First Contact

Chapter 952: The Setting Sun

He knew he was screaming inside his own skull, back behind the cold determination, but he couldn't stop. There were two of them in his skull. One that thought things, one that remembered things and knew things.

The one that remembered and knew had control over his body.

The worst part was...

...he was beginning to slowly stop screaming.

He finished dumping the magazine for the force rifle into the mouth of a snake, threw the weapon away, and raced down the corridor in that weird controlled forward falling, his center of balance way to far forward. He pulled the last rifle, with the shortened barrel, off his back, the makeshift strap rubbing against his shirt, pressing his fur against his sensitive skin.

It was instinct to wrap his hand around the pistol grip, instinct to put his finger along the weapon just above the trigger rather than on the trigger, instinct to carrying it with his elbow crooked slightly, the barrel pointed down, just running forward.

He understand what he was going to do and started to panic until what he knew reared up.

He thought that the containment storage room would be full of the killer robots.

He knew that the first thing the robots would do was leave to look for victims to harvest.

He slid to a stop in front of a vending machine and looked around.

Two shots shattered the macroplas and for a few long moments he stood there, jamming food in his mouth and washing it down with high-sugar and high stimulant drinks.

It made his body feel tingling and fuzzy, like he was on the edge of going into sugar-shock.

Satisfied with garbaging down more snacks and drinks, he ran for the storage area, sliding to a stop in front of the door.

It was peeled outward.

He darted inside, tucking and rolling to come to a stop behind a table that was flipped on its side, weapon up, socked into the shoulder joint, panning it over the room.

Oftr'kaj couldn't believe the way those reflexes just burned into his body and mind. Despite his surprise his body moved smoothly, as if he had practiced it all of his life.

Seeing no threats, he moved into the middle of the room, turning slowly in a circle, looking over everything.

He was aware he was fixing in his head where a dozen items were that he wanted.

The first was a pistol. He tried a few buttons and studs and nothing happened. He knelt down, undoing a panel by pressing a hidden button, and took a few small tools off the inside of the handgrip. He started taking it apart, looking at the parts.

battery's flat*, he thought to himself. He tried shaking it real quick. There was an odd feeling and he suddenly* knew that there was a small iron rod in between superconductor wrapped monopole magnets that were generating electricity to power the pistol.

Nothing came on and he made a disgusted noise and tossed it to the side.

Made by the lowest bidder junk, he caught himself thinking.

He tried a rifle, a visor, two bracelets, but nothing would take power.

The last was a black orb the size of his head that had a few bumps on it and an iris on one side.

Research had been unable to figure out what the function was of the Substance-Q armored objects like this one. The current theory was that it was some kind of religious device.

This one had an image of a big eyed Terror female with feline ears and big eyes.

He knocked on it twice, made a grunt of disgust, then looked at the ceiling.

A quick burst from the rifle shattered ceiling tiles and cables fell down, two sparking.

He wanted to scream as he moved up, grabbed two of the cables, moved up, and pushed the sparking superconductor against two of the bumps on the orb. Electricity snarled and crackled and he could feel slight jitters and smell the faint smell of scorched fur as some of the electricity arced through him.

He just gritted his teeth and snarled.

To Oftr'kaj's surprise, the orb suddenly made a beeping sound. He threw the cables to the side and slapped the orb, closing his eyes.

All the times he'd been frustrated, taken advantage of, hurt, picked on, all of it rushed through his brain, images appearing, voices, as he replayed those things that he tried to avoid thinking about. He opened his eyes as the rage, the pounding burning rage. flowed out of his chest and down his arm.

Purple electricity snarled over his arm and onto the orb.

It hissed and the iris opened, revealing a dark crimson light inside.

His fingers tapped the orb and a hologram appeared. His fingers moved rapidly, pinching and the opposite, snapping his fingers.

Moving through the menu.

He kept staring at a flashing number.

3.5%

The orb hissed and a pistol dropped out. Another hiss and a long bladed weapon slid out. The orb produced a rifle, another orb, and a belt/suspenders combination.

He stepped back, holding out his arms, as a laser grid played over him.

He stepped forward and breathed on the orb, then started stripping off his armor and clothing.

Oftr'kaj suddenly knew what he was going to do.

Arm up, baby, went through his head.

Pieces came out and he strapped them on. They were warm and had a slight sticky feeling.

1.25%

Heavy boots. Shin guards. Hock protectors. Knee protection. Thigh protection. Waist plates. Back plate. Chest plate. Collar. Arm guards. Heavy gloves. Thick round bars that attached from one joint to the next.

A back plate addition slid out and a smaller orb.

0.05%

The orb beeped and the iris closed, the keyboard vanishing.

His hands strapped on the gear like he'd been wearing it all of his life.

Function check on the weapon and Oftr'kaj was slightly shocked that it was a kinetic weapon. Everyone knew kinetic weapons were inferior to laser, force, or plasma weapons.

Oftr'kaj panicked, trying to struggle inside his mind, as his hands lifted up an injector. He tilted his head back, opening his mouth and exhaling.

The needle came down, puncturing the tear duct beside his eyeball. The needle withdrew and repeated it on the other side.

His hands threw away the injector as he picked up another one, blinking rapidly. It felt like there was a grain of soft sand in the corner of his eye. The other injector went into his ear. Another at the underside of his jaw, where his jaw met his throat. An injector into the palm-pad of each paw-hand, another injection into the forearms, the elbows, the biceps, then the chest. Shallow ones that burned and ached.

He stood there, breathing heavy, as the burning pain moved from his palm down his fingers, then up his arms, to his chest, and up his neck.

There was a strange sensation between his ears and his vision wavered for a moment.

He moved over and grabbed the pistol.

"Synch," his voice sounded rougher to him. Lower, like he'd been chewing on rocks all day.

"Synch," the pistol answered.

"Register," his voice said.

"User Registered," the pistol answered.

He repeated it for the rifle.

He was holding the pistol when numbers appeared in the corner of his vision.

50/50 - APERS-HV

He felt that unnatural facial expression come over him again. He repeated it with the rifle, only it was APDS-HV and 250/250.

He strapped on the belt and harness, putting the pistol in a holster, the weird sword that had a rotating edge covered in sharp, jagged teeth, then the sword on his back. Each item gave him a feeling of satisfaction, and almost sexual feeling of completion and anticipation at the same time.

The smaller orb was on his hip as he lifted the helmet and put it on.

It was dark for a second and then the visor flickered, going through the startup messages so fast Oftr'kaj missed them.

The visor cleared. It showed an outline of a biped, a compass bar on the top, ammunition counters, gauges for something called 'heat' and another for 'slush'.

Two steps took him to the wall. He lifted up his hand, making a fist. The bars across his fingers and the back of his hand clicked. He pulled his fist back, the bars along the lengths of his arms hissing.

He drove his fist against the wall hard enough that the ferrocrete blocks shattered.

The panic he would have normally felt was overlaid with a feeling of pleased satisfaction.

He suddenly knew that the rods were bi-directional pistons. Strength and reflex enhancement.

Oftr'kaj knew that he wasn't going to be running and hiding from the robots...

...Type-IV Precursor Autonomous War Machines...

...he'd be taking the fight to them. If he didn't, they'd start recovering resources.

To build more of themselves. Better ones. Larger ones. Eventually, space capable ones.

It stops here... wound through his brain.

From far away he heard it.

you belong to us

He moved over to the reflective surface at the side of the room, stopping and staring.

Oftr'kaj couldn't recognize himself. Clad in overlapping armor plates. The helmet on his head. A pistol in a holster and some kind of toothed chain blade. A rifle in his hands.

I'm just a researcher, Oftr'kaj thought to himself.

He remembered injecting the last injection.

For a second someone, something else stood in the mirror.

Tall yet squat appearing. Wide shoulders. Thick arms and legs. Thick neck. Square skull. Clad in cloth dyed in a blotchy pattern of browns. Light brown skin, close set and intent green eyes. Wide mouth that he knew were full of meat tearing and bone crushing teeth. One tag above a pocket wasT.C.A.S. ARMYembroidered with black thread. On the opposite side of the chest wasMILLERSON.

His reflection smiled. A wide, tooth baring threat display of a predator.

He suddenly knew what he had injected into himself.

What he had memories of being.

What was inside his own mind with him.

A Terror - - video archive evidence, Incident 917167HG812, Xeno-Archeology Division, 1,872 Current Era

The ship moved through endless purple, here and there bands of bright lavender shone but slowly darkened to bands of violet and purple. A proton the size of a medicine ball banged off the hull at one point, showering sparks that dwindled after spiraling through the purple space. The engines burned with a dark crimson light, pushing the craft through something that was somehow less than interstellar space.

The leading edges of section of the starship was coated with thick black material. The thicker portions had begun to form into twisting veins and bulging organs. The edges had thin tendrils off of it. All of it was matte black, light drinking.

The ship moved through a cloud of purple mist and particles, coming out and drifting forward. Shapes materialized out of the purple.

Starships, coated in the black substance to appear like tortured and bound members of different species, their bodies warped, elongated, twisted, but still recognizable.

Nakteti stared at the screen, blinking her eyes in shock, as the Sweet slowly moved past what was unmistakably a Lanaktallan battle cruiser, transformed by the black material into a bound matron, twisted and contorted into a painful, agonizing position. Barbed wire and spiked belts restrained the matron, her head was pulled back by twisted wire pulling her head back toward her spine. Her spine had protrusions that looked like jagged spikes.

The ship was a work of art created from the fever dreams of a madman.

From out of the thick purple clouds tendrils and chains were attached to the ships, many of the cables, tentacles, tendrils, and chains quivering with tension to hold the ships in place.

"What are they?" Nakteti asked.

"Things," Magnus shrugged. When Nakteti looked at him he shrugged. "What? I am a simple man. Such things as this make no sense to me and I do not concern myself with making sense of them. They simply are."

Nakteti gave a frustrated exhalation.

"Lost ships," Surscee guessed. She shook her head. "That Violet Sargasso Sea, perhaps?"

Nakteti looked it up quickly then nodded. "As good an explanation as any," she said.

Nakteti looked away from the viewscreen, looking down at the simple system she was using to pilot the Sweet. A joystick with several buttons, a trigger, and a slider.

She was holding onto it with her left gripping hand, the twisted runic work inside the circle a light drinking black with dark purple in its depths.

Her hand twisted slightly and the Sweet shifted bearing, tilting downward, sliding through the endless purple. The purple had no length, no depth, no width, no system of measurement or anything that Nakteti had been familiar with.

Now she understood it.

Like Redspace, it just was and a being could accept it or let it drive them to madness. Unlike Redspace, there was more than just the endless purple, violet, and lavender, there were particles scattered around, objects here and there.

It was a stillborn universe where the Big Bang had been more of a Sad Whimper.

But she understood it. Not in a way she could explain. To her, there was an up and down, a left and right, a forward and backwards.

It wasn't relative to the universe, to any select point in the endless purple.

It was all relative to oneself.

To their will. Their desire. Their drive.

You reached another area by navigating from yourself, from distances decided on by yourself.

Part of her knew the Twilight Library, in the Black Citedal was not far away, only a few periods of willpower.

The directions to it were easy: Up till you tasted berries. Up at a second plane until you tasted old gym socks. Downward from behind you till your left foot tingled. Down from above you until you felt a warm breeze caress your liver. Left past mourning till a single tear oozed from your right eye. Left around the post three times. Right from wrong. Right made by might. Backwards from forgotten tomorrow. Accelerate through deceleration. Punch through the start.

And you were there.

Simple.

No matter where you had arrived into the endless purple, that was how you reached the Twilight Library.josei

The Sweet moved by a huge nebula of esoteric machinery that made the purple shiver with its malevolent intent, made violet vibrate with the violence of its dark purpose, made lavender quiver with its dread operations.

As The Sweet passed it, she faintly heard it.

I JUST WANT LEFT ALONE

Then they were past.

Under and behind vast shipyards where huge hulls sparkled and glimmered with black carapaced beetles that were performing repairs, upgrades, modifications, and maintenance on the dread hulls.

have great fear she heard whispered behind her ears.

Her left gripping hand steered them past.

Further into lavender seas, past violet shores, across purple skies.

The Sweet moved forward, engines laboring.

Nakteti piloted, beyond sleep, hunger, or thirst.

there is no life in the void she heard in the back of her mind, from scratching on the inside of her skull with cold talons.

It was forever, it was no time at all, she arrived the day before she arrived, she arrived late before she had translated to deadspace, she arrived early after she died, she arrived on time before she was born.

But she arrived, piloting The Sweet with one hand, the rune aching and bleeding dark black blood.

A ripple.

A distortion.

Something where there should have been nothing, nothing where there should have been something.

Nakteti stared at the thing and swallowed thickly. At a motion, Magnus shut off all of the sensor except the single forward lens and photon reactive plate visual sensor.

The purple went on forever and began to bleed from the bottom of the screen, moving down the wall.

Another motion and Surscee nodded tightly, reaching out and powering up two engines.

The Reality Matrix Collapsar Engines.

Nakteti gave the silent order to cut the Deadspace engines.

The ship slid sideways, upwards, backwards, downwards, and around the right post.

It slid through the nothing and something where something and nothing should have been.

The It Tastes Sweet vanished from the endless purple eternity of Deadspace.