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The transponders were still there, the nearest one about a hundred and fifty meters, and the steady life sign thirty more from that. If nothing else, that had so far proven to not be a hallucination of any kind.
Taking a few moments, the Macro would run a message across the HUD; a layout schematic had been obtained, now giving context to locations and positions of the transponders. The first was located near what was designated as the "emergency gravity couch". A secondary systems command center was in the center of this section of what the newly compiled map revealed was the engineering section of a ship that had been over two kilometers long when it had been whole. The second transponder was near that, with two more in the massive sphere section at ship's stern that was labeled as the Gravity Drive, with Ion drives located in the two massive thruster pods flanking the whole construct on those wings.
Data revealed fourteen months of life support was remaining, and the carbon dioxide scrubber system was merely needing a restart to recycle the air to breathability. Odd though...the time stamps listed the current date as 1.23.2140. The computer thought it was still over eight centuries ago.
Silence around them. Only they were in the entry corridor. No sounds, no other beings, and the life signature was still just under three hundred meters from them. The rest of the ship awaited, as did what had happened.
The mist clears....and reveals nothing. The sound died down and the silhouette he thought he had seen through the fog had seemingly vanished... His heart would beat. Once. Twice. Three times until the breath he had been holding was released from his lungs. His gun was lowered, the safety flicked back on as the faint vibrations from the weapon cease, before it was holstered on his right hip.
"...I heard the acid-blooded xenos. We are pussy-footing around too much here! We should rush and reactivate the life-support of this junker. Maybe it will ease up on the fuckyness meter"
The cyborg offered, stretching from his curled position. He didn't like this. He didn't like this one bit, yet his curiosity was getting the best of him. It was an unanswered question. A mystery. And he hated letting those sit. He kicked off the floor, speeding up across the weightless ether, pulling on ahead by alternating between hits to the ceiling and hits to the floor, caring more about speed than control at this point. He was scared, yes...but also giddy. This was an unknown, ancient wreck, something that even Eliza was nervous about and the sheer realization of that was absolutely exhilarating.
"I see a console up ahead...casing is removed." He whispered into the helmet before turning in the air, his feet facing the ceiling before he gently kicked off, his hands grabbing on to the console and the panelling upside down. "Fuck this is old...What even is...I think I saw one of these in an old manual back home. Plenty of analogue nerds in the body-mod community believe it or not. I think this was the chosen medium for reading and transferring electronic information like...a thousand years ago? Can a space hulk even survive that long and remain in such a good shape?" He asked, not really to Eliza but to the air itself, as if arguing with himself.
Gloved fingers move around the remarkably spacey interior...so much wasted space! Good ol'Doc would have had a heart attack if he saw this. Would probably rant for a solid hour about how inefficient it was. Shaking his head, Eligos would focus on the task at hand, the familiarity of the situation giving him a moment of respite amidst the recent chaos. What was this? Someone had done half the world for him it seems. The lack of corrosion seemed to indicate recently. Interesting.
A small hiss echoes from his neck as his helmet depressurizes, allowing him to pull it out of his head, careful to keep his gas-mask on. For what he was about to do next, he needed to be a bit more bare so to speak, and thanks to the lack of gravity he could leave it floating next to him, light beams left on and aiming towards the gutted console. The duffel bag was opened and a three-sided cable was pulled from it as his other hand removed the ceramic plug from his jack, the vacant slot soon filled by one of the sides of the cable, the second connecting to his headphones. He grit his teeth as he felt the familiar electrical pain, his raw brain connecting with the machine..he lacked any software so his interaction was raw, trippy and...instinctual, lacking the coordinated options some would have. Eliza would soon get a message on her HUD, the text glitching and shifting as if her systems had to stabilise it to allow her to read it:
With that out of the way, he went on to connect the last connection of the cable, a single gold-plated rod from the locks of it, to the already exposed wiring of the console, bracing himself for the full flow of information. Considering how old it was it would most likely just try to pass everything into his brain, to avoid overload he was about to send the entire info through the comms to Eliza and from Eliza bounce it back to Veska, thus reducing the chances of having his brain tampered with...hopefully.
There was a flicker in the light units, briefly coming on for a split second before going dark again. Another flicker seconds later before the lighting units stayed dark. And oddly enough, there was a shifting groan in the hull, that almost sounded like a faint laugh.
And then there was a dull hiss as air could be detected moving. The carbon dioxide levels slowly began dropping, pressure dropping a moment, then restabilizing at Terran standard. Moments later, gravity would suddenly restore, bringing the floating objects to a crash against the decks.
A momentary flicker, the typical sensation of data touching his mind. A layout was gained, positioning annotations of important sections. A name of the ship; the Event Horizon, launched in late 2139, the last timestamp listing as 1.23.2140. It seemed easy as he could reach into the network...and then the overwhelming surge of something touching him. It reached through, a surge of images and sounds barraging the cyborg's brain. Screams, a rapid flash of things too fast and intense to process at once. A great eye framed by fangs.
And there was a voice. Calm, almost refined. And in control.
"Well hello there, kiddo. You are a curious one, aren't you?"
The sound of a hard connection buzzed in her comspeakers, the sound of data transfer. So far, all seemed well. The lights actually flickered on for a brief moment before going dark again, leaving a sense of having seen something very odd. Another flicker, another sense of something of having seen something very odd in the walls. And that something had seen her.
Aboard the Dancing Goddess, the data would process over the wireless connection. A schematic appeared, detailing the ship in its full state, revealing it was originally almost twenty-two hundred meters long. A name, and some mission data; the Event Horizon, launched from Mars in 2139.
And then the screens flickered. A flash of images across them as the ship's lights went dim for a moment, flickering in and out. It was brief, but everything seemed to return to normal as the data connection stayed stable. The feed revealed that gravity and the atmospheric scrubbers were coming back online in the ship. Within minutes, they wouldn't need to rely on contained air to stay aboard.
Post by Eliza Silvermantle on Oct 28, 2019 23:45:30 GMT
Eliza felt a slight tinge of relief at the news of clear evidence that they were in fact not alone, though the growing realization that the unknown visitor might not be the only thing to contend with dampened that sense greatly. "So that door did get opened by someone else. Thing is, that raises more questions. Ye'd basically need military level stealth tech ta na be picked up by any scans at all while maneuverin' like what would be needed, and they beat th' Fog Cloud, too, so they're faster than th' baseline Terran. Could be Sangheili, but this close ta Terra, it's almost certainly Confed at that rate.." She trailed off, growing nearly as puzzled as she was unsettled by the ship itself. Clearly, someone had passed by them, but who or what, and more importantly, why?
The armored woman moved up to flank Eligos, watching with a sort of morbid curiosity as he began jacking himself in to the console. "I swear, if ye get possessed by this ship, I'm blowin' yer brains out," she half-joked as she prepared for what was certain to be a mess of convoluted data on her HUD. Moments later, she found herself not at all disappoint in that specific regard, though her wariness increased sharply as she quickly checked over her suit systems, comms, and most unnervingly, the walls of the ship. "Veska..?"
"I see it. Power fluctuation, unknown cause," the AI replied tersely. "Looks like it's effected the Dancing Goddess, as well. I can run a diagnostic to make sure the systems are clean, but if that was caused by the data jack, Eligos should unplug for now until we can identify what we're dealing with," she added, even as she sent another message across Eligos's HUD. [Eligos, I swear, if you get yourself hijacked by some gods only know what, I shall be very upset with you. What are you trying to achieve here, anyway?]
the things that you might like don't grow inside of me
Still moving along at a good pace, it seemed. By the time Vincent heard the cyborg's radio chatter regarding his handiwork at the terminal he'd "accessed" a few minutes back the Spartan was already several dozens of meters deeper into the ship, information about the very vessel itself slowly scrolling by on one discreet corner of his HUD while Patch cleaned and unpacked the quarantined data dump. There were terms present that happened to be ancient even by the time Vincent himself had been born - the very idea of gravity couches had been obsolete for centuries, a novelty dating back to the idea of accelerating ships to relativistic speeds prior to the discovery and usage of the Shaw-Fujikawa translight drive in 2342.
The ship itself was not one that Vincent recognized, though, which was odd. He had never learned or heard of any such ship by the name of the Event Horizon over the course of his education nor individual pursuits of knowledge, and that should very much not have been the case. Human ships had always been towards the smaller side of things when compared to Covenant vessels, sure, but even the old Halcyon cruisers and the newer Marathons that replaced them were only about 1,200 meters at their biggest - prior to the Infinity's construction the biggest they really got were the Punic class supercarriers at 4,000 meters. An argument could perhaps be made for the relatively old Phoenix class colony ships dating back to the early 2300s, but...
This ship predated all of them by over a hundred years at the least, and yet it was supposedly over 2,000 meters when it launched. It wasn't simply a case of record should have existing - a ship that large should have been a historic achievement, and yet there was nothing. No mention of the ship itself, nor record of the so called "gravity drive" in the aft section of the ship. Clearly an experimental vessel designed to test some method of FTL propulsion or alternative method of power generation that lost out to good, old reliable fusion and slipspace transit, but... again, there should have been records. Evidently it was promising enough for someone to sink what had to be millions if not billions into such a construction project, nevermind the amount of money spent developing the vessel from concept and finding the people to crew her.
Vincent doubted he was going to find any answers to those questions aboard, though. The ship might've still somehow had power but the fact that the digital records still thought it was 2140 told the Spartan all he needed to know about the functionality of the ship's systems. They might've been working but there was no guarantee they'd operate as intended nor on command, and chances were any remaining records - wherever they were stored - were heavily corrupted if not lost entirely.
Well. Back to the business at hand...
As the other boarding team continued to take their sweet time back at the terminal Vincent would continue to propel himself along the corridor's ceiling, at least somewhat thankful that the gravity couches and the transponder he was tracking were a straight shot from the initial entry point. From what Vincent could tell the room was not only on the same deck that he was right now, but there was only one turn ahead where the Spartan would quickly shed some momentum before rebounding off a wall at a perpendicular angle to make for a straight shot towards the room containing his first transponder signal.
At least until the ship threw him another curveball. Lights flickering before suddenly shutting off but able to maintain constant visibility thanks to his HUD's VISR, Vincent would touch a hand to the ceiling again to shed some of his speed and transitioning to a slow, cautionary drift as the ship's hull seemed to groan from some unseen stress. Never a good sign, especially on a vessel this big and in deep space. Had it maybe taken an impact, any one of the few billions of chunks of ice and rock in the Kuiper Belt finally finding their way to the foreign object? Coming to a full halt and gripping one of the rib like support braces in the ceiling, the Spartan finally took a moment to right himself relative to the deck and look around for a moment... only for his helmet to snap around to the nearest source of sound, hand immediately on his submachine gun as the hallway filled with hissing.
..... atmosphere was working again. Great. Something that the other boarding team had done? Probably not, judging from the radio chatter.
And then the gravity came on.
While Vincent had already righted himself, no amount of stealth technology in the world would prevent what came next - not when Vincent himself hadn't been prepared for it or in control of how he fell to the deck. And fall he did, over a thousands pounds of machine and nerve slamming onto the metal surface as it buckled beneath the weight, legs bending slightly to absorb some of the shock and the faintest flash of gold briefly silhouetting his invisible form as the Spartan's shields stabilized.
Damn. Best Vincent could hope for was that the sound wouldn't be noticed as plenty of other objects on board the derelict came crashing down as well, filling the hallways with a cacophony of crashing metal and glass. There was no hiding the deformation his weight had caused in the deck on landing but hopefully he'd be long gone by the time the other boarding team advanced. That was assuming they even came this way as they weren't tracking any of the transponders Vincent was, at least as far as he could tell.
Continuing to move down the hall with all but silent footsteps, Vincent would begin approaching the door at the far end only to notice that the transponder itself wasn't quite in the room but in the hallway with him - perhaps tucked away in one of the side alcoves that lay between the sectioned bulkhead supports that ribbed the corridors. One hand resting on his slung weapon more out of habit than anything else, the Spartan would advance forward towards the waypoint.
The cyborg's body would go still, every muscle, artificial and organic alike, tightening and clenching painfully. Without the software barrier between his brain and the computer, usually such connections are rather abstract, akin to navigating one's thoughts and guiding them. Even in the best of circumstances it was headache and nausea-inducing, but this...He had planned to simply direct the flow of information, lightening the load placed upon his mind. But it would seem the computer, or perhaps the vessel itself, had other plans. His senses were overloaded, seeing, feeling, tasting the information force-fed into his mind body and soul.
The gravity engages, followed by the life-support systems, the helmet floating at his side clattering onto the ground, the light beacons upon each temple flickering on impact. It wouldn't be alone for long however, as Eligos himself landed flat on his back. No sound left the man however, his body tense yet sprawled, eyes open wide and unblinking. A gasp. His chest rose in a single deep breath, followed by a hyperventilating cacophony, his limbs twitching as his chest moved erratically, eyes blinking rapidly and dashing across the area, unfocused and panicked. The man scrambled to his knees and yanked the gas mask off, his other hand grabbing the cables that connected to the back of his head and violently yanking them.
Nausea overtook him as he fell on his hands and knees, causing him to heave and retch against the metallic floor panels. yet nothing would come out, nothing except a pile of yellow bile. Eligos was shivering, shaking in place, and as the motions of a moving Eliza made themselves known to his senses he would react violently, turning around and backing away until a wall was pressed against his back, his eyes still wide and blood-shot as they focused upon her blurred silhouette. He was pale...deathly pale, his lips having gained a bluish tone due to the hyperventilation, his body still shaking and shivering, mechanical limbs behaving like flesh and blood ones.
Post by Eliza Silvermantle on Oct 29, 2019 21:41:19 GMT
Eliza's preoccupation with the unsettling sensation she'd just experienced ended rather abruptly as a low groan rolled through the ship, followed by the peculiar sensation of suddenly dropping as gravity came back on, eliciting a startled curse from the woman as she landed with a clang on the deck plate. Throughout the derelict, she could hear similar impacts as other objects of varying sizes plummeted down. As she rose to her feet and regained her bearings, she turned her gaze towards her companion, then groaned as she took note of his less than optimal state. "Veska, comms check, make sure we've still got contact wi SinoViet," she grumbled as she retrieved her hardcase from the magnetic mount on the back of her armor to open on the medical kit she'd packed. "Seems Eligos stuck his dick in crazy, as it were.
Kneeling down, Eliza activated a narrow-focus light to observe his eye reactions while she began to check his vitals with the kit's equipment. "So..that was bloody stupid of ye, but we did learn some useful shite, so there's that," she remarked before handing Eligos a small container of drinking water. "Thing is, th' Event Horizon supposedly was lost wi all hands on its maiden voyage when th' reactor blew. Never saw what they claimed th' specifics were, but regardless, th' reactor's clearly workin', and it was never reported ta have an FTL drive, let alone somethin' what sounds like some sort of precursor ta Wave Motion Drive. Shite jist gets weirder, aye?"
"Running check now, but I can't be sure if that strange surge did anything. I'm concerned we may have a virus of sorts," Veska replied as she looked over the readouts carefully.
"Noted. Need ta sort out which they want us ta investigate first. Got those life signs in th' gravity couch, but th' systems control might tell us more. Like why a ship that's supposed ta be scattered debris is mostly intact. Eligos, can ye stand?"
The red dot marking the first transponder was just ahead as the soldier made his way down the corridor, then finally was in visual range. A hardsuit was on the ground, face down and splayed at an odd angle. Turned and checked, the suit would be revealed to be empty, only the transponder to indicate it was what he had been tracking.
Ahead was a door panel, annotated in the schematics as the emergency gravity couch, and behind it was the stable life sign that had been marked as a waypoint. It was still there, not moving, and now that he was within thirty meters, VISR systems could pick up that it was in low active state, similar to stasis.
The voice was still there, a dark empty crawling in the back of his mind. His thoughts would be a bit muddled, smothered almost. And it felt like something in his being half cracked, yet at the same time...he was Awake.
No reply would come from SinoViet. The signal was confirmed, but there had been no answer yet. The logical reason was merely that no one was standing by on Mars to immediately call back. They were only forty-five astronomical units out from the sun, after all, and the system communications network reached out passed the heliopause.
Aboard the Dancing Goddess, any sweeps of the ship's main computers would reveal no trojans or imvasive contacts.
Eliza would find it impossible to perform any check on his vitals, his hands violently slapping hers away as she came close, only to suddenly lurch forward, mechanical digits clinging tot he side of her helmet with an impressive amount of force, almost as if trying to to dig past the hardened protective layer. He would left himself with that strange grip, his forehead pressing against her visor, his eyes wide and focused, sharply so all of the sudden, the pupils reduced to small little dots lost in a sea of brown.
"It talked to me." He said, his own voice scratching his throat, coming off dee and hoarse, lacking the youthful vitality it tended to carry, bringing to bear the cigarette-damaged vocal cords of the young cyborg. "The SHIP talked to me..." He would suddenly push off Eliza, his back smacking violently against the metallic surface of the vessel as his limbs drop to his side. His jaw clenched, the paleness of his skin slowly vanishing as his head tilted to the side, his entire body rocking back and forth on the tip of his raptoresque feet "How can a thousand year old ship talk to me Eliza...?" He questioned, his eyes already looking away from her, off towards the distance, roughly where the gravity drive could be found.
He wasn't listening to her. Not really anyway. And even if he did, what she was saying wouldn't do much sense to him. He was a planetary kid. Space travel was kind of a new thing for him, borne of his desire to hop the fuck away from Daiban and from the heat following him from his row of Corporate sabotage jobs. Cybernetics? Sure he knew about that. Corps, CEO's and whatnot? He kept up with that on the regular. Even security systems and new AI developments, mostly out of paranoia...But anything dealing with space travel might as well be Alienese to him.
He began to move. He silently picked up the dropped cable and helmet, shoving the first in the side bag and hooking the other to his belt, keeping the lanterns on and facing forward. His jack plug would be retrieve and pushed into the back of his skull with a relieving sigh. "We need to go..." He spoke, still looking further into the ship, his hands moving as if their own volition as they undid the front of his EVA suit, wiggling his arms out of his sleeves, exposing the dull black ceramic and shining black muscle of his cybernetic limbs, the sight of them causing him to pause for a moment. His eyes closed as he flexed his hands, curling his digits into a fist. A simple motion. A simple reassurance. They were still there. They were still his. He opened his eyes and kept moving, his steps echoing across the vessel as he bound forward, unknowingly on the trail of their mysterious third member.
Post by Eliza Silvermantle on Oct 29, 2019 23:38:56 GMT
Under virtually any other circumstance, Eliza's response to the grip Eligos applied to her armor would have been swift and violent. However, these were highly unusual circumstances as it was, and his words made it that much more clear how irregular they were. As a result, she simply waited for him to calm, rising smoothly as she repacked the medical kit, then stowed the hardcase back on the magnetic holster. She said nothing for the time being, though she let out a mildly annoyed sigh when she heard Veska's reply.
"So, connection looks clear, and ship systems aren't picking up anything anymore, so we might be alright over here. How is Eligos? He's not wearing his helmet."
"He's a bit addled, I think," Eliza answered quietly. "Seems there's definitely somethin' up wi th' ship. Na surprisin', given it's na even supposed ta still exist. Got a few theories on how that is, but they're pretty vague, and I'd rather na say jist yet."
"Experimental FTL drive that went so wrong everything was covered up?" Veska guessed.
"Well, that's one of them, aye. Then there's our unknown visitor. They're definitely a thing, but stealth tech good enough ta completely evade all detection methods we have arna common fer civilians," Eliza remarked.
"Isn't that basically just the Sangheili, Banished, and the ÆSIRs, though? None of those are what you'd call civilian.." the AI answered.
"There might be a few other oddballs, aye, but th' Banished wouldna be in Confed territory, and th' Sangheili wouldna be in th' Sol System. ÆSIRs arna that common, either.." she mused. "Could in theory be a Spartan that was in cryo or some shite. Makes as much sense as anythin' else on this junk heap," the Witch muttered. "Honestly, though, I've no real ideas. None of them make sense." As Eliza finished that utterance, she reached forward to grab Eligos by the shoulder, urging him to pause for a moment. "Eligos. Ye need ta listen ta me, alright? This isna a normal ship, even by my concepts of normal. Lead th' way, but stay close, and if I tell ye somethin' as far seein' or hearin' somethin' off, listen, and if ye see or hear anythin' similar, let me know. I'll give ye all th' explanation ye can hope fer once we're back on th' Goddess, but fer now, jist keep in mind what I told ye about earlier."
the things that you might like don't grow inside of me
Well, at this point Vincent's opinion of the other two were either certifiably insane or the type of paranoid that DAW might want to keep an eye on if only because of the potential trouble they could cause. Accessing the ship's systems without some form of firewall had been crazy enough, and something that bordered on suicide this far away from any real help.... along with his following comment regarding the ship speaking to him, which most would label as straight up schizophrenia or some similar illness. At least under normal circumstances - Vincent wasn't able to entirely discount that as quickly as he normally would simply due to the collective hallucinations all of them had experienced earlier.
Nevermind Lockheed. While part of Vincent was notably amused by her frankly radical guess... it bordered on the kind of untempered paranoia and imagination that all but defined conspiracy theorists. Yes, AESIRs were rare but not all of them dead. But for her to guess one of his kin? When SPI armor and other such technology and training was available to the still relatively common special forces and ODSTs who would've normally been deployed to a job like this? AESIRs weren't the only covert operations teams Confed had, and apparently his kind hadn't been seen in literally centuries.
It would've been laughable if the one in a million shot in the dark hadn't been the one that landed.
One part of his mind still idly listening in on the radio chatter, Vincent would round the corner closest to the waypoint to finally see the first of four that he was looking for. Not at all how he'd hoped, though. Facedown on the floor, it was still relatively easy to tell at a glance that something was wrong with the suit just based on the angle at which the "limbs" were splayed, and they weren't broken. Kneeling down next to to the suit and reaching for it, a simple touch was all Vincent needed to confirm his suspicions even as he finished turning it over.
Empty.
Letting out an annoyed sigh, the Spartan resisted the urge to yank the transponder unit from the suit. All that served was confirmation that he'd tracked the hardware, not the person, and it significantly complicated things. Well.... no. No, it didn't. The Goddess and whoever was piloting it seemed fairly competent, enough to accurately use the ship's onboard hyperscanner, and they'd only picked up one lifesign onboard the Horizon since arriving. The ship itself lacked any kind of stealth technology, and after nearly a month with little to no life support it wasn't unreasonable to trust those sensor readings. This boat was dead, all bar that single lifesign through the door beside him. While Vincent was not pleased with the idea of confronting an unknown, fact remained that if anyone was going to survive during that time it would've been through some means of stasis. The gravity couches might've been primitive but they were the only such means and would do in a pinch.
If there was a survivor in there his job was clear. If it wasn't... well, not much changed, and he'd take what facts he had and scrub the mission. He had the data, records and sensor readings to back his decision up, and plenty of experience behind it all.
Standing back up from his kneel, Vincent would recheck his submachine gun for the upteenth time before flicking the safety off and reaching for the door controls with his free hand.
The door slid aside to open, revealing a room filled with nearly two dozen pod-chambers that resembled stasis tubes. Yet they were filled with a strange green fluid instead of the normal resting harness. It looked as if one of the pods was occupied, a darkened, but definitely human form in the minimal lighting. Nearby, a row storage lockers waited, one of which was slightly open with a navy blue sleeve draping out.
The voice whispered, urging him on. It called him to the furthest reaches inside the ship, like a siren. An object in his mind's eye; a sphere, perfect and without blemish. It was pitch like nothingness, encircled by three rotating trails of light.
It called him. It asked him to do just one thing.
But something else waited. Something else was calling. Something that radiated trust, determination...and a battered will. And it waited ahead.
It pulled at the armor clad woman. Some sense of something here, something she didn't recognize. It was cold, encompassing. It didn't feel quite right. Yet, it pulled her all the same, like it was promising something. And it was pulling from deep in the ship.
And yet, as she followed her companion, they would come across a deep dent in the deck. Something very heavy had fallen here, but there was no sign of what, and there was no heavy equipment in the corridor.
Eligos silently nodded at Eliza's words, although it would be hard to tell if he was actually listening. He didn't look at her and his eyes remained fixed at some far off point, beyond the walls, beyond the dim lights. It was strange. Particularly so because he seemed to be leading them, even though he was the one lacking any sort of guiding system or HUD. In fact without his helmet he wasn't even using the radio, depending on the actual atmosphere to communicate with Eliza. And yet...he knew where to go.
He shook his head, his hands moving up to rub his temples, the cold ceramic actually helping with the building headache. Busy as he was with his own scrambled senses, the cyborg would trip over the large dent in the hallway, a muddled curse leaving his lips as he staggered back into balance, quickly looking back to see what it was that he tripped over....That was a big dent. His head swivelled around, down the hall where he was headed towards...Their mystery passenger was there...ahead of them. If he was here when everything turned on then...
Without warning he would take off running. Arms moving as his sides with practised ease as his digitigraded legs stretched ahead of him in an impossibly long gait, straining the limits afforded to him by the EVA suit, each step resounding across the hall due to the force of the artificial musculature. It was there. The unknown one was there, and so was it. And so were them. Answer. Yes. All will be well once he gets there, all will be well once he...
"Move your cushy corporate ass already!...Someone is about to beat us to the punch here..."
Post by Eliza Silvermantle on Oct 30, 2019 22:03:34 GMT
Brows furrowed behind armor plating and transparent alloy as Eliza felt the strange tugging. Nothing made sense, nor had made sense since they'd set foot on the Event Horizon. The very fact that it was that vessel raised her wariness every bit as much as any of the other more obviously unnatural events that had occurred during their steady trek through the derelict's passages. The tugging, a desire that was not her own, simply made the Witch that much more wary. She followed, but she did so with the full expectation of finding further unsettling information at the end, but perhaps proper answers nonetheless.
"Ye alright?" Eliza asked when Eligos stumbled, then muttered a curse of her own as she took notice of what her companion had tripped over. "Well that's odd.." she remarked as she quickly looked around. Nothing looked like it could have caused the dent, and there weren't any breaches, or the atmosphere wouldn't be present this far in. After all, the Event Horizon was made before energy-based containment fields as best she could recall, though to be fair, it had been some centuries since the ill-fated ship had launched. "Either someone was a bit daft wi equipment, or someone weighs more than I would have thought. Reckon it was th' cre-" Eliza swore loudly as her speculating was abruptly brought to an end by Eligos bolting down the corridor. Evidently, he was not nearly so mistrustful of the foreign tugging as she was. "ELIGOS, YE DAFT CUNT, GET YER ASS BACK HERE!" Eliza bellowed over the comms, much to Veska's startled displeasure. While Eligos's augmented nature enabled him considerable speed of movement, Eliza was not about to simply allow him to run headlong into what she felt certain was a trap, and she sprinted after, readying another grapnel like the one she'd used to guide her entry through the forward corridor onto the derelict, though this time, she meant to ensnare her wayward companion.
"Eliza, what's going on? Eligos isn't responding to my communications," Veska asked carefully.
"TH' BASSA'S LISTENIN' TA A BLOODY SIREN CALL!" came the older woman's adrenaline-fueled response. "ELIGOS, I SWEAR TA SHEBA I'M GANNIN TA MAKE YE NEED A CYBERNETIC ASSHOLE IF YE DONNA STOP RIGHT FECKIN' NOW!"
the things that you might like don't grow inside of me
Door irising open much like the airlock had, Vincent would take a half step forward as his upper body pivoted, sweeping his invisible weapon from one side to the other and guiding the reticle on his HUD across the room as he did so. Clear, at least by initial appearances - no movement, either visible or on his armor's sensors. There was nothing here beyond what one might have expected from the ship's schematics. Glass, tube like pods lined the walls, filled with a green liquid that seemed to be illuminated from within. Gravity couches. Not entirely an inaccurate name, and the ancient predecessor to modern cryonic technology, at least by UNSC standards. Not stasis in the traditional sense as their original purpose wasn't dissimilar from the old g suits that human pilots used to wear around the turn of the millennium, designed to protect themselves from the g forces produced by sharp turns and more extreme maneuvers. The idea with gravity couches was much the same... just intended to protect the occupants from sudden acceleration to near relativistic speeds and the deceleration that followed upon reaching their destination, forces that would normally liquify any living thing.
Provided you only needed to survive hostile conditions for a relatively brief period, though, the technology could hypothetically be used in much the same was UNSC cryopods were, separating the occupant from their environment and keeping them alive until some point in the future when they could be rescued. Which brought Vincent to the one thing within the room that wasn't part of the ship itself.
"Patch. Bring up the dossiers for the SinoViet crew, images only." Vincent said, weapon lowering slightly as he slowly walked into the room and his gaze now settled squarely on the individual within the only occupied pod. It was a bit difficult to tell at a glance through the distortion produced by the glass' curvature, the liquid inside and the reflections of the surrounding room, but he had to be certain - if it was one of the survivors his job was done. If not... well, there were going to be questions that needed answering, best done back on Earth. One small corner of the Spartan's HUD would flash before images of different faces began to spring into being, Vincent looking each one over in turn before glancing back to the pod as he finally stopped to stand in place only a meter away from the transparent surface.
Unfortunately it seemed like whatever attention he intended to devote to identification would have to wait, however, as the comm chatter grew in volume and intensity and followed by a sudden red blip on his armor's motion tracker - on his six and closing fast.
Biting back a curse, Vincent's helmet would snap back to glance over his shoulder as it became increasingly clear that Lockheed had no semblance of control over her companion, the cyborg seemingly having lost all sense of reason. Another hallucination? Just one that no one else was experiencing this time? Not like it mattered. Vincent had put in a not insignificant amount of effort trying to avoid a direct confrontation with the other party since their business was none of his provided they didn't get in his way, but with the hallway and his only exit point now occupied... his options were limited, particularly with the artificial gravity on again. Even then, though, that wasn't the issue.
That lack of predictability was going to become a problem. Vincent didn't like unknowns, and the last thing he needed was someone unstable running around what was left of this wreck and touching things he very likely should not have been.
So, direct action it would be.
Simply taking a half step towards the door to turn and face the oncoming cyborg, Vincent would remain cloaked, giving absolutely no indication of his presence as the other man approached - and if he didn't stop the Spartan would simply elevate one elbow roughly to the same height as the junkie's face and place it directly within that face's path, fully counting on the other guy's momentum and lack of awareness to effectively clothesline him on the armored limb. Assuming that proved successful the Spartan would waste no time attempting to place a boot on the man and pin him to the floor, finally decloaking in the process.