Aerith AI: 2018

[Errant.Venture]

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Story Arc: Unexplored Space: Spring – 821 A.S. – Location: Fucked, In a Metreon Gas Cloud
Chapter 2: Things couldn’t get any worse…right?

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Tereus was having one of those super annoying vivid dreams. He was back at the academy, in one of Major Deveraux’s science courses, specifically “Theoretical Anomalies in Deep Space”. Despite her attractive outward physique, especially for a significantly older Alpha, Major Veronica Deveraux was all technical data. She wasn’t even technical data nerdy attractive, coming across more as the “I’m better, smarter, and always right, therefore I have cobwebs on my…”, “Please punch me in the throat”, kind of way. Tereus glanced down at the neural net link on his academic desk. 19:58, two…more…minutes.

The odd thing for Tereus was that while his dream had been extremely vivid this entire time, he knew this boring lecture being replayed in his unconscious subconscious was trying to tell him something. He looked down at the neural net link on his academic desk again. 19:58:32. Reliving this dream was making his head hurt worse.

“Now all of this is purely theoretical, based upon the massive amounts of data we have in our massive scientific repositories…” Major Devaurex's voice droned on.

Fuck Me…Tereus thought he remembered her voice being annoying, but not this annoying…it was almost as if someone was dragging a power rake across the deck plates of a hangar bay…or worse that Kusari Pop Music that had been a fad when they left the Sirius system…K-Pop was used by the Kusari forces as a morale killer during the Tau Wars…and it was surprisingly effective. If it didn’t make the Bretonians want to dress up like the opposite sex, in that tragic fashion that was skin tight faux neoprene, it would make them want to jettison themselves out an airlock.

Tereus glanced back down at the neural net link in his academic desk. 19:59.45, fifteen seconds to freedom…

“And that class is all I have for you today. Remember I want your reports on the hazards and potential uses for Metreon Gas in my neural net class folder by 23:59 tomorrow. No late reports will be accepted…” Major Devaurex's concluded.

Oh shit…Metreon gas…The bell signaling the end of class went off, and simultaneously Tereus awoke to warning klaxons blaring, as he was violently thrown from his bunk as a volley of explosions rocked The Errant Venture and The Repentance.

Tereus’ comm. panel sprang to life and Daughtery’s quizzical, and slightly amused voice could be heard coming in over the internal comm…well kind of. Zurie’s explicit verbatim clashed with the controlled panic of the engineering team, as more explosions filled in for the percussive instruments, and the shrieking klaxons kept wailing.

“Ugh…Tereus we have a problem…”, Daughtery stated as calmly as possible.

“Let me guess, Metreon Gas?” Tereus responded, rubbing his forehead where he felt a nice lump forming from where his face impacted on the bulkhead.

“Yeah…lucky guess Colonel, how’d you know?” Daughtery stated, almost astonished that Tereus was able to seemingly read his mind.

“Long story, you remember Major Deveraux’s “Theoretical Anomalies snore session from the academy?” Tereus, wrestled with the shockwaves rocking his ship, finally righting himself and stabilizing himself on the corner of his desk as the mass of explosions continued.

“Major Cobwebs?” Daughtery exclaimed, “I guess I should of paid more attention in that class…”

Daughtery was interrupted by a pissed off and less amused Zurie. “Damn it Daughtery, get your stupid ass over here and help me remodulate our shields,” she paused for a moment, clearly flustered, but attempting to regain her composure, “If we live through this you and the Colonel can continue this useless conversation about the sexless exploits of former objects of conquest…”

Tereus chuckled, they were screwed, but he had to laugh…Major Cobwebs had been on Daughtery’s conquest list freshman through junior year, well until she quite literally shot him down in front of the entire academy…good times, good times.

“I’m on my way to the bridge, you and Daughtery do what you can down there, relay all remodulation frequencies to Tiberius on The Repentance” Tereus stumbled to his quarter’s door, stabilized himself on the bulkhead, and punched in his code. The door hissed open, and he made his way to the bridge, stumbling and clawing his way there through the chaotic scene going on in the main corridor.

It was oddly amusing to him to see everyone, including himself, slipping and sliding down the hallways in their power armor. While the suits did have mag boots, with the violent force of the explosions, one could be expected to quite literally be turned to jelly from the vibrations that would resonate through their armor. At the very last it’d snap your spine.

Tereus finally made it to the bridge entrance. Swearing mentally, he thought to himself, note to self, add more convenient hand holds outside the door.

Tereus fought to enter his access codes. Finally, after his sixth attempt, the door slid open, and he clambered towards his station on the bridge.

“Give me a status report people!” Tereus barked to the bridge staff, “And someone please, kill the audible alarm…we all know we’re in deep shit!”

Ensign Trimble killed the alarm, and the jumpy Echo lieutenant…M…Mar…Marseille started to rattle off the long list of things that were probably going to kill them, on top of starvation, or the atmospheric recyclers shutting down.

“Shields are down to twelve percent Colonel, and we’re almost out of charged shield batteries…” Lieutenant Marseille stated.

Tereus slammed his armored fist down on the comm. panel in his chair, “Damn it Zurie, you have thirty seconds and then we’re all dead!” He yelled into the comm.

“Almost done sir, I need fifteen seconds…” Zurie could be heard over the comm.

“You have ten Zurie, make it happen!” Tereus shouted back into the comm.

Unsurprisingly the violent explosion subsided in eight seconds, as the explosions stopped. Zurie had done it, and also, unsurprisingly, she’d found a way to utilize the residual energy from the continuing explosions from the ignited metreon gas to charge the shields, and reinforce the hull plating. Tereus chuckled. At least some one paid attention in Major Cobweb’s class.

Sixty minutes later The Errant Venture and The Repentance were operational, enough. That still only left them thirty minutes to harvest the massive ice shards they’d need to save their battle group. Tiberius, the over achieving bastard that he was, had already managed to hook and begin recovery operations of on massive ball of ice. The explosions had completely thrown The Errant Venture’s port and starboard hangars into disarray and the flight deck crews were busting tail attempting to clear a spot large enough to bring in the life saving cargo just a few hundred meters from the atmospheric energy barrier keeping them all from being sucked into space.

The good news was that Zurie and Daughtery were in process of bringing in another ice shard into the aft hangar. The bad news was that the gravitational sheer from the nearby black hole was making it a task similar to reeling in a Nomad gunship with a durasteel line and a Rogue Bloodhound.

Tereus glanced down at the timer counting down on his command chair. Eighteen minutes. He keyed the comm., “Zurie, you have twelve minutes, max. We have to get out of here. Now that we have the remodulation frequency, we can send in a few transports on rotating shifts. We need to get out of here before the radiation from the black hole exceed our filtration abilities.”

“Understood sir, we ‘re almost done. Ten minutes, that’s all we need!” Zurie stated back over the comm. Despite her eccentricities, Zurie was a smooth operator when it came to tasks like this. It was still amusing to Tereus that her former commanding officer had dumped her upon him, through way of then Colonel Grey. Tereus had been a Major at the time and was a rising star and protégé of the renowned Grey. Initially he too had viewed Zurie as a burden instead of an asset, but that was solely based upon the data found in her OMPF that had been made available to him.

When Zurie first arrived, fresh off an armored transport aboard the launch bay of The Death’s Head, Tereus wasn’t quite sure what to make of her. She introduced herself, formally, and he could tell she had spent the better part of the six hour flight to their location, rehearsing what she would say at that exact moment. Oddly enough it was due to a lack of self confidence, or self esteem, as her OMPF had suggested. Instead it was due to deeply embedded need for perfection, and her personal need to present herself as a competent officer.

Zurie was definitely rough around the edges, and Daughtery was the first to get on her bad side. Surprisingly enough it wasn’t do to unwanted bravado in the form of not so subtle advances, but rather because he offered assistance at optimizing a prototype weapons platform, and completely altering her plans for the end product. After a terse arbitration by Tereus between the two, an uncanny relationship formed as the two talked tech and acted as a mutually beneficial sounding board for thoughts and creativity.

The end result of that first encounter was the highly agile, heavily armed, and deadly Mechanized AS units they currently employed throughout the battle group. Needless to say, Zurie had proven herself on more than one occasion and she was regarded as an equal, and a sister to everyone in the crew. That and she kept Daughtery in line.

Tereus’ comm. panel crackled to life. “Colonel, we’ve completed the salvage operation, we exit the metreon gas cloud now.” The sense of accomplishment in Zurie’s voice was justly deserved. “Sir, also, I’ve uploaded the fastest route out of the gas cloud, we should be able to clear it in three minutes.”

“Excellent work Zurie, you and Daughtery really came through. I’ve signaled Tiberius on The Repentance, we are beginning exfil maneuvers now. Drinks are on me once we set foot on solid ground.” Tereus unkeyed the comm. and looked down at the neural-net interface. Eight minutes, exactly what he’d come to expect from Major Adelaide Zurie.

As The Errant Venture and The Repentance exited the metreon gas cloud with six minutes to spare, Tereus finally sank back into his command chair and relaxed. He let out a deep sigh, and massaged his temples, finally noticing that his headache had gone away. Finally! Things were beginning to look up.

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The reports of my trying to imitate the revered Michal Golanski are greatly exaggerated...my avatar should prove this.

[4:17:08 PM] Michał Golański: I knew you have some prehistoric backing to kick them in the nuts.