Chapter 21: Into the Void
There were eight seats in the tram, two to each corner of the rectangular car. Lyra Heartstrings sat human-style next to Karl Zako's seat, her hindhooves kicking at the air. Rainbow Dash and Vinyl Scratch sat opposite them. On the other side of the tram Tali'Zorah sat next to Yayap with Isaac Clarke sitting opposite them. The shape of Krunch's mechanical pants prohibited him from using the chairs so he stood in the middle.
Commander Zako had noticed that everyone had clustered closest to those they trusted most. Krunch and Yayap didn't get along with the ponies very well. Zako was surprised that working together to kill the Leviathan hadn't helped speed along the process of them trusting each other. Why the ponies trusted him, Zako wasn't entirely sure. He wasn't hostile towards them and they got along well enough considering how little they had known each other. Though in reality it was probably more that the ponies didn't have much choice in the matter considering their current situation.
Zako found he trusted the ponies. They were genuinely clueless about the goings on of the Ishimura… hell; they were clueless about modern technology and galactic civilization. Even if they had some ulterior motives they wouldn't be a threat. But Zako doubted the three colorful quadrupeds were nothing more than lost and confused.
"So, Isaac," Lyra broke the silence, "would you take off your helmet so I can see your face?"
The engineer shook his head no.
"Aw, you're no fun."
"So, you're not human, are you?" Vinyl Scratch asked Tali'Zorah.
"No. I'm not. What made you think I was?"
"You look like one in a suit. But your legs bend differently."
"I'm a quarian."
"How many different species are there?" Scratch turned to look at Zako.
"Hundreds. Thousands? More than we can really go over."
"Wow."
"Hey, Lyra."
"Yeah, Karl?"
"Earlier you said you didn't know any gravity spells. How many different spells are there? I've only seen you ponies use those magical energy blasts and telekinesis… and whatever it was that Vinyl did back there that made the necromorphs dance."
"I keep telling you guys I didn't do that."
"Well, most unicorns only have a little bit of magical ability. Most of it relates to our special talent."
"That's determined by your cutie marks?"
"Right."
"So we have two musicians and a pegasus. I take it you ponies don't have much magic relating to combat?"
"Pretty much," Lyra nodded.
"Those energy blasts you two do, they seem more concussive than anything else. You have a more powerful version of it?"
"Not really," Lyra admitted, "destructive magic is mostly frowned upon. And we don't have any combat training."
"Do you have anything that might be useful?"
"We both know healing and purification spells. We don't have formal training though so it's not perfect."
"How'd that come about?" Zako wondered why they would know healing spells but not combat ones.
Vinyl fielded the next answer. "Me and Lyra used to get in a bunch of trouble back in our college days. The spells helped a lot when things got too crazy, but we're not doctors or anything. Our healing spells aren't refined, so there are mistakes from time to time."
"Wonderful." Zako leaned back in his seat. The tram car seats were small and his bulky armor prevented him from getting comfortable.
"And it's usually quite painful." Lights from the advertisements plastered to the walls of the tram bounced off Scratch's shades. "Especially if we were to use them on species we know nothing about, like you guys."
"Just keeps getting better all the time…"
Yayap looked back and forth between his commanding officer and the ponies. "How about we don't reach the point of them needing to cast healing spells in the first place?"
"Yeah," Krunch agreed.
"That goes without saying," Zako grumbled. Something else was bothering the Separatist cyborg. "How come you two unicorns didn't use your telekinetic powers on yourselves when we fought the Leviathan? That would have made things a lot easier."
"It's difficult for a unicorn to use telekinetic magic on themselves," Vinyl explained.
"Yeah. And if we used it on ourselves then that would'a meant you would have to have carried Yayap and Kyne on your back instead of me and Vinyl." Lyra made googly eyes at Zako for nothing thinking it through. "I think we are a bit easier to carry than they are, don't you think?"
"Yeah. But… can you use telekinesis on multiple objects?"
"We can but it takes practice and concentration. But the weight of an object also makes a difference. So don't go askin' us to move mountains or anything."
Krunch was not impressed. The ponies were weird. They almost sounded like they were Jedi yet they were nothing more than two music lovers and an airhead.
"Commander, what's peng?" Yayap pointed at one of the advertisements that decorated the walls of the train car.
"I dunno. Must be an Earth thing. Ask an earther," Zako said.
Yayap wasn't even going to try and ask Clarke. The human never spoke and Yayap wasn't sure if he was actually an earther or not. "Kyne isn't here. Don't you watch a lot of Earth shows?"
"That doesn't make me an Earth expert. I don't know everything about that mudball. But considering the attractive female displayed on the ad combined with the fact that earthers are incredibly lazy I'd have to say it's some sort of sexual service that somehow incorporates stasis or kinesis or both."
"What's an earther?" Rainbow Dash asked. She remembered Zako using that word before.
"A human that comes from Earth or Earth's colonies," Zako answered.
Rainbow still didn't understand. "Are Earth humans different from other humans or something?"
"Not really," Tali answered. She figured Zako would hate that remark. She had gleaned during his conversations with Yayap and Krunch while they were captive on the Ebon Hawk that he didn't think very highly of Earth humans. The quarian figured she could get away with the light jab.
"They're basically the same," Zako admitted through clenched teeth (though no one could tell with his helmet on). "Mostly just historical differences we don't need to worry about right now."
Vinyl was up for learning something new, it certainly helped keep her mind off their horrible situation but it sounded like Zako wanted to end this particular line of talk.
The tram slowly and came to a stop, signaling the end of causal conversation.
"Why can't we just ride the train outta here?" Vinyl asked.
"We can't," Zako said as they started filing out. That was hardly a satisfactory answer but Vinyl followed the others out of the tram anyway. Tufts of warm, gray steam hung in the air of the tram station. It made the area look like the perfect setting for a horror movie.
As soon as they stepped off the tram a holographic projection Kendra burst from Isaac's RIG without warning, causing Lyra and Vinyl to jump. "This may be our only chance of getting out of here alive if they can't get that quarian freighter up and running. There's an asteroid loaded up in the mining bay, waiting to be smelted. If you attach the SOS beacon to it, you can launch it away from the ship to make a clean broadcast. The beacon's on the maintenance sub-deck. You can launch the asteroid from the control room." Kendra paused for a second. "Damn, the control room is locked. It looks like they keep an emergency access key on the processing sub deck. Couldn't be easy, could it? I don't know how much more of this I can take."
The group pressed onward, looting several containers as they walked through a series of short hallways. There was an air of cautious optimism among the three ponies instead of fear and confusion. They still didn't know how they had ended up on the Ishimura or what exactly was going on (besides the fact that monsters were trying to kill them) but after beating the Leviathan it seemed like things should be getting better.
The short halls quickly emptied the group out into the RIG Room. There were lockers and crates everywhere and even a workbench. But there was something else that caught Karl Zako's eye.
"A loki mech." The Separatist human walked over to a damaged mech lying on the floor. It appeared to have suffered only minor damage. It was missing its weapon; Zako figured one of the crew had taken it once the mech was defeated.
"I bet I could get that thing up and running again," Tali said.
Zako was insulted. "I will be the one to get this thing running. I am an expert on droids. I can easily fix a simple mech. What would a droid-hater know about fixing mechs anyway?"
"Fine. Have it your way," Tali conceded.
"Are you guys forgetting something?" Yayap butted in. "We need to go get that access key for the control room."
"Wait, why are we bothering with an access key?" Krunch stopped looking around the cluttered room. "Why don't we just hack our way into the control room?"
"Because this damn ship is too old to interface with omni-tools," Zako said.
Tali stepped forward. "I could probably hack the door, but it might actually be quicker and less frustrating to go get the key instead."
"Provided there isn't an army of necromorphs ready to stop us," Yayap added.
"Fine. We'll go get the damn access key," Krunch muttered. There was always something: some button needed to be pushed, some turret manned, some key retrieved, some poison factory destroyed. There was always something slowing them up, it was as if the invisible cosmic forces of the universe were trying to keep them on the Ishimura as long as possible to increase their chances of getting killed.
"You guys can deal with that," Zako said. "I'll stay here and fix the mech."
"Find with me." Tali crossed her arms. She didn't mind being separated from the droid-lover.
"Wait, Karl. You're going to stay here by yourself?" Lyra asked.
"You'll meet up with me again later. It's not like you can help me with this anyway." Zako thought for a second, he didn't really want to be all alone. "But, I could use someone on the lookout while I work."
"I'll stay," Lyra said quickly.
"And we're staying with her," Vinyl spoke up. Rainbow nodded in agreement. The ponies were still not willing to split up from each other.
"Okay, you four stay here and fix up the mech. The rest of us will go get that key," Yayap said. Yayap was pleased with the arrangement. Their group was so big they'd be getting in each other's way in the narrower corridors and with the ponies staying behind his eyes wouldn't be blinded by their ridiculously brightly colored coats and manes.
Tali, Yayap, Krunch, and Isaac started to head off towards the freight elevator, leaving Zako and the ponies in the RIG Room with the broken down mech.
The fright elevator came up. When the doors slid open Tali, Yayap, Krunch and Isaac were greeted by a pained moan from the mouth of a masked miner. The noise had prompted the ponies to go over and investigate what was going on. The suited crewman was lying on the floor, half dead. His left arm was missing. He reached out for help with his remaining arm before finally giving in and dying.
"We gotta help him," Lyra said.
"Too late. He's dead." Tali knelt over the body and checked if the human was still alive.
Lyra knew there was no point in trying now. Hers and Vinyl's healing spells could not resurrect the dead. If only they had found the human a moment sooner they could have at least tried to heal him with their magic. Lyra frowned and her ears flattened against her head as she turned around and walked back towards Zako. She didn't like that she didn't even get the chance to save the human.
Kendra came in over Clarke's RIG. "The mining sub-deck is offline for some reason. I'll see if I can run a bypass."
The four entered and the elevator doors slid shut. The elevator closed off one possible way for the necromorphs to enter the RIG Room—that left the way they came in as the most likely way for any monsters to attack (though there were a few vents in the room the necromorphs might use). Rainbow and Vinyl followed Lyra back over to where Zako was working on the damaged mech.
"You couldn't cast a spell on him?" Zako was referring to the now-dead miner on the freight elevator.
"I can't cure death," Lyra said flatly.
"That another droid?" Vinyl asked as she looked at the white-armored, bipedal contraption. She wanted to get off the topic of the human they had just watched die.
"Short answer: Yes."
"That means there's a long answer?"
"Of course."
"What's the long answer?" Lyra perked back up as she asked. Dash groaned hearing Lyra's question.
"He probably doesn't think we're interested in the long answer if he didn't bother to tell us in the first place," Vinyl told Lyra. The minty-green mare had decided she was interested.
Zako gave out a sigh. "Since you asked… the loki model is technically a mech, not a droid. Mechs have virtual intelligence as opposed to droids, which have artificial intelligence. To make it short and sweet, virtual intelligences are not self-aware. Machines with artificial intelligence are self-aware and are capable of learning, critical thinking and independent decision-making. In Citadel space, combat droids are mostly illegal so they get around that little problem by dumbing down the combat mechs."
"Ohhhhh… went right over our heads," Lyra admitted. She didn't even understand half of what the human was saying and she was genuinely trying to make sense of his explanation.
"Not your fault. Everything goes over your heads, what with you being so short and all." The armored cyborg laughed.
Vinyl stifled a laugh. Zako spoke as if he were some giant or something. "You're not that much taller than us."
Zako didn't mind talking while working on the mech. The commander had a decade of experience fixing battle droids and working on the mech was a piece of cake for him. B1 battle droids were thinner than loki mechs and had all their internal components shoved together. Though the loki model wasn't bulky, the mech seemed to have a lot of wasted space on the inside (at least in Zako's opinion). Overall, repairing the slightly damaged mech would be a simple exercise for him.
As the freight elevator descended, Tali, Yayap, Krunch, and Isaac shuffled back and forth on their feet as they stood in place. There was plenty of room for all of them on the elevator and they gave themselves plenty of personal space between each other. Everyone kept a slight greater distance away from Clarke. The human engineer still had yet to speak and that only fed Yayap and Krunch's paranoid notions that he had some secret ulterior motive for being on the Ishimura.
There was the sound of breaking metal; the elevator's occupants thought the elevator might be having trouble before a necromorph dropped down in the middle of them. It had landed on its feet perfectly, though it had to get up from its kneeling position. Everyone opened fire. Tali hit it with a blast from her shotgun, though she also hit Yayap in the process.
"Watch it!" The grunt's shielding protected him from harm.
The shotgun blast had knocked the slasher to the side; causing Isaac to miss his shot completely and nearly hit Krunch. A few of the bullets from Krunch's assault rifle ricocheted around the elevator as the slig killed the slasher.
"Dammit, Krunch!" Yayap yelled as his shields deflected one of the slig's stray bullets. Yayap was so thankful the CIS had upgraded unggoy combat harnesses to include personal shielding. "Watch where you're shooting!"
"I'm the only one who is!"
Three more slashers dropped down into the freight elevator, and the quartet of survivors defeated them with the same lack of grace they had used on their first attacker. It was definitely a good thing they had split up, if Zako and the ponies had come with them on the elevator ride someone would have died for sure, be it from the necromorphs or friendly fire.
When the last necromorph was dead the elevator grew quiet. It was a much less pleasant ride now that they were surrounded by disembodied necromorph parts.
Tired of listening to nothing but the elevator, Krunch broke the silence between them. "Aren't those ponies weird?"
"No weirder than you are." Tali looked over at the slig.
Krunch thought they were so strange. "Their eyes are huge." Having no eyes at all would have been less weird to the slig (a good deal of species on Oddworld were eyeless).
"So?" Tali said. "My eyes glow. Yayap has those beady black eyes. And we can't even see your eyes. Everyone's weird in their own way. You should expand your mind and take a look at the Galaxy around you."
"Kinda hard to do when this is the first time I've ever been off Oddworld."
The elevator came to a halt and the doors opened.
Yayap was just glad to be away from the ponies. They smelled delicious and before they had parted ways he had to fight the ever-increasing urge to devour them for sustenance.
Yayap's thoughts of eating ponies were disrupted when he found an audio log.
"This is Temple. I found Elizabeth, but there isn't a single spaceworthy vessel in the whole goddamn bay!"
"Jacob, hurry up! We need to find a beacon!"
"There's gotta be one around here somewhere."
There were multiple paths they could take. They chose one at random, moving in the general direction of where they were supposed to go. Tainted yellow light pierced through the windows on the walls. There were significantly more human corpses lying around, suggesting the necromorphs had only invaded the area recently.
A slasher suddenly broke through a vent cover and dropped down from the ceiling right in front of them. There was no warning, no sounds that it had been moving in the vents above them. Yayap shot first. Despite the slight heart murmur from the initial surprise, the unggoy was getting accustomed to his enemies dropping down from the ceiling (they just had dealt with four slashers trying the same thing on the freight elevator after all).
The bladed monstrosity went down fast, unfortunately more vent covers could be heard being blown open. It should have been a bad situation; there were multiple directions the necromorphs could attack from. But each survivor took their own direction and shot at the incoming enemies. Everyone got an opponent and defeated it. Isaac needed some extra help as one of the overweight pregnant slashers went after him. With Tali's help, they were able to accidentally rupture the thing's stomach, forcing Yayap and Krunch to join in on killing all the little swarmers that emerged from the pregnant's gut.
Their enemies killed, they kept walking onward. They trotted down a ramp and through a door marked: Mineral Processing Area.
Back at the RIG Room Commander Zako was still trying to fix the loki mech as the ponies kept on the lookout for trouble. Though there wasn't too many ways for the necromorphs to get in the room and the ponies mostly rummaged through all the junk the room had to offer.
Karl Zako found it increasingly difficult to concentrate. His headache was starting to return. He had been doing so much better after they had killed the Leviathan but now he was feeling just as bad as ever. He started to go silent as he struggled to get the loki mech up and running again. His silence prompted the three ponies to follow his example.
Dammit. Stupid headache. Go away. As if I need any more problems than I already have, Zako thought as he worked on the mech. A thought came in through the faint ringing in his ears. Perhaps I'm suffering from withdrawal from being disconnected from the Separatist Droid Network for so long. Zako didn't know if that was the case or not. Ever since he became a bio-linked cyborg during the Clone Wars he rarely was disconnected from the network. Perhaps he relied on it too much, or had become accustomed to the constant uplink. If that was the case he was paying for his dependence now.
"You're going to die a virgin…" Zako perked up his head and looked around, searching. The oily, bodiless whispers had come back to haunt him.
"What?" Vinyl asked.
"You didn't hear that?"
Lyra turned her ears in different directions, trying to pick up whatever Zako had heard. "Hear what?"
"The whispers."
"I didn't hear anything," Rainbow said, "don't go all crazy on us now."
There was a roar and a pair of necromorphs appeared in the doorway leading towards the tram station.
"Guys, we got company!" Rainbow said.
The two slashers charged in, sharpened limbs flailing in the air ready to sever limbs from bodies.
"Zako, do something!" Vinyl yelled as the human abandoned his work on the loki mech.
The first slasher tackled the human and knocked him on his back, it fell forward onto him and tangled with the Separatist as he tried to grab his axe hooked on his belt.
"Not that!" Vinyl yelled.
The second slasher chased after Rainbow, but she was able to easily escape its claws and lead it away from the others.
Lyra hit Zako's necromorph with a magical blast, sending it flying into the wall. "Will you quit dying?" She asked the human as it got to his feet.
"I'm trying." He activated his weapon.
"To die?" Lyra shot back.
"Har-dee-fuckin'-har-har. You girls were the ones supposed to be on lookout."
"We were!" Vinyl shot the necromorph back down again as it tried to stand back up.
Amidst all the excitement and action, several of the containers and crates in the room had gotten knocked around. One of the crates had opened and Lyra noticed a plasma cutter fell out onto the floor. She had seen Yayap and Isaac use them; she figured she could too. She grabbed it up with her gold magic and pointed it in the direction of the necromorph. Lyra depressed the trigger with her magic and the weapon fired—right as Zako was closing in on the slasher.
The armored CIS officer took the shot square in the back and fell down face first right in front of the slasher. Vinyl grabbed Zako's fallen form away with magic before the slasher stabbed him.
"What happened… you shot me!" Zako stumbled and fell back down when he tried to get up. Lyra fired the plasma cutter again, hitting the necromorph in the body but doing no real damage.
"You gotta shoot it in the limbs." Zako got up and snatched the plasma cutter from Lyra's magic, fired twice, and took away both the necromorph's legs. One more shot removed the left arm and the monster stopped moving.
"I was trying to!" Lyra snapped.
"I could use a little help over here!" Rainbow was still distracting the second necromorph. She was starting to run out of room as it slowly forced her closer to a corner.
It was a risk with Dash in the line of fire but Zako knew he could make the shot. He aimed the plasma cutter towards the necromorphs right leg and fired. No cyan plasma came fourth. There was a dull clicking sound. The plasma cutter was out of ammo.
"Shit!" Zako dropped the plasma cutter and charged the slasher with his war-axe. The necromorph turned around to address him and the two were caught up in a brawl.
"I could sure use some destruction magic right about now!" Zako yelled. Rainbow tried bucking the slasher in the back of the legs to try and get it to fall over but her strikes didn't work.
"We already told you, we don't know destruction magic!" Vinyl yelled.
"Do something! Anything! How about a shrink spell?"
"Okay!" Lyra charged up her horn for the spell.
"Lyra, no!" Vinyl tried to stop the aquamarine unicorn but it was too late. Lyra fired the spell.
The slasher was hit; it staggered back away from Zako and Dash. The monster wobbled for a second as the spell began to take effect. It started to shrink in size; Zako couldn't believe what he was seeing. He didn't really think the unicorns knew shrinking spells! Soon the slasher was no larger than a bug, Zako was going to have fun stepping on it. He walked up to the miniature necromorph but stepped back as it started to regain its former size.
"What the hell?" The necromorph started to alternate between shrinking down and growing large. It was as if someone was inflating and deflating it was if it were a balloon. Finally it returned back to its normal size. But it didn't move and it didn't stay its normal size for more than a second. But instead of shrinking down again, its body started to become emaciated.
The necromorph's body and limbs turned ghastly thin until if finally fell over on its back and ceased moaning in pain. Zako felt like he was going to throw up in his helmet. He looked over at the aquamarine unicorn. "Lyra, what did you do?"
"I tried to cast a shrink spell," she said sheepishly.
"That was not a shrink spell."
"It kinda… didn't work."
"Works for me!" The cyborg walked over and stamped on the emaciated necromorph until its limbs were all free of its body. He then went over and stamped on the other necromorph to make sure it was dead as well.
Zako then made his way over towards Lyra. "Dammit. You need to watch where you're shooting!"
Tears started to well up in the unicorn's big eyes. She hadn't meant to hit him with the plasma cutter. It was her first time trying to even use one.
Vinyl walked over to Lyra before giving Zako a glare. "Hey, give her a break! You're the one who got in the way!"
"How else was I gonna fight a necromorph when I just had my axe?" Zako felt like an asshole now. He wasn't trying to be mean to Lyra. It was aggravating being shot in the back but his shields and armor held out fine. He was just jarred a bit.
"Are you mad at me?" Lyra managed squeak out.
Rainbow Dash flew over and landed next to Lyra. The cyan mare gave the human a death glare far worse than Vinyl's, daring him to say another thing to upset her unicorn friend.
"No, I'm not mad at you." Lyra was too cute for Zako to be mad at her. He couldn't believe there was anything he found cute, but the colorful alien ponies apparently fit the bill—not that he would admit that to anyone. "Just… leave the shooting to me, okay?"
"Why didn't you shoot it?" Vinyl asked.
"Huh?"
"The other one, why'd you drop the weapon?"
"Oh, the plasma cutter ran out of ammo."
"I guess nopony is shooting anything then."
"I guess so," Zako admitted.
"Are you okay? I didn't hurt you did I?" Lyra wiped away the tears that threatened to run down her face. She really didn't mean to shoot him. She felt terrible about it.
"No. My armor absorbed the hit. I'm fine. I forgive you. And it was kinda my fault too." The commander was used to being connected to a network of droids and being able to know precisely where and when he could attack without getting hit by friendly fire. Working with the strange pony aliens he realized there were bound to be some hiccups along the way.
Lyra thought the weapon would have cut Zako in half. That would have been bad. He probably would have been much less likely to forgive her if that had happened (and also he would likely be dead).
Zako decided to switch gears. "But that spell, Lyra, what was that about?"
"Like I already said… my shrink spell didn't work. It recoiled. Sorry."
"That was brutal. Why weren't you guys casting spells like that earlier?"
"We don't have practice with stuff like that," Vinyl said, "anything could'a happened."
"Lyra, do you think you could cast that same spell again? We might need a spell like that for larger enemies."
"Maybe. But it left me kinda drained. I need to rest."
"Now's not a good time to sleep." Zako went back over to the loki mech.
"Don't need to sleep. Just not cast spells for a little bit."
Things settled in when Zako went back to work on the mech and the ponies went back to keeping watch.
"Why are you sticking your neck out to help us?" Rainbow Dash asked Commander Zako. "You could'a left us a long time ago."
"Kinda harsh, huh, Rainbow?" Vinyl said.
Lyra gave the prismatic mare a short glare. "What are you trying to do, Rainbow? Make the nice human abandon us? I just blasted him and he's cool with it."
"No! I was just wonderin'." Dash regretted asking. She always did have a habit of blurting out things without thinking about them first.
"It's fine," Zako said, "why would I stick my neck out for you guys? I'm a rather selfish person—"
"You don't seem selfish at all, Karl," Lyra interrupted.
"Yes I am. I was on my own before I ran into you three. I'm used to working in groups, often large groups. I'm not used to being on my own. I was glad when I found you three. You've all already saved my life at least one time each. Why would I abandon you? I'd end up dead fairly quickly I think. It's in my best interest… no all of our best interest to stick together."
The slasher shrieked as it lost its limbs. It wasn't dismembered one limb at a time; it lost all of them at once. That's what happened when it was four against one. The slasher was right in front of Yayap and his squad. There was no grand entrance through a vent cover, no enemies hiding in the shadows to attack from behind… just a single solitary slasher.
With their lone enemy dead Yayap and Isaac walked over to a store kiosk on the side of the wall to buy ammo for their plasma cutters. Tali and Krunch had given up trying to get ammo for their weapons and walked on ahead, following the corridor until they were stopped by a cave-in. Luckily for them there was a huge hole in the wall on their left.
The slig walked through the gaping hole first.
"Entering zero gravity."
The slig turned around and walked back through the opening. "Hey, Yayap. There's no gravity in the next room."
"Well, why don't all you guys with the magnetic feet all go in and turn it on?"
"Yeah, yeah."
Krunch and Tali waited for Isaac to be done with the store before they all went in. Large sections of the Ishimura were usually coated with shadows but the powerful light emanating from the large gravity beam running through the center of the room kept the darkness to a minimum.
Kendra came in over Clarke's RIG again. "There's a failsafe on the processing control door. It won't open until gravity is restored. But you can't turn on the gravity until those boulders are cleared from the room. Maybe you can dump them into that gravity beam with your kinesis module."
"This is all you, Clarke," Krunch said. Isaac was the only one in the group that had a kinesis module. The human engineer nodded and went to work. Isaac snared the first asteroid with kinesis. Krunch was impressed, being stuck on Oddworld his whole life he hadn't gotten the chance to watch kinesis modules in action much. The slig found it amazing that the hand-mounted device could move such large objects. Clarke shot the asteroid into the gravity beam.
"Anomaly destroyed," the VI announced as the first boulder was cleared.
Screams could be heard over the sounds of the bolder breaking up. A pair of leapers had shown up. The quarian and slig shot at them while the human continued about his work.
Krunch found a lack of gravity to be very annoying when he was trying to line up a shot on an enemy. Not only could he hop around on any surface he wanted but so could the necromorphs. It made it difficult to keep an eye on the enemy. All too often the slig was relying on sound cues to save his life. When he heard a roar that was a little too close for comfort he immediately leaped to another wall to get away from any potential danger.
"Anomaly destroyed." Clarke had disposed of the second boulder just as Tali and Krunch finished with the leapers. Now a pair of little lurkers came out to play. As before, Isaac ignored them and continued to jump around the area to get closer to the large floating rocks while Krunch and Tali did the fighting.
Tali had noticed a pattern. Whenever Clarke had disposed of an asteroid, two or three leapers or lurkers would show up and attack them. It was rather odd timing. She would have guessed all the necromorphs would attack at the same time.
Krunch had a shot lined up on a lurker. The slig and the infected baby were affixed to the same wall. The slig was just waiting for the baby to open up its back and reveal its tentacles. The back started to open up—and the necromorph was suddenly bathed in a blue glow. The lurker moved at a snail's pace.
"Tali, what'd you do that for?" Krunch yelled. The quarian had it the necromorph with a stasis blast and now Krunch had to wait for it to wear off before the lurker could move again and reveal its weak points.
"Sorry for trying to help!"
"You should be!"
It didn't take long for the effect to wear off and Krunch killed the lurker how he originally planned. He had almost screwed up the shot, all the waiting while the necromorph was in stasis played with his nerves and made him anxious and careless when it was finally time to kill the miniature monster.
Isaac took care of the last two asteroids quickly. "All free-floating anomalies destroyed. Gravity can now be restored."
Tali made sure everyone was right side up before hitting the switch to restore gravity.
"Gravity restored. Access permitted to control room."
The bridges clicked into place… allowing an army of necromorphs to cross. Slashers, pregnants and exploders started coming out of the vents. Yayap tried to come in but retreated back into the whole in the wall when he saw just how many enemies there were.
"Looks like they were waiting for the gravity to come back on." Krunch fired specifically at the swollen bulbs on the exploders. The destructive deaths of the suicide bombers often killed their surrounding allies. In that regard the exploders could be just as dangerous to their allies as to their enemies.
"Where's Yayap?" Krunch asked. The necromorph numbers were starting to thin, and the slig figured the unggoy would have joined them by now.
"I have no idea," Tali said.
They got their answer when once of the bloated, pregnant slashers was killed from behind. Yayap appeared out of nowhere. The unggoy helped the others kill the remaining two slashers and exploder.
The room was empty of enemies. Tali turned to Yayap. "You might want to be careful about sneaking around while invisible. We could have shot you by accident." They started walked towards the processing control room.
"The way you guys shoot? I'll be fine… wait. The way you guys shoot, you'd likely hit something you weren't aiming for. I should be more careful."
"Very funny." Tali wasn't amused.
They entered mineral processing control room. They looked around for a second before Isaac found the key lying on the floor.
"That's the key. It'll get you into the control room so you can launch the asteroid. Don't forget to attach the beacon first! I read another report on the colonists' dementia. It seemed to start after they removed the Marker from the planet. God knows how long it was down there." Kendra cut out again.
"So, the colonists were nuts after they removed this… Marker." The gears were slowly turning in Krunch's mind as he tried to make sense of what that meant.
"I wonder if it's making us crazy as well." Yayap was a little faster figuring it out.
Five necromorphs were heading straight for them. Zaeed, HK-47, 4-LOM, and Lena were already shooting them. Over the deafening roars and gunfire Dr. Kyne had somehow managed to hear the two slashers approaching from the side. The doctor sprinted away from the safety of the group. He switched on his plasma saw, its cyan light casting a glow on the floor and nearby wall.
The two necromorphs walked one after the other rather than side-by-side. If he was quick Kyne could take them out one at a time rather than both at once. He'd have to be fast though. Kyne rushed to greet them with a speed that would have been expected of a much younger man.
The first slasher lunged with an angled arm. Kyne matched the move and his plasma saw sliced the limb off at the elbow. The necromorph didn't get a chance to strike with its remaining appendage; Kyne's next slash had cut the creature at its midsection.
The second slasher lunged just as the first fell out of its way. Kyne extended the plasma saw right in front of him and caught the necromorph right in the face. Its roar of anger was garbled by the fact that it was chocking on its own super-heated blood. Still, an energy saw to the face was not enough to kill a necromorph, so Kyne sliced it up the middle and sheared it in half. As the two sides fell away to the floor the arms still twitched, but Kyne was sure the monster was dead.
Kyne looked over to see the last of the other necromorphs gunned down. The mercenary and the assassin droids had done most of the work. The quarian couldn't make much of an impact with just her pistol, yet she never asked to borrow any weapons from the other three. Kyne only had his plasma saw, HK-47 had his blaster rifle and 4-LOM had his concussion rifle but Zaeed had a sniper rifle on his back he could have spared. Kyne guessed Lena wasn't much of a sniper if she couldn't be bothered to borrow a weapon Zaeed wasn't even using.
"It's like they know we're trying to get to the ship," Lena'Xel complained.
"Doesn't matter what they think," Zaeed said in his usual gruff voice. "We're getting to that ship of yours."
"We're nearly at the hangar bay," 4-LOM stated.
"Let's keep moving, no need to hang around here any longer." Zaeed got them going again. The veteran mercenary had HK-47 and 4-LOM with him, that was good but he had doubts about the quarian. He didn't trust her: her intentions nor her ability to fight. It was nice to know she couldn't do much to challenge him with that little pistol if it came to a… disagreement. But the downside was she wasn't pulling her weight when it came to shooting the necromorphs.
Zaeed also worried about Dr. Kyne. Spending some time with him had revealed to Zaeed that Kyne wasn't entirely stable. The doctor occasionally made remarks to a person that wasn't there… someone named Amelia. Zaeed figured the stress of the situation was too much for the doctor to handle. And while his slight touch of insanity gave him a boost when fighting, Zaeed wondered if the doctor might turn against them later. All the more reason for them to hurry up and get to the Ebon Hawk.
With the wheezers dead and the air quality improving, Zaeed had taken off his breather mask. There was no reason to wear it if he didn't need it. "Hey, Doc. What were you saying before we were interrupted?" With Kyne apparently half-nuts Zaeed couldn't be sure how reliable his information was but it was better than not knowing anything about what was going on.
"Ah, yes. The Marker." Kyne fell to the back of the group and walked next to Zaeed, letting the two droids take point. Lena'Xel was trapped in the middle of the group. "We must return it to the planet in order to contain this outbreak."
"The Marker… why have I heard of that before?" Zaeed was only half-thinking about what the doctor was talking about. He was more focused on his surroundings. It didn't help that the corridors of the ship were cloaked in shadows, but the necromorphs were terrible at ambushes as they had a habit of roaring or making other noises to announce their presence.
"The Marker is a sacred artifact to the Church of Unitology."
"Those screwballs. You aren't one are you?" Zaeed spared a glance over at Kyne.
"I am… I was." Kyne looked unsure of himself. "The Marker… it's not what the Church thinks it is. Unitology has done a lot of good for many people but… the divinity they seek from the Marker doesn't exist. If we somehow survive this the Church needs to be warned of the truth."
"I doubt they'd listen," Massani grumbled. He knew religious types were hard to reason with. Zaeed had been on more than a few missions where his assignments were to take down terrorist factions with some sort of religious affiliation. Zaeed found it odd that Dr. Kyne saw the situation for what it was and was trying to do something about it, in Zaeed's experience most religious types never saw reason, especially when it came to anything that disproved their hokey religions. Terrence Kyne was clearly an exception to the rule.
The freight elevator came to a stop and deposited Tali, Yayap, Krunch, and Isaac at the maintenance deck. What looked to be necromorph puke was all over the walls and floor. Even in her suit, Tali felt grossed out merely walking on the floor.
They could hear movement. A pair of bat-winged infectors was trouncing around the puke-entrusted floor. The four survivors quickly eliminated them before they were able to turn any of the corpses lying around the room into enemies.
Yayap turned and noticed an audio log lying on the shelf. The unggoy grabbed it and played it.
"Dr Kyne! What the hell are you… aaah!"
"Get back! Come any closer and… and I'll shoot him! Give me the access codes to the cargo bay!"
"You… idiot! This is… processing! Why the hell… would I have codes to cargo?"
"Don't lie to me! I'm sick of everyone lying to me! It is imperative that I get the Marker! Give me those codes!"
"I don't have them! Is this… what you did… to the captain? Go on… shoot me if you've got the balls!"
"IDIOTS! It's the only way to stop it… the only way to end this!"
"He's completely lost it… Somebody call security!"
The revelation of Kyne's mental stability was certainly worrisome. Yayap looked over at Krunch and Tali.
"The Marker is making people crazy," Krunch said. He remembered when Vincent had told him her theory that it was responsible for the colonists' dementia. The slig briefly wondered what happened to Vincent and the other humans in her squad but quickly assumed they were likely dead by now.
"The doctor wasn't that bad last time we saw him," Tali said. There was such a noticeable change in the demeanor of his voice. She wondered what brought him back from the edge. Perhaps it was finding more people that were still alive.
"Maybe he's fighting it off. I don't know," Yayap said, "this is bad. How do we know we aren't going nuts?"
"Wait," Krunch said, "maybe the Marker only affects humans. Maybe we're in the clear?"
"There's no way we can be sure…" Yayap trailed off. He saw something. Something he did not expect to see anywhere on the Ishimura. Yayap was positive he had just seen another unggoy. But I thought this ship was full of humans? Yayap had to know who it was… something had seemed familiar about the unggoy.
Yayap started to wander off as if possessed.
"Where are you going?" Krunch asked. Yayap didn't answer. "Hey, don't leave us behind."
Vent shaft coverings exploded and a group of necromorphs blocked Tali and Krunch from following Yayap. Suddenly having to fight they couldn't see too well, but it looked like the necromorphs had ignored the unggoy completely.
The whole room was a horrid mess of claws and fangs and bloated yellow pustules. Tali let loose her combat drone but it was almost instantly destroyed. Isaac was separated from Tali and Krunch. The human ran through a doorway to save his own skin, his cowardice went unnoticed by his allies (who were far too busy with the necromorph attack to worry about whatever he was doing).
Isaac Clarke suddenly found himself alone. He wasn't entirely sure why but he felt the urge to press on without the rest of his squad. It was very possible they had all been killed and he was on his own anyway.
He heard a soft, strangled moaning. He had heard it before. Isaac turned to see one of harmless necromorphs plastered to the wall. It retained most of its human shape until the stomach, where the body disappeared and only rotting intestines hung loose. The engineer shined a light on the creature, forcing it to cry out in discomfort. Isaac wasn't going to shoot the necromorph. He couldn't afford to waste ammo on enemies that weren't going to attack.
He turned away from the stationary necromorph to see a control panel and a track for a gondola. Isaac could barely make out the gondola in the distance, he worried that it was too far away for him to snag with his kinesis module—the device had a limited range. But Isaac turned out to be wrong; he snared the gondola and brought it over to him. It connected to the platform with a clang and the guardrails opened up to allow the human to enter.
Pressing the button to start the gondola, Isaac thought he'd be in for a casual ride. He turned out to be wrong again. Several of the necromorph pods were lined up on the two catwalks running parallel to both sides of the gondola track. Their placement certainly suggested that the necromorphs expected the gondola to be used at some point and laid a trap. Though the necromorphs in general didn't seem like the type to lay out elaborate traps that required advance planning. Whether a planned trap or just bad luck, Isaac found himself trying to dodge the barbs the pods hurled at him. Luckily for him the barbs had a hard time aiming while the gondola was moving, but that proved to be a problem for the human as well. Isaac found his own aim was not much better. Several of his plasma cutter's blasts missed the tentacled pods altogether in an embarrassing spectacle that proved just how inept Isaac Clarke was as a combatant. Luckily for him the necromorphs themselves were the only audience. Though one had to wonder how the pods were able to aim and shoot without having any eyes.
One of the pods was lucky enough that a barb it threw nicked Clarke in the shoulder. Though his armor received nothing more than a scratch and Isaac was unharmed, the pods had proven their point that they were indeed capable of hitting him.
The gondola ride was mercifully short and soon at an end. Isaac got off when he reached the other platform. Something tugged at Isaac, preventing him from moving into the next room. It felt like he was no longer in control of his own body. He felt compelled to turn back around and look to his right. It was a good thing he did, because on the catwalk to his side he saw his girlfriend Nicole Brennan.
Isaac Clarke almost didn't believe his eyes. Nicole was the reason for him being here. By now he had thought that he'd find her corpse in a morgue or that she was wandering around as one of those creatures but no. She was still alive… and standing right before him.
"Isaac! Is that really you? It feels like it's been so long… But I can help you, now. Come with me." Nicole walked behind a wall and disappeared from view.
Stunned speechless, Isaac turned back around and walked through the door leading into the repair room.
Even in the repair room, Isaac was still separated from his beloved Nicole. He didn't think he could jump the gap between his side of the room and her catwalk but he was almost willing to try. She was right there but he figured if he waited they'd find another way to meet up.
"The beacon's in the storage room next to you. I think I can disable the lock from here. Hold on."
A slasher suddenly dropped down from a ceiling vent hanging over Nicole's side of the room. Isaac shot it to pieces before it could reach Nicole. No one was going to hurt her, not as long as Isaac Clarke was there. Two more slashers appeared to test Isaac's resolve and once again the engineer slaughtered them before they even got near his girlfriend.
Isaac's nerves were on fire just waiting for the next necromorph to try and harm his sweet Nicole. His trigger finger twitched out of rage rather than fear. What Isaac didn't expect was that the next necromorph came up over the guardrail on his side, trying to take him out. Isaac fumbled with his aim for a second but managed to pop the slasher twice in the leg. The necromorph fell backwards, trying to grab onto the guardrail with a clawed limb and failed, falling into the abyss below.
Almost instantly two more slashers dropped in to go after Nicole just as a third dropped down to kill Isaac. The engineer killed the slasher that sauntered his way before dismembering the other two. The entire time Nicole kept working away at the wall-mounted computer terminal, showing no sign of fear despite the fact that she had no weapon and was under almost constant assault. In a way it almost made sense, she had been on this ship dealing with the necromorphs for quite some time and seemingly became immune to their horrors.
One final slasher tried to end Nicole's life and when it failed a lurker crawled up the wall from the abyss below. As soon as it showed its back tentacles, Isaac gave it two quick blasts and killed it.
"Okay, the door's unlocked, Isaac. I can't get over to you but I'll find a way. I love you… this will all be over soon…"
Nicole turned to leave. Isaac hated to see her go; he wanted to be with her so badly. But she was alive. They would find each other again. With great reluctance, Isaac turned and walked through the door Nicole had unlocked for him. The SOS beacon was easy to find.
Kendra popped in over Clarke's RIG. "Isaac! Hey, I lost your signal for a while. You had me worried… I see you've got the beacon, so head for the mining bay and attach it to the asteroid. I've been running trajectory calculations and if we launch soon, there's a good chance the asteroid can reach a safe distance to begin transmitting. Still no sign of Hammond's group. In their state, I can't imagine they're still alive…"
Isaac turned back the way he came and activated the gondola he had originally arrived on and began backtracking.
Yayap had finally admitted to himself that he had lost the mystery unggoy. He had been so close and yelled for the other grunt to stop several times yet the other kept on going. Yayap figured the other unggoy must have been acting on fear; there were few other explanations that made any sense. Unggoy outside their own territory were almost exclusively affiliated with the Confederate military and Yayap wondered if General OOM-9 had sent in reinforcements to save Commander Zako. But if Yayap had come across a single cowardly grunt, that meant something bad had happened.
A realization dawned upon Yayap; he still had an energy cutlass on him. How in the realm of reality did I miss this? Yayap thought as he grabbed the weapon off his combat harness. I could have been cutting the necromorphs apart ages ago. I really need to pay more attention. Having an energy cutlass on him now meant that he had it at least as far back as when he had first started chasing Tali through Rupture Farms back on Oddworld. It didn't make sense that he would forget about the weapon for so long, and the quarians hadn't taken it from him when he was prisoner onboard the Ebon Hawk either.
The other unggoy returned without warning, appearing out from behind a stack of crates. Yayap couldn't believe who it was… it was impossible.
"Bapap?"
"Yes, cousin, it is me."
"But you died… the humans…"
"Are not as powerful as they think."
Yayap couldn't believe it. He had been told his cousin had been killed at the start of the Citadel-Covenant War.
He heard the sounds of approaching necromorphs. "Stay out of sight," Yayap told Bapap. "I will take care of this." The special ops grunt switched on his active camouflage and turned invisible.
Yayap went out in search of the necromorphs but instead found the quarians. Tali was with the other two: Penn and Lena. That wasn't right. Lena was supposed to be at the Ebon Hawk under the watchful eyes of Zaeed Massani and his bounty hunter droids. Penn was supposed to be on the bridge.
The special ops grunt turned to see that his cousin had disappeared (though Yayap did tell him to stay out of sight). He had no idea where he had gotten to but now Yayap had to go and investigate what the quarians were up to. He kept his cloaking on and slowly approached their position.
He heard Penn speak first: "Come on, Tali. We gave the others the slip. It's time we got to the Ebon Hawk and got out of here."
"What about the others?" Tali sounded like she was at least a little concerned about the individuals not in her little circle of friends.
"Who are you worried about?" Lena asked. "The droid-loving Separatist scum? The humans? Those weird-ass pony aliens? Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all."
"But—"
"No buts, Tali," Penn cut her off. "We owe them nothing. We need to get out of here with our own lives. The Fleet must be warned about this threat. The others might jeopardize our safety and that could put the whole Fleet in danger if they are not warned about this. You know the safety of the Fleet comes before all else."
"You—You're right. We should leave. The safety of the Fleet comes first," Tali admitted with a slight note of defeat in her voice.
Yayap felt like a fool. He should have known better. The quarians weren't really his allies—they were just fighting against a common enemy with the universal goal of survival. The quarians only ever cared about themselves, that's how quarians always were. Of course the quarians were going to turn on them. Yayap was going to make sure they regretted their treachery.
The special ops unggoy silently sneaked up to the three quarians. He positioned himself behind Penn. Before the quarians could utter any more words of betrayal Penn suddenly snapped silent as the sound of an energy blade punctured his suit and through his gut.
Tali and Lena stood in shock, staring at the pink-violet blade that protruded through the quarian's white armor. The blade dissipated and Penn fell face-first onto the deck.
"Yayap?" Tali couldn't believe what she saw.
"Trying to ditch us? I don't think so." The unggoy disappeared again. Lena and Tali drew up their weapons, but were unsure of where the grunt had slinked off to. Yayap could be quiet when he needed to be.
"Yayap, we can talk about this. It doesn't have to be this way." Tali tried to get the unggoy talking. If he spoke she had a better chance of determining his location. Unfortunately the grunt wasn't falling for the trap and kept silent.
"We'll take you with us," Lena offered. "But we need to leave now. I don't want to die. You killed Penn; you've shown what you can do. Let's just call a truce, okay?"
There won't be a truce this time, backstabbers, Yayap silently thought to himself. Though Yayap was the one literally stabbing people in the back.
Lena kept pointing her pistol in different directions. Her jerky motions and shaky hands belied her fear. Yayap thought the quarian must have realized she was outmatched. The unggoy proved just how outmatched she was, he cut into her from behind just like he had done with Penn.
Tali turned and fired her shotgun, but only hit Lena's half-dead body as Yayap disappeared again.
"Dumb bitch isn't much without her grenade launcher, is she?" Yayap taunted.
Tali turned in the direction of the voice and fired. Yayap was expecting her to do just that and had moved out of the way just as he had spoken.
Yayap was at Tali's side. It was a simple effort to reactivate his cutlass and lunge forward. He stabbed Tali right below the chest. Blood started to leak out as Tali dropped her shotgun and tried to grab the cutlass, only to cut up her hands in the process.
Yayap leaned his head in closer. "You brought this upon yourself. I was never planning on betraying you." He withdrew his cutlass and Tali fell to her knees. He swiftly cut her across the neck and stabbed the pink-violet blade into her faceplate. With the final quarian traitor dead, Yayap turned and walked away, he needed to go find his cousin and the others.
Rainbow Dash paced all around the RIG Room. She was anxious and tired of being stuck indoors with the foul-smelling necromorphs. She wanted to stretch her wings and fly out in the open.
"When are we gonna get out of here? I'm tired of being stuck in this place. I'm gonna climb the walls!"
"We have to wait for the others to get back," Lyra said.
"Yeah, I know. But it's taking so looonnngg."
Vinyl Scratch was quiet, the exact opposite of Rainbow Dash right now. But she was suffering from the same affliction. Vinyl was tired of waiting around. Doing something was better than doing nothing in this instance. Sure, she was listening and looking for any signs of necromorphs but all too often her mind drifted to other thoughts. She wondered how she, Lyra and Rainbow had ended up here in the first place. She wondered how they would get back home… if they even could. This wouldn't be so bad if monsters weren't trying to kill us. Vinyl started to chew at her lower lip. She was good at going with the flow and just rolling with things but this was different from the usual adventures/problems she had in Equestria. She wanted to get moving again, to escape her thoughts but she remembered not to bug Karl, he was busy fixing the mech… droid… metal human. Whatever it was. She figured talking with him would only slow his work down and she wanted him to finish as quickly as possible.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" Lyra asked Zako. Vinyl let out a small sigh, she figured Lyra wouldn't have the patience to wait quietly and let Zako work. As long as Vinyl knew her, Lyra hadn't been one to wait, not when there was something exciting going on. And despite this recent lull, their situation definitely could be labeled exciting.
Lyra knew there wasn't anything she could do to help. Karl had already said so. Despite this she just couldn't help but ask anyway. She felt so useless with him doing all the work while everypony else was just waiting around on lookout.
"No, there's nothing you can do."
"I know. I just hate that we're hanging around while you work on that thing."
"You're not just hanging around. You're on the lookout for necromorphs." Zako turned his head to look at Lyra. "You are, aren't you?"
"Yeah…" A smile formed on Lyra's face as she rubbed the back of her head with a hoof.
"That's helping. I can't work on this mech and be alert at the same time. I can't do everything at once."
Lyra was still bored. She felt like she was gonna die of boredom before the necromorphs could claim her. One little question won't hurt. "What's with that weapon of yours?"
"My axe?"
"Yeah. Why does it glow sometimes?"
The human kept working on the mech, not bothering to look up at the ponies this time. "Well, it glows when it's turned on. It's a ZK-II war-axe. They're very expensive. Some people like to call them lightsaber axes."
"And what's a lightsaber?" Lyra asked.
"Right… you wouldn't know about those either. Lightsabers are…uh… sabers made out of light. They're a rather famous weapon. They're not common but more common than the axe I use is."
"Uh-huh."
"It's not actually a lightsaber. The entire weapon is made out of cortosis but when switched on the blade is super-heated, allowing the axe to cut through almost anything. They are powered by lightsaber crystals though, which is why some call them lightsaber axes."
"I don't know which is worse. Your short answers or the long ones. How much longer is this gonna take?" Rainbow asked.
"Not much longer. Even if I finish, we still have to wait for the others to get back though."
"Or we could go look for them."
"Or we could do that," Zako admitted.
Zaeed's squad finally reached the Ebon Hawk. Their journey from when they gotten off tram station and traveled to the hangar bay wasn't that great of a distance but it had been filled with necromorphs. Zaeed was running low on thermal clips, he hoped the quarians had some extras lying around their ship.
"Vague Reminiscence: This ship somehow seems familiar." HK-47 looked over the old freighter.
"Yeah, cause it's the ship we were chasing before we got into this mess," Zaeed said. He swore sometimes his droid seemed like he had one too many burnt-out circuits.
"Correction: Master, I meant I've seen this ship before that."
"Does it really matter at this point?" Kyne tersely asked as he walked on ahead to the ship's ramp.
"Answer: Not at the moment. Polite Warning: You would do well not to speak to me in such a manner, meatbag."
Dr. Kyne ignored the droid. Before the others could follow the human they heard a noise. It was obviously from a necromorph but this one sounded different from the others.
"Can you boys take care of that?" Lena started to edge over closer to the ship's ramp. It wasn't like she could do much anyway with just her pistol. "I've got to check the ship."
For once Zaeed was in complete agreement. "Alright, HK-47, you go with her. 4-LOM and I will take care of this." Lena and HK-47 retreated into the ancient freighter; leaving Zaeed and 4-LOM do deal with whatever was lurking around.
It was dark and there were a lot of crates and bags scattered around. There were dull blood streaks on the floor. Zaeed wondered why the necromorph hadn't attacked yet. Once he had heard the creatures they generally showed up pretty fast. This one seemed to be an exception though.
"Split up," Zaeed told 4-LOM, "let's see if we can't catch this thing in a crossfire."
"Understood." The two parted ways and scanned different sections of the room. It was difficult to gauge where their enemy was. From the sounds of its footsteps it seemed to be constantly changing locations.
The mercenary heard something, he pointed his rifle in the direction of the weird chirping noise and saw the head of a rather odd necromorph peeking at him from behind a stack of crates. The head withdrew after being bathed in the light. Zaeed heard footsteps, indicating the creature had changed locations upon being discovered. He tried to follow the sounds but lost the necromorph.
"Stop stalkin' around and fight me you goddam coward," Massani threatened the creature hiding in the darkness.
A massive headache suddenly surged to the forefront of Zaeed's mind. A torrent of shadowy whispers started to annoy the veteran mercenary.
"You always escape death. What makes you so special? Why do so many die and yet you always survive? Why do you deserve life?"
"I have unfinished business to deal with," Zaeed kept his voice low, but it was full of anger.
"You think that gives you special treatment? The universe doesn't revolve around you."
"I never said it does."
"You can't solve all your problems with a gun… and you can't solve them all alone…"
"The hell I can't." Zaeed was getting sick of the whispers really fast, specially since he was sure they were some sort of invasive hallucination brought on by the Marker. Even knowing Kyne's theory on the Marker it was difficult. The voices sounded so real. Zaeed didn't feel like he was drugged, his senses were sharp as he tried to spot the necromorph. It was unlike anything he had felt before.
There was more of the odd chirping noise before the hidden necromorph let out a shrill shriek, broke from cover, and charged the human. Zaeed whipped his assault rifle around to face the incoming menace but before he could even fire the necromorph was hit with a concussion blast from 4-LOM and was knocked to the floor. Zaeed filled it full of holes as it tried to get back up. He shot the legs off first but then the necromorph started pulling itself along the floor with their three-fingered hands. Once Zaeed blasted away the arms the creature stopped moving and fell silent.
Zaeed waited for a few moments to make sure there weren't any other necromorphs around. "Come on, let's get to the ship."
Inside the Ebon Hawk, Zaeed and 4-LOM found Dr. Kyne busy at a ship's workbench. The doctor's orange omni-tool was glowing brightly but the pair couldn't see exactly what he was working on. Kyne was busy weaponizing his omni-tool using various supplies he found on the quarians' freighter. Kyne needed something more than just his plasma saw. His once harmless omni-tool could now launch incineration or cryo blasts as well as neural shocks. He was interested in seeing how the attacks would affect the necromorphs.
4-LOM and Zaeed wordlessly passed the doctor and went on to find HK-47 keeping a watchful eye on Lena.
"Can your ship get us out of here or not?" Zaeed asked the quarian. From what he had seen of the Ebon Hawk so far Zaeed wasn't expecting an answer he wanted.
"No. It's too damaged. We'll need to replace a couple of parts."
"We could go check my ship for parts. Hell, maybe my ship is in better condition than yours."
"Good idea. You'll have to lead the way. I don't know where your ship is."
"Before we do that, where do you keep your thermal clips?"
"Oh, we have plenty of those."
Finally, an answer Zaeed Massani wanted to hear.
Yayap couldn't find his cousin. He couldn't find Krunch. He couldn't find anyone. The unggoy was beginning to think that the others had been killed and he was the only one left to complete the mission. But Yayap had no idea where the SOS beacon was; he had no idea where he was. He figured his best hope was to head back to the RIG Room and have Zako take over the assignment. Yayap was sure the commander would know what to do and even if he didn't, Yayap still felt it better to be in a group than on his own.
Just then Yayap had the good fortune to run into a familiar-looking slig.
"Krunch!"
"Yayap! Where have you been? What were you doing? Did you find the beacon?"
"Long story. Look, the quarians…" Yayap trailed off when he saw Tali'Zorah walk up behind the slig.
The special ops unggoy couldn't believe his eyes. What the… I can't believe it! I killed her! I killed Tali! What is she doing alive? I killed that traitor!
"You okay, Yayap?" Tali asked.
Yayap looked at his hand, he was holding his plasma cutter. His energy cutlass was nowhere to be found. He knew he had used the energy blade to kill Tali and her traitorous friends. The weapon was gone… as if he never really had it… because he didn't. Yayap realized he didn't have the energy cutlass on him because he never had it in the first place… and he hadn't used it to kill the quarians. It had all been a hallucination.
"No, I'm not okay. I… could use a nap." Yayap had decided to keep what had happened (or more accurately what didn't happen) to himself.
"That'll have to wait," Tali said, "we have to go find Isaac. He got separated from the group."
Isaac Clarke seemingly spawned out of nowhere as if summoned by the sound of his name. His sudden appearance gave Tali a little jump.
"Did you find the beacon?" Krunch asked the human.
Clarke held up the device for all to see.
"Alright, we got the beacon. Let's keep moving." Krunch got them all moving back towards the freight elevator.
They took the elevator up to the mining deck and were greeted by a couple of exploders. The slig was the fastest to fire and destroyed both of the spindly necromorphs with a single detonation. That was the upside to fighting exploders, when the popped, they tended to take their allies with them.
"I'm running low on ammo," Krunch warned the others.
"Don't whine to me," Yayap said, "I ran out of ammo for my needler ages ago."
"I wasn't whining!"
They kept walking down the hall.
Krunch found an audio log lying on the floor. After dumbly staring at it for a second he handed it over to Yayap.
"Processing log. Supervisor 2nd Engineer Dallas reporting. This will be my last report. I've seen what they do… to the bodies. What they become. I can't let that happen to me. At least if I don't have any limbs… I won't be able to kill anyone when I'm infected…"
There was the faint sound of some sort of power tool switching on in the recording.
"Please, tell Dawn… and the kids… that I love them." The rest of the audio log consisted of Dallas cutting off his own limbs while still alive.
"Damn…" Yayap almost regretting playing this audio log. "Who has the resolve to cut off his own limbs? He would'a make a great soldier with that kinda determination."
"Wait…" Krunch thought for a moment. "He cut off his limbs so he wouldn't be a threat…"
"That's what he said." Yayap switched off his omni-tool.
Tali and Isaac went exploring around the area but stayed within earshot of the slig and unggoy.
"That doesn't make sense," Krunch continued.
"How so?" Yayap cocked his head to the side.
"The necromorphs… have the blades and are trying to cut us up, right?"
"Right," Yayap nodded. He didn't see where the slig was going with all this.
"So… if the necromorphs cut up their victims, how are the infectors making new necromorphs that still have all their limbs."
"That's… a very good point," Yayap admitted. "Maybe the infectors can reattached limbs to the bodies."
"That must be it," Krunch agreed. "Or we would have seen that guy's body lying next to the audio log. But nothing's here. He must be up and walking around again."
"Sucks to go through all that for nothing." Yayap smashed open a nearby supply crate, revealing that a pair of swarmers were hiding inside it rather than ammo or credits. He quickly smashed them with his arm, leaving them as nothing more than smears on the floor. "How did they even get in that crate?"
Krunch and Yayap walked over to Tali, who was busy with something at a workbench. Before Yayap could say anything the vent directly behind where the quarian was working exploded outward and a slasher came through and grabbed Tali.
Three quick shots from Yayap's plasma cutter killed the necromorph. Tali was surprised at how good Yayap's aim had been. That necromorph was all over her yet he didn't hit her on accident.
"Thanks."
"What were you working on?" the unggoy asked.
"This." Tali handed Yayap a RC-DS ripper. "I think you make better use of this than I would." The quarian spent the next few minutes showing the unggoy how to use the tool. When Yayap felt he had a good understanding, the ripper was affixed to his left forearm.
The trio went and collected Isaac, who had been playing with a nearby store kiosk and took a lift up to the asteroid mining control room. They used the access key they had acquired to get past the locked door.
"What a piece of junk," Lena'Xel said when she saw the ship.
"Better than your piece of junk. And mine got wrecked by the goddam necromorphs."
Zaeed's group reached the Millennium Falcon. It was another short trek but once again it was full of necromorphs. Zaeed figured at the rate they were going they would kill all the necromorphs and could just pilot the Ishimura to safety.
Since the landing supports had been destroyed the group had to enter the old freighter from one of its top hatches.
Once inside, Lena felt the need once again to express her dissatisfaction with the Millennium Falcon. Not only was the ship a hoarder's wet dream, but the actual components of the Falcon were heavily used. Lena was accustomed to saving old parts but she found the state of the ship to be unacceptable.
"I don't even think these are going to work," Lena said as she carefully tried to remove a few parts she needed.
"Don't bitch and complain to me," Zaeed warned the quarian. "Those parts are going to fix your ship and get us the hell out of here."
"I don't know. I think we might end up stranded here…"
"Then we're all fucked."
"Could you guys help me out here?" Lena wondered what the others were doing that was so much more important than getting the parts they needed.
"We're busy," Zaeed said.
"Doing what?" The quarian got up and looked to see what the three bounty hunters and the Ishimura crewmember were doing.
"Taking care of some business. Go back to worrying about the ship's parts." Zaeed was having Kyne and the droids gather up some of his belongings. Zaeed had to accept the fact that he was going to have to abandon his ship, but that didn't mean he had to abandon his stuff. He especially wasn't going to leave Jesse behind; there was no way in hell he was going to leave his shitty old assault rifle.
With the parts they needed (and a great deal of Zaeed's stuff), the group started to make their way back to the Ebon Hawk to start working on repairs.
Tali's group finally reached the mining bay. It had certainly taken them long enough. Between all the necromorphs and squadmates wandering off on their own it was a miracle they had arrived at all.
"Entering zero gravity." Upon hearing the ship's VI, Yayap stayed back in the corridor. He had no desire to go floating around the room helplessly.
That left Krunch, Tali and Isaac to deal with the mining bay.
"We have to destroy those tethers." Tali pointed at a large wheel-like object.
"The wheel?" Krunch asked.
"Yes, Krunch. The wheels."
The slig wasn't entirely sure how he could destroy such a large device with just his assault rifle. So he did the only logical thing that came to his simple mind: he shot the parts of the wheel that were glowing. It worked.
Isaac jumped up to the ceiling and destroyed the second gravity tether with his plasma cutter. With the second tether destroyed a pair of leapers emerged out of the darkness. Though they were different from the ones the survivors had encountered before. They were darker in coloration and could absorb much more damage. But they weren't invincible and the trio was able to kill them.
"The other two are on the outside of the ship," Tali said.
"Looks like you'll have to go on without me." Krunch waved off Tali and Isaac as they jumped onto the asteroid and walked around it until they were outside the Ishimura.
"Entering vacuum."
Lurkers were waiting for them. Tali half-guessed she and Isaac would have had to deal with some form of enemy. It could never be easy. They killed the lurkers and destroyed the two remaining gravity tethers.
"Warning. Payload 8772 is no longer tethered. Untrained personnel should leave the area immediately."
Isaac planted the SOS beacon on the asteroid. The beacon momentarily warbled out some unidentifiable comm static. The engineer followed Tali back into the Ishimura where they reunited with Krunch and left the mining bay.
"Exiting zero gravity."
"Yes thank you, ship, I wasn't aware of that," Krunch said.
"Everything go alright?" Yayap asked as they started to backtrack to the mining control room.
"Of course everything went alright. We're all alive aren't we?" Tali asked.
"I don't know. Maybe one of you guys dropped the beacon and it's floating aimlessly around space for all I know."
"Nice to know you have such confidence in us," Tali said.
"Oh, I do. Tons of confidence…" That you might fuck something up, Yayap thought to himself.
"Dinner will be served in the Mess Hall in ten minutes," the Ishimura's VI announced.
"I could go for some dinner," Krunch said.
"I don't think we can get to the mess hall in time," Yayap said, "plus, we're not supposed to eat anything, remember?"
"Yeah, yeah. How could I forget?"
Few necromorphs blocked their path and they were able to get back to the mining control room without any serious problems.
Isaac went over to the main computer and punched a few buttons.
"Payload 8772 launched."
Kendra came in: "Beacon's on its way. All functions normal, and broadcasting wide band. Now we just have to hope somebody's listening. We'll position the array receiver. I should be able to leave this open. What? The comms array receiver isn't responding! Isaac, can you guys get back to the bridge? We need to get that array online or we can't receive signals from anyone responding to the beacon!"
Krunch groaned. "Dammit! Does nothing on this ship work right?"
The quarantine suddenly activated, trapping them all in the mining control room.
"The quarantine procedures still work," Tali said.
A pair of slashers broke in through the vents. Like the leapers in the mining bay, the slashers were darker in coloration than the typical necromorph was.
"How does the ship know these things are here before they even show up?" Krunch fired at one of the slashers. Everything was going normally as every previous fight had—until his rifle clicked empty. The slig's weapon was all out of ammo.
Yayap tried out his new ripper. He sent a spinning blade out that cut apart the two slashers easily.
"Quarantine lifted."
"Fuck! I'm out of ammo!" Krunch complained.
"Don't worry. We'll find you something to use on the way," Yayap said.
"You have two weapons! Give me one!"
"I'm not giving up my ripper. This thing is fun!"
"Then give me the plasma cutter."
"Could you two walk and argue, please?" Tali asked. "We need to get back to the others."
The group started moving.
"The ripper has limited range. I still need my plasma cutter," Yayap reasoned.
"Well, I need something!"
"I said we'd find you something. Relax."
"Yeah, right. We get mobbed by a bunch of necromorphs and I'm running."
Isaac, Krunch, Tali, and Yayap finally returned to RIG Room.
"How'd it go?" Vinyl asked. It was good to see that they had all returned from their assignment.
"The beacon is away. But the comms array is busted and we gotta go back up to the bridge and help them fix it," Yayap said. Vinyl had no idea what any of that meant. She didn't understand why they needed to launch a 'beacon,' or where they were even sending it. And Vinyl didn't even try to guess what a comms array was.
"How's the mech?" Tali asked. She was expecting that the Separatist would have screwed up and accomplished nothing while the rest of them had been doing the real work.
"Good as new," Zako said with a hint of pride, "I even bought a pulse rifle for it at the store." The loki mech was standing at attention with a SWS motorized pulse rifle in its hands.
"Hey, I need a new weapon," Krunch spoke up. "My T-1 ran out of ammo."
"Here, take this plasma cutter." Zako handed the slig the plasma cutter Lyra had shot him with. "It's out of ammo though. You need to go buy some at the store."
"Right." Krunch handed off his empty weapon for Tali to hold on to. Yayap was having her hold on to his empty needler so the slig figured he could do the same. The others made small talk (with the exception of Isaac) as Krunch bought some ammo. When they were all set they headed back toward the tram station.
Inside the cryo lab on the medical deck, the Hunter began to stir, despite still being imprisoned in the cryo tube. The Hunter was not trying to break out of the tube; something was trying to break out of the Hunter. The necromorph's chest extended twice before erupting—a horrid snake-like creature, a xenomorph chestburster, exploded forward out of the Hunter and through the hole in the cryo tube. It let out a tiny screech and looking around, sizing up its surroundings. Soon it bolted into the safety of the darkness.