He didn’t hear anything. He stretched the sense or whatever it was that picked up electrical signals. Nothing there either.
“And you’re sure you heard something?”
Yuma gave him a look he translated as, “yes I’m sure” maybe with some sort of light-expletive attached to it. There was a marginally painful zapp that followed as she stretched out her finger to poke him.
“Ok? And you don’t know what it was?”
Negative head shake.
“Well I don’t know if that’s much help,” she glared, “but you don’t usually miss stuff, let me know if you hear anything else.”
She rolled her eyes, he missed it as he turned to face the Core and Jonah started talk to him.
Yuma looked around, they were down by at least half. There was Jack, Tule, herself, Jonah, Uller who sported a charred leg and had a slight limp, the loud-mouthed woman with the light-weapon who was surprisingly in good shape, the haggard-looking slight-built woman next to her, another man who was near them with some sort of pistol, Tule, Korl, a man and a woman who were now talking with them, and… 12? that’s it? No, that can’t be right, she counted again and caught a small, broody man with a pink gauntlet. So 13 then. The Gauntlet’s striking pink color looked familiar.
Where did the crabs go?
She sensed but didn’t think and he thought but didn’t sense.
----------------------------------------
Their run continued, now in sight of the Cryo-Core Door.
“Getting close.” It was obvious but the nerves that had faded after facing the traps and crabs had started to rise as the Door climbed into view.
“Yeah,” Yuma had another complicated look he couldn’t figure out, “I can’t believe we’re actually here.”
___________
The Door had presence. That seemed like a fair metric comparing a “door” and “Door”. It was big. It fit the width of entire 30 foot corridor and upwards another 20 feet or so. At either end of the Door were Terminals.
At the foot of the door, the corridor opened into an octagon. Each side matched the width of the door. Centered at a point beyond their sight, and beyond the room itself, was a shimmering dome that cut through the center of the room. It shimmered and flashed dark-blue.
The 13 naturally gave each other room, still making sure to stay in a relatively tight formation as they entered the space.
The corridor empited into the octagon across from the door.
Yuma pulled the others' attention to herself as she whipped her head back and forth, studying the walls.
Uller peeled off to the right, Jonah looked for Eilien and smiled when he found her. He had been trying to check when he could but he still liked to make sure when he had a moment.
Kala’s crew followed Uller, she was back to her weird shifting walk as she scanned the empty space. She tried to shout her way through the quiet. Eilien, the healer, followed along with Kala’s two Crew guys covering the pair of them.
Yuma wandered off, exploring, her head still sweeping back and forth. Jack walked towards the shield angling towards the left Terminal. He was looking around, deep in thought.
Devin looked towards Jack for a couple of seconds then followed the loudmouth. Korl followed the tech-apocalypse uncle to the left, Tule cautiously followed and flicked his fingers to the side. The man and woman paused then went to the right.
Jack walked up to and reached out toward the barrier with his right hand. He paused above it, and looked at his last finger.
He drew his claw-blade from his belt-loop and gingerly pushed the tip through the dome and withdrew it. Nothing. He looped the the blade back on his belt and started to Charge himself with the Zappa. Now that Yuma wasn’t next to him he realized that he had been relying on her electricity entirely too much.
He kept staring at the dome as Uller and Jonah reached their respective Terminals and plugged in their portables.
----------------------------------------
Yuma had been hearing sounds echo softly through the room, inconsistently rising above and dipping below the low thrum coming off of the dark-blue dome. The sound of the blue shield made the edge of your hearing range hurt.
She heard it then she straightened in shock.
“What is it that you hear?” Tule had caught her reaction.
“Jack! The Terminal.” Jack responded with a nod then sprinted towards Jonah at the Terminal.
“I hear crabs.”
Tule nodded and drew his Toothpick, “yes, that makes sense.”
----------------------------------------
Yuma had rejoined them both at the Terminal, Jack squeezed between Jonah and the Terminal then hip checked him out of the way. He looked towards Jack in confusion.
“Going to hug the Terminal again?”
Jack glanced out of the side of his eye as he took out the AI disk. Jonah’s curiosity flared, “what’s that thing?”
Yuma shot a warning glance to Jack and a slightly threatening glare to Jonah. Both went unheeded.
Jack studied him for a long few moments as he placed the disk onto the pad atop the Terminal.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Jonah?” Before Jonah could respond he continued, “it is an AI. I have to bring it to the Bridge SI or we will all die.”
Jack turned away, unsure of what else to say. It felt weird to talk to another person, much less have a conversation.
Jonah vacantly stared at the Terminal screen, deep in thought.
“Did you actually talk to someone on the Bridge?”
“Yes, they woke me out of Cryo.”
“They are here?!” Jonah’s head started to whip back and forth, eventually locking onto Yuma. His eyes widened in shock.
Yuma rolled her eyes, “it’s not me, idiot, I grew up in the Second Sector.”
Jack started tapping on the Terminal, Jonah next to him looking intently at the screen.
This brought up more questions than it answered, “so how did they wake you up?”
Jack paused and looked at Jonah, it seemed like he was debating something, then looked up and to the side, “We talked for a bit after I woke up, she told me that the Bridge was cut off from the rest of the ship. She told me that we would impact into a star in a couple of months…”
“You said weeks!” Jonah couldn’t help but nearly shout. Yuma made sure that he caught her glare this time and he quieted down.
“Yeah and? That was just one person’s guess from inside the Bridge Core that’s completely cut off from the rest of the ship. You want to take your time and find out what hitting a star will feel like?”
He paused then looked at Jonah, “If the Cryo-Labs are this bad then what’s going on in the rest of the ship? I,” he became aware of Yuma’s presence. “We need to get through every place as quickly as possible.”
Jack had plenty of time to think about this as they flitted and ran through more than a 100 empty corridors in the last few… Well he didn’t know how long it had been but it had given him plenty enough time to think.
Scanning…
Terminal Accessed.
Linked Terminals Detected.
Preliminary Terminal Link…
Established... (1/2)
Complete Terminal-link.
[https://i.postimg.cc/y6ww11wh/Screen-Shot-2022-09-23-at-11-08-39-PM.png]
The thought of going through all this, and who knows what else, and then dying anyway because he ran out of time? That’s one thing he thought, debated, and found unacceptable.
Jonah didn’t have anything to say about that as he thought, hand perched on his chin.
At this point Tule walked up with Korl and whatever was left of the conversation was put to rest.
“Yuma, the walls, there are seams on them. They run in large oval patterns.”
Something about this hit Jonah’s brain and he interrupted his blank stare at the Terminal filled with commands and status updates. Jonah looked to the wall then ran his hand across it. He followed the seam and searched for more.
He stumbled back in surprise, his face a mask of panic.
“Jonah what is it?” Yuma needed to know and needed to know now, the tapping echo had just entered the edge of her hearing again.
For the first time, Jack turned completely towards Jonah and waited.
Jonah stumbled over his words then stammered out in a rush, “Portals. Doors. You heard crabs right? Well,” he waved toward the wall, “crabs in the walls.”
----------------------------------------
Uller had no idea how to crack this Terminal. The one at the start of the Run was nearly impossible but he had been sure that he would have eventually been able to do it.
This one? This one was different, it went several levels beyond “nearly impossible.”
It was like having to fight the SI while inside of its brain. He looked towards the dome shimmering right next to his left shoulder. If the Core was the SI’s brain then this thing would be the skull.
Kala pointed towards the other group that was quickly, and cautiously, making their way over to them.
“Move.” a hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back away from the Terminal.
Uller was about to inform Jack of the part of a crab that he could shove up inside himself but Kala cut him off before he could get started.
Sometimes she really pissed him off. He felt his brewing indignation taper off as sounds started to clearly echo through the room.
Scanning…
…Finished!
Second Terminal Environment… Analyzed.
Preliminary Terminal Link…
Established (2/2)
Error…
Terminal-link Severed.
Terminal Link… Incomplete (1/2)
Bring AI-Disk to Linked Terminal to Establish Terminal-link
Establish Link to Upload “Skull Cracker” Breach Software.
[https://i.postimg.cc/9FZsr3h6/Screen-Shot-2022-09-23-at-11-10-04-PM.png]
Portals had silently spiraled open on their side of the dome, across the room from them they deposited variations of multi-armed bipedal crabs.
The largest crab had placed a glowing blue disk on top of the Terminal across the way.
Jack relayed the information behind him but much of what he said had fallen on deaf ears.
Things were a bit different on the other side of the Core.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
The hexagon that Clan Head Lee found himself in wasn’t the problem, it gave them time to treat his warriors instead of leaving the wounded behind.
Whatever type of shield was blocking them was definitely a problem. The Monitors and their slow progress was also another.
The crab swarms hadn’t been much of a problem once the Battle-Group was able to stabilize their defensive line at the edge of the room to the corridor. That was, the crabs weren’t much of a problem until the “Tactician” had appeared.
These were rare, very rare crabs, they were recorded only one time in the Histories. It was seeing the Lab Historical record come to life.
The crabs, a lifelong enemy of Humanity, had been studied deeply by the Kintu Clan’s Monitors. A swarm made the crabs stupid.
Individually or in small groups they could be quite clever, using each other as cover, attacking simultaneously, circling behind an opponent. Small group tactics.
When part of a horde, the average intelligence of all the crabs in it dropped significantly. This drop was countered by faster movement, increased viciousness, a complete lack of self-preservation instinct, and overall a much greater individual energy level.
If you had been battling and eating crabs as long as he had the difference a Tactician made to a swarm was immediately obvious.
They would take command of a swarm and coordinate their attacks. Typically, in a swarm, there is an amount of infighting between the crabs, they would get in each other’s way too, sometimes on purpose.
With a Tactician the crabs could maintain the benefits of a swarm while keeping their base instincts under control. The swarm could now pull back, maneuver, readjust, and strategize across the entire swarm. These crabs were very dangerous.
The crabs would press the attack, then pull back, the sudden change in pressure attempted to catch a warrior off guard and create a gap in the shield wall.
Lancers’ spears were quickly adapting, keeping the shield line’s integrity from being jeopardized and set upon from new angles. They were stabbing their spears at crabs that tried to sneak between legs or even ones that stacked on top of each other to chain their jumps to try and break through over the top of the line.
The Tactician’s shell was a rounded square, nearly a cube. On its oversized legs it made it simple enough for it look over the Human’s heads. It had no blades, instead two oversized pincers that were capable of completely blocking their ranged fire.
Small damage that had managed to get through was quickly repaired as it picked up and ate smaller crabs crawling between its legs.
It didn’t look like "it" was in a rush to join the fight.
Clan Head Lee walked towards the line at a measured pace, a circular bar of silver metal, just under three feet long, now held firmly in his hand. A red started to creep down the length of the metal bar. The red over the bar was quickly followed by a white glow that flowed out behind it.
There, he saw it. The moment that would destroy his Clan.