We are stranded here in Omicron Theta. Only me and The Speaker are alive. We need Cardamine so that we can survive the rest of the day. Then we can come up with a plan to get emergency crew re-infected. The old crew is useless now, ExMortis and Cardamine have ravaged the body too much to recover them. Fresh bodies are required. The Speaker himself has changed into a.. Whole new creature entirely. It frightens even I.
His body is twisted. His torso is bent like a sideways 'V', with his legs on the bottom crook, arms on the top. His limbs have stretched to extend to the floor. Hooks and claws forced their way through his skin, which is now pulled so tightly, it has ripped in some places. His ribs now form an exoskeleton around his chest. I have no explanation for it. His head hangs down and twists upwards and sideways, so he stares at you with one bloodshot eye. I feel woe for anyone who tries to attack him.
He has taken over the position of negotiator. Our lives are in his hands.
The Speaker is horrifying. His already grotesque body has warped
further. He now roams the ship like a beast, growling and snarling. He's a wild
animal, constantly on the hunt for.. Whatever his delirious mind sees. We have
received help from the IND's 'Grapevine', some sort of information network. Their
transport is allegedly inbound with Cardamine. Perhaps that will calm The Speaker.
The Speaker now uses the vents as a fast travel network through the ship, rather than
using the halls. He gouges strange symbols in the walls. They aren't on any alphabet or
language on our database. Likely the withdrawal has damaged his mind to the point of
hallucination. When he stalks by my room, I hear him muttering, 'Speak to me.. Masters,
speak.. Speak to me..'
I believe he has been touched by gods.
The Speaker seems to be operating the ship by himself. The automated
turrets destroyed an incoming Zoner patrol, who were investigating our ship. The
Speaker brought their pods on board and infected them himself. They formed A Lesser
and an Overwatcher. They will be useful in restoring ship functions. The Speaker,
with this progress, seems to have calmed down somewhat. He still mutters strange
sentences, all to do with gods speaking to him. He no longer hunts through the ship,
and busies himself with ship functions. Despite his twisted body, he can operate the
computer systems with extreme skill, and has been acting as primary Communications
officer.
The Cardamine should be arriving within twelve hours. We just need to hold out until
then. This will be an incredibly short journal if we die within a year of being created.[/
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[color=lightgreen]I have just fed upon one of the infected Zoners. I required nourishment,
and The Lesser offered himself willingly. It has produced odd results. All of my biomass
in the room perspired, sending up clouds of a gas identified as Nitrogen, with ExMortis
being lifted in it. I feel, for the first time in a while, well. My body has begun to extend
out of the cafeteria. And the hunger for Cardamine has lessened. My body no longer
screams in agony as it did before. I believe the Zoner I consumed was addicted to
Cardamine, an I took what little he had in his body. I instructed The Speaker to consume
the other Zoner, to satisfy his hunger. I watched, through the security camera (I was
linked to it so that I could monitor all ship-board functions from my permanent location)
as The Speaker leapt upon The Overwatcher. Our family put up no resistance and The
Speaker used his claws and talons to literally tear our family member in half.
The Speaker seemed to be half feeding, half relieving stress. By the time he was done,
blood was spattered all over the hallway, but there was no meat left uneaten. Clawmarks
gouged the floor and walls, and when he was done, The Speaker roared. He was no
longer our friendly family member. He was a beast. A beast that I must keep close
control on, for if he loses control, there would be nothing we can do to stop him. But I
have a feeling that the ExMortis created him to be a Guardian, and would not let him go
into an uncontrollable rage. But that is all I can hope for.
As I hoped, both Zoners had Cardamine in their bodies. The Speaker
dozed in the corner of my room, his morbid body curled up as sacks on his back rose
and fell. He seemed to breathe both oxygen and the nitrogen I produced. I, too, breathe
easier now that I produce nitrogen.
But taking the Zoners has led to complications. They have been repeatedly contacting
us, and the Speaker has been roused to communicate with them. The Zoners want to
know what happened to their pilots. And I told the Speaker to be honest. He told them
they were both consumed, one completely eviscerated in the hallway. After a spell of
silence, the Zoners dispatched a bomber wing from Omicron 74. The Speaker promised
to slaughter them cruelly.
I waited in darkness as the sounds of explosions and shockwaves rocked the ship. But
the Speaker had spoken truly. Soon, four escape pods sat waiting in our cargo bay.
I told him to make an example of them to the Zoners. After the display was over, the
Zoners stopped contacting us.
Though I had no cameras in the communication room, The Speaker provided
me with his memories. It was.. Efficient. The Zoners were almost artistically killed for
the other Zoners to see. They were cut in such places that they were 'woven' into
one corpse. This was strung up from the ceiling with the message 'See what you've
provoked?' written on their chest.
But even more gruesome yet is when we animated that golem of flesh. It lay on the floor
for some minutes, while the ExMortis inside decided what to do. It still lays there on the
floor, blood coagulating slowly. It will be another fearsome Guardian against invaders,
this four-man abomination.
Using the ship-board hangar and ship modification facility, we have
taken apart the two Nepthsys and Titan we recovered days ago. We are constructing
a new ship, for our Speaker. We are sending him to a nearby Corsair outpost to collect
bodies.
The ship will be more like a torpedo, meant for downing docking port shields quickly
enough to deploy a torpedo to blast a hole in them. The ship will take many weeks to
design, construct and deploy, but it will be time well spent. This is the basic idea of the
ship:
Using the Nepthsys for the main chassis, the front will be reinforced with the Titan's
considerable armor. The Titan will also be used to construct the tethers for the torpedo
bay, which will launch one of the on-board battleship torpedoes. First, the ship will be
modified to mount and fire powerful pulse weapons of the Debilitator line. We do not
expect the Outpost to have powerful shielding, since it is all but hidden from scanners
inside a dense nebula. We only have its location because we were able to download
it from their servers when we first took the ship. It has about 50 crew, and we estimate
25 to survive the initial attack, who The Speaker will infect and transport back to the
Jelkanar. Twenty five crew will get us enough hands to operate at minimum capacity.
Although I have a plan to acquire more crew before then, which we need desperately.
We are on impulse speed towards Omicron Eta. We need only to stand on the sidelines
of a few battles to collect enough bodies to take an active part on the Outcasts' side. We
must continue our efforts to get them on our side.
Impulse engines are being operated by The Speaker. Automated weapons
are keeping us safe from anybody we might come across. Now, we wait. It will not be
easy to regain our strength, but we will persevere.
A quick, yet interesting discovery. Live prisoners converted to our crew tend to become Overwatchers more than dead ones. It appears to have something to do with the heart and lungs being functional at the time of infection. We are learning more about ourselves daily.
Today we contacted the Corsairs. We felt it a move of pity to give them warning that we are not one of them.
Adaptability and change are crucial to a developing.. Species. We can no longer call ourselves one and the same as the ExMortis virus. We are something new, born of the ExMortis. What a simple, yet critical part of our development. Our name, our real name. We have given great thought as to who we are. How others perceive us. To them, we seem to be a.. Plague. Threat. Infection. So, we are no longer ExMortis. We are Drull-Za. And we will survive. No matter what.
We have discovered a new use for human bodies, now that the crew roster is again full. They can be reprocessed to serve as nourishment for our nutritional needs. They aren't eaten raw, they must first be treated by myself. I inject them with a special strain of ExMortis that begins breaking their tissues down into a kind of paste. This paste is collected as it oozes out of the skin, and then as the skin itself breaks down. The paste can then be easily consumed by Our Family.
A caste system is being designed by myself for more efficient ordering of workers and managers. Drull-Za-Ah being higher, and Drull-Za-Na being the lower caste.