Chapter 2: Marooned
As Jenosa ship traveled to her destination – the remote planet known as Inos – she had taken a little time to practice with the gauntlets. The technician said she should, as he told her that other people first using them had trouble trying to place an accurate shot. Perhaps in their arms the gauntlets were unwieldy weapons, but to Jenosa, she had a firms grasp. She barely missed her first target, which was an empty crate she set up in one of the aft storage compartments of her ship.
Nobody could have guess that she had such a good arm; and it came from years of playing dodge ball and tossing grenades.
Even still, the energy projectiles created by the gauntlets didn't reveal anything fancy that caught her eye. They simply nailed the targets like any other gun could, with probably a similar amount of force; the only difference was that it was shorter ranged than most guns, and couldn't be done quickly or instantaneously, which bugged her a bit. Yes, she was quick with the gauntlets, but regular firearms were quicker, and speed was often of the essence to the survival of Jenosa.
She opened an actual crate that was filled with ammunition and a couple of guns and took out her favored type sidearm: a handgun. An energy blaster to say the least; actually, two energy blasters and a belt to hold them in. Light, easy to carry and aim, and could be dual wielded, that what she loved about these kind of guns, and although she would other weapons for the right occasion, handguns were like a tradition to her. Heavy weapons were the contrary for her, as she just didn't have strength to bear with them and they just slowed her down; not say that she didn't use them when other weapons just didn't cut it.
As she flipped one of the guns in her hand, embracing the light weight feel as though it were an old friend, the same burning questions blazed into her head again: Why this suit? She doubted the Military was stupid enough to actually would swap the guns for gauntlets, not that she didn't give credit to their over abundance of brains. But why make these weapons in the first place? she thought.
She tried to think up a couple of reasons. The guy did say this suit couldn't be affected by EMPs of any kind, she pondered, so I suppose the planet or lab that I'm going has some electronic field disrupting weapons from normally functioning. Every other reason that she attempted to brainstorm just didn't seem logical to the Military's standards and style.
But then she thought about what the lab was supposed to be working on. She was given barely any information about it, other than the fact that it was a biohazardous, and that she needed this suit to protect her from whatever was in the lab. She was fine as long she didn't have to worry about getting sick, but there were other aspects of the suit that just didn't fit in. That mostly being it acting likes body armor, which really was completely useless for when you were working with germs and viruses.
Nothing she thought up made sense with why she was given this suit, and that disgruntled. She hated having to do missions without barely any details, and it was justified for good reasons; but with her contract, she just had to take the risks. She took risks all the time, and hell, the life of a bounty hunter was a risk itself, and she was fine with that kind of danger. In fact, she kind of enjoyed that aspect of her life, as it kept on her on edge, active and always moving. She never dared to fly herself out and put herself on the top like other wannabe did, always making sure she was ambiguous as possible so she wouldn't be target of them as well as other people; yet the dangers that she did have to go through generated this energy inside of her that she enjoyed.
She sighed, shaking her head, her ponytail dancing with her and she placed her guns in their holsters. She wasn't going to get anywhere with all this thinking, and it seemed best to do what she always did: go down there, find out what she was dealing with, get it out of her way and complete her objectives. That was what she liked to do, not sit around and ponder a question that could be big as the "Meaning of Life" itself. As far as she was concerned, the "Meaning of Life" to her was to wake up, eat, kick some ass, get paid, enjoy your freedom, and then go back to bed.
She decided it was time to head back to the front of her ship. Magellan was in control of the vessel and making sure it was on its destination, and she had a good hunch they were almost there.
The ship that she was one was a slightly modified cruiser, an often standard transport for most people, often that being bounty hunters themselves. People like Jenosa would often get newer, more recent models, while others would rather settle with the same ship and simply modify it. Some have even come call their ship their own, treating as though it were a person, and of course, there are those who simply use ships to get around and actually have a home to go to.
Jenosa's home was, well, herself; in other words, she really didn't have a home, not that she lost hers or couldn't make one; she just didn't have the need for one. She was constantly one the move, roaming about and visiting good friends in her free time, occasionally checking into a hotel, though any the ship she flew on often acted like a home. More than often, she would check into the same apartment a lot, but she felt there really wasn't anything for her to truly call 'home', as she a home was defined by a was unique comfort and, in a sense, a place to call their own.
The front of the ship, which was so spacious that looked more like a bridge more than a cockpit, if one could call it a cockpit at all; and spacious was something that Jenosa enjoyed, as she liked have a lot of room to move around in. She took notice that ship was no longer in transit, an earth-like planet in view, albeit a bit smaller than the actual earth.
"I'm taking this is Inos," Jenosa stated, peering through the glass of her ship.
"Affirmative," her A.I. replied simply.
"Y'know, it doesn't look like some of t hose uglier dust up, terra formed planets we sometimes get sent to," she commented out loud, knowing that nobody including her A.I. would respond, but it always made her feel good when to say her thoughts out loud when she was alone. It annoyed her to keep her own thoughts bottle up inside of her, and, despite her profession, she had always been outward person.
In which case, the planet that she was looking down at appeared serene and beautiful, if not perhaps exotic, and it had this atmosphere of isolation, as though nobody could find it unless given the exact location. After giving a swift check to the sensor data, it looked to her that she and this little remote planet were completely alone.
Perhaps it was what this planet held that was garnering all those researchers' attention, she thought, knowing that the most exotic places could contain extremely deadly critters. Well, the only way to find out was go down and salvage whatever she could.
"Magellan, can you lock onto that research facilities beacon?" she asked with a hint of command in her voice.
"Processing…locating beacon…beacon located. Establish geosynchronization with orbit of Inos?"
"Yeah, you know the rest Magellan. Land this puppy."
"Affirmative, establishing geosynchronization."
As the ship changed its course, Jenosa stared down at the planet, hoping that her eyes might be able make any weird anomalies on the planet's surface, like a lightning flash of an ion cloud or storm. However, from the looks of the planet, it appeared untouched by anything like an ion storm, plus there didn't seem to be any kind of cloud activity on the surface. Everything seemed pretty tranquil, and the idea of electronic interference appeared to be more non-existent the longer she peered.
The visual silence was broken when she caught a flash of light emanate from the surface, and for a small second, thought there was actually a storm on the surface. However, the flash quickly turned into a pure white beam that lanced from one of the planet's continents at her ship.
Everything suddenly shook violently, as though it had just been bombarded with a small warhead, and the interior was filled with light that momentarily basked its detail from her eyes. Jenosa's reflexes kicked into gear as they always had, bending her legs and crouching in order to keep her balance, swearing with surprised but wincing eyes as she did.
In the midst of the rumbling, Jenosa yelled, "Woah, Magellan, wh-what's going on? What the heck's happening?"
"Vessel appears to be targeted by a high-intensity energy beam being launched from the coordinates of research lab 56. Searching data banks for beam specifications…negative, no information about beam specifications found."
Jenosa raised a brow of anger at this, "Since when do remote research stations carry high-intensity energy weapons. We're in the middle of Confederation space, miles away from the border." There was no doubt about, that research station possessed some kind of new planetary defense system, possibly a little project that the facility itself was working on. A beam of that magnitude couldn't have been constructed in a two-day's notice, and there was the huge fact that it seemed highly unlikely that anybody could even find this planet.
And yet, there was hostile intent lurking on that surface, and someone defiantly fired that beam.
Jenosa was half pissed and half worried, angry because she felt she not informed properly, and worried that this new beam type could pose a threat to her and her actual life. The vessel could dish out quite a few blasts, but who knew what this new beam could do.
The rumbling and light subsided just as quickly as it had come, and everything reverted back to silence with only the rumbling to slowly dissipate from the ship and ears of Jenosa. "Commencing damage assessment," the A.I. chimed, and in only a few seconds it reported, "Assessment complete. Hull integrity stable, no internal structure damage detected. Currently scanning for anomalies within or around vessel."
"Largest concentration appears to be in the reactor core and aft storage," the A.I replied, "Proceed with caution."
Jenosa subtly ignored the words "Proceed with caution," as it was a reflexive A.I. phrase that they said every time when dealing with foreign creatures. She didn't need to given that phrase when doing her job, nor when she was blasting out critters. All that she needed to know where they were, and she wasn't afraid of anything big, bad or ugly; only in her childhood had she ever been afraid, and it was that general fear of things that made her who she was today.
It was strange, but while she didn't like traveling and doing jobs with a lackluster of detail, her body could not help revel in the odd satisfaction of exploring and facing the unknown. Even detailed information could not always save you from sudden, surprising, unforeseen threats, and she always made ready to deal with these threats, to be a reflexive and quick thinker. Quick wit was one of her skills that had gotten her through a lot of tough situations and missions, and it was probably that she enjoyed revealing she was a gal that could take care of herself without the need of big guns or brute strength. That she was an independent woman who could kick butt with style.
Or was it the fear, which bigoted anxiety to fill her head, that, without her knowing it, became a cocktail of enjoyment like the enjoyment created when in a roller coaster ride, flying high in the air while enthralled with the thrill of being so high up; and at the same time, anxiety of possibly falling to your doom, an emotion that strangely made it more joyous for certain riders.
Or, it could be the simple fact that you were beat your opponent in spite of the fact of how dangerous he, she or it was, mocking them after even during the fight despite how intimidating they are; the ability to mock your enemy by simply using it to motivate you.
Quite possibly, it could be a combination of both the former and latter.
Jenosa didn't know what it exactly could be and could care less for the reason. All that she knew was that despite the fact that she was mostly interested in getting paid, there were times when she enjoyed her work.
As she moved out of the front of the ship, she squeezed one of her arms in an attempt to discern how tough this body armor was, but was unable to get an accurate idea. The guy did say this suit wasn't meant for heavy battles, she thought, supposing this was more a lightweight armor. It was definitely light, that was for sure, but even she knew that light could be equally strong as heavy.
In which case, it wasn't like she was going to stand around and become target practice for the foe.
She walked into the transition corridor that connected to both aft storage compartments and the reactor, as well as the escape pod, which was hidden and locked off by a sliding hatch on the floor. It was a very convenient connecting root, as it ran into the main rooms of the ship. As Magellan said, all the doors to these rooms were all closed. On one of the walls of the octagonal room was a computer screen that could display information of all sorts, from the status of the ship's systems to scanner readings, and could be changed on voice command, assuming an A.I. was there to pick up your voice, or manually on the console.
She wasn't interested in looking into the screen, but what it was currently displaying about the ship's system status grabbed her attention. Certain systems and other minor sections of the ship were reporting 'ERROR', and while Jenosa knew a ship to have its own minor bugs, these were just too many and all too sudden.
She skipped closer to the screen and asked, "Magellan, what's going on with the ship? Why does it seem as though it's going on the fritz?"
"There appears to be several minor malfunctions occurring throughout the vessel, though analysis is currently inconclusive as to why. Critical systems have not yet been affected."
She growled a "Damn, it must have been that beam."
"Further more," the A.I. continued, "unknown bio-matter has contaminated the reactor. Security doors have been closed in an attempt to isolate the contamination."
"Peachy, I guess these critters want to make a nest out of my ship," she said with a drop of sarcasm. The door that led to where the reactor was technically led to an engineering sections; there were two rooms, the one the door in the cross section led to the first room containing the dual warp cores that propelled the ship faster-than-light, and that room connected to next room with the actual power supply.
She decided to the first take on the after storage compartments first, so clean out the little sections before they became a nest too, other wise she would have to deal with bigger problems. Once that was done, the reactor room would be a one-way route for the critters in it, her being the moving wall of death.
And from the looks of it, the effects of the beam appeared to be only doing superficial work. Rather minor systems such as radar gear and general computer terminals were wonky, but everything else including life-support appeared to be in working.
Even before she opened the door, she could hear the faint but constant click-clack sound coming from inside the room, a tell-tale sign that she was dealing with insects of some sort. Her suspicions were justified as she came into the room to find the place crawling with brown centipede-like creatures, big and thick enough to be nearly the size of a man's chest, and gruesome enough to make regular women leap ten feet into the air and scream in fright like banshees.
As soon as she made her presence aware in the room, every single insect within the room, as if they were a single entity, stopped wondering around the room and immediately started towards her with intent in ripping her apart.
Muscles and reflexes tensed, Jenosa's arms immediately snapped up in front of her, guns pointed and aimed, and fired at the closest bugs first. She was met with a satisfying splorch as, thanks to dual wielding, two bugs met their fate in between their obsidian black eyes. Their heads exploded in a green mess by two, quick, well-placed blaster shots; and even more so, immediately after the head was blown off – and in that split second, the bug looked pretty much dead from that shot – more of the same green goo exploded out of the neck like a balloon being popped.
As she took precise aim at more bugs, Jenosa noticed out of the corner of her eye that the large splat of blood from her first two kills had an odd, dim glow emanating from them. 'Emanating', however, quickly became a word out of context as the glow itself rose out of the goo like a ghostly light, though still retaining its green color. The light, mist, or whatever it could be called, condensed into two eerily pulsing globs that floated unsupported in the air; and could give a person the sense the two bugs was strangely still alive.
Jenosa breathed a short "What the hell?" before too many bugs were closing in on her position, and, knowing where there was a clear spot, jumped with powerful acrobatic skills, summer saluting in the air as she did. She had no clue what those strange globs were, but they were a couple of meters apart from her position and didn't seem to be making any sort of approach. Right now she was more preoccupied with giant centipedes attempting to crawl up her legs and into the wrong area.
"Hah!" she laughed. She had expected with the way all these bugs had responded to her for them to be a bit more sma-
"Gah!" she said in surprise as one of the bugs had leapt off of a tall, stacked pile of crates and landed on her right arm; apparently, it had actually decided to take a bit of its time in crawling up the crates. The creature, too wide for its leg to come together and clasp on Jenosa's arms, clung with the use of its large mandible by biting into her should. Although delayed at first, the strength of the creature caused the stiffness of the armor to collapse a bit, and she gritted her teeth as pain pierced her shoulder.
This posed a snag for her jumping abilities, as the creature weighed her down quite a bit, and made it damn difficult to move her arm, particularly since her should we being constantly pierced. Hence, she was shooting frantically, though with barely a drop of aim, to clear the rest of the bugs that were closing in on her; thankfully, there were only a few left.
The little time spent shooting gave the latching critter a chance to climb up her shoulders and have a shot at her head. She easily heard the chittering bug and nudged its head with the head of her gun just in time, but now without one of the mandible creating a scar on one of her cheeks; the bug was then immediately blasted, and gooey blood splattered on her suit, some of her hair and face, mixing with the blood that poured out of her newly received scar.
She wiped it off of her face while wincing, feeling the burning pain from the wound as her hands moved against it; she was going to have to get a med kit for it. Her shoulder also felt sore from being potently pinched, and was glad she had this suit, other she probably wouldn't have had an arm. Of course, she'd been through worse spots.
She made a small survey where she stood and everything seemed to be pretty much clear; however, the room was now filled with floating, pulsating green blobs that glowed. Before she had a chance to do or say anything else, the blob of the bug that she killed on her shoulder had already formed and was quickly drifting towards Jenosa far too fast for her to react. She only had enough time to see it out of the corner of her before it made contact with her shoulder and disappeared into one of the lightning-blue lines.
An abnormal tingling, pulsating sensation had entered her shoulder in an instant, and she could immediately tell that stuff was inside of her. "Magellan, what just went inside my body?"
"Accessing wireless suit interface…processing. Result inconclusive. Substance appears to be unknown energy; no known match on files. Suit sensors are registering a bio-synchronization occurring with the energy."
Even before the A.I. finished, Jenosa could feel the weird energy flowing throughout her entire body just like the energy of the suit had done when she first put it on. She was a bit freaked out at this; she was fine with surprise attacks and the like, but having something invading her own body and not knowing what it was a completely different. There was always a good chance whatever she foreign disease she caught could be the very death of her, and a possibly slow painful death too.
But, to her surprise, pain did not come, and, in fact, the complete opposite happened. The pain in her shoulder subsided, as if under the effects of a soothing balm. Even more so, and although the tingling sensation was becoming weaker as this strange energy spread through her body, when it reached her head, the searing pain of her scar was suddenly dulled, and upon feeling it, it barely felt open at all. It was almost like she had never been attacked the bug at all.
Magellan was ahead of her questions, as he chimed with, "Analysis complete. No side effects or dangerous properties detected. Energy capable of cellular reconstruction and repair, and appears to be synchronized with your biological structure. Suit appears to intake this energy through the same process used on standardized energy."
She blew a sigh of relief; glad she wasn't under any immediate danger, although she was unable to comprehend what Magellan meant by "Synchronized with biological structure." She did, however, understand that her suit was technically breathing in this enigmatic energy just like regular particle energy. To be honest, it was just weird to even wear this suit; never in her life did she expect to wear such a body wear.
Stepping forward from the wall, the rest of the pulsing globs of her fallen enemies flew toward her and into her, and with every bit slipping inside. She could feel her body merging with this energy inside of her; and as more came, more of it merged with her mind as well, just as the suit had merged with her thoughts. It was as though her awareness began to expand not just inside her body, but also into the suit.
She blinked, wondering what the hell was exactly happening to her body, or the suit at that. Is this the virus that they were talking about? What the heck is it doing to me and my suit?
"Magellan," she asked in a commanding voice, "can you land this puppy in the state that it's in. The sooner we reach the surface, the better." She didn't like when weird things began to get into her body and started making weird things happen in it, and she had a damn good hunch that the lab had answer to her burning questions.
"Negative," the A.I replied in a slightly distorted voice, "landing system currently malfunction. Ships systems malfunctions have become more spread out over the minutes. Unable to find source of disruption or method of counteraction. Only know method to surface of Inos is via the escaped pod, which is currently isolated from the rest of the ship's systems."
The red head cursed, not only at being unable to currently land, but at the way Magellan's voice was acting up. Whatever was hampering the ship's system, it had begun to affect the Magellan program, or at least the COMM systems. It was almost as if…the ship had caught the flu, she thought.
And things were obviously getting worse by the minute. Leaving by the escape pod only seemed like a last resort effort, one which Jenosa hoped not to use, but felt it might just come to that. This ship had supplies and weapons, and she wasn't about to give them up to the void of space so easily.
Virus or no virus, she needed to pick up the pace in cleaning up her ship. The longer she dawdled, the more these creatures would probably multiply, and the same could possibly go the "disruptions" within the ship.
She hefted herself to the other aft storage compartment, and easily cleared out the bugs in it. She attempted to avoid taking, or 'breathing', in the pulsing globs, but she was practically a magnet to them. Very few were left to dissipate.
By now, she felt her 'awareness' with her suit increase, and it came with every ball of energy she absorbed. What appeared to have been full connection with her suit when she first put it on now seemed like a minute thread that she shared with the suit's actual 'muscles' and 'nerves'; in other words, this connection appeared to have grown. The sensation and idea that this suit almost quite literally made up a part of her body intensified within her mind.
Jenosa was beginning to assume that this suit actually took in the virus and utilized it for beneficial purposes; yet she was finding it hard to believe that this energy could even be, less considered, a virus. They just had to be something else, but what, she couldn't guess.
And guessing wasn't on list of things to do right now. Nearly immediately after clearing the room, she headed to the reactor in a dash. She was ready for more shooting and more bugs, just like it was with some of her other intense hunting days; except this was far from the intensity of those days.
What stuck out on these warp cores, and what should even be there, was that there was a thick, purple tendrils crawling up the sphere's stand out of the floor grating, and connecting to it like some organic cable; it pulsed with a eerie glow.
Jenosa had seen some forms of bio-matter and other methods use to make nesting areas, but she had never seen anything like this before. Whatever it was, she got a bad feeling that it had some kind of purpose, and that purpose had to with something about the warp cores. She shortly dispatched the wave of oncoming bugs, and, trying to ignore the strange energy that slipped into her body, she peered at the eerie tendrils, also noticing blotches of red goo on the holding section of the wrap core.
Beneath the level of the grating, Jenosa could clearly see that there was a thick, red ooze, like some kind of coagulated blood left to ferment, which pulsed with the same dim light like that of the tendril; it was as though this stuff was breathing. From what look liked the remnants of a popped, beige bubble came fourth the purple tendril. The goo of bio-matter, she noticed, was appeared to be coming all the way from where the reactor was. The reactor who's security doors should have prevented.
Just then, Jenosa heard a weird buzzing sound from the warp core that put her on edge, for it was a sound that she had never heard a warp core make. The intercom came to life with Magellan's slightly distorted voice, "Power fluctuation detected in warp core. Warp directives overwritten. Receiving new warp coordinates. Initiating warping procedures."
Jenosa's eyes went wide with shock and incredulousness. The hell, they were warping. Without her authorization. The hell they were. "Magellan, disengage the warp sequence. NOW!!"
"Negative," the A.I. complied, his voice becoming more distorted as time passed by, "unable to override commands. Standby for warping procedures."
She felt a bead of sweat formed by her increasing anxiety slide down her neck. This was bad. She was completely befuddled how the electronic disruption could, as if with purpose, seamless overwrite and input commands into the warp cores. What kind of weapon is this? she thought, but almost immediately she saw the answer had been right in front of her the whole entire time, written on those purple tendrils.
It wasn't the beam, it's these creatures. They're the ones causing everything to screw up and taking control of my ship. Jenosa didn't know how such stupid looking creatures get anykind of idea of driving her ship. She guessed Mother Nature just wired their brains recognize ship controls as a way to 'migrate'. How they could take 'hack' the ship so well was beyond her understanding though.
Either way, she had to get this over with, and fast, other wise she probably won't be in Oz anymore, or Kansas at that.
Magellan had apparently come to the same conclusion as she did, as he spoke his analysis that the spread of the bio-matter had only been slowed down, and that it was affecting or 'infecting' everything electronic it touched. His voice had become so distorted that it was becoming difficult to tell what he was exactly saying. Right now, though, she mostly ignored him and focused on the reactors.
She had a good hunch these tendrils were how these creatures were tapping into the warp core, and there weren't that many of them. Perhaps four for each, making a total of eight to kill. She decided to rip them off, knowing that shooting them would probably damage the reactor. Setting her guns into her holsters, she grabbed a completely exposed part of the tendril, her fingers getting covered in the red goo that surrounded it. She got the idea that she was actually going to feel a kind of gooey, sticky, moisturized texture about it with her fingers, as the suit felt like it was her own skin.
Surprisingly, she didn't, but even more surprising was that, instead, she felt, a bizarre energetic, pulsing sensation beat into her hands. She swore it was almost like the very energy she woke up with was being defiled somehow, but she didn't care right now. Right now, all she cared about was ripping this tendril apart in the next few seconds, as though it was a piece of webbing.
But yet, it didn't. Jenosa pulled with all her might, and though she was slightly stronger than an average woman, all the tendril did was bend a bit and continuously beat the strange sensation into her hands. It was much more robust than she anticipated, and the stuff wouldn't even come off of the metal that it was sticking it.
She let go, swearing as she did in her vain attempt that had cost her precious seconds. Seconds that not only counted down on the ship's launch, but on her life, for there was no telling when life support could be affected in certain areas. Hell, for all she knew it had been already affected, which only meant for another reason to hurry things up.
"Screw this," she said out loud in frustration. She grabbed her guns out of her holster, her hands dripping with small bits of red goo. If those tendrils connected to her reactor like a nerve, then those nerves had to be connected to a brain. That brain obviously had to be in the one place she hadn't been: the reactor core. Passing the second warp core, she came to the doors to reactor. The wall and rim around the door was being covered by the same, thick red bio-matter that was seen largely beneath the grating.
She gripped her heart in hopes that the door had not been affected, but to her frustration it didn't. And in her frustration she shot the door panel; to her relief it opened.
The reactor core was a relatively large, square room with terminals here and there. Surprisingly enough, it could also look like a completely empty room, and it often was unless there was need for maintenance. The reactor itself would often remain on level with the room floor, and could be thought as a part of the floor itself. Only when lifted would it be fully exposed.
Despite the reactor remaining in the floor, the room appeared to be quite crowded or 'smaller'. The same goo found on the warp cores was almost everywhere in the entire reactor floor. Nearly the entire reactor was gone from site, and directly over, appearing to be in the center and the source of the red goo, it was this gigantic, physically pulsing bulb. It had these large, vomit-yellow bulbs all over its red mass, though the red mass appeared to more of a substance to hold these bulbs together. These near-translucent bulbs glistened unnaturally, not only because they looked to be filled with a kind of liquid, but mainly because they seemed to dimly glow from within.
Each going at an angle from one another were these eerie, purple, extremely thick 'webbing', which ended only a couple of meters from the rising and declining bulb. They were the same exact material as the purple tendrils connecting to the warp cores. The site of it made it look like a plant mixed with a flesh of bizarre texture, a plant that seemed to have rooted itself to the reactor.
Jenosa felt a wave of anxiety flush into her heart. Never in her life had she ever encountered a creature like this. Of course she had seen some killer plants, and had entered a few big bug nests, and this and that hostile critter that threatened her life – along side a couple of humans who also attempted to blow her brains out. She had seen plenty of stuff, but this was like a twisted mix of a few creatures, and a dash of unimaginable creatures features that she could think of at all.
The matter that it had taken over her ship was pissing her off, and notion that a certain piece of vital information was withheld from her only added to the fire. It was the fact that she had no idea what she was dealing with that slightly worried her. That small worry evaporated almost instantaneously, though, as she remembered her former youth, before she became a bounty. She had gotten herself into a couple of sticky situations before hand, and it was partially her fault, too.
She wasn't a huge professional then like she was now, but she was street wise and a quick thinker. This all slowly came with experience, and yet she wasn't in any sort of combat training at all, or was planning to. Although she could have lived an average life like most people and not follow such a dangerous life, there were constraints upon that life that got on her nerves. Government, rules, restrictions, and her school life especially. Sure, she understood why rules and restrictions were place, and she was no rebel.
But then there was grade requirements she need for a job, at which she was completely hopeless at most of her courses. Not mainly because she sucked big time at them, but primarily because she lacked any kind of motivation whatsoever. School just wasn't for her, and those low-paying, part-times jobs at restaurants and the like weren't any better. In fact, she didn't have any kind of career in mind at all.
She had forsaken her 'average' life to break free from those hated constraints within any Confederation society. She knew the risks, and rather enjoyed running life on the wild side. She'd fight any obstacle to the last breath if she had to, and this situation was no exception.
She would have never had the time to break out some heavy fire arms, so she had to fire all what she had with her handguns. It surprisingly shrunk itself under fire, feeling the pain and emitting a gurgling growl from its surface. Concentrating her fire upon a single spot, hoping to penetrate deep enough to hurt a vital part. To her surprise, the bulb popped like a zit, splattering puss-like ooze all over the place.
Jenosa shield her face as it happened, although droplets of ooze still got onto her face and a bit of her hair. The touch of it gave off this penetrating, tingling sensation.
She only had a relieved face for about one second, for which it was followed by a growl of frustration. The egg or plant, or whatever it could be called had already hatch, it either prematurely or by her help. It looked the bulb had almost bloomed into this ugly plant with six, round, feature-less pacman-esque heads as fruit. Their skin was rough and purple, and, seen through their mouths, this skin appeared to be wrapped around what look like this hard sponge. This sponge or whatever it was, appeared to make up most of the heads' mass, giving hint that these creatures didn't seem to have any method of eating.
But the method of 'nutrition' appeared to clear to Jenosa, she recognized what appeared to these fleshy, roots attaching themselves to the floor. These roots brimmed and pulsed with the light of the reactor they were attached to.
She was dealing with some kind of parasite, she concluded. This had to be some kind of parasite. Any creature that latched onto something else to feed she considered a parasite. That's what parasites do. Yet, the bugs she fought didn't seem anything like this, yet they responded to her as though she was invading their lair.
Oh what did she care. This thing had already caused her enough frustration, and she'd shoot even if it were futile. What did she have to loose anyway?
She fired a flurry of shot, one of the heads closing their mouths, growling wobbly in pain. The first few shots didn't seem to do anything, and she noticed small, bright particles emitting from where she struck, floating away like cotton seeds and shortly dissipating. However, wounds began to quickly form, and her confidence rose.
"Ha, not so tough are you, you-"
She clicked her gun and it did nothing. She clicked the trigger again on both, and only got a single blast from one of them before they stopped entirely.
Work, work, work. Why won't you work, dammit? Why now? Why do you have to break down now? This wasn't good, she thought.
The injured alien, on the other hand, thought this was good. Opening its mouth wide, it spewed this sickly green ball of translucent goo. Jenosa was quick though, and leapt out of the way like a graceful butterfly, yet she landed only to be flanked one of the other heads. It was as though she had been hit by giant loogey of thick mucus, as it was roughly the same size as her. The density and force it cam at was enough to nearly knocker her off her feet, but as a person who was extremely acrobatic, balance was one of the key traits to a successful landing, and she was able to recover it fairly quickly.
Yet it felt like her entire body had not just been soaked, but as though the substance itself had been absorbed into it. She could feel a sickly, tingling sensation flood her entire boy upon, and she groaned inwardly as she felt a large portion of her strength get sapped by what entered.
Reforming her posture, she leapt again over one of the large batches of purple tendons, landing in an area she knew only one of the heads could launch an attack at her. These things, from what she observed, didn't seem to be capable launching these globs at a quick pace, although the tingling sensation inside of her was still there, running through her veins not just like a poison, but as though it were her own blood and fluids. She could feel it sapping and burning her strength with every passing second, though the sensation was weakening too.
She ignored this as much as possible, although having killer fluids running inside her body always nagged her in a fire fight. Especially since it felt like no other poison she had injected, ingested or absorbed; not that she had ever been poisoned, but it sure as heck didn't feel like anything she had ever been inject or splashed with.
If it was one thing that was really bothering her, it was why her guns were being so stubborn all of a sudden. They just decided to go off on her right in the middle of a desperate situation, and these were brand new – WHAT – THE – HELL!
Worse, the thing seemed to be regenerating and fast – it all happened when four more smaller bulbs, like the one that hose heads had been gestating in, began to inflate like balloons; each on the end a massive, purple root-like tendril. "Perfect…just perfect," she said to herself in a low voice.
First a massive attack beam that should have happened; then her ship becomes boarded by critters that make a nest out of it; then the ship begins to take a life of it's own and fly to who knows where; and finally, right when she needs them, her guns stop working the middle battle and the stupid plant was healing faster than you can blink an eye. What else could go wrong?
Oh, and little slugs were starting to spawn out of the smaller bulbs.
Jenosa's mind raced against the clock, not really panicking more than actually momentarily confused – and you had to be confused for almost less than second on the job – and the filled with extreme frustration. Although she thought quickly on her options, somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew someone back at the station was going to pay.
Amidst the thinking, she thought she felt her heart beat slow down, which was extremely weird since she could still feel the adrenaline pumping inside of her. She even recognized the vague, fast-paced pulsing sensation in her temples; and yet, she could feel this distinct, almost alien drumbeating sensation inside of her body. She couldn't quite guess which part of her body it was coming from – although it vaguely felt like it was taking up a good portion of her body – she instinctively guess it was due to what the battle has set into mentally. She heard stories about soldiers in ware zone suddenly feeling momentarily deaf for no reason when they were caught in an intense fight; others that felt like time had slowed down when their death approached them, or saw one of their comrades go down before them.
Granted, she might have seen the death of one of her own compatriots, but she never been in a war zone surrounded by the sound of weapons fire. Maybe this wasn't as intense as up front war, but everything about her current situation to this feeling in her chest made her intuitively count it as a moment related to such situations. Considering the stakes and complete lack of options she had at her disposal, she it completely reasonable for this to happen.
Hell, the only thing she could do was try to beat at it with her gauntlets and f-
The gauntlets, she thought in realization, feeling completely stupid to having completely forgotten about. To her, they might have been no better than a pop gun, but she had to try something. Almost frantic, she searched with her mind for the ability to fire, fitting her will into the suit's weapon's systems like hand into a new glove. As the spheres of projectile energy ignited in hands, however, it felt like an added, extra set of muscles – albeit actually intangible – move and shift inside of her body.
At first, this felt like something new, but then a vivid sensation from a recent memory told her that this muscle had been there before; been there when she had put on the suit, maybe even before. She didn't know; what she did know was this 'muscles' had been much fainter, less easier to detect, but now it was like it had gotten stronger and more noticeable to her. She also noticed how much more energy the spheres pulsed with.
However, she only gave these new things a few seconds mental glance before turning her attention on the infestation. She could feel the seconds ticking away with every beating sensation inside of her body. She first took out the small bulbs, which burst like balloons in one easy shot – she had a hunch they were a part of the creature's ability to regenerate. Fending off the rest of the small critters, she began blasting the purple heads.
The whole thing actually became easy sport. The creature's aim was decent, but its behavior was predictable. She made a few jumps here and there, once or twice landing in the red carpet of goo. She never stayed on the stuff too long, primarily because it was thick and it sucked down on her suits foot ware like swamp mud; making it difficult to move around on.
There was also this warm, peculiar, pulsing sensation that emanated into her feet whoever she landed on it. While it didn't do anything immediately to her, the sensation unnerving; and the heart-like beating sensation inside her body gradually rose whenever she did. However, she did not pay any attention to this, as she was focused in destroying the last of the heads.
And she easily did. All that was left was a mound full of stems, and there was probably enough second left for her to issue an order to stop the warp sequence. She expected her A.I. to announce that control was once again within his digital hands, but all she heard was a loud electrical humming noise from the dual warp cores, and Magellan's warped, static message: "Warnin--g: St-ructural integrity ----of the cont-ainment –fields --compromised."
On cue, two heavy, glass crackling explosions, one after the other, could be heard from the warp core room. The sound was deafening and Jenosa whirled around to see that the purple floating orbs inside the glass spheres were gone; and the glass itself was cracked all over. To her even bigger surprises, red warning lights and warnings alarm were suddenly blaring, and a loud audible creaking could be heard through out the entire ship.
"Mul---tiple breache-s detected ----in outer hulls. All – pers-onnel evacuate im-mediately. Rep—eat. All personnel---- evacuate immediately.
The bounty hunter swore at the top of her breath. Her day couldn't have gotten any worse. She bolted through the ship as fast she could, dodging through the hot, venting steam and falling debris. As she ran to the escape pod, she ignored how big the beating sensation had gotten inside of her.