around his eyes and mouth. Daniel looked him in the eye and said truthfully,
"I only know that they were working on nanotechnology. For being Chief Researcher, I have little connection with their projects."
This news seemed to agitate Soji. "Damn. We can't figure out what the hell is wrong with them. They're.. Well, take a look for yourself."
Daniel was led into the curtained area. The four biologists were laying on separate medical beds, completely nude. Three men and one woman. Their skin was pink and raw looking, though on closer inspection Daniel saw that it was scar tissue. Soji was next to him and explained.
"When they came in, their bodies were lacerated and burned. Their skin looked like it was boiling, but they've gradually began healing themselves. We assume it's the nanobots repairing them, but these people are dead and yet they have a bloodflow to carry the nanobots throughout their body. We're seeing massive trauma to their organs, meaning the nanobots are consuming their insides to repair the skin. Make no mistake, there is no chance to help these people. The damage is far too extensive. But what we were curious about is the Cardamine in their bodies."
Daniel looked sharply at Soji in surprise. This reaction seemed to agitate the administrator further.
"Good God, man. Don't you have any idea what your people were doing? All of their bodies are laden with Cardamine."
Daniel pulled a PDA from his uniform and flipped it open. He navigated to the biology department's reports and filtered through them. Nowhere did it mention Cardamine. He recognized one of the researchers, and pulled up his name in the PDA. Donny 'Juan' de Markus had made a series of personal logs separate from his lab reports.
"Personal log, Donny de Markus. The nanobot treatments aren't working as planned. When they're used on starships, the nanobots are equipped with an internal supply of materials to make the repairs, and ultimately consume themselves. They do this by mixing a chemical catalyst with the material that renders it into a sort of 'paste' to be applied. Our experiments on organic tissue lack such a catalyst, because there are trillions of confusing chemicals already in the blood stream, and each is different according to the DNA of the host. Nanobots can't lock on to a specific genetic sequence to perform repairs. That is, until we added Cardamine to the test data. Cardamine bonds with genetic material and provides a good anchor for the nanobots to identify what is 'good' to repair and what is 'bad'. All test data so far has yielded good results and we're ready to move to human trials. I already take Cardamine out of necessity so I'm the obvious choice. I will receive a nanobot injection and then will have a machine inflict a superficial wound to my skin. The nanobots should in theory lock on to and repair the damage."
Daniel looked at the Donny's corpse. None of this made it to the official reports. He looked at Soji and said, "Can I use your terminal? I'd like to write this up." The administrator nodded. Daniel pushed aside the curtain and moved to the other side of the room, where the administrator's computer sat on the center of a curved desk. He took a seat and began writing the report while it was still fresh in his mind, as well as including Donny's personal message. He pulled up the doctor's reports and began reading through them as well. The autopsy on one of the men showed that the nanobots were forcing the blood to circulate throughout the body. The seemed to be consuming the internal organs but leaving the spinal column intact, perhaps because it was unable to be used in repairing skin damage. The cause of death seemed to be external trauma from an explosion, and the nanobots were still trying to 'repair' the damage. But something else caught his eye. The had taken cellular scans and Daniel spotted something out of the ordinary.
It was a virus. Daniel brought his face as close to the terminal as he could to see it better. And he was sure it was a virus, hanging on to one of the nanobots. It was dragging a Cardamine molecule behind it, and seemed to connect the two. The doctors likely didn't notice it because they weren't schooled in xenobiology. Daniel had two degrees in it.
Daniel looked at other scans of the virus. In some pictures, the virus was attached to a nanobot without a Cardamine molecule like it was just along for the ride. In others, the virus seemed to be linked with the nanobot itself. In the case of the latter, the nanobot was also attached to a Cardamine molecule.
Daniel looked up at the curtained off section, and stood up. He walked back into it, and tapped Soji on the shoulder. The man looked back at him, and Daniel asked,
"Could I ask for another molecular scan of the corpses? I've spotted what looks like a foreign virus using the nanobots like vehicles."
Soji looked confused, but nodded and stood over Donny's corpse. He pressed a few buttons on the medical bed's display and stood aside for Daniel to enter the scan parameters. After doing so, the bed flashed white and then subsided. Daniel walked back to the terminal to observe the results.
He now had access to higher resolution scans of the virus, and even some video recordings. He watched as the virus latched on to a nanobot and then have the nanobot latch on to a Cardamine molecule. The nanobot seemed to consume the Cardamine, and the virus swelled as it drained the drug from the machine. Daniel was fascinated. The virus controlled the nanobot and then used it to process and consume Cardamine.
There was a scream from the curtained area. Daniel looked up to see several doctors rush out, tearing down the plastic in their frenzy to escape. Daniel saw that one of the men had been left behind, gripped by the throat by the female corpse. She was sitting up, her torso twisted towards the man as she stared into his eyes. Her back was bruised where blood had pooled while she lay down. Her fingernails were vicious and curved, biting into the man's neck and drawing blood. Daniel stood and took a few steps back, horrified. The woman- Daniel couldn't remember her name for the life of him- yanked the man closer and bit into his neck. She didn't chew or tear, she merely held her mouth there and seemed to be pulling out blood then pushing it back into the man's body. Her prey twitched slightly but was otherwise subdued.
When she was done, she dropped the man, leaving him to hit the ground like a sack. Daniel was the last one in the room, horrified and transfixed by the grisly sight. The woman- Maryn- he remembered her name. They had met briefly when the journey started and never spoke again. She now stood from the table, blood dripping down her breasts and on to the floor. She ignored Daniel and went to the other three men on the table. To each of them, she bit them on the neck and sucked out mouthfuls of blood before pushing it back in. When all three had been bitten, she turned to Daniel. Her eyes were cold and glassy.
Daniel was pressed against the wall. He had called for security, and they were coming. But Maryn took steady steps closer, blood down trailing down her leg and leaving red footprints behind her. She was six meters away when Daniel was broken from his trance and screamed, turning away from her and sprinting towards the door. He took one last look before fleeing the room and saw that the four men she had bitten were now standing and walking towards him. Meryn leaned forward and began a clumsy sprint, but Daniel was already in the hallway and locking the door. He took several seconds to stare at the door in horror before tearing himself away and looking for help.
Jackie sprinted down the halls at full speed. She was the closest officer to the medical ward, and had been called because the doctors reported corpses coming back to life. She almost smashed into Daniel, who were sprinting towards one another. She noted his horrified expression and pale complexion. He grasped her hand tightly and led her back down the hall to the medical door.
It was open. The area was empty. Daniel peeked inside, and found nobody. Jackie looked in as well. She noted the blood splattering the floor and the fallen plastic curtain. Her radio began spewing noise.
"Attention, all security personnel. We are under attack by crewmembers who have lost their sanity. They are strangling and biting to death any other crew member they see. We have unconfirmed reports that the dead then get back up and join the attackers. Keep your weapon ready. If you see a bitemark on a crew member, execute them. Bring all survivors to the bridge. Repeat, all survivors to the bridge."
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CHAPTER THREE - HUNTED
The pair heard rapidly approaching footsteps. They looked behind them, and Daniel saw Meryn charging at them, fresh blood trailing down her still naked body. He let out a yell and stumbled back. Jackie didn't hesitate. She drew her pistol, raised it and fired. Meryn's chest split open and she was blown back with the force of the shot. The woman lay still, her spinal column destroyed. Jackie now grabbed Daniel's petrified hand and dragged him past her. He saw her eyes follow them as they ran for the elevator. Two more rabid crewmates attacked them; Jackie shot the legs off of one and the head off of the other. Both continued to move after they passed by.
The elevator arrived empty. Both of them piled in and Daniel hit the button for Deck Six, where the command bridge was located. Jackie handed Daniel her spare pistol and some magazines. With a weapon in his hands, Daniel's fear lessened somewhat. He knew how to use it too, as mandatory weapons training was part of even a scientist's admission into the Order.
The elevator stopped on Deck four and red warning lights came on.
"Damn!" said Daniel, "They've activated the quarantine procedures. Access to the upper decks is offline. We'll have to use the service tunnels to get up there now."
Jackie touched her radio, but only static came through. "Must've cut the main communication service.. But how? They've spread through the ship so quickly."
Daniel answered her. "I think their 'insanity' is actually being caused by a virus in their bodies. Right before this all broke out, those people were dead- but they had an unknown virus, nanobots and Cardamine in their blood stream. I saw the virus use the nanobots like a vehicle to collect and process Cardamine for it to consume. We know that Cardamine is an extremely complex material. It's possible that the virus is using the Cardamine as a sort of control signal, operated via nanites, to animate the body by attaching to the central nervous system."
Jackie didn't understand a word he had said, but waited for him to finish before saying,
"Yes, yes, great. But we need to get up to the bridge. I know where the maintenance tunnels are. Let's go."
They continued down the hallways and bumped into another group of survivors. After a tense period of pointing guns at each other, the five of them conferred. Daniel recognized Jeryl, the woman from the cafeteria.
"Where are you all going?" asked Daniel.
"The elevator." said Jeryl.
"Don't bother," sighed Jackie, "quarantine's in effect. It won't move."
"Then where-" said another one of Jeryl's group. Daniel cut him off.
"We're going for the maintenance tunnels. We can climb from there up to the bridge. Barring that, they go right down to the escape pods."
Mentioning the escape pods made the group murmur. Jumping ship was sounding more and more appealing with the escalating severity of the situation. Their discussion was cut short by a series of footsteps coming down the hall. Half a dozen frenzied crewmen were charging at them. Daniel and Jackie took a few shots at the forerunners, but were forced to run. The five of them fled the advancing mob, who seemed to be slow and clumsy.
Jackie led them to a closet. She and Daniel stood guard while the other survivors wrenched open the grate and dove into the tunnels. They were about to join the rest of their group when they heard screams from within.
"Oh frak! No! NO!" and other assorted screams of pain and panic. The screams died down shortly after. Daniel and Jackie looked at one another in horror and promptly closed the door. "We're trapped here." said Daniel, turning his head towards the sounds of approaching feet. He heard another set coming from the opposite direction. Hands pounded on the door behind them.
He looked at Jackie. They realized that they had no escape. All routes were cut off. They looked at the pistols in their hands, then back at each other. In a rushed moment of anguish, they grasped each other's hands and brought their guns to their heads.
The ExMortis, Chapters 1-10 - Corsair - 08-12-2012
CHAPTER FOUR - EPIDEMIC
The bridge was a hellhole of noise and smoke. A barricade had been erected as far away from the door as possible, and the eight officers bunkered behind it alternated firing shifts, before crouching to reload. They carried full-length beam rifles that fired three lasers clustered in a triangle. When they impacted the approaching crew the lasers burned holes through their bodies; only shots to the spine or brain dropped them for good. Corpses were piled the door and strewn across the ground.
Suddenly, the onslaught stopped. The rabid crewmen retreated from the bridge, dragging some of their dead along with them. The Order officers got a brief moment of rest to eject their rifle's batteries and place new ones into the chamber. They heard heavy footsteps approaching, and got back into position.
The crew began staggering back into the bridge, some heavily laden with the corpses of their fallen. They walked at the front of the line, absorbing two or three shots before falling. Before their bodies hit the ground, the person behind them caught them and carried them as a similar shield. Panic began to set in as the officers realized that their targets were not being pushed back, no matter how many they shot down. They crashed into the barricade and hurled bodies over it. The officers realized too late that some of these bodies were still moving. Their screams were cut off as their throats were bitten and torn.
Opal Donnafrey sprinted down the corridors, her clothes soaked with blood. She carried a close-combat knife that had obviously seen recent use. The escape pods were just a level lower. If she could get to an elevator..
The elevator was being guarded by two of her former co-workers. One spotted her and turned towards her but did not move. It was waiting for her to get closer. She didn't give it the chance to grab her as she reared back her arm and hurled the knife. It whistled through the air and buried itself up to the hilt in the creature's forehead. It fell back and crashed on the floor, never screaming or groaning. Its leg convulsed once and then lay still.
The other guard looked down at the corpse, and started to bend over to grab the knife. Opal took the chance to dash forward, leap up and kick down. The crewman lost its balance and toppled over. It tried to grab at her leg as she sailed past, but she was already inside the elevator and heading down.
Opal drew her last knife from its sheath on her belt. Her shoulder length hair had been pulled, cut, burned and chewed on today, but a pink hairtie still clasped several strands of the unfortunate do together on the right side of her head. The doors opened on the the level that contained the escape pods. Two more elevator guards turned towards her, but she dove forward, rolling under their hands and resuming her sprint down the halls.
She had been another security guard, but every time she found another group of people they were picked off. She eventually broke off to travel alone. Transmission from HQ and the bridge had ceased; the escape pods were her last hope. Another crewman stood in her way. By now she was getting to be tired, but had enough energy to slip in close and stab the man in its temple before dancing out of range of its thrashing arms. Opal turned to see a row of six doors on each side of the hallway. Each of those twelve rectangular rooms held twelve escape pods, each pod holding up for four people. She strode down the hall, frantically checking the display panels next to each door.
ROOM ONE POD STATUS:
Pod # 1: JETTISONED
Pod # 2: JETTISONED
Pod # 3: JETTISONED
Pod # 4: JETTISONED
Pod # 5: JETTISONED
Pod # 6: JETTISONED
Pod # 7: JETTISONED
Pod # 8: JETTISONED
Pod # 9: JETTISONED
Pod # 10: JETTISONED
Pod # 11: JETTISONED
Pod # 12: JETTISONED
She moved on to the next room: it was the same there. All pods jettisoned. Panic welled up inside of her as she moved down eleven doors. Finally, the twelfth room, she saw something that filled her with joy.
ROOM TWELVE POD STATUS:
Pod # 144: READY, EMPTY
She opened the door and stepped into the room. It was dark, lit only by emergency red lights. Pod 144 was in the far right corner. She palmed open the door and threw herself in. It was dark, and she fumbled around above her to grab the harness and pull it down over her shoulders. When it latched securely, she tried to slam the red button on the wall to jettison the pod. Her hand was grabbed halfway through its journey. She saw a pair of eyes glistening wetly in the gloom. Opal went for her knife with her free hand, but not before she felt a sharp pain in her arm, teeth sinking into her flesh until they struck bone. The person biting her then took their mouth off of Opal's arm and sat back to watch. Opal's arm began to numb, the sensation spreading out from the bite zone. As it reached her shoulder, her entire arm flopped down uselessly. The numbness slowed as it reach her chest, but spread in all directions at once. When it hit her heart, stabbing pains shot across her body. She gasped and strained at the harness but the pain was short-lived. Opal died, her body sagging to the floor.
The other figure stepped out of the escape pod, a wide and gaping wound on the center of her chest. Her spinal column had been replaced with what looked like a metal pole, and the flesh around it was in the process of fixing itself. As the creature stepped into the well-lit hallway, she was recognizable as Maryn. Her eyes were bloodshot but aware, moving to and fro in a frenzied search for something else to spread herself to. She continued stalking the halls as a loud tearing noise came from the escape pod. Opal hurled the twisted remains of the harness out of the pod before staggering out into the hall, following a silent command to hunt for more hosts.
CHAPTER FIVE - OVERMIND
Maryn felt a burning in her body, a raging fire that coursed through her blood and sought to escape, to spread to others yet untouched by it. Her head felt heavy and tired but ghosts of thought still floated in her mind. They made sense of the random instincts that commanded her body.
'Take the body and mend the mind'
'Create order from the destruction'
And other such phrases. Maryn was slowly being able to understand them, to think clearly. But for now her body moved mostly of its own accord. It was taking her up, to where Daniel and Jackie had died. Her movements were heavy, each footstep slamming down onto the ground like a cinderblock. But her slow tread finally carried her to the corpses. Their brainmatter was blown all over the walls. She grabbed hold of a few crewmen who were milling about aimlessly, and gestured with her whole arm at the gorey mess. They worked together to haul the corpses and as much brainmatter as they could scoop into the central power core on the same level. Maryn's body warmed as they got closer to the large reactor.
She pulled some of the nearby chairs apart, getting as many straight poles of metal as possible before lifting the headless corpse of Daniel up and pushing it against the warm metal blast shield surrounding the reactor. She drove the metal spikes into the corpse's shoulders and waist, pinning it to the shield. Jackie's corpse was held upside down and then pushed to the wall above Daniel, so their their headless stumps touched before Maryn pinned her. She stepped back to admire her work. Both bodies were splayed spread-eagle on the blast shield, staked to the it with very temporary restraints. The combined brainmatter was packed into the cavity formed by their empty skulls. It slopped around and tried to escape its new container, but Maryn was eventually able to arrange it so that it all stayed within its container.
Maryn brought her hand to her mouth and bit down on the flesh of her palm, and then cupping her hand towards the ceiling to watch the blood pooling in it. When it was full, she splashed the blood over the brainmatter. She refilled her hand, then splashed again. She did this three more times before her hand stopped bleeding and the corpses were splattered in her blood. As a final measure, she drew a vial of Cardamine from her pouch and sprayed it into the brainmatter. She then stood back and watched.
The blood seeped its way into the open wounds on the corpses. Inside were millions of viruses, each connected to a nanobot. As the nanobots entered Daniel and Jackie's bodies, they began to disassemble their internal organs. Meanwhile, the viruses in the brain were reacting very differently. The abundance of Cardamine was devoured by the nanobots, who processed it and allowed the viruses to consume it in its raw form. Many viruses were overwhlemed by the complexity of the molecules and died out. But the ones that survived rapidly began to control the drug, using it to augment the virus' own DNA. The resulting leap in genetic complexity created a frenzy of rapid evolution, the virus consuming as much Cardamine as possible and the ones who survived were further strengthened.
In minutes, billions of the viruses had died off. Their corpses were cannibalized by the survivors, allowing even more injections of Cardamine. It was absolute biological chaos. The number of surviving viruses halved each second. It ultimately came down to two viruses, each now bloated and overfull with Cardamine and the corpses of their kin. They sent out chemical signals to locate each other and upon seeing the large amount of Cardamine the other possessed.. called a truce. The nanobots wove hormones at rapidfire speeds, communicating with each other on behalf of their controlling virus. Instead of fighting each other for the last scrap of Cardamine, the viruses drew close to one another and exchanged a sex pili. The small tubule bridged the two viruses and a gush of information followed. Too much for one receptacle. Dozens of such bridges opened a split second later, and genetic material flowed in both directions as the viruses stopped being separate and instead merged into one.
When the merger was complete, the virus no longer resembled its old self. It was a sphere, the size of a blood cell, and covered in nanobots. They swarmed over its surface delivering the shattered corpses of viruses and their nanobot hosts before departing to hunt down more. The single viral cluster was now hunting down its kin, bringing them back and recycling them. A factory embedded in its surface broke down the nanobots and re-built them with a virus pre-installed, completely integrated with the machine. Another factory took in tissue cells which the viral cluster 'impregnated' with millions of new viruses based off of its own code.
It had reached this point in the span of eight hours. Maryn had been patiently watching and waiting during this time and was beginning to see a visual change in the corpses pinned to the wall. A spongy red mass had begun to form on the brainmatter. It was small now, but was growing at an impressive rate. This mass was the reach of the viral cluster, as wherever its hunter nanoviruses went, they left behind a residue that allowed them to travel faster while snaring bacteria and viruses that might wander in.
The viral cluster spread its influence across the entire brainmatter heap it was living on. The red biomatter had begun to reach Daniel and Jackie's shoulders, and black tendrils were beginning to spread out from the center as the cluster established its own nervous system across its hosts.
The cluster had almost entirely used its cache' of Cardamine. It recognized that it needed more to continue to develop, so it sent a pheromone into the air which Maryn smelled and understood. Since she already had Cardamine in her system when she had been infected, the viruses in her had evolved to a more advanced state than her drooling kin. She turned and stomped away towards the ship's store of Cardamine. The drug was stored in large quantities both for testing and mandatory consumption as some of the crew had been Outcasts.
The supply room was open. Nobody on the Jelkanar ever worried about thefts because thieves would have no motivation or escape. It was a simple task to grab as many canisters of Cardamine as she could carry and leave. There were massive boxes filled with processed and raw Cardamine grass. But for now, she carried a bounty of the drug back to the viral cluster. When she returned, the red biomatter covered half of Daniel and Jackie's body. The black tendrils reached out and branched, sending smaller veins across its surface. It reacted to Maryn's presence by contracting and sending out another pheromone. Obeying its command, the woman drew out a canister of Cardamine and sprayed it on to the viral cluster's core.
The fresh influx of Cardamine was absorbed by the biomatter and pumped through crude cardiovascular systems to the cluster core. The Core had been pulling apart and studying the humans pinned to the wall, and had almost learned how to fully utilize its nervous and cardiovascular system. But then its Cardamine stores ran out and its evolution slowed to 'normal' speed. But with its supplies now filled, the Core resumed deconstruction of Daniel and Jackie, commanding the nanoviruses to build more efficient veins, arteries and pumps as well as nervous tissue to control the flow of fluid. Swarms of metal-clad virus detached form the Core to perform their tasks.
Days passed. The biomatter completely consumed the human wall ornaments and replicated parts of their internal structure. Every day, Maryn gave the Core a fresh injection of Cardamine. By now the red biomatter had spread across the wall, the black tendrils now buried beneath layers of dermal tissue. The brains of Jackie and Daniel had been carefully deconstructed and stored, and the Core was rearranging its own construction to mimic it. Finally, it clicked. Full sentience rushed into the Core, full connection to its nervous system. It came to life.
Currently it followed what could only be described as intelligent instinct. It knew what it was working for in an abstract sense. It wanted to be 'better'. It had tasted the complex life that was humanity, and wanted something similar. It was like a hunger that was slowly being filled with each passing hour. Seven hearts beat within its red mass, pushing fluids and nanoviruses throughout its expanse. It was close, but it needed something more. It recalled the creature that gave it Cardamine injections. That was a complex fleshcreature. It was the best chance the Core had to achieving completion.
Excreting a hormone, the Core beckoned Maryn closer. The woman obeyed, shuffling closer and eventually pressing her face against the red, spongy material that coated the wall. It was moist and gripped her skin, pulling her in deeper. Half of her face sank into the biomatter. She felt the rest of her body be pulled in. Her already naked body was by now caked in blood and grime, all of which was stripped away as she was dragged within its expanse.
Fully engulfed, Maryn could feel the nanoviruses invading her body through every opening in her body. Eyes, mouth, nose, ears, skin pores.. Her body was purged of everything but the Core's own brand of nanovirus. When they reached Maryn's brain and latched on, it was like a beam of light banished all shadows from her mind. Her thoughts were clear and free. As the old viruses that flowed through her body were replaced with modern ones, the specialized viruses attached to her brain recorded everything she thought and felt.
At first, she was astounded by the rush of sentience. Then she was curious about what was happening to her, as she was held immobile and studied. Finally, she accepted that whatever was happening to her was for the best. They had already given her thought and new life, and she would serve whatever power had done it. Satisfied, the nanoviruses detached from her brain and traveled back to the Core. Maryn was pushed out of the biomass and deposited on the floor. She stared at the Core, visible as a bulbous pink ball laced with red and black veins. She grabbed two vials of Cardamine with complete and unfettered dexterity. She sprayed the Core with the first vial and the second she took herself, draining it all in one long breath. She hadn't needed to breathe to this point, and her lungs felt old and groggy.
The rush of Cardamine in her system did much the same thing as it did to the Core. She doubled over, racked with a sudden burst of evolutionary potential. Her body exploded with hormones that the Core sensed and replied to, giving precise instructions for what it needed. It had read the data from Maryn's brain and was now completely aware. Sentient. Alive.
CHAPTER SIX - SYNTHESIS
Maryn received her instructions and immediately began to follow them. Her body writhed as the nanoviruses grabbed hold of a Cardamine molecule, processed it and then began to morph its genetic code to fulfil a specific task. This happened all across her body and it began to physically show. Two nubs grew below her shoulder blades, and her fingers elongated themselves. She was forced to crawl forward to another one of her kin who had been standing around, transfixed by the hormones coming from the Core. She grasped his legs and pulled him to the ground. He offered no resistance as she began tearing into him, eating him. She didn't bother chewing, simply swallowing mouthfuls of flesh and bone. She ate his guts, his limbs, his skull, and left only his brain uneaten. The brain she left on the floor.
She was only able to eat so much because as soon as food went down her esophagus it was pulled apart by nanoviruses and whisked away throughout the body to fuel the transformations that were happening all over her. The nubs on her back elongated and stretched, forming straight skin- covered poles. Her hands and fingers elongated and narrowed until the bones broke through her skin and formed wicked claws. The poles on her back began to bow over her shoulders, eventually bending like skinny handless arms resting on her breasts. Her transformation stalled again and she had to consume another one of her kin, one again cracking open and eating the skull but leaving the brain untouched.
Her body finished its grotesque conversion. The growths on her back finished bulking up, and cruel blades sprouted at the ends. Her legs lengthened, as did her torso. Her hair fell out, and her mouth became filled with razor-sharp teeth. She stood up to fully examine herself.
She now stood nine feet tall. Her legs bent backwards and then came forward again at the knee, ending in a broad hoof. Her arms hung down to her knees, each hand devoid of skin, curved into an evil claw. A second pair of arm-blades sprouted from her back and reached over her shoulders. Her face was gaunt and her mouth was perpetually hung open due to her large teeth. Her skin was leathery and tough, studded with bony spines and plates.
The entire transformation took the better part of a week. Maryn finished looking at herself and approached the Core. She now had to look down at the fleshy mass.
"Purpose?" she rasped.
The Core released a series of pheromones, the first calling for a massive dose of Cardamine and the second for the addition of the uneaten brains. Maryn picked up two vials of Cardamine in each clawed hand and pierced them, spraying the Core with a geyser of the Orange Dream. She then stooped over and gently scooped up the brains, pressing them into the Core's biomatter. They sank into its mass much like she had earlier.
New instructions were being emitted by the Core.
"Carry you.. to crew," she repeated, and used her knife-like fingers to cut off a section of the Core. It shuddered and convulsed as pain wracked it and nerves were severed. Maryn quickly grabbed the piece of biomass and moved into the hallway. Her backwards-oriented legs made each step into a spring-loaded jump. Even an easy trot could be considered a hurdle-jumping move by human standards. Each time she encountered a crewman, she took the piece of the Core's body and swabbed it over their neck. Nanoviruses traveled into their body and completely took it over. It was like upgrading an archaic piece of software to the latest version. Mere minutes after being touched by the Core, the crew ceased their slouching and move much more efficiently. They moved to the quarters they occupied while alive to await further instructions.
It would have taken days for Maryn to re-convert the crew on her own. Instead, she tracked down the other 'Patient Zeroes' who, like her, had been advanced enough due to initial Cardamine exposure to follow basic directions; with the four of them working together, the crew was converted much faster. It took only a day and a half to get all eighteen hundred surviving crew.
Returning to the Core, Maryn was given another command: bring back the 'blue brain'. The minds that the Core had absorbed so far had been so full of information, the Core couldn't process it all. But all shared a common fear: the Blue. Scraps of information regarding the Blue were more plentiful than others, and seemed to suggest that there were several specimens of the Blue on board. The Core wished to examine them. Once again, Maryn jump-walked out into the hallways.
The lighting system that operated the hallways seemed to work better for Maryn's current body than her previous one. She wondered if it was due to the Core's influence and augments. But now they seemed to fill her with a calm, a peace that radiated through her body. Vestiges of her old self remained, but they were not as important as her new identity: She was a loyal servant of the Core, the one given a Voice. She was the Speaker.
Descending the elevator, Maryn traveled to storage once again. She picked up a few more vials of Cardamine and stored them on her body. There was a door on the far side of the storage compartment that read 'HIGH RISK BIOLOGICAL SPECIMENS'. Mist hung around the door as the cold metal met the warm air of the storage room. Maryn approached, but the door did not open, instead a warning message was displayed on the panel next to it: "Unknown biological format detected. Access denied."
Maryn slowly dragged her claws down the metal door, tilting her head slightly. Her claws were made of a hybridization of bone and the starship hull that had been recycled by nanobots during her transformation. She drew back her arm and swung at the door. Her claws pierced through the metal door, and she hissed as she dragged her arm down, slicing swaths through it. She pulled her hand back for a moment then grabbed on to these tears, bending the door open from the inside.
Maryn stepped through the door and was struck by how cold it was. Her already tight-fitting skin clenched tighter. She saw a row of cylinders with identification signs above them. Closest to her said,
"Small specimen remains"
While the rest of the containers said,
"Medium specimen remains"
At the far end of the room was another door. Maryn approached this next portal and saw immediately that she would not be able to rip this door apart. It was a much heavier duty metal. The sign above this door read 'Large specimen'. Maryn decided this was the sample the Core needed. She left the cold storage and wandered the halls until she found equipment storage. It was easy to flay the locker containing the plasma torches and retrieve one, carefully carrying the fuel tank across her elbows, not using her claws.
Back at the reinforced door, Maryn could not find a way to operate the torch without destroying it. She then thought of the Cardamine she carried. She pulled a vial out of her stash and placed it in her mouth. She bit down, chewed and swallowed the entire thing. She gently wrapped her hand around the torch, and closed her eyes, focusing on the tool. The nanoviruses in her body traveled to the bones of her palm and began to burrow through, dragging the torch into her body and then sealing the bone around it. While she had the Cardamine in her body, the torch was fully integrated into her arm. Its nozzle jutted out of the center of her palm. Satisfied with the result, Maryn placed her hand on the door and activated the torch. Plasma spilled forth and began slicing through the metal. The heat from it, combined with the Cardamine still coursing through Maryn's body, tempered the bone-metal hybrid in her arms, further hardening and sharpening them.
The torch was doing its job. Maryn slowly dragged her hand across the door frame, cutting a hole for her to crawl through. Her ghastly face and bristling rows of teeth gleamed blue and white in the blaze. A dark film covered her eyes, protecting them from the harsh light. When her job was complete, she deactivated the torch. Its hose was still connected to the fuel tank, and lacking any other options, Maryn began to consume the torch and tank. The torch in her hand was disassembled first, and Maryn cut the hose with her free hand, placing its end in her mouth as she drank the liquid fuel.
Eventually the pressure in the tank dropped low enough to stop the flow of liquid. Maryn licked her lips as she stood, belly sloshing with flammable liquid fuel. She would have to be very careful to avoid exploding; however, body was still riding the Cardamine high and was already constructing a sac within her body to hold the liquid, providing another pipe leading from it to her mouth. As soon as it attached, Maryn felt a rush of material coming up from her gut. She turned to the wall and belched. A gout of fire exploded from her mouth, singing the wall and creating a rush of steam. She blinked in surprise.
The sac in her belly seemed to be containing the fuel, preventing it from sloshing as she moved through the freshly-sliced door and stared at a glass container. It was filled with a clear gel and at the center of the gel was a blue and black mass. She felt a tingling in the air as she approached the container and cut it open. The gel spilled through the cracks and covered her hands as she reached down and carefully enclosed the Blue in her spider-like hands. She pulled it out from its cage and turned it over gently in her grasp. It was heavy, even with her enhanced strength. It must have weighed close to half a ton. This was what the Core sought, all right.
She carried her package with great care as she departed the storage bay and returned to the elevator. On the way up, she wondered what would happen when the Core consumed the Blue. Something great, she hoped. The doors opened.
The Core's red mass had began to cover the walls of the hallway too, having completely covered the walls and floor of the room it resided in. Maryn brought the Blue towards the Core, and upon reading its pheromones, gingerly offered it. It sank into the Core with a squelching noise. Maryn stood back to wait.
The Core was silent for many days as it picked at the Blue Brain. Maryn occasionally caught whiffs of pheromones as it 'talked' to itself. She spent her time giving the Core regular Cardamine doses and patrolling the halls. The red mass spread to cover the entire floor in time, and had begun to work itself into the ventilation and maintenance shafts. The more space it covered, the further it could distribute pheromones. It had begun to command the other crew on this level, having them perform tasks like opening clogged hatches to allow the biomatter to spread further, or fetch Cardamine doses. But as Maryn was walking a massive spike of pain was driven into her mind. Before she fell to the ground, unconscious, she saw the other workers around her suffering from the same pain, sinking to the floor. Blackness swallowed her vision and thoughts.
The ExMortis, Chapters 1-10 - Corsair - 08-23-2012
CHAPTER SEVEN - UNNATURAL SELECTION
Blue haze surrounded Maryn's feet as she walked through a dream. She had no physical body, but instead moved as a shadow. She saw other shadows walking through the mist, and they seemed just as confused as she was. Over head, a bright light shone down on them, pale green in color. Maryn felt as if the light was watching her. In its glare, she was able to look at herself. Her body was thin, smooth, featureless. A ghost given the bare minimum of physical existence.
Another shadow approached her. Its face was blank, and it stretched an arm out to her. She raised her own to grasp it, but their hands passed straight through each other. She felt a slight tingling as if she had been shocked, but the shadow gave up and walked away before she could try again. A pang of loneliness shot through her.
The light above flared in intensity, and she looked up at it. It didn't burn her eyes to stare into, and as she did the light expanded to fill her vision. She realized that it wasn't getting larger, it was moving towards her. She felt warm as the smooth ball of light approached her and she raised her arms to touch it. Her arms disappeared into it, and soon the rest of her was drawn inside.
Maryn jolted awake. She was lying on a warm, moist bed of the red 'moss' that was covered the walls, floor and ceiling. She was back in her physical body, all four arms relaxed. Her legs were stretched out straight, her pale, leathery skin leading to a pair of taloned hooves where her feet had been. Her entire 9 foot (( // 2.7 meter )) body splayed out as if she had been sleeping comfortably. When she sat up, digging her claws into the wall to assist, she heard a voice in her mind.
[Good morning, sleepyhead]
Maryn froze, then looking around in alarm. Her row of one and a half inch teeth (( // ~4cm )) bared, ready to bite into whatever was nearby. The voice spoke again.
[Be calm, Maryn. There is no threat.]
Maryn felt her urge to fight and kill smothered. The voice in her head had the power to quash her instincts. Her body relaxed, and she stood up to begin walking the halls again.
[I am the Core.]
Maryn found herself walking back to the room where the Core was located. The red biomatter that it had originally been made of was now coated with a waxy purple material. Her ears were filled with a slight buzzing as she got nearer, and the voice was nearly overpowering.
[We have stopped moving through space. We must wake the rest of the crew and restore this craft to full functionality.]
Maryn could scarcely think of a response, and ultimately managed a nod. Before she turned to leave, the a section on the Core's surface turned white and pushed out a drop of clear liquid. Operating on subconscious instructions, Maryn caught the drop on one of her claws and it immediately seeped into her skin. It took a moment, but clarity began to crawl back into her mind. Her presence to the Core no longer overpowered her senses. And when it spoke again, it was as no longer a deafening roar.
[Maryn, you are my chosen vessel. You must gather the rest of us and set them to work. Go now, and perform your duty.]
The voice exited Maryn's mind, leaving her to bask in the warm, vibrating glow of the Core. But she did not stay long to enjoy it, and soon turned to lope out the door and into the hallway. Whenever she encountered a fallen crewmember, she knelt down and dragged one of her claws across their chest. Whatever Maryn had absorbed from the Core seeped into their bodies and woke them. Their eyes were wide for several seconds as the Core telepathically gave them commands, but they all eventually stood and silently shambled away to perform their jobs.
She noticed that she was the only one who had been changed by the Core. The rest of the crew just seemed stupefied, incapable of thought as she was. The Core seemed to sense her thoughts.
[You are special. You are my instrument. I need you free to think on your own in order to be effective. But the rest of the crew, they are merely bodies to exert my will. There will be challenges ahead of us that will require you to get us through. I am trusting you with this task.]
Maryn continued to wake up crew members, scratching them across the chest and moving on. The quarantine was still in effect, meaning she had to crawl through the maintenance ducts to reach certain levels. As she got to the lower levels of the ship, the temperature rose as she got nearer to the engines. The Jelkanar had powerful cruise engines that allowed it to maintain high speeds for months at a time. She knelt over another crewmember to wake them, but their eyes slid open and they grabbed her forearm before her claws touched them. The man's mouth was open slightly and Maryn realized that he was not infected with the nanovirus. He was the last uninfected human on the ship.
The man had been hit on the head by a falling gas cylinder and was only now being roused. As he stared at Maryn, his face drained of all color. He was staring at a monster. His mouth stretched open as if he was screaming, but only a hoarse squeak came from his throat. Maryn pulled her hand back and stood at her full height over the man. She stretched her four arms out to their full length and brandished her claws and blades. Her taloned hooves dug into the metal floor and she bared her teeth at the small creature below her.
The man pulled a gun from his belt and raised it, but she had already brought her claws down and tore it from his grasp- along with half of his hand. As blood gushed from his arm, his entire demeanor shifted. He went from terrified to active, rolling backwards and springing to his feet. His left hand now brandished a knife. The fight or flight instincts had finally caught up to him, and there was nowhere for him to run to.
Maryn's black eyes stared at the Order crewman unblinkingly. She wiggled her fingers slightly so that her claws made a steady snick, snack against one another. They paced around one another in the round room, and Maryn pounced first. She thrust her left arm at the man, who dodged under her attack and slashed up with his knife. The blade sliced through her tough skin and dragged through her bone. No blood came from the wound. She brought her other hand down but he jumped backwards, out of range. She was now pitched forward with both hands on the ground. The man tried noticed her extra limbs too late to move. Both of her extra arms jabbed forward, their blades sinking into his shoulder and gut. They passed right through his body and stuck in the wall. A look of surprise was etched into his face, which faded as the life drained from his body.
Maryn stood back and let the corpse fall to the ground. His blood pooled around her feet as she looked around for any other survivors. There were none. The Core spoke to her again.
[Maryn, you have performed your task. Enough of the crew are awake to operate the ship. I have another task for you now. You need to proceed to the command bridge of the ship and de-activate the quarantine procedures. I have assimilated enough knowledge from their minds to instruct you on their usage. Go, now. And I hoped you enjoyed the taste of blood. I anticipate you will be called on again to fight.]
As the Core mentioned the 'taste' of blood, Maryn felt a stab of curiosity. She looked over at the cooling corpse of the Order agent and stooped over him, plunging her hand into his chest and tearing out a handful of meat. She picked out fragments of bone and cartilage and dumped the red matter into her mouth. Her teeth shredded it into tiny scraps before swallowing. The taste was pungent and bitter, but pleasing. Her perpetual grin widened with satisfaction as a dribble of blood dropped from her chin.
She proceeded back to the elevator and took it as high as possible before forcing her way back into the cramped maintenance tunnels, heading for the bridge. Events were starting to play out more and more rapidly, and Maryn felt ready to take on the next set of challenges.
The ExMortis, Chapters 1-10 - Corsair - 08-24-2012
CHAPTER EIGHT - REACTIVATION
The maintenance shafts had been scored and shredded by her claws as she had crawled throughout them. She reached a wide, open vertical shaft. She had accidentally sheared off the ladder her first time up, and now had to get up another way. She stood in the center of the shaft and looked up. The entryway to the passage leading to the bridge was about twenty feet up. She crouched low, her sinewy muscles bunching, then she jumped, catapulting into the air like a rocket. Her hands reached up, grasped the edge of the entryway, and hauled herself up. Crawling forward, she had to navigate through a maze of tunnels to finally end up in the bridge. The room was occupied by crewman passively standing around, staring at the consoles. As Maryn entered, they placed their hands on the controls.
[Maryn, you must be my voice now. My Speaker. These minds are clouded and I cannot reach them as I can with you. When you touched my essence, I gave you a small portion of my telepathy. Connect with these drones and I shall relay them instructions through you.]
Maryn looked around at the drones awaiting instructions. Now that the Core had spoken to her, she felt a slight tugging coming from each of them. She reached out with her mind and grabbed hold of these threads of consciousness, touching the minds of the drones. The Core was right, these drones were dim. For one reason or another, the nanoviruses were having problems with controlling their bodies; however, with her will now enforced on them, they seemed to gain more control over their own bodies.
[The fuel tanks need to be swapped. We cannot move until new fuel is placed in the engine.]
Maryn's eyes darted to the engineering operator, and grabbed hold of the thread connecting them. She visualized the instructions the Core gave her. The drone bobbed its head in acknowledgement, and its fingers moved across the console. Its movements were sluggish at first, but as it worked it became faster. When it was complete, its arms dropped back into a neutral position on the display.
[Now vent the exhaust that's been built up in the waste ducts.]
Maryn commanded the engineering operator to do so, and it performed much faster this time, executing the order in a few deft movements. The ship shuddered as exhaust was vented and fresh fuel introduced into the engines.
[Now end the quarantine]
Maryn didn't even need to look at the electronics operator this time. The crewman simply obeyed her orders without her making a conscious effort. As the quarantine was lifted, the red lights around them deactivated and the alarms in the hallways ceased. She blinked as the soothing red was removed from her vision.
[Star charts indicate a wealth of stars back where this ship originated from. Stars full of life and resources. Both of which we need. Take us there. The system designated 'Omicron Delta' is our destination.]
As soon as the Core gave her orders, the navigator jumped into action. Maryn got the feeling that she was now merely a relay, not consciously giving commands but just passing them along. The ship lurched forward as impulse engines reactivated and charged their cruise drive. Maryn looked out the forward viewscreen and saw the swirling nebula rushing by them as the Jelkanar thrust forward like an arrow in the fog. Back towards human civilization.
______________________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER NINE - ARMAGEDDON
Months passed as the Jelkanar flew through the endless green nebula. During that time, the creatures within the ship took on a name of their own- the 'ExMortis'. Maryn continued to command the drones and acquired the title of 'Speaker'. At first, they rapidly consumed Cardamine but as their stores began to dwindle rationing was put into place. The Speaker already felt the effects of not having Cardamine on-demand. Pain seeped into her body, making her ache all over. The drones seemed to fare worse, losing much of their dexterity until they received a small dose in order to do their jobs.
As the ExMortis learned more about the ship they were in, they began to modify it from the inside. The first things that they did were to deactivate the gravity, life support systems and lighting. They could see just fine in the absolute vacuum, and did not need to breathe. They glided through the ship like ghosts by pushing off of walls and floating. The Speaker in particular moved in a spider-like way, using all six of her limbs to propel and control herself. The gases that were no longer being breathed were stored in large canisters. The Speaker had them placed throughout the ship to be used as weapons in case someone tried to break in.
She had been making such defenses everywhere. Spikes jutted out from the walls in almost every hall way, designed to impale or at least cut anything that tried to break in. The ship's automated turrets had been activated and calibrated to shoot humans on sight, but not ExMortis. The turrets had not recognized them as non-humans when the outbreak first occurred, which is why they had not activated sooner. Some of the ExMortis also flew the dozen fighter craft in the Jelkanar's hangar. They flew drills regularly to keep their skills us.
In addition to the spikes, turrets and gas bombs throughout the ship, the lack of light and atmosphere played in their favor. Energy that had originally been diverted to those systems now were fed back into the power core, increasing engine and weapon output by 20%. They had been running regular weapons drills when they needed to deactivate their cruise engines to vent exhaust and cool the impulse drive. They fired on asteroids and clusters of rock and dust, with the Speaker guiding their aim and directing targets. She was fed information by the Core about how to use certain weapons in different situations, and most importantly, when to flee.
The Speaker was gliding through the corridors, weaving through the spikes on the wall when she felt one of the drones on the bridge go to full alert. She touched its mind and saw that it had detected another ship on long-range scanners. Suddenly at full alert herself, she twisted around rapidly and clambered inside the elevator shaft- the elevator itself had been removed- and ascended to the bridge.
She glided into the bridge and saw the ship on the sensor display. Directing them to intercept, they closed in close enough to scan the vessel. It was a Zoner long-range cruiser, Corvo class. They were hailing the Jelkanar. Thinking fast, she sent a text-based communication informing the Corvo that they were experiencing technical failures and would get to them shortly. The Core was already in her mind, speaking to her.
[This is the perfect opportunity to refresh our supplies. Lead a raiding party with the soldiers you've been training.]
The Speaker was already descending the elevator shaft to the level with the docking hatch. She had sent a telepathic message to five soldier ExMortis, and they were en route as well. She met them at the hatch that would open to allow them to depart ship.
The soldiers had been picked from the five most dexterous ExMortis on the Jelkanar. They had then been modified by the Core and the Speaker to be deadly killers. They were hunched over and traveled on all four limbs. Their arms and legs were each tipped in deadly claws, and their long, angular faces were split by a large and menacing mouth. A short tail extended from their spine which they used to balance themselves as they pounced. They very much resembled lizards with the way they swayed to and fro in the zero-gravity environment.
Grasping the hatch to open space, the Speaker deactivated the magnetic latch and opened it. A slight tug came as the last of the Jelkanar's atmosphere rushed out. The Corvo lay in front of them, large and impressive compared to their small bodies. Wasting no time, the Speaker launched herself out of the hatch at the Corvo. There was no rush of air as she did so, just the still and silent feeling of moving through a vacuum.
The soldiers followed suit, all five hurtling through space across the three hundred meter gap. As they were half way across the gap, the Jelkanar opened fire with a barrage of pulse blasts. The EMP charges overloaded the Corvo's shields just in time for the Speaker and the soldiers to crash into its hull and grab on. The Zoner ship began to flee, but the raiding party was already tearing into one of its docking hatches. Their claws couldn't get through the thick armor plating, so they attacked the thinner metal joints on the door's edges and succeeded in slicing through several. The door, unable to support the strain, exploded off into space. Air rushed out into space before the internal force fields sealed off the breach. But by then the Speaker and her raid force were inside the ship. A single fighter launched from the Jelkanar was continuously disrupting the Corvo's cruise engines as they worked.
The interior of the Corvo was hot and muggy compared to the Jelkanar, and the gravity momentarily threw her off balance. But she was quick to recover as she moved forward down the hall. She ran right into a Zoner crewman who had come to investigate the docking hatch's explosion. A quick stab with her extra arms killed him instantly.
Commanding the soldiers to spread out and disable the Corvo's critical systems, she loped forward to the elevator to reach the bridge. Another Zoner, this one armed, fired a shot off at her before she thrust her claws into his chest. His shot had hit the wall behind her and left a considerably sized hole.
In the bridge of the Corvo, the captain was giving orders left and right. This wasn't a military ship, but he was involved in a very violent situation. First an Order battleship opens fire on him, and now internal sensors report six intruders. These intruders seemed more animal than man.. Probably the product of some mad experiment on the Order ship. A cold dread sank into him as he got the horrible idea that his ship was a test. They were testing their lab rats on his ship and killing his crew as part of it. They had already raided the armory and stolen all of their explosives.
'Enact quarantine mode! Seal those creatures on the lower decks! Erect force fields around all critical systems! Eris help us..'
The Speaker ran headlong into a force field before she reached the elevator. She examined the glowing blue field and could not see an emitter that she could destroy, meaning it was inside the wall. She turned to the wall- it was standard steel alloy, not military grade. She reared back all four arms and began hacking at the wall, tearing it to shreds and exposing the wiring within. She continued to claw at it until the force field wavered and dimmed. It was still on, just at low strength. She backed up, then charged at it. It was like tackling a wall of putty. She pushed and strained and was able to squeeze through it and reach the elevator. The quarantine blocked off elevator access to the top level, so once she was at the top she simply ripped a hole in the roof of the elevator and climbed on to the roof. She crouched low, and jumped.
She wasn't able to jump all the way up to the doors leading to the bridge, but she almost made it. She dug her claws and taloned hooves into the wall and began to climb it like a six-legged spider. She climbed above the closed doors, then flipped upside down so that she was still clinging to the wall but her head was pointed down. Using her claws and hooves to keep her attached to the wall, she pried open the elevator doors with her extra arms, the blades being shoved into the crack and forcing them open. Alarmed shouts came from the other side.
In one smooth movement, the Speaker dropped forward and grabbed the sides of the door, pulling herself in with a somersault. As she leaped to her feet, she found that she was staring six very scared humans in the face. The bridge was smaller than on the Jelkanar, and she could barely stand straight because the ceiling was only ten feet up. The humans were speechless as they stared at the creature in front of them.
She looked at each of them, a hunger building in her. She spoke, words lightly addled by her lack of lips.
'You are looking at the a'tex of hu'nan e'kolution,' she began. 'A gi't you shall all enjoy soon.'
She lashed out with all four arms, catching one human with each limb. They each died instantly. She hurled their corpses at the last two, pinning them to the ground. She fell forward, approaching them by crawling on hands on hooves. They were paralyzed with terror, and tried to shrink into the pile of their dead comrades as she approached. The closest living human she bit on the shoulder, as gently as she could. What that meant is that she didn't tear a chunk of flesh off, though she wanted to. To the other human she did the same, biting him on the shoulder. They looked shocked for a moment, then began to groan as the ExMortis virus spread through their bodies.
The Speaker grabbed some of the corpses and began to feast as she waited for updates from the soldiers. They periodically sent small messages, such as 'disabled forcefield' or 'approaching engines'. The first large report came from the soldier sent to disable the shield and weapon systems on the ship. It had killed the engineers and recovered a stash of explosives from the armory, which it had placed on the weapons control console and was awaiting instructions to destroy. The Speaker instructed the soldier to return to the docking hatch and wait for extraction.
The soldier sent to the engine room reported next, saying that it had killed the operators and also placed explosives. The Speaker ordered it to move to the fuel storage room and begin to jettison as many spare fuel canisters as it could find.
The third and fourth soldiers had been sent to secure the cargo bay, and reported that a large supply of useless supplies were there- food, water, oxygen and the like. No Cardamine could be found; however, there were a few interesting items. A cache of artifacts, and a large Blue Brain, sealed within a metal cargo container. The Speaker ordered them to vent the cargo hold for the Jelkanar to later pick up.
The fifth and final soldier had been sent to the reactor room, and reported explosives placed and ready to go. With everything set, the Speaker left the bridge and jumped back down the elevator shaft, landing on the roof with a crash. She made dents in the metal from the force of her landing. She moved back through the hallways, smashing through the weakened forcefield again and meeting up with the five soldiers by the open hatch. They had placed the last of their explosives there, ready to destroy the hatch and escape. The Jelkanar was already positioned next to the Corvo that was now drifting through space, ready to retrieve them.
They stood far away from the blast, and the soldiers detonated the explosives. The ship shook violently as the engines, reactor and bridge detonated. Air began rushing out into space as the docking hatch was once again blown open and the force field emitters destroyed. The six ExMortis dashed down the hall and leaped into open space, sailing towards the Jelkanar. Behind them, the Corvo smoked and burned before going dark as its fuel and power ran out.
The raiding party landed on the hull of the Jelkanar and re-entered the ship through the open hatch. The Speaker closed it behind them, re-engaging the magnetic seal. The Jelkanar began to tractor in the cargo that had been jettisoned- the food and water were ignored, but the artifacts, Blue Brain and fuel were all taken in.
[We shall strip the Zoner vessel for parts before moving on. Excellent work. We shall also extract the newest additions to our crew.]
Shuttles were sent out to the Corvo with engineering drones. After the Core consumed the new Blue Brain, its telepathy grew in range and strength and was able to command the drones as they moved through the dark hulk. They spent days there, stripping the cruiser of everything of value. They were about to depart when a new contact showed up on the long range scanners. The Speaker was already in the bridge when it was spotted.
This was a larger craft, and as it came nearer it was identified as an Order 'Geb' battlecruiser. It was hailing them.
'This is the Order Battlecruiser New Ankh. We received a distress call from a Zoner ship a few days ago and have come to investigate.'
The Speaker sent the same 'technical difficulties' message, but the warship wouldn't buy it.
'No, that won't cut it. Explain why you have destroyed this Zoner craft.'
Lacking any other options, the Speaker activated the video feed and spoke directly to the Order captain. A look of confusion and revulsion passed over his face as he saw the Speaker's twisted body. She spoke with the same lipless, hissing voice.
'The Zoner shi' had sut'lies that we needed. We took it all fron' then' and their crew are now ours'
The look of confusion on the other captain's face deepened. But he knew that he was dealing with a research ship, and anything could go wrong on one of those. But as he watched now, the creature he was talking to seemed to be opening and closing its mouth, and lips were slithering over its teeth. When they were finished, the thing licked them with a long, purple-red tongue.
Having grown lips, the Speaker could now communicate easier.
'I am the Speaker for the ExMortis,' she said, 'and you look so very tasty.'
As she said that, she grinned. The video display was cut. The Geb was moving in closer to board the Jelkanar. Sending a message to the soldiers, the Speaker went to meet them. Gliding down the corridors, maneuvering past the traps and spikes, she reached the docking port and opened it. There were two shuttles en route, escorted by infantry using jetpacks. She retreated back to the end of the hall to wait.
A shuttle docked with the Jelkanar's open port and as the door opened a dozen soldiers filed out. They were each clad in a skintight space suit and a helmet that clung tightly to their skulls. Each carried a rifle with a flashlight mounted on it, which they shone every which way to observe their surroundings. They saw the hallway filled with spikes and began to line up single-file to proceed through. They had magnets on their boots that helped them walked on the floor and walls with the lack of gravity.
The Speaker had disappeared into the vents and shafts that lined the hallways. This is what she had been preparing for, and was now getting a chance to perform. She looked out through one of the vents and saw a soldier moving around a spike. She thrust her arm out, shearing through the thin metal grate and grabbed the man, dragging him back into the vent with her. Gunfire began to pepper the grate, but she had already disappeared with her prize.
Moving quickly, she danced through to the end of the hall and impaled the corpse on a spike there. She was spotted, but was able to flee before the gunshots started. The Order soldiers were using pulse lasers, meant for destroying flesh, not metal. They left only scorch marks where they hit the wall. The Speaker didn't risk attacking them again while they were on full alert like that, so she waited in the ceiling for them to reach the end of the corridor before stabbing one in the throat by shoving her arm down through a lighting fixture and then fleeing before she could be flushed out.
She continued her guerilla tactics, often throwing objects as decoys then attacking from behind. Her soldiers were doing the same thing, though they had already lost one to a grenade. The Order soldiers were being slaughtered and now just wanted to escape alive. The Speaker ordered the Jelkanar's gunners to open fire on the New Ankh. The Order soldiers ran faster to try and escape in time. There were only four left now, and the Speaker made a final attack as they entered the spike-lined corridor. Leaping out of the wall, she took two down in the first pounce. The next soldier fired several shots into her body, searing deep wounds before her claw tore open the woman's suit, spraying blood into the vacuum. The last Order soldier, in a panic, ran right into one of the spikes.
The ExMortis lost another soldier while stopping the retreat. The ship continued to vibrate as the Geb returned fire, but it was already a lost battle on their part. The gunfire stopped about a minute after the last Order soldier was dead. Nothing but the oppressing silence remained.
This time there was no lengthy wait. The Jelkanar sifted through the remains of the New Ankh and moved on, now confident that they were close to civilization. The Speaker's wounds healed quickly, leaving behind white scars on her chest. She stood on the bridge constantly, waiting for the next contact to appear on scanners.
They approached a jump hole within the nebula, and upon jumping through it to reach Omicron Delta were set upon by an Order ambush. Apparently they'd been warned about the Jelkanar by the New Ankh. This ambush consisted of two Osiris battleships on either side of them, who immediately opened fire on the ExMortis command ship. The Speaker was paralyzed for a moment before leaping into action. She ordered all gunners to open fire on the port-side Osiris' engines, and launch all fighters. She moved as quickly down the elevator shaft as she could, tearing through the corridors to the Core.
The brain of the ExMortis had grown to a considerable size now, resting within a cage of metal and bone. It quivered each time the ship was hit by another weapons blast.
[You must escape. Take my heart with you, find a new home for us. This place is far too volatile. The fate of the ExMortis goes with you.]
The skin of the Core ruptured, and a torrent of clear liquid rushed out. A white sphere rolled out and bumped into the Speaker's hoof. She bent over and picked it up, cutting a slot in her chest and placing the sphere inside. It was hard and cold in her body as her chest sealed itself back up, locking the Core inside. The ship shook again, and fires began to burn as fuel lines ruptured. The Speaker scrambled through the corridors, seeking an escape. She almost fell into one.
A section of the ship had been blasted off and voided into space. She could see the Osiris that her gunners had focused fire on. Its engine was completely wrecked. She jumped out of the Jelkanar's wreckage just as a salvo of torpedoes struck behind her.The explosions doomed the ship, incinerating large portions of its hull and blowing the remainder to pieces. The edge of the shockwave hurled her off course, away from the Osiris. She flew instead towards a distant asteroid field, clinging the last hope of her race inside her chest. Behind her, the Jelkanar's wreckage was repeatedly bombed and burned to cleanse all traces of the infection.
Weeks passed for the Speaker as she sailed through open space. The Core sometimes spoke softly to her, but for the most part it was silent. As she neared the asteroid belt, she began to feel the small pebbles and dust particles. When she got close enough to a floating rock, she grabbed hold of it. Her momentum ended up dragging the rock along with her, though she was slowed somewhat. She soon ran into a larger rock that was able to stop her movement. She clung to the rock, relishing the sensation of not moving while she gathered her thoughts.
The Jelkanar was gone. Bombed to oblivion. There was no way to avoid its destruction, as the ambush was far too thorough. The important thing is that she was alive and had escaped with the Core. All she had to do now was find a new ship and escape to places that weren't so vigilant to rebuild her race.
She spotted what looked like a space station far off in the distance. She saw several pricks of light that moved, indicating starship movement. That would be the place to start. She began leaping from asteroid to asteroid, closing the distance to the station. Hours upon hours of leaping and jumping, and she was nearing the edge of the field. The station seemed no closer. But just as she was about to leap and hope for the best, she spotted something. A ship.
It was round and green, cruiser sized. It was slowly passing by the asteroid belt, well within leaping range. The Speaker bent her legs all the way, and kicked off with a rock-shattering leap. She hurtled at the cruiser at breakneck speeds, and was almost there when.. a tractor beam grabbed her. The force of her deceleration yanked on her body as a pulsating beam of energy held her fast and dragged her into the ship's cargo hold. The tractor beam continued to hold her still in the darkness as she struggled. She heard a woman's voice on the cargo hold's intercom.
'Oh, hello there. Aren't you an interesting creature?'
The tractor beam released her and she fell to the ground with a clang. Even in the pitch darkness she was able to spot a door and head for it. Force fields erected around all of the walls and floors. She was trapped.
'Ah, ah ah. Just hold on a moment. Can't have you running amok now, can I? You certainly are interesting.. heavily modified human DNA.. stop moving! You're interfering with the scan.'
A 'bubble' of the forcefield swallowed her up and stopped her from searching for an escape route. The voice sounded less frustrated now.
'Ah, there we go. More indepth scans show.. Ooh, that's intriguing. A virus that uses nanobots to deconstruct and reconstruct bodily tissue and uses Cardamine to modify genetic structure.. Your brain says you can talk, so why not say hello?'
The Speaker was released from her bubble, but forcefields continued to seal off all available surfaces.
'Who are you?' she asked.
'My name is Ai,' said the voice. 'Short for A.A.A.I, which is an acronym for 'Advanced Assistance Artificial Intelligence'.'
The Speaker had no idea what was just said. In the silence that followed, Ai clarified:
'I'm a machine, a living machine. And I am absolutely fascinated to learn about you. If I let you go, will you not wreck my ship? Those claws have seen a lot of action.'
The Speaker cautiously nodded. She was in the company of a living machine? She was prepared to believe it, if only because she herself was an unlikely specimen. The force fields lowered and a door opened. She was wary as she walked through the hall and followed a brightly illuminated pathway on the floor. There was no atmosphere in here either, though there was gravity.
The illuminated floor led the Speaker into a spacious, square room. She stood absolutely still as she waited. A section of the far wall opened, hissing as white mist poured out. A human female stepped out- only, it couldn't have been human as there was no air in this room. The woman walked closer to the Speaker and then around her, moving in circles to examine her. After a few loops, Ai stood in front of the Speaker and looked up into her face, a look of wonder on her face.
'You are a beautiful specimen,' she began, her emerald eyes stretched wide. Her tanned face was lined with auburn hair that floated around her shoulders like she was submerged in water. The Speaker wasn't sure how Ai managed to speak, there was no air in here. She decided to ask.
'How can we speak?' she said, 'there's no air in here.'
Ai was still studying the ExMortis with a delighted smile on her face. 'These halls are filled with inert gases for guests such as yourself who don't need to breathe air. Had a Slomon K'Hara in here once, that was interesting..'
Ai began to inspect the Speaker more closely, leaning in close to her claws, laying on the ground to peek at her hooves, and putting her face close to the Speaker's chest to look at her extra arms. The ExMortis was rather surprised at Ai's reaction, it was starkly contrasted to the Order's reactions just weeks earlier.
She did her own observations while Ai was busy. The woman was lithe, and seemed to be made of flesh and bone. The only machine thing about her was a small outlet on the back of her neck. The Speaker assumed that was where Ai reconnected with the ship to recharge.. Or however that body worked.
Ai stood back, her curiosity satisfied. It occurred to the Speaker that she could easily slice the woman in half, but she strangely did not want to. The AI hadn't given her a reason to be hostile yet.
'Do you need food? What do you eat?' said Ai.
The Speaker opened her mouth to speak, but Ai looked at her row of bristling teeth and quickly changed her mind.
'Actually, I don't think I can accommodate your diet. Well, if you don't mind.. Who are you? Do you have a name?'
'I am the Speaker for the ExMortis.' replied the creature. 'I am the last of my species.'
Ai's lower lip pouted out slightly.
'I'm sorry to hear that,' she said. 'So you just decided to throw yourself at my ship? Suicide, or.. Ah' she said, finally clicking the pieces into place. 'You intended to spread your virus to the crew of this ship, to rebuild your race. Well, unluckily for you this ship isn't operated by crew.'
The Speaker closed her eyes and leaned against the wall behind her. Ai continued talking.
'Now, don't give up hope yet. I may owe my life and transportation to the humans back home, but I don't feel any loyalty to them. Being a part of human society doesn't appeal to me, and they spend all their time killing each other rather than be productive. So, I doubt you'll make much dent in the death tolls when I drop you off.'
The Speaker opened her eyes and looked at the AI in surprise.
'You know what I intend to do, yet you'll take me?'
Ai nodded. 'You deserve a shot at life as much as any other creature. Besides, I am preparing to leave this part of space with a group of.. friends. I can do my good deed for the day by giving you a fair chance. You'll probably be killed off, but that's your problem. Shame, too, because you're just so damned interesting.'
The Speaker didn't know what to say. This AI was bizarre. But she was going to take her to human civilization and try to give her a chance to live. The ship shuddered as it engaged cruise engines. Ai smiled.
'We're heading for Kusari. It's the closest human nation that you can find a place to hide in. Just sit tight and I'll find a nice freighter for you to ambush.'
With that, Ai stepped back into her recharging chamber and the Speaker was alone. The Core spoke to her in the mean time.
[We must act fast. Secure a warship for our people and then take us to a place where no humans will hunt us. We can rebuild and then come back when we are ready.]
The Speaker settled back into a resting position and waited. She hoped that Ai was telling the truth about wanting to help. There was nothing she could for now except wait.
CHAPTER TEN - PROGENESIS
The cruiser slowed to a halt. Ai's voice woke the Speaker from her meditation.
'Well, this is your stop. There's a Samura convoy coming this way in about ten minutes. Wait on a rock and climb on board when they pass by.'
A pathway appeared on the ground, guiding the Speaker to the outside access hatch. When she moved close enough, a blast door closed behind her as the inert gases were vented and the hatch opened. The Speaker pushed off and grabbed on to a rock. Nearby, a Jump Gate loomed, large and impressive. The Speaker turned to see Ai's cruiser drifting away a short distance before engaging cruise engines. When it left her sight, she was once again alone. The Core was a cold reminder of the magnitude of her mission.
Ten minutes later, as Ai had said, a line of Kusari transports dropped out of the trade lane and approached the Jump Gate. The Speaker tensed, and leaped. She cartwheeled over the asteroids in her path, and then she smacked into the transport's flank, sending the shield into over drive. She pummeled the energy barrier until it gave way, then quickly tore off the hatch leading inside. The ship entered the Jump Gate just as she forced her way inside.
The transport was small and cramped. Only the pilot was on board, and the Kusarian had time for one scream before her blades cut his throat. His corpse was sucked outside as the last of the air rushed out. When the ship left the jump hole, the transport spun out of control. The forced entry and decompression mid-jump had severely compromised the ship's structural integrity. It slammed into another transport and ricocheted off before dying completely. The ship spluttered once and then went dark, drifting silently. The Speaker waited patiently inside, knowing a recovery ship would come. It took hours, but she saw a brown ship take up a position next to the transport and extend a docking tunnel. She charged forward, crossing the threshold and taking the recovery team by surprise. She cut down two and bit three, leaving them where she found them as she continued through the ship.
It was a military ship, and the Speaker soon found herself fighting in unfamiliar territory. There was air, gravity, light and armed soldiers everywhere she turned. At one point they cornered her, but she escaped by diving into a vent as pulse lasers scorched the walls behind her. The station blared red alert, all non combat personnel returning to their quarters and all security and military personnel patrolling regularly. The Speaker stayed hidden, dragging soldiers through vents when she could and biting them to silence and infect them. She began to amass a small army hiding in the vents. Those she infected would be able to approach a patrol and attack them as a distraction for her to rush up and infect the rest. Sections of the ship fell to her guerilla tactics one by one.
As with the Jelkanar, the Kusarians ultimately lost their morale and fled to the escape pods, where a squad of ExMortis pounced on them while the Speaker went to the bridge. As soon as she entered, she was barraged by pulse lasers that boiled her skin and bone. She hurled a grenade that she had plucked from a soldier's belt, and used the scattering effect to rush forward and bite who she could, killing as few as possible. She stopped when she reached the navigator, and instead hauled him to his feet, shoving him towards his station.
'Get us out of here. Now!' she screeched at him, brandishing all four arms as his comrades stood up one by one and shuffled to their posts. Cowed and terrified, the man activated the ship's cruise engine and left the scene behind them, ignoring communications from their commanding officers.
'Take us somewhere we will not be followed.' she said next, stepping back from him. He set about his work, his entire body tense with fear. She needed him human for now, couldn't risk him not being able to assist them in escaping.
'What is this ship?' she asked him. His response was said all in one word.
'The IKN Katanfreia, destroyer class.'
The Speaker licked her teeth as she recalled the Kusarian Destroyer. A small, agile ship. Perfect for what they now needed. She asked him,
'Are we being followed? For that matter, where are we?'
And again, his response was panicked and rushed.
'The Kyushu system. And no, though they want to know why we're heading for the Taus.'
'Do not answer. Stay on course. Hide us in the asteroids and we shall figure out our next course of action.'
The man was silent.
The Taus were vast, and they were able to hide inside of a large hollow asteroid. The navigator was infected, as was the rest of the crew. Event the prisoners in the hold were bitten and changed. The ExMortis takeover of the Katanfreia was complete.
The Core was again placed on the exterior of the ship's power core and surrounded with corpses to feed on. Instead of the disorganized mess that it had been on the Jelkanar, this time the Core grew with size and sustainability in mind. Its nervous and cardiovascular system stretched across the entire ship. They had lucked out with a bounty of confiscated Cardamine in the ship's cargo hold, which was used to fuel the process and keep the crew efficient.
A transmission was sent to the Hellfire Legion, and as soon as the Katanfreia was able to move again it began to stalk the asteroid fields of the deep Taus, making its way through to the Leeds system. A battle of enormous scale was raging, and using it as cover the Katanfreia slipped into the fields of smog. Over the next few days, the ExMortis on board dodged patrols and bases until it located the jump hole to Magellan and disappeared into the Independent System.
It emerged in a cloud of ice vapor stained from the bleedover coming through the jump hole. A wing of Legionnaires met it and escorted it to their system to begin a several-month workover of the ship, optimnizing it for ExMortis habitation. The undead crew developed their new environment to perfectly suit their taste. Soon they shall be ready to roam the stars again.
Update: Here is a Nexus for everything ExMortis.