An Eclipse of Corruption (Vuxayl x Cricket)

[Vuxayl]

"Greetings! You have reached bulkhead 13 of the Aurigas-Bridge Station. Before you proceed, you must acknowledge that you agree with ISC space transfer regulations, as well as any req..." Xayun sighed from boredom, leaning on the wall-mounted communications panel as a cheerful robotic voice informed him of a fairly comprehensive list of pre-recorded regulations, all of which he had ended up memorizing anyway. An eventual silence brought his attention back to the panel, a signal that the automated welcome system had finally shut up and was waiting for his confirmation, name and ID. "Yes. Xayun Ush-Ocredoia-Ush" he said in a gravelly, warped voice; he then took a card from his on-board space suit and quickly waved it in front of the ID scanner.

"Please list any accompanying non-protocol cargo." the voice said, announcing the next step of the procedure. Xayun turned his head around and peered behind himself; unfortunately, he did bring non-protocol cargo: three cases of smuggled plasma rifles, one large spool of ammunition, one large stack of papers to sign, and a pen. All carefully arranged in a dolly behind him and tied together with insulating tape. He turned around to face the panel again, and sighed. "Uhm... Confiscated Weapons, Ammo. And paperwork." he said not so enthusiastically. The presence of dangerous materials on a boarding procedure would mean he had to wait and be welcomed by a "special" commitee. And sooner or later he was going to have to sign that paperwork.

Tired as he was, he sat down in the metal grid that comprised the floor of the bulkhead, leaning to one side until he found a wall protrusion to rest his helmet on. It had a flat, seashell-like appearance in order to cover both his humanoid face and his bony crest, a male feature of his species. They had evolved to a level of sentience and technology at least as great as that of humans, which had spread and proliferated well beyond their home system. However, as compared of humans, they had evolved much faster; so fast in fact that nature never managed to catch up. Even while sitting, his tall and primal skeleton was apparent, having strong, longer limbs capable of quadrupedal running. His hands and feet still possessed strong claws to grasp and tear down flesh with, and a hardened muscular system that evolved to endure life outside of civilization.

Xayun was starting to fall asleep when the bulkhead suddenly lighted up in swirling red colors and screeching noises, startling him from torpor. The decompression sequence gave him barely any time to stand up before the bulkhead doors opened, and there they were: two armed security guards and a station representative, all human. "Welcome back to Aurigas-Bridge. This should be the rest of the small cargo, we'll take it from here." One of the guards entered to take the dolly deeper inside the station; the other one soon followed. The representative offered a cordial handshake that Xayun accepted after taking his helmet off, before going off to attend other necessary duties. The alien's bare face and half-circular crest was of a chalky, bone-white complexion, fine lines and features contrasting with the rest of his body. Two large bright-purple eyes contemplated their surrounds, with two other eyes behind these, much smaller in size.

After finally entering the station, Xayun headed down to the mess deck to rest and grab something to eat, to distract himself from the completed mission. It was only a few hours until his PDA started calling for attention, and announcing another crew reunion in the mission control deck - a telltale sign of a briefing, and a new mission. They hadn't seen much local activity lately - only the occasional smugglers that tried to get through the nearby hyper-portals with counterfeit goods, and one or two hijacking attempts - so two missions so close together was unusual. The Aurigas-Bridge Station was a something of a relic from recent wars in this sector; while it is still a military base, these days its expenditures are hardly justifiable. Even rumors of partial decommission were starting to gain traction. Xayun mulled over these thoughts until his elevator finally arrived; soon after he was heading to the briefing room.

 

[Cricket]

Deep within the bowels of the base station was an engine room in all manners of disrepair. The android worked with a combination of annoyance and restlessness. A part of her had hoped that becoming a first lieutenant meant a bigger role in the comings and goings of the military base station. But that would imply that there were more comings and goings. She was deep in the engine room, working on stopping one of the coolant tubes from leaking. This engine was what helped the base stay in orbit among many other things, and it wasn’t likely that command would fulfill her request for those repair droids. But Karilel couldn’t just stay idle, either. If she didn’t have a mission, she was going to take it upon herself to make things run as smoothly as possible. She was nothing if not hardworking.

She could flex and alter her hands in subtle ways to get into the hard to reach spots. After all, her body was made up of intricately overlapping pieces of metal. This was the telltale sign that she was a Laut’Haler—a race entirely of robots. Their creators—if they truly had any—were lost to time, with only the scarcest of relics hinting at their existence. Since then, the androids themselves had refined and adapted the race by rebuilding and improving their bodies and minds. The race was far from perfect, as their technology had its limitations, but they had done what they could.

Karilel did not have to eat or breathe, for example. Nor did she break out in a sweat in the heat of the engine room. Sleeping was something her race had copied from organic creatures; instead of relying on a power source they now could enter a type of stasis to regain energy. A very dulled sense of pain was also incorporated as they improved their bodies, but only as to warn them of afflictions when their systems could not.
Therefore, she could not work tirelessly without end, as much as she wanted to. And though she was a robot, her mind was no such super computer. Karilel had to work to get to her position on the space station just like any other organic creature would have. The Laut’Haler race was constantly adapting and was still far from their ideal selves. That didn’t stop a handful of other races to think Laut’Halers thought of themselves as better than others. If anything, Karilel had had to work harder because a lot came to the conclusion that the androids were capable of a lot more than they were. Perhaps these stereotypes gave Karilel the hard, no-nonsense edge to her daily life.

That was where she was when the alert went off on her notification system. Not an emergency, but not something she could ignore either. She made her last minute adjustments to the tubing before briskly leaving the engine room and making her way to the mission control of the Aurigas-Bridge station. She welcomed something else to do, especially a mission, but a part of her did want to finish the work she left in the engine room.

The gray metal that made up her body was now smudged with grease and whatever else the engine had decided to leave on her. The many grooves and folds in the metal that made up her body had a light blue glow to them, as did her eyes. Her uniform was zipped up her neck, but left the shoulders and arms exposed due to the large protrusions from them. Fortunately it was black because it was not in a much cleaner state. If she had any extra time, Karilel would have ran to change, to be fully presentable for her crew and whichever of her superiors were present.

Karilel entered the mission control deck, standing tall and rigid as she waited for the others to arrive. She tried her best to wipe away some of the grease but it was mostly futile. Sometimes the mission would come from the commanding officer leading the meeting, or it could be as indirect as an incoming audio transmission from an outside source, usually the station’s director.

 

[Vuxayl]

The briefing room was rather small compared to the rest of the mission control deck, which had massive maps of the nearby sectors on its walls and rows upon rows of chairs for operators of different systems. Here, there was only a central round table, with a holographic projection of the immediate space octants, a couple of chairs and a large window-like screen that displayed an alien figure, background stars faintly visible behind. The station's mission director peered from this screen, impatiently waiting for the rest of the crew of the docked ship. One of the rarest species since humans first made contact with other lifeforms, she appeared a strange creature whose looks were between Earth-based hanging moss and a quartz formation, neatly dressed in an impeccable white uniform. As one of the highest-ranking officers on duty, she was imposing and intimidating nonetheless. Strangely, there was no commander present in the briefing room.

Once everyone had arrived, she sighed and begun the briefing, using a voice synthesiser to communicate. "Took you all long enough to get here. Unfortunately, I seem to need to remind you, you have not been marked as off-duty yet." She paused. "I don't want to see this repeated, and trust me - neither do you." Even without any eyes for the crew to look at, one could feel her staring at each and every crew member by the way she shimmered and turned under the station's artificial lighting. She stared for just a moment longer at Karilel and her rather unpresentable state, and managed to feel even more disappointment. But there was really no time to instill more discipline in the crew, and neither did she want to bother with such menial tasks.

With another sigh, the mission director proceeded. "At 40.70 of the 12th station-day before today, refinery-ship Kanayago undocked station Aurigas-Bridge for ore collection and refinement in the Lambda octant." The table hologram blinked and warped a bit until a clear image of the station and surrounding octants appeared floating above it, with the specified octant and ship trajectory highlighted in red. Kanayago was composed of a huge cargo bay and built-in refinery connected to a much smaller vessel, which could pull it through space or detach from it to collect ore from asteroids. "At 51.72 and 8 days after, all communications with the pilot ship were lost. We have decided that, since commander Hor-kanthassh is currently off-station attending other duties, lieutenant Karilel will command the assigned rescue/towing ship and the assembled crew." She stared intently at those inside the briefing room. "That means you. Your task is simply to retrieve the cargo hold, which we have confirmed is currently undocked and floating in space at the marked waypoint - and search nearby asteroids in a 50km range for any sign of the Kanayago. You will launch at 90.00 today.".

Some of the crew members looked at each other nervously in the short pause that followed. "A final note. If you dare to command the rescue ship dressed as you are or otherwise fail the mission, lieutenant Karilel, I can guarantee you - this will be the last ship you'll ever fly. You are all dismissed." And just like that, the figure of the mission director disappeared from the screen with a short, high-pitched beep, followed shortly after by the table hologram. Xayun glanced at Karilel's eyes before exiting the room with the rest of the crew, going as far as to briefly pat her on the shoulder - even he could feel the weight of her new responsibilities.

 

[Cricket]

The director’s disapproval was palpable. Karilel had gambled between showing up looking like a mess, or showing up late by changing her uniform. She kept her mouth closed but wanted to explain herself—she looked the way she did because she was helping out on the falling apart station! At least her crew had grown to expect her various forms of disarray, since she was always rushing from one project to the next.

The transmission ended with the director threatening her position. Karilel gritted her teeth and clenched and unclenched her jaw. Just another time she needed to prove herself.

Though Karilel was made of metal, she still had a sense of touch. There was a comforting hand on her shoulder, and she turned to acknowledge it. It was Xayun’s, giving her brief reassurance. She exchanged a glance with him with her glowing eyes. A thank you.

She watched him go, along with the rest of the crew. She took a brief moment to steel herself before making her way to the barracks. There was no time left to waste.

The Aurigas-Bridge was constantly in disrepair. The funding sent to it was just enough to still keep it running, and the rusted walls, tight corridors, and state of the barracks only reminded Karilel of this fact. Not that she personally minded, but it didn’t help morale to feel like you were neglected while floating in space.

The android changed her uniform and scrubbed the grease from her metal. The time they were scheduled to set off didn’t leave her with much wiggle room. She headed towards the ship’s navigation center so she could use the mapping and screens to get a feel for the mission.

The Lambda Octant was noted for a few different things, but one of them was a substantial asteroid belt. That made ore readily available, hence the Kanayago’s mission, but asteroid belts held a lot of unknowns and piloting a ship through it could be risky. The ship could be anywhere in that tumultuous span of rocks.

Karilel spent the rest of her remaining time looking at the maps of where the cargo bay was known to be and the surrounding 50km. She knew she could not let this mission go south. Her PDA gave her an alert when the mission's time was approaching, so she was ready and waiting at the ship's docking bay before the rest of her crew.

 

[Vuxayl]

"Evening, commander." were Xayun's words as he passed by Karilel on the way to the rescue ship, ready to undock from the station. The ship was already pre-prepared for any basic rescue missions, and since no special equipment was needed to tow the floating refinery and any possible wrecks, the launch was relatively quick and uneventful. In the ship, Xayun did what he was trained to do - coordinating the ship's multiple engines, making sure all subsystems were healthy and on-line, and leaving the strategic decisions to those in the upper decks. Things could go terribly boring once the ship's system were all running nice and smoothly in automatic mode, so Xayun eventually decided to go up to the bridge, where the commander and officer posts were. When he entered the navigation center Karilel was at, he waited until she was done with any required tasks and then approached her for a chat.

"So, they thought t'was nice to throw you at the deep end, eh... -commander-?" He turned his head to look at her with a smile. His tone was flirtatious, but only in a playful sense... he wasn't really that much into exotic, inorganic entities. Staring back at the deep abyss beyond the ship's windows, Xayun continued. "We've all done this countless times, it almost gets boring. But that also means it won't be that hard to help you out in case you mistake, you know... an head for an ass, or something like that." He then leaned closer to her and continued speaking in a hushed tone. "And between you and me... that station control director was a real cold bitch. They all are.".

A few moments later a small, intermittent beep echoed throughout the command room, and a green reticule was projected right in the rescue ship's main window, circling what seemed to be an isolated man-made structure. Xayun turned around in the navigation center to look at the flashing displays for a moment. "All right, that's the paycheck, right there. We need to scout around and find the pilot ship, or what's left of it, dock that monster and haul it back to Aurigas.". Strangely, Xayun's inner ears were ringing slightly, even though the pressure readings were normal. Paying no real attention to it, he looked at Karilel. "All set when you give the signal, commander."

 

[Cricket]

Karilel inwardly admitted that she liked the way commander sounded. She had almost always worked in the shadow of commander Hor-kanthassh until this moment. No pressure.

She followed the rest of her crew into the docking ship while they were waiting for her instruction. It wasn’t a time for any sort of speech, but it was important to make sure everything was clear.

“Right, we have the coordinates, and you all heard the director,” she began. “The Lambda octant is known for asteroids, and the autopilot system should be able to handle most of it. However, there are a lot of small rocks and debris that the system might not be accounting for, so we will need some careful finessing. Pay attention to the ship’s vitals and make sure we aren’t suffering from any impacts when we bring her in close. This will be even more relevant when we have anything extra that we’re towing. So, everyone, just pay attention. That’s all for now.”

The ship launched without issue. It was a relatively small ship made for getting in and getting out. It had significant boosting and speed, so they managed to reach their destination in no time at all, the pilot expertly leading them through the asteroids. Karilel knew they would have to account for speed and maneuverability decreasing when they attached any cargo.

As they approached the point of interest, Karilel was surveying what she could in the navigation center, but especially trying not to think about the weight of this mission on her position. The doors opened as someone came beside her. It took her a moment first but her normally stiff posture relaxed into something more natural and amicable when Xayun came to talk to her. It wasn’t something she would usually do with just anyone else, but she and Xayun had known each other for a while. They had gone through some of their training together, and then both been stationed on the Aurigas-Bridge. Somewhere along their history, Karilel had made it her goal to rise up through the ranks. She couldn’t exactly pinpoint what Xayun’s plan for anything was, but she felt he was always effective at accomplishing what he wanted.

She turned back to him and returned his smile, though she lacked the delicate movements in her lips. Those who spent time with her at least knew what she was aiming for. “We may have done this countless times but this mission’s different for me,” she reminded him pointedly. “But, thanks for your support. I know we have a very capable team here.” She paused a moment, thought about it, and then blurted something honest. Xayun had been so candid with her she found herself wanting to return the favor.

“I don’t know if I mean that,” Karilel admitted in a hushed tone. “It just seemed like the thing a commander would say.” They had a crew of 12, including the two of them, but Karilel only personally knew about five of them. The rest were just faces and names, and she knew the smaller scale of the Aurigas-Bridge sometimes meant using those who couldn’t handle larger missions.

She wasn’t sure if she was willing to condemn the station director and agree with Xayun’s assessment. “She… was a bit cruel,” she conceded, “but she was just doing her job. Besides, I’ve heard others mutter similar things about me. Well, that I was ‘cold and unfeeling.’ Being an android, I guess.” Not to mention, she thought to herself, someday that director could be me. But she tried not to get too hopeful. If she could just prove herself on this mission…

The mood of the ship changed when the beeping went off, and Karilel was back to her professional self. Everyone knew what the beep meant; it was back to business.

She listened to Xayun but was staring intently at the display, then out the ship’s windows to see if she could see the point looming ahead of them. Karilel gave Xayun a slow nod, indicating that she heard him, but wasn’t about to proceed so hastily.

“Can we get all scanners on that object?” She touched one delicate finger to highlight it on her screen. The inorganic structure came up on the screen before her.

“…The scanners stop their processing at 90%,” came a response from one of the crew. “We know it was built by someone or something, but can’t ascertain what it’s made out of.”

Karilel looked out the window. She could see it in the distance now. Perhaps it was because she had a lot riding on this mission, but she was going to play this very cautiously.

“Bring us in closer by three kilometers,” she ordered. The crew did as asked, and Karilel paused when the ship completed inching closer.

“Still no readout on the scanners?”

“No, commander.”

As an android, Karilel had never felt a ‘shiver run down her spine,’ as organics would put it, but that’s the closest thing she could describe to what she was feeling now. She felt a buzzing through her body that was only comparable to when she could feel strong magnetic fields. She scanned the rest of her crewmembers in sight, to see if they indicated anything was wrong. If they felt anything off too, they weren’t showing it.

“What about the readout on the ship? Everything optimal? And the atmosphere… any unusual gases? Or… radiation?” she asked.

 

[Vuxayl]

The panels on the starship tried to define and display the various properties and statistics of the anomalous object, but they returned contradicting information, excluding the fact that it definitely wasn't natural. It was of organic origin, of electronic origin, weathered and round like a pebble, sharp and hard like a machine. It absorbed light, but then it reflected light, or decided to let photons pass through and scatter. It appeared black through the windows of the control room, with little specks of light shining from it like starlight reflected on a rough surface. It's as if it couldn't settle on any sort of form or nature... was it trying to? Xayun leaned over the analytics as they flashed different images and diagrams at a dizzying speed. "It must be some sort of deep space probe interfering with our sensors" he thought out loud, looking back at the object through the main window.

No sooner had Xayun uttered these words when the objected started moving, apparently of its own will, towards a cluster of large asteroids. Hidden behind these, the sillouette of a dusty planet slowly peeked out. The strange floating object shimmered under the distant stars, slowly gliding towards the of center of that planet like an inanimate rock being pulled in by gravity. When Xayun looked at the unimpressive planet, one like many other billions of planets throughout space, his ears captured such a high-pitched screech that he lost his balance and fell, kneeling on the floor.

Yelling in pain, Xayun tried to cover his ears just behind his crest in a futile attempt at making the noise stop. It seemed to drill right through his skull and into his brain, his breath strained and shallow, clenching his lateral jaws in acute suffering. Only a few seconds after its onset, the high-pitched noise went down in volume, leaving him dizzy and watery-eyed on all fours in the deck, before it simply vanished. Most of the crew didn't seem to be aware of anything out of the ordinary, with the exception of the anomalous object now well into the distance; one of the operators reached out for Xayun, giving him an arm to help him get up. "Hey buddy, what's wrong?" he said.

"Fuck off, don't touch me!" he grunted in an aggressive tone, trying to push him away. He didn't like the fact that somehow, something made him vulnerable in that very moment. He quickly apologized, catching his breath from the experience and grabbing the operator's shoulder to stand up. "Sorry, it's okay. I'm okay. I'm okay...". Xayun nervously looked back at the planet in the distance, worrying that another assault would come; but the planet was as silent as ever, and only that strange buzzing sensation remained. He looked around in the room; some were looking at him like he had just gone mad there and then. "Sorry, I don't know what happened. I'm fine now..." he said in his gravelly tone, the reflected light of the dusty, light-brown planet softly shining through the windows. "I think I snagged a muscle under my suit, it hurt like hell." he quickly added, trying to steer the crew away from starting up rumors, and then went down to the lower decks to proceed with the mission.

The rest of the mission proceeded without any further noteworthy incidents, as was in protocol. Once the cargo had been located, a couple of miles away from the site where the unknown object was found, the crew proceeded to inspect the nearby asteroids in a radius of exactly 50km, using visual identification and scanning equipment to examine each and everyone of them. The towing ship seemed to have vanished without a trace, something that was exceedingly rare in controlled space. If the ship was nowhere near, they would eventually have to continue with the mission and bring the cargo home, without its original crew.

Down in the engine room, Xayun was thinking about what had happened. The mysterious object, the blinding agony he felt during a few heartbeats as he looked at the solitary planet... the way the floating cargo was isolated, in the middle of nowhere, the tow hitch pointed at that planet... He rose suddenly like an crucial realization suddenly formed in head; he wasted no time before inputting some data in a nearby computer, reading up the results and running up to the upper decks, where the control room was. "Lieut- Commander! Commander, I know where the towing ship is. That thing we observed, whatever that was; it went down to that planet, and I'm willing to believe it wanted us to follow." He continued. "The cargo, unhooked, pointing also at that planet. The crew and their ship just didn't disappear, they unhooked and went there. There's something wrong about it. About the planet." he said with conviction, pointing in its general direction. "I did a background check. Orbital deviations from the nearby asteroids suggest that a large object flied past them. It's fours hours away, about 7000km at medium thrust, no detectable orbital debris. Isolated, and no surface information."

Xayun stared intently into Karilel's eyes. "Something made them go there, commander. Something that made them undock their cargo so that they could actually arrive there. And they're not broadcasting their position. We can do a quick high-orbit fly-by, that should clear any doubts as to whether or not there's any sign of life or artificial objects on the surface. This can be their only chance."

 

[Cricket]

Karilel was on the main floor with most of the other crew at the moment, trying to gauge what her next course of action was. She was paying close attention to Xayun as he looked over the readings. He had to sense something was wrong too… right? She waited for anything from him—a sense of unease on his face, surprise in his eyes… He looked toward the main window and she followed his gaze. Then she too was interrupted by the buzzing feeling through her body reaching sudden intensity.

If anyone had been paying attention to her, they would have noticed the glowing blue lights in her eyes and beneath her metal fizzling and crackling like static. It obscured her vision and anything that she could sense, though instead of falling to the ground, she was locked in place, straight as always. No one did notice this, however, because Xayun had cried out in pain at this exact moment.

When Karilel “came to” Xayun was crouched on all fours in pain. She was too confused to ask if he was okay, but an operator was already there. She watched Xayun angrily push himself up, and he eventually left to the lower decks.

Everyone was silent for a beat. A few eyes looked toward her for direction.

“Proceed ahead toward the cargo,” Karilel ordered.

-

Karilel continued to oversee the mission, making sure they were scanning all the asteroids in a 50km radius. Everything was proceeding cautiously, which was the only way Karilel felt comfortable doing things right now. She felt a sense of dread towards straying from the cargo and their radius.

Searching for the ship or signs of life within the radius had turned up nothing. She had the crew do a brief second-check through what they could afford to do, just to be thorough. At this point, it was time to move on. Space was vast and unforgiving, and they all knew that. The Kanayago was just another casualty. At least, that was what she told herself. No nearby wreckage, no trace… it set her on edge.

“Alright, that’s enough,” she finally said. “Let’s attach the cargo.” If she could just get back to the station now she could put it all behind.

The docking crew started to prepare. Karilel knew that this would be their point of no return—once they had the cargo attached it would only be worth maneuvering the ship home.

That was when Xayun burst into the control room. There was something about his frenzied urgency that only furthered her unease.

She believed what he was saying about the significance of the planet—to a degree. The data supported that there was something of note about it at least, but it was risky, dangerous, and their mission was effectively done. It was time to be a commander and assert her authority now more than ever.

“As much as I want to believe the Kanayago has a chance of survival, I am not risking this crew on a hunch. I don’t doubt you think there’s something off about the distant planet, but 7000km is too out of the way. Not to mention we only put our planning into getting this far and home. That’s it. Anything else is too dangerous.” That feeling was too dangerous, she thought to herself.

“Docking the cargo ship is already underway, and we’ve searched our 50km radius. That’s all we were tasked to do. Our mission is over."

 

[Vuxayl]

Xayun stared at his new commander, breathing heavily from the run up to the control deck. He expected her to see his findings as conclusive that the missing crew was somehow connected to the planet and that they ought to investigate. Karilel, however, seemed to have a different opinion, and Xayun was left with a blank, dumbfounded expression. She did seem to have a more assertive attitude, proper for a commander he idly noted, before the words she spelled started taking shape in his head.

"Wha... what do you mean, -risking this crew-? It's just a planetary fly-by! It's more dangerous to have Old Joe there aboard this ship than to do that!" he said, making a gesture towards the planet in the background, then to one of the operators in the control room, which appeared to be really focused on a technical manual on his lap, or having just fallen asleep without anyone noticing. Xayun's alien pupils widened as he tried to defend his position, and he peeked at the control room out of the corner of his eye, noticing that the preparations to attach and dock the cargo were already under way. He turned to look back at Karilel, even more shocked.

"What are you doing?! We can't attach the cargo yet! We don't have enough fuel to-" he said waving his arms in front of the crew as if he was trying to stop the operations, before he realized the futility of it. Catching his breath, he tried to calm down, going over the issue again with a bit more reasoning. "... look, these people could be in trouble out there, ships don't disappear like this. I understand that there is a mission, but isn't our job actually looking after these people? That planet is further away than the mission stipulated, yes - but it's also damn close for a planet, and given the current state of events it's more than reasonable to go in there for a quick recon and I think we'll all sleep better tonight if we do. Please reconsider, Karilel."

Deep inside, Xayun wanted to inspect this planet, maybe even more than what can be justified by a recon mission for the missing ship. Something about it begged to be discovered, but even so his priority first and foremost was to ensure that there were no signs of the crew in its surface. Karilel, however, summarily denied his request. For her, it seemed the mission was really over. Anger bubbled up inside Xayun, and his voice gained a tone of aggressiveness to it. "So you don't really care, do you. For you, it's all the same if they end up back on the station or become dried husks drifting in space, as long as you do what you're told. I thought you would be different." The fact that he couldn't deny to himself that some of the points Karilel brought up actually made sense just made him even more angry at her and the mission in general, ignoring the fact that this was her first time as a commander. "But I guess just want to be like them, don't you? Like them who are ready to sacrifice a hundred lives to keep up with protocol. Well. Fuck this. Fuck this mission." he said, striding towards the door. "And fuck you, you cold metal bitch." he added before exiting, his heavy footsteps echoing inside the room as he went down to the lower decks.

The fleeting thought that he may have exaggerated occasionally passed by Xayun, keeping himself in the engine and system rooms for the rest of the trip and trying not to think too much about what happened. But he was sick and tired of what his job forced him to do, and he was decided to finally change it all. Soon they were arriving back at Aurigas-Bridge, with the Kanayago's attached cargo safe and sound.

 

[Cricket]

Expressions were not Karilel’s strong suit, but when she stared Xayun down her face was as unemotional as ever. She knew he was right, to a point—that the planet could be worth investigating—but she knew she had her own right too. His final outburst was just the final straw. She pushed down whatever feeling she had supported him, in favor of her cold, efficient commander persona.

Her last sentences to him were, “You can make a note on your unusual observations and pass it on the bridge director. I can do the same regarding your insubordination to your superior officer.”

And that was that.

Cold? She’d show them cold, if that’s what was necessary. Actually she was quite taken back by the outburst. Only hours before they were chatting like friends. But she wanted to use her hurt and anger to drive her onwards. She would show Xayun and anyone else who insulted her as an android. She would work even harder than she was now to show them all. If being a commander or a director meant being a cold-hearted bitch, so be it.

-

The mission was a success, as far as the directors were concerned. They had secured the cargo and searched the 50km radius just as instructed. No wasted time, no wasted resources. When Karilel was congratulated on a job well done, the part of her she was trying to snub out wanted to rub it in Xayun’s face.

She was determine to only succeed on from here.

 

[Vuxayl]

The dried food can that Xayun threw back bounced on the hull of his ship and landed on a small pile of rubbish that tended to reform when he was out working for days in a row. Something in the back of his head was telling him that he really should be treating what costed him years of mercenary work to pay off a little bit better, but a couple of cans and wrappers weren't going to do any damage. And he wasn't really willing to bother with that anyway. It was time to do a bit of R&R, floating around in the middle of space, after successfully escorting a transport ship between two rather hostile systems. He did really competitive prices for almost all kinds of jobs. Reliable, with a record. And no paperwork involved. Xayun had decided years ago that if things had to be done right, he had to go out there and do them himself, even if that often required him to err on the morally grey side of things. His permit to fly in this area? Could have been forged. The custom weaponry mounted on the wings? Well, effective, but not exactly legal. "And all those damn patrols, what a pain in the ass..." he thought with a sigh, rubbing his face. And yet, unlike them, he was out there actually doing what needed to be done.

Digging himself further in his padded chair, Xayun grabbed his old PDA, which he had managed to have hacked after paying a hefty sum of money to one of his "connections". He turned it on and started flicking through the offers, the light-blue screen shining on his face and eyes. "Uhm..." he groaned, looking at the news section which once again convinced him that the political world out there was a shithole, one he was glad to be able to bypass most of the time. Lots of spam in his mail folder as well, but that's what you get when you hand out your contact to less than scrupulous aliens. The ore exchange seemed to present some good opportunities for sulfur trading... he circled and bookmarked it just in case. You never know when you find that kind of cargo, and he still had to earn a living. He skipped the product market, And then a quick browse through the classifieds... "Twin Goi'kah Sisters, Searching for Special Entertainment... Hmmm.". Well, why not bookmark that as well. Might be worth a look.

And now, the military and police feeds. The list of pending/on-course operations seemed to be pretty much the same as it was when he browsed it this morning. No real eye-catchers, and while there were a couple of notes pointing out multiple situations that were still "available", they didn't seem particularly appealing. Actually, he noticed as he looked at the list a bit closer, there were indeed a couple of new entries. "Exploded Engine, Debris Recollection, Sector 27-AH-90-QU" one of them mentioned. "No, thank you!" Xayun said with a tired chuckle as he flicked the list down with a finger. Way down and probably abandoned was "Frequent Raiding of Proprietary Solar Panel Array, Sector 10-HJ-74-QE.". The alien scratched his face, contemplating the details of the entry. "Well I guess I'll end up doing that one later this week..." he said, a tinge of weariness on his voice. And, finally, " Emergency Towing Ship Signal, Planet 89-PG-28-HI."

An emergency crash signal from a mining ship, a relatively rare - and profitable - occurrence. He ought to pay real close attention to this one. It took him quite a few swipes back and forth of the star map before it dawned on him. That planet... it was THE planet. They had been on the planet, the missing crew. It was real. Xayun jumped on the chair, the sudden rush of adrenaline making him look all over the place and wave his PDA in the artificial atmosphere. Once he had recovered from the shock he brought it back under his gaze, studying the details page a bit more. "Freelance Crew Operators - Recruitment Link" mentioned one section, pointing to a link for a public recruitment line. Xayun never sent an application faster in his life. He grabbed the thruster control and yanked it to full speed, heading towards the nearest planet. R&R was officially over.

 

[Cricket]

Karilel stepped back into her ship with a small, armed crew accompanying her. The door closed behind them and began to depressurize just as Karilel took one last glance at the planet they had just come from. The planet was mostly rocky and barren except for prickly light purple shrubs that had come up to her waist. However, the natives seemed to thrive just fine. There were two warring factions on the planet; apparently the conflict started because one side planned on irreversibly terraforming it, and the other side was fighting against the plan. To Karilel, the current environment didn’t look all that worth trying to protect. But now the rebels were getting out of hand, even threatening to use a bomb—if they couldn’t have it the way they wanted, they were going to destroy it. The government of the planet had asked for backup to placate the situation, or at least see if the bomb threat was real. The director had sent Karilel’s and her ship.

The ship took off from where it had landed within the valley of two mountain ranges. Karilel could feel exhaustion, though it wasn’t the same as organic species, and more that she was running out of actual energy. She and her crew took a beating out there, but managed to subdue the rebels long enough to deactivate any form of electronics they had. They never found out if the bomb as real or not, but it if was they put it and its detonator out of commission. It would take a very long time before they could get anything up and running again, and when they did, Karilel was ready to come back all over again.

She felt good, even if she was tired. She felt useful. She felt like she was just where she was meant to be. The crew that had stayed behind on the ship gave her and the others congratulations. Then she retired to the commander’s viewing port.

Karilel was now commander of the SS Vigilant. It had taken her what almost felt like an eternity to get here, but here she was. The ship was much more streamlined and advanced than what the Aurigas-Bridge had to offer, and Karilel was more than just a stand-in commander. This was her ship now.

On occasion, she found herself wondering if the Aurigas-Bridge was holding up at all. Probably not, without her wasting her time trying to repair it. It probably starting falling apart the moment she left it. She knew she could find out how it was doing with just a simple search, but preferred to stick to her daydreams. Besides, it barely occupied her thoughts these days and wasn’t worth the bother to research.

While she was searching through her news and alerts, Karilel received the Vigilant’s next mission. There was a distress signal from a crashed mining ship, and command sent out a recruitment link for freelance workers. It seemed that they needed someone with experience to oversee the whole expedition, even if it wasn’t entirely complicated or dangerous.

Karilel looked at the applications and reviewed the names. She also had the authority to either add them to the team or immediately decline them without further questions. As she scanned through the names, Xayun’s immediately stuck out at her.

They had not talked since their explosive situation so long ago. Xayun had only sort of occupied Karilel’s distant memory with the Aurigas-Bridge station. But when she remembered, she got a bitter, sinking feeling. What was he doing now? Why would he apply to this job?

The first thought that occurred to her was that somehow he knew she would lead the mission and wanted some chance to screw her over or watch her fail. But no… that wasn’t it. Then Karilel frantically searched for information on the planet the mission was on. It wasn’t something she usually did—it was more typical of her to head straight for the coordinates, no questions asked.

The map of the planet and its system swelled out on the screen before her. She didn’t need to double-check it, but she did just to be positive. It was that planet.

Karilel hit “decline” on Xayun’s application and went to prepare for the mission.

 

[Vuxayl]

The winds howled at Xayun while he walked the surface of a barren planet, his ears ringing with high-pitched noises. In the distance there was a large silhouette of a pyramid, and a figure waited for him at the entrance. When he arrived she greeted him, her metallic plates gleaming under the soft light that bathed the planet's surface. "I've been waiting for you for so long", Karilel said with a smile, grabbing his hand and leading him inside. Pinned to the walls and ceiling in all manner of positions were thousands of bleeding corpses, their entrails hanging down and wetting the floor with blood. Their severed limbs were rotting away on the ground, and those who still had faces were smiling. "Isn't it beautiful?" she said, contemplating them. "I want to be beautiful too. Let's be beautiful together". Xayun grabbed his plasma rifle in terror, and when she started walking towards him he shot her in the chest, making a clean hole. Karilel looked at him with a disappointed expression, blood starting to drip down from her mouth and eyes. The other corpses started coming to life, climbing down from the walls. "Xayun... I know you want it too..." she said, her metal starting to rot away.

Xayun woke up in panic and grasping for air, spreading his arms and legs on the bed like he was trying to hold on to something. When he realized he was still in bed, he calmed down and sighed, looking at the ceiling. Another one of those nightmares. His sheets were pretty much scraps of fabric, his talons ripping through them during his troubled sleep. He had already replaced the sheets four or five times, but they always ended up shredded from his night terrors to the point he was starting to not give a damn about the state of his bed. After catching his breath, he got dressed in a hurry, left his apartment and headed out to the downtown pub.

In the Space Cadet Bar, Xayun was refreshing his PDA feed over and over, waiting for a reply to his application. He wasn't usually this excited, his drink and chunk of meat still pretty much intact on his table as he swiped his fingers on the screen every ten minutes or so. He hoped it would finally take her, the lost crew and the dreadful planet out of his mind, ending his nightmares and torment. Once the little reply notification sign popped up, Xayun jumped in his chair like an excited child, opening the new message and skimming through it as fast as he could. "Denied" it said. Xayun's excitement was replaced with anger and disappointment, and he threw the PDA onto the coffee table. "Damn them" he muttered to himself. A brief feeling of dread swept through his mind, thinking that somehow -she- was in charge of it and that she was responsible for denying his application. "Ho ho no, not her!" he chuckled nervously, remembering the animosity that sparked between them so long ago. But the odds were slim, and someone like her would surely prefer a more... "boastful" mission, he though.

A moody Xayun ruminated over the denied mission, and how could he somehow force himself into it. He wasn't going to acquiesce so easily. Suddenly, his mood seemed to brighten up, and he rushed down to the counter where a dirty bartender was working. "Hey there Bill, how's tricks?... look, think you can send a crate of warm Astar beer and some hot margaritas down to my ship? Fast, I got'ta fly soon." he said to to him in a nonchalant way. The bartender raised on eyebrow at him, laughed and then brought his attention back to the glass he was trying to clean. "You're a funny man, Xay. How about you pay that last shipment you ordered, and maybe then I'll consider it, yeah."

Xayun fiddled with his pockets and placed a small golden rectangle on the bar counter, fixated on the bartender. "... If you do it in the hour, you can keep the change." he said with his fingers over the rectangle, pushing it towards Bill. The bartender's eyes widened for a bit, looking at the small credit card and then at Xayun. "Oh, why didn't you say so! My pleasure to deliver only the best to my patrons. I'll have them sent to you right away." the bartender said with a grin. Xayun chuckled, leaving the credit card on the counter. "You look like crap, mate" the bartender added, jesting at him. "You tell me that every day... and so do you" Xayun said back, heading outside to where his ship was parked.

After a couple of minutes two crates got delivered to his ship, which he stored in the trunk. Xayun peeked inside them, checking the contents over: two cylinders of hyperjump fuel, four high-explosive packs. Good quality stuff, he noted. He connected the cylinders to his ship and jumped inside, sitting in the pilot's seat and browsing around in his PDA. "Right, what is their flight course" he mumbled, reading the classified documentation for the denied mission. "Yes, there it is. Hmm, well... time to give them a surprise". He inputted the coordinates onto the flight computer, making sure he would be following them from a safe distance, and took off from the starport.

 

[Cricket]

Karilel had hoped that it would have been longer to reach the planet. But all of a sudden it was in view, looming ahead of them.

She had eagerly, defiantly accepted the mission. But in transit, she began to remember the feeling of dread and unease that crept upon her those years ago. There had been many reasons she directed the ship back to the station that day, but one of them was because she was afraid of what the planet was hiding. She had chosen dutiful cautiousness over Xayun’s reckless curiosity.

The many delicate layers of metal making up Karilel’s body were flickering here, shifting around there. Not enough for anyone to really notice, unless they were paying attention to her. And no one was paying attention to her. It was something that happened when she felt apprehension. But when you’re a cold-hearted commander, no one gets to know you closely enough to learn your habits.

She was squinting out the ships window, not willing to pay attention to much else. She was waiting for any bad sign, anything to indicate she should turn around. The low buzzing feeling started in her body.

Karilel frantically looked around the crew, to see if they noticed anything too. She finally made eye contact with one crewmate, the only one who looked like he might be nervous about something. He had a paranoid edge to him. ‘Do you feel it too?’ Karilel was dying to ask. But she kept her professionalism.

“Feeling alright?” she approached him.

Now he looked nervous that she was talking directly to him. “Yes, commander. Just… ready to get this done with.” He gave a sheepish smile and looked like he politely wanted her to leave. Because when you’re the cold-hearted commander no one wants to be honest or vulnerable around you.

As she stared the planet down, the sudden static overtook her. Karilel, as a Laut’Haler, wouldn’t really go limp unless suffering from a major system malfunction. Instead, when losing sensory input or encountering other errors, her body would lock upright in place. When she found herself focusing they were already landing on the planet. Only a few eyes were on her for direction; no one seemed to notice anything that happened. She couldn’t turn back now.

“Okay, the small, chosen squad with me. There should be another transport ship meeting us here with the freelancers,” she said. Her crew went off to suit up.

The majority of her crew needed protective suits, but some species and herself could endure the atmosphere, or lack of it. Still, she wore a heavy suit loaded with all the necessary devices and utilities, as was protocol for these types of missions.

The airlock opened with a hiss. Karilel and six others stepped out with her. The planet was mostly unremarkable to look at. However, as soon as her feet touched the ground she felt as if a weight was pulling her onto it. An increase in gravity, she told herself.

She gathered up the crew just to give a brief rundown of the mission and make sure everyone was on the same page.

“The crash signal is roughly one and a half kilometers towards this planet’s east,” she said, gesturing with her PDA armband. It would be feeding them important navigational information. “That’s just over the ridge up ahead. Our priority is survivors, but if there aren’t any then we’ll need everyone to haul back salvage. It’s not feasible to try to land a ship there, so we’ll have to do it ourselves. After evaluating the site, we can also fall back to use the retrieval bots.”

 

[Vuxayl]

Behind and outside of detection radius, Xayun chased Karilel's flagship as it flew towards its mission's destination. Locking their signatures and coordinates, he stopped his spaceship around half-way through the trip. He still had to put his external suit on, and his ship wasn't prepared to suit him up while landed on a hostile environment. So he climbed out of his pilot seat onto the back seats, and rummaged through the trunk searching for all the required parts - helmet, jacket, trousers, command module, and so on, fitting them onto himself as he found them. They were of the same model he'd used when he was still in the military; he had somehow convinced them of letting him have it as a "souvenir". The once yellow uniform was now grey from the wear it had seen from years of service; the systems of the suit had been frequently repaired and enhanced and most of the paint had chipped away.

Once he finished dressing himself up, the ship had already turned on its axis a few times from his tumblings, but he had a lock on the mission vessels and easily caught up with them. After reaching the planet's low-orbit, he throttled the ship's boosters just so they'd fall below detection, and quietly descended into the atmosphere, the other two ships mere dots on his HUD visor. Xayun eyeballed the landscape for a while after his ship was barely above ground level, and a rocky outcropping one or two kilometers away from the presumed landing site of the mission ships was a perfect place to hide it. The roaring engines started blasting dust around the chosen location as he lowered his ship until it touched ground, the hydraulics from its landing gear doing a brief hissing sound. That was it. No point going back now.

Xayun opened the pilot-side door of his small spaceship, the hinged panels slowly rising upwards. Taking a large breath of recycled air from his suit, he moved his legs outside and pressed against the dusty ground, lifting himself out. Xayun nervously stretched his arms and legs, looking at the eerie landscape. From the trunk he took a couple of small tools that he fitted onto his belt and pockets, and an old-looking plasma rifle - noticeably modified - that he strapped to his shoulder. He looked hesitantly at a single bottle of beverage and a crate, worn out and with a faint label saying "RATIONS". He'd rather not bring these out unless the situation definitely called for it, but he didn't trust this planet one bit and if his nightmares were anything to go by, then these would be more than needed. Better safe than sorry. Then, the explosives. Four packs of them, laying side by side on the ground and wrapped in black plastic bags. The plan felt risky, even for someone like him, but he was willing to go ahead with it.

Xayun briefly glanced at the positions of the two ships - Karilel's and the transport ship for the hired freelancers - marked on his PDA display, and locked his ship down. The explosive bags were tied in pairs, and he carried them around his neck. He placed the plasma rifle on his hip, the ration box on his shoulder and held the bottle with his free hand, his silhouette in the distance amusingly similar to that of a beach tourist in vacation, inflatable around neck and carrying a pack of cold beers. Unfortunately, reality was a lot more sinister. It only took a couple of minutes for him to trek all the way to where the other ships had landed, and Xayun crouched behind them, keeping an eye on the crew in the distance as he placed the explosives on both spacecrafts, one on each main engine. Now all that was left was to act natural.

"Hey, wait! Wait!" Xayun started running in the direction of the assembled crew. "Sorry, fell asleep in the- I mean, got caught up in that maze of a ship over there. S'up?..." he said short of breath, nervously nodding at one of the other freelancers. "So, anyth-" He suddenly stopped and for a brief moment panic invaded him. "No, it can't be." he though, looking at Karilel, remembering her and seeing her right there, in this mission. He avoided eye contact with her like the plague, and his mind frantically tried to rationalize the situation. "It's okay. It's just another Laut'Haler. They all look pretty much the same anyway. Right... relax." Xayun managed to look even more awkward, but he knew he had to quickly take control of the situation. He was dealing with military personnel - on a remote isolated planet, there wasn't much to keep them from shooting intruders. "My fault. S-so, anything I missed? I read and re-read the briefing."

 

[Cricket]

Karilel almost raised her weapon at the newcomer—her arms jerked up and then she immediately forced them down. Was she really that jumpy? No, it was good to be on her toes. If anything it was the newcomer’s fault for running at them. She hoped no one had noticed, but when she scanned the crowd most seemed to be staring at the incoming alien curiously.

The late arrival approached. Karilel turned to look at him with calculated intensity. Facial recognition scanning was something that Laut’Halers like herself could have, but Karilel had opted against it at some point in her life. She hoped that it would make her spend more time paying attention to her crewmember’s faces, so she could truly get to know who they were.

That meant Karilel wasn’t sure that the freelancer was Xayun, but she could make an educated guess on her suspicions. Some of the other freelancers were looking at him and then at each other curiously, but no one seemed about to speak up if anything was off. Karilel wasn’t going to call him out yet, especially not if it was just based on a hunch.

“No, I just went over what we were already informed of,” she replied calmly. If the freelancer really was Xayun and he did just sneak into the mission, let his lack of information weed him out. But on the other hand, she could be sending a completely innocent and misinformed person into a potentially dangerous mission.

“Okay, let’s go!” Karilel announced. “Freelancers, stick together for now. We may split up based on searching for survivors, or move in groups to move the salvage.” She walked off without looking over her shoulder. Her crewmembers followed after her wordlessly, and the freelancers after them. There was minimal conversation at the moment, which made the buzzing feeling echo even louder in Karilel’s body.

 

[Vuxayl]

Xayun's suit made a good job of hiding his hastened breathing as he exposed himself in front of the crew and its commander, trying to fool them into thinking he was part of the freelancers. The Laut'Haler he had been facing didn't seem to be concerned enough to press him with any inconvenient questions, and he gave a shy sigh of relief, his heart thumping in his chest. The cold, razor-sharp stare that she gave him, though, made him feel just as nervous. Even with Xayun's appreciable experience in mercenary work and other unsafe missions, the imminent danger he could feel under his skin still had an effect on him. With a deep breath and a shake of the shoulders he eased himself into the situation, now that the others believed - or rather, didn't immediately challenge the notion - that he belonged in the freelancer team, and he put on a slightly more energetic mood. Once Karilel gave the order to move, he gave a solid "Yes, commander" and followed her and her crewmembers, staying in the freelancer group.

As they were walking, he took a few moments to better evaluate the personnel surrounding him. Compared to Karilel's group, all wearing their official military suits in impeccable condition, the freelancers looked like a bunch of alien space cowboys that had been collecting dust on some fringe-colony. Xayun tried to take some comfort in thinking that he looked at least a little bit better than most of them, or at least didn't look as bad as some of them. The groups seemed tense, he noted, and some of the freelancers seemed to have their fingers on their weapons, ready to respond to any sudden threat. Something that would be perhaps too extreme in a rescue mission on an uninhabited planet, but there was something particularly eerie about this mission, and the whole crew felt it in varying degrees. He was already sweating from the walk up to the received signal, his secondary eyes fogging up from the moisture.

Halfway through the journey, one of Karilel's crewmembers sighted something gleaming on the horizon, and they quickly rushed in to the site. Once they arrived, they could see the steel beams poking out of the Kanayago's shipwreck, holding strips of insulating fabric like flags on the planet's howling winds. The ship had a massive trail of metal pieces and charred sand carved into the planet's surface behind it, having endured weather erosion, and had broken in half before stopping. Electrical wires, hydraulic systems and warped structural features poked out of the former Kanayago like guts from a machine, and cargo, machines, tools and crew belongings had been ejected in a circle around the hull's fissure point. The ship almost looked like a skeleton, most of its metal panelling having been torn from the framework, and only a few beams remaining. A few of the mission's crewmembers poked at the debris with the tip of their rifles, idly turning them around. There was no chance anyone would have survived such a crash - even if they had somehow survived the impact, the ship or whatever had been left of it didn't have the capability of providing any life support, and the Kanayago had been missing for years now.

And yet, there were a few thing that definitely weren't right. Xayun himself helped turn the debris over, searching for the bodies of the missing crew - not even one was found. Not even half of one, a single limb or a dried smear of blood was inside or outside the derelict, and not even the ever-changing weather of this remote planet would have succeeded in removing all organic remains from the crash. Most of the ship's actual hull plating was missing, together with chunks from the frame that supported them; it was possible that the wind had slowly removed them and pushed them around the surface like metal sails, but the extent of the missing panelling was unusually large. Spread around the ship and half-buried in the ground, only some of the machines remained; some had signs of being hacked away and gutted, vital electronics seemingly torn out of them. And finally, the signal wasn't coming from the derelict's location - it was somehow still in front of them.

The crew looked at each other, unsure of what to make of the contradictory data. Searching the derelict was proving to be futile - it presented more questions than answers, and they still had to investigate the signal. A few kilometres ahead, once they arrived to the signal's location... there was nothing. The planet presented its untamed wilderness at them from all sides, not a single artificial construct in sight. The crew swept a circle around the presumed site from where the signal had been emitted, and most of them found nothing. Except one of them, which struck one of the Kanayago's metal panels with her boot, half-buried in the dirt. A piece from the derelict having been swept away by the wind, most surely, but still the crew brushed away some of the dust, investigating it. Embedded in the ground, two large semi-circular doors formed what seemed like an entrance, made from plates of the Kanayago's hull. Two bundles or electrical wires were looped around a hole on each door, and it took three members pushing them on each side of the entrance to force the doors to rotate on their hinges, opening a dark entryway underground.

 

[Cricket]

The only thing that Karilel’s personal scanners were able to tell her was that this was indeed the skeleton of the Kanayago. She knew that. She didn’t need her wiring mocking her like this. How fitting, she thought, that they were here at the shipwreck—the ship that caused this whole course to begin with. They came full circle. Karilel felt like she was put in charge for the first time again and desperate for everything to stick to the plan.

She looked over the faces around her. No one was a part of the original crew she commanded her first time, except for Xayun. They didn’t know anything about the ship besides what had gone in her report after that mission forever ago. Even then, that was just a sparse overview, and this was assuming that they did their research. But she knew, and Xayun knew. Was this some sort of test? Was her past coming to haunt her for leaving the Kanayago for dead?

They worked together to search the wreckage for anything important. Nothing. But Karilel hadn’t expected much. If anything, it was too clean.

“There’s nothing here,” she said. Nothing but ghosts now. “Let’s keep moving.” And so they did until they encountered the next mystery.

A pair of sturdy metal doors was the last thing that Karilel was expecting to encounter.
After searching and coming up without answers, there was a moment of pause. For a beat, the others looked to Karilel for direction. The distress signal seemed to be coming from within those doors, underground and below them. As much as she wanted to turn around, and cut her losses like she did with the first Kanayago mission, they had to investigate and come here for what they came to do.

Her eyes flickered to Xayun, as if to ask: aren’t you wary?

“Right, time to investigate the signal and continue on. Get those doors open.” The moment she gave the order, she knew there was no turning back now.

It took them a minute for the crew to get the doors open—the doors didn’t want to budge. But they finally opened with a loud groaning noise that echoed throughout the barren surroundings. A stream of hot air shimmered out of the hole as if it was exhaling as well. Karilel spun her head around to make sure that nothing had heard the noise or seen them. Her sensors showed no signs of life around her besides her own crewmembers. As they had shown this entire mission. What a frighteningly barren planet…

She stepped forward and peered into the dark hole. Her robotic eyes made the necessary adjustments to see clearly in the dark.

“Some of you will need goggles or lights,” she instructed. Then she stepped into the hole with feigned confidence.

Despite her best efforts, the small grooves in her body and her eyes emitted a pale blue light that just made the tunnel even more eerie. The ground sloped downwards in a gradual slope but coninuted on as far as she could see. Karilel held up her navigating device in the hopes it could provide a map or image of where they currently were, but it failed to project anywhere they had not explored yet. Her communications channel also started to fill with static.

Everything was made out of smoothed metal. Karilel placed a hand against one of the walls of the tunnel to feel it—smooth but almost slightly damp from an increased humidity here. In fact, things looked slicker and wetter the deeper the tunnel went. The temperature was still only mildly warm here, and she was fortunate none of the crew with her were sensitive to heat. It was hard to say how much warmer it would get as they continued, however.

The tunnel was as least a meter above her head, and wide enough for three of them to walk side by side. She looked over her shoulder to confirm that everyone was following her. As they all stepped into the she had a second thought.

“Syra?” she called back to one of her crewmembers. “It would be best to have someone wait outside, at least with contact to the ship.” She knew she had two crewmembers back manning the ship. “I think the communicators start failing the deeper in we go, and otherwise we would lose all contact. You can keep someone with you, if you like.” Karilel looked to the freelancers. She refrained from asking them if they wanted to stay back because she didn’t want to accuse them of being claustrophobic or afraid of the dark.

After sorting things out, she kept going, the metal tunnel surrounding them. Upon further examination on the material of the walls, she and the others began to notice how, though smooth, the metal was haphazardly mismatched pieces. Like pieces of other ships fused and melded together.

 

[Vuxayl]

Their footsteps echoed in the metal tunnel as Xayun, Karilel and the rest of the crew progressed downwards. The floor was rugged enough for everyone to keep walking steady, but its grimy metallic surface and the condensed moisture posed a slipping risk, resulting in sliding unhampered towards the bowels of the tunnel. Deep into the tunnel, the howling winds of the surface gave way to an eerie silence, offset by the occasional sound of dripping water ans a subtle low-frequency noise as if the structure around them was somehow... sleeping? Xayun kept his rifle pointing at the black void where the tunnel seemed to lead, fitted with a small tactical flashlight that shone a faint orange halo on its walls. While the light was decent for inspecting what was ahead of them, Karilel's body lighting made it easier for everyone to keep tabs on each other as they progressed, and surprisingly, it even had a somewhat calming effect on him. Probably because it reminded him of the lichens he used to see on his home planet. But the tunnel seemed to go on and on.

The depth of the tunnel was having an effect on their communications, and he could feel it on his chest. In fact, he was starting to really feel it on his chest, and he drew one hand towards it, where his twin hearts beat. A terrible anxiety almost overcame him, for beneath the suit, he could feel the chip he had placed just before embarking on this mission, attached to his skin. He had learned the hard way that it's good to always have a plan B, and he wasn't going to appear on a military venture and pretend he was part of the crew all along, just like that. Just in case they simply decided to shoot him on the spot, he had devised a more persuasive reason for them to let him join the mission - he had wired their ship's engines with explosives, set to trigger if his vital signs ceased. But now that they were losing signal inside the tunnel, his switch was having trouble connecting to the explosive's receptors, which without any signal would detonate. As an added "safety" feature, the switch couldn't be disarmed from his location, either. And he had somehow forgot about it, having so easily infiltrated Karilel's team.

He kept walking down the tunnel as if nothing was happening, practically dissolving in a puddle of sweat inside his suit. This was a mistake that was going to cost him something for sure, and he had to make a decision fast - either to continue in the tunnel and cause the ships to explode, or blow the lid on the whole deal one way or the other. He knew what he had to do, and sighed. It was either him or everyone else. Maybe he really should have volunteered to remain with Syra, and now it was too late.

"... Commander? Commander." Xayun placed his hand on her shoulder, trying to bring her attention to him. The rest of the crew stopped and turned around and to face them both, wondering what was going on; once she was listening, he rested one his hands against her hull and looked into her glowing eyes, his expression one of utmost seriousness. "Commander, there are explosives on both ship's engines. You have to tell the remaining crew to deactivate them, you understand?" He barely gave Karilel any time to reply to him before continuing. "Send them this: the combination is- ..."

The sound of rocks grinding against each other and a metallic creak whooshed past them from one side to the other, interrupting Xayun and making him scan for the origin of the noise. He saw the edges of the metal plate they were all standing on arching up as it seemed to sag and deform; a couple of bolts got torn out of their supports and the whole plate collapsed under their weight. Where once was the humid tunnel, now there was only a spinning blackness as he and the rest fell down a hole hewn in the rock. Fortunately they didn't fall from a very tall height, as the patchwork metal floor that eventually caught them them was as hard as the tunnel's. He didn't stop to look at the room they had fallen in, whose walls and ceiling were all made from metal beam and plates just like the tunnel, shining from their flashlight; nor did he notice the skinned torsos that were hanging above them, dripping down a few droplets of blood. He immediately felt around his chest, his equivalent of adrenaline numbing his pain, and he could feel the sensor broken in two. For what the explosives were concerned, he was already dead. A very soft thump that traveled through the ground of the planet confirmed his suspicions.

 

[Cricket]

The rest of Karilel’s crew may as well not have been with her, she was so focused on the situation. The tunnel was made of the carcasses of various ships; the types of metal surrounding them varied wildly in quality, thickness, material, and so on. Her mind was trying to process a million things to determine just how many ships had found their way here, and how they managed to end up as a piece of the tunnel. Not to mention the sweltering humidity. She could ‘feel’ the beads of moisture pooling in the delicate grooves of her metallic body. Fortunately she was waterproof, but not buoyant enough to swim.

The humidity was very different from the howling, windy landscape above. It could mean something benign, like geothermal vents underneath the planet, or just a water source. It could also mean something as bizarre and terrifying as a huge beast, breathing and perspiring beneath the surface. Wouldn’t it make sense for a huge beast to lure its prey down towards it? Other predators did such things all the time.

Just as Karilel began thinking about how safe her ship would be outside the tunnel, Xayun grabbed at her ornate shoulder. She wheeled around to face him, startled out of her intense train of thought. He was urging something at her; she could see the panic in his eyes. At first she thought he had seen something in the tunnels they had missed, but then she listened to what he was trying to say.

“What do you mean explosives--?!” she started to say.

The entire tunnel groaned around them. The walkway bucked and reeled before collapsing beneath them. Karilel and her blue lights got swallowed by the darkness as she fell to the ground. She bumped against something along the wall, and then hit the ground, bouncing dully once. Information immediately came to her that she was unharmed. Her body could only feel dulled pain as a means of alerting her to something gone wrong and for the sake of connecting with organic species, so she barely felt the fall at all.

She got to her feet, surrounded by the sounds of a few groaning crewmembers. They were also mostly unharmed. But as the sounds died down, she could clearly hear what sounded like a boom muffled by the layers of earth above them. A tiny tremor vibrated through her body.

“Guns on him!” Karilel shouted, pointing and rounding on Xayun without a second thought. Four of her crewmembers instantly snapped their guns out and pointed them at the freelancer, standing behind Karilel. The others seemed to shocked or startled. Either at the fall, the sudden animosity, or something else, Karilel didn’t bother to dwell on it at the moment.

She grabbed at Xayun’s chest with her vice-like grip. “What did you do?” At the moment she didn’t want to risk damaging his suit, so her fingers were careful not to tear it.

 

[Vuxayl]

Xayun was still laying on the ground with his hand grabbing his chest when Karilel sounded her command, and as he lifted himself up from the floor he could hear the rattling and crackling of a couple of weapons being aimed at him. He barely had any time to face them upright, much less to grab his own weapon and stand his ground. He almost forgot whatever he was thinking about when he felt Karilel's grip on him, her raw strength surprising him to the point he felt he was being held on by something akin to an industrial clamp. Being a machine, she wasn't that far away from being one, but it was still somewhat intimidating and he twitched an expression of surprise. When he once seemed to have the situation under control, now he was completely vulnerable. He wasn't going to let it get to him, though, and he returned her a hostile stare that he tried to make as strong as her grappling of him. He briefly looked at Karilel's crewmembers behind her, and he could see some of them aiming their sights at him, red lasers flickering in the darkness.

He finally replied to her question, his gravely voice with a hint of anger. "I came here to settle things right. You've probably read the details of past missions in this sector, right? Well I was here before. That excuse of a ship we've spent the last hours turning over? We were looking for it. And the crew. And then this new mission comes up, and I knew I was right all along." Xayun lets himself calm down for a bit, before continuing. "We were denied... uh, denied to search this planet for any signs of that ship, the Kanayago." He glared intently at the Laut'Haler as he pronounced the last sentence. "And apparently I wasn't 'qualified enough' to come here on official transportation, so I decided to pay a little unofficial visit instead. I wasn't going to be kept out of this operation. Just in case I needed to be more persuasive, I happened to rig your ship's engines to blow up." Which, he thought, worked exactly the opposite of what he intended. "I attached the detonator to my vital signs..." he said, massaging his chest where the two pieces of the broken device were, pushing the skin of his suit towards his body until their outlines were faintly visible. "... and thanks to this... rockslide, or whatever it was, it triggered. Took out your engines and with a bit of luck, your communication modules as well." Xayun briefly peeked at the dark, gaping hole above them, from where they'd fallen through, and sighed.

Some of the freelancers pointed their guns at him as he explained the situation, while the others were baffled with what was happening. A short silence followed Xayun's words, and one of the freelancers pointing his gun at him spoke in a nervous and panicked voice. "Wait, what? You blew up the ships?! We should just fucking shoot you!" He anxiously rocked back and forth with his weapon steady and aimed at his chest like he was ready to attack him, and Xayun started to feel the pressure himself by now with all the barrels pointing at him. The other freelancers, and even some of Karilel's crewmembers, didn't seem to think much better of him. "I landed my ship in here too, and that is enough for us to at least get some help. But now, we're stuck in this fucking... whatever this place is, and that's the main priority." The fact that his ship was an added reason for him not to be shot on the spot helped him ease his anxiety. "We just need to figure out where are we and find something in here to help us climb back to the surface, and then we can all get out of this place and come better prepared." He spun his head around, looking at the other crewmembers. "... and I'd appreciate it you all could stop pointing your guns at me. That's not gonna take us anywhere." The freelancer from before made some frenzied motions in the air, like he wanted to stab Xayun with the barrel of his rifle.

 

[Cricket]

Karilel stared back at Xayun, her robot physiology meaning she was less likely to emotionally waver. Her voice had not lost its stern and commanding edge. “Our engines and communications are the most crucial things to all of us right now. Assuming we make it out of this tunnel, we’re effectively stranded. What if we do find the missing crew deeper in there, and they need immediate attention? After we make it out of the tunnel, the communications will still be down. What if we find valuable components to salvage? Accessing the retrieval bots will be near impossible, and moving the salvage will take twice as long. And when everything’s said and done, we have to cross our fingers that we can get off the planet.” It was hard to tell in the lighting, but her folded metal skin was practically rippling out of anger. She could shift parts of her into points by flattening folds against each other and decreasing space, if needed, and it was nearly an instinctual reaction to do it when threatened or angry.

Obviously Xayun couldn’t be blamed for everything that was going wrong. Karilel knew this—the tunnel had collapsed and sent everything from bad to worse. But now so much had been ruined. Who knew how long it would take them to get out of the tunnel, to find the crew or salvage, make it back to the ship? Now, on top of that they had no communications or engines. Xayun said he had his ship here, and could use it to get help, but how long would that take? Would anyone listen to a distress call? He had already shown everyone he couldn’t be trusted—Karilel would never trust him to leave on his ship and return with help. She could only hope that repairs to her ship and the others could be made, or someone could come for them. But that could take weeks. Karilel refrained from saying any of these thoughts out loud, as she was sure the other crewmembers were jumping to their own disastrous conclusions now.

Karilel swiveled her head to look over her shoulder at the frenzied crewmember. “Lower your rifle,” she ordered. “But you two can keep an eye on him,” she added to two of her crewmembers who looked significantly more stable in the situation. Their laser sights were unwavering. “When we finally make it back, we can detain him for mutinous actions.”

Her gaze turned back to Xayun. “Your paranoia has been nothing but trouble,” she grumbled quietly. Finally she got her clenched fist to release and let him go. Karilel turned away from him to survey the crew.

Now that the commotion was over, one crewmember was trying to get her attention. “Commander…” they whispered. The alien walked up to the wall of the new cave and flashed their light against it. Red blood and organs slickly shined back.

 

[Vuxayl]

The two crewmen wasted no time closing in on Xayun, standing next to him while keeping their weapons pointed and ready. He had no choice but to comply, staring at them with a displeased look and moving in front of them, feeling their gaze on his back. One of his guards pointed his weapon at Xayun's own, telling him to surrender it to them; he reluctantly unstrapped it from his shoulder and threw it in their direction with a grunt. "Alright... and I'm going to want that back." Still, he picked up the rations crate that had fallen with him through the hole in the ceiling, and at least he was allowed to carry it himself. While he was surely concerned about the aftermath of this situation, he preferred not to give it much thought, feeling anxious enough already. With a bit of luck, he could wriggle himself out of this stupid situation, find out what had really happened to the crew of the Kanayago and then go about his business. The spaceship damage could be either repaired or written off as some sort of environmental accident, they could use his ship as a rescue and communication lifeboat, and then he'd find a way of persuading them to pretend all of this didn't happen, or simply escape if the opportunity arose.

With the exception of Karilel, of course. He couldn't help but somehow admire her assertiveness and determination, but this meant convincing her to ignore this situation would be much more difficult, and she seemed to be in control of almost everything related to this operation. Even so, and even with her unexpectedly strong grasp still fresh in his mind, he couldn't resist butting heads with her. "... and then after you detain me, we can detain you for callous disregard for sentient life." He knew that somewhere behind all those layers of metal and silicone wafers, she still had some semblance of emotion. And he was definitely not going to let her keep him down, just like that.

Xayun was still mulling over his grudge with Karilel when one of crew members called for her attention. The crew member that had almost freaked out looked in the direction the other alien was pointing at, looking upwards at the corpses with an expression of panic and confusion. "What the fuck is that? Motherfucker!..." His flashlight panned the torso, revealing a few strips of bloodied uniform that still clang to its skin. Most of its abdominal organs were poking through its severed waist, strands of flesh hanging down in the stale air. The head, drooping down from its weight, was barely recognizable as such, and a hook was visible digging into its upper jaw, keeping it tied to the ceiling. Just where its rope ended above, there was another corpse; this time, it seemed mostly intact, and was easily identifiable as a female from its proportions and long draping hair. She seemed to have been nailed to the ceiling, judging by how her outstretched arms and legs were hugging the surface. Most of her skin seemed to be missing, at least from the parts of her body that weren't covered by the remains of her own torn uniform, similar to that of the previous corpse. Her dead, glazed eyes reflected light back to the crew, a few drips of blood falling from her exposed flesh.

The rest of the crew was silent, their breathing the only audible sound. Xayun himself could feel a tinge of fear looking at the torn-up bodies, wondering just what had happened with the original crew. One of Karilel's crew members neared her, nudging one of her shoulder protrusions and whispering in a garbled, female-like voice. "... Commander, we need to get out of here... now." Almost immediately after she spoke the crew was interrupted by the brief sound of falling dirt, and three of them immediately pointed their flashlights at the corpses, as lifeless as before. They kept their weapons pointed upwards and stayed still for a moment, observing their surroundings; and in a mere instant the woman that was fixed to the ceiling scurried back into the shadows without giving them any time to react, leaving a bloodied smudge where she had been. "... The fuck was that!" one of the crew members spoke, in fact the first thing he said since they'd been underground, and he pointed the flashlight straight ahead, trying to figure out where the thing had gone. Another member seemed to be on the verge of hyperventilation, her hastened breathing audible on the intercoms while she pointed her weapon's flashlight in random directions. "... Where the fuck is it?!" The crew was again plunged into silence, the only sounds coming from the dripping blood of the first corpse. Then, just as quickly as she'd left, the woman-like creature jumped back from the shadows onto the back of one of the freelancers, wrapping her arms and legs around him and trying to shred his body to pieces.

Unarmed as he was and not knowing what the hell was trying to maul one of the crew members, Xayun looked at one of his guards in the hopes that he would quickly respond to the threat. But he seemed to be paralysed with fear, his weapon frozen and pointing in their direction. Feeling the urgency of the situation, Xayun couldn't help but to yank the rifle from his hands and use it himself. He aimed the rifle with a quick but precise draw and squeezed the trigger, making a loud, dull sound and shooting the creature right in the head. The injury, however, didn't seem to bother her at all as she kept trying to crawl over the man with her limbs and rip his neck off in a feral frenzy, burying her teeth and claws on his suit until blood started gushing out. Xayun's shot seemed to jump-start the other crew members into action and some of them followed suit, trying to shoot the woman without injuring the ambushed man, until they both fell on the ground. The bloodied creature twitched from her multiple wounds, and finally abandoned her relentless assault. Beneath her, the man she had jumped on was bleeding profusely from the holes she tore on his neck and chest, her listless body slumped on top of him and covering his suit in blood and bits of raw flesh. Beneath her bloodied skin and exposed muscle, the faint glimmer of pieces and strips of metal could be seen, and in her hands one could see what appeared to be long claws made of metal, buried on the tips of her fingers.

 

[Cricket]

Karilel had a million responses that she wanted to spit back to Xayun. She had thought about how she abandoned any hope of rescuing the crew from this planet all those years ago many, many times in the past. But doubting herself made her soft when she needed to be the unyielding commander, and she had put it behind her and tried to stop wasting time thinking about the old mission. But her thoughts would wander constantly, wondering if Xayun had been right back then and she condemned a whole ship to die, or if she had deftly avoided something that could’ve cost her career. But now she was thinking this planet would have cost her much more than that.

But she couldn’t react to any of this drama because something much worse was unfolding.

Karilel spun around to see what was going on. She was suddenly made acutely aware of the horror surrounding them. She saw blood and organs, strips of flesh. The scanners built into her physiology were trying to tell her exactly who or what the body was, when someone nervously mentioned that they should leave. As commander, she was about to agree. “We need to find a way back out, maybe we can figure out how to climb up from where we fell, or otherwise find a new route—“ she began warily, then cut herself off.

Sudden movement. Her sensors were usually optimal at recognizing organic material, especially living ones. But there was still that ever-present buzzing feeling. The depth of the tunnel and whatever interference from the tunnel had stripped her technology down to the most basic of sensors, but she expected to still be able to spot these monsters right away. There had to be a technology in these tunnels that impacted her own. They could be dealing with something on par or even better than the advancements of the Laut’Haler.

The creature sprang and the situation erupted into sheer panic. Everyone was shouting, firing guns or frozen in fear. Karilel swiveled to the scene, her blue light softly glowing around the monstrosity that now had one of the freelancers snared. Karilel instinctively took a step back out of horror, but steeled herself to afterwards to keep going. The female thing took a bite out of the man’s flesh, creating an arc of blood. Karilel fumbled for her own gun—she hadn’t had it out like the other guards did. She had been relying on them to keep their weapons trained on Xayun, and for the moment she was useless.

Explosive gunfire was all around. Karilel even managed to get her weapon out in time to fire at the creature at the end. The collective barrage of bullets finally brought the creature down, though the freelancer man was beyond saving.

The dying man gave a shuddering breath before falling silent. The only sounds that remained after the chaos were a few frenzied breaths.

Karilel stepped forward to the creature. If the monster sprang to life, the android had no flesh or blood for her. But when she prodded the creature with the end of the rifle, its metal claws and additions looked perhaps savage enough to rip through her delicately folding metal. The monster did not spring back at her. Further inspection revealed that the monster’s metal was woven throughout the body, either holding together the looping organs and flesh, or spearing right through the flesh like bones. Something with advanced machinery like this would explain why her systems were less than optimal, among other things.

Karilel’s theory was that this used to be a flesh and blood female, but now enhanced with the robotics. Whether the enhancement became before or after death, Karilel could not tell. She refrained from voicing her hunch.

Wild eyes were trained on her, looking for direction. “What the fuck was that?” someone shrieked.

“I… can’t say for sure,” Karilel said. “But something half flesh, half machine.” She spared one more glance at the dead creature. “Alright, our absolute priority is getting out of here. We can get back to our ships and hope we can get some sort of communications up to explain that this is a bad situation. The director can decide if it’s worth sending a much, much more prepared team after we explain all the information. Or if we should nuke the planet from orbit,” She added.

Abandoning a lost crew again, she thought to herself. The lost crew could be down there, being tortured to turn into these monsters, and they had no choice but to back out.

Karilel looked up into the darkness. It was impossible to see where they had fallen through. “We can try to get out back where we fell from, perhaps by building upwards with all this rubble.” They were still surrounded by ship pieces that could be used. “Otherwise we… have to keep wandering.”

“We can’t just stay here and build up!” someone shouted. “You saw those things, there could be more!”

“We could take shifts having a small group keeping watch,” Karilel suggested. Her mechanical voice might sound calm to the untrained ear, but she was anything but. Being level headed could help in this situation, or hurt her if the others thought she was numbed to it all.

 

[Vuxayl]

The crew was starting to show a hint of panic, looking at Karilel in the hopes that she knew what to do next, being their commander. But Xayun noted how her speech wasn't as assertive as it had been when he had been caught. There were a couple of "if"s, of "could"s and "try"s; and her outward appearance and voice, calm and collected, contrasted with these signals to the point Xayun wondered just how much pressure and responsibility she was feeling right now. He glanced down at the dead creature, noting the accents of cold metal inside her flesh and the hot, humid mist that rose up from her crimson body. Some sort of hellish demon, just like the ones that he'd dreamt of during all these years. It was real.

Still, there was definitely some sort of rational explanation for the situation. One that Xayun would be more than willing to explore once they'd got the hell out of the hole they fell into, as he was ready to believe that there would be more of these creatures in here. After all the noise that they made when the first creature attacked, it wasn't unreasonable to think that some other creature, or a group of them, already knew they were here inside. So there was really no time to lose getting out, and Karilel's suggestion of trying to climb back from where they came seemed good enough to Xayun.

He just tossed the rifle he was holding back to its previous owner, crouched and started dragging some boulders back under the hole in the ceiling. He mimicked some sort of fake enthusiasm, aimed at snapping the crew members out of the terror they had been witnessed and back into gear. "We need to work as fast as we can, we don't know what else is out there. I sure as hell don't want to find out." Once he dragged that rock back to the entrance, he lifted himself up and went back to the crew, panting heavily. "I'm going to need two more guys helping me out here. The rest can keep watch around us. They can come from anywhere in the darkness, so keep your weapons pointed at the slightest sounds." With the help of two others he managed to drag most of the heavier rocks over each other, making a small pile of boulders that they could climb on. It was tall enough for him to touch the rim of the ceiling hole, but nowhere tall or stable enough for anyone to actually be able to climb it upwards to safety. Xayun looked upwards at the tunnel from where they'd came from, and saw only darkness.

"We're going to need something more if we want any chance of getting out of here" he said, looking around himself for more things they could put in the pile, or otherwise use as a tool to grab the ledge of the previous tunnel. "Hey! Can I get a flashlight pointed there, please?" The pitch blackness that Xayun was pointing at got illuminated by a soft yellow beam, and just as he had seen before the attack, there was a wall there. Filled with all sorts of metal panels and pieces of machines, bolted and welded down together in one solid, uneven surface. Xayun slid a couple of fingers under a protruding panel and pulled it against him, trying to tear it off the wall. Once it was sticking out at an odd angle he used both of his hands and all of his strength to pry it off, and with a loud snap the makeshift welds gave in, leaving him with the panel in his hands. They could either pile these panels together with the rest of the stuff, or perhaps even better, bury them in the dirt wall that the rockslide had uncovered and use them as improvised steps.

So Xayun gestured at the crew once more, speaking with added haste. "... gonna need two more helping out. If we manage to make use of all these wall panels, we'll be out of here in no time." He started pulling at the metal panels, throwing them at the pile of rubble every time the crew successfully tore one out. The crew members worked silently, and only their heavy breathing and the creaking, snapping sounds of metal could be heard. Soon there was a sizeable amount of panelling over the boulders they'd dragged, and Xayun grabbed one of them, trying to eye a spot where it would fit as a climbing support.

Something made him stop in his tracks though, and he spent what felt like an eternity looking upwards at the hole in the ceiling. He kept his gaze pointing upwards as he called Karilel to where he was. "Commander? You need to see this." He was still holding the metal panel like some sort of canvas, and a few drops of blood seemed to materialize on the surface from time to time. Which, upon closer inspection, were actually falling from the tunnel where they'd been. Xayun grabbed Karilel's arm when she was in his reach and urged her to look upwards as well, his grip on her almost as strong as when she'd grabbed him. "... you see up there?" he whispered, looking at the vague silhouette of an uncovered head peeking down the hole, moisture reflecting light around its eyes. "... I think it's Syra."

No sooner had he spoken when a low rumble travelled all around the room, followed by an abrupt and eerie silence. With his more sensitive hearing, Xayun could pick up the faint rattle of what seemed like dry leaves brushing against each other under a light breeze. He looked at Karilel, wondering if she could hear them as well. When the very faint noises started to appear all around them, he finally put two and two together. Syra was already crawling down the hole in the ceiling on all fours, and the metal panel he was still holding in his hands was already drenched in various shades of shiny red and black. His voice started in a whisper and rapidly developed into a yell, throwing the metal panel to one side. "... ambush. Ambush! RUN!"