There has been a lot of debate among Galactics about a particular quirk of Terran organisms. Some argue that eukaryotic symbiosis resulting in mitochondria gave Terran life a metabolic shortcut, while others claim it is a sign of cellular inferiority, since all other Galactic sophonts had their ATP producing mechanisms encoded in their DNA.
In more practical terms, this meant that after the bath, the Karnors ended up falling asleep on Tasha. EVA is incredibly strenuous activity, and stamina can sometimes boil down to who has the more efficient cellular metabolisms. Since Tasha's mother was Vartan, she never had Terran-style cells, and after her refit, she still didn't.
This meant she was the only one in the bedroom to notice a change in lighting from white to amber, indicating a Proximity Alert situation.
Tasha frowns at the change in color. A stray thought says she's glad it isn't yellow, and as she struggles over just why she thought of that now of all times, she walks over to the wall beside the door and taps the bridge intercom. "Bridge, this is Tasha. What's going on?" She then gets about toweling herself in a frenzy as her mind shifts from random observation to pre-action mode.
Moka answers, her voice having that slightly mechanical tinge that indicates she's communicating over her cybernetic socket. "We've detected anomalous density readings at our next target. Scholar Sophis is setting up her detection equipment. We are currently stopped relative to the target."
"Please keep me informed. I'll wake the Captain. Thank you, Moka." Tasha steps away from the intercom and heads for the bath. She hasn't spoken to Moka much since locating Charon and Luk'thu-hem and hasn't any idea what the Phins think of her new existence, or her Human one for that matter. She wonders again why her mind is wandering as she steps in to the bath and gentle shakes Gabriel's shoulders, massaging them as she does. "I'm sorry Gabe, but I need to wake you up now. There's an anomaly outside."
"Is it a giant green space hand?" the big wolf mutters groggily as he starts to wake up. Usually he's much quicker to go on full alert.
"That would be interesting to see, but no, just mystery mass. We've stopped short of the next target vessel." Tasha steps away to fetch the man a towel, starting to dry his head and upper body. "Moka hasn't reported anything specifically worrying, but, well, you know how this region is. Need to be safe." She does realize belatedly it's a bit hypocritical of her to say so.
Gabriel seems troubled by something, but shakes it off and gets up to join Tasha. "I've got time to put on pants then," he notes, and heads for the dryer.
"Nothing says leadership like pants," Tasha agrees, shifting to wake Katherine in turn, who would probably be cross with her if something did happen and Tasha didn't think she merited being awake for it. "Kaaatie, wake uuup, there's uncertainty outside."
"Please insert steak to continue," Katie mumbles, then yawns and stretches. "Why do I feel sore?" she demands of Tasha.
"Did you sleep on Hake? her elbow is boney and she sometimes jabs it when she sleeps -- and calls you a pizza boy." Tasha fetches a towel for Katherine next, then a third for Hakeber who simply gets picked up and wrapped in it. "Moka reports a mass disturbance outside, we've come to a stop before we could reach the next vessel. I thought you'd be mad if something happened and I didn't wake you up."
"Mass disturbance or disturbing mass?" Katie pauses in fluffing herself to ask.
"That awaits to be seen," Tasha says, diplomatically. Hakeber gets carried out and tucked in to bed, Tasha moving to get dressed in her (now somewhat loose) undersuit, which she throws her jacket over as if there isn't a disaster she might just come back here and take a nap with the others. No need to get over dressed.
Gabriel does pull on pants and an undershirt (which is stretched pretty tight), but doesn't bother with boots or slippers. Katie takes a sniff of her own underwear and seems to consider sticking with the towel. "If it's not an immediate disaster, I'll swing by my cabin for some fresh clothes," she notes.
"The undersuit is the answer to every question like this. I'll get you one next time we're in port." Tasha steps over to join Gabriel, hooking her arm with his. "We'll head to the bridge and observe the fascinating mass."
The first fascinating mass they encounter is spread across most of the bridge deck behind the command chairs. Glowing wires connect a collection of oddly shaped devices, some with even odder shaped antennae. These feed into a cluster of other devices arranged in a circle. At the center of these, seated in a lotus position, is Hera Sophis. All of the feeds from the devices converge into one thin glowing filament that connects to a hidden port behind the Belter's right ear.
"Sooomeone's communing with maaachine gooods," Tasha sing-songs as she walks over to her usual station, spinning the command chair and dropping in to it to watch Miss Sophis. "I wonder if her's has learned the power of sarcasim."
Gabriel has a harder time avoiding stepping on things due to his size. But he eventually does make it to his seat. "How long has she been like this?" he asks the Phins.
"About five minutes," Moka answers. Kaa is quiet, but seems restless. "Don't like-k-k just holding still," he complains. The main displays switch to deep-radar views of the debris field ahead. There are several hard points amide the otherwise ghostly images.
Tasha settles her head on her hands as she leans over to peer at the woman, watching for signs of ... something. "Nothing else out there?" She knows the answer already, but it feels appropriate to ask again.
"No sign of drone corpse," Kaa claims. "Very worrying when you don't find dead monster where you expect one."
"As a slayer of monsters, I mostly agree." Seeing Hera isn't awash with strange colors or mutating in to a bird, Tasha swivels her chair to take in the nothingness. "What sort of ship is this next one?"
"Mix of the familiar, some PTU alloys that are unfamiliar, and lots of very dense things that don't conform to known materials," Moka reports. "No signs of perfect stasis that would be needed for containing neutronium, so this is something different."
"I do like new and exciting things, just not too exciting. I just got my existence buffed." Tasha thinks Nora would have liked that joke, it references Terran land vehicles from several thousand years ago and an old joke the context of which Tasha doesn't fully understand nor have memory access to. It deals with vehicles and the importance of keeping them shiny, at its core, and is therefore something she can relate to regardless.
Katie finally arrives on the bridge, tiptoes around the mechanisms on the deck, and takes her station. She's wearing one of her shiny jumpsuits again. After a moment of reviewing things, she turns to look at Tasha and Gabriel. "Well.. whatever is there is cold and quiet."
"Collision event!" Moka suddenly declares, as the ghostly images rotate and zoom until one of the bright dots is seen slowly approaching a large piece of debris.
"I am reminded of interacting with authority figures from earlier in my life. Next it's going to tell me I need to shape up." Having little to do, Tasha settles back and spins her chair to face Katherine. "You know, I should try on my own sui--" She aburtly silences, grabbing her chair, kicking it around, and strapping in.
The display has a countdown at least. But the even is.. anticlimactic? The piece of debris simply vanishes when the dense object touches it, but all sorts of little alarms and beeps and other noises go off right behind Tasha, courtesy of Hera's cluster of detectors.
"Not detecting any known types of radiation or particles," Moka says, sounding perplexed.
Tasha lays her ears back. "It exploded in to weird, strange, bizarre and exotic matter, didn't it?"
"No," Hera says, finally coming out of her trance. "We need to move further away. At least another 50,000 kilometers."
"Something scary?" Tasha asks, ears going right back up.
"Do it Kaa," Gabriel says, and Kaa takes the Dark House out to a safer(?) distance.
"The most dangerous substance in the universe," Hera says. "Someone brought it here as a weapon, but I don't know how effective it would have been against Lukthu-hem."
"I should make a joke about Hakeber's cooking," Katie notes.
"Love? Chocolate? We already have Katie, so it's not her." Tasha does lean forward again, though, curious as to what the most dangerous substance of this universe might be. She gives it fifty-fifty if she's encountered it, caused it, or sat on it.
"Quarkonium," Hera says. "These readings will get me a doctorate degree for sure. Someone managed to harvest strange-matter from a neutron star collision, because I can't see anyone making the stuff. But.. it would only have taken one strangelet, theoretically. It's not just the densest possible state of matter, but it's stable and turns any other matter it comes into contact with into more strange matter."
"Oh. That would be bad, wouldn't it? Can that matter be recovered? Because it would make for a nice source of it, if we could keep it from making us all stranger than we already are." Tasha punches up Hera's readings, though they're beyond her understanding. The sciences aren't her forte, having grown up on a essentially barbaric planet and been bootstraped in to Galactic knowledge. "And if it's so dense is it just above becoming a black hole? But can't, because anything it touches also becomes just above being a black hole?"
"It defies most physical laws," Hera explains. "It is the most exotic of exotic matter. And anyone who had it would be hunted down by every government and.. well, everyone. If you could manipulate it somehow.. imagine a pistol, one that fired bullets. A strange-matter bullet would literally be able to convert an entire planet. Or a star. It is the ultimate weapon of mass destruction."
"Well at least now I can definitively claim there are things that cause more trouble than I do." Tasha frowns at the glob of ultimate destruction, head going back on a hand, nails drumming against her jaw. "I suppose it'd be too dangerous to even try and recover, it'd just leave planets and stars made of convienently abandoned mass destruction for anyone who could figure out how to extract a piece. While I am all for having great weapons, I'm less fond of leaving them laying around. The Titanians would come have a word with me, I think."
"That and there is not even a hypothesized method for handling it," Hera notes. "I did a study on that, and the math suggests that not even perfect stasis could shield against it. Whatever they used to get it here had to have been some sort of magic. But I can say they must have used an overspace drive to get it here."
"You'd need to talk to Sam or Amuntaten about magic," Gabriel notes. "Any way to detect particles of this stuff out here? How big of a volume could be contaminated?"
"We do know a thing or two about some kind of magic, but I think I'd rather just stuff it all in an empty universe or otherwise be rid of it." Tasha taps her console, summoning both Samael and Thoth to the bridge, before asking, "And why overspace?"
"What we're seeing is probably all of it, since it doesn't cause an energy reaction when it assimilates other matter," Hera says. "Oh, because the ship doesn't technically move in overspace drive, due to the bubble of warped space doing the actual moving. Hyperspace does not like super-dense objects."
"That makes sense. It'd be like trying to translate deep in a star system. That's another 'no' vote on using it. What about the ship beyond it? Is that the transport?" Tasha looks up, peering at the distant vessel.
"There are shreds of a ship," Moka explains. "If they had this 'strange bomb' it must have been set off prematurely. There are no drone remains, so it may have attacked specifically to take out the weapon."
"Next target-t is covered in corpses," Kaa announces gleefully. "Maybe they had another superweapon. Why would you bring anything else to this fight?"
"That does suggest it was a priority target. Luk'thu-hem is still made up of some real space matter. Losing all of its real space existence may have crippled it, or caused it to lose its hold on our universality and slip in to the universe of the other half of its existence. Or, well, other strange things that would make it hard to continue its mission. Interesting, anyway." Tasha settles back and nods. "Well, no sense staying near the universe's most dangerous gunk. Lets go see what other super destructive goodies are laying around. I'm glad we won, I'd hate to have ended up floating around here for some future ship to wonder at how destructive I might have been."
"Well, compared to the wrecks, we'd barely merit as a shuttle," Katie notes. "The next 'covered in corpses' one is still about 10,000 meters long."
"It's not the size of a thing, but how bitey it is, and also if it's helped by a god-child and the power of existential memetic Yellow." Tasha punches up the long range scans, which are still not terribly helpful. "Whatever it is, Luk'thu-hem really didn't care for it. Those child-drones aren't infinite and they took some of her focus to use correctly."
As they move closer - which takes some time, given the distances involved, more of the crew begin to pop in and out. Aaron brings coffee, and soon after Shojo brings breakfast to the bridge crew. Hera remains in her spot, just in case they strike treasure twice in terms of exotic matter. Eventually even Dr. Amuntaten arrives and stands in a back corner in silence. Lacci stays back in the rear section once she arrives, watching things via the tactical table display.
Even closer, the deep-radar image is muddied. The corpses have a lot of dense material in them, which tends to hide the full silhouette of their prey.. which also casts a significant neutrino shadow.
Tasha has long since pulled her legs up and curled up in a ballin her chair, head nestled against her fuzzy new organic scarf of a ruff. She finds herself beginning to drift off until her console alerts her that they've gotten much closer. "I'm impressed Luk'thu-hem deployed this many and the ship is still intact, or seemingly so. Maybe whatever it was couldn't be destroyed, so she opted to simply seal it all permanently?"
"That may actually be the case," Moka notes. "The mass of the drones is almost the same as the ship." Kaa begins to angle off in their approach, to give them more parallax for their scans. "Should have a full model of it all in an another hour."
"Then we might have a complete ship on our hands, all wrapped up. I prefer my presents not to be wrapped in things that have killed, in case anyone was thinking about getting me a gift." Tasha makes an exagerated 'make a note of it' writing gesture towards Katherine and Gabriel, in case they were feeling generous. "Unless it's revenge, of course."
"Maybe there will be a stash of donuts," Lacci offers. But she's been studying the scans with a historian's eye this whole time. "When can we get a materials analysis?"
"We need to be a lot-t closer for resonance scans," Kaa replies.
"Sometimes I think I don't know enougb to really appreciate these things and be useful," Tasha asides to Katherine, in a lowered voice. "Good thing I'm the owner and therefore like bossy cargo."
"Bossy cargo," Katie repeats. "I like that! You should get it on a shirt."
"That and maybe a coffee cup that says, 'Super Mommy'," Tasha jokes, tail wagging. "And if anyone laughs at the shirt I'll threaten them with cleaning the shuttle bay! Of course, Gabriel has final say."
As more data comes in, things get a bit clearer. It's possibly to 'erase' the monsters from the image and fill in the gaps. The ship looks like it was made to be simple while looking very deadly. The profile is that of a long arrowhead, but with four edges instead of two. It isn't completely featureless though, as several ports seem to be open, and there are blisters and other shapes spread across the surfaces.
"Hmm, I don't think you should wear shirts," Gabriel notes to Tasha.
"What should I wear?" Tasha prompts, leaning over towards her mate and a out of her chair, head propped and free hand twirling her hair.
"You should be topless, and use my hands to cover up," Gabriel says. "We've got plenty of others to carry stuff, leaving my hands free."
"That is a good idea. We should talk about that later. In detail." And Tasha intends to, just as soon as they're out of this strange, ancient battlefield. "There are things I'd like to try on."
"I know that ship," Lacci says, with a bit of uncertainty.
"You do not you're barely older than I am," Tasha counters, rolling over tolay on her console's armrest and stick her tongue out at Lacci.
"No, really.. I've seen it," Lacci says. "Or.. a representation of it. "The name I know for it is Nidhogg. The Soul Devouring Dragon. Or Divine Malice. It's from Celestial mythology."
"It is a Thennenin vessel," Amuntaten offers.
"Ooooh, is it now." Rolling back over, Tasha returns her attention to her screens and frowns at them in thought. "If it is, then it would be ... Oh, yes, from their precursor species, the one that held their homeworld before they did and, at least from what I was told, had the original Celestial base species as pets. That would be a Thennenin husk-ship, except it would have been functional and not just a salvaged hull. I think ... I think I have a memory of Ahriman's that placed him there when they were still around. I remember his ship."
This causes a bit of a squawk from Amuntaten. "Are you suggesting that Ahriman allied with Thotep for this venture?" he asks of Tasha.
"I'm saying I have a memory of a spaceship-pyramid leaving their home world. It could also have been from after the Celestials were uplifted. Ahriman wasn't very talkative with me, he just shared a few memories with me. Or we somehow forced them out. Neith and Mafdet interacted even less." Tasha glances back, frowning more deeply. "But that you seem surprised and even mention it makes me think you had suspected he might have. I know he was a lot more of a hardliner, that he probably did what he thought needed to be done, just like his children. It might be something he did."
"The Vril-ya did not have the mandate to hunt down the Ogdru-hem at the time of the Thennenin Empire," Amuntaten says, perhaps half to himself. "So it is unlikely any would have been involved in this fleet. They did not seek out conflict."
"Well, not openly," Samael comments, having been hiding in Lacci's shadow. This makes the Vartan woman squawk cutely in surprise when he seems to rise up next to her.
"Or undue contact, if my encounters with them are any indication. None of them even spoke to me until Atum gave me my mandate." Tasha's head shakes. Could Ahriman have been part of this? It seems remote, but he always did seem like a sinister figure, so she could see it being true. She jerks at the suden arrival, having to hide a smile because Lacci really can be adorable when she's not being so difficult. "So you're going to tell us Ahriman met with one of you?"
"I wouldn't know," Samael says. "But they weren't above meddling if they wanted to. So was he here? Probably not. Would he have helped convince the Thennenin to join the battle? I wouldn't deny the possibility. I'm pretty sure this all happened while I was dead."
"And I think most of them were elsewhere, as well. This cosmic era seemed to go unwatched by many powers -- except Thotep," Tasha observes, turning back to the ship. "I always wondered what these hulls were like when they were still alive. This one probably isn't, but I can see why smothering it would work. I wonder if it, too, had a superweapon beyond simply being a dreadnought?"
"They weren't alive, they were just incredibly durable," Amuntaten explains. "They could even withstand significant antimatter bombardment. Such a ship would have been built around a weapon, most likely."
"Something 'dragony'-" Tasha wiggles her fingers; dragony, " ...- no doubt. Is there any chance we'll be able to see underneath, or is that a lost cause?"
"I thought the Galactic codes of war prohibited super-weapons?" Katie asks.
"The code only applies to Galactic members," Tasha replies, glancing over. "And possible Clients, I think. Outliers are fair game."
"Any super-weapons would have been just for this battle," Amuntaten speculates. "However, it is unlikely the drones penetrated the hull, not with normal matter. Much of it could still be intact."
"If it's intact, the Celestials would pay anything to recover it," Hera says.
"I like the sound of 'anything'. I have always wanted my own species of ritualistic murder insects." Tasha cocks her head to the side, as if considering the possibilities. "Well, lets see if we can't unwrap the ancient gift. It would be a shame to leave it untouched, and we did finish its battle."
"That would mean telling them the location, and what to expect," Gabriel says. "Celestials may have access to knowledge about controlling strange matter. They and the Khattas are not on the same playing field with the rest of us, in terms of power."
"I didn't say give it to them, I said unwrap it. If it's still functional we can set it to autopilot and park it somewhere convienent, where we can gather it up if we need it. I'm definitely not handing the Galactic a super weapon, I don't need to fight two wars to dstroy the universe -- or cause one!" Tasha clucks her tongue, it would be just like her luck sometimes to cause that sort of mess. Thankfully she has managed to avoid causing interspecies wars, if just barely. "I'd prefer to just kick the strange matter out of reality."
"A reality with no life," Amuntaten notes.
"Or anything, if possible," Tasha agrees. "But I'm not sure we can do that? We'd have to pool our resources and think on it. Dimensional shifting is one thing, but those are local or otherwise nearby dimensional translations. We'd need something wholly removed, an isolated universe. Maybe Persephone could do it, but I'm not sure how we could."
"We cannot touch the material," Amuntaten notes. "That means opening a singularity nearby."
"Can we ... do that?" The young woman leans in curiously, ears swiveling forward. "Are you hiding a singularity gun in that snake of yours?"
"I am not," Amuntaten notes.
"Maybe the Thennenin ship has one," Sam suggests. "It had something that warranted the defensive response we see."
"Well unless my new body can conjure them I don't think I can. Maybe the ship can, but that's Sam's department. Perhaps one of these old superweapons can be used? There has to be a singulaity device around there, right?" Tasha snaps her fingers, evidently to her own surprise because it's something she could only really do well as a Human, and further, she'd apparenly gotte used to it, and points at Samael. "Yes. Or another ship. Maybe there's ten of them just floating around. We could save one or two as souvineers."
"Or you could ask the Niss," the demon suggests.
"You heard his Spooky Squishiness," Tasha declares, looking up. "Any thoughts on how to get rid of that supercloud? Or if any ship around here migth have a suitable weapon?"
"We can handle strange matter," the 'computer' voice of the Niss replies. "It was a component of our previous body's stasis anchors."
"The ones that sparked off?" Tasha asks, perking ever the more so. "And don't you need to be, well, closer? Or can you use the ship?"
"It requires constructing a purpose-built body," the Niss note. "We did not have the power to maintain what we had before, so creating a new body for this task would take more time than you are likely to be without operational control of Dark Horse."
"So much for that idea. I guess we're back to 'tour superweapons and hope for the best'. Or worst, I'm not sure which it is with superweapons. Well, we'll keep looking around and if we find something, we'll deal with things here. If not, we weren't going to be able to anyway. I'll consider informing the Titanians so they can come and clean up, if we can't think of anything better." Tasha spreads her hands towards the viewscreen. "And we may as well start with the one infront of us."
"How close should we get?" Kaa asks. "Those drones are pretty well preserved."
"Well unless they're autonomous they shouldn't be directly controlled by ... anything, at the moment. Luk'thu-hem probably gave them a stask and they'll just keep doing it. If they break off to attack something else, then they'll have failed. They're all still here thousands and thousands of years later even though the battle is over and Luk'thu-hem could have destroyed the ship herself, even if she was injured. So, I don't think they'll be in a hurry to do anything new now. And, well, maybe they'll listen to one of us," Tasha offers.
"Hera's equipment should tell us if we're getting close to anything weird," Gabriel says. "Between that, Tasha, Hakeber, Sam and Amuntaton we shouldn't be surprised. Bring us in as close as you're comfortable with, Mr. Kaa. We'll pull back if anyone senses anything dangerous."
"I'll keep my eyes -- all of them! -- peeled," Tasha agrees, though Gabriel's never heard her say 'peeled' before as it's a solidly old-Terran expression and surely Nora's. As she concentrates, something about earlier begins to bug her. Her conversation with Samael, then the fact he had been there saying she summoned him. But, did she? Summon him? he did say maybe she could exert control over lesser Shadow-beings due to her involvement in defeating Luk'thu-hem, so while she keeps an eye out she tries something on a lark: willing the drone to let go of the vessel. Willing them to standby.
After a million or more years, it may be that the drones are dead. Or Tasha just doesn't have the sort of broadcasting power needed to reach them. Also, it's entirely possible that Samael is playing some sort of joke on her.
Entirely possible. Samael's mischief has become a fixture on board ship, but she can never dismiss what he says entirely, either. Either way, Tasha decides it was worth a shot and resumes simply staring -- naturally or otherwise.
Kaa doesn't exactly pour on the gravitons. There are gaps in the various limbs he could probably fly the ship through, but under Moka's direction he flies a pattern to best get the lay of the land. The deep radar is all but useless on the ancient battleship, however, so regular radar and lidar do most of the work since the material is disturbingly opaque to neutrinos. It does work on the drones, however, revealing some very dense internal structures. So far nothing has set off the alarms in Hera's detectors though. Katie has something else entirely on her display: a 'gravity map' using the ships non-psionic mass-detector.
"I'm not seeing any hull breaches," Lacci notes. "But.. those.. uh.. tentacles do seem to be penetrating the hull in places."
"That's worrisome. With Charon, Luk'thu-hem used them to probe and attempt to reach critical systems. They could trying for any vital component, energy conduits, or even the crew. I don't know enough about how the drones function against something like this to say more." Tasha brings up the various display on to her own console's display, studying each in turn. While she may be qualified for navigation, she's certainly not a scanner technician, especially with all the newer more exotic scanners involved here. She can only guess the obvious, that the drones were deployed to reduce a threat to non-operability, and the tentacles suggest that's more than just smothering it.
"So, if the tentacles got through, do we have to get in through them?" Hakeber asks.
"There's sure to be regular entrances. The Celestials use doors.." Lacci notes, but with a hint of uncertainty.
"Scan for a weapon barrel," Gabriel instructions, as Kaa brings them closer to the forward tip of the ship.
"Well they would have tried to get somewhere useful, the problem is, is that going to be the crew quarters or the still-active alien reactor core?" Tasha glances back towards Lacci and tilts her head. "It's Thennenin, but I don't rememember seeing what they look like. They seemed to view pre-sentient celestials as pets, however, so maybe they're quite large?"
"Or pre-sentient Celestials were small," Yue suggests. "All we know about their ancestry for certain is that they had become genetically vulnerable. Even more than the Silent-Ones. I think the term was genetic senescence."
"It is possible that overspace travel has long term biological side effects," Amuntaton offers. "Their entire surviving species was exposed to it when they lost their homeworld."
"So maybe they were bad at genetics, too?" Tasha gives a shrug, who can say of the ancients without meeting them? She continues to scan for a way in, checking between her display windows in turn. "I assume Luk'thu-hem would have prioritized weaponry ports. Um. We can try for openings that are tactically useless? Or vulnerable areas where the drones would have focused their invasion on. She probably doesn't think in small-scale terms, or, well, used to, so she'd only be taking notice of things that concern her, and she might overlool escape pods, damage control measures, and other things like that."
"Hmm, that's something to think about," Lacci says, and tries to create a map of the 'intersection' points with the drones and the hull, to see if the placement looks deliberate. "They're all over the hull.. the tentacles could be overlapping the airlocks or other openings. There's some symmetry here. Maybe the seams were the only vulnerable spots?"
"This ship doesn't have seams," Hakeber notes. "Just parts of the hull you can pass through."
"The drones aren't invincible, we could try using conventional weaponry against them. They're also vulnerable to dispersal through 'quantum quaking', but I don't think we can do that. Maybe they weren't concerned about external attack? There doesn't seem to be any indication the rest of the fleet tried to assist them," Tasha suggests, looking up. "Because I'm not seeing an obvious way inside, they seemed intent on covering the whole thing, like a ... " her brow furrows. "A cage. A Faraday cage? Do you think the cage-matrix could be energy-dispersing? Maybe they wreen't trying to get inside, but trapping or sinking energy. Heat, electrical, shields, what-ever."
Lacci's map gets time on the big screen so everyone can see the distribution. "They seem more concentrated near the nose, but with fewer penetration instances," Yue observes. "The drones also have high density areas in them. Either for penetration or something else."
"My map is done," Katie says, adding more layers of information to the display. The drones look smaller on it, but also more like.. the sort of pins Tasha saw on Abaddon, in the Winged Citadel. For tacking notices to the cork bulletin boards. The drones are nearly as massive as the ship itself, and show an uneven mass distribution.
"Well now we see they're unevenly placed. If it is a mega-weapon, the concentrated area may be the 'barrel'. It could also be something like a control center, but the mass involved is considerable, too, and this is a strange way to disable a vessel. Why not come back and rip it to pieces? Why use this method? And why keep it like this and not recall the drones for re-absorption? There's a reason for this, and I think it has to do with the nature of this ship as a weapon or a drive system. Maybe, it's just one giant bomb?" Tasha drums her fingers against her cheek, plopping her head down.
"Or they wanted it intact," Katie points out. "Back home, there was a war over the latest superweapon every few years. We always tried to capture it."
"It must be exotic to interest something like Luk'thu-hem. Shadow-matter, or, maybe, it also contains an Ogdru-hem. The First Ones knew how to contain and utilize the Ogdru-hem for a variety of purposes, and their servants, too. I've met several," Tasha suggests, still drumming her fingers. "Shadow-beings are also vulnerable to certain kinds of memetic and exotic elements, as well as foreign ones. It could be any of these, and whatever it is would be containable by these drones. What are they made of, anyway?"
"Assume that thing is some sort of giant mass-driver," Lacci says. "The distribution of those large masses could be meant to disrupt the projectile path. Those hulls might block radiation, and have something to do with space-warp drives, but they can't block gravity. If these monsters incorporate actual dark matter, that could explain the absurd density concentrations."
"Stuff," Samael claims. "They're made of stuff. Some baryonic matter, probably a lot of exotic stuff like pentaquark matter, and shadow mass and energy."
"Time," Amuntaton says. "Crystallized time using that extra dimension."
"The Ogdru-hem are adept at control of gravity. The 'blood' of certain Ogdru-hem can be used for gravition manipulation, such as in stators. It wouldn't be hard for something like Luk'thu-hem to use gravity as a weapon or trap, I'd think it'd actually be 'right up her alley'." Tasha nods, sitting up and gesturing towards Samael. "Blood." She pauses at Thoth's review, frowning a little. "Crystallized time ... kind of ... orangey, reflects other realities, that sort of thing?"
"I've never seen it," Amuntaton claims. "It just occurred to me. Luk'thu-hem was after Charon's timestone core, which is.. a crystallized universe, essentially. Space and time. The Dagger of Eibon, however, manipulates space into a weapon which can destroy an Ogdru-hem. They don't seem as adept at spatial manipulation, relying on extra-dimensional means of getting around usually. I think it may be due to their relationship with 2-dimensional time. It makes them unable to manipulate three-plus-one spacetime very easily."
"I ... might need a ... graph for that," Tasha admits, massaging her head temples. "I have seen crystallized time, topogoric, but not timestone. But I do know they're not great with two dimensional space-time, they've said as much themselves. Many of them are active on multiple world-lines and points on the timeline, maybe these multiple points of contact make them vulnerable to spatial distortions. Because they're partially from beyond, their grasp on our universe and its dimensions may be thinner, more distributed, and lacking in complete anchorage. Like a spider's web, strong and everywhere, but move a few key anchors or yank it and the whole thing crumples?" Tasha gives a shrug. She really ought to sit down and learn these things more formally.
"A weapon to disrupt their hold on our reality?" Lacci asks.. and of course looks at Samael. "Would your boss have something like that?"
"Such a weapon would work for either side in this ideological conflict," Samael notes. "It would be a great risk if it were captured by the enemy."
Tasha spreads her hands apart, bringing them together: two halves. "They're two-part beings. A true Shadow-being, like their bosses, can't enter this reality. Their oustider nature gives them powers that seem like magic here in our reality, like defying the laws of physics, existing on a pantemporal level, and traversing world-lines, but that also must be a weakness. They're not as here as we-- uh, well, I guess you are and I am ... less so now. If they lost their grip, they'd ... what, just be Shadow-synced energies and dimensions and slip sideways or just fall apart, since they're hybrids, not either-or-brids."
"I think it might be more like the worldline-switching that T'thogga-hem was capable of," Samael suggests. "It might only be temporary, but 'temporary' could be a very long time when it comes to finding your way through shadow-time. It could also be potentially fatal I suppose, depending on how strongly anchored the being was to a particular timeline."
"A trip on time; time to climb up or cracking your head on eternity." Tasha drops her head back down on her hand, her free hand pointing at the screen and making a little twirly motion. "I want to know what's in there, and if it's useful, I think I want it."
"If we're right about the drones disrupting things gravitationally, we'll have to get rid of them first," Katie points out.
"Maybe they're ticklish," Hakeber offers.
"If we can get the ship inside, maybe we can pull the whole thing in to the Maelstrom, briefly? Or augment the craft's own generators or fields. The drones may not have enough members to handle a whole new degree of gravitational warping and they can't get reinforcements anymore," Tasha suggests, still doing the point and twirl thing. "Otherwise we could try and damage or destroy elements of the web and hope that without full coverage they'll lose their grip due to uneven stress load?"
"We'll need to get a look at what is holding them to the dreadnought," Gabriel says. "Kaa.. look for openings in the drones. There must be a way into their shells."
"I hope it's not bitey teeth," Tasha whispers, dropping back in her chair. She hugs her legs to her chest, head on her knees.
Deep-radar works better on the drones. There are.. openings. One of the larger drones resembles a hundred-tentacled Ammonite, and has various valves and sphincters amidst the forest of limbs. It's also near the midpoint of the Thennenin vessel, exerting the largest of-center gravitational force.
"Tubes," Lacci mutters. "Giant space monsters with tubes that open on vacuum. It's not natural."
"I wonder if that acts like a control or lynchpin. It looks important, and I don't see another like it," Tasha notes, glancing at Lacci as she does. "Maybe it's a ... 'boarding craft'? Insert smaller monsters, have them board by those airlock-like tubes. If the outter monsters are containment, they may have needed something inside to take control."
"That doesn't make them any less disturbing you know," Lacci says.
Tasha nods slowly, thoughtfully, perhaps obnoxiously. "Maybe even more disturbing."
"Don't worry!" Kaa says, sounding like he's giggling and cackling all at once. "I can squeeze into any hole!" The one highlighted on the display does look just barely large enough for the Dark Horse to fit through. It has teeth along the rim, of course, and what might be crystal eyes.
"Sam, why do they put eyes and teeth everywhere? Even places where they'd get in the way? Is it some kind of memetic expression of that consuming, existence-endangering hunger Shadow-being sometimes possess? Does it serve a function?" This has always bothered Tasha. Eyes and teeth and tentacles everywhere. She wonders if it has a purpose, if it's memetic, if it's a mistake, or something else entirely. If their existence is blurry, a kind of mish-mash between universal perception and the needs of a massive, physical existence.
"Ogdru-hem have no sense of style," Samael claims. "But mostly it is a reflection of their nature. They are not natural, and would never have evolved in this universe. And when they were alive, I imagine the eyes would pop in and out of existence. Imagine if your eyes changed location whenever you blinked."
"Yeah, that only happens when I die. Very annoying," Tasha agrees, nodding along. "I bet the same 'eye' can even end up on different timelines, realities, and what-have-you. It's really impressive they can keep track of anything at all."
"These drones don't need to keep track of things," Sam claims.
The main view shows the maw up close now as the approach it. It's.. dark and cavernous of course. "So.. go in?" Kaa asks.
"We should be able to submerge if we need to," Gabriel says. "There'd be turbulence, but we haven't seen things extend into the Maelstrom so far."
"With Luk'thu-hem destroyed, they may be on auto-pilot, so they could be dangerous if they still have a source of power. We should be care and definitely ready to submerge," Tasha agrees. She untangles herself and sits up, checking her seat straps and paying more attention to the displays while also leaning back now and then to actually look around the bridge -- and through the bridge.
There is something that Tasha sees, but it's much dimmer just outside than Samael is right next to her. Either the energies of the drone are 'low' or she just can't sense them clearly at this distance, or through the hull. Kaa does turn on the external lights (virtual as they may be) to show the interior of the tube. The structure of the walls is.. difficult to look at the. The shapes and patterns want to draw the eye into visual dead-ends, like the expanding blind-spot of hyperspace.
"I wish I could paint this," Tasha notes, leaning forward and this time actually having something to lean forward and see with greater clarity. "You can really see how they're not native to our reality, how their bodies are not just phsyical and physics, but maybe even extending in to other dimensions beyond the three plus one, and even if they're not, their alien thinking produces these shapes. It's like looking in to their mind, a little."
"They are what they know?" Katie asks, glancing at Thoth.
The tube goes on from some way, until they begin to encounter turbulence. "The ultra-dense regions are interfering with the drive," Moka reports. "Trying to compensate. Means going slower!"
Tasha also glances at Thoth, but she shakes her head. "Not exactly. Their nature is different, but also in some ways similar. The Vril-ya are what they know but don't need to destroy it to do so, while the Shadow-beings consume. The information is destroyed, but it also empowers them. I'm not sure how they both destroy information and grow from that."
The display begins to have difficulties. The deeper they go, the more kaleidoscopic things become, with infinitely repeating patterns and reflections. And the reflections are out of sync, or worse. An external view at one point shows the inside of the Dark Horse, along with the insides of the crew.
"Ew," goes Tasha, who could have done without seeing her insides once again, not to mention everyone else's. "Are we still in the universe, Kaa? We haven't shunted or translated out, have we?"
"Paths here are fractalized the closer we get-t-t to the higher density regions," Kaa replies. "May not be able to get further without submerging."
"Are these really boarding tubes? Maybe they're here to siphon energy off to higher dimensions?" Tasha glances back towards Samael and Thoth for confirmation.
"Could just be the hyper-colon," Sam suggests. "We want to get into one of the legs though."
"Well, I guess we submerge when we need to, then." Tasha settles back in, ready for more disturbances. It makes her stomach turn a little to realize such a peculiar twist of space, time, and who knows what else may reside in her forehead, or for that matter, connected to her brain.
The dive klaxon sounds, and Dark Horse shifts into a slightly different, slightly more active dimension. Here, the mass detector shows the 'skeleton' of dense structures more clearly. Even the hull of the ancient ship can be seen as density wall. "This will be rough!" Kaa claims.
"Oh wow, it shows up even here. I can't remember a ship appearing as such a dense object, not at its size. No wonder it's so interesting," Tasha notes, watching the shadow turn in space.
The shaking gets worse as Kaa follows the spiral of density towards the wall. There's a violent shudder at the point of contact with the ghostly wall, but the line of shadow-density shows the path. Then things become relatively calm, but the mass detector shows a uniform haze. "I think-k-k we're through," Kaa announces.
Tasha gives her head a quick, if violent, shake to clear it of the fractal insanity and shadow-images. She may intercat with Shadow-beings on a regular basism but most of them are either condescending and translating themselves to suit her manner of existence or otherwise physical. Seeing them undiluted is almost as bad for her as it is for anyone else, demons and gods exluded. "Are we causing any gravitation tidal forces on the ship? I remember when we tried this with the Ningyo and the damage that could have caused."
"We are still submerged, so not interacting yet-t," the Phin pilot claims.
"Which isn't going to tell us anything," Gabriel notes. "Raise the periscopes."
"Even so," Tasha notes hesitantly, but Kaa's the pilot and probably knows better than she. As it stands they're not shaking and the hazy landscape around them doesn't appear to be crumbling. "Well, this should be interesting."
The first images show a large, empty space, but other data is streaming in. "The entire structure isn't that super-material it seems," Katie reports. "But whatever was made of normal stuff is now a layer of compressed matter a few millimeters thick on the hull, denser around the penetration point. Must have been a gravitation sheer similar - extreme tidal force, maybe?"
"At least, in this chamber," the Karnor amends. "This ship is huge, and there are bulkheads of the hull material that I'm seeing."
"Could the drones have warped the gravitational field sufficently to redirect it in to this zone and thereby crush it?" Tasha wonders aloud. That's certainly one way to make an entrance! "Well, at least we now have somewhere to enter in to real space. We should make sure the interior isn't filled with pockets of hypergravity or other weaponry before risking a full emergence."
"Whatever caused the initial effect doesn't seem to be active now," Katie says. "We can avoid the density zone. It's.. uh.. invisible. But definitely there. Maybe it is dark matter."
"I don't see anything there either, so it's probably real-universe matter, or, well, something beyond my senses. There may be other intruding realities than just the Shadow and the few others I'm aware of, but it seems less likely." Tasha rubs her hands together. "Are we going to travel around inside the ship and check with the periscope, then?"
"Running scans, the internal walls aren't as dense as the outer hull," Katie responds. Deep-radar behaves oddly inside the hull, due to actual reflections, but Moka tweaks things to use the pulses more like sonar. This slowly builds up an internal model of the massive ship. "A few opaque areas still, some spatial distortion," Katie finally reports. "Lost of really big structures."
"We have equipment for navigating spatial oddities," Professor Stanislav offers. "They're hand-held devices."
"No internal atmosphere," Yue notes from the other sensor station. "But not freezing. Actually pretty hot out there."
"Can we discern anything? Drive core, sources of power, life support, maybe even stasis pods or other emergency measures?" Tasha glances back towards the exit, anticipating a ground operation. "Or is it 'see for yourself'? I'm not too surprised about the heat if they've been insulating this ship using such a complicated web of matter, fields, and who-knows-what, there may not be anywhere for vessel to vent heat any longer. It certainly can't radiate through the hull or extend heat sinks like this."
"I can't make out what the megastructures are for, and our scans aren't detailed enough to see fine structure," Yue notes. "There could be an army of three-meter-tall mermaids out there and they'd just show up as noise."
"I feel like I'm going to get requests for mermaids when we head out. Souvineers, maybe." Tasha hesitates for a moment, then pushes herself up. "Well, mermaids or not, dark matter bombs or not, I want to see what's so interesting about this vessel Luk'thu-hem wrapped it up like a gift to open later. Maybe we can even do something with it, once we figure out what it is, how well this ship has held up, and if we can clear all the drones off it."
"Find a place to surface that's away from drone-shadow-density-tentacles," Gabriel says.
"That'd be deeper in. There do seem to be some large enough open spaces," Katie says, and puts up a rough 'ghost' display of the ship, and their location in it. "There's one near the central spine we could check out."
Tasha nods to the location. "If it's not mounting a weapon the central spine could have either the main dock and -- or -- a main transport system, especially if the ship's configuration is aligned with a base thrust. There may still be working mouring systems, or cargo holds, or, well, something relying on a central transport system even if it's just a big rail gun."
"Take us there, Mr. Kaa," Gabriel says. "We'll take a peek and decide how to proceed from there."
The periscope submerges, and the ship takes a circuitous (and very slow) path through the ship. Ghosting through the internal bulkheads is easier than the outer hull, of course, but there are still spots that Kaa gives a wide berth. Eventually they're all looking into a large chamber that could be a dock. There are gantries and other recognizable structures that would be used for mooring a ship.. just no way for the ship to get in or out that they can see. But room for people-sized objects to enter the rest of the ship through hatches.
"I wonder if there will be any Thennenin attack craft or other vessels still in harborage. If they were ambushed this way early, the ship may still be heavily stocked with its war preperations," Tasha muses, head back on a hand. "I don't see any, which suggests they either escaped with them or launched everything before the battle. We didn't see any outside, so ... " She licks her lips. "Probably still out there, somewhere. Those hatches look us-sized, at least."
"No bodies or obvious lurking monsters," Gabriel says. "Surface us, Mr. Kaa." A different klaxon sounds, and the Dark Horse emerges into the bay with room to spare.
"Can Modo whip up some mapping drones?" Yue asks Stanislav, who looks blank for a moment. "I would assume so, since he claims to have made robot toys for his children."
"Come to think of it, does anyone know what a Thennenin looks like? I'd be good if we knew what the crew looked like, what their body form was, and roughly their average intelligence and preferences. It'll make navigating the ship easier, and might help with their electronics -- or electronics analogue," Tasha inquires.
"They are assumed to be reptilian," Amuntaton says. "As with other First Ones, no available records exist about their biology or culture. Older, offline library units might include the data, including any on this ship."
"And the unit we found on the Wood Ship," Tasha concludes. "But getting them to work safely is its own challenge. We don't know how well it'll work with our systems and if, being what it is, it's capable of analysis and defense. It might be worth a shot, but we could just see for ourselves and not risk imploding the device. Yue, you know more about them, is it usable safely?"
"No idea," Yue admits. "I just try to find them," she explains. "Then turn them over to the people who will try to get them working."
"We should get those people. We'll send a shuttle. It'll be, hmm, maybe a million years or so? We can play cards." Tasha rises, stretching. "Or if we're feeling lazy we could just go look ourselves. Personally I'm all for more reptiles, I had such a good experience with my last two."
"These are more likely to be desiccated than cold-blooded," Lacci notes. "Back into the armor I suppose."
"Given the temperature outside, what's the likely operating time for skinsuits?" Gabriel asks Yue.
"Lets not underestimate the ancients, they may yet surprise us." Tasha retracts her command chair to its resting position and hops out, heading aft. "And you look good in armor, Lacci. Very tough and warrior-like."
"Hmm, they're designed to move heat around, but that assumes there's a colder place to move it to. The heat out there is radiant though. I'll have to run a simulation."
"Do that. I want to know how far we can reasonably travel within safety limits," Gabriel says. "In the meantime, let's ask Modo about those drones. Remote mapping is preferable to getting lost. This thing is as big as several cities after all."
"How about our hardsuits? I know they're shielded and have active heat excahnging systems, but aren't they designed anticipating planetary environments, or else the vacuum of space? Constant, high heat seems like they'd run in to the same problems as the skin suits, eventually." Tasha pauses by the entrance to the CiC, waiting for the others to catch up. "We could probably use the shuttles for short range exploration of the hangar itself, too."
"The environmental suits have active cooling and heating systems," Lacci notes. "They're meant for dealing with high radiation environments. The skinsuits use more passive systems, extending the cooling properties of the wearer's own skin."
"But they can still be overwhelmed, can't they? Operationally, we're looking at reduced actives times as the internal sinks are unable to redistribute heat. Even spacecraft have to dump heat somewhere," Tasha points out.
"Robotic drones will do better to start with," Gabriel says. "Once we know where we want to go and how to get there, we can do what we need to maximize our working time. We'll start by limiting EVA to full environmental support suits."
Tasha nods to this. "That works for me. No reaosn to get my new body toasted too early. I think I want to keep this one. It has a ruff." And of course she pronounces 'ruff' in that particularly canine way, and aims it at Gabriel. Her tail wags.
"Are you going to style it?" Katie asks Tasha.
"Could add flavoring," Gabriel suggests.
"I might! Or dye it. Silver sounds good, doesn't it? I mean, no one would ever think of that!" There is even more wagging from Tasha.
Gabriel also gets swatted on the chest, but Tasha does grin.
"Liza probably has some ideas," Hakeber notes. "She's floofy."
"You people are odd," Samael notes. "I will go talk to the mechanic."
"Well we can fuss over my mane when we're flying through the great empty black again. There'll be plenty of time to dress me up and flavor me." Tasha sticks her tongue out at Samael as he passes. Then, just because she can, she tugs one of his wings. She almost tugs his tail, but decides that a her-and-Gabriel thing. "Remember who also has a ruff while impersonating me."
"Mine is less floofy," Samael claims.
"Faaaaeee," Tasha says, exagerating the world in an approximation of Hakeber's use of it. She gives the demon a finger-wiggle wave and shoes him off, then slings her arms around Gabriel and Katherine so they can head off and get ready.