Scene #7332: MISSION: CRYPTARK (1)

Owner	Pose
Starbound Flotilla	"The Void" used to be a term for the space in the planetary interior, but before that time, it had life as a different descriptor. The Void is the barren spaces between stars and other gravity wells, where nothing of interest collects, nothing lives, and nobody goes. There are no stars, nebula, asteroids, or stellar bodies of any kind. You could drift there for millennia without encountering a single piece of microdebris. There's no reason to be there, no reason to go there, and no reason to stay there. The only ones who make their homes there are hermits and illiterate Floran pirates, and the chances that you will ever find them are miniscule. It is emptiness. It is nothing. But there is something there. The silent fleet can be detected on active scanners, and not on passive ones. There seems to be no end to them, and no formation. The massive capital ships are blocky, industrial, clearly prefabricated in a way. This swarm of stellar titans drifts, all in near-unison, with no clear destination and no clear origin. They respond to no hails. There are at least three hundred thousand of them. Since finding these ships, it seems only possible to find more and more of them. The Starbound Flotilla are operating George's salvage ship, the SFS Mendacity II. George remains in a healing tank in its medbay, still unconscious and recovering from near-evisceration. Passage aboard is offered to those who don't have their own ships -- alongside EVA hardsuits, zero-G maneuvering kits, oxygenating limited-time nanoskins, a selection of military firearms and melee equipment, and other suchlike. A deployment bay has been pressurized, awaiting each individual's exit. From here, viewing ports allow the ship itself to be seen. There are no windows. There are only the greebles of surface hull systems and a few hatches. The hatches bear the blinking lights of active power. The SOUTH-SIDE HATCHES bear additional red blinking lights. They appear to have a SECURITY LOCK on them, demanding authorization at an access point in an unknown and untranslated language. Circling around to the EAST and WEST ends are a pair of hatches in what might be some kind of service bay area. Another hatch on the NORTH side is locked. You may deploy as you see fit. All surface hatches are accessible from the salvage ship, with the right maneuvering.
Majima Goro	Majima Goro, president of Majima Construction... Does not own a spaceship. Shocking, right? Right. He's spent a lot of the trip mostly just hanging out in the medbay looking at things. There's been some tapping on George's tank, like he's annoying a goldfish. "...Aiyah. I haven't been in space in so /loooong/." He exaggeratedly tells his captive audience, mouth drooping a bit. "But we're going to get whoever hurt you, alright, Georgie-chan?" He taps his head. "You be clear on that. Rest up." With that, he's back out to get himself appropriate space-faring equipment. As light as he can get it, since mobility is sort of His Thing, and a zero-G maneuvering kit because of course he does. He does not grab a gun. He does, however, grab a variety of small tools that probably aren't remotely meant for combat, because, again, of course he does. As prepared as he's going to get, he looks towards the hatches through the window, tapping at the side of the port, then his head, alternately. "Which one..which one..." He stands there for a long moment, before deciding. "Alright, I'm feelin' EASTy today," He declares, rubbing his hands together. "Nehehehahah!" He is off to the races.
Ezra Mochizuki	Ezra has used the Flotilla's offerings to temporarily upgrade his g-suit to space-conditions, since it's completely built for atmosphere. The speedster takes his maneuvering kit, having ridden along with the Flotilla as an unaffiliated contractor and grabbing a space knife for enhancement. Once he has a confirmation of where George has been, he bursts towards the WESTMOST hatch, moving to touch down on 'ground' as soon as possible. He can do space super-fast, it's just annoying.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Bercilak has his own means of transportation. His bike can operate in the freezing emptiness of space. He himself operates there only by the extreme regenerative capabilities afforded by his nanites. By the time he docks with the Mendacity, his green armor bears a layer of frost. Unnerving, wet cracks sound as he moves in spite of being partially frozen and decompressed. Standing at seven and a half feet, the armored figure is a study in advanced armor following anachronistic aesthetic. His nanites deconstruct it, revealing both the extent of the vacuum's damage upon him, and the incredible rate at which he's able to heal from it. His skin grows less pallid and swollen, though it's still a shocking shade of green, his lips un-crack, the blood vessels in his eyes are mended as good as new--though his irises are still naturally quite red. "Gramercy," speaks the space biker, as he accepts a nanoskin. That, combined with his armor, should take some of the stress off of his nanites. It should also allow him to speak, for all the good it will do. He administers it as if it were second nature. Though he speaks archaically, his arms and attire are anything but. After preparing, he boards his bike once more and heads SOUTH. Which is to say, he charges the heavily armored vehicle straight at the hatch, lifting his axe high, pulling into a sudden bank at the last minute, and utilizing that momentum to bury the axe into the panel which dares bar his way. That usually works. And when it doesn't, then, in his experience, you can usually just beat the door down, with a little extra work.
Starbound Flotilla	These doors are straightforward to operate, though somewhat difficult. You pull a handle, which is sized for a gripper about one and a half times the size of a human hand, bearing five grooves for what looks like three fingers and two thumbs in an alternating pattern. Pulling it requires a lot of work, but when you do, the airlock cycles automatically -- pressurizing the space within with some unknown, unbreathable gas that at least prevents more freezing -- and reveals what is beyond for each...
Starbound Flotilla	The interiors are dark. There is not one single light source among most of the visible areas. It looks massive, definitely even more industrial. Huge, blocky metal walls and absolutely massive air and material circulation systems -- the interior space is surprisingly huge. The high walls are densely packed with crevices and small overhangs, upon which unknowable technologies or artifacts have decayed into nothing. Several of these crevices contain esoteric selections of bones in repose, drifting in the zero-gravity environment. For those who came here with their sense of smell active, the smell is like an ancient library, times a thousand. Where one rests their hands or feet in zero gravity, an almost inch-deep layer of oxidization or some other sort of decay has accumulated. Majima's chosen area is a wide space, with a highly complex airlock leading south (locked like the others), a STRANGE MACHINE active and exposed to the east emitting an audible noise that has the cadence of counting, and a swarm of something moving in the dark to the west, near the blinking lights of another bulkhead interior door, alongside a strange purple light in a constant rotating pattern.
Starbound Flotilla	This will be an issue for Ezra, who will find that, while it's probably easier to maneuver these interiors, there's conspicuously an absence of any artificial gravity at all, anywhere. Popping that airlock reveals another similarly wide space with a similarly once-lived-in look, but this one has a wide array of shapes flicking back and forth in the darkness between huge sections of hull -- from shapes that look about the size of a human, to something that looks about eight times the size and girth. Whatever they are, they have yet to notice him, and it might stay that way if he keeps his lights and sounds limited. There's open passage to the east, mechanical sounds to the southwest, and a heavy machine in the southeast of the room, bearing what looks like a sealed sequence of doors with small shielded windows to see through to a glowing purple center. There's a slamming thud as Bercilak makes their entrance, and the machine there lights up red, emitting several buzzing sounds. The larger of the nearby shapes takes note of this, and immediately starts to drift south with a clear purpose in their motion.
Majima Goro	There's no gravity in here. Damnit. "Eh? Ain't these ships s'posed to have gravity in 'em?" He pauses. "...Fuck, how does that shit even work, anyway?" He says to himself, kicking off floors and ceiling to investigate the room he's in. Slowly, mind you. No need to rush. "...Probably in a tank or somethin'. Bet if I ask they'll tell me they ran outta liquid gravity and we gotta fill the pipes up with it again." He seems content with his summarization of TECH BULLSHIT, eventually making his way to the STRANGE MACHINE. He wiggles his gloved hands, breath fogging up the inside of his hardsuit. "..Neheheh. Alright. Let's see what this does." Majima has exactly zero talent and knowledge about the machinery he is about to operate. That is not, by any stretch, going to stop him from looking at random buttons and possibly hitting them to see what they do.
Starbound Flotilla	This is outrageously durable, for a door. It is positively astounding that a construction of this sort could be able to survive as many of Bercilak's strikes as it does. It takes some time before he can smash a hole in it wide enough to clamber through, and by the time he does, a backup bulkhead is already shifting slowly into place over it -- permanently sealing it. The SOUTHERN HATCH cannot be used now! But Bercilak is in. There's an alert noise. Rather, it's normally beyond human hearing, but several of the speakers have decayed enough to bring its frequency down into audible range, like the voice of a dying furby. When he yanks that handle to get the second stage of the airlock done, he has a reception waiting for him. In the dark, five long, skeletal shapes await -- three about half a foot short of his size, one about two feet taller, and one approaching from a distance. The smaller trio are limbless, faceless, covered in thrusters, and move at tremendous speed. They jab and assault like swordfish, rushing in violently and immediately trying to stab Bercilak through very important organs, and everything else. The fourth is a bulky thing with a profile like a ribcage, hunched and mounted over a massive weapon that begins spewing bolts of plasma. The fifth hasn't yet arrived...! It's hard to see what they are, in the dark. Getting a good look at them will require killing them or putting a light source on them! As for the room itself? The SOUTH WING has an open passageway to the north, and a room off to the east, where one can hear an unwholesome noise that sounds like old meat being electrocuted, but itself mostly contains misty purple tanks, some occupied and some not -- by what, it's not entirely clear without a thorough examination.
Ezra Mochizuki	As Ezra makes it inside, he turns his lights away the moment he notices the shapes, mumbling about the lack of gravity. He's gonna have to go slow, until something allows him to go fast. Avoiding the swarm, Ezra moves for the other machine, trying to get a glance through those windows. Is this the engine? Does it seem like it'd be safe, or otherwise useful, to open up?
Starbound Flotilla	Operating the machine looks fairly straightforward. There are several structures that Majima is able to find that use that two-thumb-gripper structure. A pulled lever here, a hefty "W"-shaped button pressed there, and the counting machine emits a screech that sounds like a heavy smoker being choked to death. It exposes a flat card with what looks like some sort of gray growth on it -- something fungal, maybe? Several robotic limbs are shocking the weird growth repeatedly, while another scans its responses -- and counts what must be alien numbers, ten digits at a time. The flat end looks like it matches a slot near the door though. Majima can now acquire a KEYCARD! A shape behind Majima, drifts searchlight eyes over him, and a soft shine of infrared light might prickle his skin before a heavy, limbless thing about six feet long swordfish-like shape attempts to skewer him in the back with a rocket-powered rush!
Lilian Rook	Dealing with the cold void of space isn't usually Lilian's thing. The last time had been aboard a secret ship of the Imperium, and it'd been a miserable dump with little to show for it. Allegedly, this promises to be different. Different enough that even the notorious Flotilla are looking for a contract. The first thing that strikes her is the scale. Hearing 'three hundred thousand capital ships' doesn't mean much except 'a lot' upon first contact with the ear. Being able to stand in a space where one can look around, unobstructed, in every direction at once, and still only find titanic derelicts of metal as far as the eye can see, drives home an entirely different meaning. Even Lilian spends a short while aboard the ship in darkly marveling at the sheer scope of it. "I can see more of them than stars." she says, in one of the very few bouts of vocalization she has for the subject. "How many people must have been here? How long did it take for them to get here? And they're all together; they haven't drifted apart at all." Once having to make physical contact, she goes through a similar routine as before; the combat suits she generally has requisitioned from the program are almost-incidentally sealed with the application of a suitably faceless helmet, which has the requisite rebreather, but she does make use of an appropriate nanoskin over it for not wanting to suffer the particularly distressing discomforts of hard vacuum. She has her own rifle, collapsed in a case along the way, but does uncharacteristically pick out Moonfin's swordcraft from the lockers, and scanning equipment friendly enough for her to interpret the readouts of. She needs no assistance to launch herself from the airlock to the NORTH partition, though it takes her a minute to get a handle on the usual Newtonian bane of people used to flight physics where air is involved. The lack of it just makes her drift even more eerily incidental, where she curves gracefully around to find the locked hatch, and hover before it in lieu of magnetic boots. From the moment she sees the contours of the handle, she begins recording from the optics of her helmet. Running her fingers over the grooves, ergonomically shaped for something so very different from herself, Lilian finds herself hesitating to simply force it open. "Wretched and crumbling as it is, I can't help but find myself taken in by the mystery of it." she says for the sake of an opened log. "To call Antegent 'alien' is certainly appropriate, but when confronted with the idea of 'aliens' in person -- looking on the things they built, suitable just for them, and not for humans -- the difference sinks in immediately. It's difficult to articulate." From there, she utilizes a sharp point to scrape several angular runes of her her own making into the flaking exterior, and passes through their nexus, briefly succumbing to a flicker of shadowy unreality to tumble through the other side and put her feet against something metal. From there, she unlimbers the rifle, mostly to turn on its mounted flashlight, paired with the lights attached to her helmet for the largest field of view available. She moves without hurry, taking her time to sweep the beam around the dusty, oxidized corners and corridors, staring deeply into the pattern and design of how its interior is built and layered, like trying to read meaning from tea leaves or bones.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Bercilak's violent entrance done, he is surprised to find the interior large enough to pilot his bike in. It would take a lot more hacking to get it through, though, so he leaves it behind. As if his entrance weren't loud enough, he navigates the darkness in a way that seems almost determined to bring attention his way. Using his axe and the thrusters on his armor in tandem, Bercilak navigates around the darkened, rusty corridor to the best of his ability. 'His ability' in this sense is low, because he can't, for the most part, see where he's going. In essence, he is noisily, often clumsily and blindly making his way towards that second bulkhead, and thus it's no surprise that something is waiting for him. His armor is formidable. Where the weapons of the thruster-shapes strike the plates, they are met with considerable resistance. The fabric beneath them is tough, but not so much as the plates. Yet for all their harassing, for as many times as they spill blood, he still stands. One even manages to get in a keenly placed stab through the underside of his helmet in the darkness, and the blade piercing through his skull draws, of all things, a bellow of excitement. "HAH! Vaun-chace, at laste!" The dogs have come to hunt, and he's happy to be the prey. He'll need to deal with the harriers--the fast ones--first. The plasma-shooter will slow him down, but he'll deal with it last. Best not to deprive himself of what scant light sources there are to be found in this place. He assumes that he'll have time to have fun with them, better or worse, and makes his first attack a broad, circular swing of his axe. The microthrusters on his armor fire in tandem with this swing, keeping him balanced and in place. His excited shouting, and the hiss of his thrusters, are eminently audible.
Starbound Flotilla	This use of intangibility doesn't set off the alarms -- though she can hear them elsewhere, in the distance, for Bercilak. Here in the NORTH-EAST WING, she can see all the same things the others found -- the inch-thick layer of oxidization-like decay, the drifting shapes -- and a large machine in this area. It's not immediately visible, cloistered behind a segment of several walls that bear massive air-cooling systems, some of which have failed. The only clearly visible shape is a jellyfish-like thing, a bubble full of purple glowing fluid and spindly mechanical manpulators below, which notices the overheated segment, drifts to it, sprays it with coolant, and then drifts away, then back once the coolant has boiled off. It eventually notices Lilian as well, though, and shifts -- dumbly -- to spray the unknown heat-source as well. The coolant threatens to immediately lower Lilian's temperature by dangerous levels. The machine hidden behind the walls makes strained noises. Red lasers sweep in the gaps between the walls, a set of red lines that whirl around the open space and blink lightly when they encounter the mysterious drifting shapes in the dark.
Majima Goro	"Ya-tta-, cha cha cha~" Majima quietly hums to himself. He is absolutely a technical genius. He reaches forward for the keycard, before stopping. Something is very wrong. It's in the very last moment he pushes himself off the machine, just in time for a long swordfish-like something to successfully strike through next to him, the rest of its body managing to knock him into something resembling free floating. SWORDFISH THE TRUE PASSWORD Now, luckily, he did grab some of the handy rockets that let you realign yourself in zero-G, and he did figure out roughly how to hit the buttons that make him stop spinning around and threatening to make him lose his lunch. That still leaves him with a six-limbed swordfish thing to deal with. He pushes himself up to the ceiling, waits a moment for the next rush, and then pushes back towards the alien--and slightly to the side, hoping to matador-style nail it with the bat. ...Ideally not directly to the stabby bit, if at all possible.
Starbound Flotilla	The interior of the machine is thoroughly examined. Inside, a single large eye seems to panic and urgently look to the south, then dart around anxiously. A complex input device nearby displays twenty four numerals in a 4x6 grid -- presumably the way one could open the three doors. Ezra might not be a hacker, but is there some way to open this? Well, he could just force it open, the doors aren't that high security. Every time that robotic "eye" looks to the south, it flashes red and that noise happens again. The BULKHEAD SECURITY CORE has strong opinions about what's going on over there! Some kind of turret system has realized Ezra is there, and has flipped into position to fire on him with glowing blue bolts. Three hefty, circular things with a hunched shape in all of them suddenly start blasting at him, while a seven-foot-long hefty wide looking bastard with armor plating ejects a huge purple plasma bomb that drifts towards him, glows, whirrs for about a second, and detonates with tremendous force and heat!
Starbound Flotilla	The little ones attacking Bercilak land blow after blow, but it's not too long before they start to get cut down. The axe slams into and through one of them. There's a noise like a piece of wood snapping, out-of-place for drone defenses, and yet might be familiar with Bercilak in some way, possibly. It's hard to tell what it was, as the parts go drifting off into the dark. The one gunner continues its assault, and it's soon joined by the fifth attacker: A huge beast of a thing, with a long, climbing segmented tail of some kind, four gleaming optics, and an absolutely massive plasma repeater that unloads on him. The weapon is one that would be better suited on a fighter jet. But now Bercilak is in; he can navigate where he may.
Ezra Mochizuki	As Ezra approaches, he looks over the machine. He's not sure if he tries to brute force it that it won't lock out, or sound an alarm and lure all those monsters to eat him. But he can use his speed for something else, as that turret pops out. "It's showtime." As the blasts come at him, one grazes his suit, knocking him back, before he turns on his zero-g maneuvering and starts to boost around, making swimming motions at rapid speeds to allow him to move superhumanly quick. His goal is simple: he's going to train the shots on the door by leading them, and then- Oh shit, that's a bomb. But it's probably got force. Ezra lures it over to the door, plants feet on it, and then bursts off rapidly, narrowly missing most of the detonation. The heat burns against his suit and throws him down into the hull, but hopefully, the door's been shattered in the meantime! And hopefully it didn't set off the purple glowy thingy.
Starbound Flotilla	CRUNCH. The spikedog goes spinning. Buzzing painfully, the thing manages to barely course-correct before one of its disrupted thrusters detonates. The sound that it makes is definitely one Majima has heard in the past, but it's impossible to place where or why. The drifting machine parts now contain a complimentary drifting keycard since the machine it was on got skewered. That sound was loud enough to draw the attention of something in the next area -- a pair of hefty things about seven feet tall and rather wide, girthy with a ribcage-like profile, which open fire with under-mounted plasma weapons that threaten third degree burns and worse. They're defending whatever that glowing purple spinning thing is further on.
Lilian Rook	While the purple blob does its work, Lilian remains perfectly still, recording it as fully as she can. "Obviously, not crew. The way it maneuvers suggests that there likely never was artificial gravity aboard. Did its creators really have no need of it? Even to sustain the health of their bodies?" When the blob approaches her instead, Lililian briefly considers remaining still to let it spray her and obliviously move on. A second thought suggests that whatever coolant is using has to be very strong, and reminds her that she does need her body heat. She allows it to approach just close enough to begin the maintenance process, then switches off all of her lights at once, and relocates to the arbitrary ceiling above, powering down some of her electronics and engaging her suit's suppression systems instead, while coolant sprays into empty blackness. Lilian reorients herself to her new floor, and attaches one of the Seft-designed sensors to her wrist, using what features she can to start tracking the floating shapes that the red beams only very briefly illuminated. "Of all the things to find in the dark, I can't help but think of a code scanner first, and then a laser sight second." she continues to speak to only the inside of her helmet. "It seems like it would be grossly inefficient as a means to tagging and communication though; it doesn't have an unobstructed view of its surroundings. The need for so much cooling would befit a computer, but so it would a hundred other things. Even then, it's a miracle that it still works. I couldn't possibly tell how long it's been going without any more maintenance than emergency cooling from those drones. Or, I'd prefer to assume that they are drones." The sound of alarms becomes gradually more apparent with only the whine of the mysterious machine to compete with, as do the following echoes of gunshots and impacts throughout the hull. "Typical." she mutters. "Even if there are thousands of these ships, they have no clue what could be on board. Yet they've started brawling with something or other all the same." A pause. "I would have to, again, assume automated security, by the presence of automated repair. But then how much did the architects expect they'd need it aboard their own ship?" Though she doesn't expect the security can pick up on her use of magic any more than she is particularly equipped to read the technological layout of it, Lilian still launches herself over to the air cooling stacks solely via physical motion, still engaged in stealth maneuvers to keep out of the gaps in the walls where the beams shine through, and move in time with their rotations. She wants to land as close as is physically possible to maintain position in a blind spot, and then . . . resume drawing runes along its base. With a purpose, as well.
Starbound Flotilla	If Ezra wants to force the doors open by making the turrets blast it... well, that seems to be entirely possible! Unusually, the turrets visibly spark every time they fire at the door, but they don't seem to be suffering damage from that odd overload. What IS that? The bomb is shoved into the door system, and rips apart all three layers. The hefty chunky thing that launched the bomb makes a sudden noise, like a blade slicing something, and a piece of it drifts off, though the rest of it continues its assault. The core of the door security management module is exposed. It looks to be primarily a processor, if those circuitboards are anything to go by. It keeps stressing out about matters to the south, dumbly unaware of the threat right in front of it. The way it moves is unnervingly natural, though.
Majima Goro	Honestly, it's almost disappointing. He was gearing up for this to be a /thing/. On the upside, the thrusters appear to be a great weak point, and, also, rocket-powered six-armed fish alien zombie robots is making for a pretty good day. What he /can/ do is snag that keycard, finally, and maybe take his knife and gently scrape off some of the weird fungal mold. "Do I take a sample of this shit or somethin'? 'ssat the sciency thing to do?" He asks himself, looking up at the floor. "...nehhhh, fuck, I ain't got time for that." Especially, as he resumes his explorations, there are...two giant plasma-cannon-wielding enemies. At a distance. This, for Majima, is a distinct tactical disadvantage. "Aiy--aaaa?!" He immediately boosts himself to the side, hiding behind the wall for just a moment. If he's lucky, they'll come to him. If not... He does have this spare oxygen canister. He'll work something out in a moment.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	The brute strength of his axe seems to split like logs the forms of his harriers, and Bercilak utters a bellow of triumph, marching forwards... only to be blown backwards by the combined assault of plasma. His armor bears heavy scoring, black pitted marks mixed in with the green plates, visible in brief flashes as new bolts arrive to pummel him more. The force of the larger beast's blasts is great enough that when he lands, there is a hole blown in the abdomen of his plate--and a mending chest wound that only moments ago was sizeable enough to spell death for most men. Behind the expressionless mask of his helmet, Bercilak grins. That larger one--that's a beast worthy of hunting him, one visible in the darkness only by the blasts of its plasma. "If thou art to quell me, ye must do bet by fer!" One hand drives the axe into the rust-caked floor beneath him, with a metallic creak as the monomolecular blade hews the long-undisturbed floor. Nanites surge from the weapon into the metal, repurposing the oxidized surface into fertile ground for plant life. A thick, tangled mess of fibrous vines, each as big around as a person's wrist, forms a wall that must be blasted through or leapt over, in order to catch him. Wasn't he supposed to be doing something? Something... other than sport? Hm. He shoulders his axe as his wounds slowly heal, and utilizes the thrusters on his suit to force the beast into pursuit. They'll surely expect something of him--mortals always do. Perhaps, if he found something about where these things are coming from? How they were made? As he flies blind through the corridors, he makes stops at each crevasse, grabbing at the darkness for something someone with the patience to decipher it might... well, decipher, analyze, you know. If that means he has a handful of bones and half-broken electronics, so be it.
Starbound Flotilla	Lilian Rook loads a magically-scanned MAP! She is searching out a particular objective, one that results in a considerable amount of results. Her objective can be found in this very room, in fact! The chamber with all the lasers sweeping around has a number of examples on the north-side wall, not visible from where she is. There's also the south wing's core chamber, where a stronger instance of this seems to be active (partially, and yet intensely, for unclear reasons), and a strange, broad "fuzzy" static of the objective in all areas, which feels surprisingly dynamic. The past is a mystery. Her particular query into what happened long ago here just extends and extends, and eventually somehow times out, like a process went on too long and couldn't find resolution, looping forever. However, in a search for the past, she does recover something: An access code to enter into any of the machines and consoles here. A ten-number sequence, in base 24. The coolant-spraying thing occasionally pursues her slowly, dumbly, but only in gaps between the more pressing heat issues. Her body heat alone is low enough to be low-priority. Tracking the shapes is a good idea; they drift and "patrol" in slow patterns, ones she can find out over time.
Starbound Flotilla	Majima does hear a machine growl eventually begin to get near. One of the two guarding machines has split off to come after him. Still blasting plasma wildly, it slowly approaches the blind ambush-corner. In the flickering blue light of its horrible energy weapon, blast-scarred metal can be seen; this is not this drone's first firefight. But it might be its last, if Majima gets the drop hard enough. Then it's just a matter of closing the gap to its compatriot -- still covering the hallway.
Ezra Mochizuki	Ezra moves in for the processor after he gets back up, rubbing the part of his flesh-arm where he impacted. His metal arm is brought up, as he kicks off again, trying to avoid the blasts and getting pushed closer to the core by them. "This isn't working out, ugh..." So, in an attempt to shut down the security, he goes for the eye, trying to find a cable or something to start throwing super-fast punches at and try and rip out. If he can't rip it out with his cyber-arm, he'll instead try and focus the blasts on the eye, and then get out of dodge in case it's going to explode horribly.
Majima Goro	Majima waits, pressed to the 'ceiling' just above the entrance to the door. He's prepared what he needs, and the moment a glint of metal passes the doorway beneath him, he springs into action. HEAT ACTION: Essence of Improper Maintenance There's some sort of mouth..port, thing, that Majima noticed. He's got a battery cell he's been carefully stripping important-looking bits off with his knife, and he shoves that directly down that mouth port. Probably voltage limiters. Well, no, this is /highly advanced space-alien technology/, so probably, like... Space voltage. Yeah. That probably covers it. While he pushes down, he wraps his legs around that 'rib cage' to spin himself around, jamming a very thin fuel canister down the barrel of that energy weapon in the process. One last loop around the gun, and he presses his center of mass to the weird skeleton drone's... And then he kicks off all of his zero-G control rockets, at once. He's going to explode the drone's head, and weapons, and then use it like a shield to push up at the second drone firing at him. It should cover him from the plasma fire, since it's clearly got plating that survives plasma-like shots. That's how you get down long hallways, you know, when there's ranged enemies at the end. That's about the only way.
Starbound Flotilla	Bercilak, for reasons yet unknown, finds that the surface of this ship's metal is actually irrationally very fertile. It's not clear how or why, but it contains a lot of useful minerals for plant growth. If he's looking for somewhere to go -- somewhere Ezra isn't already -- then the best place to move is no-doubt the core chamber off to the east. Several turrets spin up, circular shells with hunched-over structures inside focusing on blasting him over and over with plasma, but they circle around something that looks much more important. A thick, shining red cable links to several security laser emitters surrounding it, and another massive yellow cable feeds into a little projector that emits a massive forcefield encompassing it. What "it" is, in question, is a massive brain. At least fifteen feet in diameter, the exposed neurons visibly spark and shift as mechanical limbs robotically stimulate lobes of it with electricity. Holographic screens show feeds of the vision systems from every drone and turret on the ship, and lights pulse on its surface with every pull of a turret's trigger. It might be hard to pull back away because the gun-drones remaining are blasting hard to try to get through that tangle. Snap, snap, snap. Well that's a more familiar noise, even if it was weirdly similar to these machines.
Starbound Flotilla	BUZZ-BEEP! Several of the nearby doors display flickering lights, and shift to a yellow glow. Doors seem no longer capable of calling up reinforcements when breached! The eye, when its key cabling was torn apart, briefly expanded its pupil like a hunted prey animal, jerking around in a panic, before going lifeless and dimming. One of the larger heavy sentinels stops its path it was about to take to the south, around that time, and sticks around in this room, drifting about. It hasn't noticed Ezra, despite the system going down, but its baleful eyes and soft near-infrared vision sweep around and about near here. Gunfire is still heard to the south, and more to the east -- that's Bercilak and Majima's situations, respectively.
Starbound Flotilla	Majima slams a battery into the mouth of the thing. Crunch-crack. What was that? Why does that sound familiar? The noise of the explosion definitely isn't any more unusually familiar, nor is the sound of plasma slamming into the creature as it's used as a disarmed, dismembered human shield -- an effective one. At this size, it's larger enough and zero gravity is forgiving enough that this HEAT ACTION isn't just possible for Majima, it's technically even possible for a human being! At the end, a cluster of turrets (weird spherical things with hunched-over interior structures), a collection of more swordfish-like drones, and a larger central structure are all here. A locked bulkhead door leads west -- though right about now, it flickers dramatically, and one of its harsh red lights dims to a passive yellow. And, of course, the second of thw two gun-drones menaces. But most importantly, that strange spinning machine. An outer layer of strange shield-fields rotates around it in a circular pattern, trying to disrupt any incoming projectile and leaving only a few gaps, and making it startlingly hard to get in for melee to boot! Feeding out of it is a thick, massive yellow cable, which winds its way SOUTHWEST and then through a wall.
Lilian Rook	Kneeling by her circle for what might be a full minute, the first utterance Lilian has for finishing is only a thoughtful "Unusual." She stands up and turns to look towards the north wall, but without switching her lights back on, she won't be able to see it, nor scan it. Instead, after puzzling over the sequence, and deciding "Base twenty-four?" out loud, followed by "Five-fingered hands. Odd.", she-- -----[stop]----- "Well, let's sort this out." says Lilian to the void. Kicking off from the room-spanning machine and back into empty space, she drifts her way over to one of the signals from the scanner from memory; she is no longer being able to reference it, as its position won't update along where with she is. She has little idea of what she can expect to find, but in the perfect, blissful silence of the world that exists in this moment, she doesn't feel anxious about approaching it. Once she has, she intends to get a good look up close with her lights on a low, dull red, tracing out its contours and examining its bits and pieces, studiously noting all of it. She goes without actually touching the thing though; instead, she continues to the wall, and hovers up and down its length for as long as she feels she can do so comfortably, examining it with the same sort of dimmed reverse scuba light, memorizing as much as she can. As easy as it is to forget though, eventually she will have to go back to all that noise and tension. -----[start]----- --begins figuratively climbing over the light-emitting mechanical complex, looking for something that resembles a console or entry pad, to apply that code sequence. Failing that, she'll simply leave it intact for now, having little idea what it does, and move on to the next highest concentration.
Ezra Mochizuki	There's a heavy sentinel. That's not good. Ezra tries to slip quietly past it, turning off his lights briefly as he 'swims', and once he thinks he's past, moves to turn it back on and dive SOUTH. He doesn't know who's in that direction, but they could probably use some help!
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	The Green Knight pauses, listening for the sound of the beast he'd slowed down. Whether he hears it or not, his pace is the same. Unhurried. There will be time for the hunt, whether he hurries or not. And, in the mean time, why not take this, as trophy for his hosts? The turrets are paid attention, only grudingly, as he realizes that the precision necessary to cut this prize free simply won't be had with them defending it so vigourously. "Quell me, if indede thou cannst--for I muchly appreisen yon brain." The plasma is beginning to blow plates of his armor from the fabric beneath, which smolders with each passing blow. Focusing his aim for each swipe, Bercilak attempts to cut a determined, patient swath through the defenses. Only once the last is cracked in two by the edge of the great bearded thing, does he turn the weapon towards The brain. The mountain of a man, upper half of his armor entirely blown off, lifts his weapon again. Rapidly healing green arms coax the unwieldy thing into a dance, the blade striking only the wires without so much as nicking the flesh below. That is... as long as one of them doesn't cause some kind of massive explosion or kill the lights. He doesn't think much about these things.
Majima Goro	Majima slides right past the second gundrone. In retrospect, he thinks, he probably should have gone through the effort of aiming at it. On the other hand, aiming this thing was probably out of his skill range anyway. He looks to the cable, pushing himself in front of it. He probably doesn't have enough knife to cut through it, but -maybe- plasma fire might be bad for it.
Starbound Flotilla	The north wall, in that interior, is covered -- absolutely packed -- with bones. And above those bones is a layer of glass-like cases, containing a strange purple fluid. The bones are some of the alien. But inside those cases, she can find the aliens. The silhouette of a form, a head and a body and even something that looks almost like arms, can be seen drifting in the dark of the case -- but, the light's just too low to see all the way through to it. In this same chamber, she can get a good look at the machine that inhabits it. A massive sphere, with heavy armor plates and red beams emitted from gaps between them. It looks like a massive eye; mechanical articulators are in the midst of prodding a vulnerable spot. It's hooked into a massive red cable that moves far south from here, providing some service elsewhere. Its pupil is dilated in a paranoid panic. Back outside, a terminal is available. The code can be entered by by figuring out which direction the aliens read -- in this case, their numbers spiral out from the center of the keypad. Information is displayed. Mostly untranslatable giberish, but a star chart is clear, one made while the fleet was at their origin point. It's simple to record it off the screen. It'll be harder to deal with the systems of the ship itself, of course; the security systems remain active.
Starbound Flotilla	To Ezra's south is a relevant topic. A massive growth has formed here, plant matter blocking the way, while a pair of drones -- another heavy sentinel and a more basic gunner -- work at blasting away at it. They're trying to chase down Bercilak! Attacking the turrets is good, and straightforward. Ripping those apart is going to be good to give him a clear shot at dealing with the brain. Unfortunately, the cables offer no such freedom. He slices through the red and then the yellow cable, and then... the brain pulses strangely. A shining purple glow thrums along it, and a funnel construct shapes itself on the border, drawing some form of energy directly through the hull. An adaptive, effective substitute can explain how these ships function without dedicated repair crews, but it makes this all rather horribly inconvenient, even while carefully avoiding the brain. All the other wiring is non-exposed under that mysterious FORCEFIELD that's pulling its external power! Though it briefly flickers again, as something happens elsewhere!
Starbound Flotilla	Majima's plan riddles the massive cable with holes, which is pretty effective in one sense: The barriers on the shield module start to blink out of existence, but they restore themselves right at the cable. This is a shield-creator, donating barriers elsewhere, it seems, and trying to protect itself in the meantime! But this tactic means it's a bit more open to direct assault now. Its barriers everywhere flicker slightly -- here and in other rooms -- while it reconfigures. Dependent, interlocked systems, like organs of a creature, seem to be the nature of this place. And turrets and that gun-drone and spikedogs assaulting Majima ruthlessly are certainly the nature of the immune system.
Ezra Mochizuki	Ezra reaches two drones trying to cut through growths. He just waits there, briefly, for them to finish blasting through. As soon as there's a hole big enough for him... "Hello, friends! Mind going unconscious?" A metal fist slams into the head of the the sentinel, while the non-metal elbow goes to slam into the gunner's skull, followed by a flurry of brawling attacks that just move at rapid speeds.
Starbound Flotilla	The gunner's head-segment explodes with a weird, wooden-sounding crunch-crack sound. Much of the torso also sprays in weird fragments, splintering strangely. But the other one doesn't simply accept that; the fist streaks towards it, but it managed to swiftly turn about and back up a bit. And when the fist meets it, it meets a shield, not the drone's body. A fizzling crash roils over its body as it's slammed against one of the walls by the impact, but it opens up with a machine-gun series of blasts toward Ezra, trying to chase him before he gets through that hole. Outspeeding Ezra might not entirely work, but nobody ever accused these drones of being smart -- just aggressive and lethal.
Ezra Mochizuki	Ezra throws his wrist out as soon as the machine-gun blasts start chasing him, the metal arm firing off a series of vibrations to try and stun the sentinel. At that exact moment, one blast sends Ezra forward, and he groans in pain, trying to maneuver through the hole and get to Bercilak as soon as possible.
Majima Goro	Majima has two problems. 1: There are a lot of security drones in this room, all of which are firing at him. 2: He needs to get past those layers of shields to destroy whatever's in the center of them, because it's probably a good idea, because why wouldn't it be a good idea to arbitrarily destroy machinery in a spaceship? A knife in one hand, the bat in the other, he gets to work. He doesn't worry about killing the drones, taking the time to direct their fire towards anything that looks important. Not--because it's actually important, but every misdirection makes those shields a little weaker, until... Until he finally weaves between some, in the center, both giving him a ton of protection, and giving him access to the thing he needs to break in order to..remove that protection, but that's a future Majima problem.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	The MYSTERIOUS FORCEFIELD gives Bercilak pause--which, given the blasting away at his plant barrier, isn't great. As far as he's concerned, though, maybe it'll reach him, and maybe it won't. He raps his axe curiously against the FORCEFIELD--or rather, nearly does, for it's then that he notices the flicker. "We shalt afinde anau which of us is lorden of yon plentive halls." If there's a flicker, that means somewhere there's a power source. That, in turn means there are limitations--somehow, some way... he aims to find them. He's decided that he wants this big brain, and that's final--if the beast should interrupt him, too, then all the better. Nothing like a challenging hunt to excite the spirit! Making good on his claim, he aims to test again how fertile the ship's metal is. This time, it's a parasitic vine, seeking to strangle into uselessness whatever conduit or cable carries the power to that forcefield. They spread out slowly from the point of impact, creeping first across the floor, until they reach the walls. There, they snake gradually up the sheer surface, tenaciously clinging to and spreading into any cracks or purchase they find. They don't stop at the ceiling, wiggling into any surface that can bear them, trying to pry said surfaces apart in search of the aforementioned power source, or at least, some conduit thereof. Upon hearing Ezra on the radio, he chuckles.
Lilian Rook	Lilian doesn't flinch at bones or remains, for the sheer number she's seen before, mostly packed away on shelves or strewn about arcane arrays like they are here, rather than charnel battlefields. In the black catacombs of the thoroughly eerie derelict, however, once the dull red of her light falls on them, she doesn't approach any closer. "Abnormal." she says, elaborating no further upon the monolithic wall of stripped skeletons, and trying not to think of how many other ships might have spots like these, never mind areas in this same ship. Her light tracks to the left, to the right, then up, and catches on the glass cases. That's the point at which she backs off by feet, her hand gradually gliding to her weapon again, but remaining frozen short of reactivating it, waiting for any sign of deliberate motion from the shapes inside of it. She revises her opinion. "Perverse." "Preserved remains? It'd be odd if living aliens were living right next to their own dead. These don't seem to go anywhere either; they can't be naturally aquatic. If this doesn't represent some stratification of the interred, it could be some sort of anagathic storage, then. For making an interstellar voyage that this entire fleet somehow didn't complete. But then why did I see that same fluid utilized in the machines?" ". . . Note to review the earlier footage." She sounds like she'd just swallowed something with a deeply unpleasant taste. -----[stop/start]----- Lilian is still refusing to destroy the big, mysterious, potentially valuable, potentially important machine. After entering the code and having received the star map, she works off of the reports she's getting from the other areas over the radio, and experimentally tries unplugging, or if necessary, severing, the big RED CABLE, making sure she is at least out of direct line of sight while doing so.
Starbound Flotilla	A stun does seem to work, in spite of that projected barrier field. Ezra manages to book it through, though he's pursued persistently by that heavy sentinel. He has until that growth gives way -- no longer. He can join Bercilak in the chamber now!
Starbound Flotilla	Majima weaves in there, managing to make it into the shield! It's a TIGHT fit. If he were any larger, he wouldn't be able to access this CORE. But the turrets fire and fire, and the barriers bounce their shots back precisely. Every time they fire, a weird little twitchy zap is visible in the hunched-over machinery inside the sphere. It's just a little obfuscated by the fact that their shots are reflecting precisely back into the turrets now! It's not long before they've slagged themselves. Majima can take out the SHIELD GENERATOR MODULE now!
Starbound Flotilla	Severing the BIG RED CABLE is effective. Many of the big red lines flicker, and the SECURITY MONITORING CORE suddenly goes into a panicked overdrive. Darting its massive eye around, it looks so stressed that it was practically sleepy in comparison earlier. The mechanical manipulators still prod and poke it to make sure it never goes inactive, but now its many red lasers start to fan out urgently, and its armor plating shifts around. It makes a pitched, strained noise, as if begging for assistance, but it seemingly can't sound the alarm yet. One of Bercilak's vines somehow creeps its way into the chamber here, at the southern end. One laser sweeps over it, and suddenly the thing is terrified and focused, eye twitching and dilating desperately at the intrusion. An alarm sounds, and all the drifting shapes begin to swarm that parasitic vine, blasting at it with plasma and blades. Even the big dope of a coolant-sprayer goes to spray at it. A diversion, and a clarification. This is very, very definitely the SECURITY MONITORING CORE, now demonstrated clearly.
Starbound Flotilla	Bercilak does find that there are a truly baffling number of deposits of plant nutrition in the walls of this place, which allow a parasitic vine to squeeze through cracks and seek every angle necessary here. As they strangle the conduits from every direction, security lasers start to dim and flicker and the forcefield is behaving strangeley (though that, it turns out, is actually Majima's doing). After a certain point, he finds that the security systems have started assaulting the vine in one of the northmost chambers, which is of course because of what we saw earlier here -- or rather way over to the north, where Lilian is.
Majima Goro	Majima is absolutely going to take out the shield generator module. His eye's open as wide as it gets, the man cackling in the hardsuit as he draws out... A box of firecrackers. He brought it with him. For emergencies. And this, in fact, is an emergency. He carefully scrounges around for whatever looks like a removable panel, or somewhere with a lot of important, computery equipment, maybe using his knife to unscrew a few 'screws'. Those ones, there. That should do it. The firecrackers are lit, the panel is held tightly shut, and with any luck, he'll have destroyed a module and won't have to wail on it with a bat for the next several minutes.
Starbound Flotilla	KA-BOOM! The module detonates, and a blast of heavy smoke comes out of the corpse of the machine. And, elsewhere... Bercilak and Ezra find that the FORCEFIELD has just gone down on the CENTRAL CORTEX. The CENTRAL CORTEX is now protected only by the SECURITY MONITORING MODULE!
Lilian Rook	Seeing the vines creeping through, Lilian can only guess that they belong to 'one of the other Elites' for the fact that there could be no possible way for terrestrial growth to exist here otherwise. So, when they begin, seemingly, automatically seeking the wall of bones, she snaps off into the radio "Cut off the vines to the northeast. Now." She turns her head back to the security core, her gaze repeatedly wandering around the quivering eye without wanting to come to rest on it. Her weight shifts restlessly from foot to foot. Her finger taps against her thigh. She glances away, and then back again. A long, tense sigh. A subvocalized swear. Lilian stiffly turns all the way back, marching herself to the core through force of will. Then, she kneels back down on it, reaches out, and finally broadcasts through her helmet speakers, in another language, "Stop. Be calm." Inside, she really, really hopes that nothing happens.
Starbound Flotilla	The SECURITY MONITORING SYSTEM abruptly begins to attempt a shutdown sequence. Elsewhere, in the CENTRAL CORTEX room, the lasers are beginning to fully dim. They flicker back on, only because those robotic limbs, with large electrical torture devices, suddenly shock the thing awake. However long this thing has been online, it has been forced to go sleepless the entire duration, despite clearly having the capacity for it. The robotic manipulators near that edge are trying to guarantee its awakeness! And of course, they're guarded by the flickering lasers from that core.
Majima Goro	Majima Goro ...has been asked to 'examine' what he has killed. This is a bunch of wires and most of it is exploded. He slowly retrieves a can of beer, that he has brought with him for no readily explicable reason. He brings it up, tapping it on his hardsuit's face-shield. Even he is not sure, now. he hadn't thought it through. So, he idly tosses it away, sadly, letting the alcohol float through the zero-G atmosphere. Alright. He knows absolutely nothing about technology, and certainly nothing about creepy biotechnology. But he does have a knife, and dissecting dead things is basically science. Maybe he'll find something?
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Coaxed and tended by swarms of nanites under his command, it's not difficult to find which vines Lilian wants him to cut off. That must be the section that she was worried about--and so, the vine dies, perhaps inexplicably to whatever defenses it's set off. He assumes, by her reaction, that the brain is not, in fact, life support. He suspects he would have known much, much sooner, otherwise. Smiling beneath his cracked, now one-horned helmet, the Green Knight gets back to work. "Han we us anau our sware," he says, proud of how quickly his vines took root. "I apprise thee: nay alaming of those thou taken charge, seke we us here-awei." Even so, he wishes no harm to innocent lives. But... "As bifore, I am muchly appreisen." He really wants that brain, all the same--and now that he knows it's not life support, he's gonna get it. Fair payment, for his host, in exchange for a thrilling hunt. His axe dances between the wires, again with that same precision. No matter how perilously close he must bring the huge weapon, he never so much as nicks the brain. Hooking the beard around the terminus of a wire to yank it out where a swing would be too costly, lightly rapping the edge against another where more force would dent the casing. His whole body is involved in each movement of the weapon, the man seeming to dance just as much as the axe.
Ezra Mochizuki	As the barrier goes down, and Bercilak goes cutting, Ezra joins in. With that knife he brought, he moves to super-speed cut through wires by sawing really fast, aiming to cut the amount of time Bercilak needs down by half. "So, does this place bug you too, or am I alone in that?" He asks the Green Knight, tone low.
Starbound Flotilla	There are several things in the room for Majima to dissect. The first is the FORCEFIELD SYSTEM. Inside, he finds several processors, stacked up against each others, cards bearing that same strange gray growth that he found on his KEYCARD (which will likely, sadly, now not see use). Everything's wired into scanning or electrocuting it. There are several other things available to dissect in here. Namely, the turrets and drones. With the ability to calmly examine them now, he quickly discovers something very, very important about every single drone here, which explains both the familiarity with The Noise, and something much, much worse about the situation. We will reveal what that is in just a moment.
Starbound Flotilla	He may not damage the brain. The brain has no similar compunctions. Several robotic articulators begin to clamp around it before being severed, and begin delivering strong electrical shocks. The room begins to fill with a noise not unlike a scream, which rings inside the skull in an unnerving way. Bursts of purple light begin to pulse out of its flesh as it pumps dramatically, violently. The alarm sounds, and wormholes begin to bore in the area. Those horrifying swordfish-like things and the weird smaller gunner drones are starting to reach out of the warped space, as the brain howls. They'll be assaulting quite soon. The moment one touches -- even gets near -- those purple waves, they can feel it. Utmost malice. Absolute contempt. Reverence for only one thing and nothing else. Somehow, though, oddly, while the psychic energies try to annihilate flesh, armor, equipment, and even try to cause hemhorrage in the brain, Bercilak and Ezra find it specifically avoids damaging cybernetics and implants, two things they each have a significant amount of. But they are not only those.
Lilian Rook	The worst. "The actual worst." "Christ, that's sick." Lilian says. The reaction she gets from the security monitoring core, or more aptly, its 'maintenance systems', dashes her already dim hopes that this isn't what it looks like to her. After numerous demands to avoid damaging central power, out of due diligence in case those purple cases are wired into it and active in some fashion, Lilian finally has the unenviable privilege of elaborating. "As far as I can tell, the automatic drones aren't maintaining for the biological processing units in the ship, so much as they are policing them. It's as if pieces of the ship are keeping other pieces like work animals, or slaves. They've been doing so for a very, very long time. And there are a lot of bones." She glances back to the wall. "A lot of bones." she repeats. In one quick motion, she unlimbers the rifle, flicks on both its underbarrel light and its firing circuit, raises it to her shoulder, swivels to the maintenance drone at her leftmost side, turns sidelong, and a four round burst briefly paints the walls harsh, flickering cyan. Anchoring her stance on one leg, she extends the other and rapidly sweeps her aim along with it through a clockwise arc, all the way to her rightmost side, filling the air around the security monitoring core with consecutive blasts of thunder, the stench of ozone, and a stream of charred black casings, tumbling away in microgravity to rattle and ping off of the ancient metal. She sweeps back once counterclockwise to hit any damaged machines still keeping level, using Seft's scanner and the element of ambush to thoroughly ventilate the surrounding drones, and then one more time back the other way just for good measure in finishing off any 'wounded'. Lilian then quickly kneels to the central core, and repeats the same command, in a firmer, more decisive tone, without any hint of the reluctance of before. Though her hope is that it'll shut off any further attack drones coming after her, she ejects the nearly spent magazine and replaces it just in case, allowing the former to drift a moment while she checks the digital ammo counter, before snatching it back up. "There are only three possibilities here, and they're all permutations of the same thing." she declares for the log.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Bercilak, despite having the upper portion of his armor mostly blown off, seems none the worse for wear. That is, no injuries, despite the clear scoring on the intact plates, the cracked horn and visor. "Muchly the contre," he admits. "'Tis a place unmeke and perilous--" As if to prove his very words, a horrid scream erupts. This is when Ezra may realize that for all that high-tech gear, the man who would (maybe? unclear.) be his ally is a howling wild-man in this place of wild and deadly things. He tears his helmet off, then, howling right alongside the brain, his eyes wild with the thrill of the hunt. "ILEOQS!" He gestures excitedly around with one thick, green on "HOUNDS UNHARDELEN TO CHASEN AFTER US!" Now, he must reverse the order he took before. Retreat is absolutely not his concern. He wants that brain, and he wants a fight for it. So it is that he focuses now on the gunners first, allowing himself to be cut to ribbons, only to heal anew, and suffer new cuts, wetting the rusted floor with his blood as he chases down the gunners. His axe is true--but they must die first, for risk of shooting the brain by mistake.
Starbound Flotilla	The SECURITY MONITORING MODULE falls asleep, at long last. The drone manipulators around it have been annihilated by those rifle shots. And while it's hard to go to sleep with gunfire nearby, a magic voice and unknown amounts of time forced awake do a lot for the urge to nap. The eye shuts its armor plating over itself, its laser emitters obscured and its power low. The few drones here are not put to sleep. No, the gunfire only seemed to attract them. An array of spikedogs has amassed, and a number of heavy gunners rack their plasma weapons and open fire. It's hard to quite see what is there, but they blast from the south, spilling the contents of the tubes to the north. The cooling substance is just as toxic as before. Its contents can be noted, of course, once the drones are dealt with. Elsewhere, the alarm ceases; a brain will receive no more backup from this particular immune system of sorts.
Ezra Mochizuki	The purple energy blasts out, and Ezra moves to dodge. Two of the fingers on his right hand don't make it in time, and they're torn sheer off, causing him to scream in pain, as the suit seals itself. He almost falls to the ground, but- This isn't the worst pain you've felt. You've ran this road before, Ezra. Keep on running. "Fuck, fuck, okay! It's just- it's just fingers, right?" He sounds absolutely not alright, as he grips the knife in his mechanical left hand. The blast can't affect his legs - they're prosthetic. He'll be fine. Ezra air-dashes forward, moving to land on one of the swordfish instead of the brain, once Bercilak says they can't kill it. He moves to slit their throat, and then jab the knife into their eye with wild, unhoned ability and super speed. If another purple blast comes at Bercilak, though, he's gonna tackle him out of the way. This is not okay.
Starbound Flotilla	HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE comes off the brain in vicious, angry waves. Hate that can rip steel and disintegrate flesh. Several of the lobes are the ones responsible for this, some complex psychic structure of neurology. A clean six of them seem to be the essence of it. If Ezra and Bercilak are truly dedicated to this effort, they'll need to strike off those six lobes. Which means probably a much more clear chamber, one that isn't so full of spikedogs and jackals. Luckily, Lilian just finished putting the SECURITY MONITORING MODULE to sleep. The lasers flicker, the red flashing stops, and reinforcements cease their arrival via teleportation. Bercilak takes the jackals, while Ezra takes the spikedogs, each viciously clearing the room in spite of the tremendous hazard in the chamber. The glowing brain's light finally reveals the nature of the drones.
Starbound Flotilla	The drones are not drones at all. These are not security robots. As far as Majima, and any other dissector, can tell, they appear to be fossilized skeletons, whose bodies once contained cybernetic augmentations. The skulls of the turret-corpses hard-wired into their gunnery positions have been carbonized by repeated shocks meant to punish friendly fire against a security system in some cases, while the gun-drones fought earlier appear to be the skeletal remains of six-foot-long creatures with wide, thick ribcages, highly complex arms, and long skulls like rodents or reptiles. The spikedogs have had even their few limbs amputated when they were fit with that brutal facemask that turns them into living swords. These are the inhabitants of this ship, whose cybernetics have yet to recognize the extinction of.
Majima Goro	Nah. Nah, okay. This isn't some giant dinosaur where it feels great and awesome to cut open its eye. This isn't some fuckin' crazy ass alien guy where you shove firecrackers inside his dumbass mouth and watch his brain explode. This is something far worse. Majima does not like it. Not one bit. He slowly gets up, and in the process, ends up slowly floating to the 'ceiling', watching his 'handiwork' slowly zoom out from him. "Why the fuck are we on this bullshit ship full of fuckin' cyborg skeleton bullshit?! This is fuckin' crazy!" He yells into his radio. ""No. Don't fuckin' salvage -any- of this shit!" The argument goes on for a moment. The thrust of it is that Majima -gets- it. These are skeletons of things that were living. Nobody programmed the computers to notice when something was dead. So it just kept adding shit until the corpses did their fuckin' jobs. Steal something of value? From this? Majima spreads his arms and legs out on the ceiling, staring down at the vaguely floating bullshit all around. "....Fuck would anyone want any of this for?"
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	He can keep at this a while--but Ezra can't. It would be unbecoming to expect a man giving his aid in good faith to risk his life, when Bercilak himself doesn't share that risk. They'll have to change their plan--Albert will get the whole brain. In several expertly cut pieces. "Wardrere, huntesman!" He points behind him, at the brain, as he swats away the "Cut wareli, but cut thou must! I shalt ishilden thee." Bercilak's words have two meanings. For one, his nanites begin to work upon Ezra. Already a speedster, his reaction time is increased further by stimulation of the nerves in his eyes and ears. More pressingly, Bercilak becomes a measure more direct in his combat. Hooking several of the swordfish between the beard and the shoulder of the axe, he uses his beastly strength to hurl a clueter of them at the gunners. "I AM UNCOVERED!" He switches to a one-handed grip to beat his chest. It's true--not even the nanoskin is there, anymore. "QUELL ME, IF THOU YET CONNE!" Ezra can work much faster than him--he'll handle the monsters, but he's still not leaving without the brain.
Ezra Mochizuki	Ezra's reaction time gets double-super charged, as the command comes in. Trying to dodge more purple blasts to keep as much of his flesh as possible, he moves to carve the blade into the brain, and make sashimi-cuts, trying to carve it into portability without fully destroying the stuff that looks 'useful', slicing at lobes. He's not a knife master, but he knows how to cook, so... He'll cut like that.
Starbound Flotilla	The surface of the thing burns. That's not just burning with malice either, it's literally overheated, running at a boiling temperature that threatens to burn flesh. Melee is a dangerous matter. But it works. The thing is focused on Bercilak. Bercilak, who has so much flesh unadorned, unaltered. It is angry, and hateful, and it blasts him over and over, as much as it can, with disintegration force. Even someone with peak toughness and regenerative capacity like Bercilak would find this hard to survive more than a minute of that barrage. Thank goodness Ezra's such a speed demon that they can make the lobotomy cuts in about twenty seconds of mad darting in zero gravity. With its psychic structures severed, the remaining brain begins to slowly go dark. It withers away from violently electrifying mechanical torture devices that keep shocking and shocking, despite its failure. But, the remaining drones are beginning to shut down. A wave of process failures begins to overtake the ship... Let's hope it's fast enough to help Lilian!
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Bercilak is indeed hard-pressed to survive much of it--his nanites are stretched thin just enduring the onslaught, let alone assisting Ezra. By the time the thing finally dies down, those microscopic machines have their work cut out for them. Literally, in many places. Bercilak is a bloodied, grisly mess, mending before Ezra's very eyes, his ragged, wet breathing slowly becoming healthier. Wiping blood from his brow as the nanites salvage it for his ongoing convalescence, he smiles the smile of a man who's just finished hard work. "Gramercy," he says amiably, nodding his head. "Isemblen thee our bravie, and let us yeven hit unto the scholar. I shalt see thy hertes mediecien." He's good, so it seems, to leave--and as he said, he'll heal Ezra's wounds as they make their escape.
Lilian Rook	Currently, Lilian can't be sure of either of her grisly theories; whether the finally-sleeping core is what's left of some poor bastard alien woken up from thousands of years of advanced cryo sleep to find itself briefly stranded in the void before being butchered for replacement parts, or whether it's an extrusion of the giant 'brain' that the others are reporting at a central security nexus that was originally designed to work this way by ancient architects with a staggering level of contempt for at least animal-equivalent labour. In either case, she doesn't intend to let it be riddled with shots and permanently put offline. There's too much she doesn't know yet. So she has to get away from it, and deal with the aggravated security response. One that is already doing irreparable damage to the mystery cases of purple fluid and anthropoid shapes. The rest of it is nothing but bones. Bones of aliens and bones of machines, buzzing angrily around her without any more conscience than a cloud of phages or a swarm of wasps. Without the other security systems, they're disorganized as well, and will receive no reinforcements. She leaps straight out into the center of the room, abandoning her covered position while attempting to block out the instinctive physical disorientation from her inner ear disagreeing with the position of what she'd just been standing on as a floor. Bracing the rifle against her shoulder again, she leans back and fires into the oncoming swarm, throwing up a wall of fiery cyan blossoms and a matching scythe of micro-KEP munitions that'd punch through the hull of a lesser ship. She allows herself to fly backwards with the recoil, quite visibly immense without her feet on the ground, leaving a trail of spent ammo along her path and forcing the spikedogs to chase her, so that they inevitably have to get further ahead of the gunners and bunch up, presenting a wall of makeshift cover that means her suit only has to absorb pieces of bone shrapnel and stray embers of plasma. She is not a microgravity combat master, or even an expert. Lilian keeps it going as long as she can, and then begins to tumble over backwards. She hasn't managed to crush more than half of the close combat attack drones, and has only winged the gunners in the back at best. She could manually reset her position with magical flight, as she's been doing, and try to get back a firing stance, but the process of reorienting herself well enough to be able to aim would take too long. They're already upon her at this point.
Lilian Rook	They're also alone in a dark chamber across a whole ship from everyone else, so Lilian doesn't have to handicap herself at all. -----[stop]----- Lilian stows the half-loaded gun over her shoulder, where it fixes to the magnetic hard point and locks up. She draws the powered blade she'd picked out from the ship lockers, forged by Moonfin. Murmuring "Let's see how much is talk." to the sword, as if could hear her, Lilian arrests her momentum, faces forward, and then takes off again. She weaves through the formation of charging 'spikedogs' wherever there is still space, optimizing her route in three dimensions to be able to reach nearly all of them without doubling back. Where she goes, swift, brutal, diagonal strokes are laid out across accessible spinal regions, from any angle she can reach. They're the kind of cut used for testing swords and forms; on bamboo in the appropriate culture, often animals in hers. Efficient, calibrated chops meant to cleave as much material with as little motion as possible. Motion is what she is conserving, because motion takes time, and time is what she is maximizing. The spikedogs get enough treatment to split their cybernetic components away from the other components they need to function, on other parts of the skeleton, and no more. She blitzes through the assault cluster, and then on to the other side of the room, to the heavy plasma gunners. Here she braces her boots on their broad forms and lays into their cannons with swift, alternating swipes, drawing her grip in close and shearing metal and cables with each revolving flick. Given the sight of anything like a power unit, Lilian plunges her blade down to the halfway through each cell, and without one, draws back with both hands and severs the cranium from the rest instead. Stray fire here is absolutely intolerable. Lilian intends to end this whole firefight before anything else can be damaged. The gunners get the most thorough treatment out of the mob. -----[start]----- Lilian lands on the opposite wall across the room, out of gunsight line to the purple glass containers, crouching against the nearly perpendicular surface and using the second half of her magazine to place loud, punchy, precise shots into anything still moving aggressively and made of metal, until the last round is spent.
Starbound Flotilla	They are upon Lilian -- until they're not. Until she is upon them, and behind them, and soon beyond them. A wave of deactivation takes the few paltry remaining spikedogs offline, and obliviously-gunning jackals beyond only take seconds more to fully deactivate, drifting weightlessly with what momentum they had left. This careful caution is effective. The bank of tubes beyond has been mostly saved. Now that light can be used freely, she will soon get the opportunity to see their contents. Skeletons, dozens of them, large and larger. From seven feet to nearly forteen, the various inhabitants of the pods have long since been reduced to fossils. However, their contents remain preserved. Analysis should now be much easier. Figuring out what's going on here... it'll be a lot less difficult with this. The SECURITY MONITORING MODULE shifts, subtly. Despite the brain's deactivation, it is still alive, and "sleeping".
Starbound Flotilla	The following ALIEN ARTIFACTS (5/27) were recovered in this venture: STAR MAP FRAGMENT ????? ????? ????? ????? FOSSILIZED SKELETAL REMAINS ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? STASIS FLUID SAMPLE ????? ????? ????? ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CHIP ????? CORE CEREBRAL TISSUE ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ?????(CRITICAL CONTRACT OBJECTIVE)