Weblore: Difference between revisions

===Legacy Pt 2===

[[File:AG Weblore AnaBray.jpg|720px|center]]

“I was able to pull some data from those Exo samples.” Jinju perches on the cockpit dashboard. Two tech mites crawl over her shell.

“It’s dark out here.” Jinju’s voice is distant as she peers outside. Beyond the canopy an expanse without horizon.

“Way ahead of you, ship.” Ana checks jump vectors and flicks through alignment procedures. Mav thrusters sputter to orient the ship toward Sol. Ana test-cycles the jump-drive. It revs and then chokes before locking.

Ana hangs her head in her hands and muffles a sardonic, “Nailed it.”

Dim and powerless, it gently falls. The label grows at pace with Ana's measured approach. Rasputin's cohort of Warsats encircle her in a defensive phalanx. The station rotates to face the planet. It glitters in gas-giant grandeur as massive translucent hull plates display a desolate gut shrouded in sea-foam reflection. Jinju combs through station blueprints pouring in from Warsat data stores. Caelus consists of one long shaft containing a launch bay and spindly communication arrays at either end. Deeper, passed the launch bays, mostly maintenance frame space cap-stoned by a large reinforced mainframe housing complete with a thick-glass viewing ceiling. Orbiting ringlets, indicated as "Biomes" 1, 2, and 3, spin lazily in unison with the central structure, held in position by mag-lock paddocks that align with metallic rungs set into the station hub's outer plating.

Ana dons her helmet and puts a hand on the canopy release pulley. "You're not bringing those, are you?"

The bay is still: a snapshot of countless possible failures in the face of challenge. It holds only one ship.  The bulbous craft lay broken, dropped from its support brackets in denial of an attempted launch. Reflective hexagonal plates sparkle like space dust as the station faces Uranus' light. Scorch stains blacken the far wall behind the craft's ruined ion thruster.

Jinju beams light over the fuselage as they float through the ruptured bay in weightlessness.  The reflective hull is filled with Exos. Mannequin cadavers hang frozen on silk threads, surrounded by globular blobs of various fluids. Loose-wire tangle sags around the lifeless many. One or two glides freely within the cabin. Their chest plates share a pristine logo.

Ana locates a crumpled worker frame beside the bay’s internal air lock and signals Jinju to come over.

The main section of the station is a wide-open hall supported by struts. In large red lettering the words:

Dozens of maintenance frame plates line the floor. Some open. Some semi-raised with collapsed frames steps away, half-responding to a catastrophe. A scene in disorder.

“So?” Ana turns to the Frame.

Ana eyes go wide. “Jinju disengage that cipher thing.” Over her shoulder, a glint shines from the far central ringlet. Biome 2.

'''End'''

"DEAD-ROCK SEIZURE IN ACTION: Station Manager initiate manual override in ECHO-1 Launch Bay."

"ALERT: This station is experiencing power fluctuations. Emergency power will run until—

He awakens alone. A fluke. Others hang around Him, but they remain in the dream. Electrical surge prickles through his entire body. A screen in front of his face begins playing a recording complete with visual aid:

Power failures wrack the station in rolling thunder. The Exo slumps, lifeless until its next reset.

Alone.  

Thunder. Pain to death. Electro-static purge, triggering a reset.  

He awakens to rolling, thunderous darkness and pain. The screen does not illuminate.

He wishes he could bleed. He wishes he could die. He wonders where the Wardens are.

Short lives of confusion and pain. He grasps at falling in every direction. There is nothing to grip.

Thunder, again.

And again.

Until one day:  

A creeping madness weaves its way in solitude.

Thunder. Thunder. Thunder.  

Wake and sleep. Struggle. Dream and wake. Struggle. Endless. Innumerable. Stillbirths. Tomb spasms. Thunderous pain. Sweet death.

Thunder, one final time. The storm gives life, but never came to take.

He opens the Bridge at his end and waits.

He walks the ring when She arrives.

'''End'''

She is submerged.  

Ana gasps for breath. Her head swims in effort.

“Hold still! Your suit is leaking!” Jinju quickens Light into Ana's punctured suit, her Iris jittering from spot to spot as oxygen spurts around her in foggy clouds.

Tense finger waits on hair trigger. Ana works her starving lungs.

“Ana, you need to stop breathing so much.” Jinju bobs with Ana’s head and quickly reseals her visor.

Jinju whirs and dips back to Ana's suit. “Compiling an interface. Now. Hold. Still.”

A ceiling panel twenty meters from Ana erupts in brittle plastic shards that glisten and spin like tiny neutron stars, catching the last of Uranus' light as the station beings to turn dark. Amorphous form thuds into the floor, shattering tiles in a plume of dust that stretches up into a spire before slowly holding in place. The form tumbles to a stop. It stands between her and the open launch bay and slings a kit-bashed Ion caster aside, depleted. Hexagonal patterns stutter to blend with the station interior as the room rolls into tenebrous obscurity. For an instant, an Exo takes form, and then nothing as its cloaking shroud flashes and re-engages in the dark.

"You're good. You're good. Don't pass out. Your suit is re-oxygenating."

The words are intensely bright on her visor against the darkening room.

Bones pop in her fingers and wrist.

The Exo flattens its other hand and stabs toward her stomach.  

“What did I do to them?”

Ana stares at Echo’s husk. The faint glow of the desk's lit console screen grays out her face behind her visor.

Caelus rotates away into shadow once again, and the planet’s sheen fades from sight. Ana clicks a spring-loaded slot on the desk. It snaps to, bearing a placard of ownership.  

Ana stands. Steady.