Maps:
Spoiler: SHOW
Time until mission termination and complete failure: 4 minutes
The Grav Plant:
Buck
Spoiler: SHOW
The son of a bitch "learns it" by watching as you almost immediately flee. You briefly considered charging the dragon... but chickened out. Perhaps you're starting to sober up. It's a horrible thought, and not one you have time for - especially with the massive alpha drakedog bearing down on you. You don't want any of that shit. As quickly as you can, you grab hold of the consoles to your right and pull yourself upwards - barely escaping the monster's snapping teeth as you duck over the top. But it follows - ravenously, eager for a taste of your flesh. Grabbing a spindly tree trunk, you pull yourself towards the far corner of the central chamber as quickly as you can.
Everything is a blur of images. A tree catches fire from a laser beam, just above your fingertips. Frank screams in pain - it echoes in your ears. You drift through a floating cloud of blood droplets; they spatter on your helmet. The alpha drake grabs your leg in its teeth - a grinding pain as it bites almost to the bone.
Struggling in its grasp, you try to bash it with the baton; it sees the flickering energy wrapped around the weapon's shaft and swings you in its jaws, hurling you out against the far wall with the ease of tossing a child's toy.
You watch helplessly, in great agony, as the wall approaches. It slams into you with such force that you almost black out, but you hold on, clinging to the ribbed wall like an insect above a mass of floaty, blobby pondwater, risen from a pond below. The massive beast has lost interest in you, thinking you incapacitated - now it's headed back towards Frank.
Unfortunately, you're not out of the woods yet: the smaller drake is perched on one of the central computers, ready to leap in your direction. You realize that there's a very solid chance that you'll lose this fight - what with the zero-G and essentially no handholds anywhere to be had. The thought enrages you, and you turn to ready yourself for its onslaught, clutching your weapon's handle tightly in both hands. "I'LL BASH YOUR HEAD IN!" you shout. "WATCH AND SEE IF I DON'T!"
And it leaps at you, teeth bared, claws readied. You push yourself away from the wall in its direction, and you meet in a tangle of claws, teeth and plasma sparks. It slashes you across the shoulder, and you bash it in the leg - and then the face. It tries to bite your arm but you kick it away, sending a jolt of agony up from your ankle. You almost pass out from the pain, but hold it together as you tumble away from each other in zero-G.
The gravity chooses that moment to turn back on at full 1.1G capacity, dropping both of you into a pond. You splash-land on your stomach, nearly getting the wind knocked out of you. In front of you, the drakedog lands on its back, hitting its head hard against the pond's raised edge as it falls.
Scrambling for the baton, you pick yourself up and propel yourself towards it with a one-legged jump. As it scrambles to get back to its feet, you throw yourself onto it and bash it in the head. "DIE, YOU FUKCIN' UGLY ALIEN PIECE OF SHIT!" you roar, your throat hoarse. "FUKCIN' DIE ALREADY!" Oblivious to your shouts, the beast tears at you with its claws, and you smash it again and again until its head is a shattered, pulpy mess against the pond's border wall.
Bleeding, tired, and nearly spent, you sink back onto your ass in the shallow pond water and reflect, staring haggardly at the mess you've made. To your right is a little waterfall, creating a peaceful sound as water falls from it into the pool, further spreading the blood - yours and the drake's - that permeates the water.
In the distance, you hear Frank shouting, and the deep, agonized roar of the alpha drake. Did the bastard actually manage to get the thing? Really? Frank of all people?
It's at that moment you hear someone shouting to you from your left. "Buck!" the voice calls. It doesn't sound like it belongs to anyone from your squad, you realize; you turn to look. "I'm Mekkin," he says - quickly, with a slight aristocratic accent. He's balding on the top of his head and looks the no-nonsense sort. "We need to get moving, now."
You hear Gene's voice over the comms. "I need medical backup, now!"
Stern disappointment is apparent on Mekkin's face. He rifles through a side pouch and tosses you a stim - a white liquid: painkillers. "That's a call for me. Get back on your feet and get moving or we'll end up leaving you behind, and there's nothing I can do about that." With that, he jogs quickly out of view.
Gene
Spoiler: SHOW
Brom's dying, Frank's dying, Vynkor's still in horrible shape, and even though you're not in particularly good shape yourself, you're now the squad's best hope - even with those deep scratches on you chest. They don't seem to be bleeding out anymore, though - the coagulants must still be doing their work.
Get your fukcing shit together, Weber, you reprimand yourself as you reload. You're not going to wipe your fukcing squad again. You're going to get out there and put a slug through that fukcing drakedog's head.
"Reports of my death have been grossly exaggerated," you announce, pumping your Gauss shotgun. "Vynkor, just get over here and revive Brom! I'm - fine." You suppress a cough as you say this last, gritting your teeth and getting to your feet.
It's showtime.
You wait behind cover until it tires of tormenting buck, and moves towards Frank instead (who turns out to be not as dead as Buck thought). The perfect opportunity soon arises: the gravity turns back on, sending both Frank and the monsterdog tumbling to the floor. This is when you unload your weapon.
BLAM. A dozen pellets smash their way through the beast's hind leg, ripping through the weak skin behind the knee and fracturing the bone; it screams and staggers, letting up its relentless assault on Frank for just a brief moment.
"Yo!" someone shouts quite loudly behind you. It sounds like Vynkor.
You grit your teeth and focus.
BLAM. The shell rips through the thick hide of the monster's back, shredding what lies below. It flinches and screams, and staggers again on its bad leg.
((Continued at the end of the Grav Plant section))
Vynkor
Spoiler: SHOW
You push off your rock, hard, moving quickly toward the central corridor. Behind you, through the trees you just pushed yourself past, you hear the hiltorel trapped in Saoirse's stasis bubbles screaming at you angrily. As soon as they're out of those pods they'll be shooting at you again, so you need to break line of sight. Fast.
As soon as you reach the near wall, you bounce off of it with a strong kick of your legs, readying your guns for a strike at... well, whomever you can find. This happens to be the squid right outside the gravplant core, who is firing at buck this very moment - Buck, who has a drakedog chomping at his heels - a drakedog so massive that it positively dwarfs the ones you fought earlier. Distracted by its size, your first shot misses the hiltorel on the ground, but the shot you follow it up with is a direct hit, though non-lethal. It gets the squid's attention, and the alien fires a few plasma rounds at you; you dodge them easily, twisting in the air. They feel so slow; or you feel fast. It's hard to say.
Mekkin shows up behind the squid at that moment and makes quick work of it, lasering it in the neck, just as you drift out of view. He gives you a short salute and heads north towards Buck, possibly to make sure he's okay.
The gravity "switches on" - a full 1.1Gs, from the feel of it - certainly more than there was when you arrived. You were headed to the ceiling, and now you're falling in an arc. You spin yourself through the air and land lightly on your feet atop a computer console, and then drop from there to the ground, right beside Gene and the unconscious Brom. Gene is unloading his shotgun into the monster, so you step forward and try to help him with your pistol. It's not entirely effective against the massive alpha-drake's tough skin, but you did try your best. "Yo," you say quietly, not knowing you're actually shouting.
((Continued at bottom of gravplant portion))
Frank
Spoiler: SHOW
The turret seems to sight you; lights flash on the side and it springs to life, slowly rotating in your direction.
The pain is intense. You flinch; a spasm of agony ripples across your body.
The turret turns.
You're fighting an internal battle. This entire mission, people have poked and pried at you and your ideals. One by one, you've had the values you've held most dear ripped and pulled away; lines were crossed, and boundaries broken. Who are you? You don't even know anymore. Are you still Frank? Is this still even you? Is this hollow shell, packed with fury and topped with hatred, still the same Frank Foster you were fifty years ago?
Still the turret turns.
It seems like a lifetime ago. The scary thing is... it actually was.
The turret slows as it focuses on you, preparing to fire. You snarl, grabbing a sticky bolt from your pack as you pull your way towards the hateful machination. Slamming the bolt against the wall, you use it to pull your way forwards.
Not fast enough. Just before you reach the turret, it begins to fire a steady laser; it burns a hole in the front of your suit as you move; you shout - part from pain, part from blind rage. You scream as you wrestle with the turret with both hands, turning it away from you; it carves a burn across your suit. The motors grind, trying to turn back to you; you grab a sharp bolt and stab the bloody thing in the lens with a strength you didn't know you had, shattering the glass and ruining its internal parts. You pull the bolt and stab it again, just to be sure. The turret shudders, clicks, and grinds.
It is done.
Your wounds throb.
You turn back towards the alpha-drakedog. It just got through tormenting buck, and now it's coming back to you. You lock eyes with the monster - it definitely remembers you. Slowly, deliberately, it turns and begins stalking in your direction, pulling its way through dispersing clouds of blood droplets, its feet clinging to the tops of the computers. You glare at it in return. If it's going to kill you here, you're going to make sure it has a scar to remember the rest of its life. With this thought firmly in your mind, you reach for a coagulant and administer it to yourself, hands shaking.
The dragon hisses at you as it approaches, readying itself for a leap.
"You should've left us alone," you growl. You feel rage building in your chest (or is it pain?), which builds up to a wild shout: "WHY WON'T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE!?" Unthinking, you whip a crossbow bolt out of your side pouch and kick off of the wall as the drakedog leaps.
For a brief moment you're able to reconsider your actions without hope of righting them: you just challenged a monster many times your size to a wrestling match to the death. What the hell were you even thinking?
This is where the gravity flips on: a full 1.1Gs. The drakedog spasms at the unexpected change, which is exactly enough for you to wrap your arms and legs around its neck as you collide, tumbling to the floor; it hits a tree beneath it, smashing its face against the trunk; the branches tear at you as you and your foe tumble to the ground, drakedog on its back. This is your chance. Clinging to the drakedog's neck, you try to will your arm to stab it in the eye, but your arm won't move; it wants to keep clinging tightly as though with some primal fear of falling, holding on for dear life. In the meantime, the drakedog roars and gets to its feet, twisting its neck around nimbly to try to bite you, snarling and gnashing its teeth. You twist, trying to get out of the way, but it's no use - you see the teeth coming.
BLAM!
A shotgun blast at what must be nearly point-blank nearly shatters your eardrums. The great beast arches its back, howling in agony at some unseen wound; your fingers slip at the sudden motion, and you fall to the ground beneath it, slamming to the floor, just as the monster looks at you with a new wrath, terrifying to behold. It dives towards you with its teeth.
You ready your bolt. The eye, the eye flashes through your mind - you see it coming.
BLAM!
A second shotgun blast; the beast dips down low to the ground reflexively, nearly crushing you beneath it; its eyes are out of reach. You grab hold, wrapping your arms around its neck as you try to position yourself for a jab at its eyes, just as it rears, raising itself up on its hind legs.
You stab - a miss for the eyes, but you got it on the soft underside of its jaw. It easily pierces the soft flesh, ripping into its mouth and through its tongue; you slam it in with the palm of your hand and the monster screeches, hisses, at the unexpected agony, writhing and clawing as it tries to throw you to the floor. You feel its sharp claws rip wildly into your sides - an unimaginable pain as it shreds through your muscles.
The world grows even darker than it was before.
((Continued at bottom of gravplant portion))
Bob
Spoiler: SHOW
Everything floats? Did alpha forget to close the tap?
"Bob will get harness," you radio back, already descending towards the grav plant. You can see your allies grayish ships there, already landed. There's a shiny blue one there, too.
You carefully land your ship near where squad alpha landed theirs. The landing is really awkward - partially because your ship started behaving funny when you got over the colony, and partly because your ship is in such bad shape to begin with. You eventually manage it, though, and bring your CASKET to a rest just above the ground, taking care not to damage anything.
Saoirse was right. As soon as you get out of your ship with Jimmy, everything changes: there's no gravity. It's... really weird. Alpha broke things bad - this much is clear. Their ships are floating a little ways off the ground even, but they're motionless in the air now. You try to walk down the edge of your ship, and make a jump in their direction.
You quite promptly fall flat on your face. Gravity is back. Alpha needs to make up their mind! Will things float, or will they not? Jeez. They don't even have any harnesses either. There's not ONE THING on their ships that looks ANYTHING like something you could wear. Eventually you just decide that it's probably the big box in one of their aux slots, and detach that to take it with you. You heave it over your shoulder and start inside.
~~~
It's a mess in here. Water and blood - both red and blue - is spattered everywhere, broken branches litter the ground over ripped-up paving stones, and most surfaces are smeared with some amount of mud. It looks like it used to be a beautiful building - at least, before Alpha got to it. They really ripped the place to pieces.
"Here, Saoirse-boss," you say, handing her the "harness". She accepts it; it must be the right thing. She's crouched behind a large boulder, and was trying to fire blasts of electricity at a few squids on the other side of the complex. "I'll shoot them, Saoirse-boss. You go on, okay?"
Saoirse nods and ducks down, trying to sneak past the enemies. Meanwhile, you toss yourself into cover and pull out your massive minigun. It's going to be very difficult to aim - you can't move your left hand - but you should be able to hit something... provided they don't hit you first. But there's no time to be scared now. You tuck Jimmy under your arm to help calm yourself, spool up your minigun and step out of cover - into their line of fire. "Okay Jimmy. Let's do this."
You pull the trigger, firing a powerful stream of projectiles at the remaining squids - one of whom is trapped in a stasis bubble, and another of whom is skulking around at the edges. Your bullets rip into one as your poorly-aimed stream passes by, absolutely shredding its flesh with streams of spattering blue blood; it collapses to the ground. You manage to sink several bullets into the far one as well before it gets into cover - but your fire rips into the computer towers as well, throwing sparks and putting holes through it. You think you see the squid crawl away, and try to get him before he does, but miss. He's severely wounded now and you think you got his gravbelt too. He should be no problem.
It's a job well done.
You hope Saoirse-boss made it through okay.
Saoirse
Spoiler: SHOW
PDA still in hand, you check the positions of the two remaining squids and try zapping them with electricity from the nearby computer towers. One of them seems defunct; you can barely get a spark out of it. You decide to try with a different tower instead for the hiltorel that's closer to you. You've gotten the whole zapping thing down at this point. You know the physics don't "make sense" in your head, but the "feel" is right, and it's the feel of it that matters: you just need to encourage the electricity to jump from one place to the next. That's what it feels like, anyway. It's like putting down a red carpet, or lowering a bridge.
You don't want to kill them though. They're not really in the wrong. You are taking the gravity from their colony, after all, and even if they do have some backup stellaplex somewhere, you've messed up their equipment pretty badly.
Your second zap manages to get the closer hiltorel, electrocuting him (or her; it's hard to tell) with enough severity to cause him to go limp.
This is where things get confusing. You thought for sure you saw another hiltorel out there somewhere... at least one more squid - you know there must be three in the corner chamber, surely - but your PDA isn't revealing them, and neither are your eyes. They must be hiding behind cover, but you've lost track of them. You strain your eyes, trying to peer through the debris and wreckage...
...which is precisely when all of it falls to the floor, all at once. You fall, too, stumbling with surprise; your hurt leg nearly gives way underneath you when you reflexively try to use it to steady yourself.
While you're still taking stock of your injuries and trying to figure out where the last squid went, Bob shows up, harness over his shoulder. "Here - Bob-boss brought harness," he says, handing it to you. It's heavier than you expected. You thank him, and look anxiously in the direction of the squids. You need to get this to the computer core - and fast. Thankfully, Bob seems to undestand this instinctively. He pulls out his minigun; you see his brutally mangled hand again and wince. "It's okay, Saoirse-boss. I'll shoot them. You go on, okay?"
You nod. "Thanks, Bob," you tell him, and crouch down, headed for the center of the complex - and the stellaplex core.
((Wrapped up in the following portion (just keep reading))
Wrapping up all the above portions (except Bob)
Spoiler: SHOW
At this moment, Saoirse runs up - a PDA in one hand and a grav harness under the other. Her eyes wide, she drops the harness and directs the strongest electric blast at the beast she can manage, arcing from nowhere less than the central stellaplex tower - a bright stream of electricity with a crackling, ear-shattering thunder. The drakedog, enveloped in the crackling energy, writhes and screeches at an ear-splitting pitch with what can only be described as yelps of pain. Frank, who also got caught in the blast, loses his grip and falls limply to the floor, six feet below.
The monster's scales smoke lightly as it roars in unbridled wrath. Turning its fury against Saoirse, it begins climbing in her direction - and Saoirse hits it with another powerful electrical storm. Screeching, screaming, yelping, the monster twists like a worm, clawing up everything within reach as it struggles blindly against the electric flow, its mouth dripping and foaming with thick, dark blood. Just as it gathers the last of its strength to leap at Saoirse, its hind leg gives way beneath it - the leg Gene got with a gauss shotgun. The beast shrieks again and collapses, falling headfirst to the ground, growling and spitting blood.
Meanwhile, over to Saoirse's right, the stellaplex tower has lowered the large, many-sided chunk of stellaplex towards the ground, where it awaits placement upon a hovering dual-harness stretcher. The autohacker, having done its job, chirps cheerfully for a few moments before its insides melt with a timed and controlled chemical reaction.
Frank is alive, but barely awake, and hardly able to stand.
Mekkin rushes up to Gene and Brom - a bit late, but ready to assist.
It's time to go home.
Brom
Spoiler: SHOW
"Frank, Buck!" you shout. "This fight is over. We've lost. I've failed in my duties as your squad leader, and I'm sorry. Buck - you have two choices now. You can go down fighting, or surrender yourself. I would... I would recommend the latter. You shouldn't have to die for my inadequacies. If you cooperate with them, they -"
Buck interrupts you. "Fukc that shit!" he growls, spitting to the side. "I ain't got this far with you to leave you now. You shoulda known better'n that, Brom. I may not like you - that's true enough - but I ain't no quitter!"
"Then," you say, "it would be my honor to fight and die alongside you."
"Fukc yes." His brow furrows as he readies his weapon - the gravity gun. "I've got them a little parting gift."
You grin - almost sadistically. "We'll take a few of them to hell with us."
And Buck fires. Pieces of computer paneling and equipment peel away from their towers, spooling up around the singularity as it travels down the corridor. The drakedog, caught up in the spiral, screeches and howls as sharp bits of metal dig into its sides, clinging loosely to the floor. Floor tiling gets ripped up as the bolt descends, spiraling ever closer around the center.
A plasma bolt catches you in the chest - the exact center. You gasp and clutch at the wound, and find yourself hardly able to breathe; a lung has punctured.
The gravitational singularity explodes, taking with it at least four of the squids. Frank was caught in it too; he's now sprawled lifelessly on the floor. "I'm sorry, Frank," you whisper, choking; blood pools in your mouth and you spit it out. "At least they won't torture you."
Buck shouts; you look beside you and see the drakedog about to pounce. Your shotgun ready, you fire one, two shots into its side, but they have little effect. Before Buck can even ready his plasma baton, it's already on him - and then it comes for you.
You've lost a lot of blood already. You're starting to feel rather dizzy, in fact.
The monster leaps; it pins you to the wall. You hit your head against the back - hard enough to fracture the skull.
Everything, mercifully, goes dark.
~~~
BLAM!
It's a shotgun. Suddenly you realize - the sounds have changed. You open your eyes, puzzled, and clutch at your chest. Your hand comes away sticky with blood; the edges of your vision are still darkened.
BLAM!
Another shotgun blast, from close range. At this moment you see none other than Gene Weber standing before you, fighting what is surely the largest drakedog you've ever seen - and that by a wide margin. Did it get bigger? How? Your thoughts race, and then you grow even more confused when you see Frank. Hanging from the monster's neck, Frank stabs the beast through the jaw with a crossbow bolt, causing it to screech and roar with agony - your eyes are wide with disbelief. Is this the same Frank as before? The coward? Is this perhaps a dream?
Or perhaps you were dreaming before?
Vynkor lands nearby and immediately begins firing on the beast with her laser pistol. You hear Buck screaming in the background - "DIE, YOU FUKCIN UGLY ALIEN PIECE OF SHIT!" - you see the monster drake claw up Frank's sides to try to get him to let go.
The massive beast is in horrible shape - its leg is barely holding together, it has a hole in its neck, a stake through its jaw, and is bleeding all over its back. Alpha really did a number on it. Or ... what? You lift a hand to your head, and feel your helmet instead. You forgot you were wearing one, in fact; you feel a bit confused and dizzy.
At that moment, a massive crackling stream of electricity hits the massive beast, causing it to writhe in spastic agony. Frank falls limply from its neck, and it starts to climb over the computer towers, only to be hit a second time with another blast of energy. Shrieking, twisting, wrenching away, it tumbles out of view.
What the hell is going on?
Elsewhere:
Ishmael
Spoiler: SHOW
"What the hell? You fukcing moron, if you don't have ranged weaponry you can't do shit against these creeps! Get the fukc out of here! That's an order! I already have one asshole to babysit, I don't need two!"
You change your comm channels, opening one to the hiltorel, and read the Pastalm XVII to them as you fly in their direction. One of them breaks off, headed directly towards you, while the other three continue flying in their own directions.
You'll play chicken, you figure. It can't be that hard. Surely your ship can take it. Right? These guys can't be too powerful... although as you close the distance, and the enemy ship opens fire, you begin to rethink your decision. Nemesis sent the veterans up against these guys, and even just trying to act as decoys, they've barely survived. Nonetheless, you're in too deep now. Honor demands that you continue.
Plasma rounds rip into your ship, peeling away the light armor on the hull; your comms go out when one blast rips the front of your ship wide open; another one hits the back of your ship and half of the instrument panels go dead.
You continue on your course.
The right side of the cockpit canopy implodes under a blast, sending transparent metallic shards through your cockpit; at least one of them lodges in your shoulder. Something - coolant or fuel of some sort - spews from the right side of your CASKET. You don't really know, nor do you care.
The distance is closing. You've lost some control, but you're headed in the right direction. The hiltorel ship seems to figure out what you're doing and tries to turn away, but you're prepared, and faster; you move in the appropriate direction and loose your boulder at just the right time; it hurtles outwards as you curve away, and smashes directly into the enemy ship - but as it's only a glancing blow (and a very lucky glancing blow at that) it barely does more than dent the frame and mess up a few thrusters. Meanwhile, the turrets are still firing - it's a two-man ship, and each side of it can fire. The turret-pod is capable of rotating to follow you, which it does - it severs your tentacle arm and seriously damages the back half of your ship, knocking out no less than two engines with its laser - and you've barely damaged it at all.
The scary thing is, you've been evading as best as you can this whole time - even using psi - and yet every single one of their shots have still landed. You try to orient the ship to better take the damage on your sideshields as the other ship comes back around - and this seems to help somewhat, actually saving your open cockpit (and you) from further damage - but it's no good.
Just in the nick of time, Anabais's ship rushes in and flashes by the enemy craft with an intense speed, thoroughly splintering it and ripping it into pieces. You hear nothing over the comms - they're dead now - but you can imagine Anabais cursing at you and figure she'll probably have a lot to say when you get back to the Nemesis - assuming you can even make it there. Your engines are very badly damaged - you'll be able to limp home, at best, but it may take some time.
Caleb, and a brief interlude from the action where people sip fruity exotic drinks and talk about philosophy
Spoiler: SHOW
Actually, thinking about it just makes you a lot more miserable. For this reason, you try to "change the subject" in your mind, and instead focus on how you're sorry for Aloka. You're really just stringing her along for a bit, and then they'll torture her on the Nemesis for information and, likely, kill her. Probably not a good idea to point that out. She's probably figured it out anyway. So, you continue along with your absurd conversation.
"Stargazing, huh?" you say in a cheerful philosophical manner. "I always lived in the city, and my father was away a lot doing whatever the hell he did in the defense force, so I never actually saw the stars until I went to space myself for training- and then I never really had time to look at them. Constant training after that, just like you. Till everybody got killed by pirates on Anba and I got blamed for it, though since then I've hardly even seen a window, much less the stars." You hesitate, and then to try to cheer things up (because that went so well) add, "But, uh, I always liked swimming. Even went to a beach once."
"Hiltorel don't have mothers and fathers like that," Aloka says, in a tone that makes you slightly uncomfortable with your choice of wording. "We are raised communally by a group of parents in our 'pod', or somid. Well... that's how it usually goes. I was different." She stops for a moment, and then adds, "I'm... not really like most of my species. I get the whole 'mom and dad' thing. I was raised on the streets by a Fysar merchant - or, he was trying to be a merchant, anyway. Da kind of sucked at it."
There's a long moment of silence between the two of you, before she finally adds,
"It's nice that you went swimming. I don't... I don't remember swimming. I know that's... weird, for hiltorel, but... I mean, I grew up on stations where there weren't hiltorel. Water is always scarce. I never got the opportunity. I don't even know if I'd like it anyway," she ends dismissively. "I probably wouldn't. I mean if I want to immerse myself in water I could just shower. Anyway, I do get where you're coming from with the squad thing. That's happened a few times to me... sort of."
Just then you hear Cho over the comms. "Oh, hi Caleb! Really sorry again that I can't bring you in yet, but as soon as we get confirmation from the others that they've retrieved the Stellaplex we can get you moving, okay? For now, Kendall's on his way out there and should arrive in about a minute! Don't worry, you're coming home soon!"
Gearhead
Spoiler: SHOW
Why did you come up here? You felt like there was something you could do to help distract the enemy. That was your whole plan - to serve as a decoy. Now that you think about it, it's a shame you didn't think it through any further.
Your ship is a shameful bucket of scrap. It barely flies, even without having taken any damage. You have no piloting skills, and in addition to sucking at ship combat, you're armed only with a laser pointer good for hurting unarmored squishies. This wasn't a good plan... but it's all you've got.
Your comm panel flashes: someone's trying to establish private comms. You hit a button to allow it. "Gearhead," someone says. It sounds... almost like Anabais. "Gearhead, I'm sorry," she says in a repentant tone. It's so unlike what you already experienced of her personality that it throws you for a loop. "I had to make a choice," the lieutenant explains. "I had to save you, or your... absolute buttfukcing retarded squadmate Ishmael," she spits out, with some clear annoyance. "I want you to know that normally, you'd be my first choice."
"What are you saying?" You're not in the mood for "bedside manners" and you never have been. You think you can tell what's coming.
"Look, my RCS thrusters are in shit shape. I'd be less likely to be able to hold the climb long enough to save you, than I would be able to save Ishmael. It's a long shot for both of you, but... I am sorry. I had to make a choice. I fukcing hate losing REKT crew, but there's only so much I can do for you bastards. Not asking you to understand. I'm just... ugh, fukc this shit."
You're not entirely sure how to process that. You don't want her pity - you know that much. When you go to respond, though, you find that she's closed the private channel.
From below, the singular hiltorel podship races up towards you. It's significantly faster than the few you faced before - it looks better armored and better armed. You prepare yourself to dodge its fire.
Without any sort of warning, a laser rips itself across your hull; you go to dodge, throwing your psi unit into it as well; it rips along your left wing, digging deeply through the hull and into the internals - your PSI unit conks out, and you feel a light click behind your neck - the jacks disconnecting. This is right before the main turret plows into you with a series of plasma blasts as the podship rushes past - a procession of explosions that blast the bow of your CASKET, breaching the cockpit walls and sending shrapnel into your legs. Through the rushing adrenaline, you suddenly realize you can't feel your feet anymore.
What the fukc are you supposed to do here, you wonder? Dodge? Run? You want to get on a line to Anabais - you want to do all sorts of things - but there isn't time. You continue doing your absolute best to dodge, but with your ship's specs and that of the enemy, it just isn't enough. One of the podship's guns are turreted, and a second series of blasts rips through your engines until they find something sensitive; you feel your entire CASKET thrown forward and flipped from a blast. Smoke fills the cockpit - choking you - you can barely even see. You come to realize a moment later that you've hit your head on something; blood is running into your eye. You try to wipe it away but find that one of your arms are pinned under something unidentifiable. "Damn these meatsack parts," you whisper, as your ship falls into a dead tumble, hurtling toward the ground far below. The g-forces are intense, and you feel yourself blacking out.
Blissful darkness.
There is no pain here.
It's what you always told your patients... the ones you liked, at least.
You'd rather be a machine.