The Cycle: Enter the Hive part 2
The Cycle: Enter the Hive part 2
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Enter the Hive part 2: Ramos
The group entered the Burbashia and Ramos was surprised, the atmosphere was hazy, cloudy, and dense, mostly grey, with an ever so slightly greenish tint, adding an oppressive feeling to the cramped, almost derelict, look of the ship's environment. As if on queue, an overlay immediately appeared over the suit's visor, allowing him to see more defined shapes like it was a heavy sharpen filter on an image editor, and he wondered how creatures that lived like this used their eyes, if they even had them that is.
Ker'ak made a noise, almost like a burp, and Ramos looked at it, inquisitively, as they walked.
"My cells are just changing to methane processing, it's quite natural!" it said, answering Ramos thought.
"I see... so you just farted?" He asked, jokingly, looking at Lar'ni's serious demeanor.
"No, I don't have a digestive system I..." Ker'ak started to explain, needlessly, Ramos's felt like he was being prompted, indulged.
"But you expelled gas from you!" Ramos continued regardless, provocatively.
"Technically I will only fart after I leave, being I will expel methane then... Happy?" Ker'ak stated infusing it with humor.
"Yes, very!" Ramos added, childishly smiling at Ker'ak, realizing only now he didn't really know how Ker'ak saw things.
"Every cell of mine is an optical receptor as it is a multitude of other things." Ker'ak explained.
"That will never not be weird, dude!" Ramos said, Ker'ak was always in his mind, in a way, and although he had little to no reservations towards Ker'ak, it was still crazy having someone that can just read your thoughts.
"Emotions, not thoughts, Ramos." Ker'ak added, almost mechanically.
"Potaito, frikking potatou, dude."
"Sure." Ker'ak sounded, mimicking Ramos's "catchphrase", and sending laughs into Ramos's mind.
"You okay there Lar'ni?" Ramos asked, she had not been engaging with them much, and his attempts at relaxing the vibe were failing.
"Yes." she answered, visibly somber.
"I know you're worried but try to relax, no point in worrying before we get there!" Ramos tried to lighten her mood, she was visibly tense, he knew it was serious but stressing in advance would only make the situation tenser, and probably increase the chance of failure.
"That from someone that wanted to bring weapons to the meeting?" she asked, noticing forcing herself to wiggle her shoulders.
"No worries, Cyrlla and Por'l hooked me up!" he said, casually slapping one of the hidden vibrating spikes they had added, no doubt due to Cyrlla's remembering his fight with Garun.
"Ramos..." Lar'ni started but seemingly giving up mid-sentence. "Fine! I guess you can always kill them if this doesn't work out!" she said, between half-jokingly and half frustrated.
"That's the spirit!!" Ramos exclaimed as they got to the first door of the corridor.
Someone in a suit similar to Ramos's, although with a heavily damaged helmet, looked through the window and opened the sealed door. As the group passed through Ramos looked at the "door wrangler" and took a step back, the chest of the suit was completely exposed, missing most of the plates, and instead of a Kurriat, there was a small, almost octopus-like creature inside, using a makeshift rig of some sort to drive the suit, like a Mech.
Recovered from the surprise, Ramos took a few steps forward, looking at the creature more attentively now, and he could see that it wasn't that "octopussy" as he thought, it had tentacles yes, three of them at the bottom of the body, with the middle one being far longer than the others, but had four "arms" in the top part of its torso. These had large folds of skin? something, but there were definitely fingers at the end, three in each appendage while its long, snake-like neck, held an almost oval head, with two small pinkish eyes at the sides, ever so slightly facing forward. Its body was a deep purple, marked by very small pink dots that ran in somewhat straight lines along the body, with the odd fluorescent dot here and there, glowing blue.
"Well, damn! What the fuck are you?" Ramos asked the small creature, curiously inspecting it with his eyes.
"I believe your translator implant is broken, unknown sentient, do you require maintenance?" the creature said, with a mixture of vibrating sounds interposed with loud clicks.
"Thank you for your willingness to assist, but it's not broken, the translation software is just unfinished." Ker'ak sounded, and the small sentient creature answered, in a more subtle tone.
"Very well, if you need any repairs ask for Kramillionayra Sugretlar, you will find no better mechanic." the alien said before backtracking the suit next to the wall and jump out of it, its long tentacle arms unfolding and the loose skin stretching into wings, that it used to fly into an alcove just above them.
Ramos watched amused, turning to his two companions, "Anyone wants to tell me what creature was that?" he asked, Lar'ni answering, seemingly a bit more relaxed, but just a small amount.
"That was a Lac Maari, one of the three species that live in this ship, due to their methane needs they are pretty isolated from the rest of ours, with the exception of the command/maintenance Kurriat crew.
"Ok, I mean it's kinda cute, in a Cthulhu kind of way..." Ramos started but then looked at the improvised mech more closely, his mind going to work, while he stole a look at the alcove.
"Later Ramos, your particular brand of warmongering can wait until after." Ker'ak sounded, inputting humor in it, while Lar'ni looked at him, curiously.
"Another weapon?" She asked, less sternly than before.
"Not exactly, but Ker'ak is right, it can wait..." he said, almost sadly, that could work for them in so many ways.
"Where to?" he asked, storing the idea in his vault for later.
"Comand first, to talk to the officers about the ship's situation, then the Queens." Lar'ni said and started to make her way. As both started to follow, a weird feeling made Ramos look back, at one of the open ventilation tubes.
A small, jet-black creature was there, half-hidden in the shadows, its many pale, yellowish eyes locked on Ramos. The creature saw Ramos looking and silently skittered back, into the darkness of the tube, disappearing from sight.
Ramos, stayed there, looking at the tube for one more moment before joining the group, his hand involuntarily resting near one of the spikes, as an unsettling feeling crept into his mind.
The trip to Command was somewhat lengthy, and all around Ramos, as in the other ships, there were sentients in makeshift sleeping areas all over the corridors. There were Lac Maari and one other species, a far more humanoid one, tall and lanky, with some kind of odd apparatus around their necks, visibly filled with some liquid, while their clothes, although obviously initially meant to be light, regal, and flowy, were now reduced to little more than long, dirty wraps. They still sported some octopus vibes skin-wise, but their four legs and two arms did have noticeable joins, only one big dark eye of some kind, and five leaf-shaped antennae of sorts, following Ramos and his group like they were eyes.
But there wasn't any Hive after that initial one, making Ramos uneasy, to have so much separation meant they had their own territory within the ship, and, when they entered it, the three of them would be, in no uncertain terms, at the Hive's mercy.
As they reached Command, there was an airlock there, unlike what Ramos had seen in other Kurriat ships, they entered and as the atmosphere changed again Ker'ak produced the same burpy sound, and Ramos was getting ready to speak when he was interrupted by the Ker.
"Go on, make the joke! I know you want to."
"Ah, dude you ruined it now, it's only funny if you get annoyed at it..." Ramos said jokingly, as the door opened into a familiar Command area, although visibly older, outdated, than the Nevolsha.
A Kurriat, Nargath clan, approached them saluting Lar'ni in the Ainur way, apparently the captain.
After a more or less general brief of the ship's situation, and the Hive in particular, Ramos could see why it was all so problematic.
Hive territory was off-limits without an advance warning. Due to their hunting, any creature caught in the path of a frenzied hunter would most likely be killed, causing its own set of issues. Communication was barely possible at best without a Ker on site, and due to the stress of dealing with the emotions of the Hive Hunters and prey, and the fears and anxiety of the other denizens, no Ker lasted long on the ship, being overwhelmed on a constant basis.
All that made worse by the constant reports of Hive in the vents, or stalking sentients in poorly lit areas, increasing the general unease of all that lived there, even the Command staff seemed like they weren't getting enough rest, although no violent incident had yet occurred.
Lar'ni was obviously concerned, the Captain's forwardly honesty about their situation a veiled plea for help. They were keeping the ship running and on course but that was about it, they didn't have suits for the WarMatrons to enforce any rules really, there weren't enough undamaged for more than 20 of them, some were in the hands of the staff they were looking at, and it was obvious they were sharing them, at least the helmets, there weren't enough visible for everyone there. The biggest chunk of suits was in the possession of the maintenance crews, which had started to use Lac Maari, due to their gift with all things mechanic, to handle some of the work.
All that painted a fairly grim situation, one that Lar'ni, nor Ramos, seemed to have a straightforward solution, complicating the issue at hand. Questioning the Hive Queens about the "shipyard" was already going to be difficult, solving the issues on the ship too? Pretty much impossible.
The only solution Ramos saw out-of-the-bat was giving them their own ship, but that was unfeasible, ships were a rare resource for now, but maybe in the future.
But it wasn't all bad, the Lac Maari situation was promising, they were apparently quite gifted, adapting to Kurriat technology remarkably well, and had become one of the crew's biggest assets so far. Ramos was quite pleased with the idea, it would be a solid foundation for what he wanted to do, even if it had been born of desperation instead of a willingness to join forces, he could still work with that.
As the briefing ended and they exited Command, Ramos was going to ask Lar'ni about what course of action she was thinking of taking, but before he could the same strange feeling came over him and he looked at a dark corner in the distance, in one of the adjacent corridors, and there, sure as sin, a set of four eyes glowed, blue this time, these ones in a larger creature, centipede-like, glued upright on the wall, before it skittered, in the blink of an eye, into a crevice of some sort, and vanished.
He was being watched, stalked, But why?
Considering his options, Ramos followed Lar'ni silently into the Hive's territory, no longer in the mood for joking, his hand always resting on the nearest spike's hilt.
[...]
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