“That fucking bitch!”
Tule was getting tired of hearing Devin’s complaints and would have forcefully stopped them earlier if he was able. Instead he tuned out the impotent voice’s ramblings that muttered between sounds of crackling chitin as Devin tried to recover his body through consumption of smaller crabs.
His Master was able to compel crab-kind to an intense degree. It scared Tule at a surface level, but on an instinctual one, it felt right. He knew that fact alone should have scared him more.
The flow of crabs from the Cryo-Laboratory had stopped at some point and the Master had closed the Door, almost in a panic. The crabs had chittered and seethed at that and his Master pulled them into one side of the room in response to the momentary lack of control, closer to his calming, dominant presence. The gigantic swarm had finally settled. He had released his strangled grasp on the swarm to cover the room again but it caused problems that his scattered Tacticians hadn’t been able to manage. Apparently, whatever the Master had seen had necessitated pulling the crabs into their half of the room. He didn’t know what that had been about but didn’t bother considering it further.
The other hybrid was odd, almost child-like in some ways, incredibly deadly in others. The kin’s appearance was a painful reminder of Jack and the representation of his own lost Humanity.
The fact that the creature seemed insistent on calling itself ‘Jack’ didn’t make it easier, nor the fact that it seemed to share almost as much Humanity as Tule did, or ‘had’. His discipline hadn’t formally given up but defending that aspect of himself seemed to grow less and less worthwhile in his eyes.
He was a crab. It left a strange taste in his mouth, like he was expecting it to taste bitter but it actually tasted sweet so the flavor of it left him uncomfortably in some sort of middle ground and woefully unaccustomed to it. He took a deep breath and looked over the swell of crabs in the massive room. Its ceiling was relatively low, he figured it was to minimize the ranged advantage of the Rats. He had heard of their strange projectiles and somewhat remembered seeing them himself in that first room. The crabs had carved and expanded the room wide and long enough that the distant walls to either side of him had taken on an almost illusory quality. If he hadn’t already seen the size of Water-Reclamation he would have hardly believed a room such a size to even be possible.
It was filled with writhing crabs, not quite stacked on top of each other, but close. There were a few Tacticians as well as a solid core of hybrids, small groups around the Tactician’s and their own position. The sense of kinship he felt toward the crabs was different than any that he had known. It was cold and alien, it lacked compassion or empathy of any sort but still, its bonds were immutable. Stronger than the kinship felt between most Humans. Only ‘crab’ were worthy of life. Everything else was food, at best.
On the other side of the room was a stretch of floor that had been cleared by the pullback. Tule wanted to point out that they would be giving the Rats a foothold in the room, that they should trap them in the tunnels, unable to enter the room. Some part of him desperately didn’t care about the fate of rats or crabs or… himself. So he didn’t say anything.
Chittering screams echoed from the tunnels in front of them, that’d be the crab sentries. It was followed by soft squeaks that barely carried in the air. That’d be the Rats.
“Master, they are here.” It felt like someone else’s voice had spoken from within him.
Pairs of red reflections appeared from the shadows on the entire other side of the room. The Master looked distracted as he pulled out a blue disk. He swept his hand and the crabs organized and prepared to surge.
The Master turned his hulking form toward the tunnels as attention focused on a single point.
Tule unconsciously took a step forward.
“Jack…” The young look-alike whispered in a voice that seemed almost reverent. The Master turned toward the young crab and narrowed his terrible eyes. The thought of them sent an uncontrollable shiver into Tule.
The Master moved toward his first follower and loomed over it.
“I sense… you are compromised.” The Master’s terrible eyes flashed… then dimmed too quickly, “You will not fight. Take this.”
The blue disk dropped from his hand into the other’s. Tule recognized the shape, it looked like Jack’s AI disk, but this one was blue instead of green. An SI disk?
*Tap tap tap*
Footsteps echoed louder than they reasonably should have.
Out of the shadows emerged another shadow, this one shaped as a Human gently carrying another. He could feel the waves of hate pour out from the tunnel. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it but the room felt as if it had grown a degree warmer. He looked toward his Master. The Master nodded to him and he felt a wash of conviction enter his mind. Devin dismissively threw away the rest of his snacked-on crab and followed their Master.
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Jonah had a bad feeling and it was growing worse. The difference between the light of the hallway beyond and the near total darkness of their passageway meant that normal sight couldn’t pierce the wall of light. The Rats were organizing themselves and ahead… he could pick up numbers of crabs, the prototype ‘life-signal’ he had made from reverse engineering anti-life was crude, mostly made from memory since his original portable had been destroyed. The life/no-life signal flickered from “Detected” to “None Detected.” That either meant there actually was nothing or the signal scrubber detected such a quantity of ‘life signal’ that its autocorrection thought that it was a mistake. That meant there were numbers. Vast, vast numbers. Or nothing. He doubted that there was nothing.
Thermals were out, he looked to Jack who was taking deliberate measured steps down the hallway. The heat coming off of him made thermal-sight an impotent wash of red and yellow.
He was sweating.
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Jack walked into the Room and some guided sense focused on Tule’s location. He was approaching and between him and Devin was a monster-sized crab hybrid with crossed Human-like arms and the classic pincer-blade combination over its shoulders. So this was the one in charge.
The half of the room started to slowly fill with Rats, at least they had been considerate enough to let them come into the room.
He checked behind him and to his sides with his Affinity. Jonah was on one side, Rattigan the other.
They crossed the room to near its halfway point as Rats and ManRats filed into the room. The crab’s chittering grew in intensity before stopping. The hybrids had already stopped and Jack himself stopped some distance away.
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The Master watched them approach. It was difficult to believe that this small Human had caused such trouble. He wanted to get his hands on the AI disk but that was of secondary concern. The Human ‘Jack’ said something to the smaller Human next to him. The second one tapped fingers against his goggles and took out a strange looking weapon. He could sense the conflict from Tule as to why he was giving the Rats room to position within the room. The Rats were devious, sneaky creatures. He would not kill them in the tunnels then scare them into hiding and into a guerrilla war. He would encourage them to enter the room, position themselves, let them possess ground with a desire to hold it, then… kill them to the last Rat.
He hadn’t had too much information on Waste Disposal before entering, beyond a base genetic memory. This was taking too long for his patience.
So this is the Human who killed the Cryo-SI. Foolish machine. The Human seemed to have gotten the Waste Disposal SI on his side, he saw it sitting on his shoulder. If the Master could separate the Human from the Rats this would go much smoother.
The Master knew many things.
“I know your mission, boy.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me, crab.”
The way the Human spat the word ‘crab’ raised the soft sensory hair on the back of the Master’s neck. Impudence. He flashed his eyes in a mental attack and it… did nothing. It faded into nothingness as soon as it reached the area surrounding the Human. That was… unexpected.
“Are you just going to look at me or were you trying to do something there?”
“We have similar goal-”
“Doubt that.” The Human bitterly laughed, “I really, really, doubt that.”
“You need to correct the ship’s trajectory or we will all die, do I have that correct?”
“How?-” The Human cut himself off as he directed a glare at Tule.
“Yes, he told me, but I already knew that. I want that to be corrected as well. Of course, I have no desire for myself or my kin to crash into the heart of a star.”
The Master left it unsaid that he didn’t need or even particularly want that to be Jack.
“Sounds like you know some stuff.”
“Yes Human, I do. So how about this, I will let you and your companions leave here, unharmed, so you may continue your journey. That seems more tha-”
The Human tilted his head to the side but a single word came before the Master could continue the pitch.
“Nah.”
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Jack was holding a clamp down on his anger and surprising himself, managing to do a decent enough job of it.
The giant hybrid continued to prattle on, might as well learn as much as possible before killing it and everything around it. “What advantage do you have dying here?”
Jack scoffed, “I don’t think I will, I’m pretty hard to kill.”
Before the Master could say his next words, Jack continued, “Besides I don’t think you’re that confident either, trying to get us out of here. To separate us.”
He could see the almost perceptible narrowing of the oversized hybrid’s eyes. He felt something this time, it lightly brushed against his mind. Not even a tickle really. Some sort of Psy attack. Good thing he boosted up Rattigan.
Why would the creature bother trying to separate them from the Rats unless it wanted some advantage. Even if he did trust the oversized freak to keep his word, which he didn’t, it would be a laughable thought to give up the battle before he fought it. There was no way to avoid this fight and the mere fact of the crab-freak trying to negotiate made the fight all the more likely to happen.
Trust the crab freak to keep his word and make an enemy of Rat-Kind? No, that’d be too reckless for even him. Worse, it would be stupid to guarantee an enemy out of the eventual victor, no matter who won. If the fight was going against the Rats then he’d use the chaos to make his exit. If it was the Rats… well he’d probably have to kill off some of those but he could likely extend the ‘Crusade’ a bit longer.
Otherwise, he was going to kill as many crabs as possible. That wasn’t even considering the corpse of his… friend that he was carrying. He was definitely going to murder Tule for that. No, he would ‘kill’ him, Tule had given up his Humanity.
He had been ignoring the ‘Master’s’ words, “Tule. You killed Leanne.”
It wasn’t a question. Tule nodded, “Yes.”
Jack turned back to the Master, “So he killed Leanne, and you are the one who led the crab’s back down here to Waste Disposal? Led the attacks on Rat-Kind?”
The Master narrowed its eyes, “Yes, t-”
Rattigan roared at that, rage and hate and loss that put even Jack’s emotions to shame, red-tinged spittel splashing out of his mouth and smoking on the ground. The emotional resonance rippled as the Rats across the room roared in response. The ManRat Chief leapt forward in a four-pawed sprint toward the giant hybrid form of the Master. Jonah pulled up his Algorathan Wrist Rocket and fired a metal ball at Devin, it hit the crab’s pincer and shattered it almost too easily. He had seen it in his Electro Affinity, weak points in their shells. Presumably one of Jonah's visual settings on his goggles afforded him the same opprotunity. Leanne had done some good work that they hadn’t been able to yet heal from completely.
Jack walked to the right and toward Tule as the world around him descended into chaos.