137: Vestigial Pursuit – Four
Malakh ended up being out of commission for the rest of the day.
"Like I said in the cargo hold, it's just exhaustion," Rhea told Pryseia and the rest, crowded in the medbay as they were, "Thankfully no other irregularities showed up when I did a deeper scan, so we'll just have to wait for her to get enough sleep so she can wake up on her own."
Lying on one of the healing beds, Malakh had rolled over in her sleep then, clutching her pillow in both arms and burying her face in it. They heard her quietly start snoring not long after, muffled by the pillow.
"Wait, that's really cute," Elytra had whispered, and with her eyes practically crinkled shut due to how wide she'd been smiling, she'd pulled out her data pad and held it over the sleeping woman so she could record a short clip of her, "I'm for sure going to use this as blackmail material."
Rhea had to clap a hand over her mouth to hold back the cackle that very nearly burst out of her.
After recording her incriminating evidence, Elytra had squirreled herself away in the rec room, finally getting down to the business of finishing up their video for the heist. She still needed to record Malakh's dialogue once the woman was awake, but she was more than happy to wait for that, her own condition infinitely less dire than Pryseia's had been. Rhea had joined her once she was certain there wasn't anything more she could do for Malakh while she recovered, and had spent the afternoon going though Avvisi for any exciting bounties for future scenarios, before whipping up something for lunch for those of them still awake.
As for Pryseia, her unexpected brush with death - and the subsequent days where she'd been unconscious and recovering - had left a decently sized pile of administrative work to catch up on. V'tala had joined her for this, and the two of them made their way throughout the ship, taking account of anything that needed to be repaired, replaced, or replenished, before Viatrix joined her to go over their finances. The math involved in all of that was not something V'tala had any interest in, and so she'd joined Nevara in the mess hall to prepare dinner.
Their usual dining arrangement one short, dinner was a quieter affair than normal, but the atmosphere was much lighter than it had been over the previous handful of days, as their missing member was merely asleep, not recovering from an assassination attempt that had ended with her drowning in her own blood.
With the stresses of everything she'd skipped out on sleep to accomplish while Pryseia was convalescing, Rhea had turned in early that night, eager to fall asleep so that a new day would arrive and she could be reunited with her wife. She'd checked on Malakh before heading to bed, the woman asleep on her stomach with her pillow shoved half under her chest, one leg danging off the side of the bed. Rhea couldn't see how she could sleep in such an awkward position, but with how she was still snoring, an arm thrown over her face, it clearly wasn't an issue for Malakh.
She wasn't sure how much time had passed between when she tucked herself under her blankets, and when she awoke to the sound of something rustling in her room, but Rhea was up and awake as something heavy landed on the floor, shoving herself half out of bed with a bleary, "Baby?"
"Sorry, fumbled a boot," Malakh slurred, still sounding like she was half asleep as she wrestled herself out of her overalls.
"What are you doing out of the medbay?" Rhea had asked, and then her mind went blank as Malakh pulled off her shirt, the muscles of her abdomen undulating as she tossed it to one side and then shimmied out of the rest of her clothes before shuffling over to the bed.
"Needed to piss. Needed to eat," Malakh murmured before she tipped over into the bed, sprawling herself over Rhea before she pressed a kiss to her exposed collarbone peeking out from her askew sleep shirt and added, "Needed you."
And then with one last contented sigh as she snuggled against her wife, Malakh was out like a light once again.
Rhea's own answering sigh was one of deep, abiding fondness, and placing a hand against her vedja's back to hold her in place, she unstuck the blankets pinned between them and pulled them up, cocooning the pair of them in warmth. Rhea was back asleep moments later, the last of her lingering worries dissolving as she felt Malakh's heart beating next to hers.
"You look better," Nevara said over breakfast the next morning, though she frowned slightly at the light in Malakh's eyes and amended, "You look manic."
"The only reason I'm not sucking this spread back is because I don't want to choke before I can get to work," Malakh's wide grin had her fangs glinting in the warm lighting of the mess hall, and did absolutely nothing to not make her look unhinged, "I had a quick little peek at what Castore wrote up for me, and I am eager to get a proper delve into it."
Caught somewhere between wonder and worry, Elytra asked, "Would you be able to hold off on that long enough to get your dialogue recorded for the heist video? We've been leaving our audience hanging longer than expected."
Malakh stared at her for a moment, as if she didn't understand what she was saying, but then she blinked, abashed as she replied, "Yeah, of course. That research isn't going anywhere. But if it's what I think it is, from what I got from the bit I glanced at, it's gonna be exactly what we need to get that scanner sorted!"
"That's all well and good, but after yesterday, I'm swinging by at regular intervals to make sure you're taking care of yourself." Rhea said, going for stern but instead coming out deeply fond.
"Please," Malakh replied with a fond look of her own, "With this stuff, I think I'm going to be… it was one of your fun saying, hang on… lost in the sauce?"
Laughing lightly, Rhea shoved her shoulder. "Yeah, that's the one."
Nighttime, the indigo sky scattered with silver stars. Through the dark, something moved - nothing more eye catching than a ripple of heat off a searing surface, but there was nothing around that could have been the cause of it.
An anomaly, as heat moved upwards, not forwards as this thing did.
Inside the dimly lit interior of a small shuttle, General Grim and the Queen's Red Left Hand sat side by side, the General piloting while the Hand monitored the readouts on the consoles before them both. Behind them, the Program hovered silently in its Hyttan drone.
"No sign that anyone's picked us up as of yet," the Hand said, swiping through information panels, "We should be coming up to our destination soon enough."
Their destination, like so much of the architecture on this world, was a crystalline building of glass and chrome. The entire expansive property was fenced off by a substantial wall, guard posts around it at regular intervals. Along the top of the wall - which looked more like an art piece than a means of defence, ornately interlocking bars of metal as chrome as the building it guarded - were guards patrolling between outposts, their gazes all fixed on the surrounding landscape stretching out before them. Not a single one of them was bothering to look up.
It wouldn't have mattered if they had, however, as the stealth capabilities of the shuttle settling down for a landing on top of the roof of the building would take more than the naked eye to pierce.
Shapes like living shadows emerged from empty air, gliding noiselessly towards an emergency exit. The door clicked open seconds later, the shadows disappearing into the darkness within.
A door barely opened somewhere deeper in the building, and the three shadows slipped out into a hallway running between rooms walled by frosted glass. The gentle blinking of lights coming from inside these rooms cast muted shadows on the wall, catching the guards patrolling through the halls with faint, rainbow light. White uniforms, asymmetrical cut and expensive material - a Necupole corporation would only trust Necupole citizens to guard its secrets.
And rightly so, for there were three Lessers there to steal from them that night.
One of the shadows, tall and thin, tracked the movement of one of the guards as they passed down the hall. Quiet, electronically masked, Grim asked, "You know where the item we seek is?"
The smallest shadow, nothing more than a void hovering in midair, drifted out further into the hall, the Program responding, "At one of the labs at the far end. This is a research and development lab, as such, we would do well to download all that we can here."
The final shadow, sleek and powerful, walked down the hall with all the confidence of a person who was meant to be there, and the Hand said, "Oh, we will."
The floor they were on was a labyrinth, but the guards were poor stand-ins for the Minotaur, all of them completely oblivious to the shadows darting from room to room around them, stealing the secrets that they were supposed to be protecting. They didn't even notice when one of the shadows fell into step behind them, one arm raised and pointed towards the eyewear they had on, some sort of scanning device carried in its hand.
"Night vision glasses, and subpar ones at that," the Hand said, her voice thick with amusement, "Doesn't look like they have any protections against a sudden increase in lighting. We wouldn't need to flashbang them to distract them - flipping on the lights would be more than enough to stun them all."
"Why would they need more than that?" Was Grim's reply, dark with irony, "Clearly no one unauthorized will be able to get past all the defence they have on this place.
"There truly is no greater security flaw than hubris." The Program let out with a quiet, menacing laugh.
More rooms, more guards passing by without noticing the intruders, but finally the trio made it to their destination. A smaller lab than the ones they'd been in before, less the cluttered space of a project in the works, but more the clean repository for a piece of technology with no more secrets to bring to light. At the back of this room, in a locked display case, lay an ornate contraption of silver and purple. Elegant, swirling lines, deep set gems, a handle on the back of it that brought to mind the stock on a gun, it was strikingly different from the angular design favoured by the Necupole. Whatever the purpose of this thing was, it had been made by some other race.
"That's our prize, is it?" The Hand confirmed as she stepped up to the display case, "Smaller than I expected."
"The Gheluc Isocracy were known to be quite gifted at miniaturization, building powerful machines in compact forms," the Program told her, "Rest assured, this device will perform exactly as intended."
"Then lets make a copy of it and be on our way. I grow weary of this place." Grim said, and shadow though she was, the sharp angles of her silhouette made it clear she'd had enough.
Lifting her hand - and the device she carried - over the case, the Hand was motionless for a few seconds, and when she stepped back, her voice was bright with triumph as she said, "I've got what we came here for. Let's get back to the ship so we can fabricate a copy for ourselves."
They slipped unseen from the room, through the tangled weave of the halls, past the oblivious guards, and back up the stairwell to their waiting ship. As nothing more noteworthy than an evening breeze, they peeled away into the night, carrying away secrets that had been too poorly defended.
Hubris truly was the greatest security flaw.
The dusty orange and deep violet mech carved a swath through its enemies with its double bladed axe.
A mech of pale grey and powder green, cutlass in hand, likewise made short work of those facing it.
Within the Pelekys, stood before the fabricator, the Hand watched as an ornate silver casing set with purple gems was rendered into reality.
Axe and cutlass clashed, sparks flying as these two titanic machines fought to best one another.
Small, precise tools in her steady grip, the Hand forged circuitry together, her intent gaze never leaving off what she was doing, not even with the presence of Chancellor Bathory sauntering up behind her.
Two mechs manoeuvered around one another with a grace that spoke to years of practice, a deadly dance that showed off the skills of those commanding these machines.
The Hand, head thrown back against the wall she was pinned against, eyes closed and teeth bared, one hand clutching at Bathory's back, the other fisted in the woman's hair while her mouth was hot and insistent against her neck. One of Bathory's hands was gripped around the Hand's thigh, hoisting it up around her waist, her other one lost in the tangle of their bodies.
Pivoting to avoid the lunge of the grey and green mech, the one with livery of orange and violet swung its axe and ended the match with a swift beheading. Within the cockpit, with the screams of delight of the Necupole audience ringing through the machine that caged her, Queen Kaizoku's smile was one of vicious victory.
Deep within the heart of the Pelekys, the organic members of its crew filed in to their circular meeting room, the Program's avatar already displayed on the table within.
"Our funds from this little endeavour have been paid in full," Bathory said, leaning back in her chair, smug as the cat who got the cream, "No one seems to be any the wiser back there that they've just been plundered."
"I would expect nothing less," Kaizoku said, turning to the Hand as she asked, "And what of the device?"
Reaching forward to bring up a blueprint of the contraption on the screen, the Program's avatar sliding out of the way to allow it, the Hand said, "I've finished our replica, just need to run it through some test to ensure I've assembled it properly. It's ingenious, the Gheluc really knew what they were doing when they designed this thing."
Next to Kaizoku, the Knight of the Tomb's smirk was a slight thing as she said, "Too bad their technical expertise wasn't enough to save them."
"Whatever they've left behind will be to our advantage now," Kaizoku said, her gaze fixed on the blueprint before her, "This thing will lead us to the treasures that we seek."
The others leaned back, the looks they shared with one another brimming with the triumph of another heist against the Necupole Plutocracy successfully carried out.
It seemed that the richest, most robust economy in the galaxy wasn't enough to buy the type of security to prevent this sort of thing from continuously happening. More's the pity.
For them.
True to her promise, Rhea had popped in on Malakh frequently enough to keep her fed and hydrated, but her vedja had barely seemed cognizant of her presence, so caught up in the code granted to her by Castore. It wasn't until dinner that evening that she came out of her fugue state, practically vibrating out of her seat with excitement, the exhaustion from her experience the previous day completely gone.
"So it wasn't just one thing we got, but a bunch," Malakh barely stopped for air as she explained, "And it's all so fascinating! Hyttan code, but translated into the programming language I'm most familiar with. It took a sec there for Castore to get the hang of things, but we sorted it out together."
"You were conscious through all that?" Elytra asked, the food on the fork halfway to her mouth falling off as she looked over at the other woman, shocked.
Seesawing her hand with a noncommittal hum, Malakh continued, "Kinda? Sort of a dream state, and I basically showed Castore where the language centre was in my brain. One of the coding chunks we got was for the eventual integration of this scanning method into the Pelekys itself. Like I said before, there's some specialized parts that I'll need to use a dry dock to install to get that all working. BUT! For the handheld scanner, it's more or less got a tuner now. Military gear, civilian gear, they've all got different attributes that the scanner will now be able to differentiate between, and it gets even more granular than that. With this thing, we'll be able to tell between manufacturing types between weapons, shit like that."
"So we've the potential to acquire Hyttan upgrades to those systems that were left unaffected by Viatrix's metamorphosis?" Nevara asked.
Malakh again made a noncommittal hum before explaining, "Some of the systems we already have are on par, and in some cases better than what the Hyttan came up with before they got wiped out. Like the subspace pocket technology that we have with our cargo bay? The Hyttan never had anything even close to it. You saw the size of those cargo ships that held Malra and Enaruli - that seemed to be the standard, not subspace holds. And honestly subspace engines too, they were actually quite primitive compared to what we have nowadays. There's been a lot of speculation that they only developed the tech for it pretty close to the time when they went extinct, so we've technically had more time to really get into the nitty gritty about them that they didn't. Shields are the thing I'd suggest we seek out first, because no one in this day and age has yet to come close to the efficacy they could get out of their shields. Weapons, those I'm not sure about, because the Thalatte are really pushing the envelope in that field, and I worry that if we swap out our Thalatte guns for Hyttan, we won't be able to upgrade them like we could the ones we've already got."
"Come up with a list of upgrades you deem most important for us to find, then, and we shall seek them out," Pryseia said with a nod, "What of the means to track the Omega? The Storlayacas seemed quite excited at the concept."
"That's because there's devices already built to do that exact thing," Malakh grinned, though her expression fell slightly as she told them, "When the Omega was wiping them all out, they made a device that could track its location so that they could try to evacuate any systems it was heading towards. It was precise enough that they could track it both in and out of subspace, and it gave them enough time to clear whole planets of their populations. That wasn't enough to save them in the end, however, as the Omega chased the ships down wherever they went, most of them returning to the Hyttan homeworld, wherever that actually is. Castore showed me a memory of all that, the last, desperate stand of the Hyttan. And before you ask, it has no idea where the Hyttan homeworld is anymore than we do. For whatever reason, that information has been scrubbed from the galaxy."
"That's brutal." Rhea said, and Malakh reached for her hand in sympathy.
On her usual console in the mess hall, Viatrix asked, "I'm assuming with that tuning thing you were mentioning, we'll be able to not have the scanner be overwhelmed when trying to use it within the ship?"
Nodding at that, Malakh said, "Exactly, and that'll work for both the handheld version, and the one we get into the ship. I still want to head down to that planet we're in orbit of and run some tests, but those can wait until tomorrow. My brain kinda feels like scrambled eggs at this point, which would be bad for conducting tests!"
Leaning forward in her seat slightly, V'tala asked, "This Omega detecting device, is it something we could build, or is it something we will have to find?"
"The latter, unfortunately," Malakh replied, "We've got no way to replicate how Hyttan construction actually works, and from what information Castore was able to give me, this thing is a very precise instrument. The assorted codes I was given, they were laid out in what I can only assume is Hyttan style, but they're technically Deorviran. There's places where I can see some nuance has been lost, some functionality unable to be replicated due to the limitations put upon us by the Omega stopping us from understanding one another, but unless there's some Hyttan master engineer hidden away in some secret vault somewhere, I don't think we're ever going to be able to replicate how the Hyttan built their machines. For the Omega scanner, we've got no other option but to find one of our own."
"Then we will find one," Pryseia promised, "Given the alternative of waiting blind for the Omega to spring on us at the last second, it is imperative that we find this thing to prevent the cessation of life on the scale this monstrosity is able to carry out. All of us have lost too much time to those who enslaved us, we will not lose any more to the thing that demands our extinction."