084: Darkness, Peering – Six
As it turned out, they didn't need to land for the life support systems to go offline. The Pelekys shut them down itself the very next morning.
"Despite stranding us in the middle of nowhere, this rolling upgrade has been surprisingly conscientious, not shutting everything down all at once and all," Malakh explained from her seat in the bridge where everyone else was gathered, all of them dressed in their Kith outfits since they were also spacesuits with oxygen supplies and temperature controls that would be able to protect them from the absolute zero temperatures that would soon enough be plaguing the interior, "My hope is, with life support going down, this is the last thing to get upgraded, so we'll be getting all our systems back online sooner than later."
"There's enough ambient oxygen in the ship to last us a bit, and the suits should keep us comfortable enough when it starts to get properly cold in here," Rhea continued, "But if things do get unlivable within the Pelekys itself, we can take refuge in the cargo hold. That hasn't seemed to have been affected by this upgrade, independent as it is, so it's still got heat and air. Worse comes to worse, we do shifts with most of us the cargo hold, and maybe one or two in the ship itself to monitor sensors and send us in or out if any Leviathan show up."
"Why isn't the cargo hold connected?" V'tala asked, "Or rather, how?"
Swivelling her chair to face her, Malakh explained, "Without getting into the physics of it all, the cargo hold isn't technically within the ship. It's in a pocket of subspace that's bound to the Pelekys itself - those bright green patterns on the floor of the armoury are both the anchor points and the access points. If those get damaged, POP! The cargo hold will burst out of the subspace pocket, and since it's bigger than the Pelekys itself, it'll tear us apart from the inside out. Popping the anchor points on cargo ships are how a lot of proper pirates and raiders go about stealing the goods out of transports."
"And despite the other technological marvels of the Hyttan that we are still nowhere near the realm of understanding, this subspace pocket technology is something that they seemed to lack," Pryseia added, "The cargo vessel Enaruli was discovered within seemed to be the Hyttan's preferred design when it came to their own transports - a massive container with engines and some room for the crew."
Nodding, Malakh said, "So that's probably why our cargo hold has been unaffected by this upgrade."
"Any sign that Vi will be waking up too?" Elytra asked, and Malakh just sighed, shaking her head.
"On that front I have no idea."
Standing up, Rhea announced, "Before things get too bad, I'm going to start moving the plants in hydroponics to the cargo hold. Thankfully their pods also double as transports, because I am not losing my herb garden. And I'm especially not losing my coffee plant!"
"I'll help with that," Elytra said as she stood as well, "I wanted to run some ideas for scripts by you anyway."
"Then I'm going to move the raw organic material for the food fabricators to the cargo hold. We're not going to be able to use the kitchen, but thankfully there's a fabricator in the cargo hold so we won't starve." Malakh said.
"I can assist you with that." Pryseia offered.
Glancing over at Nevara, V'tala said, "I'll be ready to launch with Enaruli, in case of a Leviathan sighting."
"A wise precaution." Nevara said with a nod, turning to check the console at the pilot's station, "Our scanners are clear at the moment, but I will notify you the moment that changes."
Malakh let out a humourless laugh. "Here's hoping that the ship comes back online before then. I'm getting tired of this corner of the galaxy."
The hydroponics room always smelled clean and bright, the rows of pods circulating nutrient rich solutions in order to both feed and water the aromatic herbs and vegetables were a breath of literal fresh air in the recycled oxygen within the Pelekys. Elytra liked to come here sometimes to just exist.
So it was bittersweet to be emptying it out like this, the pods carefully sealed and stacked as she and Rhea brought them to the cargo hold as the temperature aboard the ship grew colder with every passing minute.
"How long will they be able to survive outside of hydroponics?" Elytra asked, shifting to get a better grip on the two pods she was holding. Resembling clear tubs with lids and handles, they were easily stackable, clearly built for transport, but thanks to the water in them they were a lot heavier than she'd expected.
Grinning over at her as they cut through the mess hall to get to the dematting zones in the armoury, four pods stacked in her arms (and that was only because any more and she wouldn't have been able to see over them, as the weight was nothing to her), Rhea told her, "Thanks to the way these things are set up, indefinitely! So long as we're keeping on top of the balance of everything in the water, and making sure they're at a steady light and temperature level, these pods can go pretty much anywhere. It's more the dropping temperature than anything else within the ship itself that I'm worried about for these beauties. Plants don't generally do well in the cold."
"That's good to hear. I was worried that we'd lose all these herbs." Elytra said with a little laugh, "Which would be dire, especially now that I'm used to having them freshly picked for our meals."
"Right?! It's amazing how only a few sprigs of fresh rosemary can elevate a fabricator-made meal." Rhea said, pausing once the pair of them stepped onto the chartreuse pattern denoting the demat zone and being whisked away to the cargo hold, "The thought of doing without is very unappealing."
They went over to their unofficial storage area within the cargo hold, V'tala already there, reaching to take the topmost pod off Rhea's stack and place it next to the others they'd already moved in.
"I've adjusted the lamp to the specifications you requested." She said as she alleviated Elytra of one of her pods, "Is there anything else they need?"
"We'll just need to keep an eye on their readouts, same as we would in the hydroponics bay," Rhea said as V'tala and then Elytra took the rest of her stack, allowing her to place the final pod down herself, "Every pod's got its own display - green means good, yellow means something's a little wonky, and red means something catastrophic has gone wrong with the nutrient mix. It'll show you what's off with the pod, and you can adjust it directly from the display. It'll all symbols too, not words. I've never done this kind of thing before, so I got the most idiot-proof models I could find."
V'tala frowned at that, saying, "Given you have decades worth of training in the medical profession, I would hardly call you an idiot."
"Hey, plants and people are very different things!" Rhea laughed, "Just because I could name all your internal organs - both the common and scientific names - doesn't mean I know how to grow parsley!"
Opening her mouth like she wanted to argue the point, V'tala never got the chance, as Nevara came over the comms then, an undeniable thread of panic in her voice as she announced, "Two Leviathan incoming, Threat Level Orange. They're both Etas."
"We're en route," Pryseia announced as she and Malakh booked it out of the storage area in the mess hall where the raw material for the food fabricators was kept, "How close are they?"
"Four minutes and closing. They're on a direct course." Nevara said.
"Shit. Well, we won't need to worry about sitting around in a ship without life support, at least?" Malakh joked, though it came out flat, "This is bad. Two of them? Did Avvisi say anything about that?"
They didn't bother slowing down once they hit one of the demat zones in the armoury, as it spit them out into the cargo hold mid stride.
"No, just an abundance of Threat Level Red sightings," Pryseia said as they peeled off towards the walkway leading up to the Storlayacas access, the hatches of Lianshae, Yarula, and Enaruli in the middle of sealing shut, "There was no mention of a single Eta, let alone a pair of them."
The both of them bolted up the walkway, throwing themselves into their mechs as soon as they could, the restraints and control apparatuses snapping in place with a frantic energy all their own.
"We're ready for demat whenever you are." Rhea's voice came over the comms, "What's the plan?"
"Nevara will pull the ship away while we hold these things at bay," was Pryseia's answer, "If we lose the ship, we lose Vi, to say nothing of our own survival. I don't believe the Storlayacas are capable of entering subspace on their own, and now is not the time to experiment with that."
The interior of the cargo hold was replaced a moment later with blue green expanse of the nebula they'd been trapped within sight of for the past while, though none of them could focus on the beauty of it with the two monstrosities barrelling down on them.
Still minutes away, the two Eta Leviathan were massive. The bodies of these things - if they could even be called that - looked like pine cones made of blown glass, segmented chambers all stacked and interlocking with one another in a roughly conical shape, impossible to see against the black of the void if they hadn't been glowing faintly with some inner blue light. Below the widest end of that cone fanned out what had to be a dozen triangular tentacles, each of them clear but glowing a faint purple, gently undulating like they were underwater, but easily the length and width of old growth trees. And below these hung a veritable forest of reddish fronds, lit up like they were on fire, masses and masses of them trailing in the Leviathan’s wakes like the tails of comets.
A deep pulse of something tore through their cockpits, their audio emulators scrambling to make sense of what was obviously some kind of psychic attack. Thankfully, the dampening upgrades that Malakh and Castore debilitatingly collaborated on held against this attack.
Angling the Pelekys so that the most concentrated mass of Leviathan corpses faced the two alive ones, Nevara moved the ship away as fast as she could, which wasn’t even close to as fast as necessary.
“Force of habit, I launched the cameras,” Elytra said over the comms, a tremor in her voice, “I can send them away, or we can either record them or broadcast this?”
With the two massive Leviathan about to enter their range, Pryseia said, “Just record. Should we live, we can make something of this all at a later date. Should we perish… it won’t be something we’ll have to worry subjecting our audience to.”
“Yeah, don’t know how well I’m gonna be able to stay in character for this.” Rhea said, powering her energy sabre as the Leviathan let out another psychic scream.
And then they struck.
Jaw clenched, her mandibles scraping together in agitation, Nevara kept flying the ship away, while every part of her screamed for her to leave her post and join the others in their fight.
Massive was an inadequate word for what these Eta class Leviathans were. Next to them, the Storlayacas flitting around their reaching tendrils looked like toys. The red fronds that sprouted from below the purple tendrils weren't just decorative, they reached out like an expansive, grasping kelp forest, trying to lasso the mechs carving swaths out of anything that came near them. From her post on the bridge, Nevara could see that it was only a matter of time before the five of them were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the two giants, and if that was to be the case, she would much rather die fighting alongside them than failing to fly away.
But just as she made to rise from her seat, to point the Pelekys in the general direction of the nearest Kith outpost and hope that Vi awoke before the Leviathan got to her and rush off to the cargo hold to take Malra out into the dark, the manoeuvring thrusters died, and whatever emergency power was left shut off, the main view screen blinking off and leaving her alone in the dark.
A lack of power wouldn't affect the anchor points, but without power she wouldn't be able to demat into the cargo hold - this was the only thought that ran through Nevara's mind as she stared in horror at the darkness around her.
And then, something activated.
Every light, every screen, every system came back online in an instant, the engines - FTL and subspace as well as the ones that powered the manoeuvring thrusters - roaring back to life.
Her floral avatar blooming on the main view screen, Viatrix barked, "No time to explain! Get in your mech and get out there!"
Nevara didn't even pause to acknowledge Viatrix's return, she just ran.
Down the corridor past their bedrooms, through the mess hall, to the back of the armoury, her left foot touching down on the demat zone within the Pelekys while her right pounded into the floor plating of the cargo hold. She was up the stairs of the walkway leading to Malra a moment later, and she barely had enough time for the restraints and control apparatus to pin her in place and the hatch shut in front of her before her mech was dematted out into space, Malra's thrusters flaring to life alongside her energy sabre as she launched herself straight at the two Leviathan.
"Nevara! What are you doing?!" Pryseia shouted, hacking her way out of a tangle of tendrils, and Nevara was there a moment later, her own sabre cleaving through a grasping mass.
"Vi's back." Was all she said, and all she had time to say, as the six of them suddenly found control of their Storlayacas wrested from them.
Flying backwards together in formation, iridescent light flowing across them like an aurora, each Storlayacas began to shift, bending and twisting in ways that should have been impossible, ports opening and docking with one another, linking them all together in a flash of blinding light.
Making them something more.
The light dimmed and they shook their head, eyesight swimming back into focus. Their thoughts were a cacophony - too many voices all at once, each of them demanding a separate action to take place.
A roar cut through the noise, a foreign, hateful sound, something that had them instantly on high alert. Two creatures were flying towards them, and they could feel the ancient hate burning like plasma torches within each.
But this was what they had been made for. This is what they had been assembled for.
This is what they had been destined for.
The voices within them unified to a single command - destroy the Leviathan.
They were Storlayacas, and this is what they were born to do.
A compartment on their left leg snapped open, the hilt of an energy sabre rocketing into their hand. It ignited with an flare of iridescent energy as the nearest Eta struck. Though Storlayacas was still dwarfed by it in size, everything else about their capabilities had increased exponentially.
Burning red fronds reached out to entrap them once more, but where the Leviathan's attacks had once been lightning quick, Storlayacas now could track its every movement with ease. Drifting backwards almost lazily, they avoided every swath of fronds that tried to reach out for them, and they felt the Eta boil over with rage at being toyed so.
Storlayacas then fired their thrusters, not even bothering to turn around as they evaded the second Eta's attempts at grabbing them from behind, and had they the lungs to do so, they would have laughed in the face of the Eta's attempts.
Their sight was now all encompassing. Every wavelength open to them, they peered into the hearts of these two monstrosities. Deep in each lay a writhing shape, like a mass of feasting maggots at the heart of the rot that was the Leviathans. Readjusting their grip on their sabre, they lunged, aiming straight for the core of the Eta on the left.
It didn't even have a chance to try and move before Storlayacas had run it through, and they sent a pulse of energy through their sabre to burn that wretched core out of the vile beast.
Their back turned to the second Eta, they still felt it try to catch them off guard, but they were not limited by being a single awareness anymore. Twisting in space, they kicked the lifeless form of the one Eta into the living other before blasting a looping path around the pair of them. With an ease that would have been embarrassing, if the Leviathan even had the capacity for embarrassment, Storlayacas once again drove their sabre into the heart of an Eta, and it died just as swiftly as its companion.
Like two nightmarish glass ornaments, the two Leviathan twisted with the momentum of the attacks that had killed them, and Storlayacas powered off their sabre with a flourish, returning it to the holster in their leg. Prizes like these two were sure to fetch a hefty sum once they brought them back to the Kith fleet, and now that Vi was back, maybe they could make good on that vacation.
The thought ran through them like an electric current - Vi was back - and they turned to where they last left the Pelekys.
No longer drifting, no longer coasting on manoeuvring thrusters alone, the Pelekys pulled up alongside them, still littered with the bodies of all the Leviathan they'd slain while waiting for her return.
"Hurry up and get those things attached to the ship so we can get out of here," came Viatrix's chipper voice over the comms, "You'll probably wanna disassemble too, since that's going to be a bit of an awkward fit for the cargo hold."
Disassemble. Because they were multiple, not singular. They'd been so of one mind that they'd momentarily forgotten. But they were aware of the space between each part now, enough to wedge their proverbial fingers into each crack and pull.
With a cascade of iridescent light, six ancient mechs spread out before the Pelekys. Where once their armour had been covered by a faint, slowly seeping stain, they now each sported bold colours that stood them starkly out from the black of the void, as well as each other.
They had no time to reflect on this, their voices filling the comms with words of worry and disbelief.
"Hey, one at a time!" Viatrix laughed in relief, "I can barely make sense of you all talking over each other like that!"