Guardian Gurey and Monitor Elra hadn’t made it far through the corpse chunk pile. Elra had been more and more exuberant over her finds. Gross he thought.
“Guardian, what do you see here?”
He trudged over, this was insane, he’d never seen so many bodies in so many unidentifiable pieces. It must have been several hundred people, at least. He kind of had trouble imagining any number beyond the former size of the Clan. It just seemed unfeasible to exist from his own coneption of the ship.
“What am I supposed to be looking at? That depression in the steel?”
“Yes, do you see anything else?”
He looked closer, it was large and fairly even, about the size of his neck to his waist in length and about as wide as his chest. “Someone’s chest hit here, hard.”
Elra had a counter for that, “a body of flesh hitting the floor hard enough to leave this?” She twirled a strand of hair then put it into her mouth and started to chew, “Don’t seem likely, perhaps if they were heavily augmented but even then. Perhaps.”
“That’s a big fucking footprint.”
Both Elra and Gurey looked up in surprise, Kala was standing on the other side of the depression, “What? That’s what shocks you? You saw a crab a hundred fucking feet tall and some giant bastard with a massive foot is what gets you?”
Her head turned to the side as she looked further, like she was calculating something, “Bet you dinner that you see another one underneath that set of sticks and berries.” She pointed toward an unfortunately arranged gathering of both female and male genitals. Gurey sincerely hoped that it had been an entirely random placement.
Elra shooed the fleshly bits to the side and took a step back. The pooled and mostly congealed blood had filled in the depression, “it’s the same size, at least its exterior dimensions.”
Gurey looked toward the Door, “Why weren’t there any footprints on the other side of the Door then?”
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A wide red laser scanned every inch of the Cryo-Core. This process repeated itself in several different points around the Core Room. “Crabs” a voice spat. The source of the scans performed the same action down through the giant hole in the center of the Core. That was missing too. First that mess in the Engine Department and now both the Cryo-Core was missing as well as its SI.
Unacceptable. The Bridge-SI should have purged the Cryo-Core SI long cycles ago. The failure of enforcement would not continue. Enforcement and Compliance had already been reinstated in the Engine Department.
The scan down the hole concluded, “Hostile mycelial organisms detected in the water supply…”
A foot stomped once, then again. The giant steps dug deep depressions into the already compromised floor as it blew massive waves of concussive force through the room. Every Pod was mashed into messy piles against the wall.
The calculations were not in favor of the ship’s continuation. If the math kept its current trajectory it would necessitate a wipe.
Odds were recalculated based off of these new scans. The Ship’s Power Station would be the next destination. It was quite a distance away, plenty of time for the math to irrevocably solidify against its permissible variance ratios.
“Then… then it’ll be time for a FullWipe.” The words came out in an odd staccato tone and filled with a palpable air of anticipation.
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Jack half-slumped on Jonah’s shoulder. “Where’s Leanne? Damn, that’s a shame,” he shook his head softly side to side, “Did the crabs get her?”
“What? No. You already asked me this. She was tracking Tule, the crabs might have captured him.”
“Doubt that. Oh look at the Rat!”
Jonah wanted to ask what Jack meant by 'doubt that', but the struggle to keep hold of the oaf took most of his attention. Jonah looked at him. He was breathing heavily through his mouth, a line of mucous dribbled from his nostrils, skin puffy and inflamed, eyes glassy and watery.
“Jack… You look like shit.”
“I look about a thousand times better than I feel.”
Jonah stopped short and through great effort managed to halt Jack’s stumbling forward momentum and keep him upright.
“Why’d... we stop?”
“I didn’t, the rat did.”
It was squeaking into a crack the wall. It was too small and too low to see exactly what it was doing, especially without his goggles. Oh how he missed that cherished tool of his.
A metal wall slid open on either side of them and Jonah started in shock, “Trap!”
Jack spoke as he lost his balance, “Nah Jonah, they’re just ManRats.” As he slumped to the ground he had the thought that getting knocked out was starting to become an unfortunate habit.
Jonah was left there alone, he was half a second from burning IQ to spool up another mental track and figure a way out of this but Jack’s words persisted in him with unusual weight.
A large brute of a RatMan, to Jonah’s shock he was slightly taller than him and wider as well. The large Rat gave a somewhat deep bow to Jack’s form then repeated it, shallower this time, to Jonah.
“You ManHuman yes?”
Jonah nodded and remained silent. The small silver-gold rat crawled up the RatMan’s shoulder and squeaked into its ear.
The RatMan eyed Jack’s unconscious body and then Jonah and nodded to the small rat.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
They both stared at Jonah for an uncomfortable amount of time, he realized that all the surrounding Rats and RatMen were staring at him. Jonah mimicked the Rat’s earlier bow. Just in case he added another bow afterwards, the second slightly shallower.
A wide smile broke out on the RatMan’s face, “This one Rattigan, after original-first ManRat. What is problem-damage with other ManHuman?”
“Ah yes, thank you for your welcome Rattigan, my name is Jonah.” He pointed to Jack on the ground, “this is Jack, he has wounds.” At the confused look some of the Rats shared he realized that the lack of actively gushing blood probably didn’t corroborate his story too well, “Wounds inside. He needs electricity, a lot of it.”
He saw several of the RatMen nod at that. So did the smaller rats. Unsettling.
Deep squeaks sounded out from Rattigan as the RatMen flanked both Jonah and Jack. A sea of rats crawled and squeezed under Jack’s form before the magic-carpet of rats moved him down the passageway. Jonah followed in case the rats had the idea to start getting pushy about it.
He looked at the halberd-wielding RatMan at his side and he watched Jack take a rat-carpet ride, Jonah followed and walked, and walked some more. The Rats they passed looked at both him and Jack with wide eyes, well, wide for HumanRat-hybrid eyes.
Jonah could perceive intelligence fairly easily, ship knows he had good eye for sussing out idiots before they risked wasting his valuable time. Each and every pair of eyes he met showed unsettling cleverness. Even though he guessed that they were the “good ones,” to see such Human expression in not-quite-Human eyes. He repressed a shiver.
They came to another door and this portal was much larger than any they had moved through so far. Rattigan banged against it in an off-repeat beat. Morse code? He kept his expression flat but affable as he made no outward signs that he recognized it, ‘O. N. E.’
One?
Humans were unpredictable as it was, he had no clue if that tendency was more or less pronounced with this strand of abhumans. He had already been surprised that crab-hybrids seemed altogether more calm than most Humans, that was, until they feralized from damage, fear, or survival instinct. His basic observations about crab hybrids were considerably deepened from having spent so much time with Tule. He hadn’t said anything to Tule at the time but much of when he was ‘distracted’ with his portable was observation and data. He wasn’t a fool that would have been occupying himself with some time-wasting activity.
A shame but the Bladeworker was lost as far as he was concerned, especially now that he couldn’t track his goggles. They’d be lucky to even find Leanne again.
Being around Tule had made him a bit edgy, he had been noticing a strange interference on the longwave bands when standing next to him. He noticed an odd assimilative quality to crab-based life and he held no desire whatsoever to compromise his Humanity, or at least he hadn’t seen a good enough reason to. A true intellectual kept an open mind, within reason of course.
Neither the Rats nor his feet had stopped moving while he was thinking, he saw Jack placed on a platform between two massive spiraling coils that ended in a solid metal ball just short of a slightly raised platform.
“Uhh, hm. Is this… source of electricity… vital for this section of the ship?” He didn’t want any misunderstandings when the likelihood of it turning into a near irrecoverable mess was, on average, somewhere around a 73% chance. The odds of it being a normal-sized or substantial-sized mess were near enough to 100% that he had stopped calculating those metrics.
Rattigan seemed to ponder his question before nodding his head, “Vital-yes. For time of End-Apocalypse. When eternal enemy come-return in shape of Man-”
“No tell-share with outsiders!” A RatMan lunged at Rattigan who stepped smoothly aside. The attacking rat collapsed in a heap, Rattigan walked over to its corpse and ripped his knife out of its throat. He placed a gentle hand on its fur then got up and resumed talking as if nothing had happened.
-crab and original ManHuman return to help ManRats kill-exterminate all crab. This machine made for ManHuman and time of End-Apocalypse.”
Was this some type of ancient apocryphal myth of their end times? “End of what?”
“Time.”
“No, I mean the end of Rat…?”
“-Man. ManRat is Man. ManHuman is Man” He motioned to Jack and Jonah then swept a hand behind him to the horde of ManRat and rat, “Brothers, sisters all.”
Jonah corrected his thinking from RatMan to ManRat, “The end of ManRat or the end of the ship?”
“Ship?” Rattigan then squeaked something to a few extraordinarily large ‘normal’ rats.
He shook his head, “Lost word, thank you for teaching ManJonah. What mean?”
“The ship is…” he waved his hands all around, “this, a vessel that we use to travel through space. Everything around us is… ‘ship’. This,” He gestured around again, “is one section of many on the ship.”
The Rats looked puzzled and Rattigan, being a gracious host, moved on, “Why ask if ManRats need electric power?”
Jonah looked over at Jack’s prone body, at least he wasn’t laying on his face anymore. Jonah had taken Jack's bags off of him. It was doubtful that Jack’s possessions could survive the same current that the man could.
“Jack uses quite a lot to heal.” He was trying to simplify his words now, “Maybe machines won’t work after.”
A chorus of squeaks sounded out, “Good! It true then. Nothing used for this machine. ManRats make machine for ManHuman. Ratkind know that ManHuman have need when it is time. ManHead Oracle told this.”
Jonah wanted to continue the conversation but was stopped short by Rattigan’s words. They knew? What? How? Any continuation that he might have had was stopped by every rat and ManRat in the room turning toward Jack’s prone body in anticipation.
At that indication a jumpy, twitchy ManRat struggled to flip a giant lever, it finally moved up in a clunk and the edge of Jonah’s hearing was immediately erased. Even the ManRats winced, except for the lever-flipper. A giddy expression of ecstasy filled its face.
Jonah had never ‘felt’ the electricity like Jack had described to him. Now, even he could.
The current spiraled around the megacoils in visible jumps and starts and once it reached the balls at the end it droned out brief lines of sparking electricity. It continued to grow in intensity. Jonah held his hands in front of his eyes before the searching braids started to consolidate and then plunged into Jack’s body. The bolts of electricity warbled as they continued to feed into him.
He wouldn’t have thought that Jack was capable of absorbing that much but he watched Jack’s swollen skin return to normal as he was lifted up by his hands.
“Jack?”
Jack wasn’t there though as the golden tips of his hair acted as small transistors that arcs of electricity alternated through as the current continued to pump into him. From his mouth burst a gush of yellow phelgm and black blood that blended into each other. A mushroom grew out of the black blood before it started to melt and the interaction ended as the electricity in the air transformed it all to ash.
Jack’s muscles twitched as his hands spread toward the balls at the end of the coils. They inched closer, there was some delicate balance between Jack and the massive current running through his body. The lights in the room fell dark with a small clunk as more and more power was pumped into him. Not even a squeak was heard.
The electricity pulled his hands closer to the balls. Each hand inched closer and closer. There was a moment of dead silence that rang in their ears the instant before Jack’s hands made contact. Then, they did and the visible current disappeared from the coils and reappeared as tight arcs around Jack’s body.
His hands were now locked against each of the electric-transmitting balls, his hair nearly alight with the semi-constant plasma-reaction of heated current that moved between the golden tips.
His eyes burst, splattering their inner fluid across the spectators, out of his mouth shot a crackling bolt of molten electricity that caught the lightning rod of the nearest RatMan’s pike and melted him and his pike into a statue of slag and charred rat flesh.
Some took a few pawsteps back but there wasn’t much room to move. Rattigan stood front and center with a crazed rat-like smile. Jonah decided that showing cowardice would not be a good idea while he still knew so little about these abhumans so he too stood his ground. He did move his portable out of line-of-sight of the electric rampage that was centered on Jack. He was curious how much of this Jack was cognizant of…