Everything had been eerily silent as we climbed. Both Briggs and I found it uncomfortable, as a good excuse to go bouncing around and killing bots would certainly liven up a climb of many miles.
Instead, the quietly horrifying endless rows of shattered and spotlessly clean cryo tubes greeted us in endless silence and testimony.
“That is some horrible psychic pressure,” Briggs murmured, clenching his teeth.
His Source was more lively and radiant, and so was much more sensitive than my Null when reacting to pressure and outside wills coming in and trying to bend things. They’d really have to whelm up and bear down for me to register this, subtle wasn’t going to do it.
“They must be waking up or something,” I murmured back, dusting off my hands as we looked down at the awesome and dreadful sight of all those empty tubes. The weight of the lives lost in fear and horror here was likely stained into every bit of the bright shiny polished metals all around. “If a psi or Primos came in here, I bet they’d go mad in minutes, even sleeping...”
“Could easily be a side-effect of the Throne Field, too, trapping their spirits here.” I inclined my head to acknowledge the point. “Which means we could be facing incorps...”
I popped my neck as I frowned at the display. What was done to these people was hitting all of my Hag buttons, and the Curse on my neck was writhing slowly as the ancient, monstrous Evil slumbering here murmured and whispered at our presence.
“Do the math?” he asked stonily.
Of course I did the math. I had too many thoughtstreams. I could not NOT do the math.
Eight miles long, roughly a quarter-mile square. Half a cubic mile. Figure a tube every 2 cubic meters or so... easily a hundred million people. Not accounting for crew awake and working in the living quarters around the cryo vault in the center of the ship.
We both could feel the scars and impacts of combat beneath our soles. Metal-rending claws, pits of acid, stray shots of energy blasts, explosions, slugthrowers. There were identical scars on the walls and ceilings, and multiple layers of them... the fighting here had been intense.
No sign of any guardbots at the moment, rubble or otherwise. The only bots we’d seen moving about were the mindlessly efficient maintenance bots going about their endless cleaning and dusting, minor TK fields playing over everything and sweeping up any microparticles daring to be about in this sterile environment.
Displayed wall charts and the rough schematics led us along hallways that had seen a lot of fighting. Visible blast scars became repeated craters, holes, and melted or fused scars that had not been repaired, or even sealed over. Psionic energies had ripped and rent at durasteel, pulling it apart like water, or making it vulnerable to acidic barrages or rending claws. Fusion streams, plasma channels, armor-piercing dings, spatial seams, dimpled impact points of laser fire, fused areas from lightning discharges... it was all on display here, as all the weapons had been used.
Still hadn’t saved them, as door after door was ripped open, and the ravaged rooms beyond amply demonstrated. While there wasn’t necessarily deliberate destruction of everything, anything that might indicate biomass was gone, and anything computerized had been completely mangled and not replaced. We were looking for them, yet couldn’t find any kind of internal observation or communication nodes, probably torn out to hamper any robotic defense and coordination with the crew.
It basically meant we were in an invisible area.
The officer’s quarters were not far off the bridge. We diverted in that direction, just to see if there was anything left behind there.
------
The captain’s quarters were improbably large, actually covering two floors. Briggs and I looked around with raised eyebrows at the size of the place... but it was mostly trashed.
There had been some fighting here as well, focused around the door, and the remains of it didn’t seem to have spread beyond the main room and the study behind. One last stand, or perhaps a final holdout of survivors, doomed by the numbers of their enemies.
“Looks like they had paneling on the walls,” Briggs mused, looking over the cables and fixtures here and there, nails and hooks to hang things from which were no longer there. Most of the cables snaking under the crossed slats of the floor had been severed or fused to unusability, and the lights here were naturally completely off-line, not that it mattered to either of us.
The captain had their own kitchen, and some parts of it were remarkably intact, considering. The pots and pans were all in fine shape, although scattered about, as most of the drawers to hold them were gone. The stove and oven were gaping open, and sterile clean, any organic residues cleaned out.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The silverware was made of gold and platinum. We collected the engraved set silently, not about to let precious metal go to waste.
We walked through the silent darkness, devilsight not caring about it. Bathroom here with an actual shower, not a sonic attachment, remnants of self-cleaning materials, shattered bottles once holding liquids and personal hygiene products snaffled up and away. Secondary bedroom over here, metal frames present like the skeletal bones of furniture. My hair reached down to bring up a nail clipper and file, perfectly functional, sitting on the floor.
They were inset with diamonds.
“Well, now,” Briggs observed after I handed them to him. “Someone really had too much money, and not a lot of good taste.”
“Personal quarters?” I picked up gold drawer clasps and corner fittings with my hair absently, dropped them in my Masspack. Loot was loot.
He looked up, pale violet eyes narrowing as he read the echoes like me. “Is that a safe up there?” he asked.
“I think so. Study, workroom...”
---
I took the study, he took the workroom.
Based on the layout, this should have had a comfortable desk and chair, the former of which was missing, the latter of which was shattered to bits. I conjectured that it had been a Disk variant, and the xenos had shattered it since it was psionically charged, or fed on the energy.
Pens, including fountain points that were still a stylish fad among the pointlessly wealthy, were scattered on the ground, most of them cut apart and their ink long gone. There was no kind of information crystals or anything less, probably snaffled up by ‘vores looking over everything, but I did lift a few scattered gold imprinted business cards up to look at them, the script fancy and very old-fashioned.
Duke Jon Mal Corunsun, Captain of the Celestial Tribute.
I flipped it over.
He who Dares to Dream, Prospers
Indeed. Now we had the name of the ship and her captain. The grim irony of it was not lost on me.
-Got a fully functional Printer, at least TL 15 in here,- Briggs /noted. I eyed the shattered dust of destroyed data crystals and cores, picked up a handful of old metal coins, and a statuette fallen in a corner. I looked at them both for a moment, and then some remarkably intense lightning lit up around my hands, crackling in the darkness, and very quickly reduced all of it to slag.
Mmm. The design was meant to focus psychic power, with none of its own. The coins were a kind of fake divination device, the statuette seemed like a meditative aid. The subtle architecture of the Warp was upon them both, meaning they were designed to draw the user into increasingly more radical personality changes.
The ‘vores naturally would leave them behind and have nothing to do with them.
---
I glided over to join Mah Fuzzy, who was poking through a lot of metal cabinets.
“There’s a lot of raw elements stored up here in granules and nodule form for the printer,” he said, waving at the cow-sized, dormant machine occupying a corner of the room. From the vibes and design, it was definitely unfolded, and could expand out to cover an area large enough to print what was desired. Probably used gravitic/mock TK ‘hands’ instead of purely mechanical ones to manipulate things, too.
Too big to port along, but it was definitely something we could use, if we could figure out its programming.
There were tools of various kinds, many with personal signatures on them, and using adamant and diamond freely. Scattered electronic tools joined the purely mechanical ones, and Briggs pocketed a few that might be useful.
No Energized raw materials visible. Possibly used by the xenos or the ‘vores, who knew. Might be needed for higher-order xenos.
He held up a crystal tray scooped full of various forms of non-Energized gemstones. They could be Energized and made viable, unlike artificial stones, so why not? Use the artificial ones for jewelry or low tech, or something.
He popped a cover on it and handed it to me, as I had full easy access to my Masspack. We could always split a load later.
Time for the upstairs, and what looked like a safe.
======
This place had probably been a bedroom of sorts, although most of the furniture was missing save for furniture accents... which tended to be gold. It was probably wooden and eaten as biomass.
There was a silver ball on a stand in what looked like a dressing room, although like before, the clothes were mostly missing. Lots of gold thread and jewelry and stuff scattered on the floor, however.
“Is that a technoskin?” I inquired of nobody, never having seen a nanite Skin. They were outlawed a long time ago, as they could be hacked, and very bad things done to whoever was wearing one. If it was psi-active, the xenos would have snatched it up.
“Looks like it.” His voice was wary, as reprogramming one of these things was just like creating a ‘touch-me’ trap.
I picked up the globe and tossed it into my Masspack for later. He just grunted, and we both headed over to the wall with the safe.
Looking at the stripped steel of the room, the safe could be neither seen nor felt. Impressive. Of course, in our tremblesense it looked like a blob of metal sticking back into the supports, with no visible purpose or access.
“Feel that seam? Damn, that’s less than a cell thick. No wonder it was missed.” I passed my hand over the outline of it on the wall, and nodded. Some good craftsmanship there. QL 40, and the xenos had blown the Search check to find it while munching down everything.
I put my hand on the metal, tinked it with my nail, and looked at the reverberations fine-tuned by multiple contact points. “I don’t see a self-destruct, so if we force it, we should be fine.”
“How does it open?” he asked, interested.
“I’m guessing a Kirlian aura match. This plate has passive sensors in it which noticed my body heat, but nothing more. There’s probably a combination of touching it a certain way and the right aura.” I inclined my head. “But really, the only important thing is the lock holding it shut. Short that properly, we can pull it right open.”
A four-inch solid golden claw formed on my index finger, poised like a bird of prey ready to strike, and drove in with a chink into the durasteel.