That evening, the entire motley crew turned up the mess hall to watch the event. It was like a party, complete with a variety of tasty food straight out of the replicator. Jannika didn't even care whatever sort of exercise program Melissa might decide to put them through tomorrow over it. She couldn't help but shake a niggling worry about the entire business, though. Just paranoia, really? After listening to Tasha's stories about how the Karzan Universe had been invaded multiple times by beings from other universes, she couldn't help but wonder if the same couldn't happen here.
"This is going to be great," Boston said around a mouthful of popcorn. "I've never gotten to see one of the corp's biggest projects tested before release before."
Anastasia munched on a bowl of tortilla chips and salsa. "Much as our time in this universe has been interesting, to say the least, it is definitely growing time to be moving on, preferably before we discover ourselves in further trouble with the government and other entities which may look to be doing unfavorable and unpleasant things toward us."
"Pandora knows we're here and watching, doesn't she," Tasha commented.
"Indeed she does," Sleipnir said. "She's most interested in the results herself and doesn't mind us watching."
"I'd just hate to be crashing someone's party and having to worry about someone coming up into orbit to shoot us down," Tasha said dryly.
"Shh, the show's starting," Jannika said, leaning forward to peer intently at the screen.
On the viewscreen in the mess hall, the feed from the portal showed it powering up slowly, flickering and pulsating light moving along the tubes running up its sides. Vibrant blue energy flows through the device, and the warp coil up on top began to radiate shimmering blue light. Slowly, the space within the gateway began to waver and twist upon itself, and the air was striated with dark and bright bands, moving about wildly like serpents. They spun and twirled about within the gate, until a swirling vortex appeared, black as oblivion and white as heaven.
The scientists around the portal babbled excitedly, taking measurements and examining readings. Then after a few moments, the surface of the vortax rippled. At first, the scientists wondered if it was destabilizing, but then something poked its way through. A horn, and then a beast, Jannika could only think that it looked like a shaggy gray unicorn. It snorted and nickered, and peered about the room. The scientists stared and exclaimed excitedly, and one of them tried to shoot a tranquilizer dart at it. The beast was struck in the rump, and it neighed in protest, then turned and bolted back through the vortex.
"Bloody fools," Tasha muttered. "Why did they go and do that?"
"I suppose they wanted to capture the creature and examine it more closely," Boston said, frowning. "I'm just not going to make any comments about what it looked like, either."
"They did not even attempt to communicate with the being first," Anastasia said. "Nor did they have any indication on whether or not it was actually sentient."
Down below, the viewscreen was showing the scientists insistantly poking forward a team of explorers that had been chosen to head through the portal and investigate what might be on the other side. They were more than a little nervous after the previous display, but they headed forward and through the swirling vortex nonetheless.
"Anyone taking bets on them being eaten by unicorns?" Jannika said.
Boston commented, "You know, this is the point where someone really should say something like 'You shouldn't joke about that.' But I don't think anyone that serious and boring is aboard this spaceship."
Even as the scientists continued taking readings excitedly, a few minutes later, the team came back through the portal at a run screaming, "Shut it down! Shut it down!"
"What's going on?" a scientist said. "What happened?"
"Shut it down! Now!" exclaimed the team leader. He turned and looked toward the gateway and uttered, "Oh fuck."
Through the swirling vortex, a herd of very angry-looking unicorns stampeded in. They proceeded to assail the crew working on the gateway, impaling them on their horns and kicking them with their hooves. The scene quickly turned into a bloody mess, leaving no one still alive to be able to shut down the gateway again. They did, however, manage to steal the entrance to the gate room from outside.
"Man, am I glad we're nowhere near there," Jannika murmured.
The unicorns were in a state of frenzied panic, and began to pound at the doors to get out. Jannika had to wonder why they didn't just head back through the portal, but figured that they must have seen humans on the other side of that doorway and wanted revenge. The things were a lot stronger than they looked, and despite whatever precautions Pandora Corp's scientists might have made, the creatures managed to use their horns to pry their way out and manipulate some of the mechanisms that were keeping the room locked down. Before long, the unicorns were running loose throughout the entire facility.
"So," Tasha said. "I wonder if anyone would mind if we went and retrieved that warp coil while they're busy with that."
"Risky," Jannika said. "The unicorns wouldn't know the difference between us and the people they were fighting."
"Wait, you're proposing stealing from Pandora Corp?" Boston said, appalled.
"Not at all," Tasha replied lightly. "Merely retrieving equipment from an obviously dangerous area."
"But it's built into the gateway."
Jannika said, "It shouldn't be too tough to remove intact, from the schematics I looked at. The trouble, of course, is getting in there and past those unicorns without being mauled or skewered."
"It could be done," Melissa put in.
"Wait, wait, wait," Boston said, holding up his hands. "Potentially stealing aside, you're not telling me you want to go into a monster-infested facility here?"
"You're welcome to stay behind," Tasha said with a grin.
"This is insane, I tell you," Boston said. "Somebody has to be the voice of reason here."
"When does the voice of reason ever get listened to?" Jannika said. "I'm just surprised that it wasn't me who proposed this idea. Sleipnir, can you bring us down somewhere nearby that we could safely get into the facility from?"
"Will do," Sleipnir said. "And I'll presume that you want to be able to safely get out of the facility again afterwards."
"That would be a reasonable assumption to be making, yes," Jannika said dryly.
Melissa stood up and stretched a bit, and said, "Bring your weapons and equipment and get ready. We'll see just how well you've been paying attention in your training. Just whatever you do, if I tell you to do something, it would most likely be in your best interests to actually do it and not argue with me or something stupid like that. Understand?"
"Loud and clear," Tasha said. "You know your stuff better than we do. You're the boss."
"Good," Melissa said with a grin. "Meet me in the embarkation room when you're ready. We head out once we touch down." She headed off out of the bridge.
"Well, you heard her, guys, let's get moving," Tasha said.
They went off and collected their various weapons, the real ones they had stashed away and not the non-lethal training sorts that they had been working with for target practice. Killing someone or punching a hole in the side of the ship due to a training accident would not have been what they had had in mind with that. Melissa was already waiting for them, leaning casually next to the main hatch. Jannika had a blazer rifle in hand, a stun stick and a pistol at her belt, and Loki in her backpack.
"If they start paying undue attention to me," Sleipnir said, "I'll have to take off and wait in orbit. But I doubt they will, or that they'll even realize that I'm not just another building or piece of furniture. They seem to be mainly going after humans, and only attacking doors and the like if they've trapped them in. The unicorns seem like they just want to be outside, and once they're outside they're not being particularly eager to get inside again."
"Good to know," Tasha said. "Are there still people inside?"
"Some survivors, I think. There's no one still in the gate room, but there might be some hiding out or trying to clean up the mess."
"Alright, time to go, people," Melissa said.
Melissa popped open the hatch and headed out toward the facility. It was a remote base on the far side of planet Pandora from their primary trade and production facilities, and from the outside it looked pretty unremarkable. There were doubtless thousands of such buildings scattered across the planet, with no one the wiser about just what might be going on inside. Jannika had to wonder precisely what other top secret projects Pandora Corp might be getting into at the moment, and whether any of those would have galactic consequences as well. That would be a concern for another time, however, and very probably never for them at least.
The facility's doors had been ripped and smashed open, forced apart by desparate horns and hooves. In the distance, the sounds of hooves beating against cement could be heard, punctuated by the occasional scream and weapons fire. Melissa nodded to the group and headed toward the building's entrance. Some of the lights were still on inside, but others were flickering or out completely. The hallway was splattered with blood and gore, and most of the doors along the sides had been bashed open.
Further down the hallway, a unicorn burst out from a side corridor and came trampling toward them. It hardly even had a chance to get close before Melissa and Tasha's plasma fire took it down. Jannika almost had to feel guilty about the entire business. It wasn't the unicorns' fault that they were trapped here. But she had to take a realistic look at it, that the creatures were an immediate danger to them and others.
"The poor things," Anastasia murmured, echoing her thoughts.
"That poor thing was trying to kill you," Melissa pointed out quietly. "Remember that. Let's keep moving."
They headed down to the next floor below, trying to make their way to the gate room. The carnage was worse here, as more people were on this floor for the gate opening than on the main level. They heard the sounds of movement and breathing coming from one of the air vents, and saw that the cover had not been replaced very precisely.
"You can come out now," Tasha said. "They seem to be gone for the moment."
A man in a bloody lab coat poked his head hesitantly out of the ventilation duct. "Where did they go? Who are you?"
"We're here to help," Jannika said. "Did anyone manage to shut down the gateway?"
"N-No, I don't think so," the man said.
"We have to get in there and shut it down, before more of those things come through," Jannika said. "Think you can make it out of here alright, or would you rather go with us?"
"I'll stick with you," he said, eying their weaponry. "Someone needs to know how to shut it down. I'm Dr. Kleven, by the way."
"Nice to meet you. Let's go," Jannika said.
They hardly managed with brief introductions as they scrambled down the bloody corridors. Jannika would have never believed that unicorns could be so vicious if she hadn't seen the evidence of it for herself, but then, prior to this, she might not have believed they really existed in the first place. Down another flight of stairs, they came at last to the gate room, through heavily mangled open doors. The swirling vortex was still active, however at least nothing appeared to be coming through it at the moment.
"Can you shut it down?" Jannika asked.
"I just need to get to the control booth over there," Dr. Kleven said. "It'll take a while though, the systems might have been damaged in the attack."
"Melissa, I want you to protect Dr. Kleven as he gets that gate shut down," Tasha said. "Boston, you stay with them. Jannika and Nastya, I'd like you to come with me. We should see about securing the area and checking for survivors."
Melissa gave the slightest roll of her eyes and said, "Right, have fun."
The three of them headed off down the nearby corridor. Jannika felt a bit nervous about not having Melissa around, but admittedly there didn't seem to be anymore unicorns left on this floor at least. It was hard to believe that they might find any survivors through this mess of carnage, though. The sheer number of bloody and broken bodies almost made Jannika sick. She hadn't thought that there were this many people involved, and figured most of the ones involved on the gate project must now be dead.
As Tasha and Anastasia went over to give first aid to a wounded scientist, Jannika thought she heard a scraping noise coming from one of the side doors. It looked like it might be a storage closet of some sort, and she thought it must be a survivor who had locked themselves up inside but now was having trouble getting out again. She headed over and opened the door. To her surprise, the closet was occupied by a small gray unicorn, one of its hind legs bent at a horrible angle. The creature looked up at her with fearful, pleading brown eyes.
"You poor thing," Jannika murmured softly. "What happened to you?"
Jannika reached out a hand to touch it softly, but the unicorn whimpered pathetically and shied away from her. The leg looked like it might be broken, but it was hard to tell from here given the poor lighting.
"There now, it's alright," Jannika said soothingly. "I won't hurt you. I promise. Just let me take a look at that leg, okay?"
The creature relaxed a little under her quiet words, and she was able to get in closer and examine it. From the looks of things, it wasn't hurt beyond some cuts and scrapes, and the leg wasn't actually broken, just jammed in against a piece of some sort of technical equipment. With Jannika's help, the unicorn was able to extricate itself from the closet. She dug around in her backpack for some first aid supplies to dab at its cuts and make sure that it wasn't bleeding or going to get infected.
"There now, all better?" Jannika said. "You want something to eat? I think I've got something in here for you."
She pulled out a chocolate bar from her pack. Always one to be carrying some sort of junk food around, at least it wasn't space rations or the like. She'd given herself the excuse that it was quick energy, but she knew perfectly well that that was bullshit and she'd only taken it because it was tasty. She unwrapped it and offered a bit of it to the unicorn. Eagerly, the beast munched up the chocolate out of her fingers, then nosed about for the rest of it, sniffing at the wrapper intently.
Jannika laughed softly. "Alright, alright, here you go."
She pulled off the wrapper carefully and fed the remainder of it to the creature. Once it was done eating, the unicorn nuzzled against her affectionately, whickering at her fondly. She patted it gently on the neck, chuckling and shaking her head a bit. What was she ever going to do with a unicorn? Besides try to send it home, anyway.
Jannika tapped her wrist comm and said, "Jannika to all units. Please don't hurt my new friend."
"I'm not even going to ask what you're doing," Melissa's reply came over the comm.
The unicorn spooked a little at the voice and gave Jannika's wrist an odd look. "It's a talking device," Jannika explained, showing the wrist device to it. "See? It won't hurt you."
After staring at the thing for a few moments more, the unicorn seemed to decide that the wrist-comm was not a threat of any sort, and relaxed again.
"Hmm," Jannika said. "You don't look as big as the other unicorns, so I guess you're not fully grown yet. And if your anatomy is anything like a horse's anatomy, I'm guessing that you'd be a girl unicorn. Come on, let's go meet my friends. I'm sure you'll like them, but they probably don't have any chocolate to give you."
"Your new friend, I presume?" Tasha said in amusement as she approached.
The unicorn shied away from them at first, but then quickly realized that these humans weren't shooting at her or attempting to hurt her. Once that got through her head, she approached Tasha and Anastasia curiously, sniffing about at them and examining them from all angles. She spent a few more minutes sniffing at Tasha, and made an odd expression and snorted a bit, then backed away and cocked her head at Tasha, looking at her in puzzlement.
"I don't think it likes me," Tasha said dryly.
"Tasha's a vampire, little one," Jannika said to the unicorn. "Don't worry. She won't bite. She sticks to humans."
"We'd best head back to the gate room," Tasha said. "And see about getting that warp coil. If the gate's not shut down yet, we might still be able to send this one home again."
They went back to the portal room, the young unicorn diligently following Jannika all the way. When they arrived back in the room, Melissa promptly pointed a gun at the creature, and raised an eyebrow. The unicorn shied away and tried to hide behind Jannika and her friends.
"What did you do, bring home a pet?" Melissa scoffed. "I take my eyes off you girls for five minutes and you start bringing home cute furry creatures."
"Can we keep her?" Jannika said lightly.
Dr. Kleven looked up and over at them and said, "Oh dear, oh dear. We should send it back while we still can. Take it over to the portal, quickly now, girls!"
"Come on," Jannika said gently to the unicorn. "You want to go home, don't you? Where it's nice and safe and scary two-legged people aren't pointing guns at you?"
The creature ignored Jannika and strode over toward the control booth where Dr. Kleven had been working. She gestured with her horn as if to direct him to move away from the console. Confused, he stepped back, quite nervous about being close to the creature. Sniffing and poking at the controls for a moment, the unicorn then bit down on a lever and pulled it back, and kicked at another console, causing sparks to fly as it lost power. In the main gate room, the glowing pipes around the gateway went dark, and the swirling vortex shimmered out of existence.
Jannika blinked, and looked in confusion at Dr. Kleven. "Wait a minute, you were actually trying to shut the gate down, weren't you?"
"Of course I was!" Dr. Kleven shouted. "And get this monster away from me!"
The unicorn turned to him, glaring at him threateningly and lowering her horn to point straight as his chest. Terrified, he backed up against a wall, but couldn't go any further. Jannika and Tasha stepped up on either side of the unicorn, looking at him intently.
"You weren't actually trying to do that at all, were you?" Tasha said. "What were you trying to do?"
"Please don't hurt me! Get this thing away from me! You don't know what you're doing! I can't let the gate project be sabotaged! It took months of work just to get it to start up. I'd never be able to start it up a second time. I was trying to recalibrate it to open a portal to a different world instead."
"Why?" Jannika said. "What would you possibly hope to accomplish at this point? Starting another alien invasion of differentcritters? And what in the galaxy were your compatriots thinking trying to tranq that unicorn that came in first?"
"To keep any more of the monsters from coming in, of course!" Dr. Kleven said frantically. "Please get this thing off of me! Spare me! Have mercy! I'll do anything!"
"Right," Jannika said with a smirk. "How about you tell us how to safely extricate the warp coil and let us walk away with it without alerting your superiors?"
His eyes widened. "That's why you came here? You're just thieves looking to steal our technology? What would you do with it?"
"We're not thieves," Tasha said. "And we know how to use it safely. We just want to get home again, that's all."
"Dr. Kleven, you do not understand our situation here," Anastasia said to him. "I and Natasha here came to this universe from another dimension on the event of your first warp coil experiment, and we have been attempting to find a way back ever since. If we are feeling particularly generous upon your cooperation, we may decide to share our interdimensional drive technology with your corporation before we leave."
"I don't have the authority to authorize such a thing!" Dr. Kleven said. "But go ahead, take it! I can't stop you! It just... unscrews!"
Jannika smirked at him and headed over toward the gate to check it out. There was a service ladder heading up the side allowing relatively easy access to the warp coil up top. She pulled out her tools and proceeded to work on 'unscrewing' it as Dr. Kleven had said. Sure enough, it came out easily enough, and she extracted the warp coil and climbed down with it in her hands. It was a surprisingly light and small object for how much work they'd put into being able to get their hands on it. Just a little spiral that could change the universe forever.
When she returned to the booth, Dr. Kleven was still panicking and being held at horn point by the unicorn. "You've got what you came for. Are you going to let me go now?"
"I think I'll leave that up to my new friend to decide," Jannika said. "What do you say, girl? Should we let him go?"
The unicorn nickered, then in reply, impaled the scientist on her horn, neatly piercing his heart clean through. She pulled her horn loose and let the surprised-looking body slide to the floor. Jannika smirked broadly and pulled out a cloth to wipe the blood off the creature's horn.
"Good enough answer," Jannika said.
"I like your new friend," Melissa said wryly.
Jannika chuckled softly and patted the unicorn on the neck. "I guess you're not going home after all. Come on, let's get out of here, before the planetary guard or something shows up."
They made their way back out of the facility and back to where Sleipnir was parked, the unicorn obediently following after them and occasionally kicking at one of the corpses along the way. The area outside the facility was quiet at the moment, in the dead of night, although in the distance the sounds of ships approaching could be heard. They got back to the ship quickly and Jannika opened up the cargo hold, ushering the unicorn inside along with the rest of them. Sleipnir took off once they were all inside and the cargo bay doors closed.
"I'm afraid you'll have to stay in the cargo hold," Jannika said. "I don't think those hooves would be good for negotiating the ladder. We'll be sure to bring you food and anything you might need."
"Like a bucket," Tasha pointed out.
"Right," Jannika said. "So, hmm. What are we going to call you, girl?"
The unicorn whickered something that sounded like, "Hahihihi."
"What was that?" Jannika said.
"Hahihihi," repeated the unicorn.
"I believe that was meant to be her name," Anastasia said.
"Hahihihi," Jannika said slowly. "Right. Uh, mind if we call you Giggles?"
The unicorn whickered in amusement. "I don't think she minds," Anastasia said with a smirk.
"Excuse me," Sleipnir said. "But do you guys want to set a course for another system, or shall we just continue to hang around in orbit until they start suspecting us of foul play?"
"Go ahead," Jannika said. "Once I make some arrangements for Giggles here so that she's comfortable, I'll see about installing this warp coil. The ship was designed so that it could be just plugged in, right?"
"Correct," Sleipnir said. "Although I'm not sure it's going to be quite as helpful as you'd hoped."
"What do you mean?" Jannika wondered, raising an eyebrow.
"I mean that if you intend to leave the universe, we would require a destination," Sleipnir explained. "I do not have any coordinates for the universes Tasha and Anastasia have been speaking of in order to travel to any of them."
"Now you tell me," Jannika muttered, shaking her head. "We'll figure something out. First things first." She patted Giggles on the back. "I'll be back shortly with some things for you, okay?"
The unicorn whickered at her, and with a grin, Jannika headed out along with the rest of the crew. The others scattered off to their quarters, the mess hall, and the rec room, while Jannika went up to the engine room to secure the warp coil first before heading to the mess hall to get some things replicated. A bucket, some blankets, a bit of food... She could only hope that with the intelligence displayed so far, that Giggles would be able to understand relieving herself in a bucket rather than on the floor. She hadn't really intended their ship to become a stable or anything. She could also only hope that the creature's diet wasn't anything too strange or that it wasn't allergic to one thing or another that she might inadvertently feed her.
Giggles seemed happy enough with the arrangements, however, and nuzzled Jannika in the shoulder affectionately when she brought in and set up the items for her. Jannika chuckled softly and sat down across from her, looking over the unicorn thoughtfully.
"I wish I could really talk to you," Jannika said. "There's so much I'd love to ask you. Like why did you come through the portal, and how did you wind up in that closet? Were you just following the rest of your herd so that you didn't get left behind, or did you have reasons of your own for coming? Maybe you were as curious as I am about seeing other universes, going places you've never been before..."
Giggles whinneyed, and bobbed her head. Jannika raised an eyebrow and peered at her thoughtfully, wondering if she was trying to say something. Oh, for a universal translator or something. Aliens inexplicably speaking English was rarely a problem in science fiction!
"Was that a yea or a neigh?" Jannika said with a smirk. "So, can you actually understand what I'm saying to you, then?"
Giggles shook her head up and down again, almost as if in a nod, and whickered at her.
"I'm going to take that as a yes," Jannika said pensively. "Interesting. Hmm, you know, come to think... Sleipnir, you say you don't have the coordinates for the place Tasha mentioned she wanted to go. Do you have the ones for the universe Pandora Corp opened that portal to? The one where the unicorns were from?"
The unicorn snorted and neighed, shaking her head from side to side and stamping her front hoof. Jannika looked toward her in puzzlement and raised an eyebrow.
"What, you don't want to go back there, even to see if the warp coil works?" Jannika wondered. "I'm not exactly planning on shoving you off if you don't want to go, after all."
Giggles seemed a little mollified, but still snorted softly. Sleipnir said, "Yes, I do have the coordinates for that particular universe if you really want to go there."
"Sleipnir, is there any way you can translate what Giggles is trying to say to me?" Jannika said. "I mean, the body language is coming across clearly enough, but it makes it a bit one-sided and I imagine it must be rather difficult for her to try to convey any more complex concepts and statements."
"What do I look like, the Starship Enterprise?" Sleipnir said dryly. "But no, seriously, I could, but it would take a while to build a basic vocabulary. She also clearly has some minor psychic power to be able to understand us and communicate as much as she's managed."
"I suppose that might be why she turned on Dr. Kleven but knew the rest of us really meant her no harm," Jannika murmured thoughtfully.
Giggles nodded her head and whickered. Sleipnir said, "But anyway, yes, I could try to start building a database by showing her images and having her state what they are in her language. It would take time, of course, but eventually I might be able to make a decent translation device possible."
"Alright," Jannika said, and looked to Giggles. "Would you be willing to do that?" Giggles nodded enthusiastically. "Okay. You can get started on that whenever you like. I'm going to go get some lunch and some sleep. Give a whinny if you need anything."