081: Darkness, Peering – Three
"That's wha- you saw all that!?" Malakh gaped at Elytra from where she sat in the pilot's seat on the bridge.
They'd been posted up there together for a while now, the both of them fully dressed as their Kith personas, ready to start the cameras rolling at a moment's notice.
Ever since Nevara picked up readings of a Leviathan in the area nearly a day ago, they'd all been on high alert, setting up shifts so that there would be two people ready to be dematted out in their Storlayacas, two keeping an eye on their sensors in the bridge, and two to take care of whatever chores there were around the shift and get some sleep before their next shift. With no shields, no weapons, no stealth, no jump engines, and no Viatrix to demat them in and out of the ship and maneuver around whatever threats might cross their path, they knew they'd have to keep their guard up until either the ship came back online, or Viatrix did.
And with the uncertainty of all that, being ready to broadcast at a moment's notice was one way to keep their minds off the stress all that uncertainty was causing them.
"Yeah, more or less," Elytra replied from her seat at one of the gunner stations, "It was cryptic imagery, so I figured I may as well recreate it for our audience, what with the mystery vibe we're cultivating at the moment."
Malakh leaned back in her chair, running both hands through her mane as she said, "And here I thought you just made it up. A mech big enough to have suns for its eyes?!"
"I don't think there's one actually that big. Hopefully?" Elytra laughed, "It was just symbolism for how the Hyttan view themselves, I think? I don't think it was an individual person, but like their race as a whole? I'm not entirely sure about anything from that whole experience, to be perfectly honest. I'm pretty sure the place it dragged me to was their homeworld."
Malakh hummed sarcastically. "You see any landmarks to help track that place down? There's a lot of scholars out there who would pay a fortune to find the seat of the Hyttan's power. And infinitely more unscrupulous types who would pay even more for salvagers rights."
"Aside from those two suns, I've got nothing," Elytra sighed, leaning back in her own chair, "I don't know what kind of wavelengths were being given off by those things, but everything I saw was white on white on white on white. I have a suspicion that those suns are the reason all Hyttan tech seems to lack colour, it was like colours couldn't even register under that light."
"The Storlayacas seem to be the only exception to that, what with how they're taking on our colouring for some reason." Malakh pointed out.
"Any idea why or how they're doing that?"
"I can't find a mechanical explanation for it, but I'm not exactly an expert on Hyttan tech. Though to be fair, I don't know if the Hyttan experts would be able to puzzle out more than I have. As for why?" Malakh just gave an over-exaggerated shrug.
They lapsed into silence after that, staring out at the blue green shapes of the nebula they'd wound up stranded by, plagued by questions on questions that they doubted they'd ever get the answers to.
"How did you get that footage, by the way?" Malakh asked after a while, "The giant mech, the Hyttan buildings. You didn't scan your brain or something, did you?"
That got a laugh out of Elytra. "No, it would probably make things easier if that kind of tech existed! One of the programs in the Kith media creation suite is an animation program, and they had models of Odazaen in their databases, as well as assets based off of Hyttan ships and structures that have been found. I just assembled things together until they looked like a city, and scaled the Odazaen model WAY up, then messed around with filters and light sources until I had something that looked like what I experienced."
"Well good job on all that, it looked as impressive as it was cryptic," Malakh told her, "I just hope that Viatrix is okay after all this."
"Can you tell what's going on with her?" Elytra asked quietly, her voice laced with worry.
Malakh sighed, bringing up a readout on one of her consoles. Elytra couldn't make heads or tails of it, but the other woman certainly could as she said, "Like Rhea pointed out, her brainwaves, for lack of a better term, make it look like she's asleep. She's been through a couple cycles that resemble deep sleep and REM sleep, but I haven't been able to see if there's anything to indicate when she's going to wake up. On a programming level, it looks like she's getting a massive download from somewhere, but I haven't been able to trace the source, and I haven't been able to parse anything about the code coming in itself. It's been about two days since she fell into a coma, and the download is still happening. I've got no idea how long it's going to take to finish, and how long it's going to take to run the program or whatever this thing actually is. And I've got no idea what's going to happen to Viatrix when it's done doing whatever it's doing to her."
Elytra clenched her jaw at that, her own worry mirroring what she could feel coming from Malakh. There were so many variable at play, all of which were hidden from them, and there was nothing they could do to remedy any of it.
"I hate this." Elytra said quietly.
Malakh could only nod in agreement, staring out at the nebula they were trapped in front of for the time being. She couldn't help but wish that a Leviathan would pick up on them, because at least that was a problem they could solve.
Waiting in the dark like this with so little to distract them? It was brutal.
"It looks like the Knight of the Tomb's first official appearance went over well, so congratulations on that!" Rhea said as she read off the data pad she was holding, lounging against the open hatch of Enaruli in her Bathory outfit, "Speculation threads are popping up with theories about who and what she really is."
Shooting her a curious look, V'tala said, "I know the dregil have been kept hidden from the Usgaisjan since first contact, but the words of my pledge, name included, should have given the audience some indication to my purpose. To say nothing of how I threatened you all."
"It was kinda chaotic in that Hyttan ship when you came out of stasis, and the cameras didn't catch most of what you said, either through audio or visual, so lip readers couldn't do their thing. They just saw you kneeling before the Queen, as Elytra killed the feed before you pointed your gun at us." Rhea explained.
"Fortuitous that she was so quick to act." V'tala conceded.
"Yeah, she's got a real knack for controlling the cameras when we're rolling live," Rhea said with a fond smile, "So while the audience saw you bending the knee to Kaizoku, they didn't catch the exact words of the dlegh, your name included. No one was sure what to make of the Knight of the Tomb before, but they're liking the combative relationship she seems to be developing with Kaizoku now."
"Pryseia deserves the credit for that," V'tala said from her perch in the pilot's seat, "New to acting as I am, I just followed her lead."
Rhea barked out a short laugh at that. "Hey, don't sell yourself short! You didn't come off as an amateur at all! Believe it or not, she's relatively new to acting too. It's just shy of a Cycle since we escaped the Thalatte, and only half as long since we joined up with the Kith. She's always been good at bullshitting her way through sticky situations, though, so I guess that was a transferable enough skill."
Frowning slightly, V'tala asked, "How long were you captive for?"
Tipping her head back against the rim of the hatch, Rhea said, "Over a hundred Galactic Standard Cycles, which I know is more than a century in each of our respective race's calendars, but I honestly don't feel like doing the conversion on all that at the moment. Knowing how much time we had stolen from us…"
"Is maddening." V'tala finished quietly, and Rhea shot her a sympathetic smile, patting her shin.
"You get it." Was Rhea's soft reply, "It sucks, because despite everything, it didn't feel that long. Short bursts of action, followed by years of boring routine. I got stuck serving on an outpost for over a decade at one point, and the time went by before I even realized it. To be fair, though, I spent a lot of time dissociating during that posting. Now that I'm actually doing something that I enjoy, it's easier to stay grounded in the present."
Nodding slightly, V'tala said, "Different details, but I was just as uninvolved in my own life. Pryseia said much the same when I spoke with her."
"You ask her about her moms?" Rhea asked, and V'tala's answering look of shock was enough to get Rhea cackling.
"You just had a look like you had follow up questions when the topic came up the other day, is all," Rhea explained, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes, "One of my buds at university was studying journalism, and you get the same look in your eyes as she did when something piqued her curiosity."
V'tala let out a quiet hum at that. "Familial bonds are alien to me. Growing up, we were told that our dregil status would bring only good things to our families, but we never actually met them. And from what Pryseia saw, it's clear to me now that none of us had kin. It sounds like we were grown with Umbor tech instead."
"I'm not familiar with that." Rhea admitted.
"Early Usgaisjan colonization efforts started before they developed FTL travel or discovered subspace, so the journey between worlds would take years. To cut costs, colony ships had small crews that were kept in stasis for most of the journey, being brought out at set intervals to make sure everything was still running. Twenty years out from their destination, artificial wombs - Umbor tech - would combine stored genetic material to grow those who would become the first wave of settlers, altering them in order to better adapt to their new world. They'd be kept in a semi-comatose state so they'd use up fewer resources, being 'taught' through neural programming until the ship made landfall, after which they would actually be born. 'Growing up' like this caused cognitive issues that were more trouble than they were worth, and this colonization method quickly fell out of practice. From what Pryseia told me, I was incubated only as long as a natural born usgaisjan's gestation lasts, so I escaped that fate." V'tala explained.
"Oof, lemme guess, they'd threaten the families you never saw if any of you got out of line?" Rhea asked rhetorically.
V'tala nodded, a muscle in her jaw ticking before she said, "My performance during training was adequate enough that a nonexistent family was held above my thread, so I never developed an attachment to something that wasn't actually real. A mercy, seeing how the loss of hers affects Pryseia even now."
"Yeah," Rhea sighed, "She looked into what happened to her moms the first chance she got, and she was a wreck when she found out they'd both died twenty Cycles ago. She's braver than me, though, I haven't been able to work up the nerve to look into what happened to mine."
"You don't want to know?" V'tala asked, her expression caught somewhere between sympathy and confusion.
"Well my parents are for sure dead. They had my sisters and I later in their lives than most," Rhea told her, a wan smile breaking across her features, "My sisters - triplets - were only four years older than me, and with modern medical advancements, human lifespans can easily surpass a century, so they could very much still be alive out there somewhere. I'd rather live in the possibility of them being little old ladies than the certainty of knowing they're in the ground. For now, at least. I don't think I'm in a place where I could handle the grief just yet. I was really close with the three of them."
V'tala gave her a long, searching look before she quietly asked, "What were they like?"
A sad laugh caught in Rhea's throat, but just as she opened her mouth to speak, Malakh's voice came over the comms.
"We've got a Leviathan incoming."
Striding onto the bridge with General Grim beside her, Queen Kaizoku demanded, "What's our status?"
"A single Leviathan - a Delta according to our readings - on a direct course for us," the Hand said, her eyes never once leaving the view screen, "Bathory and the Knight have already launched to meet it."
"Good," Kaizoku said, nodding at Madame Augury, "With me. Grim, take over piloting. My Hand, I shall need you to remain behind in order to wring whatever extra power out of the engines as you can manage."
The Hand hesitated for only the barest fraction of an instant, her gaze locking with Kaizoku's before she said, "Of course."
She was up and out of the bridge a moment later, her hand rising to lay over her clavicle as Grim slid into the pilot's seat. Frowning slightly, Augury hot on her heels, Kaizoku marched from the room.
Outside, hanging in space, the saffron tinted Yarula and the pure white Enaruli floated in the void, rifles drawn as they tracked the movements of their incoming opponent.
"You've been in stasis for some time. I hope your skills haven't gone to seed." Bathory called over the comms, a smirk evident in her voice.
A blast lanced out from Enaruli's gun, streaking through the empty space between them and the rapidly approaching Leviathan, striking it dead centre. The creature writhed briefly at the hit, veering off course before it came on all the quicker.
"They haven't." Was the Knight's reply, stowing her firearm in favour for her sabre. Yarula followed her lead, and a moment later the Leviathan was on them.
It was massive, a confusing mass of fractal limbs. One moment it was arrayed out in a starburst, a pinwheel of fronds, and the next it had twisted over on itself, its limbs crimping into angles that made it look more like a massive spider, and then again so that it resembled a moth. It was coloured a pustulant yellow, and perhaps because of this, it targeted Yarula first, rather than the mech that had already scored a hit.
"Lucky me." Came Bathory's droll voice over the comms, Yarula darting out of the way after slashing an arc across several of the Leviathan's limbs. The wounded appendages retracted as a terrible, psychic scream accosted the airwaves, and several more rose to take their place.
"They didn't have anything like this in my day." The Knight said calmly as Enaruli darted in behind the Leviathan, slashing into the wing-like limbs at its back as it tried to pursue Yarula, another howl blaring out from the thing as the blow landed.
With an agility that flew in the face of physics, the Leviathan turned sharply, lashing out with several of its undamaged limbs almost too fast for the Knight to bring up the energy shield mounted in Enaruli's left forearm, but she was able to deflect them in time, a screech like ice cracking under strain ringing out as the audio emulators scrambled to make sense of what was happening.
Yarula charged in with Enaruli keeping the monstrous entity distracted, plunging her sabre into the centre mass buried at the nexus of all those limbs, causing another psychic cry to all but overload their sensors as she said, "Well, you're handling your first encounter with a Leviathan better than most."
The Leviathan in question didn't turn this time, but instead unfolded more of its limbs, lashing out at both Storlayacas with some, and attempting to hold them in place with others. The two mechs worked in tandem, cleaving a path through the reaching limbs before darting off in opposite directions in order to make it follow one or the other.
Instead, the Leviathan split in two, each half chasing after them.
"Not a fan of that!" Bathory shouted as one half of the Leviathan rapidly gained on her, twisting its shape once more so that it resembled a corded, clenched fist. It was clearly intent on battering her out of the sky.
"The heart of it." The Knight called in response, and Bathory turned so she could fly backwards to face her foe.
In the centre of the monstrosity, where it had severed from itself, a milky green mass was writhing visible between broken armour plating, like a dense knot of maggots wriggling over fresh meat. In the distance, Enaruli was fully in the clutches of the half that had been chasing her, her sabre plunging into the core of that half of the Leviathan again and again and again.
Holstering her own sabre so she could draw her rifle, Bathory slowed just enough so that her half of the Leviathan could catch up to her without having enough of a speed difference to cause a proper collision, and she easily wedged her weapon into the creature's gaping wound, unloading into the thing.
One after another, a pair of psychic death cries echoed out through the void, and the two halves of the Leviathan curled up on themselves and fell still.
Shoving Enaruli free from the lifeless grasp of the creature that had tangled with her, the Knight said, "If this is all they are, I am unimpressed."
"You hear that?" Bathory called out back to the ship, "It seems our Knight won't be requiring any assistance with these things."
"Yes she will," Grim's voice cut in, as dire as her name, "I just got four more Leviathan on sensors. They're all Epsilons, and they're headed our way."