Chasing Ghosts III: Controllable
19 Aug 2023Maul Montresor
---Click Here For Previous Post---
"He was often close of letting go of what he chose
but the simplicity built into a maze
He would stay inside for hours knowing that the slightest move
would get him interference for days"
"He was often close of letting go of what he chose
but the simplicity built into a maze
He would stay inside for hours knowing that the slightest move
would get him interference for days"
Pushing the pills to the roof of my mouth, I rubbed my tongue across them, feeling their texture. As they began to dissolve, the bland taste melted into a layer of film that covered my mouth. I swallowed what was left of them with an audible gulp and laid my head back on the headrest of the pilot's chair, closing my eyes. The only thing on my mind at the moment was Christoph and that kid of his. The scared look on their faces...the crying. I really fucked that one up. Typical, honestly.
After a moment of sitting in silence, the tension in my shoulders slowly began to ease. My head was no longer pounding with every beat of my heart. The drugs were starting to kick in. I peeled opened my eyes and raised my head back up to look at the HUD on the canopy which indicated that the fuel scooping process was half finished. Seeing as Sepultus Memoriae wasn't in the system Christoph pointed me towards, I'd been jumping around the systems that were nearby for what felt like days. Just searching for any clue leading to the mega-ship.
On the way out here, I tried contacting Julie via direct messaging and explaining to her that this "missing ship" of hers is actually a mega-ship and that she was going to have to pay me more for finding it, but I hadn't received a response yet. Maybe my message came off as too aggressive...or maybe she was just ignoring me. Hoping I'd been lost along with the ship she sent me out looking for. I don't know. It didn't matter. Besides, I hadn't even located the damn thing yet. I needed to focus.
I tightened my grip on the controls and was relieved to feel that the trembling in my hands had subsided. I had finally begun to feel in control of my body again for the first time since I'd left the station. I tried not to think too much about how this was the first time I'd had this problem in months.
"Fuel scooping complete."
The damned COVAS nearly caused me to jump out of my skin. I seriously needed to focus. Gripping the throttle, I pushed it forward and moved my ship away from the star, and began spooling up the frameshift drive for the next jump.
As my ship moved through witch-space, my mind, unfortunately, started to drift towards thoughts of the Thargoids. I hated the things and could probably count the number of encounters I'd had with them on one hand. I actively try to avoid them but this war was making it harder and harder to do. Hats off to the brave pilots out there on the frontlines holding them back. I could never muster up the courage to do it, not in a million years. They're like a bunch of real-life superheroes out there protecting humanity. Which is nice and all, but only one question was on my mind; What if Sepultus Memoriae was attacked by the Goids? I mean, plenty of ships and people have gone missing throughout this war. It's likely that-...well, probably best not to think about that right now.
That being said, it's hard not to be a little bit fascinated with them though. I've heard that they live in witch-space. But maybe that was just a rumor or maybe it wasn't. I'm not really in the know about these things. I just hear things from others who seem to speak with enough authority about the Goids that I can't really begin to question them. Chalk it up to my other endeavors keeping me busy, but I just ain't keeping up with it. Anyway, if these things do live in witch-space, just think of the things we could do if we were capable of harnessing that ability ourselves. Perhaps we'd finally be able to explore it, whatever it is, and give definitive answers to the numerous reports of people seeing these "inexplicable lights and structures" as they pass through. It's crazy to think that we understand so little about something we use so much, but that could be said for many things these days. Besides, why question things when we can just blindly consume them? New gun? Yes. New Guardian tech to throw on your ship? Why, of course! Repercussions? Never heard of them!
I suddenly realized that I had arrived at the next system sometime during my incessant internal ramblings.
No nav beacon here, I was going to have to rely on the full spectrum system scanner for this one. It looked to be nothing but barren planets, until, for a brief moment, a signal appeared in my scanner's display. It then disappeared nearly as quickly as it had appeared. I rubbed my eyes, thinking perhaps I'd been imagining things, and waited to see if it would appear again. Sure enough after a few minutes, there it was; a distress signal. I attempted to target the signal to no avail, it had gone again. I did catch the rough coordinates and distance though and began to close the distance as I waited for the signal to appear again.
A short game of cat and mouse played out as I narrowed down a location to drop out of supercruise. The signal was appearing almost like clockwork. Automated, maybe. It didn't matter. I just needed to confirm this was the ship, contact Julie, and get paid. And better yet, no more debts. At least any that I was aware of.
I dropped out of supercruise nearest the signal, just as it vanished again, and sighed in relief at the sight of the colossal mega-ship in the distance. The relief quickly turned into intrigue as I realized that this "science vessel" Julie had me looking for was actually a prison ship. First, it was a ship turned science vessel, then a ship turned mega-ship, and now its science vessel turned prison ship. What the fuck was Stefan hiding behind all these layers?
I wanted a better look at the structural integrity of the thing, so I cautiously approached. It had been badly damaged. A few holes were blown into its sector D hold. If that sector was being used as a holding block, they're all likely dead now. As it rotated, the name "Sepultus Memoriae" was branded across various parts of the structure, confirming that this was indeed my target. Looking at some of the windows, it appeared some parts of the ship had power while others didn't and the rest seemed to fluctuate between light and darkness. Likely a damaged power plant. I finished my inspection with a datalink scan. Besides all the damage to various components, the only thing of note was an array of signal scramblers dotted around the ship. That explained the distress signal fluctuations. The scramblers must have been gaining and losing power, letting the signal bleed through briefly.
"Incoming communication link"
Again, COVAS ripped me out of my concentration.
"Goddamn thing!"
I shouted in frustration, before fumbling to find the correct button to accept the com-link and then muting the COVAS all together.
"....Survive...Board...Armed...Please...Survive...Board...Armed...Please...."
The static made the message nearly impossible to decipher but judging by the man's voice, it was a cry for help. It was repeating, meaning it was likely automated as well. Some of the scramblers must still be powered and are reducing the distance in which the message is capable of traveling, otherwise, I'd have received the audio signal much earlier during my approach.
For a second, I thought of destroying the scramblers to see if it'd clear up the signal strength but with the amount of damage this thing had already endured, I wasn't sure how much more it could have withstood. To do it safely, I'd need to deactivate them from within.
As I looked over what length of the structure that was in view of my canopy again, contemplating what kind of mess I'd gotten myself into, I noticed a light blinking in a room located on one of the spinning shafts of the ship that was connecting two of the holding blocks. The blinking almost looked as if it were Morse Code or something. While waiting for another rotation to confirm if what I was seeing was real, I began searching for a document I had saved on my ship's computer to translate this ancient code.
"S.O.S."
Not being an expert at this, it looked close enough to raise concern. Glaring out at the mega-ship, my mind was racing. I knew I had to make a decision. It was either message Julie the coordinates of her new half-destroyed "asset" and wait for her lackeys to arrive to deal with this or send her the message and get a headstart on helping any survivors that may be on board.
I'd been deceived multiple times by now, whether that was purposeful or not was up for debate. Taking the creds and being done with it seemed to be the obvious choice considering the hassle I'd been put through already.
Before I sent the message to Julie, I caught myself staring out the canopy at the structure again, contemplating as I scratched at my beard. Then it happened, an explosion big enough to rock my Krait. I grabbed the controls to stabilize and noticed during the chaos that the explosion came from sector C but the explosion came from within. Leaving a similar-sized hole to the one in sector D. The lights across the entirety of the mega-ship began to go out, section by section. After a few moments parts of the ship began to light up and slowly come alive again.
"...Fuck it..." I mumbled to myself, slamming the button to send the coordinates to Julie.
I had to help whoever may still be on board. While hopefully figuring out what the hell had happened here in the first place.
---Click Here For Next Post---